Tell me about common cons/scams: "Thanks, you suck. Hello, this is Linda."

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about common cons/scams: "Thanks, you suck. Hello, this is Linda."

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greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

You can always just start a cancer charity, spin it off into four branches, fill it with family members, raise more than $180 million over four years and then spend 97% of the money on salaries and personal expenses: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/19/us/scam-charity-investigation/ In what the FTC is calling an "historic decision", these people will pay the huge penalty of having their businesses shut down and they'll have to do a lot of paperwork and the government could maybe, in the end, collect about a million in fine money out of them.

There are small-time sympathy-scammers as well, who create fake online identities and exploit the trust and generosity of other people living with or supporting people with various diseases: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/18/cancer-cons-phoney-accidents-fake-deaths-internet-hoax-buster-taryn-wright

# ¿ Mar 20, 2016 11:34

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:57

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

You win the money, everyone stands up and claps and as you walk back to your car a couple of dude's homies jump you and teach you a lesson about messing with crooks.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 23:42

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

BiggerBoat posted:

Off the subject, but I love caper/con men/double cross movies (House of Games, Matchstick Men, Oceans Eleven, Hard Eight, The Sting, etc.). Can anyone recommend some good con man/scam movies?

Big Deal at Dodge City. It's been a long time and it's a slow burner (and I may have had a fever), but it fits the bill.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2016 00:10

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

photomikey posted:

It's tax free, so in the US, they're already making 30% more than someone with a job. Seriously, what would one make slogging away at minimum wage? $9/hr? Over an 8 hour day, $72 and then uncle sam takes $15 or $20, you walk with $55 or so?

I have seen a single homeless guy take donations from more than one car in a particular light cycle. Even if you figured a buck a donor, one donor a cycle, that light cycles every 3 minutes, so 20 cycles an hour... you're already doing triple to post-tax minimum wage. It is not hard for me to believe that you could exist better begging than you could working. Perhaps living in a mansion is a stretch, but living in a nicer apartment than the guy manning the drive through window of the fast-food joint you're standing in front of... doesn't seem far fetched at all.

There is a parallel A/T thread right now "ask me about hitchhiking" which turns out to not be about hitchhiking at all but about how much better it is not to be one of society's sheep and to be a free spirit and how many drugs one person can choke down while being homeless.

Just imagine if we all gave a dollar a day to our local city or state government so that people who were genuinely destitute could just have a place to sleep and a permanent address. Then at stoplights we could say, "I pay my tax, just go to the local shelter and they'll take care of you" and not have to worry about anything cos people who need help would be all right. :bern101:

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 23:13

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

You can afford an extra dollar a day for everybody who doesn't have a place to sleep in your town.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 23:57

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

No! The only people who use libraries or roads or beds are cheats and thieves! I read a newspaper article once!

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 00:18

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

In Dublin, the rental market was really loving crazy in 2003-2004. To get a place, you typically had to show up with first & last in cash and be ready to hand it over and sign the lease on the spot to get keys. None of this, "I'll think about it and call you first thing in the morning" (I found out the hard way about this). But obviously this just leaves people open to all kinds of rip-off artists, like the guy who rented his apartment to 9 different couples who all showed up with working keys and rental agreements on the first of the month. He had gotten about �4000 from each of them.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 20:27

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

There should be fake credit card numbers you can give to scammers that secretly notify the police when they're used.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 20:09

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

BeigeJacket posted:

These MLM things seem uniquely American. I've never seen them in the UK, and always have been left confused by Amway jokes in movies and TV.

Here's a 1-2-3 part article that shows just how loving crazy the USA is for MLMs. It's depressing as poo poo (will probably just amuse you though as a non-American).

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 23:36

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

I have friends who worked for Google ad support and they tell me that every time they changed their algorithm hundreds of Herbalife zombies would call up screaming about how they were ruining their life and going to cost them their house and poo poo like that. Fortunately there was lots of upward mobility at that time or it would have been unbearably grim.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2016 00:29

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Lutha Mahtin posted:

was there an invoice attached? don't leave us hanging!!

