Bacon1

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Mpox: Thailand confirms Clade 1b strain for first time in Asia Thailand has announced its first confirmed case of a new, potentially deadlier strain of Mpox - the first in Asia, and second outside of Africa. According to Thailand's Department of Disease Control, the infected 66-year-old European man arrived in Bangkok from an unnamed African country on 14 August. ... Mpox is transmitted through close contact, such as sex, skin-to-skin contact and talking or breathing close to another person – but it is nowhere near as infectious as other viruses like Covid and measles. But the spread of the new variant and its high fatality rate in parts of Africa has sparked concern among scientists, and led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it a public health emergency of international concern. (more) https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czrgpg127zgo https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/thailand-confirms-its-mpox-case-is-clade-1b-strain-first-country-2024-08-22/

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That's generally good advice, but should be expanded to a broader realm. If something suspicious or unusual crops up: --don't respond / take action directly to an unsolicited call you have received. If in doubt, call the financial institution separately on a verified number you know to be correct to make any inquiry. (Apparently these days, there are caller ID spoofing hacks that can enable fraudsters to call people from their fraudster numbers, but have it appear to the call recipient that the call is actually coming from a legitimate entity). --same for emails and SMSs purporting to be from financial entities asking you to do something unusual with your funds or asking you to give them your account passwords and such for "verification." Many U.S. FIs these days have messages on their websites and elsewhere clearly saying their staff will never call customers asking them to disclose such things over the phone or in reply to emails or SMSs.

The pretense was getting the guy to believe some his accounts/funds had been compromised and were at risk, and thus he was persuaded to transfer/move his funds to what the fraudsters falsely claimed were safe, government controlled accounts. From the OP report: "That’s when a third man, who identified himself as Finn Whitrock, came on the line and said he was with the Internal Revenue Service. He provided a badge number and said that Mr. Heitin’s other accounts were at risk, but that the government could safeguard his money by transferring it to a federal locker. If he was willing to cooperate with their investigation, Mr. Whitrock explained, Mr. Heitin could play a critical role in preventing a ring of criminals from preying on others — while ensuring he wouldn’t lose the $20,000 the thieves had tried to steal. But they needed to move quickly. “Let’s do it,” Mr. Heitin said he had told them. “I then gave them access to my computer, and they started me in a series of withdrawals from my banks accounts.”

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It's easy to come here and say the victim here was dumb and a rube... But in truth, these kinds of scams happen all the time, including here in Thailand. Where people are persuaded to transfer funds to criminals / fraudsters claiming to be police, or government officials or bank staff under various pretenses. And they somehow manage to persuade the victims to do things you wouldn't think people would normally do.

The news was reported in the NY Times, so it's legitimate. And, if you had actually read the full news report, which you apparently didn't, you would have read that the victim had his funds in multiple accounts, including at banks and brokerage accounts. And because he drained his retirement accounts there, he's now facing an IRS tax bill on the withdrawals. When his original brokerage (rightly) balked at the guy suddenly wanting to drain his entire accounts without further confirmation or legitimate reason, he got around their objections by transferring his accounts at the behest of the fraudsters to a different brokerage, which then allowed him to drain the accounts without any further verification. From the OP news report: Draining His Retirement "After Mr. Heitin pulled out a total of $113,000 from his checking and savings accounts, he was instructed to move his retirement money to accounts where he could more easily transact. Those transfers would be trickier: He had more than $830,000 in his I.R.A. and brokerage account, and his adviser of more than 20 years would have questions. ... [After being denied at the original brokerage] Mr. Smith [one of the fraudsters] came up with another idea: Roll the I.R.A. over to a different institution. That worked. Mr. Heitin now had $834,000 in the new I.R.A., which he emptied in under two weeks, with no questions asked by the new provider, and moved the money into bank accounts."

It was the old scam about persuading the victim that his/her accounts had been hacked or otherwise compromised, and then convincing them to move all their funds to "safe" accounts that actually are controlled by the fraudsters, masquerading as regulators/law enforcement.

Further from the OP: "They [the fraudsters] coach victims on how to sidestep fraud prevention measures at financial institutions, and they use manipulative psychological tactics — isolation, a sense of urgency or preying on people’s willingness to trust or connect — to keep the scam going. ... People over 60, often targeted by cybercriminals because they are viewed as having the largest piles of savings, experienced the steepest losses among all age groups in 2023, at more than $3.4 billion, according to the F.B.I."

How One Man Lost $740,000 to Scammers Targeting His Retirement Savings Criminals on the internet are increasingly going after Americans over the age of 60 because they are viewed as having the largest piles of savings. July 29, 2024 For nearly three months, Barry Heitin, a 76-year-old retired lawyer, thought he was part of a government investigation that felt like something out of the movies. He was actually assisting criminals in stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars — of his own money. Last fall, he spent just about every weekday doing the legwork and making withdrawals from his bank accounts as part of an intricate scam: He believed he was helping the feds safeguard his money and catch thieves who were after it. “They kept telling me, ‘This is a big case and we are going to stop a whole ring of people,’” Mr. Heitin said. “It was like a rabbit hole. I was going down the hole with them.” It cost him almost all of his retirement savings: roughly $740,000. (more) New York Times https://archive.ph/DLWyA

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