[HN Gopher] My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster
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My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster
Author : acdha
Score : 384 points
Date : 2025-03-12 01:55 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bentasker.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bentasker.co.uk)
| brohee wrote:
| A bit of a missed opportunity with the war in Ukraine. He could
| have expressed pro-Ukraine sentiment and the (most likely
| Russian) scammer could have echoed them back and possibly be
| caught in a FSB dragnet.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Its also important to get the maximum engagement from the
| scammer. Text produced is work and time. This is the only thing
| you can cost them, so its time to engage chatgpt and have them
| stuck in a telenovella.
| lnsru wrote:
| Modern lawyers use preproduced text blocks for their letters.
| I would like to believe, that scammers do the same. Probably
| they even have figured out what phrases are the most
| effective for good engagement.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Their early emails are often boilerplate, but once you get
| them out of their opening book, they have to write their
| own emails. I've often seen in advance fee scams, after the
| first few emails, there's a sudden decrease in the quality
| of the text, that's how you know they're writing their own
| emails
| notpushkin wrote:
| The article might have been updated, but it addresses
| your point now. This particular scam used emails
| consisting of one persinalized paragraph + a few slightly
| randomized paragraphs straight from the playbook.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It was probably a Chinese slave in a Myanmar boiler room.
|
| Romance scammers and "pig butchering" scams are usually run by
| Asian gangs. Nasty folks.
|
| The "good" news, however, is that AI is likely to make a big
| impact, here, and reduce the need to kidnap poor folks.
| netsharc wrote:
| Ha, with AI scammer traps (e.g [1]), it'll be AI lying to
| other AI, trillions of CPU cycles wasted accomplishing
| nothing other than speeding up the destruction of the planet.
|
| I suppose one can then declare the mission accomplished: zero
| scammers left on the planet.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV_SdCfZ-0s
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > trillions of CPU cycles wasted accomplishing nothing
| other than speeding up the destruction of the planet.
|
| Also known as "advertising".
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Ha, with AI scammer traps (e.g [1]), it 'll be AI lying
| to other AI, trillions of CPU cycles wasted accomplishing
| nothing other than speeding up the destruction of the
| planet._
|
| Reminds me of a small part of Neal Stephenson's "Anathem".
|
| Or maybe a bit of Peter Watts' Rifters trilogy.
| martin_a wrote:
| Man, not even slaves are needed for scams anymore. Sad to see
| job losses even there... /s
| brohee wrote:
| The fact that the scammer was in Russia was pretty credible.
| It'd be pretty odd for a scammer in Myanmar to alter the
| metadata to appear as to be from Russia and not from
| Kazakhstan as the "woman" claimed to be.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Good point.
| z3j4e wrote:
| Thanks for this great example of how much metadata can work
| against the person generating it.
|
| And I also want to thank the author for the wiki regarding the
| identification of the MUA by the Message-ID, that was a nice new
| detail I didn't know :)
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Yeah, a pass with some exif scrubbing software would've gone a
| long way here.
|
| They probably just don't care though because not doing so
| doesn't really risk anything.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Anyone sophisticated enough to even look at the exif data is
| not a good mark.
| codedokode wrote:
| I thought gmail doesn't disclose sender's IP address? Or I was
| wrong? This is not good for privacy.
|
| Also, for fingerprinting you can obtain a GPU model via WebGL
| (helps in detecting a VM), and probably can scan for known
| browser extensions by trying to fetch extension-specific URLs.
| Some sites also scan ports on the localhost by trying to connect
| to them to find out which software is run.
| mmsc wrote:
| >I thought gmail doesn't disclose sender's IP address? Or I was
| wrong? This is not good for privacy.
|
| The IP address is the smtp server of course, not the individual
| user.
| leni536 wrote:
| I learned that most email services do attach the IP address
| of the MUA (that is, the user's computer) if you send through
| SMTP. I set up an SMTP relay for myself to hide that.
|
| The user's IP address is not attached if you use webmail.
| neuroticnews25 wrote:
| Now i think it doesn't but it did as recent as in 2014, in a
| Received header like the one in the article.
| badmintonbaseba wrote:
| It still does, just tested it.
| LeonM wrote:
| > I thought gmail doesn't disclose sender's IP address? Or I
| was wrong? This is not good for privacy.
|
| This is not necessarily a Gmail thing, but just how SMTP works.
| It's not as bad as you'd think though.
|
| SMTP services log the IP address and/or hostname of the remote
| host, and the address used by the host to identity itself
| (known as the HELO address). This is the address of the remote
| SMTP service (known as the MTA), which isn't typically the IP
| address of the users computer where the email client runs on
| (known as the MUA).
|
| Under normal circumstances your email client (MUA) connects to
| your email service provider (MTA), which then sends the email
| to the MTA of the recipient. So the IP of your MTA (email
| hosting service), _not_ your MUA (your computer) is exposed.
|
| For example: if you send an email to a Gmail inbox using MS365,
| the receiver (the Gmail user) would see only the IP-address
| from Microsoft's outbound SMTP services.
|
| So unless you run your own SMTP service at home, or attempt to
| directly connect with the receiving MTA using SMTP, your IP
| address won't be exposed.
| badmintonbaseba wrote:
| If you send through a MUA (like Thunderbird) that uses
| Gmail's SMTP then Gmail do expose your IP address. Most other
| email providers do the same.
|
| > Under normal circumstances your email client (MUA) connects
| to your email service provider (MTA), which then sends the
| email to the MTA of the recipient. So the IP of your MTA
| (email hosting service), not your MUA (your computer) is
| exposed.
|
| This is incorrect, most email providers' MTA includes the
| MUA's IP address in the headers.
| CPLX wrote:
| Pretty sure that gmail doesn't disclose a useful email address
| when using web version of gmail, is that right?
| _tk_ wrote:
| I've never quite understood this sort of anti-scammer content and
| what its appeal is to readers. There are a million YouTube videos
| and other articles out there that explain, analyze, as well as
| mock[1] and denigrate scammers - who are essentially modern day
| slaves [2].
