Is That Call from the “Embassy” the CCP or a Scammer? Answering Back Connects Instantly but Gives No Way to Tell Them Apart, Reading Out a Street Address Is a New Variant, a Chinese Residents’ Address Sells for Just 1 Cent on the Black Market, Scams Parasitize on the Credibility of Transnational Repression, Ordinary People Have Only a 2.3-in-1,000 Chance of Meeting the Real CCP! Find the Base Rate First, Then Divide by the Clues

The host uses a scam call he received from someone claiming to be the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. as an example, using a joint Bayesian updating formula to probabilistically quantify fraud versus CCP transnational repression. By analyzing the likelihood ratios of evidence such as phone numbers, script talking points, and black-market address leaks, he concludes that the probability of an ordinary person receiving a real call from the CCP is extremely low, and shares a rational decision-making framework of "finding the base rate first, then dividing by the clues."

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Full transcript:

Focus on reality, reject fragmented perception. Just last Saturday morning at 10:19 AM, I happened to be at the supermarket buying groceries. Well, right at that moment, my phone rang. The caller ID showed a Washington D.C. number: +1 771-224-593. When I answered the phone, what did they open with? "Hey, are you so-and-so living at such-and-such address? I am a staff member from the Chinese Embassy, surname Yang. Our embassy sent you a package, but you haven't signed for it." I replied right away in one sentence: "I have fucking nothing to do with you fucking CCP, and I have nothing to say to you. Get the fuck away from me." The person on the other end hung up immediately. After they hung up, well, I actually regretted it a bit. First, because I was driving at the time and didn't manage to record it. On the other hand, there are simply too many scams targeting ethnic Chinese by posing as the embassy. A while ago, a Taiwanese friend of mine had just arrived here for school. Just a few days after landing, they received a call from the so-called Chinese Embassy. At that time, I was chatting with my friend and said, "You must have been stunned for a second—when did Taiwan establish formal diplomatic relations with the US and reach ambassadorial-level diplomatic relations?" Right now it's also not long after school started, so I guess this US branch of the Northern Myanmar "embassy" is quite busy right now. How I wished the CCP would actually come through for me! But this time, I was still a bit disappointed. After all that, it's most likely the Northern Myanmar embassy, isn't it? What, did you bastards not get completely rounded up recently? Making a comeback now, are you? Oh, by the way, I even called back this time—a total of six times. Right after that, at 11:07 AM, there was a call that lasted 55 seconds. The person on the other end still said it was the embassy and asked what I wanted. I said, "Didn't you send me something? What is it?" Then they refused to answer and hung up directly. After that, at 11:08 AM, I spoke for another 11 seconds. At 11:09 AM, there were three calls lasting 4 seconds, 2 seconds, and 3 seconds respectively. Every single time I started talking, they hung up. Finally, at 11:10 AM, the last call went completely unanswered. Well, today we are going to use some street mathematics to calculate the probability of whether the caller was the embassy or a scammer. This is a video showing a super practical application of Bayes' theorem. So how do we determine whether this was a scammer or the CCP extending its claws? Well, we can make two hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 is that it is a scam impersonating the embassy; Hypothesis 2 is that it is transnational repression. Then we calculate the probability evidence by evidence. Hey, this is also a standard way to price things in capital markets.

Let's first talk about this area code. 771 is an area code for Washington, D.C., which conveys the same meaning as 202. Hey, both belong to Washington, D.C. I looked into it, and this number was activated in November 2021. A 771 number only indicates that it is registered in Washington; it doesn't mean the person calling is actually there, because in the US, numbers can be kept when switching carriers or cities. Now, here comes the fun part. Hey, I checked the North American number registration database, and the number block 771-24X from 5000 to 5999 has its registered holder listed as New Signal Wireless P C R. This is the legal entity for AT&T Wireless, and the line type is wireless. That is to say, this number was originally assigned to a wireless customer on AT&T's network, possibly just a prepaid SIM card worth a few dollars. Then I went to check several major anti-fraud reporting databases—you all should probably save these too, basically all scam numbers are in there. However, this number has zero fraud reports. So what does it prove if a callback gets through? Back in 2018, there was a tactic. Hey, what was this tactic like? That batch of scams opened by claiming to be the embassy as well, but what did they use? They used robocalls with recorded audio. And what did you hear when calling back? You heard that the user was out of the service area, meaning their entire number range was forged. But in my case, when I called back, a real person picked up immediately every time, and they kept claiming to be from the embassy. So here comes the question: this number is entirely controlled by the caller's side, and it is a real, physical SIM card—it didn't spoof someone else's number. So I thought, the number being real doesn't mean the CCP embassy is real, right? Because as I've said, I never slander the CCP; I just tell it like it is. Besides, I don't want to waste precious time arguing with a scammer—that's boring. Taking on the CCP is much more exciting. My reasoning for making this judgment is quite simple: even if a scam call center uses a real SIM card to answer these callbacks to maintain the illusion of being an office, the cost to them is virtually zero. At most, it just increases their risk of exposure. Therefore, the fact that the callback connects doesn't help distinguish between the two hypotheses. In other words, whether a callback connects provides zero information toward identifying if the other party is the CCP or a scammer. Thinking of this, I even laughed at myself in self-deprecation. What was so funny to me? It's that the CCP and scammers are really hard to tell apart.

