2024 LC Thread #1 - Elder Fraud Advice

You need to put your foot down about this one. Make sure you freeze his credit with all three reporting agencies as well.

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Yeah, this is a pig butchering scam. They’re not going to stop butchering while he still has money. They are going to contact him pretending to be law enforcement or someone else to help him get his money back from the first set of scammers, etc. You need to somehow get it in his head that he can’t talk to anyone on the phone or via email without going through you first.

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https://x.com/HollyAnderson/status/1836934419665330284

holy shit CW, this is so fucked

how is this stuff not surfaced at all in the presidental discourse, kamala should be hammering trump for supporting these scammers.

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I had to help my mother with her quick decline a couple years ago. Falling for a scam was a strong symptom – she never would have when she was sharp. She was across the country. I visited and put a Nest Camera in every room with 24/7 recording and shared it with concerned family who kept watch. I cancelled all her credit cards and just took over her bills. I left her with an ATM card – there is no recovery but it limited the money and hassle. I found she wasn’t really able to take care of herself. I had to fix a bunch of stuff in her place. Things got worse – so much more loss of executive function and behavior changes. Now my sister lives with her and provides necessary care 24/7.

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Brutal. I don’t know how we got here, but one of the things that I hate most in this stupid world is that, because it is “cyber” crime, it’s the victim’s fault and it’s sort of gg well played scammer gotta tip your hat nonsense. It’s all normalized, completely risk free for the scammers, and if you (or your company) doesn’t stop them, you’re the dummy cuz it’s all just fair play.

Actually, I do know how we got here. Our government is filled with 100 year old boomer racist psychopaths who think anything more complicated than a solar powered calculator is some kind of magical wizardry.

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Wonder if there any sort of opportunity for class action lawsuit against the crypto ATM companies. Surely they well aware essentially all large transactions are due to scams. Any “serious” crypto person is using things with way lower fees

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And I’m resisting taking a shot here, but you ever notice how our boomer parents with all of their serious bootstrap ideals and self determination and personal responsibility sneer at how them kids these days want everything handed to them but are all fucking broke with zero plan for how to put a roof over their head or food in their deplorable mouths just wait to be bailed out yet again by someone else (who they will look down on).

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I’ve thought about this stuff a lot. My boomer parents both passed relatively early. And while I miss them (especially my dad), there’s a small part of me that is relieved I never had to face these issues with them that I know many of my generation are going to have to go through with their boomer parents.

Seeing how poorly prepared they were for any sort of retirement has also made it so that I’ve prioritized safeguarding my financial future, so I guess that’s been a lesson for me also.

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Literally just had a conversation with a friend yesterday where I said I hoped my parents would drop dead someday (not today, not tomorrow, not any time soon) since I know they have no strategy for how they’ll survive if they make it into their mid 80s.

For sure on the first part, already in progress on the second.

Multi quote isn’t working, but warned him about recovery scams already and that they’re going to keep coming for him now but I’m not at all confident he gets it.

It hit me last night that this should be in the discourse, would move votes, and would play into Kamala’s AG background. @skydiver

If Kamala came out for a victim relief fund and a new crackdown, she’d legit probably get my father’s vote that she’s drawing dead to otherwise - and it’s not bad policy.

I’m now very concerned this may be the case, one step at a time here but we’ll see.

Listen I am being nice to him but if you think I’m not saying some shit when I’m venting. This is a man who thinks the caravans are coming to commit all the crimes, then gives all his liquid money to some guy on the other side of the world through a Bitcoin ATM.

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Yah, it’s pretty hard to make an argument that you’re well able to take care of yourself when you liquidate your life’s savings into hundies and roll over to the weed shop and feed them into a Bitcoin ATM.

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Honestly if the origin of these scams doesn’t have nuclear weapons it would make an awful lot more sense to drone strike them than it ever did to drone strike the Taliban. Unfortunately I’m reasonably sure that most of the big names in international cybercrime are in the Russian Federation.

There are a lot of reasons to cut the Russians, and a lot of their neighbors (especially Armenia) off from the internet. This world wide web bullshit hasn’t been true in quite a while and it’s long past time we adapted.

Also the bankers shouldn’t be able to get off here with a fraud warning. They should be refusing to dispense the cash and calling the cops. Those bitcoin atm’s absolutely shouldn’t be a thing either. Literally all they are is terminals to facilitate fraud.

And no I’m not worried about the international response to using military force on cyber criminals. This country isn’t the only one where it’s a problem, it’s a problem everywhere there’s internet. The only people who would complain would be the ones subject to cyber sanctions, and if they want those to go away all they have to do is stop harboring vast large call center sized fraud operations and respond aggressively to reports of cyber criminals in their jurisdiction.

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This is the biggie for me. The banks need some culpability. If they are concerned enough to give @commonWealth’s Dad a written warning that he’s being scammed and proceed to issue his withdrawal without alerting the authorities, how are they not accessories to this?

As for Bitcoin ATMs, in an era where every digital wallet sells bitcoin, what exactly is the use case for these ATMs, other than as you pointed out, to take advantage of people who couldn’t tell a bitcoin from a bit of computer memory?

I’m going to be real I’m a huge crypto hater. I think it’s actual use cases are mostly just enabling organized crime and some of the stupidest dutch tulip bulb tier speculation of all time… and burning more power than a medium sized country.

If you want to know why I want to redistribute the wealth asap it’s that the millenials heirs big contribution to civilization so far is crypto which I think is all you need to know about how fucking useless they are.

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First of all, buy an Apple TV 4K.

I dunno man. How many catalytic converters get recovered and returned? Bags stolen via smash-and-grab through a car window? Porch pirates?

Then there’s also the issue that a thief here can be arrested and tried, but a cyberthief in Russia ain’t getting extradited even if caught red handed.

India also seems to be a big player in these types of scams.

Yeah they should be required to put a new kind of silver alert out, delay the customer as long as possible, and get a cop there or get a BOLO out on the customer’s car, and send someone to the Bitcoin ATMs near the branch and near their home.

And they aren’t using the Bitcoin ATMs in Walgreens or grocery stores, it’s the smoke shop or a shady gas station. It’s obvious to me the owners of these ATMs and stores that allow them are at best passive investors in the multi-billion dollar a year elder fraud industry.