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzz3NeDz3E [2]:
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-02/human-trafficking-vie...
| jdiez17 wrote:
| It's a form of "justice porn". You're right that these scammers
| are victims themselves. But seeing how they treat vulnerable
| groups (particularly less tech savvy, trusting, older people -
| which may well be your mom one day) is absolutely fucking vile.
|
| Also, some anti-scammer YouTubers are legitimately very skilled
| and entertaining to watch. Kitboga is the first that comes to
| mind. He has all these voices, characters, sound effects - and
| takes scammers on quite some adventures. Pretty funny.
| VPenkov wrote:
| I can think of three things: serving as a guide, serving to
| raise awareness, and entertainment.
|
| On the "serving as a guide" part, some people are activists and
| subscribe to the idea that if they are wasting a scammer's
| time, this means the scammer has one victim fewer.
|
| On the raising awareness side, there are absolutely plenty of
| YouTube videos, but it's always good to educate people before
| they become targets. The psychological and financial impact of
| getting scammed can be devastating. Raised awareness could also
| prompt the authorities to crack down on scam centers.
|
| On the entertainment side - some people just get a kick out of
| it.
|
| Additionally, this particular article breaks down the various
| tactics used and teaches the reader to identify them.
| jjani wrote:
| This deserves some nuance. Much of the scam-baiting content -
| in fact, all of the ones I'd seen until this post - revolves
| around tech support scams, advance fee scams and the likes,
| which unlike these romance scams are generally not done by
| slaves.
| whoisstan wrote:
| How do you know they are not done by slaves?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Scammer Payback's videos always include footage from the
| surveillance cameras. At least the scammers he and his crew
| target don't use slavery - that's more of a problem in
| Burma/Myanmar, not in India where many tech scammers are.
| whoisstan wrote:
| Didn't know, are they individuals working independently
| with some 'services' to provide targets/money laundering
| or are they part of organized crime or payroll? I am
| curious in the support structures they are embedded in.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| SP gives tales on that in pretty much every video. It's
| usually messenger apps where the coordination happens -
| scammers share and sell lists of leads, marks and mules,
| with different prices for "verified susceptible" targets,
| there's regional groups (even on Facebook lol) where scam
| ringleaders and potential agents meet, and yes there's
| payroll and even legit shift work.
|
| In the worst cases, legitimate companies sublet their
| office space to scammers - the day shift are regular
| callcenter employees that do fully legitimate
| consulting/support/outsourcing stuff, and in the night
| the scammer crews roll in. Utterly absurd to watch, and
| police usually doesn't do shit because they're paid off.
| belorn wrote:
| Based on crime research, it seems that most organized crime is
| composed of modern day slaves, with varied degree of slavery.
| The most extreme are those that involve trafficking. It is a
| key distinction of the lowest level of their hierarchy,
| including the aspect that the lowest levels do most of the
| hands on work and most/all of the interaction with victims.
|
| I view articles like this to be similar to those that explain
| and analyze the behavior of foot solders in street gangs. Who
| do they approach, how, what strategy do they employ to build
| trust, and how do they avoid detection.
| codedokode wrote:
| In this case, if the scammer is from Russia there is likely
| no trafficking involved (except maybe for the woman who
| called on the phone because she did not sound Russian to me).
| whoisstan wrote:
| Same, better to think about ways to actually help them than
| mock them.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Hi from Argentina!
|
| Yesterday someone tried to hack my WhatsApp. He call me and
| said something like:
|
| > _Hello! I 'm from phone company $Name. Someone tried to
| register your WhatsApp number form $Another_city. We are
| calling to confirm because otherwise we will have to block your
| phone line with $Name._
|
| The first problem was that $Name was not my phone company. I
| though it was a " _change company_ " call that is worse than a
| scam because it's real and is done by the phone companies. They
| even let children accept the company change. So I said that I
| didn't authorize any change to anything. He replied that:
|
| > _You are in WhatsApp group $Something and if you don 't
| confirm we will have to block your phone line with $Name._
|
| Weird pause because I was in group $Something! And he
| continued:
|
| > _We will send you now an SMS with a code to confirm your
| identity, because if we don 't get the confirmation we will
| have to block your phone line with $Name._
|
| I hang up.
|
| I got a SMS from WhatsApp with a secret number to install
| WhatsApp in a new device, that explicitly says that I should
| not share the number with anyone.
|
| They probably hacked the account of other member of group
| $Something. The main plan is to send money request to other
| persons in the group. Our bank system is quite modern and
| _everyone_ has in their phone an app from the bank to transfer
| money instantly for free. (I have not seen a dead-tree check in
| decades.)
|
| So today I have zero sympathy for scammers. Moreover, I think
| the employees of the call centers of the real companies here
| have worse working conditions than the scammer here. And
| neither of them are in almost slavery conditions.