I almost got a virus from opening an "invoice." Somebody finally got lucky matching vendors and institutional email addresses: everyone at my school (teachers and staff) started getting mails about unpaid bills to the local book store. Our admin is really loving bad at paying bills and I've been confronted with 9mo bills when I've gone to the shop in the past. I swore and clicked it without thinking but fortunately Gmail saved me.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2016 06:44

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

My sister is totally into one of the pharma/health MLMs and is constantly instagramming and facebooking and generally working it. I still don't believe she makes any money, I think she just loves the attention and that she thinks people think she is making money. She got our other sister involved and the new one posted on FB last week how easy it was and she didn't even have to do that much work, leading to a smackdown from sister #1 telling everyone that it was only because she gave sis #2 her best customer: our mom.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2016 23:01

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

PT6A posted:

I've been getting a lot of "FedEx" emails saying that my parcel could not be delivered and would I please open this ZIP that has all the shipping details?

Who the gently caress falls for that poo poo?

I also got a text message telling me my CIBC bank account had suspicious activity on it, and I should go to a dubious-looking .co.uk link to "fix" it. I don't have an account with CIBC and one of the C's stands for "Canadian." How the gently caress do people fall for this garbage?

Well, in the first case, people who ship a lot of stuff with FedEx. If you spam 15 million people, some of them will fit the profile and then some of those people will have had a problem recently and open the file. Like I said earlier, it almost happened to me when spammers guessed a company I had used and my school's admin had a history of not paying invoices even after I'd submitted them two or three times. I went to open the file in a "what the gently caress is it this time" way because the scenario was just so familiar and they had actually spoofed the email address properly.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2016 06:49

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Oh, boy, what a totally legit email!

Is she still using her Yahoo account? Or is she using the University of Missouri again?

# ¿ Aug 13, 2017 05:36

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

BiggerBoat posted:

No one's spoken about Amway and MLM in a while but, skimming the thread, I've noticed some people actually say that they "know a friend who made $xx,xxx. He showed me a check". to which I say, no. No he or she did not.

You may have seen a check for say $10,000 but what they're not telling you is that it's not net profit and that they bought $9,000 worth of bullshit that month/year/whatever. I have a real hard on for MLM's and those that get wrapped in it, similar to mega churches and faith healers. They grind my gears and piss me off.

You should check out USANA The Cellular Nutrition Company. My sister's into them big time and it makes me so mad when she shills for their woo woo crap (she's a pharmacist, fer chrissake).

I've heard they make OK products, vitamins, supplements, skin creams, hair products, etc., but they mark them way up and then do this direct sales shite rather than just selling their stuff in stores. It combines bullshit medical fantasy cell rejuvenation bullshit with buying stock (at a discount!!!) to badger your friends and family with. They've got the aspirational health + wealth market on absolute lock and it is sickening. You see, "MOST ASSOCIATES JOIN SIMPLY TO IMPROVE THEIR HEALTH AND PURCHASE PRODUCTS AT A DISCOUNT (pdf)," so really, not everyone wants to make a lot of money, no no no... you can do that though if you work really hard and are a good person and really believe in yourself (I guess).

So how much can you make? From the pdf linked above:

So you order your stock at a "discount", then you can charge your friends and family whatever you want, and if you really want to lock in the "savings", you'll get your stock on auto-order so you have a massive inventory to unload on everyone you ever talk to. Listen to these amazing success stories! (Also check out the elegant site structure: https://www.usana.com/dotCom/opportunity/stories lol

quote:

Tracy Wenkman
Florida, USA
Since joining USANA in July 2011, Tracy Wenkman has defined herself as one of the company�s finest leaders. Not only did she earn the prestigious �Rookie of the Year� award in 2012, Tracy has rank advanced multiple times, been a repeat member of USANA�s North America Growth 25, has served on USANA�s Independent Distributor Council, and is consistently one of USANA�s Top Preferred Customer Enrollers.

Tracy admits before USANA she was never one to speak in front of big crowds, but she now loves the challenge and opportunity to share her knowledge and experience with everyone she meets, one on one or with thousands.

