The crypto scam behind those weird text messages

In the last couple of years, I'm sure you've received texts that start with something like, "Hi! It's [random name], remember me? How are you?" and try to engage you in conversation. If, like me, you've sensed it was a scam but haven't been able to figure out exactly what was happening, this episode of the podcast "Search Engine" (which Vulture describes as the "spiritual successor to Reply All"), entitled, "Who's behind these scammy text messages we've all been getting?", will enlighten (and horrify) you.

Search Engine describes the episode:

An investigative reporter travels halfway around the world to find out who is sending him random wrong number texts and why. After you hear this story, you'll never look at these messages the same way again.

The episode features Zeke Faux, author of the recent book Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall, who has gathered stories and data from people who have lost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on crypto scams that start out with these strange text messages. In the podcast episode, Faux describes the scam—which is very similar to the "pig butchering" love scams operating in Dubai that we reported on last year, and which can last for months—stating that the scammer promises the victim love or money, even perhaps giving them some small amounts of cash, while sizing up how much money the person has. Once the victim sends in the max (up to a million), the scammer disappears. 

Faux also explains that the folks who are texting you are also victims and explains, "Once you know what's really going on on the other end of the text messages, it becomes not fun at all."

His investigations led him to Sihanoukville, a town in Cambodia where abandoned casinos have been turned into "prison cities." These sprawling complexes house victims from all over Southeast Asia who were lured there by scamming gangs with the promise of employment, only to find themselves in a sort of indentured servitude where they are forced to work 12-to-16 hour shifts.

France24 quotes Vitit Muntarbhorn, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, who stated that such trafficking victims—which number in the thousands or even tens of thousands—"were experiencing a living hell often resulting in torture and even death," locked behind steel bars and barbed wire. And The Guardian quotes Jan Santiago, deputy director of the Global Anti-Scam Organization, who explains how the scams work:

"The hallmark of this kind of scam is the initial scammer never really asks for money directly," says Santiago. Instead, they're nudging their target to invest on a third party platform. "They really make good use of the gambling psychology and loss aversion of people," he said. "That's where the losses really double."

The opacity of cryptocurrency, combined with a lack of resources among the authorities, means agencies are rarely able to recover money.

Late last year, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) reported that while some efforts are being made to address these crypto scams across Southeast Asia, attempts to quash these crimes vary from country to country, as some anti-scam efforts in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore seem to be showing some progress, while Cambodia and Myanmar "continue to be the most egregious havens for criminal operations." And while there has been some effort to crack down on crime in Laos, it's unclear, "whether the crackdown" is "a symbolic, one-off operation or if it will evolve into a systematic effort to disrupt the crime groups." Despite efforts to address these crimes, the USIP states that Southeast Asia's scamming epidemic is still raging, as international coordination to stop these crimes remains slow to develop. They conclude:

A major problem is the continued failure of authorities to systematically collect, share and publicize information on criminal networks, patterns of scamming and human trafficking. The deficit in evidence and coordination hampers law enforcement and public advocacy alike. While sanctions against a few high-level perpetrators are a useful step, much broader transnational accountability is urgently needed.

Listen to the Search Engine episode on the text scams here and read the France24 article here, The Guardian piece here, and the report by the US Institute of Peace here.