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Comment by ourmandave | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't it be nice if something could be done about these lowlifes besides relying on youtubers like Kitboga?

Is there any downside or risk running a call center and draining the accounts of pensioners?

Here in Turkey there was this "Bulgarian missed call scam" thingy.

Essentially, some Turkish speaking Bulgarians(mostly roma, Bulgarians don't normally speak Turkish) would call random Turkish numbers, hoping for a middle aged or older Turkish man call them back. The scam goes like "I live in a poor Bulgarian village and my father/brother/husband treats me badly, how lucky I misdialled the phone to such a gentleman like you" and then they proceed to earn the mans trust and ask for money(first they ask for a bus ticket, then they will call back "on the way for Turkey" about something unexpected happening and ask for a large sum to be wired through Western Union).

I'm Bulgaria born and I happen to have relatives where some of the scams are run at. I've seen with my own eyes people camping in front of a Western Union branch theatrically pretending that they are at the Turkish/Bulgarian border and the woman needs to pay some large fine otherwise they wouldn't let her go to Turkey. She will hand the phone to her husband who will pretend that he is a racist/fascist/gestapo Bulgarian officer asking for money or else she ain't coming to you.

My relatives there told me that they even started scam courses with a week full curriculum where you pay the experienced scammers to teach you how to run the scams. They built some very nice houses in the region.

Anyway, it all faded away when Bulgaria made it compulsory providing ID when you buy a new SIM(10 SIM registrations per person per year limit is introduced). Probably as a result of Turkey asking Bulgaria to locate the scammers. I heard about some still doing it by using SIMs from other countries however the heydays are gone.

This story doesn’t add up. You need an ID to pick up cash from western union, why would showing an ID to get sim cards be an issue at all?

Odds are that this SIM card legislation actually had nothing to do with the scam fading anyway.

The village I’m from is internationally famous for internet scams, they’ve changed over the years because both the potential victims and scammers have become more savvy. Not due to legislation.

It's not about the identity of the person but the limit of SIM cards per person per year. Not just showing an ID, a copy of the ID is stored in the records and you are not allowed to buy more than 10 SIM cards a year.

Just because someone says that they are scammed, the authorities would not simply prevent the alleged scammer from making calls or receiving money.

Since Bulgaria and Turkey are two separate jurisdictions, the scammed person from Turkey will need to prove in Bulgaria that someone scammed them.How are you supposed to prove what she said to you on the phone? Once the mone is transferred, it's gone. To receive a Western Union transfer all you need is a name and a code.

But why does the amount sim cards matter for this scam? How many hundreds of sim cards do you need? Surely it’s easy to find other people to buy sim cards for you?

Because they need to change SIM's all the time. There are websites listing suspicious numbers, simply Googling the number reveals if the number is is used for scamming. Unsuccessful or successful attempts often result someone writing about it in one of those phone number websites.

I don't know if the SIM card limit is by national ID number or operator but there are not that many GSM operators in Bulgaria anyway, it's a small country. There were more before but they merged and now there are 3 in total.

But surely the victims are not sophisticated enough to google numbers?

And even if they are, how hard can it be to find some poor people to go get 10 sim cards for 10 euros? I know that wouldn’t be hard at all in my village.

Or to just corrupt one guy working for the telco and get unlimited SIMs registered using fake IDs?

Or not corrupt anyone and just go get SIM cards with trivial to fake Romanian ID cards?

There is no downside. The biggest risk to the people running these scams is to get banned from the US; which they are probably fine with if they made enough money.

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