A 'scam manual' written to help immigrants not become victims | Hacker News Reader

A 'scam manual' written to help immigrants not become victims

atlasobscura.com

196 pointsBerislavLopac135 comments

Really wish this existed in the 90's when my family moved to the US from eastern europe. A non-exhaustive list of scams my parents fell for:

- Investing money in a friend's company - this was the most painful as it was perpetuated by our family members who lived here for a while that we trusted

- Rainbow vacuum cleaner

- Aqualife water filter

- Hiring someone to take us to another city to buy a car to "help get a good deal" - turned out he was working for the seller, and it was not a good deal at all

- A summer job for me selling Vector cutlery

Unfortunately it's easy to scam new immigrants, this happened for hundred years and still happening now.

> Rainbow vacuum cleaner

There was a wave of this in 90s and 00s but in Poland. In my eyes parents signed a loan for "Mercedes of vaccum cleaners" for an amount of over 2k USD. Average salary back then was something below 700 USD. Fuck this American scammers. Eat shit and bankrupt Rainbow. Rest of the above were occuring as well. People were looking at the west with hope and sympathy, while the west came over with smiling brutal extortionist rape fest.

I don't understand this. Why did they sign up for a $2000 loan if they could barely afford it?

Colleagues in workplace started buying and were receiving commission by referencing next client. Trained salesman visited home and used all dirty sales tricks and pitches. Until now I remember "don't say this vacuum is expensive, this is Mercedes of vacuum cleaners, everyone desires even a substitute of Mercedes", or "a salesman enters someone's home with an attitude that they own him the commission money". You grew up in Communism with an absolute shortage of everything and are unable to evaluate good value in market economy. Fuck this manipulative psychopats.

>Colleagues in workplace started buying and were receiving commission by referencing next client.

You can blame the West as much as you want, but it sounds like Poles were stabbing Poles in the back too.

In novel free market and democratic ways. That was extremely bitter realization. The reward for hardships so far was a new wave of MLMs, cults, sects, scams, and whatnot.

It was still way better than Soviet occupation. But I get it, it was hugely disappointing.

PRL was not "Soviet occupation", unless you're referring to parts of Poland during 1939-45

We do still have them right here in the US-of-A but they tend to be more clever in packaging... Mary Kay, Amway [0], people working IT at state colleges known for IT but paid for a weird 'stock tip' ponzi email thing, heck I know between 2007ish-2013ish a couple close friends bought into this weird "I'm a cellular reseller" MLM thing...

[0] - Still remember when some otherwise very bright folks got wrapped up in 'Team of Destiny' which was basically Amway over the internet back in 2001-2002ish times.

This scam was popular in post-soviet too. Basically a very annoying salesman who reiterates on all sorts of reality bending pushes once you let them in. You may think it shouldn’t work but it does, on people whom you wouldn’t call idiots. As I understand it, it leverages the tendency to respect authority and avoid conflict, among other sales tricks.

There’s an old joke about it:

Salesman: (enters the room and dumps trash on the floor) If our vacuum cleaner can’t clean this, I will eat this trash!

Dwellers: You can start eating cause electricity is off for three days.

A variation of that joke was in the "Sales Resistance" episode of I Love Lucy from 1953 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVJNQhGpwSw .

At the end, Lucy tries to make her money back by using the same sales techniques used on her. The vacuum cleaner doesn't work because electricity is turned off because the resident hadn't paid the power bill.

In Prague or Budapest about '88 - hazy now as we were moving about a lot - before the wall came down, but the "thaw" had started. McDonalds just opened a restaurant, first in the city. Anyway there we were looking at this enormous queue... the biggest damn queue I ever saw, It went round the block, and the next block... like how people camp out for black Friday but thousands and thousands of people. Each burger was the equivalent of a few weeks wages. But nothing could stop them, all hungry for a bite of "freedom".

Meantime porn producers and other creeps were swarming Prague and Budapest to "taste the Communism". Hard to find a woman who was in her teens or twenties at that time who wasn't curious if free market penis is as hard as post-Communist one.

> porn producers and other creeps were swarming Prague and Budapest to "taste the Communism"

A significant majority of white sex workers in Western Europe and porn actresses still tend to be from Eastern Europe—Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia.

Jehovah's witnesses is another vile scam that hugely spoiled the image of the West in the eyes of the people who just broke free from the Soviet occupation. I don't understand how such evil and disgusting cult is allowed to exist. If a person would hide a list of thousands of child molesters or would endorse killing children by giving fake medical advice to their parents, they would be put straight to jail. How are cults allowed to do the same without any repercussions?

