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I felt like the [mock?] indignation that it might be possible to clone a persons voice - at telephone compression levels - showed that the person did not have s

I felt like the [mock?] indignation that it might be possible to clone a persons voice - at telephone compression levels - showed that the person did not have sufficient grasp of the situation to know if they were being scammed. The article says "Having had several telephone calls to establish it was actually her asking for help" and then later that it was "Zoom" sugguesting that it was Zoom audio-only calls. What would be the harm in having the Austrian government confirm the debt here, supposedly the friend, the customer, and the bank all know about it already. Or indeed what would be the harm in sharing the communications -- why would you not want to. Being set against it would suggest something like the messages saying "don't share these messages" which would be a massive fraud flag. We don't learn if the "Edinburgh academic" was ripped off or not. Aside, anyone have an insight into how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro?

vidarh 2y ago
> Aside, anyone have an insight into how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro? Extra income from contracts and failed to set aside enough? I've had big tax bills before, it's not that unusual, and I'd get the temptation of dipping into money set aside if subsequent income has been lower than expected. But tax authorities do tend to be flexible about repayment plans most places. Maybe that's not true for Austria. The bigger issue there for me, though, is that a scammer is not going to hesitate to fake a tax bill. Why the bank think that would prove anything suggests to me they haven't thought this through very well either.
- henearkr 2y ago
  No, nowadays many official documents come with a URL (often in the form of a QR code) linking to a digital copy of the document stored on a governmental server.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    I have literally never seen this. I don't doubt it can happen, but for that to work it'd rely on the fraud team to 1) know exactly what a letter from the Austrian tax office should look like to notice if there isn't a URL if those letters do have one, 2) if the scammers were to include one, it'd require them to be certain enough about the URL that pointing it to a suitable fake one would be insufficient. I'm not convinced the fraud team wouldn't be easily fooled, in other words. Not that I'd want to try; but for someone already breaking the law there's little reason not to.
    - henearkr 2y ago
      Or they just pass it to the branch of the bank that is located in Austria, as they are familiar with the matter.
      - vidarh 2y ago
        Starling doesn't have branches, and only has offices in the UK.
        henearkr 2y ago
        To a consultant in Austria, then.
        vidarh 2y ago
        You're trying to tell me you genuinely believe they'd find and hire a consultant in Austria to assess the authenticity of a document? Where would they seek out someone for this hypothetical task there's no way they'd actually bother with?
        henearkr 2y ago
        Yes, it's a bank, they hire tons of consultants all the time. Moreover, they could also order an executive summary in order to learn what is the procedure if they need to do this check themselves in the future.
amiga386 2y ago
> how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro? You may be mixing unrelated facts. The academic was trying to help his friend "cover a cashflow problem", no more specifics. The bank asked to see the friend's tax bill, but also correspondance with their accountant. The article does not say why the bank asked for these. They could be asking purely to confirm the friend's identity. Nonetheless, you could get an out-of-nowhere €15k tax bill from Austria, if a family member died and bequeathed you a house worth €700k, as the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz will make you immediately liable for €15,000 (first €250,000 @ 0.5% = €1,250, next €150,000 @ 2% = €3,000, final €307,143 @ 3.5% = €10,750). You'd probably want to keep such a house rather than sell it immediately to meet the comparatively small tax demand, so if a friend can solve your cashflow problem, it's much better all round. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6edcfe00-26cb-4898-ba74-7156f7a4fecd https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6edcfe00-26cb... Personally, if my friend was having a hard time and I were to gift them money, and the bank demanded proof of my friend's hardship, not just remind me to double-check I'm not being scammed, and validate that I had the correct destination bank account... I'd also tell them to fuck off and then change banks. They do have to report high value transfers to the government, but that's then for the taxman or police to ask me directly why I moved the money; not the bank, and not for determining if I'm being scammed or not. You don't need to write "Edinburgh academic" in quotes, John MacInnes really is an Edinburgh academic: https://static.sps.ed.ac.uk/q-step/about_us/people/macinnes_john.html https://static.sps.ed.ac.uk/q-step/about_us/people/macinnes_...

vidarh 2y ago

> Aside, anyone have an insight into how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro? Extra income from contracts and failed to set aside enough? I've had big tax bills before, it's not that unusual, and I'd get the temptation of dipping into money set aside if subsequent income has been lower than expected. But tax authorities do tend to be flexible about repayment plans most places. Maybe that's not true for Austria. The bigger issue there for me, though, is that a scammer is not going to hesitate to fake a tax bill. Why the bank think that would prove anything suggests to me they haven't thought this through very well either.

henearkr 2y ago
No, nowadays many official documents come with a URL (often in the form of a QR code) linking to a digital copy of the document stored on a governmental server.
- vidarh 2y ago
  I have literally never seen this. I don't doubt it can happen, but for that to work it'd rely on the fraud team to 1) know exactly what a letter from the Austrian tax office should look like to notice if there isn't a URL if those letters do have one, 2) if the scammers were to include one, it'd require them to be certain enough about the URL that pointing it to a suitable fake one would be insufficient. I'm not convinced the fraud team wouldn't be easily fooled, in other words. Not that I'd want to try; but for someone already breaking the law there's little reason not to.
  - henearkr 2y ago
    Or they just pass it to the branch of the bank that is located in Austria, as they are familiar with the matter.
    - vidarh 2y ago
      Starling doesn't have branches, and only has offices in the UK.
      - henearkr 2y ago
        To a consultant in Austria, then.
        vidarh 2y ago
        You're trying to tell me you genuinely believe they'd find and hire a consultant in Austria to assess the authenticity of a document? Where would they seek out someone for this hypothetical task there's no way they'd actually bother with?
        henearkr 2y ago
        Yes, it's a bank, they hire tons of consultants all the time. Moreover, they could also order an executive summary in order to learn what is the procedure if they need to do this check themselves in the future.

amiga386 2y ago

> how do you suddenly get a "tax bill" from the Austrian government for 15k Euro? You may be mixing unrelated facts. The academic was trying to help his friend "cover a cashflow problem", no more specifics. The bank asked to see the friend's tax bill, but also correspondance with their accountant. The article does not say why the bank asked for these. They could be asking purely to confirm the friend's identity. Nonetheless, you could get an out-of-nowhere €15k tax bill from Austria, if a family member died and bequeathed you a house worth €700k, as the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz will make you immediately liable for €15,000 (first €250,000 @ 0.5% = €1,250, next €150,000 @ 2% = €3,000, final €307,143 @ 3.5% = €10,750). You'd probably want to keep such a house rather than sell it immediately to meet the comparatively small tax demand, so if a friend can solve your cashflow problem, it's much better all round. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6edcfe00-26cb-4898-ba74-7156f7a4fecd https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6edcfe00-26cb... Personally, if my friend was having a hard time and I were to gift them money, and the bank demanded proof of my friend's hardship, not just remind me to double-check I'm not being scammed, and validate that I had the correct destination bank account... I'd also tell them to fuck off and then change banks. They do have to report high value transfers to the government, but that's then for the taxman or police to ask me directly why I moved the money; not the bank, and not for determining if I'm being scammed or not. You don't need to write "Edinburgh academic" in quotes, John MacInnes really is an Edinburgh academic: https://static.sps.ed.ac.uk/q-step/about_us/people/macinnes_john.html https://static.sps.ed.ac.uk/q-step/about_us/people/macinnes_...