I find it mind blowing how at one point I was getting scam texts almost daily because it seems like the easiest criminals to capture.
Registering a number will eventually lead to a bank account.
They can social engineer the criminal.
They can trace where the call is coming from.
Yet it seems they barely do anything.
> because it seems like the easiest criminals to capture. Registering a number will eventually lead to a bank account. They can social engineer the criminal. They can trace where the call is coming from.
If only it was so easy as running a trace on the criminal and then driving down to their location to arrest them, just like the movies.
The people running these scams are several layers removed from the people sending the texts. The big ones are careful to do some or all of it from another country. It's not as simple as tracing a number and then arresting someone.
The crackdown in the linked article involves 34 different countries. Just imagine the global police coordination required to trace that all and pull it off.
I can't get my local police to investigate home invasion crimes, so it is absolutely flabbergasting to imagine 34 countries coordinating to do anything other than eat a donut.
They did a pretty good job of shutting SF down for APEC last month while they met behind closed doors. But that's on behalf of rich people, not the scammed.
It was impressive. I was definitely blown away by how quickly the city and the peninsula was cleaned up. Really made me wonder why they don’t do it for the rest of the time if it could be done so easily.
It seems like police are heavily YMMV. I reported a felony theft and my local police referred it to my state's equivalent of the DoJ, and they are actually investigating. I was surprised.
In my experience, the bigger the city, the less police seem to care. Or perhaps they are busier and have to prioritize differently, but to the victim it's the same effect.
My brother recently had success in having small town cops go to a person's house to retrieve his lost+found IPhone, even. I was sure they'd tell him to sod off as a civil matter, but they retrieved it and even drove it to his house a solid 20 minutes away.
If it happens when nobody is home thus nobody is hurt, they will most like dust for prints and you will have to clean their mess as well.
They got more important things than "they stole my laptop and €500 cash". If the thieves steal amounts/treasures that are terror-funding-amounts, and/or they physically hurt someone, then they will most likely find them (someone will snitch on them as police applies pressure to they-know-who-most-likely-did-it).
I remember 20(?) years ago in the UK someone broke into an old man's home, beat him severely, and stole his (olympic game) medal(s). The thieve(s) were then severely beaten up by fellow criminals and handed to the police. I cannot remember details, and asked ChatGTP but couldn't find more information (but I swear it was a case like that).
I also know enough police officers that will tell you to your face that for petty crime without physical harm they will never go after the perps. Unless they catch them for something bigger, and by running their prints they discover/can pin on them more stuff.
Home invasion specifically means while someone is home, otherwise, it's just a burglary. I should know. I was home. So what ever the rest of your lengthy retort says, I'll never know because it's clearly started from an ill informed position and would be a waste of anyone's time
Mark Rober's video on going up against some scammers based out of Calcutta very strongly implied (without outright saying for what I assume are liability reasons) that the scam call centers they were trying to take down were paying off the Calcutta police for protection.
>The people running these scams are several layers removed from the people sending the texts.
A guy who sent 17 million messages to Australian numbers lives 12kms from me and was only arrested last week.
Even if he's used false identities, it literally is "drive down the street to where these texts are coming from"
Cell triangulation is incredibly easy and accurate, especially when the average phone is pinging dozens of towers in cities with timing advances like mine is now.
You're not wrong about the bureaucracy involved in getting this done but the fact a few guys making videos for fun can make a living off doing this exact kind of thing as content suggests to me that well-resourced law enforcement should be able to do much more.
Police are overworked and have low case closure rates. If their incentives align with the case+evidence, a “YouTuber” (or any other non-expert investor), the additional steps to build a legal case can move pretty quick.
YouTube has notably different due process protections, rules of evidence, and standards of proof than criminal law in reasonable systems of government, however.
> If only it was so easy as running a trace on the criminal and then driving down to their location to arrest them, just like the movies.
There's Youtubers that find call centers, hack into their network, watch them on their camera systems and mess with them[0]... surely the authorities could do more
If you want to throw out due process sure. "The authorities" can't just hack networks. While entertaining, what these YouTubers are doing is very illegal.
My wife got scammed. They opened a bank account in her name tied to her email address. She contacted that bank right away. For 2 months she received messages about other people transferring money into this account. These were other people getting scammed. The wheels turn too slowly.
If this worked they would have caught the Gilgo Beach Killer a decade before they actually did. He contacted his victims with burner phones that cops were never able to trace back to an individual. They were able to figure out which towers they pinged, which they later used to identify the person by matching it against which towers his personal cell phone pinged (and they could only do that because they had a witness identify his truck).
And that's when police actually care about catching the person.
In a bunch of places (including the UK), you can get a phone number without any money and without any postal address. Just buy a 'free' esim. And you can top up with cash if you want.
On the other hand, proofing your UK address to the council, bank or literally anyone, is one of the most mind numbing things ever... speaking as a German.
Facebook Marketplace has/had a huge problem where nefarious persons from Africa sending you a Google voice verify code. They says the code is to verify you are selling the item. The scam works by getting the code back and obtaining a google voice number. They use the numbers for the real scams, FB marketplace is just the starting point.
And you really want “them” to put their energy and time into finding some guys who send you text messages instead of finding guys who abuse children or kill people?
