Tuesday
21 June 2022, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Any replies to the organizer
- thormay@yahoo.com
Venue:
ZOOM online
Focus Questions
1. What is your favourite scam? What makes it work?
2.
Why have 'influencers' always had such a huge effect on the
viability of scams?
3. There are many kinds of scams but
most victims have certain things in common. What are some common
characteristics of scam victims?
4. What are some of the
oldest scams in history (yes, you can go back millennia...) ?
5. What makes it sometimes unpopular or even dangerous to
call out some scams? Examples?
6. Sometimes political
movements are corrupted or captured by scammers. Past & present
examples? What gave them potency?
7. The so-called
metaverse, still evolving, is a free-range territory for
scammers. What kind of scams can you anticipate emerging in this
space?
8. What makes makes for a brilliant piece of
advertising scam? Examples? [e.g. From Thor's inbox: "Hello My
Dear Nice To Meet You Dear How Are You Doing Today? is, Miss
Fina Tema am from Finland please i have something very important
to discuss with you" ]
9. At what point do some business
practices become scams? For example, many consultancies skate on
very thin ice. Or banks have been known to incentivize their
staff to push investment products that are not in customer's
interests. Or phone companies etc often bamboozle customers with
elaborate 'plans' that hide real costs. ... the list is endless.
10. How far should laws and governments go in trying to
protect gullible citizens from scams or near-scams?
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Extra Reading
Caitlin Fitzsimmons (February 13, 2022) "Lonely Australians
lose $200m to romance scams amid pandemic". Sydney Morning
Herald @
https://www.smh.com.au/national/lonely-australians-lose-200m-to-romance-scams-amid-pandemic-20220208-p59up8.html
Dominic Powell (June 2, 2022) "‘Parasitic’: Why the
founder of Dogecoin thinks crypto is a scam". The Age @
https://www.theage.com.au/business/entrepreneurship/parasitic-why-the-founder-of-dogecoin-thinks-crypto-is-a-scam-20220601-p5aq66.html
[Quote: "I think it’s very telling that the people who are
seemingly most involved in, pouring the most money in and
exerting the most power over cryptocurrency right now are the
same people who destroyed the economy in 2008, the same people
who are billionaires in the real world."]
Australia,
National Disability insurance Agency (2022) "What Are Scams?"
NDIS @
https://www.ndis.gov.au/participants/working-providers/what-are-scams
Mark Reddie (7 June 2022) "AFP targeting Italian mafia
figures in next phase of AN0M probe". ABC @
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-07/afp-target-italian-mafia-ndrangheta-activities-in-australia/101131092
[Quote: The Australian Federal Police is investigating 51
Italian organised crime clans — including 14 from the
'Ndrangheta — as well as 5,000 members living across NSW,
Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.
Investigators have accused them of working closely with Middle
Eastern crime gangs, Asian triads and South American cartels
to smuggle tonnes of illegal drugs into the country. "They are
responsible for 70 to 80 per cent of the world's cocaine and
they are flooding Australia with illicit drugs." Assistant
Commissioner Ryan said billions of dollars in dirty money was
being washed through the economy"].
Khaled Al Khawaldeh
(8 June 2022) "Number of scam calls to Australian phones cut
by half while text message crypto scams soar." The Guardian @
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/jun/08/number-of-scam-calls-to-australian-phones-cut-by-half-while-text-message-crypto-scams-soar
[Quote: "Communications industry peak body and watchdog sees
telcos block more than 549m scam calls since inception of code
... ACCC data shows Australians lost more than $205m in the
first four months of 2022 with the majority of losses coming
from “crypto-investment scams” which increased by over 300%.
Those scams were primarily via text message – a method that
has seen an increase in scamming of 54% since last year".]
Amy Bainbridge (16 June 2022) "Funeral insurer Youpla
'grew and grew' off welfare payments, then collapsed". ABC
News @
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-16/centrepay-centrelink-payments-behind-acbf-youpla-growth/101109642
[Quote: ""I just thought that it was just a great thing for
Aboriginal people, as we struggle all the time to bury our
loved ones." From 2001 to 2017, ACBF was the only
funeral fund to use the government-run system Centrepay to
debit millions of dollars from Centrelink payments. Now, ACBF
— also known as Youpla — has collapsed, leaving thousands of
customers like Ms Roberts without funeral cover. "The fact
that ACBF was on the Centrepay system for so long meant that
the business was able to grow and grow and grow and thrive to
the point where we estimate that Indigenous people have lost
over $200 million."
