#Crypto #Cryptocurrencies #Scam #Tether #China #Cambodia #SlaveLabor: "I’d been hearing rumors about illicit uses of Tether—I’d seen court documents containing intercepted messages from a Russian money launderer promoting it to his clients, for one thing—but pig butchering was the most concrete example I found. People around the world really were losing huge sums of money to the con. A project finance lawyer in Boston with terminal cancer handed over $2.5 million. A divorced mother of three in St. Louis was defrauded of $5 million. And the victims I spoke to all told me they’d been told to use Tether, the same coin Vicky suggested to me. Rich Sanders, the lead investigator at CipherBlade, a crypto-tracing firm, said that at least $10 billion had been lost to crypto romance scams.
The huge sums involved weren’t the most shocking part. I learned that whoever was posing as Vicky was likely a victim as well—of human trafficking. Most pig-butchering operations were orchestrated by Chinese gangsters based in Cambodia or Myanmar. They’d lure young people from across Southeast Asia to move abroad with the promise of well-paying jobs in customer service or online gambling. Then, when the workers arrived, they’d be held captive and forced into a criminal racket.
Thousands have been tricked this way. Entire office towers are filled with floor after floor of people sending spam messages around the clock, under threat of torture or death. With the assistance of translators, I started video chatting with people who’d escaped."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-17/crypto-text-message-scams-lead-back-to-cambodia-slave-labor
Miguel Afonso Caetano /
npub1pw…r95z7
2023-08-20 09:31:26
Author Public Key
npub1pwuvltfvfme0d987k6rs3an6jnv9k2w32zqdlqt5hpy9u3cmv6ps2r95z7Published at
2023-08-20 09:31:26Event JSON
{
"id": "7a49c3d8652edb8b3c61d1ee603d66540a1ebbd85b1b14b94cfc72d690119ce7",
"pubkey": "0bb8cfad2c4ef2f694feb68708f67a94d85b29d15080df8174b8485e471b6683",
"created_at": 1692523886,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"t",
"crypto"
],
[
"t",
"cryptocurrencies"
],
[
"t",
"scam"
],
[
"t",
"tether"
],
[
"t",
"china"
],
[
"t",
"cambodia"
],
[
"t",
"slavelabor"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://tldr.nettime.org/users/remixtures/statuses/110921245419058284",
"activitypub"
]
],
"content": "#Crypto #Cryptocurrencies #Scam #Tether #China #Cambodia #SlaveLabor: \"I’d been hearing rumors about illicit uses of Tether—I’d seen court documents containing intercepted messages from a Russian money launderer promoting it to his clients, for one thing—but pig butchering was the most concrete example I found. People around the world really were losing huge sums of money to the con. A project finance lawyer in Boston with terminal cancer handed over $2.5 million. A divorced mother of three in St. Louis was defrauded of $5 million. And the victims I spoke to all told me they’d been told to use Tether, the same coin Vicky suggested to me. Rich Sanders, the lead investigator at CipherBlade, a crypto-tracing firm, said that at least $10 billion had been lost to crypto romance scams.\n\nThe huge sums involved weren’t the most shocking part. I learned that whoever was posing as Vicky was likely a victim as well—of human trafficking. Most pig-butchering operations were orchestrated by Chinese gangsters based in Cambodia or Myanmar. They’d lure young people from across Southeast Asia to move abroad with the promise of well-paying jobs in customer service or online gambling. Then, when the workers arrived, they’d be held captive and forced into a criminal racket.\n\nThousands have been tricked this way. Entire office towers are filled with floor after floor of people sending spam messages around the clock, under threat of torture or death. With the assistance of translators, I started video chatting with people who’d escaped.\"\nhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-08-17/crypto-text-message-scams-lead-back-to-cambodia-slave-labor",
"sig": "3a09ae2ae87a1f2f33fa51d49408e009af22620a6e9c35df86d17b2a0c36123f68af4523f7878443e598a2e079f88b1608803f3635efc297b9e23e8e0b9475b5"
}