Well it's a nuanced answer. The United States has freedom of Religion, and a large separation of Church and State. It leads to some bad but theoretically some good.

> If a person would hide a list of thousands of child molesters or would endorse killing children by giving fake medical advice to their parents, they would be put straight to jail.

Unfortunately any progress our country has made in this regard has been utterly regressed in the last 5 or so years....

But to better understand the other side of this as far as religion, consider the Catholic sacrament of Confession. A priest is not supposed to divulge confessions to anyone.

Then, let's consider the danger on the other side. Historically, Governments swooping in and grabbing lists of church members, what happened next was not looked well upon.

And so the US has this sometimes almost horrifying level of separation of church and state, where people do have the freedom to worship, however other benefits are abused [0][1] and we even have let folks that infiltrated three letter organizations keep their church status [2]

[0] - I still remember the baptist sermon of "I am not telling you how to vote! I am not telling you how to vote. But the bible says X will go to heaven and Candidate Y does not X"

[1] - Churches do not have nearly the same level of oversight as a normal nonprofit

[2] - "Operation Snow White"

It's not about some faith nuances, Jehovah's Witnesses are predators and stalkers.

> How are cults allowed to do the same without any repercussions?

I am not a friend of the JW, but as an adult, you're expected to be your own advocate. You opted in to a system of faith, not science.

Regarding child molesters, any organization that spells out a code of silence in its doctrine is always fun to deal with. The JW are hardly unique with their theocratic warfare, there's also mesirah, deceivers-yet-true, keep sweet, omerta, "snitches get stitches", etc. You can't penetrate such a culture from the outside, so no witnesses testify, hence no repercussions.

I used to ignore or look down on them. After they stalked me with some profiling and unwanted weekly visits while I lived abroad, I actively hate Jehovah's Witnesses. They stalk intercoms in the buildings. Another American smiling predators and lunatics.

"a) list of thousands of child molesters or b )would endorse killing children by giving fake medical advice to their parents"

I do neither associate with Jehovah's witnesses. Would you be willing to share some details?

> parents signed a loan for "Mercedes of vaccum cleaners"

Somehow I think the problem is less the 'American scammers' and more the fact that your lot decided it was worth taking out a loan for a vacuum cleaner, of all things.

They were in some lunatic trance agitated by manipulative sales tactics. Any other loan they would have research beforehand and actively apply for.

> fact that your lot decided it was worth taking out a loan

Let's use analogy - currently American elderly are aggressively profiled and targeted by various scams starting from a phone call because they are gullible, lonely, and vulnerable. Perhaps they simply decide it's worth to give away 1000-3000 USD here and there? Maybe they decide that few calls with a guy with Indian accent is worth 2000 USD, of all things. Honestly I feel certain satisfaction that it bites back.

If it makes you feel better, the Rainbow and the Vector get lots of non-immigrants, too.

And some people swear by the Rainbows because of the water feature.

> - Investing money in a friend's company - this was the most painful as it was perpetuated by our family members who lived here for a while that we trusted

I don't know your parents' experience, of course, but this method of losing money is one of the most popular for everyone. I once saw an expert who provides finanical education to new professional atheletes (known for being bankrupt soon after retirement despite millions in income). Loans to family/friends' businesses was top of their list of no-no's.

On the other hand, many successful businesses have started that way. Many more legitimate but failed efforts also have begun that way. Not everyone has access to VC capital, personal wealth, or a bank loan.

> On the other hand, many successful businesses have started that way.

It's called the triple F round: friends, family, and fools.

Yeah, I should've been more clear: it wasn't really investing in a friends company. I agree it can be a source of funding when other sources aren't available, but in this case it was a total scam - the company was specifically designed to accept money and fold.

Affinity fraud.

It's really a bitter pill to swallow that there exist people who would do this to their friends.

Or family members. MLMs and social media influencers are a plague.

Here in Singapore there was a plague of such cases when China opened up. The main victims were ethnic Chinese Singaporeans being screwed over by long lost family members in China.

It's only getting worse[1].

There's so many tele-scammers from China nowadays and old Singaporean Chinese are ripe for the pickings. The usual ones I hear over the phone are MOH, IRAS, or SingPost, or some other authority impersonation.

[1]: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/record-scam-cases-singapore-2023-t...

Isn't Vector just a weird MLM sales channel for Cutco? It is unlikely anyone will make money off it, but from what I understand it is not impossible. You just won't make money selling knives at least.

Are you saying Cutco isn't a MLM scam? I've always avoided it like the plague.

