Crooks Behind $27M in 'Refund' Scams Busted By YouTube Pranksters After Being Lured to Fake Funeral (sfgate.com)
- Reference: 0181296222
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/05/182224/crooks-behind-27m-in-refund-scams-busted-by-youtube-pranksters-after-being-lured-to-fake-funeral
- Source link: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/man-youtube-fraud-seniors-22188072.php
But 42-year-old Jiandong Chen just [2]admitted Thursday in a U.S. federal court that he was involved in the fraud and money laundering via cryptocurrency — pleading guilty to two charges with maximum penalties of 40 years in prison and a $1 million fine, plus 20 years in prison with a maximum fine of $500,000 or twice the amount laundered. "Chen, a Chinese national, is the second defendant charged in a five-defendant indictment." And what tripped him up seems to be that "Certain members of the conspiracy also did in-person pickups of money directly from victims..."
And so YouTube enters the story — when the scammers called pranksters with 1,790,000 subscribers to their "Trilogy Media" channel. In [3]an elaborate three-hour video , the team of pranksters lured the scammer to a rented Airbnb where they're staging a fake funeral with a nun. (One of the men acting in the video remembers "we start doing a prayer... I'm holding the scammer's hand in my nun outfit...")
They convince the scammer to collect the cash from a dead man — "Is there anything you'd like to say to him?" Then there's demon voices. The scammer's victim resurrects from the dead. Did the cash mule bring holy water?
The end result was a video titled " [4]CONFRONTING SCAMMERS WITH A FAKE FUNERAL (EPIC REACTIONS) ". But two and a half years later, their "cash mule sting house" video has racked up over 1.3 million views, 22,000 likes, and 2,979 comments. ("This video is longer than Oppenheimer. Thanks for the laughs fellas.")
And the scammer is facing 60 years in prison.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/chinese-national-youtube-video-pleads-guilty-27-million-multinational-fraud-scheme
[2] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/man-youtube-fraud-seniors-22188072.php
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjiFJWsHbwE
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjiFJWsHbwE
Oh, boy! (Score:2)
Another YouTube "epic reaction" video! I can't wait to see how this three-plus-hours-long one differs from the 37 billion other epic reaction videos!
Re: (Score:2)
I can :-)
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Indeed. Major oil trades consistently less than one minute before some other blather Rump releases obviously designed to move markets? Nope, nothing fishy here, just business as usual. . .
The fines are very small. (Score:4, Interesting)
The fines should be proportional to actual damage caused (ie: 100% coverage of any interest on loans, any extra spending the person needed to do in consequence, loss of compound interest, damage to credit rating along with any additional spending this resulted in, and any medical costs that can reasonably be attributed to stress/anxiety). It would be difficult to get an exact figure per person, but a rough estimate of probable actual damage would be sufficient. Add that to the total direct loss - not the money that went through any individual involved, and THEN double that total. This becomes the minimum, not the maximum. You then allow the jury to factor in emotional costs on top of that.
In such cases as this, the statutary upper limit on fines should not apply. SCOTUS has repeatedly ruled that laws and the Constitution can have reasonable exceptions and this would seem to qualify.
If a person has died in the meantime, where the death certificate indicates a cause of death that is medically associated with anxiety or depression, each person invovled should also be charged with manslaughter per such case.
3+ hour video? (Score:2)
Oh, come on. The editor of this video interleaved clips from each ploy so you have to watch the whole 3+ hours to see any one ploy in its entirety? No, thanks.
Re: 3+ hour video? (Score:2)
Yeah, nowadays youtube creators are mostly producing crap like that in order to pull as much advertising revenue as possivle. No more direction and good writing, mastering a 5 video with actual thought. Just 1 hour+ long content with no effort at all
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I agree but clicking ahead is not that hard.
Fighting scams with bigger scams? (Score:2)
No thanks. YouTube is the largest scam in this story. (That'll teach you not to ask me? And I'm still going to fall short of Funny...)
It would be interesting to see the real financial data. I think the google actually knows how the money works in YouTube, but revealing how the trick works could create a "That trick never works" again situation. However the general outlines are pretty clear.
YouTube gets lots of eyeballs. That's largely because there is lots of new content all the time, and creating that cont
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> I sort of listen to YouTube while I'm doing other stuff.
I tried that, but it didn't work. I found someone playing a series of 12 piano pieces I enjoy, organised in a playlist. Youtube played ads in between each piece. I could not move back to hear hear again a track, or skip to next, without getting ads. It was impossible to just focus on the music.
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> I agree but clicking ahead is not that hard.
It actually is when you don't pay You Tube for premium access or whatever they call it. If you don't pay for that, every attempt to click ahead is likely to pull up a commercial or two before you see any video. In a 3 hour video, I can see how it's just not worth it. Crap, there are a few content providers I actually like and I'm not even willing to watch their 30 minute videos because those are that long just to maximize advertising money as others have said.