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“When I was in jail at Beaumont, Texas I talked to one of the correctional officers there who shared with me a story about her friend who lost her identity and

by BJBBB 6y ago

“When I was in jail at Beaumont, Texas I talked to one of the correctional officers there who shared with me a story about her friend who lost her identity and then lost everything after that,” Ngo recalled. “Her whole life fell apart. I don’t know if that lady was one of my victims, but that story made me feel sick. I know now that was I was doing was just evil.” Earnest question. Other than a sociopath or psychopath, how could an adult human not know from the beginning that their actions are immoral and unethical?

jandrese 6y ago
Maybe he figured it would be no problem. The credit card company would reverse the fraudulent transactions and issue a new number and the person would be on their way.
- ev1 6y ago
  Anecdote: I help run a gaming community (think public large Rust, Ark, etc. servers); we routinely have players, anywhere from 14-20+ age, try to "help us out" by donating large amounts with stolen cards, hacked PayPal accounts, and the like. Almost always the country is BD/PK/BR/VN/ID/LK. We don't have CIS (RU/UA/...) players, so assume that's excluded from this anecdote. I'm unsure why, whether it's cultural or socioeconomic or otherwise. They don't see anything wrong in doing it, and when aggressively questioned (because we've banned their game accounts from our servers for fraud) the answer is always "what's wrong I am just trying to help" and "everyone here does this, no one wants to pay $[50+] for [GTAV/other AAAgame/etc], everyone buys hacked or keylogged accounts off secondhand market for $2"; some of them outright just try to offer lists of cards ("dumps?") in exchange for privileges/virtual titles on the forum/etc because they don't want to go through the effort of cashing them out. Of course we're like WTF in response. If you look on r/gaming or other forums, it's super common to have someone "buy" your hacked account and when you reset it and recover it, you get a barely-comprehensible angry email asking why you stole the account they purchased legitimately and paid $1-2 for.
  - outworlder 6y ago
    Interesting anecdote. Some of us may try to claim the moral high ground, but we aren't fully in control - not until much later in life. If you are a teen and all your friends do this, you'd be a sucker for paying the "full" (read: non-stolen) price. Because they don't fully realize what's involved in getting these 'goods' to them. From the article: > “When I was running the service, I didn’t really care because I didn’t know my customers and I didn’t know much about what they were doing with it,” Ngo said. “But during my case, the federal court received like 13,000 letters from victims who complained they lost their houses, jobs, or could no longer afford to buy a home or maintain their financial life because of me. That made me feel really bad, and I realized I’d been a terrible person.” He may be a psychopath and faking it. But probably not. When harm happens that far away from you, it's easy to brush aside. I'm from one of the countries in your list - won't specify which so as not to invite flames. Suffice to say that there's a baseline level of corruption that's tolerated, if not encouraged. Tax evasion, pirated software, contraband, you name it. The population is really abused by the government (very high taxes, lots of bureaucracy, terrible public services, corrupt officials) so I guess that's how some people survive. And then it creeps into other areas in their lives via network effects. That's one of the reasons I left.
blablabla123 6y ago
According to the linked article it sounds like he was 16 when he started doing that.
CarbyAu 6y ago
I see it as easy as mental conditioning. For example, Lots of people throw rubbish "away". But when you make clear (by say a trip to the landfill dump) that there is no magical "away" that will swallow rubbish forever, they begin to think differently. In this case, Ngo was stealing from a magical pool of people who "would only be minimally inconvenienced", those "Others" not of his social group that are rich and can afford it. But when confronted with a direct result of actions, thinks differently... Would I trust Ngo now though? Nope. Ngo burnt more "trust" than an Aussie bushfire disaster.

by BJBBB 6y ago

jandrese 6y ago

Maybe he figured it would be no problem. The credit card company would reverse the fraudulent transactions and issue a new number and the person would be on their way.

ev1 6y ago
Anecdote: I help run a gaming community (think public large Rust, Ark, etc. servers); we routinely have players, anywhere from 14-20+ age, try to "help us out" by donating large amounts with stolen cards, hacked PayPal accounts, and the like. Almost always the country is BD/PK/BR/VN/ID/LK. We don't have CIS (RU/UA/...) players, so assume that's excluded from this anecdote. I'm unsure why, whether it's cultural or socioeconomic or otherwise. They don't see anything wrong in doing it, and when aggressively questioned (because we've banned their game accounts from our servers for fraud) the answer is always "what's wrong I am just trying to help" and "everyone here does this, no one wants to pay $[50+] for [GTAV/other AAAgame/etc], everyone buys hacked or keylogged accounts off secondhand market for $2"; some of them outright just try to offer lists of cards ("dumps?") in exchange for privileges/virtual titles on the forum/etc because they don't want to go through the effort of cashing them out. Of course we're like WTF in response. If you look on r/gaming or other forums, it's super common to have someone "buy" your hacked account and when you reset it and recover it, you get a barely-comprehensible angry email asking why you stole the account they purchased legitimately and paid $1-2 for.
- outworlder 6y ago
  Interesting anecdote. Some of us may try to claim the moral high ground, but we aren't fully in control - not until much later in life. If you are a teen and all your friends do this, you'd be a sucker for paying the "full" (read: non-stolen) price. Because they don't fully realize what's involved in getting these 'goods' to them. From the article: > “When I was running the service, I didn’t really care because I didn’t know my customers and I didn’t know much about what they were doing with it,” Ngo said. “But during my case, the federal court received like 13,000 letters from victims who complained they lost their houses, jobs, or could no longer afford to buy a home or maintain their financial life because of me. That made me feel really bad, and I realized I’d been a terrible person.” He may be a psychopath and faking it. But probably not. When harm happens that far away from you, it's easy to brush aside. I'm from one of the countries in your list - won't specify which so as not to invite flames. Suffice to say that there's a baseline level of corruption that's tolerated, if not encouraged. Tax evasion, pirated software, contraband, you name it. The population is really abused by the government (very high taxes, lots of bureaucracy, terrible public services, corrupt officials) so I guess that's how some people survive. And then it creeps into other areas in their lives via network effects. That's one of the reasons I left.

blablabla123 6y ago

According to the linked article it sounds like he was 16 when he started doing that.

CarbyAu 6y ago

I see it as easy as mental conditioning. For example, Lots of people throw rubbish "away". But when you make clear (by say a trip to the landfill dump) that there is no magical "away" that will swallow rubbish forever, they begin to think differently. In this case, Ngo was stealing from a magical pool of people who "would only be minimally inconvenienced", those "Others" not of his social group that are rich and can afford it. But when confronted with a direct result of actions, thinks differently... Would I trust Ngo now though? Nope. Ngo burnt more "trust" than an Aussie bushfire disaster.