[HN Gopher] Hundreds of thousands trafficked to work as online s...
___________________________________________________________________
Hundreds of thousands trafficked to work as online scammers in SE
Asia, says UN
Author : layer8
Score : 328 points
Date : 2023-08-30 12:27 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ohchr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ohchr.org)
| 1-6 wrote:
| Unsure if it's related to the same region but in general,
| scammers are getting sophisticated with their attacks finding
| local churches and email phishing with unusually detailed
| information about church members. Posting videos asking prayers
| for specific individuals online is a bad practice since it
| exposes not only that individual but everyone around them to
| scam.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Related; 130 trafficked Indian workers were rescued last year.
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/8/indian-workers-resc...
| skilled wrote:
| Related (as in a similar story but focusing specifically on
| Cambodia),
|
| They're Forced to Run Online Scams. Their Captors Are Untouchable
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37304188) (no comments)
| momirlan wrote:
| i remember an article about people from Moldova trafficked to
| Turkey, where they promptly had one or two organs harvested and
| then sent back home. the horror...
| macawfish wrote:
| This is an extreme and poignant caricature of the labor market in
| general as vast numbers of people experience it. Not to minimize
| what's happening here: extreme financial pressure with very high
| stakes is not rare. It's disturbing to see the extremes because
| there's no hard line between normal labor and this, it's really a
| continuum.
|
| Aside from enforcement and regulation, what really prevents these
| exploitative forms of labor from spreading?
| kirillzubovsky wrote:
| Hi, this is UPS. Your packages was the wherehouse due to an error
| in the shipping address. Please contact our customer service
| immediately at http://scams4you.xyz
| ConfusedDog wrote:
| Just saw a documentary interviewing escaped trafficked labors -
| just men, women ain't even capable of escape. They are falsely
| promised for "entrepreneurial opportunities," promptly got locked
| up and financially deprived to do scamming, prostitution, etc.
| One guy escaped, bystanders took him to the police and the police
| was part of the traffiking ring and sold him back. He finally
| paid off somebody with promise of ransom payment from his
| relatives, and upon entering Chinese border, he was fined by
| Chinese border control for violations. These local traffik orgs
| are armed with AKs and well connected politically. What a crazy,
| crazy world.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > They are falsely promised for "entrepreneurial opportunities"
|
| From what I heard, which I cannot verify, it's more sinister
| then that. People take completely normal-sounding jobs in
| normal-looking and functioning offices. After several months of
| being paid normally for normal work, they're invited to a team-
| building event in SE Asia. There, they lose their passports,
| are interned in huge camps and are press-ganged into being
| scammers, and tortured or killed if they refuse.
|
| This isn't your usual "can't cheat an honest man" tale where
| you sucker in greedy rubes with a promised free lunch.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| The entire chain that enables this is disturbing, but
| fascinating.
|
| For instance, the scammers would need some kind of
| credibility in the job market before the team-building
| exercise. Do they just start up new legtimate businesses with
| new people just for this purpose?
|
| And the SE Asia slave camps need a huge amount of compliance
| from the locals.
|
| And what happens when none of the employees return from the
| original country?
| costco wrote:
| > And the SE Asia slave camps need a huge amount of
| compliance from the locals.
|
| Myanmar is home to like 20 different civil wars. Some of
| these conflicts ended in ceasefires. The areas that got
| good ceasefire deals (Wa, Mongla, some "border guard
| forces" who the military lets do whatever they want in
| return for allegiance) generally have a high degree
| autonomy from the Burmese government. So these areas are
| essentially run by warlords who are accountable to no one
| because the Burmese government cannot enter these areas.
| China backs some rebel groups and occasionally puts
| pressure on them to stop various crimes but they quickly
| adapt (when China cut internet to Mongla they just started
| using satellite). These areas are home to the largest meth
| labs in the world, illegal logging, illegal mining, etc. So
| they are perfect for criminals as they just have to pay
| "taxes" to whoever is in power. I read a good book on this:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62141000-stalemate
|
| Some scams are in Cambodia and Laos. The survival of these
| mostly has to do with corrupt law enforcement. All of the
| scam victims are either Chinese or in the West so they have
| even less reason to care.
|
| > For instance, the scammers would need some kind of
| credibility in the job market before the team-building
| exercise. Do they just start up new legtimate businesses
| with new people just for this purpose?
|
| I think it goes something like this: You make $200 a month
| as a dishwasher in Cambodia. A friend of friend messages
| you and tells you that you can make $800 a month. Because
| you are hopeful and want to improve your life you do not
| thoroughly vet them.
|
| > And what happens when none of the employees return from
| the original country?
|
| If they are from the region there's usually no record
| because they are picked up by an "agent" and go through a
| series of illegal border crossings.
|
| There are people who actually knowingly apply for these
| jobs too: https://vodenglish.news/underground-group-chat-
| teems-with-hu...
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| This seems like an important point. Either this element is
| being exaggerated, or some aspect of their society itself
| is enabling this at a fairly deep level.
| nradov wrote:
| People who need a job apply to new start-up companies all
| the time. The scammers can just start a new company every
| few months. All they need a rented office.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't believe you, to be honest. Provide a source or delete
| if you can't substantiate.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| For what it's worth, they would be unable to delete the
| comment both because it has replies and because it is past
| a certain age. The comment can't otherwise be edited to
| have its text removed because it is past a certain age.
| ConfusedDog wrote:
| Yeah, I saw that, too. If they refuse, they claimed that they
| are going to be "harvested" of cornea, plasma, kidney, etc.
| What I don't understand is that they said they were
| threatened to be taken to international water for organ
| harvesting procedures, but was that even necessary? Those
| camps are pretty criminal already, seems to be an unnecessary
| extra step.
| derefr wrote:
| My understanding -- which mostly comes from reading about
| the "scam centers" operating in the Laos "golden triangle"
| autonomous region specifically -- is that everything
| happening there is either "legal" or "unprosecutable" due
| to jurisdictional problems. If a Chinese-owned-and-operated
| company has a bunch of illegal immigrants from Myanmar and
| Thailand and Cambodia (but no Laotians!) locked up in a
| "scam center" in a Laotian AR... then which police force
| has both the motivation and the right to come knocking,
| _without_ that being an international incident and
| potential incitement to another territorial war in the
| region that nobody wants?
