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Comment by cissou | Hacker News Reader

What I'm left wondering is: what is the payoff for these scams? These aren't easy to scale, as you need to be manually writing plausible looking, personalized emails, waiting for someone to take the bait, "nurture" them over days or weeks, etc. Also you need specific, valuable skills: between the social engineering, the actual engineering, the perfect grammar, the creativity, someone who can pull this off can definitely get a high-paying, honest job pretty much anywhere. Add to that the hassle of having to constantly change web hosts, stories, payment processors, etc. as you're constantly going to be chased by your previously scammed "customers", and the very real risk of prosecution. The payoff must be ENORMOUS for it to be worth all this trouble. What am I missing?

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Large parts of this can be automated (scraping profiles, setting up ads based on that scraped info, templates for responses etc), CRM system to track interactions, for which you have 'white collar' staff. The rest you farm out to call center style operations, the 'blue collar' work, who can also do things like 'customer support' for ransomware victims etc. There are entire villages in e.g. Eastern Europe that are notorious for housing gangs like this. They're actual businesses, ran in a professional manner, with an HR department and tech support guys and accounting people etc. The key to financial success is keeping all your staff occupied in a efficient manner - balancing the 'lead generation' with the actual work involved, just like any other business.

Edit: Google "Râmnicu Vâlcea" if you're into this sort of stuff and have some time to go down an internet rabbit hole.

that's a lot of overhead and effort for a scam. It would be easier to just to have a normal job such as being a software developer.

> It would be easier to just to have a normal job such as being a software developer.

Sure it is, but there's a whole world outside of the US, where jobs aren't as easy to find, nor as well paying as software developer job in the US.

Lots of overhead to set up but minimal marginal cost to deploy for multiple use cases and audiences.

It wouldn't surprise me if scammers package their strategy/toolsuite and resell the mechanism to other scammers. Ticket brokers bot networks do this.

First month + last month + deposit (1-2 months) to move in. It's also very common for landlords to ask for cashier's checks or even cash to avoid possibility of checks bouncing. The rent was $4300/month so this could easily be $15k. Per person they can sucker up until the final deadline for renting it. That scumbag might be making more than we do.

I'm guessing there is little risk of prosecution wherever they are.

I think you’re missing professionalization. Writing mortgages would sound implausible, too, if each were the product of an artisan, but there is (effectively or actually) a company here, plausibly with an office, payroll, quarterly targets for on-target compensation, etc.

(This scam has unit economics strikingly similar to being a mortgage broker, with lower capita requirements, minus all the pesky compliance bits.)

Also note that a lot of the folks working for this economy don’t have high-quality access to the legitimate side of the software industry, because they live somewhere we don’t/can’t hire.

One of the best things we could do to drain the swamp is outcompeting Evil, Inc for some of their lynchpin specialists and managers.

There is also an identity theft vector. I’ve encountered scams from NYC CL apts that targeted PII for “credit checks.” I’ve had a man give me a very innocuous looking form to fill in all my sensitive details including SSN, previous addresses etc. It’s easy to fall for something like that, especially when you’re desperate for an apartment you can afford.

(Btw, KYC laws don’t help in this regard, as they condition us to give our PII to anyone who asks for it — so long as they have sufficient leverage over us, we won’t ask any questions.)

There are professional organizations running operations on Craigslist in major cities. Identity theft can be a foothold into much greater schemes, and PII is always a valuable commodity regardless.

It’s potentially a twofer: steal 3 months rent and your identity!

> someone who can pull this off can definitely get a high-paying, honest job pretty much anywhere

Who's saying he hasn't already? Some Amazon guys got busted building a prostitution website here in Seattle a few years ago.

Are you kidding? They copy the stuff from other ads, have email templates. You could set this up including the fake airbnb website in a few hours, quicker if you get good at it. All from your own home, little chance of getting caught, and the possibility of $1000s.

> can pull this off can definitely get a high-paying, honest job pretty much anywhere.

This is just ridiculous.

You may have to consider that there are not-so-few countries where a monthly wage of 500-1000 US$ for a good, honest job is the norm or possibly even a good wage, if the scammer can make 1 of these per year he/she is on par with what other people get, if he/she can make 2 of these per year it is more than enough.

Given some of the absolute insane move In requirements I’ve seen for some places in SF, if you can get one sucker per month, you can easily net 10-15k/mo

I’ve seen places asking for first, last and deposit as rent and a half for 4000/mo places.

> you need to be manually writing plausible looking, personalized emails,

They are not so personalized, are they? Look at the huge email with the pictures and everything. Most of it could be a template. Some of them could be one off, but they are small.

They can also just write once and copy and paste relevant sections as needed. Doesn't sound like such a big deal.

Packing up shop after you have racked in enough profits also doesn't seem like a big deal. Heck, you could be preparing your next 'camp' even as your current one is returning profits.

> and the very real risk of prosecution

May not be so real depending on where the scammer lives.

Getting a job works if you live in an area that has those jobs available. The currency that you get from these scams might also convert really well to the local currency, making it higher paying than a real job.

  what is the payoff for these scams?

Marginal cost for each new pursuit is essentially zero, limited to the ad cost (often zero, like CL).

There were tons of fake CL ads for the Super Bowl and NFC Championship games, asking as little as $850 for Super Bowl tickets (minimum real market price ended up $5000+). Yet people fall for it all the time.

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