Experiencing all of this success only a few short years after starting a USANA business has been so rewarding for Tracy, and it proves that hard work leads to positive results. �Even though it takes serious time and dedication, I�m so thankful to have this as my job,� she says. �I wouldn�t trade helping people experience success in both their businesses and their lives for anything in the world.�

Look her up, BB! I'm sure she'd love to help you experience success in both your business and your life!!!

quote:

Anna and Yvan Lozano
Ontario, Canada
Anna Lozano understood that for things to change, she needed to change, and USANA was ready to help her gain the better life she had always wanted.

Since the very beginning, Anna has had big dreams for her USANA business. In the few years that she has been with USANA, she has already excelled beyond what she ever imagined. She is passionate about the opportunity for better health and financial independence, and her success with USANA has given her a reason to be excited about life again.

Anna believes that USANA makes it easy because the company operates with integrity and quality. Everything, from the award-winning products down to the sales tools, helps her succeed. With USANA�s help, Anna is ready to continue making a difference. �I want to inspire and empower as many people as possible around the world to live their best life in optimal health and financial freedom,� she says. �Thank you USANA for changing our lives forever!�

These people are experiencing so much success it just can't be quantified in any way. But they definitely have a lot of it! It's just so amazingly wonderful and all you have to do is pay the $29.99 to become an associate so that you yes you can take advantage of these truly amazing products that just can't be sold in stores for some reason and if you want to really profit, you'll order a bunch of them and also buy the wonderful sales and marketing materials they generously offer at very reasonable prices or if you want to really succeed why not attend one of the $400 Usana events where you get pepped up (and also buy more books and crap) and really get empowered to start making your dreams come true!

ed: just did the maths on the earnings table. Out of 42,549 people, there are 35 making over 200k, 51 making 100-200k, 89 making 50-100k, and 234 making 20-50k. BUT MOST PEOPLE JOIN JUST TO BE HEALTHY so those numbers are totally OK and not indicative of a loving brutal scam.

greazeball fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Aug 16, 2017

# ¿ Aug 16, 2017 21:47

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

MANime in the sheets posted:

This is why my mom stopped donating to MADD. As far as she can tell, they spend nearly everything they get from donations on soliciting more of them.

According to Charity Navigator, they spend about 25% on fundraising and 10% on admin so only 65% goes to the program which is pretty poor IMO for an org with revenue of $35 million/year.

Thanatosian posted:

I hate the "charities" that call, ask for a random common name, and then when told they have the wrong number, say "oh, well maybe you can help me..". They inevitably have hella generic names, usually involving veterans or firefighters.

Don't forget children and the police!

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 13:37

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Fil5000 posted:

Is that top one spending nearly 97% of its revenue on raising revenue?

Only 90! Program expenses are what they're raising the funds for and what you want >80% of the expenses to be. Those guys spend 91 cents to raise one dollar and then spend less than 6 cents of that dollar on sherrifs or policemen

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 14:16

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Rusty Shackelford posted:

Program expenses are how much they spend to operate, which is separate from how much they spend to raise funds. That top "charity" only has about 3% left over after their total expenses.

No, there's a separate category for administration. The table is only comparing fundraising to program expenses, which they define as the percent of the charity's total expenses spent on the programs and services it delivers. These guys actually have a great score for admin expenses! :classiclol:

If you click the image in my first post, you can click through the links there for all the stats on each one.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 21:07

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Lutha Mahtin posted:

ah yes, Charity Navigator. the organization that is a thinly-veiled attempt to push a single, narrow, ideological standard as the only way to discuss nonprofits

It's far from perfect, but is has collected and compared financial records for hundreds if not thousands of charities so they can be compared in a consistent manner. I don't think their accountability and transparency metrics are the best but just for getting basic info I use it a lot. What other sites should I be checking when I want to look into a charity (genuine question, I'm trying to donate more and I do check places out)?

# ¿ Sep 2, 2017 23:16

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

I don't, personally. But I see that I presented it that way. Thanks for the article. To your point, there are no immutable laws of how to run a charity so evaluation will always be done on subjective criteria no matter who does it. They do seem to be pretty clear about what their criteria are though so if you get to know them you learn how to look through their reports to find what you're looking for. And in cases like the image I posted in the thread, they make it obvious just how lovely some charities are being.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2017 02:27

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

stringball posted:

The Wikipedia page on it left me very confused before I asked this, thank you!

