French start up Find My Scammer carried out the investigation pro bono as the victim has literally no money left in her account, not even a cent.
Victim had no experience whatsoever with social media before creating an Instagram account in 2023 to share holiday pictures.
Victim was targeted after liking pictures related to Brad Pitt on Instagram.
Victim was in the midst of a divorce before being contacted by scammer.
Victim was groomed for months and months by scammer passing themselves as Pitt's mother, agent, etc, in addition to Pitt himself, using American phone numbers, fake articles, etc.
Victim had no knowledge of technologies such as deepfake.
Victim was lulled into a sense of security as grooming lasted for many months before she was asked to send money for the first time, thinking that such a scam would be more immediate.
Victim has HIV and cancer, tried to end her life three times.
French TV program which revealed the story accused of manipulating the subject matter and misrepresent facts to encourage ridicule against victim, has been pulled off all platforms.
Scammer found in Benin, was tricked into clicking a link which gave start up full access to his computer, phone, information, living address, etc. Crypto wallet where the stolen money is stored found. All information in the hands of authorities investigating the crime.
Scammer has over 30 victims. Also poses as fake Keanu Reeves.
An important point in the story: while she was contacted by the scammers when she was still married, it is after the divorce that she received most of the money that was eventually scammed - over €700k
Depends. Mostly not. But Pegasus spy software was put on iPhones via silent SMS. So those targets didn't even need to click a link. All they really had to do was owning an iPhone. And made their number known.
This is the name of the city today, but this has not always been the case. In the past, Leuven was a bilingual city, and to many of the people who lived there, the city was known as Louvain.
Stripe notifies you of an issuer dispute raised through the respective scheme. They have no control except being a messenger back and forth between you and then customers issuing bank and the scheme. So not on Stripe this one. And this is coming from someone who absolutely despises Stripe. Especially you, Alan from Stripe.
Not to go full ad hominem but the author of this tweet is Dan Price, best to do some background research on him before trusting him to be calling out others for “don’t be evil”.
There are few one-dimensional characters. It seems lots of people discount any worthwhile acts performed by people who also perform bad acts. Many of us are a little complex, quite a few of us highly so.
While I don’t think Lambda School is good, did they actually ever collect on any students who didn’t get jobs?
It seems kind of important to the premise. These things may have been loans and had a finance charge or whatever. But if you can “default” and nothing happens… what are they really?
The contracts in the early days lasted up to five years, so people who went on to further training (e.g. associates degree at a community college) still owed money even though Lambda School had zero role.
Later, they extended it to eight years and removed the “tech job” stipulation. I read one account a guy owing money who worked as a mailman.
That’s scummy but it sounds like they could have achieved the arrangement “pay a share of your income wherever it comes from” without a loan.
The important part of this is a loan gives you rights as a creditor that an ordinary Accounts Payable does not. Did Lambda School’s creditors ever exercise those rights? If not, how important is the existence of a finance charge or APR or whatever? I mean, if it is only a loan for the purpose of being a product for banks, but functionally is just a, whatever, a payment plan: man, the CFPB is basically complaining about annual billing versus monthly billing discounts, bundling, and any number of psychological tricks. Scummy yes, but dramatic? No.
The peons and peasants with their pesky "anecdotes" don't morally matter to these elite club members. Never believe they're on your side although they're good at making it look like they are.
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