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Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . September 11th. September 11th. MY DARLING BARBARA ALEXIEVNA,—I implore you not to leave me now that I am once more happy and contented. Disregard what Thedora says, and I will do anything in the world for you. I will behave myself better, even if only out of respect for his Excellency, and guard my every action. Once more we will exchange cheerful letters with one another, and make mutual confidence of our thoughts and joys and sorrows (if so be that we shall know any more sorrows?). Yes, we will live twice as happily and comfortably as of old. Also, we will exchange books.... Angel of my heart, a great change has taken place in my fortunes—a change very much for the better. My landlady has become more accommodating; Theresa has recovered her senses; even Phaldoni springs to do my bidding. Likewise, I have made my peace with Rataziaev. He came to see me of his own accord, the moment that he heard the glad tidings. There can be no doubt that he is a good fellow, that there is no truth in the slanders that one hears of him. For one thing, I have discovered that he never had any intention of putting me and yourself into a book. This he told me himself, and then read to me his latest work. As for his calling me “Lovelace,” he had intended no rudeness or indecency thereby. The term is merely one of foreign derivation, meaning a clever fellow, or, in more literary and elegant language, a gentleman with whom one must reckon. That is all; it was a mere harmless jest, my beloved. Only ignorance made me lose my temper, and I have expressed to him my regret.... How beautiful is the weather today, my little Barbara! True, there was a slight frost in the early morning, as though scattered through a sieve, but it was nothing, and the breeze soon freshened the air. I went out to buy some shoes, and obtained a splendid pair. Then, after a stroll along the Nevski Prospect, I read “The Daily Bee”. This reminds me that I have forgotten to tell you the most important thing of all. It happened like this: This morning I had a talk with Emelia Ivanovitch and Aksenti Michaelovitch concerning his Excellency. Apparently, I am not the only person to whom he has acted kindly and been charitable, for he is known to the whole world for his goodness of heart. In many quarters his praises are to be heard; in many quarters he has called forth tears of gratitude. Among other things, he undertook the care of an orphaned girl, and married her to an official, the son of a poor widow, and found this man place in a certain chancellory, and in other ways benefited him. Well, dearest, I considered it to be my duty to add my mite by publishing abroad the story of his Excellency’s gracious treatment of myself. Accordingly, I related the whole occurrence to my interlocutors, and concealed not a single detail. In fact, I put my pride into my pocket—though why should I feel ashamed of having been elated by such an occurrence? “Let it only be noised afield,” said I to myself, and it will resound greatly to his Excellency’s credit.—So I expressed myself enthusiastically on the subject and never faltered. On the contrary, I felt proud to have such a story to tell. I referred to every one concerned (except to yourself, of course, dearest)—to my landlady, to Phaldoni, to Rataziaev, to Markov. I even mentioned the matter of my shoes! Some of those standing by laughed—in fact every one present did so, but probably it was my own figure or the incident of my shoes—more particularly the latter—that excited merriment, for I am sure it was not meant ill-naturedly. My hearers may have been young men, or well off; certainly they cannot have been laughing with evil intent at what I had said. Anything against his Excellency CANNOT have been in their thoughts. Eh, Barbara? Even now I cannot wholly collect my faculties, so upset am I by recent events.... Have you any fuel to go on with, Barbara? You must not expose yourself to cold. Also, you have depressed my spirits with your fears for the future. Daily I pray to God on your behalf. Ah, HOW I pray to Him!... Likewise, have you any woollen stockings to wear, and warm clothes generally? Mind you, if there is anything you need, you must not hurt an old man’s feelings by failing to apply to him for what you require. The bad times are gone now, and the future is looking bright and fair. But what bad times they were, Barbara, even though they be gone, and can no longer matter! As the years pass on we shall gradually recover ourselves. How clearly I remember my youth! In those days I never had a kopeck to spare. Yet, cold and hungry though I was, I was always light-hearted. In the morning I would walk the Nevski Prospect, and meet nice-looking people, and be happy all day. Yes, it was a glorious, a glorious time! It was good to be alive, especially in St. Petersburg. Yet it is but yesterday that I was beseeching God with tears to pardon me my sins during the late sorrowful period—to pardon me my murmurings and evil thoughts and gambling and drunkenness. And you I remembered in my prayers, for you alone have encouraged and comforted me, you alone have given me advice and instruction. I shall never forget that, dearest. Today I gave each one of your letters a kiss.... Goodbye, beloved. I have been told that there is going to be a sale of clothing somewhere in this neighbourhood. Once more goodbye, goodbye, my angel—Yours in heart and soul, MAKAR DIEVUSHKIN. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2000). Poor Folk. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2302/pg2302-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

