back to article Hundreds arrested in Far Eastern online scam crackdown

Almost 600 people have been arrested across the Far East in co-ordinated raids against a network of online fraudsters. Arrests were made in China, Taiwan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand late last week. Indonesia has already deported 101 people back to Taiwan. The scammers mostly tricked mainland Chinese victims …

COMMENTS

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  1. Andus McCoatover

    The 37 people arrested.. were tricking people into paying fake traffic fines.

    Now there's a thought!

    How about wheelie-bin fines?

    Lob a tramps' nappy into the bin, and 'ren uncle=robert.'

    Oh, wait. Councils have a mafia-monopoly already on that. My bad.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      I've been hit by that one.

      Nasty. They leave behind an official sounding voicemail and make you call an automated system. I was still on a prov license back then and worried that I messed up somewhere. Luckily my cell line dropped before I could make the payment.

      That was years ago tho.

  2. Blubster
    Coat

    None that I can think of..

    My wife went to Indonesia

    Oh really? Jakarta?

    No, she went by aeroplane.

    1. Disco-Legend-Zeke
      Joke

      Guy: "I Met A...

      ...girl, I thought she was African, but it turned out she was from one of those Carribian Islands, um, I forget the name."

      Other Guy: "Jamaica?"

      Guy: "No, we just kissed a little."

  3. Ted Treen
    Go

    If they're guilty...

    ...then I hope they're dealt with, with the customary tenderness & gentleness associated with far-eastern legal systems.

    Although I'm over 60, I still spend a lot of time advising those older than me (and a surprising number who are younger than me) on how to respond to the variety of 419ers and similar ungodly who blight their time online.

    A pox on them, a plague on all their houses, and I'm glad to see that some police forces still retain their cojones, unlike ours in the UK who have been metaphorically de-nadded by a proliferation of liberal-lefty judiciary and legal politicos, few of whom could count their fingers and come up with the same answer twice running.

    1. Tom 38
      Thumb Down

      @Ted Treen

      """

      I still spend a lot of time advising those older than me (and a surprising number who are younger than me) on how to respond to the variety of 419ers and similar ungodly who blight their time online.

      """

      No Ted. Bad Ted. You don't 'respond' at all, you just delete the email without opening it.

      Also, just in case, google do not actually run any lotteries. Just FYI.

      1. Ted Treen
        Happy

        @Tom

        Check your dictionary:

        Respond is not the same as Reply.

        A stimulus might provoke a response without provoking a reply.

        Deleting it is one response.

        Training your Spam Filter is another.

        Blocking the sender's email address is yet another - and that's just for 419ers.

        Bad Tom. Naughty Tom. Telling Teddy off without checking...

  4. Shannon Jacobs
    Holmes

    Why is Google so often linked to spammers and scammers?

    My own take is that it's just because Google is too busy becoming EVIL to worry about the small fry competitors. If not Google would give a much higher priority to fighting the criminals. For example, imagine that Gmail included USEFUL and POWERFUL tools to iteratively analyze the spam and to go after ALL of the spammers' accomplices.

    I disagree that the problem is "liberal-lefty" anything. In general, it's much harder to bribe people who are acting out of ideology, and we really should consider freedom of speech questions.

    Having said that, and imagining that Google decided to oppose evil, that Yahoo magically became competent, or that Microsoft became sincere, let me offer a couple of thoughts on spam:

    1. If email is NOT desired by the vast majority of the recipients, then it is spam.

    2. The large email providers could track this simple metric. Legitimate email advertisers provide subscribe and unsubscribe options, and the large email providers can TEST them with honeypot addresses.

    3. Spammers should be leaned on ALL the way up and down their chain of accomplices. ANYONE who provides any support in ANY form to a spammer should get leaned on.

    4. You can't expect any spammer to become a decent human being. Only a total sociopath would participate in such a business. However, you can make it much less profitable and that will persuade them to crawl under less visible rocks. Google could do MUCH more along these lines--if they hadn't become so evil, that is.

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