Technology

59769 readers

3616 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

730

Elon Musk Fans Are Losing So Much Money to Crypto Scams (gizmodo.com)

submitted 1 month ago by UnderpantsWeevil to c/technology

82 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Gizmodo filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FTC to get complaints sent to the federal agency about crypto scams that pretend to be affiliated with Musk. We obtained 247 complaints, all filed between Feb. and Oct. of this year, and they’re filled with stories of people who believed they were watching ads for authentic crypto investments sanctioned by Musk on social media.

The ads sometimes featured the names of Musk’s various companies, like SpaceX, Tesla, and X, while other times they utilized Musk’s association with neo-fascist presidential candidate Donald Trump.

...

Some people in the complaints believed they were talking directly with Musk, a sadly common story that has popped up in news reports before. But they weren’t talking with Musk, of course. They were communicating with scammers engaging in what’s called pig butchering—the name for a type of fraud popularized in the mid-2010s where scammers extract as much money as possible through flattery and promises of tremendous profits if the victim just “invests” where they’re told.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[+] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] UnderpantsWeevil 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

A lot of the people falling for these scams are straight up mentally ill or disabled.

It's funny to think of some blowhard yacht guy getting fleeced. Less funny to see an adult with Down's Syndrome or Schizophrenia or Dementia or a child who got hold of a parent's credit card and sucked in by some Mr. Beast tier grift get played.

[+] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] thesohoriots 8 points 1 month ago

The article said nothing about intellectual disability, but it did suggest some older people contextually from their complaints. Here’s an actual citation from one of the complaints that I think sums it up perfectly:

Now, i’m an intelligent [person], at least I consider myself that to be. I am a huge fan of elon musk and tesla. I only bit into this because it did sound too good to be true.

[–] blackbelt352 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's just how basic demographics analysis works. There's a lot more people who are struggling with mental health problems/mental disabilities that make them more prone to believing scams. And so many games and storefronts use dark patters to make it extremely easy to make undesired purchases or have no safeguards to prevent children from using their parents credit card for purchases.

All these kinds of people vastly outnumber dumb finance bros on their yachts making stupid money decisions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Don't have empathy. It's not allow