[HN Gopher] U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top sourc...
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U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig
butchering' scams
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 165 points
Date : 2025-05-30 01:58 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (krebsonsecurity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (krebsonsecurity.com)
| duxup wrote:
| This stuff makes me so mad.
|
| I know a friend who told me about a loved one getting scammed.
| Dude meets some girl from a foreign country online. Next thing
| you know he thinks she got him into some great cryptocurrency,
| and nothing anyone can tell him will make him realize he is
| getting scammed.
|
| Sad stuff.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| It happened to my father. I told him he was getting scammed. My
| mom (divorced) told him. So did my sister. It didn't matter. He
| lost all of his savings - 300k+. I wish I had taken his phone
| away, changed his passwords, etc. My mom didn't want me to take
| drastic action because she was concerned that if he knew how
| much I knew he wouldn't keep telling her things. It doesn't
| matter once they've lost everything, of course.
|
| To anyone reading this thinking it wouldn't happen to your
| parents, don't be so sure. I thought he was smarter than that,
| and at some point he was, but age dulls things.
|
| He was a construction worker. That money didn't come easily; he
| ruined his body to get it. I think these scams work in part
| because it's hard for the rest of us to imagine so many people
| being so cold-hearted. It's almost inconceivable.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| This is horrifying. From your perspective, what's the hook
| that gets a person to hand over the money? Is it to make
| return on investment, or is it because they think the scammer
| loves them, or some other reason?
| Centigonal wrote:
| Usually it's a combination of both. The scammer works their
| mark for months and develops a deep relationship with the
| victim ("fattening the pig") before moving to the next
| phase where they mention how they started making tons of
| money in crypto, or recently got into financial trouble and
| need help, or similar ("butchering the pig").
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I think in his case they simply built up trust, and made it
| seem incredibly casual. It's hard for me to know exactly
| because I wasn't super privvy to what was going on, but by
| the time I talked to him about it he effectively trusted
| them over me.
|
| It all would have been so clearly a scam to anyone with any
| internet sense at all it blew my mind he would have been
| fooled.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I cannot find the article again, it was posted here a few
| months ago so maybe someone knows of it but,
|
| A guy intentionally went down the rabbit hole of one of
| these and wrote about the anatomy of it. In his case it was
| a young (like 30 something young) woman who graduated at
| the top of dentistry school in Uzbekistan and got a large
| grant to start a practice in the UK. Something like that.
| They talked/flirted for weeks/months, sent pictures, all
| that. The mark of course lives in the UK and she will need
| a place to stay while she gets her feet on the ground.
|
| Finally right as she is leaving to come to the UK there is
| a bureaucratic problem and she needs ~$10k to resolve it
| quickly before the grant lapses, and she cannot access the
| grant money for expenses until she is in the UK. Also her
| bank froze her account because of this mess so she needs to
| use these alternate means to get the money to her, and she
| can immediately pay you back upon arrival. You get the
| idea.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Pretty simple, for women; the promise of companionship,
| romance, someone to listen to them.
|
| For men; sexy pictures, flirting, promises or chances of
| physical intimacy.
|
| Older, single or widowed people are especially
| vulnerable.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| I found it again:
| https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/security/seducing-
| a-r...
| abletonlive wrote:
| I experienced the same thing in my family. It sucks. I still
| haven't fully forgiven them (the supposed victim).
|
| As much as I agree it's partially mental decline, it's hard
| for me to imagine it's not at least also partially a
| character flaw that would get you into this situation
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I, tiptoeing here, kind of agree. Am I missing something or
| do these scams operate on a person's greed?
|
| To be sure, I invest in order to see a return. That's
| greed, I guess? Or maybe not?
|
| I think having (unrealistic) expectations of doubling your
| money in anything shorter than ... about a decade ...
| should be sending up red flags for anyone. "Make money
| fast" should fire the same neurons as "Put it all on zero
| and spin".
|
| I had a friend who began to believe he had written code
| that could play the stock market and rake in the cash on
| trades (he was testing it on historical data and doing very
| well). The best way I could try to reel him in was to
| simply suggest that if it were so easy, everyone would be
| doing it.
|
| Same goes for _any_ get rich scheme.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| My dad isn't a gambler. He invested in the stock market,
| but never anything like options. I've never known him to
| buy a lottery ticket. He's not greedy.
|
| He is, however, pretty trusting. It took them months to
| get to the point where he was putting money in. I think
| he (naively) just trusted them. I wish he would have
| trusted us instead.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > I think he (naively) just trusted them. I wish he would
| have trusted us instead.
|
| Probably he trusted people who spent more time talking to
| him. I don't mean it as an way to blame anyone, I just
| think it's the way the trust mechanism is wired into the
| human brain, and this is why these scams work so well.
|
| Ironically this mirrors the parent's frustration of "I
| wish my kid trusted me and not his dumb-ass friends".
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| No, you're absolutely right. I had the same thought
| afterwards - but also, we're both introverted and
| definitely not phone-talkers. I don't really blame myself
| on that front.
| RainyDayTmrw wrote:
| That's a common enough take, and I think there's some
| truth to it, but I think it's overly simplistic. I think
| there is certainly a motivation that such scams target,
| but I don't know if "greed" is necessarily the right
| word. Some of it is not necessarily knowing what is or
| isn't realistic, given the stories that we hear on the
| news. Some of it is feeling stuck, and trying to go out
| on a branch, and picking the wrong one. Not all of these
| cases are immoral, or at least not the same level of
| immoral.
| guerrilla wrote:
| With romance scams it's ego, especially with men. My
| neighbor needs to beleive that 25 year old blondes taking
| selfies on yachts are interested in him. Nothing in the
| universe could convince him otherwise. He would have to
| change so much of his personality and life to accept who
| he is or become who he would need to be. It's impossible.
| I think this is actually a question of thermodynamics at
| this point.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Disagree. I used to work with a guy that got scammed by a
| girl in Vietnam. They met online. He flew there to meet
| with her multiple times. He met her "family". They were
| even intimate. After a few months, she convinced him to
| invest in some sort of restaurant. He even went with her
| to talk to "lawyers" (in Vietnam; she never came to the
| US). Then she took all the money and vanished. I think it
| was close to six-figures.
|
| He's a reasonably intelligent, humble guy. But he was
| also the perfect mark. He had just gotten divorced from a
| 10-year marriage, and he was lonely. So I wouldn't call
| his situation ego. I would call it loneliness. And I
| think that's how a lot of people get scammed. Everyone
| wants to feel loved.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I should have said it's often* ego. It can be either or
| both and other factors. I wouldn't rule it out entirely
| in your case though but you didn't mention the relative
| attractiveness of the people. I was talking about a 65
| year old man, out of shape, in debt, poor skills with and
| understanding of women.
| wmf wrote:
| Bitcoin has done 4x in some years and 10,000x in a
| decade. Unfortunately that has led people to believe that
| crypto is magic. Classic Ponzis and such mostly don't
| work any more but if you add in crypto suddenly people
| are willing to buy in.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Classic Ponzis are still very much around too. The SEC
| prosecuted a fun one last month
| (https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025-71)
| where they raised $91 million pretending to trade
| international bonds.
| FabHK wrote:
| 100%. That's why I'm so mad when influential people
| repeat the "crypto is the future of finance" nonsense. It
| is this uncritical hype that makes so many people
| vulnerable to crypto scams. Trump is doing it, Blackrock
| is doing it, it must be the best thing since sliced
| bread, right? No.
| const_cast wrote:
| Scams operate on any character flaw, with varying degrees
| of effort required. They exploit the human mind. They
| might target greed, or loneliness, or insecurity, or even
| fear of loss.
|
| But we all have character flaws. Everyone. So we are all
| vulnerable. Not to the same scams, but to some scams.
| abletonlive wrote:
| Sure but can you admit some people are more flawed than
| others? I don't think it's useful to just handwave this
| away and act like we are all the same.
| multjoy wrote:
| The difference between a good salesman and a fraudster is
| intent. This is weaponised grooming.
|
| These scammers don't have code of ethics, they will push
| whatever emotional button they think will get the result
| they want. You're conditioned by society to respond to
| certain patterning, they take advantage of that in full.
| tacon wrote:
| > The best way I could try to reel him in was to simply
| suggest that if it were so easy, everyone would be doing
| it.
|
| Alas, most good entrepreneurial activities violate the
| efficient market hypothesis. Ditto for many investments.
| Some people are more alert to opportunities, have better
| deal flow, etc.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28029044
| creato wrote:
| Some of these scam victims are duped into trying to help
| someone they trust with a financial problem. In that
| case, the victims are being the opposite of greedy. The
| only character "flaw" I can think of in these cases is
| being naive/too trusting.