|
| (From time to time we have police investigations of slavery
| conditions but mostly for forced prostitution and ilegal cloth
| factories. It's a real problem but not in the scammer area.)
| willvarfar wrote:
| (Last month there was a crackdown that freed over 7000 call
| centre slaves in Myanmar.
|
| In that operation those freed actually ended up in a kind of
| captive holding situation
| https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/southeast-asia/myanmar-
| sc...
|
| The article mentions that the call centres in Myanmar were
| targeting Chinese and Americans, so although the call centers
| are very far away the people they are scamming might be a lot
| closer. Its a very international problem.)
| chatmasta wrote:
| Depending on group privacy, they may be able to identify
| members without joining it (i.e. no need to hack someone else
| in the group).
|
| I haven't kept up on WhatsApp research but at some point this
| was true - same goes for online status and avatars. I have
| those set to "nobody" and "default."
|
| WhatsApp makes it way too easy to go from "phone number" to
| "real person online at X, Y, Z hours."
| znpy wrote:
| > who are essentially modern day slaves
|
| scams are not acceptable, no matter who's performing it
|
| > I've never quite understood this sort of anti-scammer content
| and what its appeal is to readers.
|
| mocking is a very effective way to raise awareness of the
| issue, it delivers information on how scammers act and how to
| understand you're being scammed, and make that information
| stick.
|
| making that kind of scam inefficient is a very good way
| (entertaining, non-violent, essentially harmless to scammer) to
| make the phenomenon disappear.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| Are you maybe falling into the trap of being surprised at other
| people not yet knowing what you know? "Today's ten thousand" as
| it's called in xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1053/
|
| If you're not already jaded with the topic, it's really
| interesting! There's a lot of detail and nuance to it, and
| yeah, there's some satisfaction in seeing the bad guys get
| foiled for once.
|
| This particular investigation doesn't actually mock or
| denigrate the scammers. The author sets a strict rule at the
| very start:
|
| _Techniques not people: the aim of this is_ not _to identify
| the individuals behind the scams, it 's to see how they work._
|
| That doesn't actually rule out mockery, but they don't engage
| in it anyway (beyond a "cheeky bastards" aside, which in any
| case is more about acknowledging their chutzpah).
| acdha wrote:
| I posted it because I find awareness of these scams is useful.
| If you have older relatives or friends you might want to be
| ready if they report a new online relationship.
|
| I also don't spend much time on YouTube so a blog post is good
| for people who don't want to take the time warning a video.
| kibwen wrote:
| Unrestrained empathy is self-destruction. Being a victim is not
| a blanket excuse for the act of victimizing others. There is no
| easy, feel-good solution to this problem.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Then the telecom industry is responsible for blocking it, or
| perhaps is liable for damages caused by the slavery.
| danielvf wrote:
| One warning, this scam, with it's fast timeline and request for
| funds to be sent to the girlfriend is a classic, but modern scams
| can be quite different than this.
|
| "pig butchering" scams can run for months of contact with no
| requests for money, and then instead of asking for money, the
| user "invests" into what appear initialy to be profitable
| investments alongside the scammer.
| guappa wrote:
| I think at this point pig butchering is so famous that if you
| fall for it you'd fall for any scam.
| bell-cot wrote:
| If only that was true. In reality, outside of the more
| online-fraud-savvy demographics...
| Lanolderen wrote:
| Getting scammed on Runescape should be part of the school
| curriculum.
| ConfusedDog wrote:
| I was scammed out of about $4 when I was kid playing
| Ragnarok Online. Taught me zero trust. In hindsight, it's
| a cheap but effective learning experience... well, until
| I met my now ex-wife.
| rambambram wrote:
| At least know that I have trust in your humor and sense
| of smiling in the face of adversity.
| mesofile wrote:
| Many years ago when advance-fee email scams [0] became common
| I was likewise amazed that anyone would fall for them. Then
| it was pointed out that the seemingly obvious warning signs
| were a feature and not a bug, they are there to filter out
| everyone with a minimum of common sense and ensure that the
| scammers, who are casting their nets wide, only get responses
| from a few people but those people who do respond are quite
| gullible. The pig butchering thing is just a different filter
| meant to trap a different kind of vulnerable person.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I have literally never heard of it before this thread.
| Zak wrote:
| This thread is the first I've heard of it. I had to look it
| up.
|
| The scammer convinces the mark to put money into fake
| investments and escalates until the mark runs of of money or
| gets spooked, then disappears. It's often made more
| persuasive by engaging in a fake romance.
| fmajid wrote:
| The people doing the pig butchering are themselves trafficked
| and working in horrendous slavery conditions in Cambodia:
|
| https://theconversation.com/pig-butchering-fraud-the-link-be...
|
| https://restofworld.org/2022/cambodias-scam-mills/
| saaspirant wrote:
| I can confirm. Someone I know went there for "job abroad" via
| an "agent" and then came back after knowing what it truly
| was. It's common in India
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I stopped trying to mess with them and string them along
| after I heard about this.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| There are downsides to engaging and not engaging, but I'm
| still on team engage and waste time.
|
| Once they can't find any true victims in a reasonable
| amount of time, the industry will disappear (or automate
| and remove the torture and amplify the attempts 1000x)
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Once they can't find any true victims in a reasonable
| amount of time, the industry will disappear_
|
| You're wasting more of your time than theirs. Think of
| it, you've already got your own answer. This is a whole
| _industry_ and that implies people that work full time.