IDK, it just seemed like overpriced normal knives to me. They aren't bad knives. But I just sharpen my knives before each use anyways. The $2 knife from wal mart works just fine.

Most people could probably benefit from someone helping them navigate the car buying process. For a $500 I bet I could talk most buyers through the right lease, payment setup and financing and pre negotiate a decent deal in one of the 3-4 neighboring states and setup an inspection at a good mechanics if buying used. I bet I could bring 1-2k of value into that transaction. If I was doing it as my day job I could probably squeeze out 2-3k or help them tap the auction market directly.

The problem is there's no way to prove that you're doing that and not a scammer; you're almost better off just asking someone who bought one recently what they did.

(What you're suggesting is basically Nothercastle's Used Cars)

Except it’s more like a buyers agent or a doula. Someone that’s navigated the process many times to assist on behalf of a buyer. Upfront payment no commission or kickback could even put that in the contract.

I do think these people exist I’ve seen them advertise services in specialty car forums but it’s very niche.

You see it more frequently in certain luxury vehicles where the price is part of the prestige, usually to where the equation is a bit more managed, e.x. they can set base price higher and have fewer random 'tire kickers' to deal with.

But the buyers agent is going to work with most buyers only once. And work with dealers many times. This is hard to get the incentives right

Pre Pay the agent then the incentive is correct.

But now you need an agent to help you navigate through the market of car-buying agents!

That's worth writing a book for. A short, straight-to-the-point guide in simple language would probably sell really well.

It’s not though because if you can read the book you don’t need help. The thing most people need help understanding is the intricacies of financing, rates, prepayment, insurance, and warranties that’s not something an average can figure understand .The other part is just getting around the upsell and shopping around. You can research all that online the information is there but most either don’t care to understand or it won’t.

Not sure I agree in general. Grinding through hours of research and teaching yourself things from scraps of info is a lot harder than reading it out of a well-structured book. Can't speak for this particular domain but I certainly would appreciate a coherent resource.

Yes but unfortunately things change pretty often so idk how you keep everything up to date in a book. Leases need a calculator to compare and reliability and depreciation estimates are also dynamic. You could have a website with a subscription but people hate paying for those.

I can totally understand that, but I don't want to waste time figuring out how to optimize it by trial and error if there's a an easily digestible guide that gets me within 95%, because that shit is not fun or interesting to me. I'm telling there's an audience for such a book because I'm it, and you're arguing that I don't exist. Then you put a new edition once every 1-2 years, and call it 'Nothercastle's cary buyer's guide 2025'.

Buying a car is an awful experience. I once had a Mazda dealership hold onto my keys and license during the negotiation so I couldn't leave.

Under what pretense did they get a hold of your own car keys?

Trade-in evaluation?

Just check it visually, kick the tires, and listen carefully how the engine starts up - should be quick and smooth. Pay cash. Now please send me the $500 check.

Many people would fail even that but no visual without a lift isn’t enough.

These services have existed for many years. ie https://carbuyersadvantage.com/faq/

But it takes a leap of faith for me to think my interests are best served with this type of service.

I see what you mean, I guess if your friends used it and it worked for them then I could see using it as well.

This place you linked isn’t upfront about their fee structure at all so I’m pretty suspicious. If you aren’t paying for the service your aren’t the customer and this might be the case here.

Reminds me, tourists as well. I often traveled to a certain location abroad, and never had trouble with taxis etc. Later, two older female relatives accompanied me on a trip, and the first taxi we went on the driver tried two scams on us!

What's the scam with the water filter?

Charge thousands of dollars for a subscription for something you can basically buy at Home Depot for $250

Yup Nikola Tesla was another immigrant who was scammed almost hundred years ago.

Rainbow is worth the money in my opinion. I think the one in my family is at least 20 years old, and it's way better than any other because of the mixing-dust-with-water thing. I've used many vacuum cleaners, including some industrial-grade ones, and none of them can hold a candle to Rainbow. Not needing any consumables like paper bags is a nice bonus.

>"Really wish this existed in the 90's when my family moved to the US from eastern europe."

I moved to Canada from USSR in the beginning of 90s. The scams were plentiful and unexpected. Lucky for me I've followed that golden rule - if it sounds too good then fuck it. Saved me from lot of troubles. Some of my friends were not so lucky.

>>Rainbow vacuum cleaner

Why is that one a scam? We've had one now for over 20 years, my mum still uses it almost daily, as far as I can tell it's built like a tank and will outlast all of us lol.