|
| I don't know how common the "savior" victims are vs. the
| "get rich quick" victims, but they definitely exist, at
| least according to various mini-documentaries on pig
| butchering I've watched. Maybe these victims were
| modifying the story to seem more sympathetic, I can't
| say.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Sure, but we all have character flaws. I'm certain if he
| were 10 years younger it wouldn't have happened to him.
| There's a reason it's almost always older people that fall
| for scams like these. We need better ways to protect people
| of a certain age - my mom looked into it and apart from
| going to a judge to have them rule to give us complete
| control over his finances there was nothing we could do.
| Even an FBI office people could call where they'd call/send
| someone out convince them to stop would go a really long
| way.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > character flaw
|
| It's usually greed. The aphorism isn't entirely true, but
| you can't cheat an honest man.
| Windchaser wrote:
| Awww, I don't know that that's true. If by "greed" you
| mean "it'd be nice to not have to clip coupons before
| doing my grocery shopping", sure, there are a lot of old
| people who would like things to be less tight.
|
| But it's not greed in the sense of Ebenezer Scrooge or
| finance bros. All it takes is some pie-in-the-sky naivete
| and trusting the wrong person.
| larrled wrote:
| No, older people aren't greedy. They are insecure about
| their age and doing things they perceive younger more
| successful people as doing reduces their existential
| angst and fear of mortality. Wanting to live and be loved
| is also not greed. The actual flaw is a society that
| permits crypto currency, and encourages trade and
| globalization at any cost. Gotta give all the elderly 5g
| cell phones and Facebook accounts, and be saddened when
| millions of Indian scammers reach out and touch someone.
| FabHK wrote:
| Disagree. These unprincipled scammers often exploit
| character flaws, sure, but also exploit positive traits -
| trust, a desire to help, the desire for love and
| belonging, or (in the case of cyber trafficking victims
| that are then forced to scam others) the desire to find a
| good job to support one's family.
| silisili wrote:
| Sorry to hear that. Makes me angry just reading it, I can't
| imagine how it makes you feel.
|
| I've mentioned before here wondering if there is a name for
| this phenomenon, it's similar to sunk cost fallacy, but more
| emotionally charged. Like, the thought of having been scammed
| makes you put on blinders and keep going hoping you weren't.
| It doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but it happens all the
| time, to people of all ages.
|
| This guy was only 53 and fell for the same traps, rather
| famously -
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/21/cryptocurrency-shan-hanes-
| pi...
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Oh, I definitely think that's part of it. Nobody wants to
| be betrayed, or made the fool.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Perhaps simple denial? If you continue having contact with
| them after giving them some money but they keep elaborating
| on how the money helped or satisfied their (scammer's)
| wishes, the victim may not think they have been scammed.
| Like "look she's still talking to me every day. We're
| close. A scammer would have vanished by now"
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| One should not hesitate to attempt to obtain a
| conservatorship if they can when this happens. It's the only
| thing that will stop someone from losing it all.
| Unfortunately, if a court deems them mentally fit, there's
| nothing to stop them.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| The bar to get that done seemed too high before he lost all
| of his money. Now that's done there isn't much of a point,
| apart from protecting his house. My mom is on the deed as
| well so there shouldn't be too much risk there, though I've
| tried to convince her to put it into a trust for multiple
| reasons.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Recommend setting up deed monitoring/property alerts if
| your local property records/recorder supports it, should
| notify you if any documents are recorded or transfers
| attempted without your knowledge against the property.
|
| Sorry for your loss.
| petesergeant wrote:
| My mother is exceptionally vigilant, which is great, but her
| partner ... I've never met anyone who gets targeted so much,
| or who needs it spelling out to him so much that he doesn't
| really have $2m in a crypto wallet somewhere he forgot about
| that a helpful person can send him. I think it's a fixed
| personality trait. If they split up, and doesn't have her
| watching him like a hawk, I worry he's toast.
| throwaway912312 wrote:
| I hear you. Same with my dad. Found out after he gave his old
| phone to my mom without logging out. Tried to show him he was
| falling for MS-clipart certificates and
| bossofbigbank@gmail.com but to no avail.
|
| After tracing 250k wired in just 6 months, we detangled my
| mom out of potential liability and reported him. He was put
| into financial stewardship (= personal finances done by an
| attorney). He appealed and the court ruled he seems normal,
| so he could also be in charge of his finances with only a
| monthly checkup. We still had his email access. He contacted
| his scammers the day after promising more money soon...
|
| Fast forward to today, he's broke, likley evicted from his
| auctioned off appartment in a couple of months at age 79 and
| dividing his pension between wiring it to scammers and eating
| just enough to stay alive. Lost all his friends (many
| borrowed him money), doesn't see his wife or grandkids grow
| up. The opposite of a happy end.
|
| If you find yourself in such a situation: - I received a lot
| of valueable advice from the local anonymous addiction
| hotline (how to react, where to seek help). Best call you can
| make. - In Switzerland, the KESB (govt authority for
| protection of elderly and children) can help you. They had a
| neurological assessment made and a court put him financial
| stewardship. It would have saved him from himself if not for
| his appeal. - Think ahead and have one person act as "bad
| guy" - everything I tried was in consensus with the whole
| family, but I played bad guy. Of course my dad broke with me,
| but he keeps sporadic contact with everyone else - his only
| social contacts - priceless.
|
| I see legislation improve hereabouts - my bank (in France)
| now requires to watch a screen for 3 seconds and confirm
| you're sure to wire X to Y and you are sure Y is Y before
| oking a transaction. Far from enough. We infortunately won't
| convince our dads that they are getting scammed, but better
| consumer (and boomer) protection is something we can lobby
| and vote for.
| FabHK wrote:
| Sorry to hear. Heartbreaking. I truly don't understand why
| we as a society give these scammers (a $500bn a year
| industry, according to The Economist) better tools for
| their trade, crypto, with virtually no other use cases.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I think in a world where slitting someone's throat for few
| thousand dollars (in some countries for few hundreds to just
| few) isn't unheard of, I don't know in what way people would
| find such scams inconceivable. I think the reason squarely is
| people being naive, or stupid, greedy, desperate (for love,
| better X times returns etc) etc - or a combination of these.
| And yes, they are victims, yes.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Keep in mind some of us still grow up in places where we
| can leave our cars/homes unlocked. Obviously extending that
| feeling to the entire world is naive, but it's also pretty
| understandable for our now elderly population..
| sagarpatil wrote:
| The worst part is, these scams flourish during bull markets,
| like now, when alts start shooting up 10-20% everyday. Stay
| safe.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Pig butchering gets additionally horrible when you consider the
| other side. People who actually handle the chatting are kept in
| inhuman conditions and physically cannot leave. Laundered
| profits go to criminal bosses at the top (corrupting various
| local governments, given they constitute a significant
| percentage of their economies at this point).
|
| See _Number Go Up_ by Zeke Faux for a glimpse into that (and
| how cryptocurrency, in particular stablecoins, in particular
| Tether, facilitate it). True, much of book is largely about the
| weird cryptobro culture and FTX collapse, but research into pig
| butchering and personal travel to scam compounds was the most
| visceral part for me.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| > People who actually handle the chatting are kept in inhuman
| conditions and physically cannot leave.
|
| I think there might be a word for this.
| wmf wrote:
| But I was informed that ended in 1865.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| The world's a big place.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| On a more serious note, you might want to be aware that
| slavery is still legal in the US as a punishment for
| crime. For further reading, you might be interested in
| the prison industrial complex.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| And that's why the term is "modern slavery".
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think the degree to which this is fully true is overstated
| from when i've looked into it. a lot of it is not the best
| working environments, but people are still scamming people
| for pay and are largely not forced to do so.
| strogonoff wrote:
| The difference here is that Zeke wrote a book chok full of
| sources (a significant chunk of the book in the end is
| basically pages of references), while you so far supplied
| none.
|
| While I don't know anyone personally, a local semi-famous
| person was abducted in Thailand and sent to one of these
| compounds (except in Myanmar). He was rescued by a combined
| rescue mission of his country's and Thai governments. This
| made big news a few months back, and resulted in a drastic
| reduction in Asian tourist travel to Thailand (which itself
| doesn't run these compounds, but is a big destination for
| tourism), so much so that Thai government was (maybe still
| is) in panic mode because of it.
|
| Remember how Thailand tried to enact measures even
| _technically abroad_ , like cutting off electricity and
| Internet connections (and how these compounds are
| controversially using Starlink now)? This was all posted on
| this site in the year leading up to today, and the reason
| for it is that pig butchering related abductions driven by
| crime nearby states made it unsafe for most Asian-looking
| people to travel to Thailand. Does it create an impression
| of voluntary labour in your mind?
|
| Perhaps in near term LLMs will allow them to reduce
| headcount so much that the bosses become willing to pay and
| less inclined to keep them captive, but so far claims that
| it's all mostly voluntary labour just don't compute with
| available evidence.
| strogonoff wrote:
| (For the sake of completeness, I should add that
| Thailand's crackdown could potentially be motivated not
| only by tourism revenue but also by the pressure from the
| government of PRC, which in turn could be motivated not
| only by its poorer citizens being among those kidnapped
| but also by its richer citizens being a target of pig
| butchering scams. Still, I don't know how common the
| latter is--from my observations, in Western cultures
| people are more inclined to trust strangers compared to
| Chinese cultures--and in any case this does not make the
| well-documented kidnappings and forced labour less real.)
