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U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

200 points by todsacerdoti 1y ago

duxup 1y ago
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.
- Auracle 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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").
    - Auracle 1y ago
      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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        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 1y ago
        I found it again: https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/security/seducing-a-romance-scammer.html https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/security/seducing-a-r...
  - abletonlive 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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.
      - Auracle 1y ago
        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 1y ago
        > 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".
  - silisili 1y ago
    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-pig-butchering-scam.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/21/cryptocurrency-shan-hanes-pi...
    - Auracle 1y ago
      Oh, I definitely think that's part of it. Nobody wants to be betrayed, or made the fool.
    - gosub100 1y ago
      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 1y ago
    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.
    - Auracle 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
    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.
    - Auracle 1y ago
      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 1y ago
  The worst part is, these scams flourish during bull markets, like now, when alts start shooting up 10-20% everyday. Stay safe.
- strogonoff 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    > 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 1y ago
      But I was informed that ended in 1865.
      - tbrownaw 1y ago
        The world's a big place.
      - dfxm12 1y ago
        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 1y ago
        And that's why the term is "modern slavery".
  - whimsicalism 1y ago
    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.
- deleted 1y ago
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- merek 1y ago
  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/@NanoBaiter https://www.youtube.com/@KitbogaShow https://www.youtube.com/@KitbogaShow
  - teddyh 1y ago
    > 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 1y ago
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_sanctions/ 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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  Can you cite where in the US code of law a foreign criminal is afforded due process in a sanction action?
  - robcohen 1y ago
    KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development v. Geithner and Al Haramain Islamic Foundation v. U.S. Department of the Treasury
    - duskwuff 1y ago
      Those are names of cases, not laws.
      - paulryanrogers 1y ago
        Precedent fills out the finer points in how laws apply, or don't.
      - ksenzee 1y ago
        Perhaps you’re not familiar with the common law system and its reliance on case law?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
est 1y ago
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 1y ago
  It's a known malicious actor. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/polyfillio-javascript-supply-chain-attack-impacts-over-100k-sites/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/polyfillio-ja...
deleted 1y ago
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naet 1y ago
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 1y ago
  i bet heavily using crypto against AI progress on coding to hedge my career
  - gavagai691 1y ago
    Is your job developing AI coding tools?
    - whimsicalism 1y ago
      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 1y ago
    How is crypto relevant to betting?
    - whimsicalism 1y ago
      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 1y ago
shoo 1y ago
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 https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc
- rs186 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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.
stevenwoo 1y ago
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-scam-crypto-tether 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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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.
    - reaperducer 1y ago
      Cognitive decline with age is not a certainty.
aziaziazi 1y ago
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-urges-end-to-Pig-Butchering-term-cites-harm-to-online-victims https://www.interpol.int/News-and-Events/News/2024/INTERPOL-...
- dmix 1y ago
  Spending their time wisely I see.
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    I agree, meanwhile sometimes words not only describes thinks but influence those using them.
springthorpeca 1y ago
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infecto 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars which stopped Barbary pirates enslaving US sailors.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
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 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 1y ago
  Sounds like begging for censorship…
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      I suspect they're saying ISPs doing it would be begging for censorship, not that your project is
      - 1y ago
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coolspot 1y ago
> Silent Push found Funnull was a criminal content delivery network (CDN) Should be (CCDN) then
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200 points by todsacerdoti 1y ago

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.

Auracle 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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").
  - Auracle 1y ago
    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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
      I found it again: https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/security/seducing-a-romance-scammer.html https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/security/seducing-a-r...
- abletonlive 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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.
    - Auracle 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        > 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".
- silisili 1y ago
  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-pig-butchering-scam.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/21/cryptocurrency-shan-hanes-pi...
  - Auracle 1y ago
    Oh, I definitely think that's part of it. Nobody wants to be betrayed, or made the fool.
  - gosub100 1y ago
    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 1y ago
  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.
  - Auracle 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
  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.
  - Auracle 1y ago
    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 1y ago
The worst part is, these scams flourish during bull markets, like now, when alts start shooting up 10-20% everyday. Stay safe.
strogonoff 1y ago
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 1y ago
  > 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 1y ago
    But I was informed that ended in 1865.
    - tbrownaw 1y ago
      The world's a big place.
    - dfxm12 1y ago
      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 1y ago
      And that's why the term is "modern slavery".
- whimsicalism 1y ago
  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.
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merek 1y ago
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/@NanoBaiter https://www.youtube.com/@KitbogaShow https://www.youtube.com/@KitbogaShow
- teddyh 1y ago
  > 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 1y ago

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_sanctions/ 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 1y ago

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 1y ago
Can you cite where in the US code of law a foreign criminal is afforded due process in a sanction action?
- robcohen 1y ago
  KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development v. Geithner and Al Haramain Islamic Foundation v. U.S. Department of the Treasury
  - duskwuff 1y ago
    Those are names of cases, not laws.
    - paulryanrogers 1y ago
      Precedent fills out the finer points in how laws apply, or don't.
    - ksenzee 1y ago
      Perhaps you’re not familiar with the common law system and its reliance on case law?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

est 1y ago

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 1y ago
It's a known malicious actor. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/polyfillio-javascript-supply-chain-attack-impacts-over-100k-sites/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/polyfillio-ja...

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naet 1y ago

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 1y ago
i bet heavily using crypto against AI progress on coding to hedge my career
- gavagai691 1y ago
  Is your job developing AI coding tools?
  - whimsicalism 1y ago
    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 1y ago
  How is crypto relevant to betting?
  - whimsicalism 1y ago
    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 1y ago

shoo 1y ago

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 https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc

rs186 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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.

stevenwoo 1y ago

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-scam-crypto-tether 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 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
  - reaperducer 1y ago
    Cognitive decline with age is not a certainty.

aziaziazi 1y ago

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-urges-end-to-Pig-Butchering-term-cites-harm-to-online-victims https://www.interpol.int/News-and-Events/News/2024/INTERPOL-...

dmix 1y ago
Spending their time wisely I see.
- barbazoo 1y ago
  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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  I agree, meanwhile sometimes words not only describes thinks but influence those using them.

springthorpeca 1y ago

[dead]

infecto 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars which stopped Barbary pirates enslaving US sailors.
Workaccount2 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago

BLKNSLVR 1y ago

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 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 1y ago
Sounds like begging for censorship…
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    I suspect they're saying ISPs doing it would be begging for censorship, not that your project is
    - 1y ago