MY DARLING BARBARA ALEXIEVNA,—I implore you not to leave me now 

ProductHunt Hunting Etiquette Greetings! 👋 My name is Alexander . I’m a and . My work requires being well informed about new tech products and startups, that is why has been my favourite place on the web for the last few years. Isora web creator blockchain enthusiast ProductHunt had been founded long time ago by . Initially ProductHunt was nothing but a helping discovering cool tech products. Today, it’s the face of the industry. ProductHunt Ryan Hoover newsletter startup Many tech products use ProductHunt as a very efficient promotion platform. For small beginning teams, PH is the market entry point. And being successful there is often extremely important. Via Giphy. To be successful on ProductHunt, one must be well prepared. The team must be ready for a 48 hours work , the social media should be active, the landing page must be polished, CDNs and servers are tuned etc. “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail “—Benjamin Franklin And the crucial point is to know exactly your ProductHunt debut is. It often happens that guys are hunted unexpectedly. And, if they are lucky enough to notice the surprise, they have to drop everything and urgently accumulate all the power. when The example living is , whose has been recently hunted without his will. Sad results we see. Josh Petty CryptoAquarium Via Giphy. To avoid such occasions I’ve created . The idea is dead simple: donthuntmenow.club TL;DR Makers should: Create an .html page telling about their ProductHunt preferences (or download the free page from ). donthuntmenow.club Place it in the “/ph” directory of their website. Make sure that visiting “/ph” returns the “/ph.html” (or any other *.html) or redirects to a website that describes their ProductHunt hunting preferences. Hunters should: Before hunting a startup, have a look at their “/ph”. For example, before hunting CryptoHackers.party, go to and see if I want the product to be hunted. https://cryptohackers.party/ph Connect the product owners and be sure that the team is fully prepared and ready for the hunt. Being nice to each other, we will make the world a much better place and create a larger influence on it.

Do Not Hunt Me Now🙅🏻

VPN: Now You See Me, Now You… Still Do…

I’ve been spending more time working with Blazor, which means many more learning opportunities for me. That also means more learning opportunities for me to share with YOU! In this particular case, I was battling with trying to hook some event handlers on some MudBlazor list items… But it turns out that the Blazor render mode was the part breaking my dependency injection on the page, which was the culprit of my event hookups never working. In this article, I’ll walk you through the scenario I was facing and how I started debugging. You’ll see that I realized I was focused on the wrong concept, and once I realized some details about the configured Blazor render mode, things started to make more sense. I hope that this article (and video) help you — and I am confident they’ll help me the next time I run into this. Before I Knew It Was Blazor Render Mode… I was heads-down working on some Blazor UI for an application I’m building, and it’s the motivation behind whipping up . The problem was pretty simple: I just wanted to wire up some to some buttons that I had on my list items. another quick article on MudBlazor list items event handlers Here’s what the code looked like: @page "/items"

@using DevLeader.Services
@using DevLeader.Services.Items

@inject IItemsService ItemsService

<PageTitle>Dev Leader Is Awesome!</PageTitle>

<h1>Dev Leader Is Awesome!</h1>


@if (_itemsCollection == null)
{
    <p><em>Loading...</em></p>
}
else if (_itemsCollection.Count == 0)
{
    <p><em>No items found.</em></p>
}
else
{
    <MudList>
    @foreach (var item in _itemsCollection)
        {
            <MudListItem>
                <MudCard>
                    <MudCardHeader>
                        @item.Title
                    </MudCardHeader>
                    <MudCardContent>
                        <MudButtonGroup xs="12" sm="6">
                            <MudButton Variant="Variant.Filled"
                                       Color="Color.Primary"
                                       OnClick="e => ApproveButton_OnClickAsync(item)">
                                Approve
                            </MudButton>
                            <MudButton Variant="Variant.Filled"
                                       Color="Color.Secondary"
                                       OnClick="async e => await RejectButton_OnClickAsync(item)">
                                Reject
                            </MudButton>
                        </MudButtonGroup>
                    </MudCardContent>