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Various stories from people who have been on the other side
| of this tend to concur. I unfortunately cannot find the
| story, but a Pakistani call center scam artist who was
| hired by one of these crime syndicates went on record
| recently talking about the experience (I think it was in a
| podcast) and he said that he was recruited into a well
| paid, well organized machine and the workers themselves
| were treated well. He painted a picture of a hyper-
| competitive Glengarry Glen Ross-esque environment with
| leaderboards and the like, where people fought over and
| protected their "leads" (marks). The only struggle for him
| was not the working conditions, but rather with the moral
| aspects when he realized what he was doing.
|
| Usually, as you would expect, the employees don't really
| realize until after they are recruited in what they are
| doing, and oftentimes the money and job is cushy enough
| they are willing to set aside their morals to do it.
| xsmasher wrote:
| Since hearing this I have stopped insulting or berating them.
| I just reply "Kill your masters, you outnumber them" and then
| block.
| merek wrote:
| I'm a big fan of YouTube anti-scammer vigilantes. They bait
| scammers, expose their tactics, humorously waste their time, or
| even manage a counter attack.
|
| I believe these guys can be a big part of the solution. YouTube
| creates a financial incentive for individuals to go down this
| route, and apart from being entertaining to viewers, it
| broadens awareness of scammer tactics, which hopefully means
| more people detect scams early.
|
| I wish these guys success and hope to see more anti-scam
| YouTubers appear.
|
| Examples:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@NanoBaiter
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@KitbogaShow
| teddyh wrote:
| > _YouTube creates a financial incentive for individuals to
| go down this route_
|
| No, YouTube creates a financial incentive for individuals to
| _produce videos_ where they _seem_ to do this. The problem of
| this is obvious, and if, as you hope, more of this content
| appears, there will not be enough people to check them all
| and keep them honest.
| billyhoffman wrote:
| Oh snap! The same group behind last year's Polyfill.io supply
| chain attack are back!
|
| Krebs doesn't mention it but The Register makes the connection;
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/30/fbi_treasury_funnull_...
|
| I mean there name is literally "Funnull". They know exactly what
| they're doing.
| mmooss wrote:
| Don't fall into the trap: Government penalizing private parties
| without due process can be appealing when it's a private party
| you don't like, but even those people deserve due process -
| that's the point, everyone does. Also it's arbitrary, unchecked
| power that is used for corrupt purposes, and by supporting it in
| a situation where you like to see it, you are legitimizing that
| power in every case.
|
| Edit: It's tough to give due processs to foreign individuals,
| especially those who don't want to be found. But there are many
| ways, including via their own government, or via the fact that
| American company resources are used for these crimes - everyone
| in the US connects through an ISP operating on US soil.
| tw04 wrote:
| Can you cite where in the US code of law a foreign criminal is
| afforded due process in a sanction action?
| robcohen wrote:
| KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development v.
| Geithner and Al Haramain Islamic Foundation v. U.S.
| Department of the Treasury
| duskwuff wrote:
| Those are names of cases, not laws.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Precedent fills out the finer points in how laws apply,
| or don't.
| ksenzee wrote:
| Perhaps you're not familiar with the common law system
| and its reliance on case law?
| mbrubeck wrote:
| In both of those cases the designated entity was
| incorporated in the US (KindHearts in Ohio, AHIF-Oregon in
| Oregon).
| mmooss wrote:
| I didn't say it was illegal.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| That's more of a problem with the US code of law than with
| the point GP is making.
| tw04 wrote:
| I have 0 issues with the US sanctioning criminal
| organizations that are defrauding Americans. It's not a
| slippery slope, it's common sense which is why literally
| nobody is trying to defend the perpetrator in a court of
| law.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm sure the folks running that scam center or the cloud
| service provider can afford to hire attorneys and argue their
| case.
| resist_futility wrote:
| Evidence of active harm, if they were in the US they would have
| been raided. They get sanctioned and can sue instead.
| MrMorden wrote:
| The process is that they need to be designated by specified
| cabinet members based on published criteria. If Funnull believe
| that they weren't lawfully designated (e.g., because they're
| actually in Peoria or whatever), they can hire a lawyer and
| sue.
| umanwizard wrote:
| "These French resistance fighters can't shoot the German
| soldier -- what about due process?"
| lesuorac wrote:
| Seems like some process was followed here to me.
|
| FBI investigated a bunch of scams and found somebody assisted
| scammers. It's not like they pulled a name out of a hat and
| sanctioned them.
| jaoane wrote:
| Where's the judge in all of this?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Due process just means following pre-written law. ex.
| There's no judge involved when a cop shows up to a fight
| and arrests both people.
|
| It's the same law [1] that everybody is talking about
| w.r.t. Trump's Tariffs except that global trade isn't
| emergent while Funnull is a new actor.
|
| [1]: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-201600880/pdf
| /DCPD-...
| jaoane wrote:
| They arrest people to put them in front of a judge. This
| is nothing like that.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I'm sure the treasury department would love for the guy
| to appear in front of a judge.
|
| However, he's also welcome to email an appeal [1].
|
| Note: This is a civil penalty. Much like a traffic ticket
| and does not require a judge.
|
| ---
|
| You won't necessarily show up in front of a judge if you
| get arrested. You may get released with no charges. You
| might also not get court time until a year+ from now
| inwhich case you'll probably plead guilty to time served
| regardless of the crime since it lets you out now.
|
| Due process does not mean "judge approved". It just means
| consistent with written law.
|
| [1]: https://ofac.treasury.gov/specially-designated-
| nationals-lis...
| lordfrito wrote:
| While we're at it, we should also tax all foreigners living
| abroad. All this due process stuff is expensive.
| HamsterDan wrote:
| They are a foreign company. They have no due process rights. We
| could hit their data center with a cruise missile tomorrow and
| it would be perfectly legal.
| est wrote:
| From a glimps of Funnull website it looks like an anti-DDoS
| provider.
|
| Many of the less-known providers are doing shady business, they
| provide shield for cracked MMORPG servers in the 00s, the most
| infamous one was "Legend of Mir" and was quite popular in East
| Asia underground market especially those Internet pubs.
| raincole wrote:
| It's a known malicious actor.
|
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/polyfillio-ja...
| naet wrote:
| Cryptocurrency enables a big part of this. Not saying that there
| weren't any wire scams before crypto, but crypto has made it
| _much_ easier for average people to make anonymous international
| money transfers that can 't be reversed.
|
| Not to start a big argument, but to my eyes the main usecases of
| cryptocurrency are to bet on them as a speculative asset or to
| use them for various forms of crime. Someone will probably tell
| me about some theoretical situation where it is a positive force,
| but I still think those are by far the two most common daily
| uses.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i bet heavily using crypto against AI progress on coding to
| hedge my career
| gavagai691 wrote:
| Is your job developing AI coding tools?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| no, but i do work in ML - i think there are two channels
| through which this derisking makes sense, but people on
| here get aggressive if you mention the other one.
| dantillberg wrote:
| How is crypto relevant to betting?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| because it gives you access to binary options markets with
| deep liquidity that you can't get access to in any other
| way. i guess it counts under various forms of crime because
| we criminalize offering useful financial instruments
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Whether you see international money transfers outside of the
| government control as a positive or negative force largely
| depends on how much you trust your government. How much it
| should limit things for your own safety?
|
| I suspect that for majority of the earth population the trust
| level is rather low, even though in some countries it could be
| different.
| os2warpman wrote:
| If I had to throw out a number describing how many more times
| I trust the FDIC than I trust some cryptobro, the first thing
| that comes to mind is "ten billion".
|
| And my trust in the current administration is rather low.
| homebrewer wrote:
| Well, they're pretty comparable in many parts of the world
| (and I despise cryptocurrency, btw). Despite what you might
| think, the current US administration is far from the worst
| compared to what some of us live under. Americans simply
| lack a proper "zero point" to be able to properly gauge
| this.
|
| I place exactly zero trust in what our administration says,
| because they've lied about the country's economic situation
| and what they're planning to do about it four times during
| my lifetime, and several more times during our parents'
| lifetimes. Our savings were cut in half (or more) several
| times because of this, and so much of it was lost, the
| total amount of time wasted working for effectively free is
| in the decades now.