Every child, as part of his education, should be required to play some MMO with in-game trading, where noobs are routinely taken advantage of, where scams and betrayals abound, as a preparation for real life.

> Every child, as part of his education, should be required to play some MMO with in-game trading where noobs are routinely taken advantage of

So, RuneScape before the Grand Exchange, then.

  drop ur addy and press alt f4
  it will duplicate ur items

  Sending trade offer to double ur gp

This wasn't for immigrants. This was for a subset of immigrants from rural areas. This manual could be equally applicable to a German farmer heading into Berlin for the first time. America had no corner on the scam market. Certainly Paris or London was home to scams over and above anything the US had to offer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cour_des_miracles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stock_Exchange_Fraud_of_... (People dressed up as French soldiers to convince everyone in London that Napoleon was dead.)

And don't forget Scotland's history-altering national scam:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme

An endeavor with legitimate intent is not a scam, not to mention how devastating that was to Scotland.

But go ahead, make fun and light of a national disaster that saw people starve, die, and even an entire nation lose their independance.

Darien started as a mistake. It evolved into a scam.

As for death and suffering, throughout history even the smallest scams have created suffering. That immigrant who lost his money to a card shark? His family might not eat for a month. That woman who lost money on an investment scam? She might have to take a job that will likely kill her in a few years. And a great many scams were openly violent. Darien was not unique in its resultant suffering.

It was never a scam. Never.

And using hindsight to call something a mistake, doesn't mean it was apparent to anyone beforehand.

How did you reach the conclusion that the post in question was making fun of anything?

Callung a legitimate endeavor a nation untook to start their own colony, better their destiny, feed their impoverished people, where brave volunteers died horrible deaths, a 'scam", is hard to interpret otherwise.

Something can be both a national tragedy and a scam.

The Darien scheme, for example, was both.

No part of it was a scam. The fact that the endeavor was made, validates this.

Next you'll call US bonds a scam, because scam artists take advantage, and use them in some scammy way.

I would love a better understanding of modern scams and crime in general.

Like what does "money laundering" look like on the ground, how would I know if someone around me was trying to do that?

I've had some random Amazon items show up addressed to me, but I didn't order them, and I think that was part of a scam, but I never fully got my head around how it works.

I hear about various "work from home" jobs actually being scams, but what's going on there? Not just scamming the workers out of their personal money, I mean, like using the workers as the arms and legs of a larger criminal enterprise. What's that all about?

I would watch a show on this, if it had better-than-mythbusters quality of explanations, think more like Connections or Newton's apple.

The random Amazon items are probably the "brushing" scam[0] which I guess is about using stolen payment to generate "verified purchases" for fake reviews.

[0]: https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam

TBH Many legit services funded from taxes, contributions, and insurances feel like scam. Many jobs fell like scam. Scammers focused on profit extraction exploit the decreased level of alertness. Unfortunately, random "friendly stranger" is almost always scammer especially if pulling out anyone's wallet is involved.

Yeah. A friend of mine just shared this:

https://i.imgur.com/KDUOq2j.png

Great. They will look indistinguishable from scammers, and I have low hopes that anyone will actually check ID now that this notice has told them they're legit. Some scammers are gonna have a field day impersonating them.

While I don't support abuse of 911 for things like this, they really need something like it, a known-trusted authority that people can verify with.

Otherwise, you're using information in the notice to verify the notice! That's pointless!

Hell, Troy Hunt just wrote about this: https://www.troyhunt.com/thanks-fedex-this-is-why-we-keep-ge...

> I hear about various "work from home" jobs actually being scams, but what's going on there?

Many merchants won't ship overseas due to fraud, costs, etc. In this scam, the fraudsters purchase something with stolen payment, ship to you, and then have you re-ship to them or whoever they've resold it to. Often at your expense which they promise to reimburse.

If the merchant realizes they're fraudulent orders, they may block you as a fraudulent customer blocking your address in back office fulfillment services. Now you have trouble buying your own things.

If investigators look into it, they come to you. Since shipments are going over state lines, it could turn into Federal trouble.

And you never get reimbursed for shipping.

> I hear about various "work from home" jobs actually being scams, but what's going on there? Not just scamming the workers out of their personal money

Often the scam here is that the workers have to pay for their own training, pay the company for supplies, whatever... And then just the work never materializes.

"Once you've done the training we'll set you up with clients" and then ooops, there's just no clients available anymore sorry.

Earlier this week I was thinking similar..

How do I teach a young person about to travel the world alone as a new adult the scams like bump-and-rob.. the pick pockets in new orleans and the ones that 'tell you where your shoes are from'..

the ball and cups people in NY, the purse snatchers watching from the alleys..