| How much time do _you_ spend on this? Have you spent your
| whole day optimizing your workflow and answers to get an
| optimal response? Because they most certainly have.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Finding out how to keep them on the line longer is part
| of the fun.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| ...let me pass you to my brother...
| saghm wrote:
| That just makes it seem like you're also exploiting the
| people who are forced into this, only for a different
| motive than the ones who forced them into it in the first
| place. Maybe there's a better way to entertain yourself
| than this?
| Teever wrote:
| But the industry has a business model and if the margins
| are slim enough the model doesn't work and the industry
| collapses.
|
| Think about a drive through that serves three rushes in a
| day, people driving to work, people on theyr lunch break,
| and people driving home.
|
| If each rush is an hour long how many people would need
| to DDOS the drive through with frivolous complaints and
| time wasting bullshit like 'oh let me find my change,
| just a second... Oops I dropped it sorry, let me get
| that... Oh I can't open my door can you be a dear and
| send someone outside to get it?' to completely disrupt
| the entire rush and therefoe the vital flow of cash?
|
| If I spend twenty minutes on the phone with a scammer
| while I'm doing house chores like washing dishes and
| folding laundry that's 20 minutes that the scammer isn't
| making money.
|
| If he has a 12 hour shift that's only 36 people to
| completely eliminate his chance of making any revenue.
|
| How many people need to do this to eliminate the profit
| from this employee?
| lurk2 wrote:
| I would have thought the chief limitation in an operation
| like this would be that your profits are (presumably)
| Pareto distributed, so 80% of profits come from 20% of
| victims. This would make the operation more like mining
| Bitcoin than serving lunches. One thing that supports
| your theory that the margins are slim, however, is that
| there are crime syndicates kidnapping people to work in
| these call centers. If the wages didn't represent a
| significant marginal cost, they wouldn't need to risk
| attracting international attention by kidnapping people
| in the first place.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I used to be somewhat mean to telemarketers, until I
| learned that some of them are prison laborers - getting
| paid pennies per hour to work in a prison call center.
|
| That already feels morally un-great, and messing with them
| further no longer felt like something I could justify.
| pocketarc wrote:
| I agree, and I feel like that goes for everything in
| general. It's like people who get mad at customer service
| people - the customer service person has absolutely
| nothing to do with the product that's giving you grief.
| Even the telemarketer, as you point out, doesn't want to
| be there (or even if they do, they may just be there
| because they have no better options and need to put food
| on the table).
|
| In life, there are very few situations where being unkind
| is ever worth it.
|
| And even here on HN, I sometimes get the impulse to argue
| with someone for whatever they said. What I do is I type
| out my little comment, then close the tab without
| actually posting it. Some things are better left unsaid,
| regardless of how satisfying they'd be to say.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I should have been clearer that I meant the more-
| obviously illegal telemarketers, which frankly are the
| only ones left.
|
| Having said that, I have no moral problem with keeping
| them on the line and dragging out a conversation without
| being rude - every minute they're speaking with me is a
| minute they're not trying to convince my elderly
| grandmother to switch her power bill to some fly-by-night
| shitfarm.
| psadauskas wrote:
| One thing that really stuck with me from the show _The
| Good Place_. The premise is that getting into heaven is a
| points-based system. You get points for doing good
| things, loose them for doing bad things, and when you
| die, if you have enough points, you go to heaven.
|
| _Spoilers for season 3 ahead_
|
| Used to be, for hundreds of years, you'd go visit your
| mom for her birthday. You'd be walking down the lane and
| see some wildflowers, so you pick them and bring them to
| her. +10 points.
|
| In modern society, to do the same you'd drive to the
| florist and buy some flowers, then drive to your mom's.
| +10 points. But the PE firm that bought the florist laid
| of 100s of workers, and -10 points for supporting them.
| And the flowers were picked by underpaid exploited
| immigrants, -10 points. And you dumped a bunch of CO2 in
| the air from your drive and gave a newborn asthma, -10
| points.
|
| The show was saying that because of the choices that
| modern society and late-stage capitalism force upon us,
| nobody has gone to heaven for _decades_.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I guess that show has been over for nearly 5 years, but
| it might still be a good idea to spoiler this reveal for
| folks who haven't gotten around to it so you don't lose 3
| points.
| psadauskas wrote:
| Good idea. HN doesn't have a spoiler tag, but I added a
| warning.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| _Freezes; looks around Hackernews_...
|
| Wait a minute... _THIS_ is The Bad Place!!!
|
| Seriously though, I was super-embarrassed a year or two
| ago, when I received a phone call and quickly became
| convinced that some scammer had a hold of me.
|
| I began questioning the poor lady on the phone and she
| gamely answered all my questions: location, company,
| including spelling her name and pronouncing it entirely
| differently. Many answers were quite vague and not
| satisfying to me at the time. But cold callers will
| absolutely hang up on that type of treatment!
|
| My ultimate question was asking if she was safe or being
| trafficked or captive or something, because I noticed
| there was a dog barking in the background. And she
| must've been WFH.
|
| Only after I wrote up a detailed play by play of the call
| and frantically reported it to several of my colleagues,
|
| It turned out to be a totally legitimate call and
| somebody had authorized the marketing campaign. She just
| had so little information, she was unable to answer me
| adequately. I was so embarrassed I can't even tell you.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I wouldn't be embarrassed. I'd be embarrassed on their
| behalf, maybe, for half-assing it so badly.
