Not that the number isn't absurdly large, but there are a few reasons to think that estimate is about an order of magnitude too high.
The first of which is that Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar all together only have a GDP of about $100 billion. 90% of these scams are run from that region of the world. The second is that these sorts of analyses end up unknowingly including the addresses of so-called "P2P exchangers" i.e. unlicensed but not necessarily entirely black market currency exchanges such as hawaladars. If one of the fraudsters converts their Tether to another currency with one of these exchangers, that address will be labelled as "fraud" even if all of the exchangers other customers are legitimate (informal money transfer systems are used for remittances in a lot of the world). The fact that unofficial exchangers often have business relationships with each other also even further complicates analyses that look solely at on-chain data. Lastly, no existing analysis, including by companies like Chainalysis, even comes close to $75 billion.
Keep in mind 75B is over 4 years the GDP numbers cited is for a single year .
The fact it is such a large portion of the GDP is one reason why these scam compounds are able to operate without getting shutdown , there is indirect support from government officials.
John Oliver mentioned it is as much as 50% of the GDP in Cambodia in a recent segment.
Romance scams are not new, but this has grown so quickly because of COVID , all these countries had sudden loss of tourism revenue, the gangs exploited desperate people to run these scams .
A vast majority of people scammed like this do not report to the authorities. They are too embarrassed to be scammed this way.
If victims don’t report then nothing gets labeled as fraud.
Also remember these scammers run exchange apps (fake-ish ones ) to fool people in losing more money by showing their investments going up and try to make you pay more as “tax” when you finally try to withdraw and so on .
The scam is crypto based, but the transactions don’t necessarily always happen in crypto at all, so analysis of chain alone is not sufficient to know the scale .
Way low. Only a small fraction gets reported. My elderly terminally-ill mom lost a couple hundred thousand and we never reported it. I assume most don't.
I really don't understand why more political pressure isn't put on backbone operators to blacklist more.
I've read that there was just a huge amount of fraud (hundreds of billions) in the payroll protection scheme, and that a lot of that fraud was virtual. How is 12.5 billion possibly the record?
Readit News
The first of which is that Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar all together only have a GDP of about $100 billion. 90% of these scams are run from that region of the world. The second is that these sorts of analyses end up unknowingly including the addresses of so-called "P2P exchangers" i.e. unlicensed but not necessarily entirely black market currency exchanges such as hawaladars. If one of the fraudsters converts their Tether to another currency with one of these exchangers, that address will be labelled as "fraud" even if all of the exchangers other customers are legitimate (informal money transfer systems are used for remittances in a lot of the world). The fact that unofficial exchangers often have business relationships with each other also even further complicates analyses that look solely at on-chain data. Lastly, no existing analysis, including by companies like Chainalysis, even comes close to $75 billion.
The fact it is such a large portion of the GDP is one reason why these scam compounds are able to operate without getting shutdown , there is indirect support from government officials.
John Oliver mentioned it is as much as 50% of the GDP in Cambodia in a recent segment.
Romance scams are not new, but this has grown so quickly because of COVID , all these countries had sudden loss of tourism revenue, the gangs exploited desperate people to run these scams .
A vast majority of people scammed like this do not report to the authorities. They are too embarrassed to be scammed this way.
If victims don’t report then nothing gets labeled as fraud.
Also remember these scammers run exchange apps (fake-ish ones ) to fool people in losing more money by showing their investments going up and try to make you pay more as “tax” when you finally try to withdraw and so on .
The scam is crypto based, but the transactions don’t necessarily always happen in crypto at all, so analysis of chain alone is not sufficient to know the scale .
Do you mean scams that start on tinder? Pig butchering?
I really don't understand why more political pressure isn't put on backbone operators to blacklist more.
https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-...