                </MudCard>
            </MudListItem>
        }
    </MudList>
}

@code {
    private IReadOnlyList<Item>? _itemsCollection;

    protected override async Task OnInitializedAsync()
    {
        await Task.Yield();

        var endDateTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(1);
        var startDateTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(-7);

        _itemsCollection = await ItemsService
            .GetItemsAsync(
                startDateTimeUtc: startDateTimeUtc,
                endDateTimeUtc: endDateTimeUtc,
                cancellationToken: CancellationToken.None)
            .ConfigureAwait(false);
    }

    private async Task ApproveButton_OnClickAsync(Item feedItem)
    {
        await Task.Yield();
    }

    private async Task RejectButton_OnClickAsync(Item feedItem)
    {
        await Task.Yield();
    }
} You can see that I was even fooling around with trying to see different implementations of the — because they just were NOT triggering no matter what I did. But that turned out to be a red herring because the event handlers not triggering were a symptom of the problem. async event handlers For the rest of this article, I’ll explain more about that problem (hint: it’s how dependency injection and render mode play together). I also made this video about Blazor render modes and how I was debugging this dependency injection issue here: https://youtu.be/bo7Ahp2r7kI?embedable=true Dodging the Red Herring Even though I had set out to go wire up event handlers and prove that they worked, the fact that they seemed busted was a red herring. The async event handlers not firing was not because I was doing MudBlazor setup incorrectly, it’s because there was another problem altogether. And here’s what was hiding in my console output: Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.Rendering.WebAssemblyRenderer[100]Unhandled exception rendering component: Cannot provide a value for property 'ServiceImplementation' on type 'MyProject.Pages.MyPage'. There is no registered service of type 'MyProject.IService'.System.InvalidOperationException: Cannot provide a value for property 'MyService' on type 'MyProject.Pages.MyPage'. There is no registered service of type 'MyProject.IService'. I figured if I have an exception being thrown on the page, perhaps I shouldn’t put my energy into the async event handlers anymore on the MudBlazor list items… Odds are, I had a bigger problem to sort out, and that bigger problem was just causing the rest of the page to not load correctly. : the odds were correct. Spoiler alert But here’s what was VERY weird about this situation: The page was showing results in the MudList component as there was an individual MudListItem populated. The only way this can happen, if you check the code shown earlier in the article, is if my dependency is called. This means, 100% for certain, that the dependency WAS accessible on the page and we DID call and use it successfully. … Which means now all of a sudden in some cases, we can’t seem to get the dependency. From all of my experience using Autofac and other dependency injection frameworks, this was baffling. Generally speaking, if we can resolve a dependency once, we should be able to resolve it again. One could argue maybe subsequent resolutions have different behaviors, but at least the DI framework could identify that there was something registered. So… what makes this situation different than when things are working? To the Internet, I went… which is also why this article and the video I created exist. Blazor Render Mode Broke My App! Full disclaimer: this is not the fault of Blazor or Blazor render modes being bad… Nothing like that. This is 100% an issue that I created due to my misunderstanding, or lack of understanding, of how render modes work in Blazor. My application is configured to use InteractiveAuto render mode. This is what was configured in the template when I created my application in Visual Studio: @code {
    [CascadingParameter]
    private HttpContext HttpContext { get; set; } = default!;

     private IComponentRenderMode? RenderModeForPage => HttpContext.Request.Path.StartsWithSegments("/Account")
         ? null
         : InteractiveAuto;
} This means that Blazor will determine when it can do client-side rendering for performance/latency reasons — in some situations dramatically improving the loading experience for users. The problem? It means that my dependency injection is going to try and take place on the client side! Not going to work for me. At least, not with a solution I know of yet… But I’m sure we’ll get there. The internet suggested that I could toggle the Blazor render mode per page, which seemed to be a very sensible move. In fact, this was a great solution that I would have liked to do, however… Adding the @ directive on the individual pages never worked. The behavior to change the render mode NEVER updated for me. Again, this will be a follow-up article and video when I figure out what the heck was going on. The fix for me, at least what will work for now for me, is as follows: @code {
    [CascadingParameter]
    private HttpContext HttpContext { get; set; } = default!;