|
| Laotian police have been quoted as saying that they have
| full authority to come into the autonomous region to
| investigate a crime, given irrefutable evidence of a crime
| -- but that they can't come in _without_ such evidence; and
| that it 's very hard for them to get such evidence.
|
| I'm guessing that by "crime", here, they probably mean "a
| felony" (or whatever the Laotian equivalent is) -- which is
| likely the blocker for them, and probably the basis for the
| very thin line that these criminal gangs are treading.
|
| I believe that "an escapee who can show that their organs
| had been harvested" would be irrefutable evidence, enough
| for a police raid; while "an escapee who told a story about
| being held captive for years" would not.
|
| (And re: the other part, of some of the things happening
| there being "legal" -- a large part of how these companies
| work is by indentured servitude, in the literal sense: they
| get people coming there to sign contracts for provision of
| services and equipment, that create a debt owed by the
| worker to the service/equipment-provider; and then they
| don't let them leave until they work it off. These
| contracts seem to have a lot of power for the gangs; they
| don't bother to chase escapees who haven't signed them,
| while considering people who _have_ signed them to be
| "theirs to keep." Presumably, they've tested these
| contracts with local law-in-practice, and found that they
| actually work as a shield for what they're doing.)
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| That sounds very much like the plot of _Animal World_!
|
| To be honest, it doesn't all add up for me as simply
| described: offices where multiple people suddenly vanish
| seem unlikely to escape notice back home, unless they're
| excellent at picking people without any support network to
| report them missing. But maybe there's more to it than the
| simple description. And there is an enormous supply of
| migrant workers in cities without friends or families to
| come looking until it's to late, so I suppose it _could_
| happen. Or maybe it 's garbled in the transmission and the
| jobs are all actually out of the country, but they don't
| spring the trap instantly when you walk in
|
| But at least it seems not to be simply little scammers
| tricked by bigger, eviller ones, but rather they really
| have people who were genuinely looking for at least fairly
| honest work being ensnared.
| jstarfish wrote:
| From other accounts, people back home are generally too
| _poor_ to come looking.
|
| These people have to smuggle themselves out of their own
| country, then maintain a presence illegally abroad,
| _then_ run an amateur investigation. It just doesn 't
| work out like that.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I live in a rich European country and every once in a
| while they find some poor smucks forced to pick asparagus
| at a farm or have sex with a dozen men a day in a hotel.
| It gets a little column in a newspaper.
|
| It's really not that hard to make people drop off the
| grid in an uncaring world.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I am sure that there are terrible human rights abuses as
| outlined in the parent article, but I think it is also true
| that the media loves to jump on stories like these and
| exaggerates things.
|
| See for instance CNN reporting that Kim Jong Un had his
| uncle torn apart by a pack of dogs. Generally once organ
| harvesting starts coming in to play, one should put on a
| very skeptical hat, while there is evidence that this has
| happened among some prisoners in China, I think one should
| remain skeptical on first-read of such claims.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Sounds like an industry ripe for disruption, AI, LLMs and AI
| voice generators to the rescue! /s
|
| In all honesty, if AI is killing those organisations, that
| might be the only half way decent thing coming of the current
| AI use cases.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| I don't believe this happens with any degree of regularity;
| it's like the plot of a movie.
|
| If it happened even once, it would be noteworthy. Do you have
| any reference to an article about it?
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Ever heard of the World of Faith Fellowship?
|
| They've had decades of child and adult abuse and they
| continue to operate pretty much in the open in the USA and
| hardly anyone has even heard of them.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/nc-state-wire-north-carolina-
| ap-t...
|
| The idea that something like what the GP is describing
| could not happen halfway across the world because it would
| be so well covered is probably highly mistaken.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I personally agree, it is ringing the "apocryphal" bell in
| my head
| b0afc375b5 wrote:
| > After several months of being paid normally for normal
| work, they're invited to a team-building event in SE Asia
|
| Holy ####. This reminds me of my previous software developer
| job when we were supposed to go to South Korea for God knows
| what[0]. The reason why we had to go there wasn't really
| explained well to me, and I didn't care enough to ask because
| I was just excited to go to another country. In the end our
| application was denied by the embassy, and I always felt a
| bit disappointed by that.
|
| Perhaps the possibility of my case being sinister is
| miniscule, but maybe I shouldn't feel too disappointed.
|
| [0] the owner of the company I worked for was South Korean
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I don't think that South Korea would fall into this
| category, its pretty well developed and western-style
| democracy (with some strong nepotic powers at place but
| ultimately even they are not untouchable).
|
| If you would be invited to say Philippines, Indonesia
| (which covers Bali too), Myanmar, Laos etc. that should
| raise an eyebrow.
| rolph wrote:
| just because someone says you are being taken to a
| particular place doesnt mean thats where you will end up.
| PeterisP wrote:
| That's not how international travel works until you
| totally leave civilization; no matter who's paying for
| the trip, you do know where you're going, and each
| individual has a choice at every border crossing; they
| can't simply "export" a box filled with people on a plane
| that's going "somewhere".
| rolph wrote:
| Thats only if they play by the rules and everyone is
| honest and unfettered by coercion.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37327558
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Yeah, but if you're a westerner being taken on a trip to
| South Korea, read your plane ticket to see if that's
| actually were you're going.
|
| If the deal is more akin to "get in this van and my guy
| will take you to where you need to go", then that's
| another story.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| > get in this van and my guy will take you to where you
| need to go
|
| That could have been their pickup from the airport.
| rolph wrote:
| once your in the air you are effectively detained.
|
| a large number of situations, contrived or otherwise, can
| result in emergency diversions.
|
| you may want to be sure a connecting flight is legitimate
| when travelling in 'suspect' regions.
|
| this would be high profile kidnapping, but a source of
| non SEA persons, that would be more convincing, and a
| source of international ransom revenues, espescially if
| they were also accused of some crime.
