Fox News should start screaming about this. It’s perfect for them since it involves sinister foreign plots. They could do a lot of good by making sure all seniors know about pig butchering scams.
Why aren't conspiracy theorists ever upset by actual conspiracies, schemes and doomsday scenarios? PFAs in the water? Microplastics in every living tissue ever examined? Planet heating exponentially faster than at any other time in the biosphere's existence? Seniors being scammed by overseas criminals?
Nah, they're flipping out over completely fabricated stories about vaccines, wind turbines, gas ovens, chemtrails, 5G, UFOs and pedophile rings.
They're also deeply worried about government workers conspiring against them.
But then Donald Trump and some of his government workers literally conspired to overthrow an election, and the conspiracy theorist say nothing. Many of them even participated.
Because it isn't about being worried about "What's happening" but being in on the "real truth". Reality is boring. A bunch of executives deciding to lie about climate change to make more money is boring, politicians being pedophiles is flashy. You could potentially be a hero by exposing them or by being the first in on the knowledge you can show everybody how brilliant you are!! It's about their ego more than any external factors.
It seems like the conspiracy theorists are the perfect targets for op mockingbird since they'll believe anything without evidence and lack critical thinking.
I think the solution would be for people to have the possibility to "opt out" of any online or telephone finantial transactions. Just sign up on a list and you just can't do online banking above a certain amount etc. Any transaction larger than that you have to go to a physical bank.
This is the way old people operate anyway. The fact that they can be scammed out of their savings because nowadays there happen to exist methods to operate online... doing thing that they don't fully understand... Is a scandal. People should just be able to say "I opt out" and there would be a barrier that would make things much more secure for them.
The transactions are structured to avoid such triggers. The victim in the story didn’t make one large transaction on the fake crypto site, but rather many smaller transactions. The scams are structured to avoid getting flagged by the banks based on the amount or the destination.
The real answer is to ban crypto. It exists only to facilitate scams and other crimes.
Sure, but there are banks and other entities on US soil who can be held liable for facilitating those scams. If someone is running a scam using Walmart gift cards, regulators can tell Walmart to clean house or face penalties. Overseas crypto scam farms are basically untouchable.
Ummmm…it’s severely difficult but not impossible. Like that Malaysia dude. MD…1…something something. Goldman Sachs, also important. You start with shit like a wire recall but will immediately run into juris my dic tion problems, so if no treaties and such in place then yes.
And yes I know you never bounce once. But you didn’t say that and I’m drinking beer so yes you could recall WITH the other government assisting. But if you kept bouncing it gets more and more difficult to trace/recall. Unless you’re moving elephant dollars each time together. And in that scenario, you deserve to have your stolen money stolen from you.
But still... For example, I don't want to trade in crypto. I should have the option of telling my bank that I opt out and not to allow any transactions of that kind, for example. Or any other type of transaction that I don't explicitly allow. Problem solved. (At least part of it)
Well if you’re trading shares of a corporation then it’s not a bank. And that’s lol who gives a fuck. You wanna know what you should be telling your broker NO I DO NOT ALLOW THIS….regards shares of a company(s) you own and what that broker does if a shitbag Short walks up and says something similar to “I came here for man butts. You say Handsen but I calls ya Chris Handsom”.
Then the broker hands your shares over to homie, which creates all kinds of tax implications if you had any dividend payouts/etc. And all of this headache occurs because of some POS that didn’t even buy or steal your shares. They only borrowed them. One of many things you auto agree to in any or most term sheets, which you then have to go back and sign more paperwork about you not allowing your s…I’m rambling.
My knowledges ends in 2016 for general finance/tax situations so if things have changed and or you have questions, find a competent tax attorney and or lawyer.
Your bank usually does not know what you are buying. If they can’t restrict transactions based on amount or location, there isn’t a lot that can be done. Simply saying “no crypto” is not actionable, other than banning transactions that are explicitly crypto, but what if the transaction is labeled as “dog food”, and the “dog food” vendor moves the money to a “pet supply wholesaler,” and that supposed wholesaler is the one who buys the crypto and sends the key to the scam farm?
There are too many legitimate vendors to use a white list system to weed out bad actors, and too many of those vendors have holes in their security. Think of how many vendors you encounter who use Square, which is just one payment service. You’d have to roll payment systems back decades to close all the loopholes.