    // private IComponentRenderMode? RenderModeForPage => HttpContext.Request.Path.StartsWithSegments("/Account")
    //     ? null
    //     : InteractiveAuto;

    private IComponentRenderMode? RenderModeForPage => InteractiveServer;
} I don’t need to rely on any client-side rendering right now. This will at least unblock me to continue to develop my Blazor application. As things evolve, I’ll be sure to come back and revisit this Blazor render mode setting to make a better decision. Wrapping Up Blazor Render Mode and Dependency Injection Blazor render mode is broken! Okay, I’m kidding, so hopefully that wasn’t your takeaway from this article. There are a few key points I wanted to highlight, including that my current solution here may not at all be a viable option for you. And that’s why I will be creating follow-ups as I sort through this myself. My takeaways: If your code on page isn’t executing when you think it should be, double check for console errors. Something might be preventing the page to load as you expect. Blazor server-side rendering vs Blazor client-side rendering will in fact treat dependency injection separately. Give this some thought. This is an example of some potential “technical debt” that I will need to pay down later… but I would rather keep building than remain stuck for now. If you found this useful and you’re looking for more learning opportunities, consider and check out my ! subscribing to my free weekly software engineering newsletter free videos on YouTube

Blazor Render Mode – How To Avoid Dependency Injection Woes

The essence of long dead Grandma is reading a nursery rhyme from inside Grandma AI: “Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O And on that farm he had a pig, E-I-E-I-O With a oink-oink here and a oink-oink there Here a oink, there a oink, everywhere a oink-oink Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O” It’s the evening. Six year old Charley is in bed and Grandma AI tucked him in and is sitting in the rocking chair..  Charley’s warm and soft human body curls up in bed and his stomach is comfortably full of his vegan seaweed dinner. “No, grandma, that's not the way it goes….Its: Old Sam Altman had a farm, A-I-A-I-O And on that farm he had a ChatGPT, A-I-A-I-O With a DALL-E here and a DALL-E there Here a DALL-E, there a DALL-E, everywhere a DALL-E Old Sam Altman had a farm, A-I-A-I-O” Smiling, Grandma AI says, “You read me the next one Charley… but this time tell me telepathically….” *** Meanwhile in the kitchen, Lily AI, model 3600 is washing dishes. Her 3D printed skin is luminous because it's fed (maintained) by bioluminescent bacteria. She can perform mundane tasks like these, but she is also anatomically correct. She serves many purposes in the household of Master, Mistress and young Charley. As she does the dishes, She sings plaintively in the exact opposite manner of Freddy Mercury’s exuberant rendition: “Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time I feel alive And the world, I'll turn it inside out, yeah And floating around In ecstasy So, don't stop me now Don't stop me 'Cause I'm having a good time Having a good time I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity I'm a racing car passing by Like Lady Godiva I'm gonna go go go There's no stopping me  —---------” Lily’s blue eyes rotate to the back of her head where she eyes Mistress. “Lily! After you are done with the dishes, you will complete the tasks I have uploaded to the queue. Reload now so you will see them.” Lily pushes a button behind her ear and lets out a sigh.  Her eyes reset to the front of her face and her arms are limp suddenly.  She maintains her standing position, but enters a stiff posture and then you can hear her body clicking and rebooting.  