Yes, that is how it starts, and there is one little snag. There is no such thing as a quick fortune, not for anyone. On the other hand, it gave me the idea for a new movie called ‘The cure is so much worse’ a nightmare of the most horrific kind, but more about that later.
The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64939146) gives us ‘Thousands may have lost out to crypto trading app’, and I wonder just how stupid people are. You see, when I am given “Trading in cryptocurrencies has become popular, with people often promised large rewards over short periods” I see a red flag, a really big ref flag. If I have something that makes me so called rich overnight. I do not share it, well perhaps I share it with the two best friends I have and only after I have gotten a nice payout, so that I know that I am not setting them up. It is that simple. Its like these house scammers In Sydney almost a decade ago. Housing was so short that people started advertising apartments for sake via Facebook and a few other sources. If I know of an apartment for sale, I send a quick message to my dearest friends and no one else. Because an opportunity like this, I either use myself, or hand it to a best friend who will owe me a solid. With digital currency it is different, I trust none of them and even if The Saudi government or a place like Kingdom Holdings pays me an initial ₿2000 (for my IP) the first thing I do is to go to a bank and transfer it to a dollar number in my bank account. Bitcoin might have some reputation, but I do not trust it, I trust no form of digital currency. Then we are given “She says she lost hundreds of euros when she invested in iEarn Bot. She asked not to have her identity revealed as she fears her professional reputation might be damaged. Customers buying the bots – like Roxana – were told their investment would be handled by the company’s artificial intelligence programme, guaranteeing high returns”, so we aren’t even buying an app, we are buying a bot, more red flags, the there is the AI reference, an issue that does not exist and that list goes on. Then we are given “In Romania, dozens of high-profile figures, including government officials and academics, were persuaded to invest via the app because it was sponsored by Gabriel Garais, a leading IT expert in the country.” This person Gabriel Garais was apparently duped as well, some IT person.
And then the curtain falls with “iEarn Bot presents itself as a US-based company with excellent credentials, but when the BBC fact-checked some information on its website, it raised some red flags. The man whom the site names as the company’s founder told us he had never heard of them. He said he has made a complaint to the police. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, alongside companies such as Huawei and Qualcomm, are all named as “strategic partners” of iEarn Bot, but they too said they have no knowledge of the company and they are not working with it.” This also holds the third red flag. You see iEarn implies an Apple product, so why was Apple not all over this from days one? There might be a solid reason, but this gets me back to Gabriel Garais, as an IT person he should have known.
This reeks like a Ponzi scheme menu and the setting and the spread implies organised crime of a new kind. Whether it is Russian, Korean, Chinese, or even American does not matter. When you can spread to this degree things get noticed and when people are getting scammed the lights go on nearly everywhere, as such the mention of 800,000 people in Indonesia and no one raises a brow? It does not add up. But the BBC went further. This is seen when we see “On the website, the company does not provide any contact information. When the BBC checked the history of its Facebook page, we learned that until the end of 2021, the account was advertising weight-loss products. It is managed from Vietnam and Cambodia”, OK, that might be true, but these pages can change hands like a snap from a finger and no contact information is the largest red flag.
I get it, there are vulnerable people and they are seeing that pensions are coming up short, they see the promise of quick cash and I get it, some are falling for the trap, but the stage of Common Cyber Sense should have been on the forefront of their minds. And finally we get to “With the help of an analyst, the BBC managed to identify one main crypto wallet that received payments from about 13,000 potential victims, for a profit of almost $1.3m (£1m) in less than one year”, so 13,000 people gave someone over a million dollars in one year. When we consider what Indonesia is setup for, this seems like a low estimate and the news goes from bad to worse. You see this is now, when the national 5G networks go live, this amount gos up buy a lot and it will be achieved in under a week. I said in 2020 that the law was not ready and it is still not ready, moreover national police forces do not have the resources or the manpower to stop this and this is what organised crime is waiting for, it would help if the law was ready, but it is not and this is going to get worse.
Getting back to the idea, it is still evolving, I need. Prologue to make the start, but the setting is nearly done, and to get this in the open I would need an actor, nothing like Ryan Reynolds (or Hugh Jackman). This is deep dark, people will step into a dark room to see a light (compared to my setting) as such I need a proper dark actor. Perhaps even a woman like Eihi Shiina. She scared the hell out of me in Audition (1999), I was even surprised myself that I could have such dark thoughts. A movie that literally scares members of organised crime into their own basements and commit suicide? Yup, that might be a new Netflix (or Apple) hit.
Have fun and please do not fall for these kinds of scams.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 