Abul Rizvi [Former deputy secretary
of the Department of Immigration](18 June 2022) "Boats are not
the problem, it’s the 130,000 asylum seekers living here." The
Age @
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/boats-are-not-the-problem-it-s-the-130-000-asylum-seekers-living-here-20220617-p5aufm.html
[Quote:" Most Australians would be surprised to learn that
since 2015, Australia experienced its biggest
labour-trafficking scam abusing the asylum system. This scam
involved about 100,000 people being organised to arrive by
plane, mostly on tourist visas. Organisers of the scam
targeted vulnerable people, initially from Malaysia and China,
with the prospect of well-paying jobs in Australia, usually
working on farms. The organisers apply for asylum on behalf of
workers who often know nothing about the applications. That
gives them work rights for a number of years while
applications are processed, during which time the organisers
usually take a cut from the workers’ already meagre wages. It
is far easier and cheaper to exploit the asylum system by
trafficking people on aeroplanes. We now have almost 30,000
asylum seekers at the primary stage of application and another
37,000 at the clogged-up Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The
majority of asylum seekers are refused protection which means
there are another 31,000 who have been refused at both stages
but remain in the community without any support or work
rights". The Immigration Department does not have the
resources to actually deport these people]
Wing Kuang
(18 June 2022) "China's Lipstick King Austin Li was a rich
influencer adored by Beijing officials. One mistake triggered
his downfall". ABC News @
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-18/china-livestreamer-austin-li-censored-over-tiananmen-massacre/101160890
[Thor, comment: I've included this piece because it
illustrates the human tendency to follow the herd in
fulfilling a personal "dream" - in this case buying lipstick
seen on the face of a male idol. This is the perfect recipe
for a mass scam. In this case the delusion was shattered by
the unknowning violation of Chinese communist party taboo -
accidentally using a symbol as mindless as an icecream battle
tank on the anniversary date of the Tianmen mass murder, which
officially doesn't exist in China. You might also argue that
deleting history for political advantage is another kind of
scam (.. yes, shades of Trump's non-election ..)].
"The
‘big rip-off’: how Trump exploited his fans with ‘election
defense’ fund - The former president used donations to a
nonexistent legal defense fund for his hotels and the January
6 Ellipse rally." The Guardian @
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/18/donald-trump-election-defense-fundraising-defrauded-fans
Robert Reich (20 June 2022) "The Crypto Crash: all
Ponzi schemes topple eventually". The Guardian @
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2022/jun/19/the-crypto-crash-all-ponzi-schemes-topple-eventually
[Quote: "Eighty-nine years ago, Franklin D Roosevelt signed
into law the Banking Act of 1933 – also known as the
Glass-Steagall Act. It separated commercial banking from
investment banking – Main Street from Wall Street – to protect
people who entrusted their savings to commercial banks from
having their money gambled away. ... Glass-Steagall’s larger
purpose was to put an end to the giant Ponzi scheme that had
overtaken the American economy in the 1920s and led to the
Great Crash of 1929. ... But by the 1980s, America forgot the
financial trauma of 1929. As the stock market soared,
speculators noticed they could make lots more money if they
could gamble with other people’s money – as speculators did in
the 1920s. ... Finally, in 1999, Bill Clinton and Congress
agreed to ditch what remained of Glass-Steagall. ... As a
result, the American economy once again became a betting
parlor. Inevitably, Wall Street suffered another near-death
experience from excessive gambling. Its Ponzi schemes began
toppling in 2008, just as they had in 1929... millions of
Americans lost their jobs, their savings, and their homes (and
not a single banking executive went to jail). ... Which brings
us to the crypto crash. ... Why isn’t this market regulated?
Mainly because of intensive lobbying by the crypto industry
... The industry is pouring huge money into political
campaigns.And it has hired scores of former government
officials and regulators to lobby on its behalf."
Hannah Bowers and Alex McDonald (21 June 2022) "From text
messages to fraudulent ads, how scammers are draining bank
accounts". ABC News @
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-21/scammers-using-text-messages-calls-emails-fake-ads-to-get-money/101167848
[Quote: "The Australian Cybersecurity Centre reported
cybercrime cost the economy an estimated $33 billion in 2021.
... "I don't think there are many crimes that you can say
penetrate the family home almost on a daily basis," ... One of
the leaders of a group involved in a prolific scam operation
was jailed in May after duping dozens of Australians when
large swathes of the population were in COVID-19 lockdown in
2020. Court documents reveal the group created false
identities on a website they called the "1-stop-rort-shop",
bragging online about software that was able to evade SMS spam
filters. ... Police found the men had access to staggering
amounts of personal information, including people's secret
online questions and answers.]
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