Now that we've covered the number, let's look at the script. These fucking idiots first claim to be from the embassy, and then they use your home address to prove they have your information. What is the main point of this step? It's to reinforce their persona and their sense of presence, ultimately to gain your trust. However, this script has a major flaw: almost all scammers open by focusing on mail or packages. They repeatedly emphasize that there are contraband items inside. Now the script has evolved into "the embassy sent you something, but you didn't sign for it." So, stubborn as I am, I went back to look through the script books used by those scum in Northern Myanmar over the past few years. Hey, let me tell you, it's actually quite interesting. Starting from late 2017, the opening lines of scripts circulating simultaneously in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand almost always featured staff from the embassy. Hey, that was already a standard opening move. Then in 2018, it started with pre-recorded calls, followed by pressing a key to transfer to a live person who would say your package is involved in money laundering and that they need to transfer you to the police (Public Security) or have you wire money to a so-called "safe account." According to FBI statistics, from December 2017 to February 2019, there were over 350 complaints regarding this category, with actual losses exceeding $40 million. But after two years, hey, the situation changed a bit. What did it become? It turned into live one-on-one calls. In Japan, there was a victim who experienced a situation where a real person called and directly addressed the victim by name. In January 2024, the FBI summarized the current version into four steps: First, calling from spoofed or disguised numbers. What is their goal? To further harvest your personal information. The routine is to transfer you to the so-called Provincial Public Security Department. What do they ask you to do? Hey, they ask you to present your Chinese national ID, demand that you accept 24/7 video surveillance, and finally require you to wire a security deposit.

But my opening move—well, whether the other party was a scammer or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), well, they probably had never seen it before. Right off the bat, I said, "I, with you bunch of fucking idiots in the CCP, what the fuck kind of business do I have?" That kid was probably dumbfounded by me all of a sudden. There was no such response in the scriptbook. Plus, that kid was probably afraid of being back-traced, so, well, he hung up the phone right away. That's why I've always said, basically, those who are superstitious about the CCP and those who get scammed, well, are basically the same group of people. Not for any other reason, just that when you try to call that CCP embassy switchboard, you can't even get through. Would they have the time to call me on a Saturday? But I still kept open the possibility that the CCP had contacted me, because after all, the probability of them contacting me was still a bit higher. Later on, I also did something, which was to break down the script of these fucking idiots, cross-check its characteristics with existing scam scriptbooks, and after my item-by-item comparison, the characteristics matched very well. First, claiming to be from the embassy and giving a surname, well, this point matched very closely. Then, saying a package wasn't signed for, well, mail appeared again, well, this point matched again. Live video streaming also matched, and the process of this routine also matched very well—first matching the name, then the Washington area code also matched, and upon meeting resistance, giving up immediately, timing-wise it still matched. He didn't transfer me to the so-called Public Security Bureau to ask for money. Why? Just because my first sentence scared him away, so I guess the second half of the script hadn't had time to appear yet. The only thing that couldn't find a precedent in public records was that he reported my house number first. This is a variant of a phone number combined with directly calling out a name. What does this show? It shows that the other party has paired data of surnames and addresses in their hands, it's no longer just a phone book of surnames. Then where did this data come from? Well, that stubborn streak of mine came up again, which is also the real problem we are facing today: from which pipeline did my name and house number flow into the hands of this group of dialers? Well, I strictly follow the enlightenment of the sages—and these are real sages, not some PTSD-ridden bullshit like Bo Guagua's family. This sage is Leibniz, who said that when there are disagreements or contradictory opinions, let's not quarrel, let's do the math. Actually, it's the same for the same person: when you have a pair of contradictory hypotheses in your head, we don't agonize, well, we get to work and do the math.