| slingnow wrote:
| So with zero substantiation from the OP (who admitted
| this), you believe this explanation and you've now
| connected it to some company trip to South Korea you once
| didn't go on?
| soared wrote:
| Source? That sounds straight from a Facebook group
| coconut_crab wrote:
| The usual story here (Vietnam) is that the victims are often
| promised a job with high earning prospect in Cambodia, or
| they are in debt after playing in casinos over there. Since
| Vietnam economy isn't in a good shape, there is no lack of
| potential victims. They don't really get killed either as it
| will cost the kidnappers, they will just get sold to another
| scam center. Oh and the victim can buy their freedom back if
| they scam enough people (my friend lost 10k USD in one such
| scam), not that there is many people who can do that though.
| granshaw wrote:
| Where there is no opportunity, there will be crime
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Perhaps not as dramatic, but this is not uncommon.
|
| HBO is right now running the documentary series Telemarketers,
| about a US operation that is clearly a fraud, but it's
| protected by corrupt and bribed police union management.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| It's the modern day slave trade.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| brightball wrote:
| The well connected politically is the weird thing about this to
| me.
|
| I think we can all agree that trafficking is...bad. Yet there
| seems to be this strange political push back against anti-
| trafficking efforts.
|
| I've seen it for years to the point of pretending it's not even
| a problem. The recent political reaction to Sound of Freedom,
| which was not a political movie, is just the latest example.
|
| It's one of the most worrisome aspects I've seen in general
| "politicize everything" trends.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Politics is a fancy name for "controlling the rules well
| enough to be able to prospect my little business".
| Politicians are not all ideologically positive and
| benevolent, or even patriotic or nationalist, some are really
| just trying to find a way to do business better.
|
| One of the worst banana republics in that regard are the USA:
| here in China we'd never let a frigging casino operator rule
| the country, we have a small pride still.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Bo Xilai literally was on the Politburo and laundered
| massive amounts of casino money from Macau internationally.
| andrethegiant wrote:
| Link to documentary?
| ConfusedDog wrote:
| I couldn't find the exact video I saw on YouTube. It's funny
| if you search "escape Cambodia," a lot of Gordon Ramsey's
| food videos pops up, but if you search "Tao Chu Jian Bu Zhai
| " in Chinese, you find all these terrible trafficking cases.
| larkaa wrote:
| I'm guessing it's this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-EtdC4zQso
| aaron695 wrote:
| This is the best for Cambodia - "Forced to Scam: Cambodia's
| Cyber Slaves" by Al Jazeera -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-EtdC4zQso
|
| > local traffik orgs are armed with AKs
|
| > police was part of the traffiking ring
|
| These statements are not representative of Cambodia,
| local/Chinese gangsters don't run around with AKs, and the
| documentary is a little exaggerated like _all_ documentaries
| but I don 't doubt there were suicides and beatings.
|
| Some Facebook ads were very clear what you were doing. There
| were not 100,000 working in Cambodia and most were not
| trafficked.
|
| This UN statement is garbage, liars bore me. It's why this is
| progressing to organ harvesting and other rubbish because the
| UN is bringing it to fantasy.
|
| Watch the doco and they mention the amounts they were making,
| then times that by 100,000 trafficked then all the ones who
| answered the Facebook ads and it doesn't add up.
|
| It's the Chinese doing this, which the UN page doesn't
| mention. Maybe the report does. But it's a main point for a
| summary... if the truth mattered.
|
| Video of 40 people escaping a Chinese run Cambodian casino
| https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/40-people-swim-back-to-
| vie...
| zztop44 wrote:
| Shoutout for 101 East, which does some excellent reportage
| on a bunch of underreported East Asian and south East Asian
| topics.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Not even scam bosses allow for remote work i see. Cant they just
| like hire willing scam workers instead of trafficking people?
| bboygravity wrote:
| The scams with willing people are just called multi-level
| marketing.
| differentView wrote:
| It's harder to beat the workers into working harder remotely.
| Remote workers can also more easily work with law enforcement,
| quit, and start competing scams.
| gumballindie wrote:
| A bit like legitimiate workers minus the beating part. That's
| replaced by hazing, harrasment, gaslighting and bullying at
| the work place. Same end goal, worker control, for both types
| of businesses, legitimate or scam.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Are they scamming Westerners? (TFA wasn't clear). They'd have to
| be pretty fluent in idomatic English to do that.
|
| Do the 5-10 messages I get each week "Hi! This is Irene. Are you
| going to the party?" come from trafficed people?
| alephnerd wrote:
| They started off targeting Chinese speakers (Mainland China,
| Taiwan, HK, Malaysia, Singapore) but expanded into English and
| Thai over the past few years.
| em500 wrote:
| I'm guessing that they're mostly targeting the richer Asian
| countries, including China (which is on average is poorer than
| the West, but in the aggregate has comparable spending power as
| North America).
| Avicebron wrote:
| If it's not automated, it could easily be some sort of pre-
| defined script. I don't get many anymore, but I've definitely
| had mysterious text messages from different numbers supposedly
| across the country that were nearly identical. Usually it was
| "hey is this [random name], where were you last night?" I
| assume this was meant to draw me into some sort of dialogue. It
| happened enough that I can't really believe it was just a
| misdial.
| magic123_ wrote:
| A relative of mine got scammed for tens of thousands of dollars
| exactly this way. They are college educated, COO of the company
| they founded in the US, and thought they were just making a new
| friend over several months after receiving a message that was
| addressed to them by error.
| knodi123 wrote:
| From what I understand, initial messages don't come from the
| slaves; instead, you get connected to one if you reply. So the
| english skills might shift drastically between the first and
| second message.
| freedude wrote:
| Slavery is an old, detestable practice. There are more slaves
| worldwide today than in any other time in history. Welcome to
| modern civilization. Contemplate that the next time you use
| something made in China or another third world country. This is a
| common practice.
|
| https://www.un.org/en/delegate/50-million-people-modern-slav...
