📰 The Southeast Asian scam industry chain is no longer as simple as a few people temporarily forming a group to swindle others. An undercover investigation reported in the article found that from personnel recruitment and privacy record lookups, to building fake DApps, driving traffic, and money laundering—every step in the process has specialized people responsible.
🔥 Even more chilling is that USDT is used in almost every stage: personnel transactions can be settled with it; background-check services charge dozens to hundreds of USDT; the technical service providers who create spoof trading platforms also receive payments via USDT. A tool originally meant for transfers has become, in the hands of criminal and gray-market actors, a common method for cross-border payments and fund transfers.
👀 In the human trafficking groups, the number of members is close to 5,000, with quotes ranging from several thousand USDT to over ten thousand USDT. Another background-check group has more than 3,000 members. Information such as household registration, marriage, medical records, assets, and vehicle tracking can all be used for transactions, with the fastest delivery taking just 1 to 2 days.
💡 Fake platforms are no longer crude, hastily made webpages either. Related services can provide functions such as multilingual support, contracts, spot trading, pledges, and borrowing coins. They can even customize counterfeit investment platforms according to the identities, projects, and recharge methods specified by the scam syndicate, and then integrate the other party’s controlled wallet address.
Honestly, the hardest part to defend against is right here: scammers may have real personal information, and the incoming calls may also show local numbers. And the fake apps can be made to look just like the real thing. When you see “customer service” recommending an investment to you—via a familiar person’s referral, an unfamiliar link, and requests to transfer USDT—would you really believe it immediately?
#反诈 #USDT #加密安全 #Southeast Asia criminal and gray-market industry