Crooks Behind $27M in 'Refund' Scams Busted By YouTube Pranksters After Being Lured to Fake Funeral (sfgate.com) 29
One crime ring scammed 2,000 elderly people of more than $27 million between 2021 and 2023 using tech support/bank impersonation/refund scams. "Victims were in their 70s and 80s," reports the U.S. Attorney's office for California's southern district. Victims were first told they'd received a refund (either online or via phone), but then told they'd been "over-refunded" a massive amount, and asked to return that amount.
But 42-year-old Jiandong Chen just 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 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 "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.
But 42-year-old Jiandong Chen just 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 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 "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.
3+ hour video? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: 3+ hour video? (Score:2)
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Joke's on them. Nobody has the attention span to watch multi-hour videos anymore.
Re: 3+ hour video? (Score:2)
Re:3+ hour video? (Score:4)
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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Hmm... Maybe that's why I never select playlists? One of those problems I learned about and solved with "Don't do that" a long time ago? I do think that these days a lot of "getting used to" has become "learning how to avoid undesired features". The feeping creaturitus is strong with YouTube.
Perhaps the most interesting aspects of Microsoft Secrets by Cusumano and Selby involve their methods of avoiding feature creep.
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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.
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Oh, boy! (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
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I can :-)
Re: Jail and fines are too easy (Score:3)
Statistically it is not the severity of the punishment, it's the likelihood of being caught and facing consequences.
When the likelihood of facing consequences is high, even frequent offenders comply even when consequence are minimal. Even something like line jumping, it's about if they think they can get away with it, not the seriousness of consequences.
Traffic violations are similar. When "everybody knows" a curve holds a speed trap people drop to the speed limit, when they are past it they lay on the ac
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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.
Re: The fines are very small. (Score:2)
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I would assume, that the fines are on top of all damage compensation these crooks will have to pay. I am also a bit unsure, whether the crooks will have the funds to both reimburse their victims and pay the fines, especially now, when they rightfully face decades of FPMITA prison. Not sure, whether raising the fines would have any effect on the actual outcome.
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"I'll never understand how fines are a tiny portion of the theft. It should be the whole amount stolen plus damages."
Why do you want the government to get more money than the victims?
Re: The fines are very small. (Score:3)
Why (Score:2)
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My understanding: the criminals targeted people in their 80s who did not notice a problem, or did not report to police. The scammers randomly called the pranksters, thinking of making new victims. The pranksters could report to police, but instead decided it was an opportunity for a 3 hours "epic reaction" video.
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There's real 'funeral' scams too (Score:3)