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Foreign Scammers Use U.S. Banks to Fleece Americans
- thesources 1y ago[dead]
- supportengineer 1y agoI thought that US banks had to know their customers
- unboxingelf 1y agoKYC only hurts law abiding citizens. Criminals just use stolen identities (from breaches of KYC data).
- mouse_ 1y agoGotta love anarcho tyranny
- downrightmike 1y agoI had to look it up: The term "anarcho-tyranny" was coined by writer Sam Francis to describe a situation where a state oppresses citizens' lives but is unable or unwilling to enforce laws that protect them. Francis believed that anarcho-tyranny is built into the managerial system and cannot be solved by voting out incumbents or fighting corruption. He argued that the political left has dominated politics because of a progressive managerial class that has increased state power and bureaucratization, while eroding the power of other authorities. Francis believed that the only way to restore sanity was to devolve power back to law-abiding citizens. Francis also used the term to describe an armed dictatorship without rule of law. Some commentators have used the term to describe situations where governments focus on confiscating weapons instead of stopping looters. Thomas Fleming has described anarcho-tyranny as "law without order" and suggested that people should follow the advice of a boxing referee and protect themselves at all times. But in reality it was the right that was setting us up for failure all this time, going back to at least Reagan as California's governor reducing funding to schools. Then Nixon doubled down.
- tantalor 1y agoThe best defense to scams is to not fall for scams.
- throwaway48476 1y agoThe best defense to scams is maintaining a high trust society.
- mouse_ 1y agoI'm having trouble understanding exactly what it is you're trying to say. Could you elaborate?
- throwaway48476 1y agoFor thousands of years western societies executed or exiled troublemakers. This created the selective pressure that led to high trust society.
- mouse_ 1y agoI don't know what kind of education you were brought up in, but lynch mobs are not cool, actually.
- fallingknife 1y agoThe left has done more damage you our education system by removing standards and getting rid of separate schools for the smartest students than the right ever could by cutting funding. Most recently in California they got rid of calculus class in high school. Meanwhile we continue to increase spending and are near the highest in the world and our education system is trash https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
- downrightmike 1y ago
- throwawayq3423 1y agoThey don't if they don't have to.
- adrr 1y agoDepends on the level of KYC. If you're just doing social and birthdate, its easy to bypass. You could add additional checks like check phone and email which are readily available from data brokers. You could send a physical mail to the address in the credit report with a PIN. It depends on level of the level friction you want your KYC program to go. When I built a KYC at a neobank, we focused more on verifying that you were in the US. We could detect proxies and if you make the signup in a mobile app, you can pin the cert which will stop automated attacks. We relied on fingerprinting devices but a lot of methods don't work due to mobile OS providers cracking down on them.
- coderatlarge 1y agoUS banks are too busy delaying their customers’ ach transfers for days so they can profit from the float to actually solve customer problems and take responsibility for the many societal benefits they enjoy.
- dgfitz 1y agoDon't know if this is true, but I read this a few years ago, top answer: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/se51wb/eli5_ach_deposits_why_do_they_take_so_long/ https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/se51wb/e...
- Tadpole9181 1y agoI've seen a "pay me a few bucks and I'll do it instantly", so pretty sure it's not a technical issue. It's a "we can charge a few bucks if we don't fix it" issue.
- fredfish 1y agoI had a bank VP tell me Bill Clinton fixed the US' deficit by moving tax settling to be immediate on them. The strings of my little fiddle broke.
- quesera 1y agoDefinitely not a technical limitation. ACH clearing (transaction information) happens multiple times per day. Originating bank sends a list of transactions to the clearing house, Receiving bank is notified of transaction pending. ACH settlement (bank-bank funds transfer) happens overnight. Funds from the Originating bank are "rehomed" to the Federal Reserve, and then again to the Receiving bank. This is, obviously, a database update. ACH posting (funds available to customer) happens whenever the Receiving bank feels it's appropriate. Generally, by local close of business on the settlement lot schedule (same day or next day). The receiver may choose to delay posting to customer account if they don't trust the Originator, or the customer, or just for fun. ACH transactions are reversible. This is the reason posting happens as quickly as it does (!), but also the reason posting takes as long as it does.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dfxm12 1y agoThe banks have some responsibility here, and the article brings this up. The banks' response involved saying they can't keep up with volume and shifts blame to social media for some reason. You gotta understand, there's the law, then there's enforcement of laws, then there's punishments for getting caught breaking the law. The banks have done the math. Maybe they've even lobbied to have the penalties/enforcers reduced. It doesn't pay for them to follow this law strictly, so they don't. You'll find this across the legal system. It comes down hard on the poor and marginalized, but gives a lot of grace to the rich, even if at our expense.
