"banned from the sites for being dishonest."
I had to read that line a couple of times, and still can't stop smiling.
Scammers have scammed their fellow cybercriminals out of more than $2.5 million on three dark web forums alone over the last 12 months, according to Sophos researchers. In a Black Hat Europe session, Sophos threat hunters detailed their investigation, which examined scams on two well-established Russian-language marketplaces, …
Every profession has its code. Lawyers do, bankers do, politicians do, even estate agents do. Even scammers draw the line at ransomware, you'll note.
There is absolutely honour among thieves. It's just that... the things that are prohibited are generally not the same things that you might expect or hope to be prohibited.
Twice in the last few weeks I have been contacted by a pension company checking with me that I had asked for a valuation. I have not. Both times it seems to have been the fraudster who stole from my accounts in February / March 2020. They are still stealing my post (I have a scan of a form, which was sent to my home address but never reached me, requesting the value of my pension taken all in cash in my name in October), calling my pension companies and trying to steal my pension.
I reckon that the fraudsters know that registration with CIFAS* (which alerts financial institutions that you are the victim of fraud and warns them about setting up accounts with your name, address, etc.) only lasts 24 months, so they have another go a couple of years after their first attempts. Much like burglars would steal stuff, wait for the insurance company to pay up, replace the TV, Stereo etc. and then go back and steal it all over again.
No honour amongst thieves.
* https://www.cifas.org.uk "The UK's largest cross-sector fraud sharing organisation"
Several ways. Setting up a mail redirection requires disturbingly little in the way of proof that you are the genuine recipient. Another way is if you know the accounts your victim holds (possibly from letters acquired from the mail redirection), then simply write to the companies requesting a change of address.
When I set up a mail redirection, Royal Mail didn't require much information from myself to redirect mail from Leeds to Cambridgeshire. There was only a very basic identity check. It seems plausible that if you have enough information about someone you could set this up without them ever knowing.
I do not know how my post got stolen, but I suspect that there are several ways, including a corrupt postman who steals from the mail round (which would explain why two issues of New Scientist also failed to arrive), possibly stealing for the mailbox (tricky, but probably possible after some practice).
As far as legal documents go, in the UK, solicitors have their own legal mail service to avoid things getting lost in the post between them. I have alerted the Post Office to loss of mail, but they were not able to find anything wrong. Even some recorded delivery post is not tracked through the entire journey, just at the end on delivery. Tracked mail can also 'go astray', so if you really want to ensure that something gets there, use a courier*, or take it yourself.
* The Joseph Gordon Levitz film 'Premium Rush' is fiction, but a good watch for some of the spectacular cycling stunts.
The biologists didn't invent the term hyperparasite for nothing.
"And after a month, you've trapped all the rats. But what do you do then?
Throw the drum into the ocean? Burn it? No. You just leave it. And they begin to get hungry, and one by one... (smacks lips repeatedly) ...they start eating each other until there are only two left.
Two survivors. And then what? Do you kill them? No. You take them and release them into the trees. But now they don't eat coconut anymore. Now they only eat rat. You have changed their nature."
Icon - Well 007 has a frequently used chopper.
There is a saying, “You can’t fool an honest man,” which is much quoted by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men. Moist never tried it, knowingly anyway. If you did fool an honest man, he tended to complain to the local Watch, and these days they were harder to buy off. Fooling dishonest men was a lot safer and, somehow, more sporting. And, of course, there were so many more of them. You hardly had to aim.