|
| I don't owe anybody who calls me out of the blue my time,
| especially when their shit isn't together. My mom answers
| the phone and actually talks to these people, and
| politely says "no thank you", whereas I don't even pick
| up the phone for certain area codes, and certainly don't
| engage in conversation if it's clear it's some bullshit I
| do not care about.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| In her book Medicine Stories, Aurora Morales speaks of
| the impact our participatory existence in an unjust world
| has on us.
|
| We have to harden our hearts in order to walk by the
| unhoused, harden our hearts to buy stuff me know is
| produced by slavery, pretend we don't see the
| extortionist, your-money-or-your-life nature of
| industrialized health services, harden our hearts to the
| slaughter of billions of animals for the meat industry,
| pretend we don't witness the ongoing ecocide and
| destruction of our only biosphere.
|
| That's before the daily servings of doom via our doom-
| monetizing, amygdala-destroying media outlets.
|
| Such levels of ongoing denial and desentization impact us
| to the point that we live in an increasingly unhealthy
| state of mass psychosis. We are all freaking out
| internally, pretending that all is OK externally.
| an_aparallel wrote:
| Thanks for bringing this up, sums up how I feel about
| life. And underlines one of my biggest realisations of
| recent times: depression is a valid/natural response to
| helplessness and a world of injustice...
| Terr_ wrote:
| Spoilers for those interested:
|
| Calculating points process -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY-Rzou38k4
|
| Michael trying to explain the problem (see math on
| screen) -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8m_5HDZF7w&t=1m40s
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >It's like people who get mad at customer service people
|
| Except the customer service people willingly accept a job
| to act as an in-between so that any appropriate anger at
| a company is directed at an employee. To what extent do
| companies purposefully make use of this to prevent
| outrage directed at them? Back to the original topic, how
| much do the people leading these scams like pushing the
| story of the scammers being forced into it, because it
| increases the empathy that people feel towards the
| scammers and better allows the scams to continue?
|
| At what point does being kind shift into a sort of
| pacifist mindset, that while great if everyone used it,
| creates fertile ground for far worse approaches to human
| relationships to flourish and spread, leading to the
| quality of the average approach to human relationships
| declining?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Back to the original topic, how much do the people
| leading these scams like pushing the story of the
| scammers being forced into it, because it increases the
| empathy that people feel towards the scammers and better
| allows the scams to continue?_
|
| My feelings of pity towards the people being literally
| enslaved don't mean I don't want the scams to stop, or
| for the people to be liberated.
|
| It just means I don't scream profanities at someone who
| had their passport stolen.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| " _It 's like people who get mad at customer service
| people - the customer service person has absolutely
| nothing to do with the product that's giving you grief._"
|
| I used to believe this. But I have since changed my mind.
| Corporations train their reps to actively stonewall and
| frustrate you and hope you go away while they screw up
| your finances, travel, healthcare and deny you things you
| paid for.
|
| A couple years ago, I was on the return flight from
| France to the US with wife and kid in tow. At the
| airport, I learned that the flight was a code-share. The
| airline I had booked with was meaningless. Meaning, the
| seats that I had paid extra for so we could sit together
| was no longer the seats that I picked. Even though I
| spent extra money to get what I asked for, I wasn't
| getting it because the real airline said <random
| paragraphs of verbiage>. Meaning myself, wife, and kid
| would no longer be sitting together on an 8 hour flight
| despite me paying extra for it, five months in advance.
|
| So I performed what I called my "angry frustrated
| customer routine". I became loud and agitated several
| times at the airport. Until I got my way and got what I
| had paid for.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Corporations train their reps to actively stonewall
| and frustrate you and hope you go away while they screw
| up your finances, travel, healthcare and deny you things
| you paid for._
|
| And how much choice do those reps have? Their choice is
| "follow the playbook" or "go out and find a new job".
|
| It sounds like you yelled at someone who was not
| responsible for your original issue. You weren't
| performing. You were _being_.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Eventually I got someone's attention although I had to
| through five different people. Somebody did the right
| thing after I became loud.
|
| I termed it performing as I was deliberately trying to
| draw attention to myself from the other passengers.
| xp84 wrote:
| It's odd to me that people feel _worse_ about unpleasant
| things happening specifically to convicted felons than to
| the general public.
|
| If you were being mean to a random jerk, and then he
| pointed out "By the way, I roughed up my wife last night"
| would you feel _more_ bad about being mean? But you 'd
| feel worse if it turned out he was doing time for that
| same crime?
|
| Note: I know that there could be people truly wrongfully
| convicted included in the set of all prisoners, but I
| certainly don't think that's common enough that they
| should be treated better than the average person.
|
| Second note: I also am not saying being a felon means one
| should be punished forever or anything. Just that, yeah,
| prison isn't meant to be fun, and being expected to work
| while doing time is not cruel punishment. It's what most
| people do outside of prison. Anyone who doesn't accept
| those terms, I fully support them clicking "Decline" by
| not commiting crimes.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> prison isn't meant to be fun, and being expected to
| work while doing time is not cruel punishment.
|
| The problem I have with this is that last time I checked,
| nearly all sentences for people going to prison are
| incarceration, not incarceration+forced labour. It's the
| same as people cheering up prison rape because "they
| deserve it" or "if they don't like it, they should just
| stop committing crimes". Again, no one is ever sentenced
| to prison+prison rape, and failing to protect prisoners
| from each other is a massive failure of the state.
