2025-02-15
40 分钟The Economist Previously on Scam,
Inc. What has your experience been with U.S. law enforcement?
It's poor.
Just to say the least.
We're operating as if we're back in the Stone Age when you really think about it.
I got an alert that a victim's stolen cryptocurrency had moved from a private address to an exchange that is cooperative with us.
She's one of a handful of people in America trying to get scammed money back.
I think I was at an office party eating bagels or pizza at the time I got the alert on my phone.
I dashed down the hall.
I may have pushed an intern out of the way, I'm not sure.
It gets very exciting sometimes.
And I got on the computer, wrote up a freeze request, sent it out to the exchange.
I did it all in under 10 minutes.
I don't think I could have done it even faster.
And then we sit and we wait for the exchange to respond whether we got that freeze request in on time.
I got a response back, hey, we would have loved to help you out,
but the crypto that you were tracing is already gone from the account.
I was like, how is that possible?
The victim's Bitcoin had come into the account.
The scammer had swapped it for Tether, another cryptocurrency,