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| This isn't new, but it's good to continue to report on it. I
| remember even back in 2005 it was generally well known that the
| gold farmers in World of Warcraft were likely Chinese prison
| labor. There were even a few articles about it:
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/chinese-pr...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Labor historically in a lot of places, was built on peasant-
| serfs, indentured servitude with a duration, or in many cases
| slaves. I believe that many educated people in the West are not
| aware of the extent to which this is true throughout history.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I agree that this is true, however I also think that when we
| imagine slavery in the West we think of chattel slavery and
| the reality is that what we call slavery in these peasant-
| serf contexts was not the same thing, did not have the same
| mortality rates, etc.
| jedmeyers wrote:
| My friend in Eastern Europe ran a bot farm in WoW. He ran bots
| on his computers that farmed resources, then sold resources for
| gold and then sold the gold to Chinese for end-user resale. The
| only labor involved was hiring some college students and paying
| them for each top-level character they progress that can be
| used for farming. He even bought my character for $50 when I
| stopped playing.
| logicchains wrote:
| There's a big difference between prisoners (who at least in
| theory are locked up as punishment for committing a crime) and
| people who've been trafficked into slavery. Even the US uses
| prison labour, but it's people who committed crimes. What's
| happening in SEA is kidnappping innocent people, locking them
| in guarded compounds and forcing them to scam people, and they
| get raped or beaten if they refuse.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The difference is really not that large, if it exists at all
| which I don't find to be the case. What severity of crime
| justifies enslavement? You can have your sentence extended
| for refusing to labor, regardless of what you're originally
| in there for. Is that just? Is there "a big difference"
| between that and trafficked labor?
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's true in principle _but_ the laws and legal system are
| set up in such a way that a very large percentage of
| particular demographics will end up in this situation and
| from an outsiders perspective it doesn 't look all that
| different.
| zirgs wrote:
| You can simply not deal drugs. It's not that difficult.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| I'm glad you've never been framed for a crime you didn't
| commit.
| logicchains wrote:
| Even if you see it as China enslaving its own citizens
| under false pretences of criminality, that's still quite
| different from private entities in one country luring
| people from another country under the false pretences of
| high-paying jobs and then enslaving them.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, there are differences. But there are also some
| pretty worrisome similarities. And the numbers in the US
| are _far_ higher than those mentioned in TFA, especially
| when taken over the decades that this has been happening.
| logicchains wrote:
| The difference is that the US is a democracy and people
| voted for the politicians who created those laws (and the
| attorney generals who enforce them), so by democratic
| logic the people convicted by the system "deserve" to be
| imprisoned to some degree.
| k8fj30gs wrote:
| When starving 9 people voting to eat the 10th is still
| democracy, and by democratic logic they would "deserve"
| it to some degree.
| hnfong wrote:
| Tyranny of the majority is a thing.
|
| Sometimes it's not even the majority. Politicians are
| elected for their main policies that usually involve a
| couple things, but there are thousands of laws and it
| doesn't follow that every one of them has majority
| support.
|
| It's also a matter of inertia to "overthrow" the
| government in power. In democracies there's a peaceful
| way to do this, and in autocracies there isn't. The fact
| that autocratic governments aren't yet toppled does mean
| something, though obviously not much. But then, the fact
| that the government is democratically elected doesn't
| necessarily mean much either. (You sure Americans like
| Trump?)
| logicchains wrote:
| >Tyranny of the majority is a thing.
|
| While that may be true, surely philosophically speaking
| there's a significant, qualitative difference between
| saying "this is moral because people voted for it" and
| saying "this is moral because the stupid victims deserved
| it". Many people would accept the former, accept that
| prison labour is morally justified, but very few people
| would accept that it's morally okay for private criminal
| gangs to kidnap and enslave people.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Philosophically speaking, from the perspective of a
| victim it's all the same. They don't have the luxury of
| being able to philosophize about it, they are too busy
| dealing with the reality of it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fortunately politicians are never influenced by money or
| ideology and 100% represent the choices of the voters.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I don't think "Even the US" is a valid way to justify
| slavery. I mean, even the US had slavery at one point right?
| celtoid wrote:
| "Slavery is still constitutionally legal in the United
| States."[0]
|
| [0] https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-
| ed-1209-13...
| iterminate wrote:
| "Even" the US isn't much of a moral barometer for prisoner
| treatment. The US uses prison labor because the US is one of
| the worst countries for prisoner (mis)treatment, certainly
| the worst in the west.
|
| > There's a big difference between prisoners (who at least in
| theory are locked up as punishment for committing a crime)
| and people who've been trafficked into slavery[...] What's
| happening in SEA is kidnappping innocent people
|
| Lots of people in prison are innocent, especially in the US.
| Prisoners are no less deserving of rights and fair treatment
| than victims of trafficking. Likewise, I'm sure many
| trafficking victims are guilty of committing crimes (as are
| most people).
| jart wrote:
| I know a few degenerates who would happily go to prison if
| prison labor was mining gold in WoW.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Prison labor is not intrinsically bad, but they should not
| be exempt from minimum wage laws. Ideally there should be
| some mechanism for forcing prisons to pay the prisoners a
| fair market wage; even if the prisoner doesn't deserve it,
| the rest of the labor market deserves to not compete with
| underpaid prison labor. And we need another constitutional
| amendment, removing the exemption for convicted criminals
| in the 13th.
|
| If those issues were cleared up, then giving prisoners the
| opportunity to learn how to earn money legitimately would
| be good for rehabilitation. So prison labor is not
| intrinsically mistreatment.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| The big difference between the US and other western
| countries' philosophy about prison is that most (all?) EU
| countries see the main goal as rehabilitation whereas the
| US sees the primary goal as punishment.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Prisoners are no less deserving of rights and fair
| treatment than victims of trafficking
|
| Everywhere in the world it's accepted that prisoners lose
| the rights to freedom of movement and association; that's
| what being a prisoner means. In that sense trafficking
| victims are absolutely more deserving of those rights than
| convicted criminals.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I question the utility of imprisonment to achieve any
| legitimate social goal. It may not be an effective
| deterrent of the most heinous crimes. It doesn't seem to
| work as rehabilitation. It only works as physical
| prevention of recidivism in people that lack self-
| awareness and self-control to prevent it, but
| unfortunately those are exonerating conditions in our
| system. It seems to me that prison should be understood
| and used in the opposite way: not punishment, but a
| compassionate alternative to remove people from society.