There are so many scams and criminal things I've seen over the years (and I am sure many more I do not know) - how to prepare people for predators that are waiting for the noobs in the cities..

the dating app free dinner people and the dating app drug and rob common in Columbia these days..

/random quick thoughts.

We need a compendium and video to show some things they should be aware of and looking for instead of staring up at the pretty new lights or what not.

> and the ones that 'tell you where your shoes are from'.

Isn't it "where you got your shoes"/"what street your got your shoes on" ("you got 'em on your feet!"/"you got 'em on [current street name]")? Do they actually get violent or is the implication enough for people who fall for that?

The time I saw it go down I appreciated the honesty and candor at the end.. it was made clear that 'they preferred to provide value by being entertaining for a time and wanted money for doing a 'fun thing'.. yet they had many times before.. and during the current interaction, had many opportunities to take advantage of the distracting situation to take everything, and would be happy taking less if it was offered..

while nodding to others who were nearby that they could stand down since it appeared a charity/entertainment tax was going to be paid instead of needing to be taken..

That's the vibe I ran into there.. I'm sure it varies depending on who is involved..

Several lessons.. one of which is I carry a 20, a 10, and a couple of 5's in one pocket so I can hand over cash in any situation without pulling out a wallet - which is easy to snatch / grab..

Also be aware of anyone who wants to take your attention to a small place, like staring at your shoes and their hands near that spot, so you don't know what's going on around you..

So I didn't mind handing over a few bucks for the candor, but I can see how it gets worse, and likely also changes upon time of day / night.

> the dating app free dinner people

This is a lesson that people can learn for themselves relatively cheaply.

> the dating app drug and rob common in Colombia

This on the other hand sounds quite scary, glad it hasn't caught on where I live.

I learned the dating app Herbalife scam. Ended up with $20 nutritional powder can in hand.

dating app -> drugged -> robbed..

I recall at least 3 stories around Nashville with this M.O. the past couple years or so.. I remember at least 2 stories from around Miami that I've seen in the news.

I'm sure there have been many more, just seen a few actual stories when not looking for them..

I've seen an interesting revenge video made with one of the Columbia situations - and it's apparently gotten to be such a common thing that the state department has recently warned people (https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/21/world/colombia-dating-app-war... ) not to use dating apps when going there.

> new orleans ... the ones that 'tell you where your shoes are from'

I didn't realize how localized these scams are. NOLA is exactly where someone tried to pull that on me. I don't know if it was a scam really, he was in no position to collect if I didn't enjoy his joke.

I told him it wouldn't be fair of me to take the challenge, because there was no way he could possibly be correct. He kept trying with some rewordings, but I stuck to my position and he moved on.

At the time, I wondered idly where the conversation would have gone if I had been more receptive, but I have to admit I never considered the obvious elementary school-level joke!

> I hear about various "work from home" jobs actually being scams, but what's going on there?

There's a lot of variants, but a couple of the most common ones are:

1) "Welcome to ScamCo! Here's a check for $X to help you pay for these work supplies, send us back the extra after you're done." (The check bounces; the repayment of the remainder doesn't.)

2) "Welcome to ScamCo! You'll be my personal assistant, please buy me some gift cards / cryptocurrency / whatever." (The payment to cover the cost of the cards bounces; the gift cards / cryptocurrency / whatever are unrecoverable.)

3) "Welcome to ScamCo! You'll help me move money between my bank accounts." (The bank accounts are stolen; the mark is working as a money mule.)

4) "Welcome to ScamCo! You'll help us reship packages." (The packages are stolen goods.)

Looks like 50% of those scams could be eliminated simply by the general public not accepting cheques.

I don't think I've seen one here for at least a decade and a half, same for signatures with credit cards.

Similar scams are done in Europe, where checks are almost-extinct. Sorry, scammers will always find a way

How though? A direct bank transfer in Europe is nearly completely impossible to reverse, once you have money in your account it's staying there.

The "money agent" acts as a cut-out and delay tactic.

Usually it's combined with a parcel re-shipping scam.

It works like this: "Sell" high-priced items on eBay, use the local bank account of the mule to collect the money. The victims will trust this process because a local bank account is involved. The mule now transfers that money through irrevocable money orders into a non-extraditory country.

The victims will go after the mule, but the police will take some time, so you get 2-4 months out of a mile until he is arrested.

At the same time, you order high-priced items using stolen credit cards and have them delivered to the mule. The mule repackages them and sends them to the scammers. The shops will go after the mule.