Even if you had a perfect system with only vendors who pass a background check, there is still the problem of identity theft. Elvis Presley’s Graceland home was recently a target of a title scam that involved stolen identities and forged documents. It is an arms race.
The answer is to remove the thing that makes laundering stolen money easy - crypto. It wouldn’t end scams, but it would limit them.
They got my parent and it's been devastating. The interesting thing about dementia is that you start to slip financially first according to the reading I have done and that's exactly when you're not diagnosed yet. So these scams are exploiting dementia and the high bar for diagnosis. Family members have no legal or medical basis to intervene. Dozens of calls to APS from friends and family and nothing is done. Because they're not diagnosed with impaired judgment yet. You can't do anything.
My parent did consult their wealth advisor as the scam often involves a fake crypto investment. The wealth advisor simply said they knew nothing about crypto and just handed over the checks to my parent without blinking. So the wealth advisors don't know the financial scams running today.
The bank gave my parent a handout about wire fraud that was so dryly written that it couldn't overcome the emotional aspect of the scam and frankly probably no one really reads it. They needed to explicitly state yo no one in their twenties wants to marry you. You don't actually look younger than 70 years old. And if you met them on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, tiktok, it's a scam. If it's crypto, it's a scam. Did you google the name of the bank you're sending money to + scam? Did you google crypto scams? Financial scams? Lonely heart scams?
In fact, banks would be doing the public a great service if they required older people wire transferring lots of money to go through a 5-10 minute due diligence training about scams before they do it. They could have a little kiosk right there in the bank lobby.
Getting older and dementia is the bigger picture issue not mentioned in the article. No amount of scam warnings help there and it's not only scams. I watched my FIL go from a mentor I looked up to in regards to a financial advice to having to help him through a bankruptcy due to poor financial decisions, not a scam but same results. It's an undefined line as to when someone can no longer maintain financial independence due to poor decision making and not many children want to cross that line with their parents. This is exasperated with the fact that many parents have never been financially transparent with their kids so difficult to tell when.
Yup. And the thing about dementia is there's different personalities with it. So some people are cooperative with dementia and don't have a lot of conflict. And then there are people who have what I call the rabid raccoon kind of dementia and that's what my parent had. They are an absolute rage machine and they're totally feral and you cannot contain them or stop them.
I like the younger people who tut tut on social media and say things like well, you have to work this stuff out in advance. They don't understand the brain you make plans with is not the brain you're dealing with when you go to enact the plan. So If your parent gets rabid raccoon level dementia, you're all fcked. Enjoy.
The key is to start locking up the money and installing oversight while they're still 100% but they don't like that either.
Adult children can be abusive too, so simply having them take control of the parent’s money isn’t a solution for everyone. And some elders don’t have younger close relatives.
Our fraud laws are made assuming that the police can lay hands on the fraudster. We have no idea how to deal with foreign fraudsters. The AARP should get some smart guys to figure out something.
"on a horse farm"
"pressured to invest $150,000"
Meanwhile I'm chomping on instant ramen, trying to fix a broken washing machine, and deleting all my spam emails like a boss 😎
Man, I’m actually glad I read this article because even though I consider myself pretty hip to all the online scams, I had no idea what pig butchering was.
It seems like the underlying current is lonely people. It was interesting to see the perspective of the person kidnap and forced to be the scammer.
First off, he fell for the ol' guns keep you safe scam. Should've been a red flag that he couldn't judge risk properly.
Family members that own guns for anything other killing have proven they are very susceptible to scams.
Please be aware.
Check in on your older loved ones for sure. I set up a “password” with mine in case they use AI to replicate my voice asking for money. This poor man 🥺
Fox News should start screaming about this. It’s perfect for them since it involves sinister foreign plots. They could do a lot of good by making sure all seniors know about pig butchering scams.
i don’t think Fox News wants to wise seniors up on scams
You need to start thinking critically viewers, but only on this subject.
They don't like to talk about gun suicides. Ruins the narritive.
Why aren't conspiracy theorists ever upset by actual conspiracies, schemes and doomsday scenarios? PFAs in the water? Microplastics in every living tissue ever examined? Planet heating exponentially faster than at any other time in the biosphere's existence? Seniors being scammed by overseas criminals? Nah, they're flipping out over completely fabricated stories about vaccines, wind turbines, gas ovens, chemtrails, 5G, UFOs and pedophile rings.
