- Reports by older adults losing $10,000 or more quadrupled since 2020
- Those who lost $100,000 or more increased sevenfold
- One third of the money lost was sent in crypto
- These scams also begin as tech support frauds
- $690 million reported lost to this type of scam last year
Part Nine on Fraud gangs: We know that China has organized crime groups, despite its totalitarian ways. Fentanyl precursors are made in China and then sold to Mexican drug cartels, for example. And most of the counterfeit goods sold around the world come from China, and are massively sold on the internet. In fact, the largest pool of fraud complaints to the BBB are about counterfeit or nonexistent goods sold this way. China, or Chinese gangs, are mainly responsible for the massive scam compounds in Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines that kidnap young people and force them to scam. These compounds grew out of Chinese-led online gambling “casinos.” Finally, there has been a noticeable trend in the use of Chinese couriers being used to pick up victims money for India-based tech support frauds. Chinese people also are actively involved in gift card fraud. And note that China seems to have devised ways to take and process credit cards (for sales of counterfeit goods online and for online gambling) despite efforts by MasterCard and Visa to fight this illegal use of their cards.