Ah. That makes sense - thanks for explaining.

Until bank-to-bank 0% fee services like Zelle become more popular, checks are still the best way to pay someone a significant amount without a chunk getting taken out as debit/credit fees.

Thankfully people these days know that checks that aren't cashier's checks are nearly worthless. I wish more people verified the check over the phone before accepting it but it's a start.

Absolutely - or if the check clearing process made it more obvious to customers that a check hasn't cleared yet, possibly even by not making funds available for checks drawn on dubious banks until the check has fully cleared.

Here's a rule of thumb on scams: know what the risk-free rate is (in the American case, the benchmark would be 10-year U.S. Treasury note rates), and know deep in your heart that any[0] return above that bears risk.

The 10-year note currently yields a fraction above 4%, as of the last auction[1]. That means that anything that has the potential to return above that also has the potential to lose money; and generally, the more potential for higher returns, the more risk. Anybody claiming to give you a "quick, safe return" on your money is lying about at least one of the quick, safe, or return; i.e., a scam.

[0]: Very rarely, there are true arbitrage opportunities or some other situation where someone's cleverness leads to outsized risk-adjusted returns. "You" are probably not that someone.

[1]: https://treasurydirect.gov/instit/annceresult/press/preanre/...

You can currently get a 5%-interest savings account with some quite reputable firms (Morgan Stanley, Robinhood, Wealthfront). Those are effectively risk-free ways to earn more than 4%.

I think the 10-year treasury note rate underestimates things a bit. Maybe it's because there is an assumption priced in that interest rates will go down again?

But the point stands: right now, anything offering you more than 5% return must have some risk involved.

5.4% from a Goldman Sachs CD promotional rate. That is as risk free as anything else.

> Maybe it's because there is an assumption priced in that interest rates will go down again?

Yes, exactly this. The 1-year treasury pays 5%, so it's appropriate to look at that instead.

Normally the 10-year pays more than the 1-year, so it's safe to look at that; we're currently in an unusual state (an "inverted yield curve") where it doesn't, and people tell you this is a surefire sign of a coming recession.

Yeah and really for most people that risk with those FDIC insured banks is effectively zero so backstopped by the fed anyway.

Off topic, but as a finance nerd I want to point out that if you know you won't touch your money for 10 years and put it in a savings account paying 5% you are bearing "duration" risk. It's possible that interest rates will fall a lot and by failing to lock in a 4% return you end up with less money at the end of 10 years. (Just a technical note! You probably shouldn't buy 10 year treasuries!)

This but S&P 500 for me. I am at a point I won't believe any investment would get me more than a few % over S&P for significant length of time like 5-10 yrs.

I don't know, a 5% CD with FDIC insurance may actually be lower risk, as US debt credit rating has been downgraded to AA+ from AAA recently.

> Like what does "money laundering" look like on the ground, how would I know if someone around me was trying to do that?

You won't. Money laundering is giving plausible reasons for the government to think illicitly gained money is actually legitimately gained.

It usually takes the form of a business. Generally speaking the more service oriented the better (You wouldn't want to explain how a restaurant can serve 1000 people with 1 grocery store run. But a laptop repair business? Pretty easy to fake a few "I uninstalled a virus from mister smith's computer".)

> I've had some random Amazon items show up addressed to me, but I didn't order them, and I think that was part of a scam, but I never fully got my head around how it works.

That one is a fun one. You generally aren't the one being scammed, someone else is. It's (probably) triangulation fraud. [1] [2] Though it could also just be a scammer checking to see if a stolen credit card will buy things.

> I hear about various "work from home" jobs actually being scams, but what's going on there?

Generally, these are MLMs. It's usually targeted at stay at home moms. It's usually "be your own boss". And usually the business model is you try to recruit people to sell the products you are ostensibly supposed to be selling. Basically a pyramid scheme but legal because there's a product in the mix (really dumb that it's legal).

[1] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1119606931

[2] https://chargebacks911.com/triangulation-fraud/

Restaurants work as part of a larger money-laundering operation, though. Cash washes through the till in the restaurant, and you sign the receipts for all the non-existent food your buddy's supplier sends you. There are probably some other dodges I'm not aware of.

Source: worked for a mob-adjacent restaurant in London. (Excellent food, though, and in a nice location; it had celebrity guests in on the regular.) I got curious watching the owner ringing in ticket after ticket and stuffing the register with £50 notes, then once I saw a couple of inflated invoices it all made sense. A while later the Met took down the owner's cousin, and the restaurant closed shortly thereafter. It was an awful place to work (top tip: don't work for, or with, coke fiends; functional heroin addicts are fine), but goodness was that an education. I was an illegal immigrant at the time, so I didn't have many options.