£147 seems like a lot of loving money to watch TV, why is it so expensive or even needed?

Because there are no ads on BBC TV or Radio, only some promotion of BBC content between shows.

edit since this was already answered:

Not only does this mean the programmes are longer, and that they will play full films without breaks, it also affects programme development. The point of a show on a US TV network is to bring viewers in to watch ads, so you want the show to run for as long as possible. The point of a show on the BBC (there are commercial networks that compete with them, they're not all license fee supported) is to provide value to the license fee payers, so the emphasis is (theoretically) on good storytelling with pre-determined conclusions, since you're usually only signed for a few episodes of a drama series.

I'll also add that in Switzerland our license fee is over $400/year and we still have commercials and very little original content. :11tea:

greazeball fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Sep 5, 2017

# ¿ Sep 5, 2017 17:22

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

I guess there's a new chatbot that you can use to waste email scammers' time? I could swear there already was one of these. With this one, you just forward any email you think is a scam to me@rescam.org and it'll set up a proxy address and start sending interested, gullible, incompetent messages. I think you can choose to get updates from the email thread, but the FAQ was a bit hazy on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPajqAJWiNA

https://www.rescam.org/

# ¿ Nov 12, 2017 10:33

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

I mean, obviously you have to just take them at their word but this is the group that runs the chatbot:

quote:

After noticing the growing influence of technology in their respective areas, the New Zealand Police, Ministry of Education and several not for profits teamed up with telecommunication organisations and IT industry partners to create an independent body focussed on online safety.

Together they created the Internet Safety Group (rebranded Netsafe in 2008).

# ¿ Nov 12, 2017 20:03

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

So long as people are motivated by feeling like they got a better deal than someone else, we're all going to get the worst deal that sellers can give us:

quote:

If the marketplace was a war between buyers and sellers, the 19th-century French sociologist Gabriel Tarde wrote, then price was a truce. And the practice of setting a fixed price for a good or a service�which took hold in the 1860s�meant, in effect, a cessation of the perpetual state of hostility known as haggling.

As in any truce, each party surrendered something in this bargain. Buyers were forced to accept, or not accept, the one price imposed by the price tag (an invention credited to the retail pioneer John Wanamaker). What retailers ceded�the ability to exploit customers� varying willingness to pay�was arguably greater, as the extra money some people would have paid could no longer be captured as profit. But they made the bargain anyway, for a combination of moral and practical reasons.

The Quakers�including a New York merchant named Rowland H. Macy�had never believed in setting different prices for different people. Wanamaker, a Presbyterian operating in Quaker Philadelphia, opened his Grand Depot under the principle of �One price to all; no favoritism.� Other merchants saw the practical benefits of Macy�s and Wanamaker�s prix fixe policies. As they staffed up their new department stores, it was expensive to train hundreds of clerks in the art of haggling. Fixed prices offered a measure of predictability to bookkeeping, sped up the sales process, and made possible the proliferation of printed retail ads highlighting a given price for a given good.

Companies like General Motors found an up-front way of recovering some of the lost profit. In the 1920s, GM aligned its various car brands into a finely graduated price hierarchy: �Chevrolet for the hoi polloi,� Fortune magazine put it, �Pontiac � for the poor but proud, Oldsmobile for the comfortable but discreet, Buick for the striving, Cadillac for the rich.� The policy��a car for every purse and purpose,� GM called it�was a means of customer sorting, but the customers did the sorting themselves. It kept the truce.

Customers, meanwhile, could recover some of their lost agency by clipping coupons�their chance to get a deal denied to casual shoppers. The new supermarket chains of the 1940s made coupons a staple of American life. What the big grocers knew�and what behavioral economists would later prove in detail�is that while consumers liked the assurance the truce afforded (that they would not be fleeced), they also retained the instinct to best their neighbors. They loved deals so much that, to make sense of their behavior, economists were forced to distinguish between two types of value: acquisition value (the perceived worth of a new car to the buyer) and transaction value (the feeling that one lost or won the negotiation at the dealership).

