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Comment by docdeek | Hacker News Reader

"If they reached a person who was sufficiently terrified or gullible — this was known in the business as a “sale” — they would instruct that person to buy thousands of dollars’ worth of iTunes cards to avoid prosecution, they said…”

Fascinating story but how is it that people believe their government accepts payments in iTunes gift cards?

The money transfers also referenced in the article sound a little more legitimate (though still not sounding kosher) but is there some reason to believe that a US government agency would ever ask for payment in anything other than dollars?

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That was my first thought. That said, it sounds like they may be targeting first generation immigrants, and their successes come when they get through to someone who's not very familiar with US norms, and perhaps rather more familiar with the concept that problems sometimes go away after making illegitimate payments in unconventional ways to officials.

My second thought was to wonder how purchases and redemptions of thousands of dollars worth of iTunes gift cards managed not to be flagged up by Apple, bearing in my there's certainly enough money flowing through their systems for law enforcement to be very interested in monitoring their compliance with KYC/AML regulations?

I think they don't really do much in the way of targeting. I get a couple of these fake IRS calls every week.

They're probably just reselling the cards. No need for anyone to buy digital assets from Apple.

eventually someone needs to buy digital assets from apple for the cards to be worth anything

They'll be sold in small quantities to deal hunters on places like eBay, which will then be used like any other gift card.

If you want to save a bit of money, you can find gift cards for all sorts of gift card on eBay for a bit of a discount. Lots of this activity is legitimate, with the cards being sold by people who got the cards as a gift but would rather have a somewhat smaller amount of cash. Scammers can just hop right in to this market.

Not if a large enough group of people is willing to accept iTunes gift cards as payment.

As long as they are a token that is sufficiently expensive to get hold of, I don't see why an economy can't work even if nobody ever spends them with Apple. It'd be like an economy based on gold coins in which nobody ever melts the coins down for their value as raw gold.

My understanding is that the real bottleneck is that if you want to buy iTunes gift cards in large denominations you have to go to Apple or a reputable retailer and specifically ask the vendor to put up to $500 on the card and charge it to you. If you're doing that several times in a row to it probably ought to raise a flag with Apple, the vendor or possibly your bank.

Relative to cash or gold, the token also has the not insignificant problem that it's time limited and can be secretly spent or voided, which should result in the card being substantially discounted (and checked for validity with Apple) each time it changes hands. It's also officially "not for resale"...

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