More than 100 arrested in Spain in $900k WhatsApp scheme

> I'm worried about the new wave of impersonation scams that's coming thanks to voice cloning.

That at least isn’t replicable at mass scale. You’d need to have a training set for each relative you’re pretending to be.

But in general, yes, it’s going to be a mess.

I wish there was more promotion of the simple way to protect yourself from most scams - if someone initiates contact with you, contact them back through a channel you found independently in a way you already trust. My bank keeps warning me of scams and has a list of ways to protect yourself, but they're stupid things like check if the message is from a mobile number, and does it sound too good to be true? They don't mention the more robust and simple technique of calling back using the number on the back of your bank card. This will nip voice impersonation scams in the bud too.

I hired a lawyer who did advise that. Telling me not to pay any invoices they send me without first contacting them to confirm.

On the other hand, my doctor sends text messages asking for bills to be paid to an account number in the message itself. Training people to trust scam techniques!

From the article:

> The scammers were so convincing that in most cases, they managed to get continuous payments from their victims, according to the police.

They managed to secure continuous income streams of free money by talking to people on their phones. It’s extra money and surely they planned on doing more scams. That’s the motivation.

> Spain's GDP per capita is $30,000, and I'd assume they'd been doing it for at least 6 months, so they're not even making an average wage.

I guarantee they weren’t working on this 8 hours per day, 5 days per week. That’s not how scams like this work. They’re talking to people through WhatsApp. It’s about as demanding as texting their friends, albeit with additional overhead of maintaining the ruse and keeping facts straight. They could have carried on these conversations while working their day jobs.

Some people just get a thrill from committing crimes and extracting money or goods through crime. It doesn’t have to be life changing money, these people just like doing crimes and getting a few thousand extra dollars to do whatever they want with.

Of course, the actual cost is devastating once they’re caught. But they’re not thinking about that.

A lot of criminals would make more with a real job. Sometimes it is cultural (having a real job is seen as weak). Sometimes the crime seems like it would make more money than it actually does for the work input.

I asked one 19-year-old defendant who had just been given a 30-year sentence for armed robbery with an AK-47 how much he actually got from the robbery? "$2000. $1000 for me, $1000 for my cousin." Ugh :(

My mother recently got scammed with that first script during a hectic day at her workplace. As stupid and out of character as those messages were, somehow in between her these guys managed to clean out most of her bank accounts in PIX transactions. They're so easy nowadays you can transfer thousands with very few swipes.

Those payments are for a good operation routed through stolen identities and funneled out using the internet (e.g. gift cards, traditionally). It's easy to trace until the money goes out of the country and gets transformed from a gift card back into money in some place the country has a hard time touching.

you would think, but apparently anyone can now download an app called "talkatone" that gives you a free phone number to make calls and send texts with

Where this is more enforced, it's not uncommon for criminals to get homeless or drug addicts to register phones using their identities.

no, read the articles

Here's how it works, in scams and high pressure sales:

1. Victim suspects scam

2. Victim recognizes the presence of predator.

3. Victim gets scared.

4. Victim tried to maintain composure, but can't think of a way to escape the situation without the predator pursuing.

5. Victim appeases predator because they fear all the terrible things this predator might do, as the predator has no morality and the victim's civilization has collapsed around them.

These predators are violating the deepest social contract. They are acting like brilliant, vicious animals. They deserve to be treated like such, yet they are cloaked in the protection of civilized society. They are a cancer on humanity.

The scam has a similar phone version, with a signature "Hey , it's me" first contact to get the victim to fill in the details on who's calling. A good enough scammer can explain away a lot of the red flags (why it's coming from an unknown number etc.)

And of course it doesn't require a 100% success rate, they'll call number until hitting a jackpot.

> It’s hard to understand how someone could fall for this scam… if a loved one was having an emergency of some kind I would expect them to call rather than text, and I would respond with a call either way to discuss the details.

I think elderly are more vulnerable to this, because they get scared and want to help.

My elderly mother fell victim to a "microsoft" and "paypal" technician calling her twice, despite my training her on how not to pick up the phone from these calls and going over how nobody from these companies would ever call her. She got nervous and scared and basically did whatever the scammers told her because she thought something was wrong with her computer.

Now after it's happened twice :she has been reminded not to answer any calls from number she doesn't know. But she still gets nervous she is going to miss something important from health insurance or doctors office so she is still tempted to pick up spam calls.

It's tough, no matter how much I train her she will still want to answer and "help" the scammer. They keep doing this because it works.

I need to just lock her phone down so all callers not in her contact list go to a voicemail I screen. :-/

It’s hard to understand that there are some people who aren’t as cautious or vigilant or tech-savvy or self-confident as (or far more self-confident than) yourself?

There are similar versions of the scam aiming at companies, as the CEO needs money wired to him as part of a secret acquisition of some sort. There's training trying to target this vector specifically, as the amounts are huge, but it also means more efforts can be made to be more realistic: Getting plenty of pictures and entire voice interviews from many CEOs is trivial. You can imagine how hard one can go crafting a fake message.

It's not unlike people entering their credentials where they shouldn't. I've worked at a company you know about, where we had an expert in-house phisher. Her best attempt managed to get 50% of credentials... when targeting the security team itself!

So yes, any attack that pulls on the right emotional levers will work on all kinds of people.

Onset of dementia can help you become prone to scams like this. Most victims are elderly.

It’s not a guarantee for avoiding dementia, but doing heavy cardio regularly before you hit old age might help mitigate it.

Sure, you think that, but then the one time it does happen and you don't give them money and someone gets serious hurt or dies, you never forgive yourself ever again. And out of worry that that may happen, a lot of people will be safe rather then sorry. Since money is less important then lives.

Soon your calls won't be safe either; Voice cloning is getting REALLY good.