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Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
- LunaSea 2y ago[flagged]
- Junkulem 2y ago[flagged]
- TaurenHunter 2y agoAre you talking about ex-presidents? Trump isn't even receiving a salary: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1341/take-no-salary/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpomete...
- antifa 2y agoI actually don't believe the NFT sale was primarily intended to be a scam, but the secondary effects of scamming his own fanbase were of course problably welcome. If someone were able to trace all the payments to their sources, it would not surprise me if the primary purpose of the NFT sale involved: - violation of the emoluments clause. - bribery/quid pro quo (pay me now for the presidential acts I agreed to do, but also people who helped him financially earlier may be early investors who are intended to be beneficiaries of the rugpull). - Trump 2 being more of a shared puppet than we realize.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- roenxi 2y agoI'm not going to read the "article" because it is a transcript and looks a bit rambly and I don't expect it to be talking about anything interesting. But just going to the headline here; consider the base rate. North America has huge per-capita wealth (by a bit of a margin over most other large players). It is expected that scammers would target them and make the most profit there.
- matsemann 2y agoBut why less Europeans? A language barrier for some countries? More regulations about robocalls etc? GDPR and better privacy so our data isn't as easy to exploit?
- roenxi 2y agoEuropeans have less money than Americans. Even if there are no differences in law or practice scammers are still going to make more money off the wealthier people. I suppose in some sense we could jot that down as more regulations leading to less scamming.
- Symbiote 2y agoThis Global Anti-Scam Alliance website [1] says Americans, Danes and Swiss have the highest average scam amount, at $3520, $3067 and $2980. But it also says Pakistan lost 4.2% of GDP to scams, vs 0.2% for Italy, Netherlands and France. It looks like I'd need to register to see more details statistics. [1] https://www.gasa.org/post/global-state-of-scams-report-2024-1-trillion-stolen-in-12-months-gasa-feedzai https://www.gasa.org/post/global-state-of-scams-report-2024-...
- the_real_cher 2y agoBetween scammers, the medical industry, H1Bs showing up just for jobs, these reports from DOGE about the pointless nonprofits, PPP loans, private equity buying up businesses, and landlords, etc America is just becoming a place to extract.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- spoonjim 2y agoAmericans are great marks because we are so relentlessly optimistic
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoAnd rich and uneducated.
- throwaway48476 2y agoWestern societies have higher social trust which enabled them to outcompete the rest of the world. Business moves at the speed of trust. Now that western society has increasing contact with the low trust world it is regressing to the mean.
- kevinventullo 2y agoThe regression is not due to “contact with the low trust world.” Globalism isn’t new. The call is coming from inside the house.
- leosanchez 2y agoDid you account for crypto scammers in your theory ? Aren't most crypto scammers from developed countries ? It can be argued that POTUS himself is a crypto scammer.
- nottorp 2y agoIt helps that marketing that is defined as fraud elsewhere is legal for you ... you get used to it.
- heresie-dabord 2y agoFrom TFA: "You've probably noticed that online scams are everywhere. You see them on job recruitment sites, in your text messages,on dating apps and across social media. And while people are getting better at spotting these scams, scammers are constantly advancing too. Arguably, the most hurtful,personal and financially damaging of these scams is romance scams"
- ggm 2y agoNot that there aren't massive downsides, but I do wonder where the spend side of this $1T goes. If it's shifted out of the USA then its being spent somewhere else. I've never seen a decent write up of how the crooks invest the money, where they accept losses (muling?) and how they re-invest.
- throwaway48476 2y agoSee "I go chop your dollar". Scammers also buy a lot of stolen luxury vehicles in 3rd world countries. The CBC did an investigation where they they to a Nigerian car dealership and everything was stolen, usually from Canada or the US.
- feketegy 2y ago1 trillion? (x)doubt...
- labrador 2y agoThat number is ridiculously high. I can't read the article because it's paywalled but back on the envelope says thats about $4,000 per adult American per year
- pembrook 2y agoCertain cities in countries like Nigeria and Morocco have become fraud “Silicon Valleys” where there’s quite literally tens of thousands of people collaborating and sharing best practices on how best to scam Americans and Europeans. This will only get worse with AI. When I worked for a certain large inbox provider a few years back, I was astonished at the volume of fraud and phishing attempts that actually originate from these countries. And it’s amazing how centralized it is in certain cities. Most people have no idea that a significant portion of the local economy in places like Lagos is driven by internet fraud, and due to local corruption it’s nearly impossible to prosecute. If 100,000 Nigerians were physically pillaging a countries land and stealing physical assets that country historically would immediately go to war. The fact that this doesn’t matter as much since its all digital may need to be re-evaluated now that our financial lives are almost entirely digital. Western countries are going to have to finally put their foot down at some point.