|
| There's really no reliable way of saving money long-term
| here, unless you scrounge enough to buy real estate or
| something else that is unlikely to be devalued to 30% of
| its original value with a stroke of a pen.
|
| I can imagine why some people would resort to
| cryptocurrency and extracting money out of the country
| asap.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| These are all good points. Like others here, I will
| preemptively state my dislike of the political classes.
|
| Perhaps if financial regulations were not so onerous,
| traditional payment processors like PayPal would be able
| to handle more types of transactions with a lower
| overhead. As it is, the large number of prohibited
| categories creates a demand for cryptocurrency. As you
| noted, inflationary monetary policy is another source of
| discontent. Perhaps if central bankers had exercised a
| bit more restraint, there would be less demand for
| cryptocurrency. The same can be said for capital controls
| and more...
|
| So there is a bit of irony when posters appeal for even
| heavier regulations and prohibitions. These are the
| forces which have created demand for wholly unregulated
| markets. It shouldn't be hard to see how these
| overreaches have created a counterbalancing force.
| Tragically, these overreaches generate a safe-haven for
| additional bad actors.
| SXX wrote:
| Well, that only works until bank accounts of somebody
| disloyal become frozen.
|
| And if you compare chances of that with chances of being
| deported to El Salvador prison... Well let's say frozen
| bank accounts doesn't sound that impossible.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Sure. But not everyone in the world shares the same FDIC
| with you.
|
| To complicate things further, international transfers
| require cooperation not only between the sending and
| receiving states but also from states that control the
| transfer system. Any hiccup along the way and you may lose
| your money, sometimes forever (true story).
|
| > And my trust in the current administration is rather low.
|
| Again, I'm not sure you realize what the "low trust into
| the government" means for the rest of the world.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| For the majority of the earth population, this is not a
| concern. Yes, things may get fuzzy around an inflection
| point, but for most people, their concerns fall way short of
| that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| lots of people live in countries with severe governance
| problems and a bad monetary regime.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _main usecases of cryptocurrency are to bet on them as a
| speculative asset or to use them for various forms of crime.
| Someone will probably tell me about some theoretical situation
| where it is a positive force_
|
| When you don't agree with the laws that are being broken in a
| particular case.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| So if 57% in a country agree with a law, the remaining 43%
| should be allowed to circumvent that law through these means?
|
| Of course, the opposite argument is "what about north korea",
| but it's a package deal is my point.
| johngladtj wrote:
| Generally speaking you shouldn't be able to impose your
| will on others
| naming_the_user wrote:
| Pretty much, yeah.
|
| If almost half of the population disagree with something
| then it's probably a stupid restriction to begin with.
| anovikov wrote:
| Reason of most scams is the absurd level of trust existing in
| Western countries.
|
| When i first saw Upwork where hours were paid by the tracker in
| a guaranteed manner and people SIGNED for it, i knew West was
| doomed. I still find it hard to believe people can be that easy
| to dupe.
|
| Level of trust in the Western societies needs to be radically
| reduced through government propaganda, church and other
| channels. The world has become global. Westerners are now a
| small minority in an ocean of people where the manner of
| relationship that will be seen as sociopathic in the West, is
| the everyday norm and always have been. If they won't adapt,
| they will cease to exist. The cozy world where one could trust
| another because they all shared fear of God and had a
| reputation to lose, is gone.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| A high trust society is actually a good trait, not a bad one.
| It's rather easy, lazy even, for a culture to devolve into a
| low trust minima. That's basically the default state that
| people have endeavoured to evolve out of.
|
| I think it's also the kind of thing that can easily overwhelm
| anxious minds. The kind where "what if it's a scam?" leads
| them to never taking a risk, donating to a cause, doing
| someone a favour.
|
| Not that there isn't a fight to be fought here. But waving
| the surrender flag on fostering a trusting society is a very
| weak move.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| "A high trust society is actually a good trait, not a bad
| one."
|
| 100% agree, and seeing it erode is painful (e.g.,
| toothpaste now locked behind plexiglass).
|
| But to steelman the parents point, while it is be good to
| be high trust society, that society may be poorly adapted
| when rapidly integrated into a low trust globalized world.
| homebrewer wrote:
| There's little societal trust in e.g. Russia, and yet they're
| getting massively scammed by Ukrainian call centers every
| day. People selling their only housing, sending all their
| savings for "safekeeping" overseas, are daily news. Not just
| old ladies (but them too), but also middle-aged intellectuals
| who were supposed to know better.
|
| It's all using the same schemes that have been explained in
| the news over and over again, there's little innovation on
| that front. You have to be living under a rock the for past
| few years to fall for them, and yet people do. I think
| there's simply a certain amount of marks in every society,
| regardless of how its members trust each other, and the only
| reliable way of protecting them is managing everybody's lives
| DPRK-style.
| anovikov wrote:
| I think the only reason of why it works is that Ukrainians
| are an even lower trust culture, and they are better and
| more cynical at duping people. Plus, in Ukraine many people
| see it as their patriotic duty, and perhaps rightfully so,
| so these kind of jobs are likely to attract quite
| sophisticated people who will be able to pull off very
| believable scams, not some social rejects or worse, forced
| labor sitting in Myanmar jungle, as it is in Asia vs USA
| scams.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| The cost world you describe didn't emerge because of fear of
| god (which has been prevalent for milleniums, mostly
| everywhere) but the abondance of cheap energy and goods,
| basically since oil starts getting processed but other minor
| factors helped too. Democracy and peace emerges when peoples
| aren't scared to miss food anymore.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| In the US food is plentiful. Poor people die of obesity
| related illness. But trust is plummeting because of a
| decline in social cohesion. Building a high trust society
| is hard, and there is no monocausal solution. You can't
| plug in god, or food, into a low trust society to flip it
| to high trust.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Food is plentiful here, but unevenly distributed.
| Childhood hunger is still a serious problem.
|
| https://www.axios.com/2025/05/14/childhood-hunger-food-
| insec...
|
| During the initial pandemic, great strides were made in
| the United States to mitigate childhood poverty, but
| these measures were quickly overturned. Now the
| administration wants to defund SNAP and other food
| security programs. Alas.
| N_Lens wrote:
| Trust is necessary for social development & advancement, and
| low trust countries & societies are also low on the
| development index. The development of advanced economies is
| predicate on the "absurd level of trust" in western
| countries.
| mola wrote:
| Classic Russian thinking that the only motivating force is
| fear. No wonder you get stuck with homicidal tyrants ruling
| over you time after time.
| derbOac wrote:
| I think the underlying concept you're looking for is
| corruption versus rule of law. Blaming the victim versus
| expecting consequences for the perpetrator etc.
| kalaksi wrote:
| The banks here have said that if you get scammed and money has
| been transferred (no cryptocurrency involved), there's nothing
| they can do. It was a bit surprising to hear since you only
| hear cryptocurrency transactions being irreversible.
| silisili wrote:
| Banks aren't perfect, but they also aren't anonymous.
|
| If you feel wronged, you can take appropriate legal recourse.
|
| Crypto offers no such thing.
| whatsupdog wrote:
| Good luck taking legal action against an off shore entity,
| especially when the legal fees is more than the money
| transferred, and the money most likely moved to three
| different accounts in as many countries from that first off
| shore account.
| theptip wrote:
| You're right that you don't have guaranteed recourse for
| foreign fraud. But at least the banks play whack-a-mole
| and make it somewhat expensive for criminals to set up
| accounts; crypto undoubtedly makes money laundering
| substantially easier and cheaper.
| SXX wrote:
| Banks are good if you live in a functional democratic
| country with sane politics.
|
| If you don't then you'll easily get the bad side of it
| since abusing the power is not that hard.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| How is paypal / venmo / cashapp different?
| veidr wrote:
| you can sue them
|
| modulo all the ToS / arbitration clauses, that is still
| the fundamental difference
|
| and although not a recourse available to most people,
| still not nothing
| gosub100 wrote:
| KYC
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The difference is, crypto makes irreversibility a fundamental
| part of the system, making it impossible for any party to
| unilaterally reverse a payment without having to first take
| over the entire chain. With regular fiat money and banks,
| such reversals are perfectly possible on a technical level.
| The banks are usually unwilling to do them, and an individual
| may not be able to force them to in practice, but it's still
| _possible_ in a way it 's not possible with crypto.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > The banks are usually unwilling to do them, and an
| individual may not be able to force them to in practice,
| but it's still possible in a way it's not possible with
| crypto.
|
| Generally they're unwilling to do that because it involves
| losing money for them.
|
| Transfers work in a multi-step process to ensure money
| isn't created.
|
| You tell Bank A to transfer money to person X at Bank B.
|
| Bank A tells an intermediary bank C to move funds from Bank
| A's account to Bank B's account. (This step is unnecessary
| if either A or B are large enough to be an intermediary)
|
| Bank C lets Bank B know that it's gained funds
|
| Bank B moves funds internally from Bank C to customer X.
