401–410 of 463 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The receiver account can still be seized by government institutions That is hardly an advantage for the victim. Come to think of it, that's a (rare but realistic) threat for normal, licit commerce.
What do you think the government does with the money? Keep it?
Have a friend who lost more than $12k in the process of buying a house. Scammers sent the wiring instructions a few hours before the legit closing attorney sent the real instructions. The email looked exactly right except for a minor change to the domain name from address. After one hour, wire transfers sent in error are no more recoverable than crypto. How the thieves knew so much about the process and timing is sup…
Is it just me or is there fantastically more fraud these days than a decade or two ago? Any transaction feels like walking around in northern Canada during black fly season. I receive several cold scam calls per day and I’ve known people who have done things like purchase a home and been inundated by fake calls from “the underwriter” and other scams. Is there no mail and telemarketing fraud enforcement any more?
Have a friend who lost more than $12k in the process of buying a house. Scammers sent the wiring instructions a few hours before the legit closing attorney sent the real instructions. The email looked exactly right except for a minor change to the domain name from address. After one hour, wire transfers sent in error are no more recoverable than crypto. How the thieves knew so much about the process and timing is sup…
For anyone interested, a friend of mine works on a technical solution to this exact scam. https://certifid.com/ No affiliation besides having a friend who works there.
And it's yet another party that can get hacked.
The solution is for the parties to talk too each other to verify their relationships, instead of replacing all the trusted people by random websites.
Have a friend who lost more than $12k in the process of buying a house. Scammers sent the wiring instructions a few hours before the legit closing attorney sent the real instructions. The email looked exactly right except for a minor change to the domain name from address. After one hour, wire transfers sent in error are no more recoverable than crypto. How the thieves knew so much about the process and timing is sup…
This problem can be avoided if the parties use digital signatures and require a phone call for final confirmation of the instructions.
It's a principal-agemt problem. Real estate agents hire their friends to do escrow.
Have a friend who lost more than $12k in the process of buying a house. Scammers sent the wiring instructions a few hours before the legit closing attorney sent the real instructions. The email looked exactly right except for a minor change to the domain name from address. After one hour, wire transfers sent in error are no more recoverable than crypto. How the thieves knew so much about the process and timing is sup…
Well, I'm not sure why transfers are not checked against the name, especially for high value ones This is fraud. It might not be recoverable immediately but it merits a police report. And maybe with that report you can have the receiving bank take action
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was the down payment on the house in this case. And was actually a lot more than $12k. It has to be a wire transfer since checks take so long to clear and the title can't transfer with that uncertainty. My advice to anyone buying or selling is to get the attorney's phone number from a known good source in advance, and call them to verify the wiring instructions before submitting. Also compare the bank account name…
> It has to be a wire transfer since checks take so long to clear and the title can't transfer with that uncertainty. Why was an escrow service not an option?
Checks can be uncleared long after they clear (another common scam, since checks have no security model), so nobody sane accepts checks from stranges for large numbers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am closing on a house, and this is quite terrifying. How in the world did the scammers know all the exact details of the house? I am guessing the $12k was good faith money? In my case, I was able to write a plain old check for my good faith money.
My title company gave us all of the relevant information and account numbers in person on paper and made us sign documents agreeing that we were warned not to trust any information sent via email, web, or phone. You should expect the same.
Have a friend who lost more than $12k in the process of buying a house. Scammers sent the wiring instructions a few hours before the legit closing attorney sent the real instructions. The email looked exactly right except for a minor change to the domain name from address. After one hour, wire transfers sent in error are no more recoverable than crypto. How the thieves knew so much about the process and timing is sup…
I am closing on a house, and this is quite terrifying. How in the world did the scammers know all the exact details of the house? I am guessing the $12k was good faith money? In my case, I was able to write a plain old check for my good faith money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then for crypto you need to count what fraction of value is used for illicit activity. Here is a paper estimating its about 46% of transactions [0]. If you look at transactions that cause real economic activity (as opposed to speculation) I bet the fraction would be in the 90%+. [0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3102645
You are moving the goal posts. The point initially was to show that the current socio-political institutions are no better than "Wild-West" blockchain systems to avoid fraud and misappropriation of assets. You are now talking about how much of a "real economy" blockchain can handle, which is a different matter and a totally unfair comparison. Let's talk about a "real economy" when people are allowed to enter a work a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am closing on a house, and this is quite terrifying. How in the world did the scammers know all the exact details of the house? I am guessing the $12k was good faith money? In my case, I was able to write a plain old check for my good faith money.
I could imagine a MiTM scam where the scammer relists the owner's property, and provides the mark with the scammer's email, phone number, mailing address etc. Depending on how sophisticated the scammer is, the MiTM between communication can be transparent to the victim.