- Krasnol 2y agoIt is good to hear that it is coming from countries which has been played by the Western World on the globalization front. Then ripping off those who profited from their low status and relevance on the world market gives it a nice Robin Hood touch.
- samlinnfer 2y agoIt's good to hear that scammers are taking your grandparents retirement money as reparations for colonial acts?
- throwaway48476 2y agoMost people dramatically underestimate how widespread their cultural moral system is. Billions of people live in cultures where scamming is perfectly moral.
- pembrook 2y agoAnd most people dramatically underestimate what a death sentence a low trust society is for economic development. Countries that allow a culture of scamming are all poor because a low trust society will never develop into a first world economy. Trust and property rights are the basis of all development and investment and human collaboration.
- mixologist 2y agoI am always confused how someone will fall for the scammer with such poor knowledge of your native language. If you look at the reports from the scams it is always so obvious that they are scams just by looking at the way sentences are structured or the way they speak. I would expect that easier targets for such scammers would be people who don’t use English as their primary language. Not someone living in US. It is weird that such things are not an immediate red flags to people. Then again, I have a better grasp on English language than last 3 US presidents so I guess you have to lower your expectations. I thinks that this is also a reason that Musk, with his ramblings, didn’t reach such cult following here.
- cdirkx 2y agoBy explicitly being obviously a scam, scammers can preselect for the most gullible people
- prawn 2y agoSome portion of legit call centres for banks or telcos (as an example) have an accent, especially when support services are outsourced. Means that many are not deterred by an accent or imperfect email phrasing when approached. In one case of a friend's mother being scammed: she'd complained to her ISP about an issue with their service. Their actual customer support told her to expect a call back later that day. Then some sort of Microsoft support scam out of India happened to call her an hour or two later...
- margalabargala 2y agoAll scams are not created equal. Here's an article by Cory Doctorow, a great example of an intelligent, tech-savvy person, detailing how he got scammed. https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swi...
- tossandthrow 2y agoA perspective: redistribution finds it's ways. People with roughly equal wealth would not scam each other's at this level
- throwaway48476 2y agoThere are tons of scammers with more money than their victims, they don't stop scamming.
- HanClinto 2y agoExactly. For an easy example of this, look at religious con artists masquerading as faith healers or "health and wealth" preachers and whatnot. They flaunt their affluence while profiting off of the backs of the poor. Once scammers and other criminals get a taste, they're not going to stop just because they've got more money than their victims.
- pembrook 2y agoAsk Nigerians how they feel about economic opportunity living in a low trust society full of scammers. I hope you’re aware scammers don’t have a moral code (they are most likely to be sociopaths) and do not exclusively target the wealthy. Often the most likely victim of a scammer is their neighbor.
- vinni2 2y agoI struggled to find the source the fact that $1T is lost to scammers. From the FBI internet crime report in 2023 Americans lost about 12.5 Billion dollars [0]. That is far from 1T$. Another source reports cost if cybercrime is reported to reach 9.5T$ in 2024 but again no source provided for that number [1] [0] https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2023_IC3Report.pdf#page16 https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2023_IC3Report.pdf#... [1] https://www.esentire.com/resources/library/2023-official-cybercrime-report https://www.esentire.com/resources/library/2023-official-cyb...
- theropost 2y agoIt kinda just depends on the agenda, one source says it’s nothing, another says it’s a trillion, and that huge gap usually means someone’s trying to push something, like tougher laws or justify some policy shift. Half the time it feels like the facts don’t even matter, just the story they wanna sell.
- Spivak 2y agoHalf is being generous. Too much damn policy takes the form: I want policy action X for reason A, but people would be pissed if I said that's why, so I worked backwards to fabricate problem B which I will pretend to be deeply passionate about and plausibly has solution X. It's god damn maddening. At least one side effect of the new GOP is they're partially dropping the pretense of needing B so we can at least not talk past one another sometimes.
- secabeen 2y agoIt's a pretty ridiculous number, total US GDP is only $27T. That would mean scams are ~1% of the US economy, which is non-sensical.
- votepaunchy 2y agoWouldn’t $1T be close to 4% of US GDP?
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- mg794613 2y ago* No source for the number. * has "mostly from americans" (also no source) * brought to you by the same people suggesting you should get a second job to forget the stress from the first job.
- throwaway48476 2y agoIt would be so easy to stop scammers if international transactions were insured and reversible. Governments just don't care at all about stopping scammers.
- redserk 2y agoBut a lot of scams don’t require this. The international transaction side isn’t with the victim, it’s with a completely different person happily sending cash over. Say you run a gift card scam. Victim buys $100 in gift cards and provides you codes. You sell the $100 gift cards on a marketplace for $75. A completely unrelated person buys the gift cards for $75 from you. That unrelated person is satisfied, they got $100 for $75. They got a deal. You got $75 from a happy customer. The loser is the person spending $100 in gift cards. Other scams require you send money to a domestic “mule”, who then sends the money along not realizing it.