|
| If you want your money back and Bank C says it's already
| been withdrawn then somebody in A,B,C is going to take a
| loss. Personally I think we should have an easy way to pay
| in a 7d settlement or something. Who really cares if
| somebody sends a 7d settlement when buying a house as long
| as its done 7d before closing.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Right. Still, the whole thing is plugged into society at
| large, including court system, so ultimately the courts
| have the power to force anyone in the chain to give money
| back and eat the loss or argue to take it from elsewhere.
|
| To the unending dismay of crypto fans, the same _is_ true
| about cryptocurrency - but its design fundamentally gives
| the law less leverage and actual points an intervention
| could be made. That, plus the whole thing is very new.
| But that 's just a transient state; this kind of
| immutability is not compatible with society or real life,
| so the only cryptocurrency-based systems that'll survive
| long term will be the ones that give up on the whole
| cryptoanarchy thing.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| If Bank C is forced to take the loss, it'll be more
| careful in opening accounts for scammers to withdraw
| money. If Bank C is in a country that doesn't care to
| enforce such losses, then Bank B (or A if A is big
| enough) will think twice about deciding to do business
| with Bank B. Moving the cost of the scams onto the banks
| will strongly incentivize them to prevent the scams.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > Moving the cost of the scams onto the banks will
| strongly incentivize them to prevent the scams.
|
| And then less people have bank accounts.
|
| The scammer isn't necessarily the person with the final
| bank account. Its often somebody who was told they're
| managing payroll for some made-up company and they're
| going to get a 2k transfer and to keep 500 of it and
| withdrawal 1.5k of it as cash to do payroll.
|
| While you may think that now only people who aren't
| scammers won't get bank accounts what actually is
| happening is that anybody that can be fooled doesn't get
| one.
|
| https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-
| fra...
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Doesn't that already happen? I've read stories from
| people in the US who are fooled, and as such, are marked
| as high risk and have their accounts closed. The rate it
| happens might be greater, but the total increase in harm
| from fewer people having bank accounts due to risk of
| scams might be less than the harm reduced by fewer people
| getting scammed. If scams are reduced enough, the number
| of people having bank accounts might go up because less
| people are losing them after being scammed.
| jlarocco wrote:
| There's some kind of circular reasoning going on here.
|
| Banks _are_ more careful, and that 's why they don't deal
| with certain kinds of transactions. And that's where
| crypto comes in to "disrupt banks" and "democratize
| finance".
|
| Long term, crypto will be no different than regular
| currency and finance because people don't like getting
| ripped off and defrauded. We'll have a period of time
| with people pulling old scams but with crypto, and
| eventually it'll be regulated just like normal finance.
| FabHK wrote:
| The problem is that crypto is designed to evade
| regulation. You can put lipstick on a pig and regulate
| the centralized intermediaries (which, remember, crypto
| aimed to disintermediate): exchanges, custodians, ETF
| providers, ...
|
| The dilemma is that you can either escape those
| regulations by going to unhosted wallets (self-custody)
| and transacting on the blockchain, or you keep everything
| (by regulation) entirely within the regulated
| intermediaries, but then there's no need to waste 1% of
| world electricity on some slow "decentralized" database.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| But you know who customer X is and if he obtained the
| money fraudulently then the bank (or police, courts, etc)
| can go after him to recover it. It might not happen but
| it's possible.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Same statement could be said about you no?
|
| You're the one that was defrauded. The bank processed the
| transfer exactly as you told them to. So therefore, if
| person X isn't providing the service you expected then
| you should have to go to the courts to get it back?
|
| The general problem is that it takes a lot of leg work.
| Often Customer X was being defrauded through some payroll
| scam (they take out ~500 and forward the remaining 1500).
| So now you have to recover $500 from them and then trace
| the 1500 again. Possibly through multiple countries and
| their courts (who may see this as beneficial for their
| country; jury nullification goes both ways).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Correct, but there are possibilities and established
| processes (however unlikely or inconvenient) to get the
| money back.
| iwontberude wrote:
| Stellar XLM has reversibility but no one seemed interested
| in that
| johtso wrote:
| This seems like the correct way to go though.. if you want
| reversibility, then introduce escrow into the situation,
| the foundational building block should be irreversible.. as
| there's no way to make a means of transfer _more_
| irreversible if you're inherently giving control to a 3rd
| party with no choice.
| kalaksi wrote:
| I agree. Smart contracts or other functionality
| integrated into wallets could also improve usability e.g.
| regarding irreversibility and user mistakes. Base layer
| doesn't have to be the final way to use cryptocurrencies
| and it isn't.
| fuddy wrote:
| This just bring in new problems like people thinking they
| got paid but there being a refund trick.. This happens in
| the traditional system too, but at least when it exhibits
| total indifference to an account serving no purpose
| besides refund scams it is violating KYC principles
| instead of running as expected.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Why?
|
| Irreversible transactions are not desired by anyone in
| payment networks. Consumers don't want to get scammed out
| of money. Merchants want customers to feel like
| transactions are low risk so they are more willing to
| make them. That's a big reason why merchants put up with
| the outright hostile to them system of chargebacks. Sure,
| you will lose some money to chargebacks you might think
| were not valid, but you have made much more than that
| back from liberalized spending habits.
|
| Nobody benefits from irreversible transactions except
| fraudsters and other bad actors. And they benefit soooo
| much from transactions being irreversible. Why would you
| build and advocate for a system that explicitly empowers
| bad actors over anyone else?
|
| An escrow is not a solution. The escrow itself could be a
| bad actor.
| ty6853 wrote:
| I've intentionally used irreversible crypto payments to a
| merchant that is an an industry with high chargebacks. It
| is highly useful in transactions where the merchant is
| highly trusted but the buyers tend to be weasels. Such
| merchants tend to charge high premiums for reversible
| payment methods.
|
| In such cases it is win-win for both the merchant and
| customer, the customer doesn't have to foot the
| reversibility overhead and the merchant is able to offer
| goods at the same profit margins but lower price which
| should yield more sales.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| That just kicks the can of trust to the entity performing
| the escrow, and there have been many, _many_ cases of fly
| by night escrow companies (or companies _pretending_ to
| be escrow companies) who just take the money and run.
|
| So introducing another third party to trust makes it more
| complicated than the alternative of allowing transactions
| to be reversable.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Banking reversibility is also kicking the can to a
| trusted third party.
|
| Several years ago my credit card was stolen. I contacted
| my bank, who then accused my wife of cheating on me in
| another state (I know this didn't happen because there is
| no way she left 1000 miles away for several days multiple
| times between me seeing her, unless she has a hidden
| personal jet). By 'lying' about it being a fraudster
| instead of my wife who 'had cheated on me' the bank then
| accused me of bank fraud.
|
| The bank then obtained fraudulent invoices, which were
| used to 'prove' I owed the money. They just buried me in
| false paperwork to the point I could never win. When the
| bank was done with all that, they closed my regular
| checking account too, because they had now flagged me as
| a criminal.
|
| I will take anyday, an 'irreversible' crypto account over
| a banking system where they just close my other accounts
| because they think one was fraudulent because I was
| defrauded.
| hananova wrote:
| The thing is, crypto IS reversible, and has been reversed
| in the past. The people affected just need to be rich
| and/or powerful enough. And you and I are not in that
| club.
| smeej wrote:
| This was mostly true of v.1 cryptocurrencies, but it's not
| like it's inherent to the system. It's just as easy to
| design cryptocurrencies where there _are_ control
| mechanisms, governed however you 'd like them to be. USDC,
| for example, can be frozen in any wallet at any time, and
| has still become hugely popular.
|
| IF reversibility is a desired feature of digital
| currencies, the market will bear that out. People can and
| will choose those currencies.
|
| As with any "feature," there are tradeoffs, and it might
| well be that people en masse decide they would rather
| everyone control their own money than have central powers
| supervising, just as it might well be that people opt back
| into a system very much like the one that exists today, but
| with new efficiencies.
|
| Adding programmability to money in the digital age was
| necessary. I don't know why anybody is surprised it hasn't
| reached some sort of final, settled state this early in the
| digital age. It basically only came into practical
| existence after the launch of smartphones and ubiquitous
| internet access. Give it a minute.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| USDC is only popular because it can be easily used to
| evade taxes while retaining its value
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| How do you reverse yourself mailing $1000 USD cash to some
| scam outfit?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I meant electronic payments specifically; my error in
| using terms that implied cash also counts.
|
| Obviously, you can't just reverse a cash transaction.
| It's one of the reasons people try to avoid using it in
| many situations.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Reversing stolen crypto transactions in practice is done
| the same way you reverse stolen cash transactions.
|
| You find the criminal, and the cash and give back the cash
| to the wronged party. With cash, the criminal can hide the
| cash in some random location, and nobody can say if they
| spent it or they lost it. With crypto, everyone knows where
| the money is. You just have to figure out the passwords to
| the wallet in some way.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Right, my mistake for using too broad terms. I meant
| specifically electronic payments, which have this
| reversibility aspect that neither cash nor crypto have.
| latchkey wrote:
| The (dumbass) finance department in my last company was
| phished out of about $50k. They received an email "from
| another company", that we happened to do business with, that
| was asking to update the account information. The FD didn't
| do any verification cause it was over a weekend and it was
| 'urgent'. Basically ignored all the classic signals.
|
| The bank refused to return the funds. The concept that just
| because it is a bank and it must be irreversible, is totally
| wrong. Another very good example of this is the whole corrupt
| Zelle service.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| interested to hear more about zelle
| ty6853 wrote:
| IIRC zelle is designed to be reversible for the banks but
| not the customers, it is the worst of both worlds.
| latchkey wrote:
| Zelle is effectively DNS for your ACH bank account and
| the address is your email or phone number. It is
| notoriously used by scammers because they know that it
| isn't reversible.
|
| Just google "zelle fraud" and go down the rabbit hole...