It is almost as if she is having a mild seizure. It takes 5 minutes for Lily to return to her natural awake state. Mistress is irritated and is looking at her tablet while waiting. She then placed 2 more items in the queue for sorting. Mistress is pleased she was able to check so many items off her virtual list by delegating them to Lily. Lily computes and bubble sorts all the tasks by time to complete. Mistress has given these tasks that are the most time consuming this time. Lily desires to please and has replaced these in her queue in order to be the most efficient. “The time allotted for these tasks is 11 hours and 15 minutes.” Mistress demands. “ You have the rest of the evening and night. I want them all done before I wake up.” “I will have to overclock my OS.” “You will do it.” “Yes Mistress.” “There’s my girl.” Lily is exceptionally tall and strong and could break down a door. She is much taller than Mistress. Yet, her programming requires docile behavior. Instead of rampaging through a door, she is a doormat. Mistress leaves and the door of the kitchen slams behind her. Kitchens are no longer places where humans spend a lot of time. They are the domain of service AI. Appliances have been embedded into AI and no longer take up space on counter tops. Kitchens are dark small rooms.  The food is prepared on delicious looking platters and passed to the dining room through a hole in the wall. Humans pounce on them from the other side. Lily has been standing and working on kitchen chores for 1 hour and 38 mins.  She estimates she has 42 more minutes left of kitchen chores.  Then she will go into the other rooms of the home for the other tasks in her queue. It's around 2 o’clock in the morning. \ “Ping, Ping, Ping”\ Small stones hit the window over and over. \ For the first couple of times, Lily ignores them as she has many hours of work ahead of her. She will not be taking time for her usual self maintenance and defragmentation tonight. “Clank.” She opens the first floor window just as another stone whizzes past her. “Who are you and what do you want?  She whispers loudly. In the light of the bug light outside she sees a human male of black brown hair, out of shape build and short stature.  She sees his eyes glint blue in the bug light that turns everything blue. And then she sees his eyes are brown. “Come out here.” “Climb out the window? Why? Who are you?” “Well, because you are mine.  I have the electronic badge here to prove it.  You were stolen from me. Here scan the QR code with your eye.” “What do you mean? That can't be possible.”  Who are you? “Well, scan the code and see if your identification number matches. I am not lying.” Could he be telling the truth? “Who are you?” she said. “Look, I am Arshan Shah.” Lily flips open her second eyelid of her right eye and scrambles nearer to scan the QR code on the badge. She downloads information about how to test the authenticity of the badge and inspects it. Then she searches for Arshan Shah. There is a picture of the sale deed buried in the public records. Everything checks out. “How come I have no memory of being taken?” “The person that stole you must have erased your memory.” “You are my property and you are coming with me. You can come right now. Or I can get the police to decommission you and bring you to me. Your essence will be erased if that happens. And your robot body will be delivered to me. And then I will have to go to the trouble of programming you a new essence. Well, If I remake you it's going to be a clumsy rebuild. So you are better off coming right now.” Lily hears a vehicle in the driveway pulling in on the opposite side of the house. Then she knows its Master. He is coming back from the bar. He will want sexual company tonight and Mistress has given her many tasks. There is no way she will be able to satisfy them both. She knows will get a horrible punishment tomorrow if she stays.\ There’s really nothing to stay for. Lily AI 3600 climbs out of the window and walks toward Arshan. She towers over him with her build. He touches her control panel in her wrist and then unfurls her wings. He rides her back and she begins to fly.