Then I went to check, and hey, taking a look, fuck, this criminal industry pipeline is cheap beyond belief. For example, on people-search sites like True People Search, just by entering a name—even without spending a dime—you can see an American adult's full name, plus what else? Including where they currently live, what their phone number is, and it can even list out who all their relatives are. For enterprise-level data APIs like Alameda's, each call costs only one cent, and they can even build batch lists filtered by Chinese surnames; there are also many official channels. Let's take Alameda's current real estate registry as an example: although owner names are not displayed on the official website, Regrid, a commercial company specializing in selling parcel data, holds all 489,735 parcels of land in Alameda County, and has every single parcel owner's name, house address, and mailing address—not missing a single one. Even voter files for California, statewide, are just 100 dollars apiece. Just the year before last, which was in 2024, America's National Public Data leaked 272 million Social Security numbers matched with names and addresses, and they could be downloaded for free on hacker forums. From that, I could reverse-engineer where their information came from, because they recited the street number, right? Now we can deduce what's happening. The responsibility of frontline operators in scam call centers is to verify identities and then transfer to the second tier; however, the underlying data on these lists is generally outdated, so reading out the entire address carries the risk of blowing their cover. But the street number is the most stable field in an address. What is their goal? To make you say yourself that this information belongs to you. As soon as you answer that this person is you, they have both completed verification and refreshed outdated data into resaleable 'responder' data. So in this scenario, what is the street number? It's a low-risk verification question. So what is the situation right now? It's that a group of Chinese scammers is taking the leaked foundational data from National Public Data, reprocessing it, and conducting real-time information updates, specifically targeting overseas Chinese as a demographic. I really feel that sometimes the operating methods of these scammers and the CCP can practically be called like father, like son. If these fucking idiots in Minmei really built a country, it would probably look just like the CCP state does today. This is why, on prior probability, it's very hard to naturally separate the two.

Since 2020, the US Department of Justice indicted four individuals from the CCP's 54th Research Institute. What was the reason for the indictment? It was hacking into national databases and taking away the names, Social Security numbers, and addresses of 145 million Americans. In March 2025, the Department of Justice indicted the company I-Soon. This company was commissioned by the CCP's Ministry of Public Security to hack into the email accounts of CCP critics inside the United States, charging 10,000 to 75,000 dollars each time. Coupled with Article 7 of the CCP's National Intelligence Law, when it comes to the phone number and location of a real-name WeChat account, CCP state security (MSS) does not need US court procedures to retrieve it. So does the CCP hold everyone's addresses? What is my judgment? My judgment is that there is a high probability they do, and most of it was obtained through illegal channels. That is one reason why we cannot completely rule out an official operation conducted quietly by people from the CCP state. Let's continue looking at the data: in three US cases with complete court filings, every single time the CCP needed the address of an overseas target, what they did was send people to track them down. In the Fox Hunt case, the CCP operatives initially didn't know where the target, Xu Jin, lived; they only held the address of one of Xu Jin's relatives, and it was in New Jersey. And, as I've already told everyone about this matter, they hired an American private investigator to search databases, and the result? The entire process was fully exposed to the FBI, wasn't it? And what did these fucking idiots from the CCP do? They brought Xu Jin's 82-year-old father from China to the United States, and dropped him right at this relative's doorstep, all just to wait for Xu Jin to show up to see his father. Then the private investigator staked out outside, and by tailing him the next day, they finally found his home.

