- Outside of the obvious, the tragedy of the young woman losing her life, the fact that the scammers likely will not be impacted at all, etc. a couple of other thoughts.
- It’s strange that we still haven’t setup any sort of authenticated form of communication with official parties. Email/phone call scams have been around for a long time. They’re very easy to fall prey to. There’s no reason our phones shouldn’t be able to inform us that a certain number is officially from the IRS, Cops, Verizon, etc.
- This is a form of Swatting. Delivery companies, and also the police, etc need to do better in ensuring the people demanding services are where they’re demanding the service and/or the person who lives there is aware and genuinely needs to be visited. - We need a bit of a broken windows policing for online/digital scams. The reason they are blowing up is there is hardly a risk of being caught. And the cost/benefit analysis probably suggests that th police really shouldn’t be involved in most of the individual cases or expend too many resources. However, this blows up the number of cases so the aggregate cost does indeed grow too high. So there needs to be an effort to prosecute and expend resources even on low level cases so the criminals get the message that they’re not gonna get away with it.
- We need a high trust society.
Everything else is band aids on a broken one.
- In re your first point, it's tricky because the advice is to call them back on the publicly available number. Problem is, I know somebody who fell for a SEO hijack and called a fake number. Not everybody knows how to spot a scam. The guy here did though, and he used my techniques (ask questions they'd know the answer to). He knew he was getting scammed. I think it was just an emotional override with weighing the risks. This one is very different than a call saying the IRS wants Google Play gift cards or whatever. Especially with the scammers having the woman actually show up. That's next level in all the wrong ways
- The amount of scams happening is insane.
The amount of people being wraponized into doing terrible things for others is insane.
This is kind of a gun story but not really IMO.
This is kind of like a story like the people who SWAT others and sometimes people die and sometimes they are held accountable.
If someone is committed to presenting a false narrative for a long time they can manipulate people into doing things. That's not new, but it's certainly more accessible than ever and nobody is ready for it =(
- > amount of people being wraponized into doing terrible things
This story is headline news because it’s rare. The man shouldn’t have had a gun. That’s where a confused elderly man went from deserving sympathy to contempt.
- The elderly man even figured out he was being scammed! The scammers didn't have the full name of the family member, and they had a key detail of the alleged situation incorrect.
When the elderly man called them out, the scammers responded with threats and this apparently triggered the elderly man into (unfortunate) action.
- And every scam across borders is a flyer for nationalism, isolationist politics and a cold shower to multiculturalism - as it shows the prevalence of "scams" beeing different and socially accepted beeing very different in different cultures. And when scamming the elderly can be socially accepted career in a society, the opinion of the affected on that society will corelate.
- This man was not "weaponized into doing terrible things for others". After he kidnapped an Uber driver and determined she was not a threat, he murdered her in cold blood.
- >The amount of people being weaponized into doing terrible things for others is insane.
Really is mind boggling when you look at it as "fractional evil". Some hypothetical clerk may make 99 "could go either way" decisions one way or the other to little ill effect and 1/100 or maybe 1/1000 of the time their decisions costs someone tens of thousands of dollars for no good reason for it could have gone either way.
How much of society's wealth is lost to such endeavors?
One wonders how much "evil" exists only because there exists some amount of legitimate activity it can be mixed among to dilute it enough that nobody cares.
- "Objectively, a reasonable person would not kidnap and ultimately murder a defenseless person because they were scared,” Mr. Scott told the jury.
That doesnt sound objective to me at all.
- It's very hard to make people understand how scammers use third parties. Mom 92 year-old mother mailed a check that was stolen in the mail, had the name changed, and was e-deposited.
My brother (a lawyer!) wanted to sue the person whose name is on the check! I had to convince him not to bother; that the person's account that the check was deposited to was probably some other victom who was tricked into giving the bank login information away and his account was being unwittingly used to launder checks. The scammer was most likely overseas, but pays U.S. Post Office employees to steal envelopes that likely contain checks and send images (See https://www.justice.gov/usao-ct/pr/former-postal-employee-se... for example)
The bank reversed the check but we had to get a notarized statement from my mom, and it was a hassle for a 92 year old.
As far as this case goes, guns should only be used in self-defense when there's an immediate danger. Not punitively. This guy's life wasn't immediately being threatened and he deserves to have the book thrown at him.
- That's the mindset isn't it?
*Punitive* use of force.
-----
Batman usually doesn't do too badly. Not only is it fiction but they're often against fiction level villains who are 'hardened' criminals in literal senses. Even then the violence tends to stop at the point where actual resistance stops. (They get tied up and delivered to the cops with maybe the black eye used in the initial apprehension.)
-----
Contrast this with what we see repeatedly on TV when poorly trained and poorly supervised law enforcement officers beat down or outright murder someone until they're not just not resisting anymore but are outright _unable_ to resist at all. Such excessive use of force in a professional context should also be a crime that is punished with congruent weight for the breach trust in a public official absent extenuating circumstances ('I had an emotional reaction' leading directly to deadly force should not be such a circumstance).
I do recall a highly unfortunate case of someone from WA state who was on some combination of super drugs such that there didn't appear to be a reasonable application of force to result in a successful outcome. More and better tools might help. Maybe net launchers and methods of incapacitating someone at a bit of a distance for mutual safety?
- > The scammer was most likely overseas, but pays U.S. Post Office employees to steal envelopes that likely contain checks and send images
Jesus, it's almost like Kaczynski was onto something.
- It's easy to place all the blame on the shooter but you're basically ignoring the other 999,999 in a million of these situations where bad stuff happens that don't escalate to this point by doing that.