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-online-shopping-makes-suckers-of-us-all/521448/

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 14:08

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Initio posted:

How does the tide thing even work?

If I was desperate for money working a job under the table, would the boss hand me a hug of tide at the end of my shift?

Suds for Drugs
Tide detergent: Works on tough stains. Can now also be traded for crack. A case study in American ingenuity, legal and otherwise.
http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/

# ¿ Jul 25, 2018 12:54

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Piell posted:

Pretty much every call center is a scam

with the important distinction that not all of them are scamming the people they're calling, many of them are scamming the businesses they are making the calls for

# ¿ Aug 27, 2018 12:02

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

ToxicSlurpee posted:

That should depend on the cancer, I think. Some of them have very high cure rates if you catch them early enough. I used to work with a dude who was pushing 100 that had cancer three times. Pretty good health otherwise. Interestingly he only worked because he wanted to rather than from that he couldn't afford not to.

Anyway, my thought is similar, though. If it's one of those "you have a 50% chance to live and even if you do you'll have like 2 years, tops, and they'll suck" types of cancer then OK, I'm out. Had a good run. See you on the flip side, folks. Big pharma (a whole scam topic in and of itself) has come under fire for marketing cancer drugs for certain kinds of terminal cancers that cost tens of thousands but maybe give you an extra year of life.

What kind of job can still be competently done by a 100-year-old? Academia? I've got lots of teaching colleagues who are noticeably losing a step in their 70s.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2018 09:03

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Mustached Demon posted:

So is a credit scanner.

yeah but contactless...

# ¿ Oct 2, 2018 12:32

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Consent goes in the blockchain

# ¿ Nov 4, 2018 08:44

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

I'm visiting the states and bought a SIM for roaming and holy gently caress the loving robocalls. No wonder people are constantly shooting the place up, I'm about to go on a killing spree because I can't use my goddamn phone.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 19:52

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

It really speaks volumes about the expected level of consumer rights in the US that an absolute flood of spam calls ranging from minor irritations to harrassment to targeted scams which has made regular use of the telephone all but impossible is just hand-waved away with "you just have to ignore it" and "you can pay money to alleviate the problem slightly". I'm still pissed off at how many bullshit calls and voicemails I got while I was in the states for 2 weeks, even with the Hiya subscription (carrier level blocking wasn't available with the roaming SIM I bought and other blocking apps wouldn't install based on my phone's region). If I had to actually live with that, I would seriously consider learning how to program robo-dialers to harass the poo poo out of every single Congressional and FCC office until they put a stop to it.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2019 10:45

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

My PIN is 4826 posted:

Wait, am I reading your post correctly? Are you saying that even if I'm on a roaming plan from my own country, I will get robocalls once I set foot in the US?

No I had to buy a temporary SIM in the states because my carrier doesn't have a roaming plan for the US. When I put in the new card, I had already received a text message by the time my phone had started up and two calls in the first hour. I can only assume the temporary cards use recycled numbers so the calls and texts were previously just going into the ether.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2019 07:45

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Step 1 get a fuckin PO Box dude

# ¿ Jul 27, 2019 00:17

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

peanut posted:

Should I even consider making a LinkdIn profile to make my translation business more visible, or is it all MLM and manager-level poaching?
I do NOT have a network of associates that I can/would vouch for, lol.

It's never going to be the primary source of a job but it will serve as a kind of social-meida-lite page where people can look you up. There's probably a more niche site depending on your language(s) or a marketplace for translations where you would have better results per view.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2019 09:37

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

BiggerBoat posted:

For casinos, basically ensuring the odds always favor the house at 51-49%. After that, it's all about keeping people playing for as along as possible in order to ramp up the proceeds from those odds.

They eliminate windows so you don't know what time it is, put the biggest winning slots near the front and do things like route traffic in ways similar to what grocery stores do to encourage more shopping and impulse buys. They give out free drinks to make people impulsive. Casinos in and of themselves aren't "scams" and to compare what they do to what carnival games do is off the mark.