- 3np 2y agoAlso triangulation fraud: 1. Acquire stolen ccs 2. Set up web shop (or Amazon/eBay account) with attractive deals 3. When an order comes in, purchase the ordered item elsewhere using a stolen CC and have it sent to buyer The clueless buyer will be the one under investigation for cc fraud.
- forinti 2y agoThe scamming industry in Brazil seems to have grown a lot since the pandemic. I get calls almost daily. Three types of scam are really common lately: 1- You get an SMS pretending to be from the Post Office saying that you have to pay tax for your packet to get through customs; 2- You get a call from someone saying they're from your bank and they need you to confirm that you bought something expensive like a TV; 3- Someone says they're your lawyer and you need to pay them to get your settlement (this one is nasty, because they look up people who have something going on in the justice system).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- miohtama 2y agoHere is a very good podcast on the topic: Scam, Inc. https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc Some highlights - There are estimated to be 500,000 people working globally as scammers - It is mostly Chinese Triad led industry - It is geopolitical: for the government of China it is ok, even desirable, that Americans get scammed - $1T figure must be too high, as criminal experts estimate the whole global industry to be $200B - $500B
- hasbot 2y agoMy elderly mother has been scammed twice (that I know of). She fell for one of those "Your computer has been hacked" popup windows a few years ago. Which led to her buying a "protection" service that installed malware on her machine. Every couple of months she'd have an "issue" and have to shell out more money to fix it. She's been using computers since the 80's (Apple ][e) but still is utterly clueless on how to operate a computer. I had her take her computer to a computer shop to have the OS re-installed but he somehow kinda botched it. Fortunately I was able to later re-install Windows myself and she hasn't had an issue since. I've strongly warned her about scammers and now when she doesn't respond to an obvious scammer email she's pleased with herself. Old people really do become children again.
- OutOfHere 2y agoAt least now they can ask ChatGPT if an idea makes sense. Get them their fish oil, fish, eggs, and B vitamins.
- nathancahill 2y agoYou took her computer to a "computer shop" and yet she's the one that's clueless?
- Kirby64 2y ago“Had her take her computer” - presumably GP didn’t do it themselves. Easily understandable if they don’t live nearby.
- yardie 2y agoFolks, if you still have grandparents and you love them please give them a call. Let them hear your voice and know where you are. Scammers are targeting the elderly because they are lonely. With social media all they need are a few public posts to feed them plausible details. And absence of seeing or talking to you means anyone can call and say they are you. I’ve read transcripts and listened to the call recordings as evidence. It’s quite clear most elderly have no idea what their adult grandchildren sound like. But one day they are going to get a call from a Cabo jail and naturally want to help.
- a_bonobo 2y agoSomewhat related, Western Australia's newest billionaire, Laurence Escalante, got rich by running a sweepstakes betting company that operates only in the US. https://www.afr.com/companies/games-and-wagering/escalante-raises-stakes-as-gaming-empire-loses-dominance-20240627-p5jpgp https://www.afr.com/companies/games-and-wagering/escalante-r... The company does not operate its games in Australia, where that kind of gambling is illegal (or rather, there are far more rules before people can enter the draw). Are Americans just easy marks?
- ttyprintk 2y agoFor scale, this is a good comparison. His company had net earnings close to the totals by guided scams. These are smartphone-based slot machine games; for some reason called “sweepstakes”. When an addicted person talks about that, they have the same reservations and shame as a scammed person.
- yimby2001 2y ago[dead]
- barbazoo 2y agoWe’re not talking about all the AI trash people sell for $100/year for what is little more than a system prompt in front of an LLM, are we?!
- more_corn 2y agoWe need a federal police in charge of tracking down and stamping out scams. They attack our elderly, and otherwise vulnerable. They steal money from the people who can least afford it and fund various violent, illegal and nefarious organizations.
- clown_strike 2y agoWe have an FBI, they're just busy chasing Russian and Chinese boogeymen so they dont look too closely at the actual miscreants.
- evilsetg 2y agoOne thing I have trouble wrapping my head around is blatant scams being advertised on reputable sites and apps. As I understand sites run ads through advertisement networks, but why are those networks not required to vet the ads that are bought for obvious scams. There should be regulation that requires these networks to vet each ad that is bought. With that in place at least the scams would not follow us everywhere on the web.
- vednig 2y agoConsidering that for each scam a transaction fee i.e. 1-2% goes back to one of major US bank or card processor, they should re-calculate the scam amount and impact it has, as all the scams here are supposedly digital. Plus, since all the transactions go through reputed banks why isn't there a decline, it has been happening since a decade now.
- tyreu 2y ago[dead]