Every time that I or a friend has ended up in an even mildly not-everyday financial situation there was IMMEDIATELY a scam waiting there.

Trading in a car? Last-minute they discount the trade-in value due to damage and hope you won't realize that's already counted in the KBB value.

Car's making a weird noise? The mechanic wants to replace your struts for 1800$ even though the sound is just from the brakes being worn down.

Inherited money in a trust? The trust manager calls you to "discuss your plans" and get you to let them manage the money without your ever seeing it.

Miss paying taxes in a state because you thought you didn't owe them anything because you didn't actually live there? I'm still getting fake letters that try to scare me into calling them even though the bill was cleared up. years ago.

That's just off the top of my head. I swear sometimes it seems like this whole country is build on scams. It's fucking depressing.

It feels like everything here is predatory by some law of thermodynamics. Anything that moves must be powered by the exploitation of someone, and no change may happen without the simultaneous ratcheting up of some mechanism of extraction.

Profit has an inexorable tendency to decline, and thus the squeeze.

The hidden extra cost of sales tax and tip when you go to pay in America feels very much like a scam. I don't understand why the cost is not just exactly as advertised like everywhere else.

Because the entire nation has been brainwashed into believing that it's your responsibility as a customer to make sure someone else's employees are well compensated. It's literally the biggest scam going on currently in US, and you will get people(including here on HN) passionately defending it.

What's missing are transparency laws. Every business should give a breakdown on where cost for a service went. If that breakdown does not cover compensation to the employees then it should be illegal.

I was even more surprised to find out that delivery services don't pay tip to drivers on top of the agreed upon rate for their service. Instead the rate they're are paid is adjusted as per the tip provided so that the total amount of money they make remains the same per delivery.

It can only be considered a scam for the tourists, because everyone in America knows that prices in the menu are 30% less than the real prices, and mentally adjusts for it.

You go in for a medical procedure. There are multiple entities that send you a bill, directly to you and also to your insurance. Normal practice seems like it is to wait and see what the insurance will cover, and after a reasonable amount of time (and getting a statement of benefits from the insurance), you pay the difference. Meanwhile you've been reported to the credit bureaus, so basically anyone can see that you had a recent medical procedure with potentially to-be-settled balances.

A couple years later you start getting calls from collection agents saying you owe money, often times only double-digit values. They hound you till you give in an pay it (after all, how can you verify something that was several years old?). All because when you went to the hospital billing clerk, they can't tell you how much you owe the third-party pharmacy, or the radiologist, or the independent anesthesiologist that bills you at some random time anywhere from 1 month to 3 years later.

You probably know this already, but for the general audience: you don't actually owe a debt to a collector if they can't prove to you that you owe it, and they're typically very bad at that. (See https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/the-waste-stream-of-c...)

The podcast Darknet Diaries in general is a little like that. It explains a lot of these, often by inviting the criminals themselves. It's fascinating.

I've had some random Amazon items show up addressed to me, but I didn't order them, and I think that was part of a scam, but I never fully got my head around how it works.

These are Amazon shops in China that don't want to say they're in China so they send returns to other US customers. I got sandals this way with a print out saying "return them to this address".

I got some expensive item in the mail once, that I didn't order, and as I took it out of the mail box, a young man approached and said it was actually his and took the parcel.

On the ground, money laundering looks a lot like embezzlement, because it's basically the opposite: instead of trying to divert money away from a business and into somewhere it shouldn't be (their bank account), they're trying to take money from somewhere it shouldn't be (say, a shipping container full of cash) and putting it into a legitimate business.

This works best with a variably high volume, cash-based, low-variable cost business. Variably high volume, because the more legitimate cash flow you have, the harder it is to notice some level of illegitimate cash flow, and the variability makes it much harder for someone (law enforcement) to notice that you're consistently making more money than you have business for. Cash based is obvious, you have cash you need to legitimize. Low variable costs eliminate another way law enforcement could notice you, if your variable costs don't match your revenue (a restaurant that only buys a couple lbs of butter a month shouldn't be making thousands of meals).

> On the ground, money laundering looks a lot like embezzlement

Thank you, this is exactly the sort of mental rubric that made a lot of things click!

And it makes me even more suspicious of that car wash that offers a very expensive "premium" wash package whose differences from the mid-grade package are stuff like vacuuming and hand-rubbed wax that probably consume little to no additional inputs. Hmmm. Hmmmmmmm.