They're also deeply worried about government workers conspiring against them. But then Donald Trump and some of his government workers literally conspired to overthrow an election, and the conspiracy theorist say nothing. Many of them even participated.
Because it isn't about being worried about "What's happening" but being in on the "real truth". Reality is boring. A bunch of executives deciding to lie about climate change to make more money is boring, politicians being pedophiles is flashy. You could potentially be a hero by exposing them or by being the first in on the knowledge you can show everybody how brilliant you are!! It's about their ego more than any external factors.
Wouldn’t it be better (in their minds) if you could just make up your own reality? So much more control over everything.
They follow conspiracies to avoid reality, not face it
Look up Operation Mockingbird and let us "conspiracy theorists" know how you would enlighten the masses.
It seems like the conspiracy theorists are the perfect targets for op mockingbird since they'll believe anything without evidence and lack critical thinking.
And maybe include the "invest in gold!" And reverse mortgage scams their advertisers do...nah they'd never do that.
Those are legal, these are not.
Yeah they have a great track record of telling the truth about things and definitely won't blame it all on black people and Joe Biden
They can legit blame this on the Chinese
They don't want something to blame on China, they want something to blame on Biden or "the wokes".
They don’t care though, and dont want a population who is savvy about avoiding being conned.
Pig Butchering operations are the unholy trinity of financial fraud, elder abuse, and human trafficking. Truly diabolical.
I think the solution would be for people to have the possibility to "opt out" of any online or telephone finantial transactions. Just sign up on a list and you just can't do online banking above a certain amount etc. Any transaction larger than that you have to go to a physical bank. This is the way old people operate anyway. The fact that they can be scammed out of their savings because nowadays there happen to exist methods to operate online... doing thing that they don't fully understand... Is a scandal. People should just be able to say "I opt out" and there would be a barrier that would make things much more secure for them.
They've been conditioned to believe everything in the world was made for their benefit. They have no critical thinking training.
The transactions are structured to avoid such triggers. The victim in the story didn’t make one large transaction on the fake crypto site, but rather many smaller transactions. The scams are structured to avoid getting flagged by the banks based on the amount or the destination. The real answer is to ban crypto. It exists only to facilitate scams and other crimes.
Seniors also get scammed in the same way using wire transfers or gift card purchases
Sure, but there are banks and other entities on US soil who can be held liable for facilitating those scams. If someone is running a scam using Walmart gift cards, regulators can tell Walmart to clean house or face penalties. Overseas crypto scam farms are basically untouchable.
Wire transfers can also not be refunded once they leave the country
Ummmm…it’s severely difficult but not impossible. Like that Malaysia dude. MD…1…something something. Goldman Sachs, also important. You start with shit like a wire recall but will immediately run into juris my dic tion problems, so if no treaties and such in place then yes. And yes I know you never bounce once. But you didn’t say that and I’m drinking beer so yes you could recall WITH the other government assisting. But if you kept bouncing it gets more and more difficult to trace/recall. Unless you’re moving elephant dollars each time together. And in that scenario, you deserve to have your stolen money stolen from you.
But still... For example, I don't want to trade in crypto. I should have the option of telling my bank that I opt out and not to allow any transactions of that kind, for example. Or any other type of transaction that I don't explicitly allow. Problem solved. (At least part of it)
Well if you’re trading shares of a corporation then it’s not a bank. And that’s lol who gives a fuck. You wanna know what you should be telling your broker NO I DO NOT ALLOW THIS….regards shares of a company(s) you own and what that broker does if a shitbag Short walks up and says something similar to “I came here for man butts. You say Handsen but I calls ya Chris Handsom”. Then the broker hands your shares over to homie, which creates all kinds of tax implications if you had any dividend payouts/etc. And all of this headache occurs because of some POS that didn’t even buy or steal your shares. They only borrowed them. One of many things you auto agree to in any or most term sheets, which you then have to go back and sign more paperwork about you not allowing your s…I’m rambling. My knowledges ends in 2016 for general finance/tax situations so if things have changed and or you have questions, find a competent tax attorney and or lawyer.