| Punishment and deterrence are something different from a
| behaviorist perspective, and there are other things that
| work better, faster, and cheaper. Physical pain is
| punishment: pepper spray, bullet ants, microwave cannons,
| carbon dioxide. Deterrence is mainly the quality of
| alternatives available, for which there should be a floor
| established, like an agricultural labor camp at sub-
| minimum wage.
| _jal wrote:
| > In that sense trafficking victims are absolutely more
| deserving of those rights than convicted criminals.
|
| No. you assume conviction = guilt, and that whatever
| treatment that comes thereafter is just.
|
| For instance, it appears you would endorse treating
| people like these trafficking victims if they were first
| convicted by some court you consider valid, since "that's
| what being a prisoner means".
| the_other wrote:
| Might is right, huh?
| logicchains wrote:
| What would you consider an acceptable alternative? If
| criminals were not stripped of freedom of movement, then
| what would deter potential future criminals from
| committing crime? Prison is meant to act as a deterrent
| so that people with no moral compass have some incentive
| not to commit crimes.
| pmarreck wrote:
| According to the data, prison is not a deterrent:
|
| https://www.vera.org/news/research-shows-that-long-
| prison-se...
|
| Instead of focusing on the penal system, which is fairly
| hopeless, we should focus on preventing people from
| entering the penal system in the first place by focusing
| on systematic improvements that reduce criminal behavior
| as an appealing option. Look up "rational choice theory"
| with regards to criminal behavior: https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Rational_choice_theory_(crimin...
|
| But that all said, the fact that the penal system is not
| mutated based on sensible performance metrics such as
| recidivism rate etc. is a human failing. The thing is,
| the system has already failed them at that point and they
| made their decision to not cooperate with society, so of
| course the people who have chosen to cooperate with
| society (the same people who have not sufficiently
| contributed to the systematic improvements that would
| have prevented that behavior to begin with) will fail to
| care about them.
|
| My participation in this is to mentor young men (some are
| "at-risk", which basically means that their demographics
| are more likely to lead to criminal behavior), which I've
| done a few times and which is rewarding, because young
| men _really need it_ right now. If I didn 't have a 2
| year old son who is keeping my hands quite full, I think
| I'd do it again.
| alexb_ wrote:
| The main purpose of prison is not rehabilitation, or
| deterrence, but to put dangerous individuals away so they
| cannot terrorize others. This is why we put rapists in
| cells (or, at least we try to) - every year in a jail
| cell is a year they aren't raping women.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| that is not the main purpose at all
|
| the main purpose is punishment, see: nonviolent drug
| offenders in prison
|
| one might argue a higher level purpose is to keep "the
| right people" in prison, where they lose their freedom,
| sometimes including the freedom to run against, campaign
| against, and even vote out the politicians keeping them
| there
| pmarreck wrote:
| I might suggest that the purpose _as stated_ , the
| purpose _as expected_ and the purpose _as actually
| practiced_ might all be different
| almostnormal wrote:
| > In that sense trafficking victims are absolutely more
| deserving of those rights than convicted criminals.
|
| Except the innocent but incorrecty convicted
| (non)criminals.
|
| On the other hand, some of the victims might not be
| convicted but guilty of something. But even those should
| better be taken care of by the regular system.
| stevenally wrote:
| If there is profit in holding people prisoner, then there
| is an incentive to falsely imprison people. Or give them
| overly long sentences.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Agreed. There should only be a cost associated with
| punitive action. The incentive should be to get them out
| of the system (or, don't laugh- maybe rehabilitate
| them?), not to keep them in it.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| But the people who profit are not the people who are able
| to falsely imprison people.
| teh64 wrote:
| Incorrect, they get kickbacks:
| https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-
| conahan-ma...
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| I think this is sort of the exception that proves the
| rule. The people profiting form prisons have direct
| incentives to increase prison populations , but the
| people who can actually falsely imprison people have, at
| best, illegal side channel incentives.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are non-illegal side channels, like "tough on
| crime" judges getting political donations from deep-
| pocketed interested parties.
| magic123_ wrote:
| Except when judges get kickbacks from prisons for sending
| them prisoners.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-
| conahan-ma...
| egonschiele wrote:
| This is not as simple as your argument makes it out to
| be. The US has a long history of imprisoning people so
| they can be used as slaves. Netflix has a good
| documentary on it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8
| CalRobert wrote:
| Of course, in the US you can still enslave prisoners
|
| """ Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
| punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
| convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any
| place subject to their jurisdiction. """
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_U
| n...
| wavemode wrote:
| Citation needed? I'm unfamiliar with what metric or data
| you could be referring to in order to conclude that the US
| is the worst country in the West for prisoner mistreatment.
| iterminate wrote:
| Any metric. Pick a country with a well regarded prison
| system (e.g: Norway) and then compare the U.S. system on
| every metric to see the disparity. Injury, sickness,
| malnourishment, violence, education, recidivism, drugs,
| forced labor, mental health. No country that is typically
| considered as part of "the west" comes close to any of
| these metrics when compared to the United States.
|
| A question for you: which country in "the west" can you
| think of that has worse prisoner treatment than the US?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Apples and oranges. Norway is a tiny country with a very
| homogenous population. The US is huge and very diverse
| socioeconomically, racially, and culturally.
| zztop44 wrote:
| Which western country do you have in mind where it might
| be worse to be a prisoner than the US?
| gentleman11 wrote:
| The USA still uses slave labour, sorry to inform you. Bust
| somebody for pot possession, and to protect society, gotta
| force them to work for basically free? Give me a break. Your
| country is still a slave leasing one, if not a slave owning
| one
|
| The ancient Greeks often used crime or war as an excuse to
| capture slaves. At least they had the honesty to call them
| slaves afterwards
| steve1977 wrote:
| > There's a big difference between prisoners (who at least in
| theory are locked up as punishment for committing a crime)
| and people who've been trafficked into slavery.