Like what does "money laundering" look like on the ground, how would I know if someone around me was trying to do that?

Restaurants in high rent areas offering suspiciously cheap food with relatively few customers.

They are all over NZ. People are so naiive about what they are.

A lot of scams work on greed (like the betting tipster scam) or desperation (like the bail scam) to get people to lower their guards. Offering somebody $100,000 most people will immediately realise it's a scam, but a $50,000 job sounds more reasonable. The job "interview" builds the relationship and trust, then the actual scam comes out.

Bail scam: https://www.countrymeadows.com/news/story-bank/frantic-call-...

There's also Gipsy scams: https://budgetslowtravel.com/europe-scams/

- My Credit Cards Don’t Work Scam

- Pathetic Person Scam

- Women with Babies Scam

- Swarming Scam

- Friendship Bracelets Scam

- Survey Scam

- Gold Ring Scam

- Baggage Scam

- Subway Begging Scam

- Blocking Scam

People defend tolerance and fight prejudice against Gypsies, until they meet them in real life. More sophisticated one is Polish, Slovakian, and Romanian Gypsies are renting out social housing they receive in UK.

One of the Nero Wolf novels involved conning illegal immigrants in the 1930s. Interesting read...

I thought it was funny the references to scammy mail order colleges. Little has changed since the 30s.

The Golden Spiders! There was a really wonderful television series based on Nero Wolfe a few years back too. Just ignore the one from the 80s.

So..... it's not a scam manual?

When you put things in single quotes they tend to negate the meaning.

You’ll love the http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com

Holy crap! That's hilarious.

Looks like some people use quotes when they intend to ‘emphasize’ a word.

To be fair, I wouldn’t know what would be a more appropriate way of indicating that. Other than markdown, I assume this doesn’t count.

Emphasis has *long* been done with asterisks. That's why they create italic on here.

> Emphasis has *long* been done with asterisks.

Source?

Sounds interesting; but earliest continuous use I’m aware of would be Usenet. That’s not that long and quite niche (in the context of typography and its history).

Something I'm learning from reading the comments is that the culture has moved in what it calls a "scam"

In my mind, and from my background, a scam is a pretty brutal outright fraud. You buy a toaster and they send you a box of bricks.

From the top comment: - Rainbow vacuum cleaner (I would say it is not a scam, just an overpriced and underwhelming product)

- Aqualife water filter (Similarly I would just call this an overpriced product)

- Hiring someone to take us to another city to buy a car to "help get a good deal" - turned out he was working for the seller, and it was not a good deal at all. (Depending on details, this actually does sound like a scam, though a small one. The scam part is where they hired the intermediary, other than that it's just abusive sales)

- A summer job for me selling Vector cutlery (not a scam, It's a crap job for sure, and MLM for sure, but they do in fact pay you for what you sell. I sold cutco and I made a little money)

Some others:

Trading in a car? Last-minute they discount the trade-in value due to damage and hope you won't realize that's already counted in the KBB value. (arguably a scam, but mostly I would just call that aggressive hagling)

Car's making a weird noise? The mechanic wants to replace your struts for 1800$ even though the sound is just from the brakes being worn down. (Might be a scam, but it also might just be a mechanic who's not great at their job. I have blown many thousand dollars in billable hours for my clients by misdiagnosing software issues before. Sometimes the people we hire just fuck up and that's part of life. If you as the client are really out of your territory then you are more prone to hiring someone incompetent)

Inherited money in a trust? The trust manager calls you to "discuss your plans" and get you to let them manage the money without you ever seeing it. (Again, conceivably a scam, but also it's a little tricky because the trust working just right would look similar. This feels a lot more the mechanic example where it's not so much a scam as you are hiring someone who isn't very good)

And then the infamous "investing in a Friend and Family business" and never getting the money back. I have no doubt that this is sometimes a scam... but I'm an angel investor and also do quite a bit of F&F investments and I can say for sure: I don't think I have ever been scammed, and the vast majority fail burn the capital and show no positive return. That doesn't make it a scam! Running a business is hard! I think we already know this on HackerNews. Just because someone bets and looses doesn't mean they got scammed!

>The chapter titled “The Con of the Matchmaker” describes how American con artists published their own newspapers, filled with ads for women looking for husbands. Anyone who answered such an ad would have their finances scrutinized and then wrested from them by a so-called marriage broker, with no actual wife at the end of the ordeal.

Huh, i suppose some things never change.

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@dang spam bot?

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