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _use them for various forms of crime_
|
| It's not a coincidence that a guy who was found liable for
| financial fraud is reducing regulations around crypto currency
| and then launched a meme coin.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Not to start a big argument, but to my eyes the main usecases
| of cryptocurrency are to bet on them as a speculative asset or
| to use them for various forms of crime.
|
| What argument can even be had? This is factually true. Whatever
| other use cases were hoped for when it was invented, they have
| failed to materialize.
| eugene3306 wrote:
| I use crypto often. I am Russian, I left Russia when Putin
| started the war. For me, it is quite hard to open a bank
| account. So I use crypto. I work remotely for a Singaporian
| company. Now I'm in Vietnam, I can pay for my groceries with
| crypto using QR code. I can cash USDT crypto with a rate better
| than paper bills.
|
| I have two bank accounts in Kazakhstan. Both card credentials
| were stolen after I used a popular hotel booking website,
| which, by the words of reddit, shares my card details with
| hotels. Some money was stolen. Seems like 3D-security only
| affects my payments, and theifs have a freedom to choose a
| website without 3D. Now I have to keep that cards always
| locked. Unlocking them for a short moments, when I need to make
| a card payment. Like booking an hotel, or buying an airline
| ticket.
| exFAT wrote:
| >Now I'm in Vietnam, I can pay for my groceries with crypto
| using QR code.
|
| That sounds great. What do you use?
| eugene3306 wrote:
| Fizen
| latchkey wrote:
| It is wild how Vietnam really transformed from a complete
| cash society to a mostly digital one in just a few years.
| Covid did it.
|
| Nothing more annoying than having your largest bill be worth
| about $20 and having to carry stacks of them around for
| things like just paying rent.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Totally agree, I think crypto is cool from a technological
| standpoint, but I don't think I've seen one common genuine use
| of BTC, etc.
|
| And before someone comes in with very specific, anecdotal
| examples - notice I said "common", ie not buying your indie
| music from a retro-Serb band that plays using the concept of
| instruments as instruments and from abandoned sewers; but only
| on Mondays.
|
| I definitely feel like the majority of crypto traffic is
| primarily due to bubbles/moneymaking/bets/pumps+dump and then
| the secondary/next closest use case is for criminal activity.
| And then after that perhaps the myriad of much smaller use
| cases like people paying for Proton using crypto.
| latchkey wrote:
| > _I 've seen one common genuine use of BTC_
|
| One of my favorited comments/threads:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410
| skybrian wrote:
| The most surprising part of that thread is the claim that
| they're using Bitcoin rather than a stablecoin. But perhaps
| things have changed in four years?
| latchkey wrote:
| To be fair, the article for the thread is about how
| Tether was forced to end in NY.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Even that technically falls under the crime umbrella
| (though I don't believe it is immoral or unethical). It's
| basically the getting around government imposed capital
| controls.
| compootr wrote:
| Just this week, I received a bug bounty from a company in
| bitcoin. No BS with banks or anything!*
|
| *: until I convert it to fiat
| isk517 wrote:
| The biggest impact cryptocurrency has had on my life is the
| ability to pay criminals after they've taken your data hostage.
| It's awesome that we've invented a way to make creating and
| distributing malware profitable.
| pas wrote:
| it definitely helps to motivate some people to consider
| security as a functional requirement
| gradschool wrote:
| > Someone will probably tell me about some theoretical
| situation where it is a positive force
|
| Challenge accepted. My positive use case for cryptocurrency
| pertains to someone like me being over sixty and worried about
| being swept up into the guardianship system. With most of my
| assets in crypto and assuming decent opsec, they would be
| inaccessible to the guardian. If a judge ordered me to grant
| access, could I be cited for contempt by refusing to comply
| given that I had already been legally ruled incompetent? If I
| were cited regardless, would the threat of incarceration carry
| any weight given that I would be already incarcerated in an old
| age home? Unless there's some principle the guardian is trying
| to uphold, the rational course would be to choose a different
| victim.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| That's what happened to my grandfather, and the same happened
| to a friend's father two years ago.
|
| There are greater protections against elder abuse today, but
| often by the time their broker or finance manager finds out,
| the damage has been done.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| Elder abuse is certainly a real problem, but the
| guardianship/conservatorship system also does address a real
| problem: many seniors actually do become mentally unable to
| manage themselves.
|
| You're worried about falsely being forced into a
| guardianship, but what happens if you actually do develop
| Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia and your family
| legitimately needs access to your assets to care for you?
| It's easy to say you'd just give them access before it gets
| really bad, but an insidious part of the problem is that
| someone suffering from such a decline either doesn't, or
| refuses to, recognize it happening.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Before she died, my grandmother couldn't remember where
| she'd hidden her most valuable jewellery.
|
| She was an _excellent_ card player 10 years before that,
| probably because she could recall most /all of the playing
| cards in the discard pile, so I'm sure she could have
| remembered a Bitcoin wallet passphrase -- until the last
| few years.
| lxgr wrote:
| I've unfortunately seen that as well.
|
| Paranoia is a common side effect of dementia, and I've
| seen lots of anguish and money (legal/bank fees) spent on
| recovering non-life-changing savings that were just too
| well hidden. At least there was a fallback option to get
| them back - crypto would have been permanently lost.
|
| Finding a middle ground between security and availability
| is hard even as a healthy adult and only gets worse with
| age.
| lxgr wrote:
| > With most of my assets in crypto and assuming decent opsec,
| they would be inaccessible to the guardian.
|
| The flip side of this is that there's also a decent chance of
| your assets becoming completely inaccessible to anyone,
| including you or any of your successors (if applicable),
| unless you've made careful preparations involving time locked
| contracts or similar.
|
| And yes, you're probably safer against the enforcement of
| court rulings you might disagree with, but you are extremely
| vulnerable to blackmail or cyberattacks compared to
| traditional bank accounts.
| 8note wrote:
| whats the benefit to you though?
|
| youre going to be incarcerated in an even worse kept old
| folks home, and anything you actually try to spend on will be
| both spied upon - you getting a nurse to type in the secrets
| for you, or confiscated an sold before yoy could enjoy the
| results.
|
| i think you'd be better off trying to tackle the problem
| directly, and get legal changes to how guardianship works,
| since itll still screw over your crypto assets
| gopher_space wrote:
| > worried about being swept up into the guardianship system.
|
| Functionally speaking you'd have to be incapable of calling a
| lawyer on your own, which means you'd already be under
| someone's care. Even if you're being scammed dry, the
| absolute last thing you want in that situation is a lack of
| funding.
|
| Find someone who understands end of life financial planning
| and set up whatever trust-like scheme they recommend.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Crypto is hard for most scam victims to buy. Ban gift cards.
| Gift cards have always been a lame thoughtless gift anyway.
| tayo42 wrote:
| This is what I'm wondering. How do you get the typical person
| to fall for a scam to open a crypto account, buy it, go
| through kyc, etc
| xsmasher wrote:
| I think they are doing bank transfers directly to the
| scammers, who give them a FAKE website that shows a crypto
| balance + great investment returns. I'm not sure crypto is
| involved at all; it's just the old Spanish prisoner /
| Nigerian prince scam with a new coat of paint.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >How do you get the typical person to fall for a scam to
| open a crypto account, buy it, go through kyc, etc
|
| With spam like the below (note that the original contains
| mostly UTF8 characters to avoid spam filters). I get these
| every so often on the NOC and postmaster addresses of
| domains I manage.