|
| And of course we have to acknowledge that having prison
| population working for close to nothing creates really
| perverse incentives, both on the side of the state as
| well as enterprises employing prisoners. In fact I'd
| argue that even if you feel that it's entirely fair and
| deserved you should still be against it to stop
| incentivising all the nasty shit happening around it.
| Prisoners should be sitting in prison, they shouldn't be
| working, or if they are it should be on public works not
| on anything that the state charges money for.
| xp84 wrote:
| > It's the same as people cheering up prison rape
|
| Respectfully, no it's not. Our society does in theory,
| and should, recognize a universal right to not be raped.
| It doesn't recognize, for anyone, a right to not have to
| work and still be taken care of, with the possible
| exception of the Royal Family. Though I understand most
| of their income comes from their historical ownership of
| vast lands, which is slightly different.
|
| > Prisoners should be sitting in prison, they shouldn't
| be working,
|
| Why should they only be sitting? Where's the free room
| and board for those who haven't committed felonies? If we
| aren't offering a UBI to random non-criminal lazy people,
| I don't think it's justified to recognize that as a right
| of prisoners specifically.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Respectfully, no it's not.
|
| Alright, maybe the comparison took it too far but I hope
| you see my point - the sentence is imprisonment, not
| imprisonment+X.
|
| >>It doesn't recognize, for anyone, a right to not have
| to work and still be taken care of
|
| Nonsense - how about the ill and the disabled? Why do we
| take care of them even if they don't work? Unless when
| you say "our society" you mean some society that doesn't
| have that - but then I can't possibly know where you
| live.
|
| >>Where's the free room and board for those who haven't
| committed felonies?
|
| Uhm....almost every developed country offers some kind of
| socialized housing and food stamps if you need them?
|
| >>I don't think it's justified to recognize that as a
| right of prisoners specifically.
|
| It's not their right - it's ours. We lock them up and
| they should stay locked up. They should sit in prison all
| day not because it's their privilege to be sitting around
| all day bored, but because it's our privilege to walk
| streets free of criminals - we want them there.
|
| Also observe how even I acknowledged that prisoners could
| be used for work - any kind of public work where they
| aren't a danger to society is fine with me. But the
| moment you introduce a profit motive you are creating
| breeding ground for corruption and incentives which have
| absolutely nothing to do with justice.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _being expected to work while doing time is not cruel
| punishment_
|
| No, but it sure smells like slavery.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > I used to be somewhat mean to telemarketers, until I
| learned that some of them are prison laborers - getting
| paid pennies per hour to work in a prison call center.
|
| Are you talking about people who have been convicted of a
| crime and are calling you at dinner to sell you something
| or conduct a survey, or about people in Southeast Asia
| who have been kidnapped and are being forced to run
| scams? I've heard of this happening in Southeast Asia,
| but not with actual convicts, only kidnapping victims.
| tdpvb wrote:
| What if everyone started responding with aggressive
| encouragements, "Escape!" "Run from that place," "Murder
| your overlords, you outnumber them!"
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I used to be mean to scammers and ask if their mother was
| ashamed of them etc., but I recently tried another tactic
| and told them I loved them. It works a lot better. One told
| me his name and where they were located. It costs me
| nothing to tell them I love them. Maybe they need to hear
| it.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| The cynic in me is wondering if this is them attempting
| to swap to another tactic to establish a different
| relationship with the same end goal.
| derefr wrote:
| I send them messages written in Khmer asking if they need
| help. (Most of the victims are not themselves Cambodian and
| cannot read this. But the messages are not for them;
| they're to spook their captors.)
| rawgabbit wrote:
| The news reports I see said most of the scam centers are
| in Myanmar run by Chinese gangs. The victims are mostly
| Chinese, but there are reports of Japanese, Kenyans and
| many other nationalities being trafficked. They are
| forced to work 18 hours a day and tasered when they don't
| meet their quota.
|
| Even a famous Chinese actor was tricked and trafficked.
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/14/china/china-actor-
| thailand-sc...
| asah wrote:
| I suppose it's good news that AI will displace these humans ?
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Removed as my context was incorrect
| geodel wrote:
| This is terrible. We must demand better working conditions
| for these folks.
| gadders wrote:
| I ask them to invest in an alt coin I'm launching and then they
| stop talking to me.
| pat_space wrote:
| Sad example of out rural kansas:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/21/cryptocurrency-shan-hanes-pi...
| inimino wrote:
| And in case it isn't obvious, with AI "companionship" models
| and such, this is about to get _a lot_ worse as the cost of the
| string-along goes to zero.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I await the day where the companionship models are actually
| as good at creative writing as even ChatGPT. Of course if
| they're ever as good as a real person (the holy grail) then
| I'll be very happy, but I don't see that happening any time
| soon.
| lurk2 wrote:
| I saw this happen a few times where I used to work. The one
| instance that I remember was an older pensioner and a Filipina
| woman in her 30s. She met him in our city and eventually
| convinced him to move back to the Philippines with her. He used
| his pension to build her family a house for them all to live
| in. Once the house was finished, they locked him out of it and
| threatened to call the police if he didn't leave. This guy was
| in a wheelchair and didn't know how to read. What struck me was
| how nice he was - he wasn't at all bitter when he was
| describing what happened, and was extremely polite to everyone
| in the office.
|
| I guess they look for people like that.
| namaria wrote:
| The opening email is hilarious
|
| "I am true woman! Scammers are bad!"