These are the odds at optimal play, too. Keeping people drunk, sleep-deprived and disoriented improves that a bit I suspect. Then they make sure that big wins get noticed: lights, bells, special treatment... make sure everyone sees the big winner! There's the free perks you get for playing more too, anything to keep you at the table longer: I'll get a room upgrade if I just make it through this bad patch, OK well maybe a free buffet, etc.

The average gambling budget for a trip to Vegas in 2016 was $578. I had $100 a day for my fun money and once it worked out great and once I went to bed early 3 nights in a row.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2019 23:03

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

I like the British betting site advert that turned the Gambling Addiction Disclaimer into their slogan: We Gamble Responsibly, at Bet365.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz9RfAlWJgM

# ¿ Sep 9, 2019 08:26

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

BiggerBoat posted:

I can't shake the feeling that almost the entirety of capitalism, and especially banking, is a scam.

Like banks and credit card companies want to charge me extra to protect against ID theft and fraud with a Super Duper Xtra Turbo security protection. Motherfuckers, that's YOUR job. It's the loving definition of a bank; a SAFE, GUARDED place to put your money. A place with literal SAFES in it and GUARDS guarding those safes. The loving Equifax breach is just the beginning as far as I can tell and those assholes got off soooo easy. Any bank should be 100% on the hook for compromising your accounts, period.

And not a bank, but look at what PG&E is doing in California. Literally turning off people's power to protect against fires that they should have done to start with. Every single libertarian motherfucker I talk to who goes on and on about the free market being better at everything will bitch endlessly about customer service at Comcast, Verizon, BofA or CITI and bitch to the moon about Google and Facebook but what REALLY sets them off is a 30 minute wait at the DMV or the Post Office.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMehSfTmnbY

# ¿ Nov 2, 2019 13:44

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Eric the Mauve posted:

e2: It's also funny that Satan was allowed to kill the guy's wife, but didn't, apparently because he thought his life would be worse with her alive

LOL that hadn't occured to me before but it's spot on

# ¿ Jan 19, 2020 14:23

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

Some scammers are going pro it looks like

quote:

An army of more more than 200 fake �traders� based in Ukraine have been persuading victims all over the world to part with their savings, according to a whistleblower from the operation who describes it as a huge investment scam.

British and Australian victims of a sophisticated enterprise were apparently lured by fake ads posted on Facebook and mobile phone games featuring celebrities such as Gordon Ramsay, Hugh Jackman and the moneysaving expert Martin Lewis.

After responding to the ads, the whistleblower alleges that unsuspecting victims were contacted by call-centre workers operating in a building in the heart of Kyiv�s business district, promising lucrative investment opportunities.

But the investments in bitcoin, commodities and foreign currencies all appear to be fake, as do the follow-up calls from companies telling victims that they could help them recover the losses.

Details of the operation have been leaked by a whistleblower who provided the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter with secretly filmed footage, internal company documents and testimony about its practices. The material has been seen by the Guardian and other partners in the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

According to the whistleblower, the fraudulent investment operation made $70m (�55m) last year. The information he supplied also suggests that:

� Victims of the scam were persuaded to install software on their computers and phones that gave fraudsters access to their bank details.

� Accounts were faked showing huge returns to encourage people to trust the company and invest more.

� Fake traders were disparaging about their victims in internal company postings, repeatedly remarking how they had �hosed� unsuspecting investors.

� Members of the �retention� team at the firm, which was tasked with making 300 calls a day to extract more money from investors, were rewarded by commission-based payments according to how much money they persuaded victims to hand over.

The whistleblower said the purpose of the retentions department, which he worked in, was to �squeeze the money� from clients until they were down to �the last cent�. He added: �It�s money from accounts, it�s money from their wages, even they push the clients to borrow money from the banks.�

more here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/01/revealed-fake-traders-allegedly-prey-on-victims-in-global-investment-scam

# ¿ Mar 1, 2020 20:58

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:57

greazeball: Feb 4, 2003

That's the way most of these hosed up incentive schemes are designed, to encourage the workers to gently caress each other over so the companies don't have to get their hands dirty.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2020 12:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about common cons/scams: "Thanks, you suck. Hello, this is Linda."

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