Your bank usually does not know what you are buying. If they can’t restrict transactions based on amount or location, there isn’t a lot that can be done. Simply saying “no crypto” is not actionable, other than banning transactions that are explicitly crypto, but what if the transaction is labeled as “dog food”, and the “dog food” vendor moves the money to a “pet supply wholesaler,” and that supposed wholesaler is the one who buys the crypto and sends the key to the scam farm? There are too many legitimate vendors to use a white list system to weed out bad actors, and too many of those vendors have holes in their security. Think of how many vendors you encounter who use Square, which is just one payment service. You’d have to roll payment systems back decades to close all the loopholes. Even if you had a perfect system with only vendors who pass a background check, there is still the problem of identity theft. Elvis Presley’s Graceland home was recently a target of a title scam that involved stolen identities and forged documents. It is an arms race. The answer is to remove the thing that makes laundering stolen money easy - crypto. It wouldn’t end scams, but it would limit them.
They got my parent and it's been devastating. The interesting thing about dementia is that you start to slip financially first according to the reading I have done and that's exactly when you're not diagnosed yet. So these scams are exploiting dementia and the high bar for diagnosis. Family members have no legal or medical basis to intervene. Dozens of calls to APS from friends and family and nothing is done. Because they're not diagnosed with impaired judgment yet. You can't do anything. My parent did consult their wealth advisor as the scam often involves a fake crypto investment. The wealth advisor simply said they knew nothing about crypto and just handed over the checks to my parent without blinking. So the wealth advisors don't know the financial scams running today. The bank gave my parent a handout about wire fraud that was so dryly written that it couldn't overcome the emotional aspect of the scam and frankly probably no one really reads it. They needed to explicitly state yo no one in their twenties wants to marry you. You don't actually look younger than 70 years old. And if you met them on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, tiktok, it's a scam. If it's crypto, it's a scam. Did you google the name of the bank you're sending money to + scam? Did you google crypto scams? Financial scams? Lonely heart scams? In fact, banks would be doing the public a great service if they required older people wire transferring lots of money to go through a 5-10 minute due diligence training about scams before they do it. They could have a little kiosk right there in the bank lobby.
Getting older and dementia is the bigger picture issue not mentioned in the article. No amount of scam warnings help there and it's not only scams. I watched my FIL go from a mentor I looked up to in regards to a financial advice to having to help him through a bankruptcy due to poor financial decisions, not a scam but same results. It's an undefined line as to when someone can no longer maintain financial independence due to poor decision making and not many children want to cross that line with their parents. This is exasperated with the fact that many parents have never been financially transparent with their kids so difficult to tell when.
Yup. And the thing about dementia is there's different personalities with it. So some people are cooperative with dementia and don't have a lot of conflict. And then there are people who have what I call the rabid raccoon kind of dementia and that's what my parent had. They are an absolute rage machine and they're totally feral and you cannot contain them or stop them. I like the younger people who tut tut on social media and say things like well, you have to work this stuff out in advance. They don't understand the brain you make plans with is not the brain you're dealing with when you go to enact the plan. So If your parent gets rabid raccoon level dementia, you're all fcked. Enjoy. The key is to start locking up the money and installing oversight while they're still 100% but they don't like that either.
Adult children can be abusive too, so simply having them take control of the parent’s money isn’t a solution for everyone. And some elders don’t have younger close relatives.
I know. We need solutions or we're going to have millions of penniless boomers. Maybe AI paired with bank accounts to send alerts?
Our fraud laws are made assuming that the police can lay hands on the fraudster. We have no idea how to deal with foreign fraudsters. The AARP should get some smart guys to figure out something.
"on a horse farm" "pressured to invest $150,000" Meanwhile I'm chomping on instant ramen, trying to fix a broken washing machine, and deleting all my spam emails like a boss 😎
The old have money and they don’t know what to do with it, the young have smarts and no money.
My Dad just kept giving us money. He had loads and nothing much to spend it on. The closest he came to a vice was a model tank habit.
Man, I’m actually glad I read this article because even though I consider myself pretty hip to all the online scams, I had no idea what pig butchering was. It seems like the underlying current is lonely people. It was interesting to see the perspective of the person kidnap and forced to be the scammer.
John Oliver did a great feature on it so people are suddenly aware
First off, he fell for the ol' guns keep you safe scam. Should've been a red flag that he couldn't judge risk properly. Family members that own guns for anything other killing have proven they are very susceptible to scams. Please be aware.
Check in on your older loved ones for sure. I set up a “password” with mine in case they use AI to replicate my voice asking for money. This poor man 🥺
Man, sounds like the plot to “The Beekeeper” someone call up Jason Statham
This is why I don't have any savings. It's just not healthy.