|
| Considering what can probably get you in jail in a country
| like China, I'm not so sure about that.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| its also a really big misalignment of incentives when
| prisons can use prisoners as a profit center though their
| labor. they take away jobs from free people who would have
| been able to do those jobs and get a (more)fair wage for it
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Sorry, but that is insufficient evidence to me for something to
| be "generally well known." It is well known that there are
| flawed incentives to testify in Western contexts to things that
| did not happen in East Asia, this is known among South Korean
| defectors (not denying that NK is objectively terrible, one of
| the worst countries in the world - but defectors to SK have
| been known to say outright false things because this is how
| they get paid and get media attention and many of these
| publications will pay for stories).
|
| Something that is "generally well known" by contrast is that
| China almost certainly harvested organs from prisoners in the
| 90s and early 2000s.
| csomar wrote:
| I don't know about Myanmar but I am a little bit skeptical about
| "hundreds of thousands" in the rest (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia).
| I've traveled the region extensively and am in a remote place in
| Laos now.
|
| I think the UN is using the word "trafficked" way too liberally.
| While I heard stories from fellow travelers and citizens (only in
| Cambodia, be careful in Phnom Penh and don't go to Sinahouk); my
| guess is that the majority of these are in some kind of situation
| (like owing money to the boss) or maybe justifying what they are
| doing (it's not a crime if you are forced!).
|
| For some reason, I find this "hundreds of thousands" quite
| sinister. It devalues the whole issue as it normalizes it; while
| there are some people now in real need of help and in real
| danger.
| cheeze wrote:
| I mean, these aren't people locked up on slave ships and hauled
| to a new world or something, but they are absolutely trafficked
| in that they are forced to do the work against their will
| without a way out - literally modern slavery.
|
| This comment feels mega weird to me, like you're trying to
| downplay the plight of these hundreds of thousands of modern-
| day slaves because it doesn't meet your definition of
| trafficking.
|
| I'm certainly going to trust official figures coming from the
| UN over someone on HN who happens to be traveling in SEA
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| I don't see in any country in SEA -- and I live out here --
| how you could hide 100K people in concertation camps to do
| high tech scamming.
|
| There is a comment above about someone's Laotian wife working
| hard conditions doing these scams because it pays much better
| than local work -- this seems much more convincing.
|
| Even the issue with the Vietnamese casino workers was only 40
| people -- though not to minimize it's importance.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| We're talking about hundreds of thousands across several
| countries, not in a single facility. If you have 50
| prisoners per building, you only need 4000 buildings like
| that to get to 200k. This could be happening anywhere, even
| in large cities. You don't need huge infrastructure per
| location to do this, though it does take some logistics to
| keep it up. Running a clandestine prison in the middle of a
| city is not trivial, but certainly not impossible to keep
| under wraps. I'm surprised it's profitable, though.
| Eridrus wrote:
| Many advocacy groups (particularly those making claims about
| human trafficking) fudge their numbers to make their cause
| seem more important, and you can see why, we would probably
| not be discussing this article without such an eye catching
| statistic in it.
|
| If you try to see how they got this number in their report it
| is "credible estimates/sources" that are "on file at OHCR".
| So there's no way to independently verify this, you have to
| just trust them, which doesn't breed confidence in their
| estimates.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Anecdotally I met an NGO worker once in Phenom Phen who was
| drunk and admitted exactly this -- because he had to
| justify his 200K Euro job in that city. With that salary
| you're like a king, you'd probably do alot to keep it.
| mithras wrote:
| My wife's niece is from Laos and works for one of these chinese
| scam shops in the golden triangle. She is there voluntarily
| because it makes 5 times more money than her best alternative.
| Morally repugnant of course.
| elric wrote:
| Hundreds of thousands? That's a mind boggling scale. That's at
| least the size of a decent city. How do you even cope with the
| logistics of dealing with 100k+ scammers?
| dangus wrote:
| This is why I discourage people from playing games with scammers
| to "waste their time."
|
| I always assumed that they were not really doing this job by
| choice, whether it's modern slavery or not.
|
| You're not saving someone else from getting scammed, you're
| messing up a quota for someone who might be physically punished
| for missing it.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > You're not saving someone else from getting scammed, you're
| messing up a quota for someone who might be physically punished
| for missing it.
|
| At some level, starving the beast is the only way to stop it.
| The more crimes they commit, the more likely it is they get
| _caught._ You can 't account for the disposition of victims in
| the hands of thugs, and there's no guarantee victims _won 't_
| get fed to pigs even if they were consistently Employee of the
| Month. If you already have a viable way to dispose of bodies,
| why let _anybody_ leave?
|
| The better reason not to play games with scammers is that
| you're antagonizing someone who does not respect rule of law.
| Consider what someone overconfident in their ability to commit
| crimes unchecked might do to you in retribution.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| It's sad that these scammers are victims themselves, but
| measures that reduce the extent to which these victims can
| victimize other people are a clear net good for society. You
| won't save a trafficked scammer by hanging up early so he can
| move on to easier marks, but you _can_ prevent him from using
| the next hour to make a new victim out of somebody else.
|
| Or to put this in other terms; you're a Ukrainian machine
| gunner. In the distance you see Russian soldiers. You know that
| many of them are from the Russian gulags, unjustly imprisoned
| in an oppressive autocracy, quite likely for a crime they
| didn't commit, and now forced to invade a foreign country. You
| pull the trigger and mow those victims down, because if you
| don't those victims will make victims out of your friends,
| family, and fellow countrymen.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| If everyones quota goes to zero perhaps the master behind these
| scams go down with it.
| dangus wrote:
| If I don't pay the prostitute it's definitely not the pimp
| who is going to get bruises.
| [deleted]
| aphroz wrote:
| A good thing that soon AI will be able to scam us as good as
| humans so they won't need to traffick people anymore.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| And would that make life better for traffick victims in any
| way? They'll brutally be repurposed for some other dirty work
| [deleted]
| logicchains wrote:
| There's a recent Chinese blockbuster about this called No More
| Bets, inspired by a true story. But in the movie the victim is
| saved; in real life he's still enslaved
| em500 wrote:
| Another one is Lost In The Stars.
|
| https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/haven-for-scams-hit-movies...
