Trouble always comes around. When money is involved folks will always find a way to work the system criminally. To wit:
This story from Wired follows the adventure of someone who took it upon himself to track and expose a scammer on the Dark Web, who was offering an assassination service. People who wanted someone dead (or just beaten up) would contact this guy, send him some bitcoin, and he'd promise to arrange a hit man to do your dirty work. Of course, it's all a scam. He pockets the bitcoins, the strings you along as far as he can, then he just stops responding. Face it, you have no recourse -- "Your Honor, this man promised to kill someone for me and failed to fulfill his contract..."
What follows is a cat and mouse game between the scammer and would-be exposer. The most interesting aspect is how, in the end, it's really unclear whether there is a well defined good-guy and bad-guy. We start out rooting for the crusader trying to shut down the scammer, but in time we begin to wonder... The scammer is taking money, time, and energy away from people who are actively trying to be murderers. He is certainly motivated to enrich himself, but are the consequences of that really all that bad?
An observation I'd make is that if this scammer devoted the same level of effort and creativity to non-criminal enterprise, he might be even richer.
Closer to home is this story about Amazon review shenanigans. Not people posting fake reviews to bolster their product, but people posting obviously fake reviews to competitors products to trick Amazon into shutting them down. This can work because Amazon reacts savagely to any reviews that are deemed to be fake. Once you have been suspended for having fake reviews, regaining access to Amazon is an infuriating and expensive proposition. Retailers are so dependent on Amazon that being suspended can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. The process to petition for reinstatement is so complex and shrouded in bureaucracy that there is a cottage industry of consultants/lawyers to get the falsely accused reinstated.
This is unsurprising to me. If you have ever tried to talk to a human being at Amazon, you can imagine the frustration involved. The truth is, if a robot can't handle it, it may not be possible for Amazon to do. In fact, one of the consultant's strategies for getting someone reinstated is simply having them confess and apologize. That is something the system can handle. What the system can't handle is determining that it has made a mistake. Robots aren't so good at self-critique.
So picture this: you are shoestring retailer of widgets. Some Chinese widget firm suddenly starts posting some obviously fake 5-star reviews to your product. You, being a good and honest person, report it to Amazon to get the reviews removed. Amazon responds by suspending your product for having fake reviews. You begin bleeding money. You can't get Amazon's attention to explain what's going on so you contact a consultant. The consultant tells you to admit guilt, even though you are not guilty because it's the quickest, and possibly only, way to get back in business. I can think of few things that would be more demoralizing than that. I have to imagine that, at some point, someone is going to kick off a class action suit against Amazon over this kind of thing.
It's tempting to say this is the result of Amazon's monopoly in the retailer space. That's only partially true. If you can post fake reviews to one site, you can post to many. It probably wouldn't stop it from happening. But with more viable online retailers than Amazon, maybe one of them would at least have a reasonable way to protest mistreatment.
The really interesting concept here is that, because of their scope, Amazon has set up what amounts to a private legal system, and is facing all the complexities and inefficiencies and injustices that the public legal system is facing. Maybe Amazon is planning on making a legal system their next product. Perfect it in house then offer it for purchase. That is how they operate, after all. (I was kidding when I wrote that, but the more I think about it...) In reality this is the sort of behavior that attracts the attention of the government and Jeff Bezos might find himself up in front of a congressional panel of indignant demagogues.
But once again, I am struck by how much effort and creativity the bad guys devote to scams and fraud, when the same sort of energy would pay off more were they to take up legitimate entrepreneurship. Why? Do they think it's easier? Is it the thrill of escaping punishment? Do they just miss-estimate the risk?
I guess crooks just gotta be crooked.
P.S. For $2.99 you can get a Kindle Book telling you how to reach Amazon Customer Service. Satire is dead.
