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Comment by donohoe | Hacker News Reader

It references this story which to me is very troubling:

  Contreras told the story of one woman who fell victim
  to these schemes named Maria. After Maria took a loan,
  agents for the app iFectivo sent her 13-year-old daughter,
  her cousin, her nieces, and more than a dozen of her other
  contacts a picture of a nude woman with her face
  photoshopped on. iFectivo told her contacts she had
  become a prostitute to pay her debts.

Full story (referenced in TechPolicy article): https://restofworld.org/2022/mexico-scam-loan-apps/

Troubling, unethical, illegal stuff.

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Stuff like this is what disabused me long ago of extreme forms of libertarianism. Most libertarians and also some defund the police types on the left are just woefully naive about what monsters people can be. Turns out we need a very active police force and regulatory state or people will almost literally eat the vulnerable.

What calls my attention of this story is that employees of that app would go through the trouble of creating a credible shopped image of her and sending it to all of her contacts. Do they have almost no clients, was the loan particularly big, do they have loads of employees just to do this...?

It is not hard at all to create a credible head swap photo shopped image. Probably a one man job to do it to everyone they want to do it too.

With ML, it can be (unfortunately, in this case) automated. One victim - lots of work. Thousands - almost the same amount.

alternatively, it was just a real photo from her phone

It was just the next jira ticket

I wonder if there is a personal aspect to this, not just being scammers but also kinda creepy people / maybe already familiar with harassing people/ know people who will do it for them.

Clearly, that is the leverage the lenders have over their clientele, instead of credit reporting or asset seizure.

These scams are run as boiler rooms, where everyone is working on commission. Actually my understanding is it's a bit more of a pyramid scheme, where the senior folks get a cut of everything, closers get a cut from openers, etc.

But anyhow, point is these scammers are often motivated to go to considerable effort, because the ultimate prize is a pretty big cut of someone's life savings. But of course only a few ever achieve that. The rest will just try for a while then churn out, while the ultimate owners count their money.

It.wouldn't be hard. A dozen different body types, and skin color. You quickly recognize body C, darkness 5, remove background, snap a line for the neck. Send is of course automated. I think after some practice you could do several per minute, and with potential payouts of $100 each that is pretty good.

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