Crypto scam lures ships into Strait of Hormuz, falsely promising safe passage
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Nothing adds that trump touch to an ill-advised war of choice quite like some crypto grift.
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So, how does the scam work? "Pay 1 BTC for safe passage?" sort of thing?
Edit: whoops, I just saw in the article that's exactly how the scam works. Sorry for the noise!
Edit: whoops, I just saw in the article that's exactly how the scam works. Sorry for the noise!
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I wish they would, but why would they? The Trump regime gave them ample reason to close the strait (a predicted and expected outcome!) and now the Iranians/the IRGC have learned they can exert globally strategic influence by controlling the strait. They have an incredible amount of leverage and I expect they will extract a lot before opening the strait - maybe as a toll road.
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Yes, Iran is rumoured to accept "Transit Fees" in BTC to allow ships safe passage through the Strait.
So shipping companies get contacted by someone claiming to be a representative of the Iranian government, who provides a bitcoin wallet address, and then gives "safe passage" once the payment goes through.
The shipping company only discovers that they've been scammed when the Iranian military says they have no record of this transaction and order the ship to turn back/board it/shoot up the bridge.
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I don't think the Iranian government is an especially high-capacity organization, but I would not personally be inclined to impersonate them and fraudulently collect shitcoins ostensibly on their behalf. What they lack in capacity they can certainly make up for in nastiness.
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Wow, the stories just get crazier.
Is it weird to wish I was merely hallucinating?
Is it weird to wish I was merely hallucinating?
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I know this is just a nitpick on wording and not directed at you personally but
The IRGC did not learn that -- they already knew it. They've been telling the world for decades and decades "if the United States and Israel attacks us, we will exert the leverage that geography has given to us and close the Strait"
Top US military minds: "Yup, if we attack them they're gonna close the strait"
"Yup, we'll close the strait if you do that"
US military holds war games and determined "yup, closing the strait is their strongest and most logical card to play, and we don't really have that much of a counterplay (though we'll cheat to make it look like we do)"
US attacks Iran on behalf of Israel, Iran closes the strait, and the absolute dumbest people to ever walk the earth come out of the woodwork once their gas prices start going up to say "WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS!?"
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Criminals never cease to amaze me. If they devoted their intelligence and skills to legitimate ventures, they could probably become rich that way instead.
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Scamming oil companies for bitcoin by pretending to be Iran. This is better than fiction.
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That last part is the part that pisses me off. The whole Goddamn point of a wargame is to figure out where you're weak so you can fix it. It's not to look good.
And on the "everybody knew" part, when the war started, YouTube suddenly started giving me a bunch of videos about how bad going to war with Iran would be. They were beat-by-beat statements of the exact things that would happen.
And they were all years old. Many of them having been made during the first Trump administration.
Random history YouTubers knew this shit.
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Pay 419 Dogecoin for safe passage!
Gets you through The Strait 419 times faster!
Gets you through The Strait 419 times faster!
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jonbob_newcastle
Ars Scholae Palatinae
It would seem that Sweden didn't get the message. Apparently the very idea of sinking an aircraft carrier is... inconceivable!
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Netanyahu won't open it because he only gets to delay his corruption trials as long as he has enemies to stay at war with.
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If anything it has gotten easier for Iran to close the straight over the last 5 years using both air and sea drones. Look at Ukraine they don't have a navy, but they've managed to sink several Russian ships and deny them access to most of the Black Sea. Closing a 30 km wide straight is child's play by comparison.
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Normally I would laugh at crypto people getting scammed, but this could actually get people killed.
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Which crazy bastards do you mean? You need to be more specific.
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And someone in the current regime will say “Hold my beer”. (But that won’t be Hegseth, as he wouldn’t let go of his beer, and nether would Patel)
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A video I watched yesterday (via the excellent YT channel 'What's going on with shipping') had an Indian captain shouting over the radio at the IRGC while under fire (paraphrased) "THIS IS (SHIPNAME) I AM SECOND ON YOUR LIST PLEASE STOP FIRING", I wonder if their company got scammed too and the crew was very surprised that their clearance wasn't real.
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Words from the president of the United states. The most impotent one, this master deal maker wants you to know that the US doesn't care about the strait because they don't use it, but also will destroy a civilization if Iran doesn't open it. Weeks later, the strait is still very closed and the iranian government is posting videos mocking Trump.
The Make America Great Again folks have made America pathetically weak. And more than a third still supports this shit show.
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Trump thought he could make a deal (one that profits him) by threatening the life of Iranian leaders, like in Venezuela (and soon Cuba?), and if not kill them and repeat.
It seems he cannot kill the new ones, and he has no plan B.
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One that also has only two major through courses, one in/one out, to accommodate the size of some of the vessels needing passage!
It'll be interesting to see who these scams trace back to in the end. The crypto went somewhere and this sort of scam takes some effort to pull off.
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It's really incredible how much damage cryptocurrency has done. Enabling a whole category of ransomware, sales of drugs and weapons, rug pull scams, providing a financial incentive for hacking since it's so easy to steal, covering up a pay-to-play access scheme for our president, and now even endangering international shipping.
Is there any way in which it has actually made the world better? Aside from benefiting grifters, scammers, thieves, and people who essentially just gambled and won?
Is there any way in which it has actually made the world better? Aside from benefiting grifters, scammers, thieves, and people who essentially just gambled and won?
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What, just as we discovered a legitimate use for it?! Paying tolls for safe passage no longer needs awkward piles of gold or such..
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Which ones? The Iranians who closed it, and even briefly reopened it, or the US that blockaded it and even continued to do so when the Iranians reopened it?
From Iran's perspective, keeping it closed is a winning play. They would be fools to open it. From the US perspective, well, I don't know that there are any winning plays for the US. We've screwed this war up so badly from day one, we may have just flat out lost. It will almost certainly result in regime change in the US.
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Worse. Worse than fiction.
It's not oil companies at risk. It's sailors. People who already had a pretty risky job who probably more than anything just want to go home right now even if there is no home and they can't afford to if they had one.
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They’re using Stirling engines in their subs? This is something I must learn more about.
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