- mschuster91 1y agoI've said it before here, I'll say it again: it is high time that our governments follow the money and the scammers. Sanction the source countries of these scams to hell and beyond until they clean up their act and pray in front of us on their knees for forgiveness. And yes, I'd like particularly Narendra Modi to kneel - it's hard to wish anything else after watching more than two Scammer Payback videos. Obviously Indian police is aware of what's going on, he's posted more than enough proof, but mysteriously the callcenters get warned in time and vanish. The US alone loses 158 billion $ each year [1] to scams, the global toll is allegedly around 1 trillion $ [2]. That's fucking insane, this has to stop. [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ftc-states-scams-cost-us-consumers-1583b-one-year-roger-grimes-219ye https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ftc-states-scams-cost-us-cons... [2] 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-...
- throwaway48476 1y agoScamming is a large fraction of GDP in some countries.
- throwawayoldie 1y ago> it is high time that our governments follow the money and the scammers I suspect the reason they don't is many of them know that following the money will lead right to their own front doors.
- coredog64 1y agoEvery dollar in scam damages verified by the FBI is one fewer work visa for anyone from that country. India is now in a hole of 1 billion (or 10,000 lakhs) work visas, and the latter are more valuable than scams.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- SapporoChris 1y agohttps://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/ The US GDP is more than 27 trillion. If 158 billion is being lost. That's about .6% of the GDP. So, my question is, why does this have to stop? If it is stopped the benefits to the global population seems trivial. I'm sure at the individual level it is devastating. Good luck getting the national government to care about such a small percent.
- jmclnx 1y ago>A huge portion of such fraud is transacted in cryptocurrency. Yet another reason to avoid cryptocurrency, until that is 100% fully regulated, I will always avoid it. One of the biggest reason is every tom, dick or harry is creating their own cryptocurrency these days. Including the dummy in charge of the US :)
- bapak 1y agoI don't see how this is relevant at all and not just a rant about something you don't like. People are asked to buy and send crypto, they're not the same people who know what crypto is.
- darth_avocado 1y agoA much bigger portion of the scam economy relies on gift cards than on crypto, yet we seem to be completely okay with gift cards.
- csense 1y ago> In October, the U.K. began requiring banks to reimburse scam victims up to £85,000, or about $116,000, per claim when they make a fraudulent payment on behalf of their customers, even if the customers authorized the transfer. How does the bank verify the scammer and the "victim" aren't colluding? I.e. Mal opens a bank account with $100k, it gets cleaned out when he's "scammed" by Eve, then Mal is reimbursed $100k. Mal & Eve collectively start with $100k, and end up with $200k. (This is why I put "victim" in quotes: In this scenario, Eve and Mal are co-conspirators trying to defraud the scam reimbursement system.)
- nikanj 1y agohttps://xkcd.com/1494/ https://xkcd.com/1494/
- fallingknife 1y agoBut in practice it's not like that. Roofing scams recently destabilized the entire homeowners insurance market in Florida https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/roofing-scams-florida-property-insurance-hurricane-rcna29649 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/roofing-scams-florida-p...
- hombre_fatal 1y agoFwiw the word “colluding” already describes why victim was emphasized.
- rafram 1y agoYeah, but the scammer could also just walk into the bank and pass the teller a note telling them to hand over all the money in the drawer. They'd do it! But it would be theft and the scammer would be arrested, just like if they did what you're suggesting.
- weird-eye-issue 1y agoIt's cute if you really think that These days you can open bank accounts completely online with fraudulent info You can even open bank accounts from countries on the other side of the world. How will they arrest you, exactly?
- busterarm 1y agoIf you pick the right credit union, your experience will truly be so much better. Even one as big as NFCU. I've never looked back since switching.
- seatac76 1y agoSo pig butchering based out of SEA is now the dominant scam form? It’s crazy how quickly this came to dominate the landscape.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoProbably having AI increases the efficiency of this operation substantially, since it is heavily personalized and requires a lot of long term, non-paying effort on the part of the scammer . Either from directly replying to messages, or from automatically developing dossiers from victims social media profiles so you know what topics get them going.
