Feds gut host behind pig butchering scams that bilked $200M from Americans The US Treasury has sanctioned a Philippine company and its administrator after linking them to the infrastructure behind the majority of so-called "pig butchering" scams reported to the FBI. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Funnull Technology Inc, meaning any property or assets it owns in the US - …
Unfortunately these pig butchering scammers are not only praying on people on these dating site with their scams, they are often using forced labour to work in their scam call centres as well.
Surely if the US has strong enough evidence against this company they can pressure the Philippines authorities to raid the business and shut it down rather than just imposing sanctions?
I've had lots of scam calls over the years and like to string them along for as long as possible. Eventually they become very rude and hang up on me when they twig I'm playing them. However, one strange call from a young woman doing the "Amazon Prime" scam baffled me. After stringing her along until I was distinctly bored, I made it clear that I knew it was a scam, but instead of being rude and hanging up on me she continued, almost begging me to continue with the scam. I said something extremely rude to her, I could hear the stress in her voice but she still tried to continue. Eventually I hung up. Some time later I wondered if she was one of those captives in a forced labour camp scam centre, under threat to succeed with the scam... or else! I've heard they can face punishment including beatings etc if they don't reach a mandated quota.
It's likely that the Philippine business concerned isn't the physical location of the scammers, but just one of the links in the chain. The Philippines isn't a common place for the scammers to work from, but it is a common place for them to originate from as they have a higher rate of fluency in English. That business could be involved with finding people to work there*, but it probably doesn't own the building where they are now. Of course, this could be actually based there, but even then, the business probably doesn't own the building for exactly this reason. If they make it harder to identify where the building is, it's harder for it to be raided. Two business entities is a cheap way to make this more complicated.
* That's both for forced labor and for voluntary labor. There is often some of both involved, although when the people who voluntarily choose to scam people find out how little they're paid to do it, they sometimes switch categories.
I have received multiple text messages allegedly from the Florida Dept of Transportation, which runs the toll system on various roads in the state. The texts state that I have unpaid tolls and that various penalties will be applied, including suspension of my driver's license and sizeure of my vehicle, if the tolls are not paid immediately.
So... I don't recall having been on a toll toad recently, and last I checked I had a positive balance in my Sunpass (toll) account. A check with the Sunpass site shows... $25+ in the account. A call to Sunpass support is aborted as the first item on their automatic message system, ahead of 'our menu has changed' (which it hasn't...) is a note that they are aware of an ongoing scam attempt, don't bother to call to notifiy them, please. Another look at the actual texts shows that they were sent from a number with the 63 country code, not from the US. 63 is the Philippenes. It appears that someone has figured out that most in the US, and definitely most in Florida, have worked out that texts from 809 and 876 area codes (the Dominican Republic and Jamaica) are likely to be scams and have moved on. It's just a matter of time before even Florida Man starts to wonder why he's getting texts from a Florida government agency sent from literally the other side of the planet, and the scammers will have to find a new transmission point. Until then, I report as junk and delete the texts in question.
There will always be scammers as long as there are enough victims available to make it worthwhile. Especially since the people running these things rarely face any consequences for doing so personally. If we are to ever have any hope of ending this business, it's through educating the would-be victims and inoculating them against the scams in advance. There doesn't seem to be much of an effort being made to educate people though.
Better education may work with some folks, but not all. I read a case recently about a woman who started sending money to her online "boyfriend" but when her own family discovered this they told her it was a scam, but she refused to believe it and sent more money. Eventually she accepted she'd been scammed... but then a stroke of luck... a scam recovery agency contacted her and offered to recover the money she'd sent the scammer, all for hourly investigation fees of course, so... you know where this is going...
So the numbers seem to indicate the total number of victims at about 1000. I guess that is why you see so many clearly dumb scams that you ignore because they are filtering out all but the most gullible people who will believe anything. They only need a few lucrative targets to make it all worthwhile and anyone who notices anything wrong isn't worth spending time on. The typos and other errors are not mistakes, they are there on purpose. If you notice them, you are not a worthwhile target.
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