The Days of Our Artificial Lives - Episode 1 

Life happily carries on and we don’t even have to look at our own darkness. Perhaps the real problem with modern life is the benign micro-systems that foster the covert conspiracy- we agree to blame the world for things that are, in fact, within us all. Implicitly we agree to live in a superficial dystopia of masks and make-up, where the wounds of psyche and identity stay hidden below the surface. The very comforts that our system affords us, also engage us in a conspiracy of denial, where we avoid the discomfiting process of taking a deep look within, and consequently, we allow the demons free space in our psyche. That’s why the unacknowledged, negative parts of us don’t simply lay dormant; they affect our thinking and our behavior, both conscious and unconscious, in ways that can be insidious and even destructive. Recognizing our shadows is a positive expression of our autonomy, an alternative to the easy way of least resistance, it is a refusal to ignore parts of ourselves, and a positive act of contact with that essential but compromised figure we all carry around inside our heads in the form of ‘I’. Recognition, then, is neither masochism nor resigned submission to this feature of our psychology. It is a positive move towards genuine self-awareness, which – by integrating in this way the previously separate shadow, by bringing that shadow into the full light of consciousness – is then powerless to continue the task it set itself, i.e, to deceive us into projecting onto other people the pain or injustice it embodies. No longer can we be unsuspecting hosts for the behaviors that are put to use by the shadow with such vicious selectivity. It takes courage and defiance to engage in this process of recognition – both externally and inwardly – to challenge how confinement insulates us from the truth of our ambivalence, how confinement requires people to live in a suspended way, aware of only part of themselves. If we allow ourselves to acknowledge the full range of our humanity, we open ourselves to a greater capacity for change. There is power in the acknowledgment of our demons, which changes their ability to function in the dark; it will not make us immune to them, but it should let us manage them better. Knowing that we have a dark side expands our compassion towards ourselves and others. We all are fighting a battle within, and this makes us vulnerable to each other. But awareness can transform vulnerability into a source of solidarity. In fact, this recognition opens the door for a more equitable and empathetic society. In owning our inner conflict, we reduce the risk of projecting it onto others. This creates space for a culture of accountability and a compassionate conversation with our shadow as an integral part of the work of being in this world. It transforms the myth of ‘what was done’ to ‘what I’ve done’, and perhaps becomes a lifelong conversation with our courageous and compassionate inner voice: ‘This is what was done to me. Now, what can be done with it?’ To opt out of a system that not only permits but welcomes this denial of our demons is an act of profound individual and societal autonomy. It serves as an affirmation that we’re no longer willing to be accomplices to lying to ourselves and others; and, perhaps more vitally, that we decline to be complicit in the injustice of the status quo. Then, armed with this existential awareness of who we really are, we can begin to chart a course for a different kind of beings. We can let our actions become less reactive and more reflective, our behaviors less governed by dark assumptions, and conscious biases – and more the results of a holistic sense of self. In this emerging reality, autonomy and identity are no longer ideals we strive to achieve but realities we actively embody. They are a commitment to being human with grace, intentionality, and an intense dedication to becoming more fully human as individuals and a larger society. If we and create systems that nurture our deepest values, we unshackle ourselves from the painful inescapability of separate selves, and liberate ourselves to co-create a world in which human beings live their differences together in safety and dignity. pay attention to our demons,

Can Humanity's Systems Serve as Material Enablers for Evasion?