| eXpl0it3r wrote:
| Every few weeks I'll get a DM on Discord where they try to sell
| me some art. Of course they never have any public portfolio and
| don't identify themselves further. Usually I ask them directly
| "what's the scam this time" or similar and they always reply
| along the lines of "I'm not scammer. I'm real!". Haven't had
| the patience to find out how the scam eventually works.
| not_a_bot_4sho wrote:
| The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
| chatmasta wrote:
| For me the most off-putting email was the one describing her
| favorite breakfast of an omelette, Caesar salad and coffee.
| Gross!
| throwme0827349 wrote:
| I don't know about that region, or whether they were trying
| to create a breakfast that would sound classy but credible to
| a Westerner.
|
| However, I can say from first hand experience that home
| cooked Russian breakfasts in Vladivostok were mind bending.
| As an American, when I eat breakfast but it's a small and
| simple affair. A cup of oatmeal and some coffee, maybe eggs
| if I feel ambitious.
|
| The Russians I stayed with made hela breakfast every morning.
| Like a huge potluck dinner made from recognizable ingredients
| in very unexpected combinations. While I'm sure they were
| spoiling me a little because I was a guest, it was always the
| biggest meal of the day. One memorable example was buttered
| noodles and meatballs, bread, butter, cheese, cucumber
| slices, coffee and tea with condensed sweetened milk, and
| even a little dark chocolate for desert. I'm probably
| forgetting more stuff.
|
| Also the kids (10 and 8) drank coffee! I think they were
| mostly in it for the sweetened condensed milk though.
|
| That was an awesome breakfast for sure.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It's probably more that most Americans typically have very
| little for breakfast.
|
| Around here, cornbread and sausage gravy, coffee (milk or
| tea for my teenager) is a not-uncommon Saturday breakfast.
| I think I made a variety of muffins last weekend. Or home-
| made corned beef hash with scrambled eggs, etc. You get the
| idea.
|
| OTOH, during the week it's probably something simple like a
| sausage patty on a toasted English muffin, maybe with a
| scrambled egg (my version of a McMuffin). Or cereal if I'm
| not feeling it.
|
| I have had Caesar and other salads for breakfast. Salads
| are really delicious when you don't want a heavy meal and
| they're quick and easy to make.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I'm okay with a heavy breakfast. It's the mixture of
| Caesar salad, omelette and coffee that doesn't sit well
| with me. I'll take some cold romaine lettuce with my
| eggs, or some hot spinach, but something about Caesar
| salad - maybe the dressing? - feels distinctly "lunch or
| dinner only" to me.
| bsenftner wrote:
| This website tries to deliver a trojan payload.
| donpott wrote:
| Which one? HN? TFA? Any of the scammy subdomains mentioned
| therein?
| bsenftner wrote:
| The site linked by the article.
| tky wrote:
| It does not. If you believe otherwise, elaborate on your
| claim.
| bsenftner wrote:
| My antivirus blocked loading the site, identifying a
| trojan payload, using Russian text. That's as far as I
| went.
| wheybags wrote:
| There's a message encouraging Russian visitors to not
| support the war in Ukraine. If your antivirus is flagging
| any Cyrillic text, that's a bit overzealous IMO.
| not2b wrote:
| Kapersky, perhaps? Flagging an antiwar message as
| dangerous?
| billy99k wrote:
| They are so greedy, it didn't take me much effort to run a
| successful phishing campaign against multiple scammers a few
| years ago, when I got bored.
| scottndecker wrote:
| "Although I was invested in this project, I definitely wasn't
| "flirty sex chat with some random scammer" levels of invested.
| The thought also dawned on me that part of their playbook could
| even involve "Aidana" calling for phone sex.
|
| Either would be crossing lines that I didn't want to cross,
| meaning that I'd stumbled upon an unexpected 4th rule of
| engagement: don't talk dirty with scammers."
|
| Rules of life to live by.
| scyclow wrote:
| Romance scams are pretty wild. A few years ago someone attempted
| to catfish me on hinge by impersonating WWE wrestler Mandy Rose.
| I think the irony or impersonating a professional wrestler (whose
| job is to act within an artificially constructed kayfabe
| universe) was lost on them.
|
| I ended up turning the exchange into an interactive website:
| https://0ms.co/sexydating
| kgeist wrote:
| Yoshkar-Ola, Russia is mentioned there. I'm from Yoshkar-Ola.
| This kind of scam business exists here at least since the early
| 2000s. We were once called the capital of such scam business in
| Russia. I didn't know it's still a thing. One of my acquaintances
| worked there in around 2005-2007. It was mostly students renting
| an appartment, rows of PCs. He left right before they were raided
| by police. Some British individual reported to our authorities
| and law enforcement acted on it. Never heard about them ever
| since, before this article.
|
| It's kinda sad that we're associated mostly with Prigozhin in the
| West (the first thing the OP remembered), although we have other
| interesting stuff, for example we have probably the last
| remaining, still practiced pagan religion in Europe:
| https://hwpi.harvard.edu/pluralismarchive/news/europes-last-...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I recently encountered a YouTube video talking about a related
| industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYup8chgkwM
|
| It seems to be a similar idea, but with the scamming hidden in
| less-obviously-illegal places.
| mgfist wrote:
| > It's kinda sad that we're associated mostly with Prigozhin in
| the West
|
| Unfortunately, Pringles had such a hilarious (in a dark way)
| last few years that it makes it very hard to compete with.
| Aspos wrote:
| Kazakh names are typically unique planet-wide. There is a very,
| very low chance of there being another person with the same name.
| Chances of finding another person with the same name and the same
| year of birth are practically zero.