Furthermore, there is the matter of that fucking idiot Lu Jianwang, which I have mentioned before. In 2022, the Ministry of Public Security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had this fucking idiot set up an overseas police station in New York. After this fucking idiot tracked down a pro-democracy activist living in California, he was directly exposed. As for the ending of this fucking idiot, I have already talked about it—he brought it upon himself. He was convicted on May 13th of this year, which I have also told everyone about before. Then there is Zhang Manying in California in August 2025. Who was he instructed to fly to the western United States to stalk? He was stalking the family members of President Lai Ching-te, and even sent back license plate numbers from outside the residence of the President's relatives. As a result, he was arrested directly at Los Angeles Airport on October 4th of this year. In my view, the CCP is essentially doing one thing: legally collecting the private information of these residents within the CCP-controlled country, while using illegal means to obtain this information all over the world. So, to put it bluntly, the CCP and the scammers are like family. And do these two channels intersect? Well, they actually do. The conclusion of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in July 2025 was that the CCP tacitly approves of this behavior. What did the bipartisan report from the House Select Committee on the CCP in May of this year say? It stated that the fraudulent activities are not directly controlled by the state, but rather that scammers leverage the harassment and repatriation operations against people in the U.S. that the Chinese government publicly promotes, making their fraudulent activities appear credible. So, think about it: where does the scam industry parasite? It is built on the credibility of transnational repression. Therefore, the scripts of the scammers are highly tied to the behavior of the CCP. It is precisely because transnational repression is real, but it does not actually need to occur after this phone call, that they can successfully swindle money. So, I will give you a mental guide to avoid telecommunications fraud. The guide is actually just five words, but these five words are more than enough to prevent this kind of telecommunications fraud. These five words are: "The CCP is a fucking idiot." Remembering these five words is a way to disenchant power. The essence of why scams can happen is the superstition that Chinese people have toward power. If you are no longer superstitious, and your first reaction upon hearing "Chinese Embassy" is still to want to verify with them, then who the fuck can these idiots scam? Regarding the matter of hanging up the phone, what was my original judgment? It was that the other party felt guilty. On the scam side, the commission for the frontline operator can only be realized when the victim transfers money. Once my first sentence comes out, whether it is the CCP or a scammer, their judgment is that the probability of converting me is zero. So, hanging up is a correct or rational action for them. As for the CCP side, I think the probability is also high that those instructed to make contact will definitely not leave recordings or materials. Once they encounter a super hostile attitude, they will also hang up the phone. Well, both hypotheses predict the act of hanging up, but a behavior that both sides predict is not evidence. Therefore, I have abandoned the "guilty conscience" explanation—not because it is wrong, but because it is useless. Because what is the essence of information content? It is difference; I must be able to distinguish differences from it, otherwise, the information content is zero.

Well, now, let's put this evidence into an algorithm and quantify the probability. That's what you call rigorous. The joint Bayesian updating formula I used is right on the screen. How do you use it? The posterior odds equal the prior odds multiplied by the likelihood ratio of each piece of evidence. What are the prior odds? The prior odds are the ratio of the probability of a scam versus the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before hearing the phone call content. The likelihood ratio is the probability of the exact same evidence appearing under the hypothesis of a scam divided by the probability of it appearing under the hypothesis of the CCP. If it is greater than one, it leans toward a scam; if it is less than one, it leans toward the CCP. What is the relationship? The evidence is multiplied one piece at a time, and then we see which way the odds shift step by step. How did I determine the prior? Well, I used statistical methods. I dug up all the government impersonation-type complaints received by IC3 last year, totaling 32,424 cases. Furthermore, from last January to this July, complaints impersonating foreign officials and diplomats stood at 1,809 cases, while the recorded volume of CCP phone contacts with overseas dissidents amounts to just a few dozen cases a year. In other words, for an ordinary overseas Chinese person, the prior odds are roughly a ratio of 1 to 100. But since I am someone who openly confronts the CCP, within the target population, my identity requires increasing the weight of the CCP hypothesis. Well, I raised it tenfold for myself, so the prior is taken as 10 to 1, meaning that 91 percent of the prior probability is a scam for me, and 9 percent is the CCP. Then we calculate the likelihood ratio one by one. For the script regarding uncollected items sent by the embassy, in scam records, this is a standard opening, and the beginning about the email accounts for about 30 percent of the weight of all scam scripts. In other words, the probability of this email thing appearing under the hypothesis of a scam is 30 percent, whereas under the hypothesis that the other party is the CCP, recorded intimidation excuses are all straightforward—such as returning to China, stopping recording, stopping the program, or otherwise thinking of your family; not a single case used a package as an excuse. However, I won't set it to zero, I'll take 2 percent to leave some room. Thus, 0.3 divided by 0.02 gives a likelihood ratio of 15. Let's look at the next item: being able to call back and still get through. The probability that a live scammer answers a callback using a number they control is taken as 0.6 by me, and if it is the CCP, their number is likewise a controlled number, also taken as 0.6, so the likelihood ratio for this item is 1, leaving the odds of the entire chain unchanged. Then there is the point that this number is not flagged, meaning it is a number with low-frequency outbound dialing. The probability that a number authenticated with AT&T's own number block is not flagged, I take as 0.5, while a disposable number contacted by the CCP must be clean, so this item is 0.95 for the CCP, and 0.5 divided by 0.95 is approximately 0.53. Note that this item leans toward it being the CCP. As for hanging up, under a scam it is 0.9, and under CCP behavior I take it as 0.8; their ratio is approximately 1.1, also almost unchanged. For quoting the house number, aliases are the norm in scam variants, but quoting the house number is relatively rare, so this item is taken as 0.3. Well, since the CCP decided to make this call, there is a high probability they have already located my position, so I take it as 0.6, and the likelihood ratio is 0.5, which also leans toward these bastards being the CCP. Now we can do the mental math: 15 multiplied by 1 equals 15, 15 multiplied by 0.53 multiplied by 1.1 is approximately 8.8, and 8.8 multiplied by 0.5 is approximately 4.4. What is this 4.4? It is the ratio of the probability of it being a scammer versus the probability of it being the CCP. After normalization, the probabilities that this phone call was made by the CCP versus a scammer are 18.5 percent and 81.5 percent, respectively. If you are not an open dissident, this ratio drops to 2.3 per thousand. In other words, once you hear that the other party is from the embassy and they even mention an email or a package, you can mindlessly trash-talk them. Of course, if you have free time, well, playing along with them is not out of the question. So what did I do? On the one hand, I turned around and reported this transnational repression to the FBI, and on the other hand, I filed a scam complaint; the receipt numbers are these two. Because 18..5 percent as the probability of it being the CCP is not exactly low. Following that, I submitted a scam report to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the reference number is this. The original intention is that regardless of whether this bunch of fucking bastards is the CCP or not, they have an inextricable tangle of relations with the CCP, and today I am also going to cut off their fucking financial path right here on the channel—cutting off even one stream counts. The value of reporting the number itself is secondary; the main thing is to update the database's scripts so everyone understands what these fucking idiots are playing at. And then comes the most useful part of today.