You can't just say that the people actually doing the thing (whatever that thing may be) are in the right because they are doing their jobs otherwise they become a black hole for infinite liability. You need to accept that the dead person was wrong to be there collecting that package at which point is becomes a question of who dispatched them (obviously not themselves in this case) on what grounds and under what circumstances, etc, etc and how did it lead to this failure.
Think about this like an industrial ancient, not some heartstring grabbing rage bait. There will always be crazy old men. Sure, send him to prison or whatever but how can the chain of events that lead to this particular crazy old man killing someone under these circumstances be broken. Uber needs to tighten their shit up, so does the phone system, etc, etc.
- Anyone with a gun is 100% responsible for the outcomes of useing it. The training for carrying it and useing it must be in absolutes, you always dissable, unload, or holster a weapon unless imediatly required, chamber is checked, the barrell NEVER tracks across a human, there is never a situation where an armed person can not walk away from an unarmed person, repeated, tested, habitual life long habbits in gun handling. Or some asshole who tried to get off on the crime of cold blooded murder of someone who he let in his house, had left his home after he got a gun, he followed her out and shot her, she tried to escape, he shot her 5 more times while she was backing away, and she THEN slammed his head in her car door. True grit, wish she made it.
edit: pic from car right before he fires first shot
https://atlantablackstar.com/2026/02/03/ohio-83-year-old-man...
- Umm, it’s incredibly easy to blame the shooter because in those 999,999 cases the shooter was not effectively kidnapping the person they were supposedly afraid of.
This guy didn’t just shoot the delivery person whom they were afraid of.
He didn’t let her drive away even after she was clearly scared, explained she was simply an Uber driver, showed no evidence of weaponry and just wanted to drive away.
There’s a reason he wasn’t just convicted of killing the Uber driver but also of kidnapping.
- Agreed. She shouldn't have been there--not that it was her fault, but Uber shouldn't pick up packages and deliver them to others. Some other service should do that, and it should make contact with both sender and receiver first to make sure everything is on the up-and-up.
- > As far as this case goes, guns should only be used in self-defense when there's an immediate danger. Not punitively. This guy's life wasn't immediately being threatened and he deserves to have the book thrown at him.
I had agreed when I read your comment before I read the article. But after reading the article it feels like this is missing the mark. We're bumping up against the equivalent of gang stalking / stochastic terrorism here - someone being harassed through digital channels and put in a mental state where they're fearing for their life in the physical world.
A similar case of the phenomenon happened in NY a while back [0] with someone being killed for driving up to the wrong house at night, with the shooter presumably having been pumped full of general fearmongering by mass media. But the stark difference in that case it was the shooter's own media diet creating insular paranoia whereas here it was personally-targeted digital communications making the shooter feel threatened by the person ostensibly acting as an agent of those threatening him.
This is a tragic situation for sure, but falling back to applying fundamentalist judgement to emergent behavior is a mistake.
- I'm not withoit any sympathy for the man. But if you choose to have a handgun you have to be 100% responsible for its use. I've owned guns when I've lived in rural areas, but I don't own one in Silicon Valley because I think the risk outweighs the benefit.
- I own (inherited) guns and live in a rural area, but taking a safety class made me realize I'm simply not the kind of person who will ever want to carry in public or preemptively escalate a situation with a firearm. So I think we're coming from a generally similar nuanced "centrist" background.
But what does "100% responsible for its use" even mean, modulo mens rea? If instead of an Uber courier, this had been someone knowingly working for a local gang who acted physically threatening, we would be viewing the shooting as a lot more justified, right?
I'd say that the shooter's perception was halfway to this, despite how we can Monday morning quarterback that the shooter should have perceived the human being they were aiming at was cowering and backing away. Human perception is terribly biased towards confirming what we think we should see.
Taking a step back, I'm not trying to excuse the shooter here, especially in any kind of fully-exonerating manner. But rather I'd like to avoid the situation being wrapped up and tied off in a neat little bag of "personal responsibility" where an 83 year-old gets "21 years" [0], and we ignore the more fundamental issues that created such a tragic situation in the first place.
Rather it's the surveillance industry's digital intermediation that makes it possible for the victim to be both perceived as an aggressive threat, while ultimately just being a regular peaceful person doing basic job after basic job (while shouldering an extreme amount of long-tail risk!)
(Also there should probably be some age limit at which there starts to be a recurring competence examination for firearms, like there should be for driving, or having signature authority on a bank account for that matter. But uh, good luck with that!)
[0] IRS life expectancy is 9 years, outside of prison.
- Checks in their current form need to be sunsetted. Either have a way of printing a check locally that have QR codes that include recipient's name and the sender's financial institution. No static routing and account numbers.
- When is the stopping point to get it so that our phone system stops scammers. We should migrate off phones except for personal calls to each other (without a number - more of a 2-step authorization, you can call me, I can call you, negotiated via links over email...
The phone number is dead, and the only last need for it is scammers and companies that want to record you but you not record them.
- Minimally we should make spoofing harder and use some basic TLS type technology for calls.
- While we’re at it let’s get rid of wire transfers, and transactions by bank id / account number. Something more fool proof and transparent is far overdue.
- > let’s get rid of wire transfers, and transactions by bank id / account number
You can’t sent a Fedwire with only account number [1]. And this woman wasn’t shot because of wires, the man was told to hand over hard cash.
- I thought STIR/SHAKEN was supposed to help. Whatever happened with that?
- Getting grifted is no excuse for shooting a stranger.
- Yes, and nobody here is disagreeing with you.
32 points by fortran77 4 hours ago | 29 comments