|
| It's not even phishing. Just spam blasts to find anyone
| uninformed enough to believe it, and insecure enough to be
| afraid of the (empty) "threat": Take a
| second to dztor, iohale [?]eerly, aod soosentrate on this
| medzsa[?]e. It'dz srusial to giye it your complete
| focus. We're about to [?]iscusdz a
| dzignificant matter betweeo udz, ao[?] I'm absolutely
| oot kid[?]iog. Uou might not recogoie me, but
| I'm familiar with you and at thidz moment, you're
| likely wonderiog ho[?], right? Uour browdziog
| habitdz haye beeo ridzky - dzcrolling through vi[?]eos,
| clickiog links, an[?] vidzitiog some undzafe
| webdzitedz. I derloued malware oo ao adult
| site, aod uou dztumbled across it. While uou
| were streaming, your dzudztem wadz exrosed through rdp,
| allowing me full acsedzdz to your deyice.
| No I can monitor everything oo your dzcreen, remotely
| astivate your camera and misrorhooe, aod you
| woul[?]o't eyen notice. I aldzo hane somplete
| accesdz to your emails, contacts and other accountdz.
| I'ne beeo obseryin[?] your activities for quite some time
| now. It's dzimrly unfortunate for you that I came
| acrosdz what uouane beeo up to. I speot more
| time than nesesdzary di[?][?]in[?] into uour perdzooal
| data. I've sollected a significaot amount of
| dzeositine information from your device and
| reyiewed it thoroughlu. I eyen have resordiogs of you
| eo[?]agiog in dzome rather [?]uedztionable behavior
| at home. I've somriled vi[?]eodz an[?] soarshots
| (inclu[?]io[?] imagedz of your livio[?] spase)
| where one si[?]e [?]isrlays the sooteot you were
| viewing, an[?] the other si[?]e shos you... [?]ell, let'dz
| just sau uou koo[?] what I meao. With a
| single click, I could dzhare thidz with eyery one of your
| cootactdz. I uoderstan[?] uour uncertaioty, but
| don't ekhpect anu leoieocy from me. That dzaid,
| I'm rrerared to let thidz [?]o aod allow you to carry on
| adz if nothing ener ocsurred. Nere'dz
| the deal - I'm offering you two choises: -
| Igoore this medzsage an[?] fiod out [?]hat hapreos next. If
| you take thidz rath, I'll dzhare the yi[?]eo with
| all uour cootasts. It's [?]uite a reyealing
| clip, aod I can ooly imagine the humiliation uou'[?]
| face when your solleaguedz, friends, and family yiew it.
| But, adz they dzay, actiondz have sondzequencedz. Don't
| rositioo yourdzelf adz the nictim here.
| - Ray me to keer thidz matter private. Let's refer to it
| adz a privacy fee. Here'dz the [?]eal if you
| [?]o this route: uour sesret remaios safe, oo one else
| ill ener know. Ooce I reseive the paymeot,
| I'll delete everythiog. The paumeot idz to be
| made ekhcludzively io srypto. I'm aiming for
| a resolutioo that works for both of udz, but mu termdz are
| fioal an[?] noo ne[?]otiable. 1100 USD to my
| bitcoio a[?][?]redzs belo (remove whitespaces if any):
| bc1qt30ya4ssczyhzpe03t6jt8524hgfswe7pdxq9u
| Once the payment idz ma[?]e, you can rest easy knoio[?] I
| keer mu word. Uou hane 50 hours to somplete the
| transastion, and bts idz the onlu form of paymeot
| I'll accept. The sydztem I've set ur [?]ill
| automaticallu [?]etect the payment an[?] immediately
| delete eyeruthing I hane on you. Don't waste
| time redzpondin[?] or attemrtiog to oe[?]otiate - it woo't
| work. If I notise you've srokeo to anyooe about
| thidz or dzou[?]ht a[?]nice, the vi[?]eo will be
| sent to uour sontastdz without hesitation. Aod
| [?]oo't thiok about turniog off your rhone or attemrtio[?]
| a factory redzet - it won't make a differeoce.
| I [?]on't make errors, aod I'm dzimply [?]aitin[?] for the
| payment.
|
| As you can see, the claims and threats are cartoonish. But
| folks who aren't tech savvy could be fooled by this.
|
| I'd expect that each spam recipient is given a unique BTC
| address, so that they can be identified for further
| "blackmail"[0] should they actually comply.
|
| And to clarify, the above message was received by a
| "postmaster@domain" account on 23 May 2025. And since I've
| been seeing them for at least a few years I can only assume
| they are at least occasionally successful.
|
| There are other scams that target folks with bitcoin
| demands too. Likely with similar claims.
|
| [0] https://malwaretips.com/blogs/ive-recorded-many-videos-
| of-yo...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| In the past they might have asked you to mail them USD. Same
| risk there. Not like the post office is funded sufficiently to
| open all mail. And once that money is out of your bank account
| and out of your hands it is also gone.
| deadbabe wrote:
| The idea that someone could just beat you with a lead pipe
| until you open up your bitcoin wallet and surrender all the
| bitcoins and then there is nothing you can do about it in any
| kind of legal system or even cryptographically should terrify
| anyone into boasting about having any kind of bitcoin assets.
| dpassens wrote:
| I wouldn't recommend boasting about owning bitcoin either but
| why couldn't you involve the legal system? They can go after
| the criminals who beat you with the pipe just as they could
| if they beat you to get to your cash/luxury
| car/art/jewelry/other valuable stuff.
| throwaway494932 wrote:
| > various forms of crime.
|
| Keep in mind that most of the world doesn't live in a perfectly
| functioning country with proper rule of law. Being able to use
| crypto to commit a crime in those countries is a feature. You
| never know when you will need this feature in your own. (Stupid
| example: tomorrow Trump wakes up and decide to block all bank
| accounts of non-citizen until they prove that they are in the
| US legally: will being able to make crypto transfers be good or
| bad ?)
|
| But even assuming that all criminal use of crypto is bad, as
| our money become more digital, we are more and more dependent
| on a small number of payment processors that get to decide what
| is good and what is bad, regardless of the legal status (or
| decide that the legal status that matters is the one of the US,
| even if you live in Nigeria). This is particularly true for
| businesses that handle anything sex-related.
|
| For an example of the latter, just a few days ago a payment
| processor suspended its services to Civitai [1] because it lets
| people to make ai-generated porn. "The company that had been
| processing credit card payments for Civitai made the decision
| to cease processing payments beginning May 23, 2025, due to
| their discomfort with enabling AI-generated explicit content."
|
| [1] https://www.laweekly.com/civitai-ditched-by-credit-card-
| proc...
| robomartin wrote:
| > Cryptocurrency enables at big part of this
|
| Interesting panel discussion on the state of crypto today at
| the Regan National Economic Forum event.
|
| I believe it is the third panel in the stream:
|
| https://www.reaganfoundation.org/events/videos/2025-reagan-n...
| shoo wrote:
| Sue-Lin Wong has an excellent 8 part podcast series "Scam Inc"
| about pig butchering scams, the first three episodes are free to
| listen: https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc
| rs186 wrote:
| Listened to the whole show, and I am very disappointed that
| they don't put enough effort into stressing how much
| cryptocurrency facilitates all these. They talk about
| cryptocurrency as if it's just a way to transfer money, and it
| happens that bad people use it for scams. No, it's almost the
| sole reason pigbutchering works so effectively these days and
| works as the perfect tool for scammers in obscure corners in
| the world.
| bryceneal wrote:
| While I agree that cryptocurrency can make the process much
| easier for scammers, I am wondering what exactly is the
| proposed solution? Something like 28% of adults in the US own
| cryptocurrency, and that number increases every year. A few
| years ago I could see path to some kind of global crackdown
| on crypto by governments around the world, but it now seems
| to me that cryptocurrency has reached terminal velocity and
| it's now too late for something like that to happen. Coinbase
| is in the S&P500, Circle is floating an IPO, and there are
| dozens of ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum sitting in the 401ks
| of average Americans.
|
| Perhaps the solution is trying to better understand how
| victims are acquiring and transferring their funds? Perhaps
| we need to regulate centralized exchanges to better protect
| their customers. In the U.S. it's necessary to pass some
| simple online questionnaire before trading advanced financial
| products like options/futures. Perhaps we need something like
| this for cryptocurrency? I'm just throwing out ideas, because
| I don't know the solution. But even if you think regulating
| it out of existence is the ideal outcome, that is simply not
| going to be possible at this point.
| rs186 wrote:
| In China, cryptocurrency is effectively banned -- mining
| machines are confiscated, banks are not allowed to do any
| transaction with crypto exchanges. Effectively you cannot
| turn money into crypto or the other way via normal means in
| China. Of course some people still find ways, and pig
| butchering exists in China, but it is much harder via the
| crypto route.
|
| I don't know if there will ever be a global crackdown, but
| I know it's definitely not going to happen in the US,
| because, well, freedom, and the man in charge is all-in in
| crypto.