- os2warpman 1y agoThis is an earnest request. Please help me understand the mindset of people who fall for pig butchering scams. The thought of giving money to a stranger who I met via a dating app or other social media platform who shifted the conversation to WeChat and asked me to wire money to a bank account is so incomprehensible to me that the mind of someone who would do that is entirely different to how mine is constructed physically, chemically, and electrically to such a degree that it is difficult for me to even believe that it exists. I am not even particularly financially literate. In college. I barely scraped by my statistics class, took no finance or business classes, and the only formal financial literacy education I have ever received was a single one hour course given to me by the US Army in late 2001 when they announced the TSP (401k for military) was coming where the only takeaways were “compounding interest is magic” and “put your money into a retirement account and don’t look at it until you’re a decade out from retirement”. To me, believing an unsolicited stranger who is offering you an investment opportunity like what pig butchering scams are will make you rich is the same exact thing as walking out of a rundown gas station that also sells nunchucks, bongs, and ninja throwing stars with a little baggie of pills that have a tiger on the label thinking that they’ll turn you a super sex machine. Is it desperation? Profound financial illiteracy that exceeds mine by several orders of magnitude?
- rectang 1y agoPlease help me to understand the urge to blame pig butchering on pigs rather than on butchers.
- nemomarx 1y agoThey butter you up for a long while before they get to the offer - that's the distinction from normal scams. They act as a friend and confidant for weeks, maybe flirt, and when the pig is "raised" they move to the slaughtering process so it's not a stranger, it's "your close online friend says they have a good retirement fund and it might do better than yours, would you try it out?"
- hedora 1y agoIf you target 100,000 people, a 0.01% response rate ends up being a lot of money.
- skeezyboy 1y ago[dead]
- tempodox 1y agoOn the side of the banks, whatever happened to KYC?
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- danielodievich 1y agoThe Economist's Scam Inc podcast (mentioned elsewhere in this discussion too) has fascinating (and very troubling) insights into this. I have sons heading to college this and next year and I have tried to prepare them for the world of scamming that exists out there. I sure hope I've done enough. Just a few minutes ago I had a scam text that pig butchering begins. I typically delete them immediately but this time just to see what happens I wrote back in several languages aggressively counter-offering to teach them how to buy crypto. I got a puzzled response, then a picture of a waifish asian woman on restaraunt balcony, I think it's AI generated, but it doesn't matter, and then after me clearly not biting a "Fuck you". I wrote "I feel for you doing pig butchering, but its not going to work here", translated it to Chinese and sent that, and got back another "Fuck you", this time in Chinese. ... Now that I typed this out, I realize this was kind of pointless exchange
- alyandon 1y agoYou wasted their time delaying them moving on to someone else. Mission accomplished.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dghlsakjg 1y agoYour kids are far more likely to fall for dumb shit their friends talk them into than random texts. They will be, or already have been, exposed to people telling them that crypto/leveraged day trading/AI/whatever is the shortcut to wealth. That will likely be their peers, or the people (podcasters) that have high status amongst their peers, and is a much more insidious problem. That's what will get them into trouble.
- busterarm 1y agoI hate online scammers to my core -- weird reason too. A guy I knew back in high school was notorious for falling for 419 type scams all the time. His brothers would constantly dunk on him for being scammed online. It was like 7, 8, 9 times... Years later he was caught on TV by Chris Hansen and charged. Went to prison. That recontextualized everything. He wasn't falling for scams -- that was a fiction to cover the fact that he was being repeatedly blackmailed by people who caught on to his activities online. It makes me extremely angry to think that people knew what he was up to and let him continue just so they could keep getting evidence against him to blackmail him again and again. Fucking furious, honestly.
- djoldman 1y agoAMLKYC always seemed obviously backward or ridiculous to me. The fact that banks are essentially tasked with enforcing laws is... a crutch to say the least. Analogies are by definition imperfect but: 1. why not point the finger at ATT and Verizon for allowing phone calls and IP packets that facilitated crime? 2. toll road owners, car/truck manufacturers, UPS, USPS, should they be tasked with "knowing" more about their customers? All this just ends up blaming the victim and doesn't really fix the problem while having massive collateral damage like folks having their bank accounts closed for no good reason and causing real losses to actual businesses. What's the solution? I'm not sure. Perhaps it begins with holding countries more to account for the actions of their resident criminals.
- throwaway48476 1y agoThis is what happens when a high trust society suddenly comes into contact with a low trust society. The systems that worked fine can't keep up with the scale of fraud.
- dfxm12 1y agoThe government gives plenty of help to banks. I don't think their role here is unreasonable. The solution is to tighten/enforce regulations around bank accounts & make the penalties mean something. Two wrongs don't make a right. If you see something, say something. If you think telecoms are doing something wrong, write to the FCC. Bring up SIM hijacking for me. If you think toll road owners are doing something wrong, bring it up with them and maybe the FHWA.
- throwaway48476 1y agoThis will continue to happen until all foreign transactions are insured and reversible.
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- alhusainhadadn 1y ago[dead]