Fraudsters Jailed for £37m Copycat Website Scam | Hacker News Reader

Fraudsters Jailed for £37m Copycat Website Scam

bbc.com

24 pointsIntronExon16 comments

What interesting to me is just how prevalent this sort of thing is. For a long time (at least 10 years), students applying for financial aid in the US are routinely told to 1) fill out a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and 2) not click the top few results when they google it because they'll be semi-scam sites that charge you money to "help" you fill out the form[1].

Which is, as near as I can tell, exactly what these people have been convicted of doing? Maybe these people shaded the truth a bit more; the FAFSA application sites tend to have disclaimers. Eg https://www.fafsa-application.com/ has a fairly prominent disclaimer, presumably because they believe anything less will get them sued.

[1]: Although when I tested it just now, it seems Google has got better about filtering them out of the organic results, at least, since I went through college. Which is good for students I guess.

It makes sense for private companies to repackage government "services" in a more applicant-friendly way, and of course take a cut for doing so. Governments are notoriously bad at doing it themselves, especially visa applications. I suppose being open about it and not impersonating the government is the key difference between ethical and not.

Absolutely and nothing illegal about that, at least in most reasonably acting countries. Dont forget you talking about UK where they continue attempt to ban encryption and pass laws toake all your data visible and accessible to the government at any given time.

> I suppose being open about it and not impersonating the government is the key difference between ethical and not.

That and being honest about how much value you are bringing to the table. If you don't actually improve on the free version, it is unethical to sell.

And you should never use language to imply a value proposition where there is none. For example, someone else posted a link to some green card scammers. One of their claims is:

> "USAFIS GUARANTEES 100% participation in the Lottery!"

This may be true, but it is still an unethical statement. It hints that this is a net positive vs. the free application the USG provides, but in fact any valid, submitted application participates in the lottery.

>... Any valid, submitted application...

Didn't you answer your own question? They claim if you use their service then your application will participate, this they are claiming your application will be valid and submitted. Id you don't use their service then there is a chance your application will not be valid or submitted... Isn't that a positive? Maybe not enough of a positive to justify the cost, but their claim isn't unethical.

I doubt they have the capability to cause whatever information you provide to magically become valid. Perhaps they do additional checking and notify you if there is an error. If that is what it is, then that is what they should say. The sentence as worded implies that any application has some chance of not participating in the lottery if made through ordinary channels.

In most of these UK examples they're imitating sites that are easy to use already. There's no indication that they're any easier.

Reading this article is remarkably comical. I understand what they did is labeled as criminal. Yet it's funny how a lot of businesses are similar and in this world they're legal.

"They showed no regard for the unnecessary costs they imposed on their victims - I would say they treated them with contempt." - Hmm that isn't new.

It also reminds me of my time in Southern Italy government officials with mob connections tried to exploit me when i lost my passport

Businesses that don't pretend to be an official government service are fairly dissimilar from this case, but yes - I agree with the sentiment!

There are a couple of Reply All episodes that talk about almost this exact same scam. Fake taxi service lost and found sites, fake DMV sites etc.

https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/76-lost-in-a-cab

https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/78-very-quickly-to-the...

This site does something similar for green card lottery: https://www.usafis.org

They do offer a clear disclaimer though.

My friend has actually won a green card through a website like that (unofficial) he forgot about ever applying and people from this website spent considerable time and effort to contact him and let him know that he won, they called his Russian phone number and got a hold of him miraculously, I am pretty sure had he applied directly through the official dvlottery site, he would never know that he won. so sometimes this type of sites do what they say.

I wonder how they processed payments, and what their "getaway" plan was, beyond "let's hope we don't get caught".

Yes the money trail would have been quite crucial in tracking them down I suppose. I don't think they could be accepting Bitcoins on a govt. looking site.

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