Comment by gota | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gota | Hacker News Reader

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> While I was in Brazil, some thugs with pistols came into a bar where I was. They forced people to send a Pix payment to a specific account, and their money was gone.

Sorry, don't mean to be rude, but your story doesn't track for many reasons. First, PIX keys are associated to formal bank accounts. If what you described happend, that account was blocked by the bank likely within the hour after the 'robbery'. And "stealing" accounts from other people in a way that allows you to withdraw cash from is exceedingly difficult and uncommon.

Furthermore, it might have been possible in early days of pix, but it's been some time now (maybe from the start? Making your story impossible) that Pix has a 'undo' feature that the sender can do on their bank app or ATM even; similar to the 'block this credit transaction' from a credit card.

> With Pix, as I understand it, nobody feels responsible for it and the money is gone.

Incorrect, see above. Are you confusing PIX for some kind of crypto transfer?

Have you ever worked in a financial institution?

This is such a common occurrence that the BCB had to impose a default $200 nightly limit for Pix trns between 8pm and 6am.

The way it works is, criminals use money mules, or stolen identities, to open legitimate bank accounts, then once the cash hits the account, they fan out the stolen proceeds to crypto rails or other money mules (“laranjas”)

BCB has been trying to solve this with MED 2.0 but it is still a duct tape over the real problem: rampant crime and fraud in Brazil

And let’s not dive into the digital bank heists that have been happening since the last year, when hackers have already managed to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the financial system by exploiting Pix’s 24/7 network [0]

Such attack to the financial system would have been akin to a war declaration in serious countries, but crime is so widespread and normalized that Brazilians lowered their standards to accept these absurd situations

  [0] Hackers steal R$400m in attack on Pix-connected fintech: https://valorinternational.globo.com/google/amp/markets/news/2025/07/02/hackers-steal-r400m-in-attack-on-pix-connected-fintech.ghtml

> Sorry, don't mean to be rude, but your story doesn't track for many reasons. First, PIX keys are associated to formal bank accounts.

> If what you described happend, that account was blocked by the bank likely within the hour after the 'robbery'.

> And "stealing" accounts from other people in a way that allows you to withdraw cash from is exceedingly difficult and uncommon.

There you have the straw man ou front man accounts, when the bank comes to act, they have 96 hours to handle the case, the accounts are already empty. I am not sure, but maybe some Brazilians can confirm if my story is impossible or not. I am not from there. I just saw it happening and people explained me that the money was gone forever. I am definitely not confusing PIX for some kind of crypto transfer.

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