
Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin - ldayley
http://www.grubstreet.com/2014/07/pizzeria-owners-bitcoin-extortion.html
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sharemywin
Apparently they've never worked in pizza. I could just see them sending it to
my dad.

First off, What's a bitcoin?

Negative Online review...what's an Online review.

Harrassing telephone calls...you mean a friday night?

Farudulant delivery orders...10 all the way pizzas with anchovies...sure we'll
make those right up and deliver them...ya right...

Illegal drug sales...don't be primising illegal drugs to the delivery drivers
unless your going to follow through.

Health department -- they visit every six months anyway.

BBB...I once watched a customer complain and get an attitute about his pizza
...he took his pizza and threw it in the trash handed him his money back and
said dominos is down around the corner.

I used to try to talk him into advertising too get more customers and he'd
always tell me he didn't want anymore customers.

He used to keep a saw'd shotgun behind the counter because the gangs that live
in the apartment complex behind us were talking about robbing us. There's
still a hole on the floor from where one the employees got shot 'cause they
just wanted to shoot someone.

~~~
Scoundreller
Would you mind doing us all a favour and building a database of every pizza
place like this on the planet? It sounds like my (our?) kind of place.

~~~
sharemywin
It's simple find the most run down looking place you can find that's over 5
years old. You know if they're still in business it's not because if the
atmosphere and the service, it's because of the food. Also, as for hacking
it's hard to hack an order pad and a pen.

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privatedan
If I were a pizza parlor owner, I would frame this letter and hang it in my
restaurant.

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coreymgilmore
Some quick digging around: not much to be found on the wallet addresses on the
extortion letters. One wallet was tied to a 0.001 transaction on 6/27.

wallet: 17gt1BancvtnnJwy4BA41VBUH3pfbUvzE block: 308079

~~~
snorkel
Can't coinbase just ban whatever id was presented in the letter?

~~~
DanBC
See also "joe job", "reputation attack", and "denial of service".

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Nakatomi_Plaza
It's cheaper for the Pizza company to eat some of the fraudulent orders than
pay the $600 extortion fee.

~~~
pavel_lishin
That's if the extortionists even bother carrying through with their threat.
It's pretty cheap to print up a thousand letters and mail them to pizzerias
all over the country; if even a couple cough up the money, that's probably
money and effort spent well enough. The deadline is far enough in the future
that it's not really worth it to prove that punitive measures will be taken.

~~~
larrys
I guess I assumed these were coming from out of the country. Do we know that
they are being mailed in the US? If that is the case the postal service almost
certainly knows which post office these were mailed out of.

~~~
schrodinger
How useful is that? Someone could drive an hour, dump them all in a mailbox
anonymously...

~~~
larrys
Could be useful if triangulated with other information.

And it's always possible that whatever mailbox they dumped them in was in view
of a video camera or perhaps their car passed video surveillance (or walked
by). Or maybe used an ATM nearby. Or paid a toll. People slip up. For that
matter what about all that stuff about embedding things in printers (micro
traces or whatever they are called).

Otoh, I constantly get all sorts of scams from overseas wanting to charge me
ridiculous amounts of money for trademark registries (approx. $2000 USD iirc)
of zero value. They have been pretty consistent over the years and I'm
guessing that even with the cost of foreign postage they are a net win for the
perps. Otherwise I can't imagine they would keep sending them.

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ngoel36
My girlfriend's father had a hacker break into their network drive, encrypt
all their files, and extort the company for $500 of Bitcoin in exchange for
the password...

~~~
ceejayoz
Your girlfriend's father opened an email attachment he shouldn't have, you
mean?

edit: C'mon, folks. Cryptolocker isn't a bunch of hackers targeting individual
network drives. It's spread via email.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoLocker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoLocker)

~~~
drivingmenuts
Sure, and stupid people deserve to be taken advantage of, right?

Cos' that's what I see you saying.

~~~
ceejayoz
No, I'm saying awareness of the actual causes of computer issues like
Cryptolocker can be very helpful in preventing such infections.

No one in the general public is going to know how to protect against
"hackers". "Don't open attachments if you aren't expecting them from someone"
is actionable advice.

~~~
furyofantares
The problem is, before your edit, you just made a sarcastic response whose
sole function, as far as I can tell, is to belittle the person you were
responding to for their lack of awareness of issues like Cryptolocker without
attempting to inform them.

This may not be a correct interpretation of your post but it is how it reads
to me, above the edit.

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kyllo
Page has a pop-up with autoplay video ad. No thanks.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Adblock/Flashblock/Ghostery seem to have blocked it for me.

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NoMoreNicksLeft
They might as well be asking for plutonium or stolen Picassos... pizzerias
don't have bitcoins, and generally-speaking have no idea how to get them.

Seriously. Should have included two pages instructing them how to acquire the
things...

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Timmmmbob
I hope they reported that to the police!

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steanne
actually, my local hole-in-the-wall takes bitcoin.

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naturalethic
This would be a great way for the Fed to push back on their competition.

~~~
ascorbic
The Fed is in the pizza business?

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steffenfrost
The address doesn't seem to be a valid BTC address.

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jzf
I came here to upvote anything stephenson - reamde and for pizzerias,
snowcrash.

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VLM
Obviously the victim isn't the local pizzera its Coinbase. Someone just spent
"not very much money" to make them look incredibly bad.

Should be fairly easy to track them down, just analyze the pattern of yellow
dots on the color laser print to figure out the make, model, and serial number
of the printer making the extortion letters, then contact whichever of
coinbase's competitors made those letters and ...

Now if I was thinking a little more clearly I'd figure out how to track them
down myself, and let it be known to coinbase's competitor that I'd keep these
facts quiet if I was too busy eating pizza bought by, say, 5000 BTC from
whichever coinbase competitor made the letters.

~~~
fleitz
Will be super easy as long as they had the foresight to buy the printer on a
credit card and the pizzeria's police force is actually CSI.

Seriously, the police are not going to analyze dots on laser printer to track
down an extortion for $500, just like they don't swab for prints / DNA on a
B&E. Real life is not CSI.

~~~
cjg
I had an attempted break-in and the police (UK) did indeed dust for
fingerprints - and they caught the guy.

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ccozan
"What the heck is a BitCoin??"

I bet there is no actual extortion going on, but kind of a "let's educate the
business owners into the new digital economy, and, if necessary, by force".

The pranksters probably estimate, once the business owners find out what is
the idea of Bitcoin, they will say, hey, let's offer this to our customers.

~~~
talmand
Um, no, that's a pretty clear cut example of extortion.

Whether they follow through with the threats or not is irrelevant. The act of
extortion has already been committed.

