Man, I have a deep-seated fury directed at scammers who prey on the elderly. Someone close to me got hurt badly by them. I got back at one the other day:

I posted a keyboard for sale on a local classified website. Scammers love to hang out and look for fresh postings. They’ll contact you and feign interest. Then they will say that before they go any further, they’ll send you a code that you have to give them to “verify” that you’re legit. Guess what: the code comes from 22000 and ends with “… is your Google verification code”, usually in some foreign language. (My guess is either these chumps aren’t smart enough to change the locale on their browsers that they’re firing the password reset request off from, or they deliberately do this so the victim doesn’t get suspicious.)

Well, one of these scammers reached out to me. As soon as he sent the password reset request, he started spamming me asking me if I had got it. So impatient…

I told him that I did, and that to be eXtRa sEkuUr I send a screen recording to “prove” that I was legit.

Of course, the video was “Never Gonna Give You Up”

He got pretty mad after that. Poor scrub… I hope he finds a more honorable living or gets put in jail where he can’t hurt innocent people.

Where can I collect my prize?

You just messed with some poor indian guy getting paid $.2/hour to create gmail accounts. Good job!

If you're scamming people and you get paid peanuts, does it somehow make scamming _more_ morally acceptable in your eyes? Weird.

My comment had nothing to do with whether or not this is morally acceptable. This is just a silly thing to brag about, no meaningful scams were disrupted. Might as well go fuck with the poor guy trying to buy food by running an equally immoral shell game on the street.

However, “scamming” people for codes to activate gmail accounts is certainly _more_ morally acceptable than scamming them for money. There’s no moral equivalence between pretending to be an IRS agent to steal your money and wasting a minute or two of your time to activate a gmail account.

What kind of a sick person must ashton314 be to hope that the guy creating gmail accounts for a living gets put in prison for that?

Hmmh, I guess I misunderstood the described scam. I thought that the Google account code was for the victim's Google account, but if it was for a brand new Google account then I agree with you it's not _that_ serious. Although, if they register a Google account with my phone number and then use the account for illicit purposes and get the account banned, it's very very likely that Google will also ban my main account. So there is some real damage that is likely to come for people who fall for this scam.

I don't know which is "acceptable". Possibly (but maybe very rarely) the frauded account assigned with your SMS is used for illegal operation, then you're investigated.

Ouch. I did get my vaccine a few weeks ago, so hopefully I'm not that sick. ;-P

My understanding was that they reset your password then hold your account for ransom or use it to break into your other services. (e.g banking, 401k, credit card, etc. Email access can get you pretty much anywhere.) I have no problem with seeing people who deceive and rob innocent people of their savings sent to jail. If what they're doing with my confirmation code truly is harmless, then yeah, of course I wouldn't want them sent to prison. But I thought this scam was more than that. Maybe you know more about this case than I do?

I don't have the resources to completely take down a scam ring; I figure I can help by trying and slow these people down now and again. Maybe the time I made him waste on me prevented him from getting to someone who would have fallen for the scam. Maybe not. In either case, the prank is pretty harmless.

Well, well, well.... How the turntables....

But in all seriousness, it makes me so ashamed how so many of these scammers that prey on elderly US/UK people are from my home city of Kolkata.

NYTimes had a great article earlier this year on such scammers from Kolkata - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/magazine/scam-call-center...

Pretty good idea and forward thinking by the Japanese police.

I feel like cryptocurrency promises many more scams like this if it ever becomes mainstream. Imagine how profitable scammers in the future could be, mass autodialing worldwide, GPT and text to voice filling out details of a script, asking for transfers in cryptocurrency. At least with this scam the scammers are often physically vulnerable when they go to pick up the money.

It’s probably never the scammers picking up the money. They’d just hire someone to act as a mule.

The mule knows how to get in contact with the scammer, or what bank account to deposit into, etc. It's a thread that may lead back to the scammer.

I like the idea but isn't this illegal in US for example. In US you can only combat scammers by reporting them to the police.

They only pay out the $100 if the scammers are identified thanks to you, kind of a bullshit offer really.

“People in Japan can now earn $100 for doing the cops work for them.” would be a more accurate headline.

What's the alternative, though? If the police can't get cooperation from the would-be victim ahead of time, they can only investigate after the crime is committed, which will never be as effective as organizing a sting at the drop point.

Other options I can think of: - Blanket the city in cameras so you can track the scammer after they collect the money. - Create and operate honeypot numbers and hope the scammer calls one of them. - Hope the scammer makes a mistake that allows you to identify them (such as using their own cell phone).

> What's the alternative, though?

Paying out an amount that’s equal to more than 1 day of local police salary?

This is nothing but a silly PR stunt with zero intention of ever paying out, otherwise they’d be offering 100x this much.