Who’s Behind These Scammy Texts?

Like me, you probably receive occasional text messages that are clearly a wrong number mix up. If you notify them of that, they will politely respond but strive to continue the conversation. In an earlier newsletter, Joseph wrote about his personal experience responding to one of these (in the interest of research) and how it led to an online “job” offer involving cryptocurrency. I recently listened to a podcast episode from Search Engine that did a similar deep dive into these scams. The investigative journalist traveled to Cambodia to learn more about the origin of these scams and the truth behind them. I won't spoil all the details, but it does involve sad cases of human trafficking. The actual human sending those texts may not really want to be doing it. Check out the full episode at the link above or an abbreviated version from Planet Money.