 |
November 20, 2013, 05:07:45 AM |
|
Admittedly it's cruel, but when someone takes out a big loan on BTCJam and then walks away and doesn't pay, I've been offering to buy the notes at a cut-rate price and then try to collect on the debts. Harassment ensues and so far, 4 out of 4 times, the buyer has paid me to buy the note from me to leave me alone.
Unethical, I'm sure, but so is skipping out on your loans.
Typically I do some basic research first and then if I think I know who the person is, I buy the loan for 10% of the original investment. If I can get the deadbeat to pay up, I've started offering to pay the original borrower enough of a cut so they get a total of half of what was recovered. I don't know how long I can keep doing that. It depends on the long-term recovery rate.
It's amazing how cheap it is to convince the buyers to pay up. 2 or 3 hours of doxxing results in all the data I need. Then I use Twilio to call up the buyer and play a message I had someone on Fiverr record for me. If they don't respond in a day, they start getting txt's every hour and calls every few hours from different numbers. If that doesn't get them to respond, there is a daily call on other numbers they might be near. Workplaces, phones of their family members, friends, schools, etc. At some point, I use lob.com to send them post cards at whatever address I can find of theirs.
If all that doesn't work, I outsource some basic griefing. During the discovery phase I figure out every social media platform they're on from Facebook to obscure message boards and then I set it up so those sites are monitored for any activity from that persons account. Anytime they make a post, a comment is left about how they stole money from people.
The neat thing is that it's about 60% automated and I'm making strides to have it 95% automated. I want to be able to pick a scammer every day and click a button to start a recovery campaign that outsources the doxxing, contact, griefing, and occasional review of teh doxxing to make sure updates aren't necessary (picking new account names, etc)
So far I've spent 0.2BTC in buying bad debts and 0.04BTC in various API fees/hosting/etc. I've recovered 1.7 BTC. It's a pretty good return on my money.
|
