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Yeah, that was a bit rushed :). I edited my comment, please re-visit it. (And yeah, it's still an estimate, since no-one except WU has any possibility of knowi

Yeah, that was a bit rushed :). I edited my comment, please re-visit it. (And yeah, it's still an estimate, since no-one except WU has any possibility of knowing the truth. Still, 0.1% seems fraud seems like an awefully low estimate, doesn't it?)

nickff 10y ago
How does being rushed justify a complete an incendiary allegation based on a WAG? Do you have any basis for this allegation, or is it just an "Obama was the head of the illuminati, because, someone's gotta be heading the illuminati"-type guess? You revised it down to 10% now; why? Don't get me wrong, 10 is a great number, much better than 11, but I still don't see any rationale.
- johansch 10y ago
  No, it was a Wild-Ass-Guess based on my instinctial knowledge of how money they are moving around yearly and how much is likely fraud. To add a perspective: They paid about a penalty for about a 1/1000th of the money they move around. What's your guesstimate for how much of WU money is based on fraudulent transfers?
  - nickff 10y ago
    My guess would be that Western Union has transferred between $0-$100 000 000 000 per year in fraudulent transfers, and I really don't know where in that range they might fall. You don't have to make a guess, and if you have no reason to do so, you should just avoid it. Opinions without reason are just feelings.
    - johansch 10y ago
      You remind me a lot of that guy I used to supervise who totally refused to do any work estimates on anything, because "there was not enough data to conclusive estimate the amount work needed". There are concepts such as "experience", "pattern recognition", extrapolation etc.
      - nickff 10y ago
        I can tell you that I perform $0 in fraudulent transfers, but would not then guess that 0%, 10%, 30%, or 50% of your revenue is derived from fraudulent transfers, because I don't know you or what you do.
        johansch 10y ago
        Well, thank you for demonstrating quite clearly what I just wrote.
  - scottlamb 10y ago
    The story says 2,000 agents were involved. Do you trust that number? I'll assume so through the following reasoning: I'm not sure how many agents they have, but https://corporate.westernunion.com/ https://corporate.westernunion.com/ says there are 500,000 Agent locations, so let's conservatively say there are 500,000 agents (surely there's at least one per location). That suggests (at most) 0.4% of their agents were involved. I doubt 100% of those agents' work involved aiding and abetting scammers, so less than 0.1% sounds totally believable to me. That said, I think arguing about how big the fine should be is accepting the faulty premise that a fine is an acceptable penalty. Wire fraud is a felony. I know someone who went to prison for it. The article says "[Western Union] agents were helping scammers avoid detection" and "Fraudsters [...were...] giving Western Union agents a cut in return for processing the payments". They willingly participated in felonies for personal profit. Shouldn't they—and all the supervisors who can be proven to have condoned their actions—be going to prison? Or is this okay just because everyone's doing it and they have a fancy corporation to hide behind?
    - johansch 10y ago
      > I doubt 100% of those agents' work involved aiding and abetting scammers, so less than 0.1% sounds totally believable to me. I would say that's incredibly naive and refer you to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465310

nickff 10y ago

How does being rushed justify a complete an incendiary allegation based on a WAG? Do you have any basis for this allegation, or is it just an "Obama was the head of the illuminati, because, someone's gotta be heading the illuminati"-type guess? You revised it down to 10% now; why? Don't get me wrong, 10 is a great number, much better than 11, but I still don't see any rationale.

johansch 10y ago
No, it was a Wild-Ass-Guess based on my instinctial knowledge of how money they are moving around yearly and how much is likely fraud. To add a perspective: They paid about a penalty for about a 1/1000th of the money they move around. What's your guesstimate for how much of WU money is based on fraudulent transfers?
- nickff 10y ago
  My guess would be that Western Union has transferred between $0-$100 000 000 000 per year in fraudulent transfers, and I really don't know where in that range they might fall. You don't have to make a guess, and if you have no reason to do so, you should just avoid it. Opinions without reason are just feelings.
  - johansch 10y ago
    You remind me a lot of that guy I used to supervise who totally refused to do any work estimates on anything, because "there was not enough data to conclusive estimate the amount work needed". There are concepts such as "experience", "pattern recognition", extrapolation etc.
    - nickff 10y ago
      I can tell you that I perform $0 in fraudulent transfers, but would not then guess that 0%, 10%, 30%, or 50% of your revenue is derived from fraudulent transfers, because I don't know you or what you do.
      - johansch 10y ago
        Well, thank you for demonstrating quite clearly what I just wrote.
- scottlamb 10y ago
  The story says 2,000 agents were involved. Do you trust that number? I'll assume so through the following reasoning: I'm not sure how many agents they have, but https://corporate.westernunion.com/ https://corporate.westernunion.com/ says there are 500,000 Agent locations, so let's conservatively say there are 500,000 agents (surely there's at least one per location). That suggests (at most) 0.4% of their agents were involved. I doubt 100% of those agents' work involved aiding and abetting scammers, so less than 0.1% sounds totally believable to me. That said, I think arguing about how big the fine should be is accepting the faulty premise that a fine is an acceptable penalty. Wire fraud is a felony. I know someone who went to prison for it. The article says "[Western Union] agents were helping scammers avoid detection" and "Fraudsters [...were...] giving Western Union agents a cut in return for processing the payments". They willingly participated in felonies for personal profit. Shouldn't they—and all the supervisors who can be proven to have condoned their actions—be going to prison? Or is this okay just because everyone's doing it and they have a fancy corporation to hide behind?
  - johansch 10y ago
    > I doubt 100% of those agents' work involved aiding and abetting scammers, so less than 0.1% sounds totally believable to me. I would say that's incredibly naive and refer you to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465310