A doctor’s initiative to implement a mechanism for wire transfer recipients to consent to receiving money has garnered 2,200 signatures since its launch on May 10, the government-run public policy participation platform showed yesterday.
The proposal to verify payee consent for inbound transfers (PCIT) has to gather 5,000 signatures before July 11 for the government to comment on potentially adopting such a measure.
I’m not sure how this happens. How does an innocent party get flagged like that?
The scammer will either “hack” someone’s account and transfer money to the innocent party’s account - or they use the innocent party’s account as the recipient’s account in an online scam. They then need to prove that they’re actually innocent (because all the banks will just assume that they’re acting as a money mule).
In both cases, the victim will usually file a police account - and because of that the innocent party’s account will be frozen because they’re involved in a scam.
Why would scammers be doing this?
They won’t receive the money, but they can cause some issues for the innocent party (frozen account, legal costs, …). So either the innocent party has angered the scammer (wasting their time) or the scammer was actually paid to cause these issues to the innocent party.
It’s a bit like SWATting someone - nothing gained for the scammer (except “revenge”), but lots of issues caused for the innocent party…
Or like in the article:
Lin said she blocked the vendors and reported them for suspected fraud, but they wired a small sum to her account in an apparent act of retaliation, resulting in the authorities flagging her as a possible suspect.
She angered the scammers - they sent her money from a know scam account and she lost access to her account as a result of this.
If very unlucky, the innocent party could lose their job, visa etc. - just because someone sent them “dirty” money without their consent or involvement.
Holders of flagged accounts are barred from accessing their assets for between six months and two years, preventing them from receiving salaries, paying rent or mortgages and tanking their credit scores, she said.
The ability to “block” an incoming transfer would solve this!
So the scammers’ account is a known account… why is it not blocked, too? I don’t understand the article: if innocent parties can lose their accounts, how the heck do scammers still have access to theirs? That part makes no sense in the story… it’s part of the story that is NOT written.
That would be a great improvement . You can literally have all your accounts frozen. Dam right you should have the right to refuse money. The scamming situation is so bad now in Taiwan it’s becoming another factor in perhaps not living here. It’s become scam island.
The police are so slow to investigate scamming rings as well.
The scammers will use an account that is not yet known to be a scammer account.
The scammers know it’s only a matter of time until that account gets frozen - eventually, basically all scam accounts will be known and frozen. They just need to be faster in sourcing new accounts that the police / banks freezing them…
So the timeline is a bit like that:
Scammer uses account A to scam people
Innocent party has “beef” with the scammer, but discloses their account info B
Scammer sends money from account A to account B
The ones getting scammed in 1 report to the police
Account A gets frozen - police investigate
Account B is being shown as having received “dirty money” from account A