| [deleted]
| kazanz wrote:
| > The scam centres generate revenue amounting to billions of US
| dollars each year. Revenue in 2021 from scamming globally
| amounted to USD 7.8 billion worth of stolen cryptocurrency.
|
| Crypto has made scamming easier than ever. Ironically, it
| probably is making it easier to track how impactful it is too.
| delusional wrote:
| It's a nice honeypot. All the scammers are busy scamming each
| other.
| sproketboy wrote:
| [dead]
| brap wrote:
| I wonder if low quality scams (made by humans) are still going to
| be a thing given advances in AI.
|
| I bet a human sounding bot can already make a phone call and scam
| most of our grandparents far better than the average human
| scammer. Add the ability to mimic the voice of a relative and you
| can get pretty high success rates, even with more tech-savvy
| victims I bet.
| aunth067 wrote:
| it's already happening at scale, there was a 60 minutes segment
| on this recently https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-being-
| targeted-by-grandpar...
|
| The "ethical hacker" shows them how to use an AI to spoof the
| 60 minutes host's voice, then use it to scam a 60 minutes
| employee on camera, in real time. It works.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Eventually, it's going there but at the moment, people are
| mostly using low-tech methods to scam others. Oftentimes we'll
| overestimate/underestimate the abilities of scammers. It's
| important to realize that access to cloud services and
| sophisticated AI requires money for that infrastructure and
| these paltry scammers won't do that unless it's a part of a
| bigger org.
| brap wrote:
| I'm guessing that most of these scams are coming from large
| orgs as described in the OP/comments, this seems like a
| fairly expensive operation. I'm also guessing that for about
| the same cost they could use AI to cast a much wider net,
| making it more profitable even if the quality is lower. The
| paltry individual scammers will probably go out of business
| soon.
| slig wrote:
| Low quality and obvious scams are a feature, they filter only
| the most gullible.
| brap wrote:
| I think you only need to filter when your scale is very
| limited due to the effort involved. A human can only make so
| many calls per day. AI makes these attempts much cheaper.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| I think AI chatbots will lift these scams to a new level
| never seen before without any telltale signs that we can
| spot.
| costco wrote:
| Well, maybe it can fix the grammatical mistakes and
| inconsistencies in their stories. There still remains the
| fact that this person you've never met before is
| suggesting you send hundreds of thousands of dollars to
| this great investment platform you've never heard of and
| is very interested in you yet can't meet up despite have
| talked for weeks.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| First it was Kenyan academic ghost writers for hire, now AI
| putting traffickers out or business too? What's this world
| coming to....
| brap wrote:
| Sadly I don't expect things will get better for the
| trafficked victims, this only lowers their "value" in the
| eyes of criminals. They will probably find even worse uses
| for them.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| This is not new at all, there are US companies facilitating this
| (see: Tinder e.g) with zero regard for the lives of the people
| forced into doing this. They actively ignore these things and
| profit off it, absolutely disgusting.
| troglotit wrote:
| Tinder slave-labour is used also for assembling drones in
| Russia that attack Ukraine. Source (RU):
| https://istories.media/news/2023/07/24/studenti-dolzhni-stra...
| logicchains wrote:
| LinkedIn and various job boards have much more responsibility
| than Tinder; most of the victims described in the article
| travel to SEA for what they've been led to believe are high-
| paying white-collar jobs, not because they're romance-scammed
| into going to meet a partner there.
| alephnerd wrote:
| LinkedIn isn't common in ASEAN. It's a uniquely North
| American phenomenon (194m Americans), though there is some
| traction in India (94m), Brazil (60m), and China (57m).
|
| Most users offered the jobs are getting them via everything
| apps like WeChat, Zalo, WhatsApp forwards, Viber, Line, etc.
| [deleted]
| messe wrote:
| > It's a uniquely North American phenomenon
|
| I don't think that's an entirely accurate assessment.
| There's a significant userbase in Europe as well, on the
| same order of magnitude as North America.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| This is an accurate assessment, on the other hand things
| like tinder actually have more reach in Asia mostly due to
| cultural differences.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| LinkedIn has a much lower hit rate, because people tend to
| search for region specific jobs, whereas Tinder you can send
| any location you desire with your fake profile (but they're
| very easy to spot).
|
| The Tinder things are very rarely romance scams, they pivot
| to crypto scams immediately, "I work in the finance industry
| scoping out markets for crypto" etc - then I'd imagine they'd
| encourage someone to invest but they usually see through my
| attempts at scamming them back, one day I'll figure it out.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| LinkedIn was used in a lot of scams with fake jobs.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| Sure, but the hit rate is still much lower.
| naillo wrote:
| What is tinder doing to facilitate this? I assumed bots on
| there were just financial scam bots not of the trafficking kind
| Nextgrid wrote:
| "bots" don't run on their own. While the initial message
| might be from a bot, leads need to then be coached into
| falling for the scam which involves human labor and can very
| well be such enslaved victims trapped in third-world
| countries.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| Correct, I did some research into this, while the initial
| match is automated, you're connected with someone likely
| under duress, Tinder/Match do not care about this at all
| (in my present country its 80%+ profiles that are evidently
| human trafficking and extortion). After asking what they
| intend to do about the horrific rights violations they're
| profiting off, they said, "we don't care" literally.
|
| There is also the collateral, the profiles/photos they
| steal are of real people, which may or may not end up in
| real life ramifications for them. It used to be entirely
| generic Asians (Orient, not SE, as they're more attractive
| to the west apparently) - but these days they've upped the
| game and use region specific photos (ie; in my case, Slavic
| origin)
| gumballindie wrote:
| As soon as sam altman hears about this he will make a
| proposal about replacing scam humans with ai. Which in
| itself is better than trafficking humans i suppose.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| AI can't feel suffering, after all.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Indeed. It's usually those around it that feel it.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| ai is literally the human equivalent of a sociopath
| and/or narcissist, it's devoid of human emotion
| sp332 wrote:
| Training AI also requires lots of human labor.
| https://gizmodo.com/openai-chatgpt-ai-chat-bot-1850001021
| popularonion wrote:
| Tinder has become totally swarmed with these kind of
| scammers. It's way worse than it was a few years ago.