|
| Edit: Seems like this particular combination is not unique after
| all. Found quite a few people of the same name. Perhaps they
| chose a victim which can't be found trivially.
| bloak wrote:
| Though the name Aidana is Kazakh, the pictures would be more
| plausible for a member of the Russian minority in Kazakhstan
| (15% of the population according to Wikipedia). The article
| doesn't reveal where those pictures were stolen from, does it?
| And the voice? Typical spam call centre voice ... Philippines?
| Aspos wrote:
| Sounds clearly Russian to me. Russian spoken in Yoshkar-Ola I
| guess.
| alecmg wrote:
| nothing like Russian, South Asian maybe
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The article doesn't reveal where those pictures were stolen
| from, does it?
|
| It says they're taken from the Instagram account of "a
| Russian personal trainer".
|
| I doubt the author is making an ethnic distinction between
| European Russians and Turkic Kazakhs, so the woman is
| probably identifiably located inside Russia.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Kazakh names are typically unique planet-wide.
|
| Really? What kind of structure do their names have? I think
| even cultures that used full-sentence names tended to have some
| conventional ones.
|
| And certain name ideas are very common cross-culturally, as
| witness Bogdan / Nathaniel / Theodore (and older Diodorus /
| Apollodorus / Herodotus / etc) / Dieudonne / Atallah...
|
| Going to something I know better, Chinese names _can_ be
| unique, and I know someone who tells me her father specifically
| attempted to ensure that nobody shared her name, but I wouldn
| 't go as far as saying that being unique is the typical case.
| Some names (Xiao Li , Guo Qiang ) have an attractive meaning
| and are used with identical spelling by large numbers of
| people; other names (Xinyue, Sijia) show a lot of spelling
| variation while always being pronounced identically.
| Aspos wrote:
| There are quite a few pre-Islamic taboos some of which
| persist to this day. For example, can't give a child a name
| of a living person parents know of. This of course includes
| extended family, friends and even acquaintances. This
| restriction alone enforces creative naming.
|
| Typically names consist of 1-5 elements which can be combined
| arbitrarily. There are literally thousands of such elements
| though.
|
| Last name often is a first name of an ancestor a few
| generations deep and it is likely to be unique too.
|
| So as a result first+last name combinations are quite unique.
|
| Urbanization is changing all this of course but some
| traditions are still strong. In my entire life I've met just
| 3 people with the same first name as mine.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Typically names consist of 1-5 elements which can be
| combined arbitrarily.
|
| Out of curiosity, are those elements meaningful or just
| pure sounds?
| Aspos wrote:
| Yes, they are meaningful. For example: Adjective + some
| natural phenomena + some flower = girl name.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I strongly believe that overseas scammers should be treated as
| enemy combatants of the United States and neutralized with
| loitering munitions just like an ISIS terrorist would be.
| rexpop wrote:
| From another comment:
|
| The people doing the pig butchering are themselves trafficked
| and working in horrendous slavery conditions in Cambodia:
|
| https://theconversation.com/pig-butchering-fraud-the-link-be...
|
| https://restofworld.org/2022/cambodias-scam-mills/
|
| ---
|
| Thank god a bloodthirsty ignoramus like you is not in charge of
| the military.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Growing up in the cold war, we always heard of "Mail order brides
| from Russia".
|
| In 2008 I had a disastrous international romance that began on an
| MMORPG.
|
| It was then that I learned that mail order bride companies often
| mediated between prospective girlfriends and the men overseas,
| and they actually protected both sides from scams or utter
| heartbreak. They made secure matches if they were reputable and
| they were able to arrange romances, or visas, immigration or
| whatever was being looked for.
|
| Their clients alone would never have the resources to research
| and verify and vet one another.
|
| It may have been a backpage, craigslist, back alley sort of
| operation, but perhaps sometimes it actually worked?
|
| Hail Melania
| DamonHD wrote:
| Someone I know is AFAIK still with his (second) Russian mail-
| order bride and has been for many many years. (The first one
| was sent back...)
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Every message International 1 cent.. and doing nothing against
| the scaming is promoting deglobalization.
| __jonas wrote:
| Interesting read, I wonder why they didn't get more into details
| about this fake dental practice website used by the scammer, like
| what server it's hosted on, who the domain is registered to, I
| guess they just had pretty good opsec and there was nothing
| interesting to find there?
| citizenpaul wrote:
| These scams are sad and horrible.
|
| I find it hard not to put some blame on the victim though. At the
| end of the day you are are responsible for watching out for
| yourself. When I look at the pictures of these people scammed.
| They are most often unattractive and unaccomplished people that
| believe suddenly a good looking international fashion model or a
| Harvard Doctor is inexplicably interested in them.
|
| I know its kinda sad but you have to have SOME idea of where you
| fall in the game of life and if something that much of an outlier
| comes along. You have got to be a little suspicious that they
| would really be interested in a romantic relationship with you.
|
| You cannot protect someone that has allowed this level of
| delusion to be their real world view is my point. "Protecting"
| these people from themselves essentially requires complete
| submission and removal of free will from at least some part of
| the population by force.
|
| I've watched the documentaries and most of the people after the
| fact admit that they basically did it to themselves. Nothing
| anyone could have done would have changed the outcome because
| they wanted it that way until it was too late.
| 1024core wrote:
| Reminds me of those 419 scams ("Nigerian Prince" scams) from the
| 90s and early 2000s.
| bevenhall wrote:
| Incel vibes all over.
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