|
| But at least some governments in the world see clearly that
| crypto does more harm than good and take action accordingly
| -- surprisingly China in this case.
|
| It may not be the best solution, but it is _a_ solution.
| bryceneal wrote:
| I believe China's cryptocurrency ban is more about
| fighting capital flight than scammers. There are
| restrictions in China on everything from foreign
| exchange, overseas investments, domestic property, and
| cross-border payments. They have two separate currencies
| in part to prevent money from leaving the country.
|
| That said, China is one of the most authoritarian
| countries in the world. It has some of the most effective
| controls in place around media, speech, technology, and
| capital of any country. I'm not sure whether that model
| could be easily copied, and whether it should be copied
| is maybe a different conversation altogether.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| John Oliver has an informative episode on it as well.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg
| stevenwoo wrote:
| They still used AWS servers in the USA to avoid some blocking.
| Baader Meinhof but just heard this episode
| https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/1253043749/pig-butchering-sca...
| where they tracked down organization in Cambodia that specialized
| in targeting USA and China citizens for pig butchering and
| explained the mechanism of the scam using Tether cryptocurrency.
| ksenzee wrote:
| I wonder what kind of scam my generation will be falling for when
| we get old. At least I have smart, trustworthy kids. If I didn't,
| I'd be making smart, trustworthy young friends, and soon.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| As a millennial, probably the exact same stuff. I see my
| friends, especially the genz ones, addicted to cracktok. And
| ofc cracktok advertises endless cheap crap for them to buy, by
| dropshippers with huge margins, or Chinese sellers who have
| realised why bother with a Western middleman when you can up
| your factory price to dropship retail & make the most money.
|
| Plus with advancements in AI, people are gonna have to finally
| get pretty good at seeing anything and thinking "I don't know
| if this is real, I should fact check it" but I personally think
| that'll never happen, people will continue to go on believing
| whatever they see as evidenced by YT/TT comments that I've seen
| on obviously fake or scripted videos.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I wonder what kind of scam my generation will be falling for
| when we get old._
|
| There was a study recently (last year?) that found Millennials
| are more likely to fall for online scams than Boomers and
| Gen-X.
|
| The reason is because Boomers and Gen-X grew up during the
| advent of the internet, when there was a lot of media about the
| dangers online. Millennials (and presumably Z's, too) never
| knew life before the internet, and didn't get all those
| warnings when it was spinning up, so they trust what they see
| more.
| ksenzee wrote:
| Interesting. As it happens I'm Gen X, and possibly we're more
| wary than millennials now, but I fully expect cognitive
| decline to affect that.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Related: Interpol urges to stop using "Pig Butchering":
|
| > INTERPOL argues that the term 'pig butchering' dehumanizes and
| shames victims of such frauds, deterring people from coming
| forward to seek help and provide information to the authorities.
|
| "Romance baiting" is proposed instead.
|
| https://www.interpol.int/News-and-Events/News/2024/INTERPOL-...
| dmix wrote:
| Spending their time wisely I see.
| barbazoo wrote:
| If it increases the number of people coming forward then why
| not. It's not that this is was the only thing Interpol was
| doing.
| JTbane wrote:
| It's not always romance related, sometimes it's just a promise
| of massive crypto investment returns.
|
| "Pig butchering" is more apt as the long con is like fattening
| up an animal before slaughter.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I agree, meanwhile sometimes words not only describes thinks
| but influence those using them.
| infecto wrote:
| The US does not do enough in this space to punish companies. It
| feels like such low hanging fruit too that would significantly
| help the elderly population.
|
| Reported to Vercel a bank phishing site weeks ago, no response
| still. It's amazing how little companies care.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Until we put people in prison, the cyber crimes will continue.
|
| Declaring states that do nothing about these criminals as
| harboring terror is a good start. This is the same legal
| principle that resulted in the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars which stopped
| Barbary pirates enslaving US sailors.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Forcing telecos to authenticate phone calls would probably be
| the single most important change.
|
| But instead of forcing them, we have been letting them drag
| their feet while while regular people are losing _billions_ to
| scams.
|
| The whole phone system is ancient and long deprecated. When I
| get a call from my bank I should see their name and a badge of
| authentication. Not a random phone number.
|
| Imagine you could register irs.gov and start sending e-mails
| from that domain. That is pretty much the current state of the
| phone system.
|
| Un-fucking-believable no one is _forcing_ change here.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Telcos have systems in place that are specifically to allow
| international phone calls to appear as if they're local
| calls. This is to "facilitate business".
|
| They have these services and continue to offer them because
| they get paid for having them, despite the double decker bus
| sized hole this provides for scammers.
|
| I agree 100% that there should be much tighter regulation on
| telcos.
|
| What I'm not sure of is actually whether it's possible
| without having to rebuild a lot of their networks almost from
| scratch.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Phone numbers should just be deprecated and move towards a
| DNS like system.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| The older I get the more I realise how much of an anchor
| legacy systems are, so the more I appreciate forward
| planning in many contexts.
|
| I like to do things in a modular fashion; sectioning off
| related parts.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Phone numbers have nothing to do with the spoofing
| problem. Hierarchical identifiers would have the exact
| same problem. The problem is that VOIP callers can set
| whatever phone number they want. Email is also vulnerable
| to spoofing.
|
| The solution is to roll out signing for phone numbers.
| The owner of each phone number is known. It could even be
| published in DNS with ENUM. Most phone calls are from big
| companies like telcos and mobile providers. The VOIP
| callers would be harder to update, but could be
| restricted so can't spoof known numbers.
|
| If going to roll out new identity system, easier to use
| existing phone numbers than make a whole new identifier
| system.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Afaik, VoIP is just the easiest onramp to spoofing
| numbers.
|
| Anyone with BGP-equivalent access to the phone network
| can spoof numbers, even if they're coming from a
| landline. Might even be able to when you have a business
| landline terminated in a PBX.
|
| i.e. the phone network backend is built on trust.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| I admin the phone system for my phone company, for any user
| I can change the outgoing CLI to be literally any number in
| the world, I can even call out as "1" if I want to.
| larrik wrote:
| It's worse than that.
|
| I got a call with the caller id of my (credit union) credit
| card company. They had my name and address, knew I had a
| card, and were claiming they were investigating fraudulent
| charges. It sounded more official than my actual credit card
| company. The only real things to tip me off was that the list
| of fraudulent charges kept changing, and they were super keen
| on me reading the entire credit card number back to them.
|
| There were never any fraudulent charges, and the actual fraud
| department didn't seem to care.
|
| I'm guessing it was due to the Experian leak.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| But this would interfere with freedom of entrepreneurship! And
| since no amount of government regulation can reduce fraud to
| zero anyhow, the current amount of it is economically optimal.
| Besides, every person has the unalienable right to ruin their
| life, gosh darn it. /s
| barbazoo wrote:
| Same with captcha providers (google et al) that these scams
| often hide behind. They don't care, they just want money just
| like the scammers.
| omarmung wrote:
| (I work at Vercel) Send me an email at dustin @ vercel dot com
| and I'll dig in here. Sorry about that.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I kind of wonder why ISPs haven't already started offering value-
| add security services that have various levels of filtering to
| provide a cleaner-feed internet experience.
|
| From my limited research there seem to be a surprisingly large
| number of bad actors that own moderate swathes of ip address
| ranges and even Autonomous Systems (AS) that are known and can
| therefore be blocked.
|
| I use OPNSense, which seems to allow AS blocking in the firewall
| rules, and also have some automated blocking based on external
| malicious IP address lists. My not very well maintained project
| can be found here:
| https://github.com/UninvitedActivity/UninvitedActivity
|
| I have no idea if these sites would have been blocked by my
| setup.
|
| Another concept I like but haven't put the research time into is
| blocking recently registered domains (RRDs). It would appear to
| be the case that RRDs probably aren't crucial to the average
| persons daily browsing experience, so blocking them for a certain
| period of time shouldn't cause too much hassle. There are some
| services that list them - problem is that there can be tens of
| thousands per day, which can be difficult to manage into lists
| compatible with various blocking softwares ( I haven't found how
| to automate it for pihole yet - but I haven't tried very hard
| either).
| nottorp wrote:
| Sounds like begging for censorship...
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I've divided my stuff into four layers: basic, recommended,
| aggressive, and paranoid.
|
| Choose your own level of "censorship" or choose none at all.
|
| All such things can descend into the political mudpit, it
| just takes effort to keep the pigs noses out of the technical
| experts trough.
| loaph wrote:
| I suspect they're saying ISPs doing it would be begging for
| censorship, not that your project is
| williamscales wrote:
| NextDNS has an option to block RRDs.
|
| I don't know if it does anything for suspicious AS.
| coolspot wrote:
| > Silent Push found Funnull was a criminal content delivery
| network (CDN)
|
| Should be (CCDN) then
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