|
| It's becoming basically unusable unless you communicate with
| photo verified users only, but I'm sure a lot of photo
| verified accounts are run by these scammers too.
| throwaway67743 wrote:
| Yup, the verification works against regular users and in
| favour of automation. But that's a good business model for
| them, without impossibly attractive potential matches
| nobody would pay for anything, so they have no financial
| desire to stop it.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| I've had a random person contact me out of the blue on Telegram
| and try to build a friendship that obviously ends in a pig
| butchering scam.
|
| Fortunately, I have a rule to never make online friends. If I've
| not met someone in a personal or professional setting before, I
| assume they're a robot unless proven otherwise.
|
| Some pig butchers have also tried to contact my parents, but my
| parents are careful, and I immediately block any such number.
|
| Pretty sad to see that these operations could easily be stopped,
| but the perpetrators live in extremely corrupt places/semi-failed
| states where they just pay bribes to the local authorities to
| leave them alone.
| smeyer wrote:
| That's a nice way to avoid scams, but the cost doesn't seem
| worth the benefits to me as someone who otherwise has good
| awareness about scams. I've made some nice friends off the
| internet and yet to fall for a scam, so it doesn't seem worth
| locking out that possibility of friendship just to reduce the
| odds of being scammed slightly more.
|
| I could easily see giving very different advice to a friend
| with less scam awareness, though (like an older friend with
| limited knowledge of technology).
| bettercallsalad wrote:
| Can relate. I was in a dating app and there were so many of
| them pretending "nice looking girl looking for husband" that
| then tried to befriend you and tried crypto scam. It's so
| smooth that even as someone who is relatively well versed in
| the crypto world and associated scams I couldn't tell at least
| in first two or three attempts. Their first few messages
| leading upto this would be "do you believe in financial freedom
| as for a happy life?" I would play along just to see what their
| strategy is and it would almost always end up trying to lure
| you into yield farming asking to deposit in some random wallet
| address promising 15% monthly yield.
|
| It was so frustrating at some point, my first questions to
| someone matching me would be are you a crypto or onlyfan scam?
| Man the online dating world has turned completely shameless.
| soco wrote:
| Just try Tumblr nowadays, which is not even a dating app. But
| those scammers don't mind, they "only want to make friends"
| and push ahead with one fresh empty profile after another.
| And I'm sure it brings them profit, otherwise you wouldn't
| see them swarming you by dozens.
| apetresc wrote:
| Sorry, is "pig butchering" a euphemism for something, or am I
| missing out on some new scamming trend?
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| It's the name of the scam where they trick people into
| investing in fake platforms and steal their money.
|
| The scammer starts first by building a romantic relationship
| with the target (this part can last weeks or months). Along
| the way, they start suggesting cryptocurrency investments on
| trading platforms that look legit at a glance but are fake
| underneath. They instruct the target to deposit money into a
| wallet, like any exchange, but the perpetrators just steal
| the tokens and show the mark fake figures.
|
| It's a long term thing that takes a ton of work...I have no
| idea how the scammers even pull it off at scale.
|
| This site goes into more detail;
| https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/Pig-butchering-
| sca...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It's a long term thing that takes a ton of work...I have
| no idea how the scammers even pull it off at scale.
|
| When cost of living is a few hundred dollars a month at
| best, looting 10k from a single mark is going to last quite
| the time.
| Zenul_Abidin wrote:
| Someone's obviously making the websites, a few other people
| are finding the victims, and all the money is funneled to
| one overlord who pays everyone else a small cut of the
| stolen money.
|
| It is appalling that no social platform is taking this
| seriously.
| bloopernova wrote:
| > It is appalling that no social platform is taking this
| seriously.
|
| The big social media corps won't eat into their profits
| by hiring people to find the scammers.
|
| It will take a law that says something about keeping a
| human in the loop, or that your reports should always be
| validated by a human.
| soco wrote:
| Tumblr has created a special reporting type exactly for
| these, and they do disappear afterwards quickly (tested
| this). But by the amount of requests I still receive
| daily from fresh and empty accounts, I guess the work on
| _avoiding_ them in the first place still has a lot to
| catch up. A quarantine period for fresh users risks
| alienating legit ones, IP filtering won 't bring it too
| far, no idea what one could do to quench it.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| It's really nasty, I lost contact with an ex girlfriend
| after her social media got taken over by this shit. Still
| no idea if it was just her account that got taken over or
| if she got swept up into some nonsense.
| Given_47 wrote:
| Idk, I've seen the former happen pretty frequently. They
| basically just socially engineer getting ur login
| credentials from u. I'm not even sure how the
| conversation would start but I would guess it's one of
| the end goals of "Special offer for u! Check your DM!"
| incessant comments
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| It felt way more insidious than that, they were really
| either trying to be her or roped her into something. I've
| seen the latter happen pretty frequently, probably
| because I don't tend to live in what you might call prime
| target countries for these types of scams to hit as an
| endgame (NA/Europe/wherever else the money is greener)
| btseytlin wrote:
| "take it all" - https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-pig-
| butchering-scam/
| cottage-cheese wrote:
| Both, for instance https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-pig-
| butchering-scam/
| heja2009 wrote:
| The term was also new to me. From [1] I understand it is a
| class of cryptocurrency scams starting by building a cordial
| relationship via social media or dating apps and then
| suggesting financial investment.
|
| [1] https://www.michigan.gov/ag/consumer-protection/consumer-
| ale...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| So-named because you "fatten up the pig" before slaughter.
| illwrks wrote:
| "The pig butchering scam is a type of fraud in which
| criminals lure victims into digital relationships to build
| trust before convincing them to invest in cryptocurrency
| platforms. Unbeknownst to victims, the fraudsters control the
| platforms and will eventually take all the money and vanish.
| "
|
| I've taken it from the article here:
| https://www.aura.com/learn/the-pig-butchering-scam
| k8fj30gs wrote:
| See this documentary:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4wYV0V-5s
| [deleted]
| yalogin wrote:
| They torture people to do online scams? What a bizarre world this
| has become. Never thought we would see trafficked and online
| scams in the same sentence. Effectively, I guess, they don't want
| to pay the employees and so force them at gun point.
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