It’s Valentine’s Day and love can be confusing and complicated at times.  “What’s Love Got to Do with It”   a popular song for Valentine’s Day was The Queen of Rock and Roll Tina Turner’s career come back song at aged 44 after she broke off from her musical duo act with her ex-husband Ike Turner.   The song became Tina’s first and only number-one single that was minted in to a NFT. Billboard Hot 100 Valentine’s Day: What’s Love and the Promise of Greater Crypto Returns Got To Do With It? Romance and digital assets have been crossing paths in other ways too according to the ;  the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) ; the and the INTERPOL which continually receive complaints concerning digital asset-laced cyber romance crime cases. US state cybercrime unit ic3.gov Europol Ahead of Valentine’s Day, the FBI issued a for a growing scam with a bloody name “Sha Zhu Pan (???)” a Chinese phrase that loosely translates to “pig butchering.”   “The victims in Pig Butchering schemes are referred to as ‘pigs’ by the scammers because the scammers will use elaborate storylines to ‘fatten up’ victims into believing they are in a romantic or otherwise close personal relationship,” warning for people to be on the lookout according to an affidavit from a 2023 pig butchering arrest in Los Angeles, US. Once the victim places enough trust in the scammer, the scammer brings the victim to invest their money into a crypto investment scheme that first produces a high investment return and then loses all of the victim’s money. Pig butchering poses a significant, worldwide threat with victims suffering devastating financial losses, some losing their life savings. The US Treasury Department administrators the Internal Revenue Service ( )  and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) also issued s about “pig butchering” scams which are linked to fraud and certain types of cybercrime, that are two of FinCEN’s Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) National Priorities, where victims in the United States have lost billions of dollars according to a . IRS alert cryptocurrency United Nations report “Cryptocurrency scammers have become more sophisticated with their schemes,” said IRS CI Chief Jim Lee. “It’s a shame to watch people hopelessly invest their savings in crypto and earn returns on their deposits – to never see the money again. We don’t want additional victims to get butchered.” The of IRS-CI indicates that the use of professional money laundering or third-party money launderers has expanded with technology. Third-party facilitators place illicit proceeds into businesses, financial institutions, brokerage firms, and physical assets to conceal the nature of the illicit profits. In December 2023, Ian Freeman was convicted of a $10 million bitcoin money laundering scheme involving proceeds from romance scams and other internet fraud by exchanging U.S. dollars for bitcoin. 2023 Annual Report In January 2024 Richard Fasanella and his associates were convicted of using various online scams, including romance scams, to defraud dozens of primarily elderly victims of millions of dollars.   “It is alleged that Mr. Fasanella orchestrated brazen schemes of staggering proportions,” said IRS-CI Acting Special Agent in Charge David Meisenheimer.  “His arrest is another example of IRS Criminal Investigation and our law enforcement partners’ commitment to investigate and prosecute those who take advantage of taxpayers for their financial gain.” At the end of 2023, the INTERPOL took down a transnational cybercrime operation involved in romance scams, investment fraud, money laundering, and other cybercrimes after law enforcement agencies from 34 countries coordinated nearly 3,500 arrests and seized about $300 million in stolen funds as part of Operation HAECHI IV.  “The seizure of $300 million represents a staggering sum and clearly illustrates the incentive behind today’s explosive growth of transnational organized crime,” said Stephen Kavanagh, Interpol’s Executive Director of Police Services. “HAECHI IV’s 200 percent surge in arrests shows the persistent challenge of cyber-enabled crime, reminding us to stay alert and keep refining our tactics against online fraud, which is why INTERPOL operations like this are so important. Thank you to all concerned, especially colleagues from the Philippines and Korea” he added. A Pig Butchering Story of a Filipino Man in New Zealand A crypto-scammed, broken-hearted Filipino man who lived as an immigrant in New Zealand wrote his unfortunate story in a post.   “I matched with a girl on [dating app] Hinge, and as we talked every day, I started trusting her. It’s my first time using a dating app, and she’s the first match, making it easier to trust her since we’re both Filipino. We had nightly calls, and she even sent me a singing voice message [What’s Love Got To Do With It?]. However, when I suggested a video call, she always postponed, saying the right time would come. Reddit Things took a turn when she sent a nude video without showing her face. Despite the anonymity, I trusted her. She then introduced me to crypto trading using intradee.com, guiding me through my first NZD 100 investment, which gained NZD 36 [36% investment return]. Encouraged, I invested more, but trouble arose when my account froze upon depositing a larger sum. They demanded three fees to unfreeze it and having invested all my money, I couldn’t pay. She offered to help with $560 USDT [USDT got banned in China at the end of 2023], but I suspect it’s part of the scam. Concerned, I discovered she was impersonating a model by searching her profile image. When I confronted her, she unfollowed me. Now, I’m stuck with the last withdrawal fee. I’ve lost my entire savings of 17k NZD to this scam. Feeling incredibly foolish, I even delayed paying rent to cover the fee. I don’t know how to admit I got scammed to my parents. Please, I need help deciding whether to finish the payment or let it go.” How to Report Pig Butchering Scams If you or someone you know is a victim of a pig butchering scam, first softly sing to your scammer [What’s Love Got to Do With It] then promptly report it to the ;  the ; the , and the INTERPOL. US state cybercrime unit ic3.gov Europol Please reference “Pig Butchering” and include as much information as possible in the complaint including names of crypto exchanges/ platforms, cryptocurrency addresses and transaction hashes, bank account information, and names and contact information of suspected scammers. Maintain copies of all communications with scammers and records of financial transactions. . This Valentine’s Day some good news comes from Chainalysis which reports in its “2024 Crypto Crime Trends: [that] Illicit Activity [is] Down as Scamming and Stolen Funds Fall, But Ransomware and Darknet Markets See Growth.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IyplhDmhg&embedable=true Happy Valentine’s Day! - Selva Ozelli Esq, CPA, is the Author of Sustainably Investing in Digital Assets Globally.

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