In fact, when most people encounter something they are unsure about, there is only one question in their mind: is this real or fake? What kind of perspective is this? It's a Boolean, binary perspective. It's either true, meaning it's a one, or it's false, meaning it's a zero. But in reality, it's very difficult for us to obtain information with such strong determinative power or robust causality. Therefore, asking this question in the first place is actually asking the wrong question. Why? Because the information in our hands is never enough to draw a definitive yes-or-no conclusion. If you force yourself to make one, you can only rely on gut feeling. And scammers' scripts are specifically designed to exploit human gut feelings. In other words, many times the evidence we hold cannot be pieced together into a strong causal deduction; we can only do correlation reasoning. At this point, what must we change the question to? We must reframe it as: what is the probability that it's true, and what is the probability that it's fake? And under this perspective, we can also identify another key point: exactly what kind of information are we currently lacking to make a judgment. Once you adopt this perspective, you can calculate it. How do you calculate it? It's just what I did regarding that phone call earlier. Applied to anything else, the sequence doesn't need to change: first, split the situation into two competing hypotheses—that is, whether it's a scammer or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—and then find the baseline ratio of this happening in everyday life. For example, when an ordinary ethnic Chinese person receives a call claiming to be from the embassy, what is this ratio? From this, we can see that the ratio of scams to the CCP is roughly a hundred to one; this ratio is the starting point. Why must you find the baseline ratio? Because if you don't establish this starting point first, people will be led by the nose down the most terrifying path. Once you have the starting point, go through the clues one by one. After reviewing each clue, ask only one question: how common is this clue when the first hypothesis holds true, and how common is this clue when the second hypothesis holds true? Divide the two numbers: the further the result is from one—whether greater than one or less than one—as long as it's further away, the more useful the clue is. If the result is close to one—such as the call going through when dialing back, or the other party hanging up, which are things both sides would do—just throw it away directly; there's no need to let it clutter your brain. Finally, multiply the starting point by these few numbers. You will hold a quantified probability in your hands. Once you have the probability, how do you decide on an action? Multiply this probability by the consequence, and compare it with the cost of taking the action. That call of mine was actually quite disappointing, and also quite a failure. The probability of it being the CCP was only 18.5%, while for ordinary Chinese people, there is only a 0.23% chance of running into the actual CCP entity rather than those Northern Myanmar clones. If a Chinese person encounters this situation, just hang up the phone immediately, and never say those two words: even if they read your personal information correctly, don't say "it's me"—either hang up directly or say "wrong number," and then flag or report the number while you're at it. For ordinary people, this is already enough. You see, was any action here driven by fear? It was entirely calculated by multiplying probability by consequence. There is one more thing to think through in advance: which new clues, once they appear, necessitate recalculating? For instance, if the other party asks me to delete a video, as long as this single clue appears, I will immediately recalculate the multiplication. This is the dynamic updating inherent to probability itself.

In fact, applying this approach to doing business works the exact same way. Let's just take a quick example—this isn't strict statistics, I'm just making up numbers off the top of my head. Everyone in business has definitely faced a problem: whether or not to give a customer a credit period. For instance, if a new customer asks you to ship the goods first and then settle a payment of 100,000 yuan at the end of the month, don't waste time wondering if this person is reliable or not. What should you ask first? Ask others in the industry what percentage of accounts receivable from this new customer usually turns out to be uncollectible. Let's assume it's 10%, or one out of ten. Then your starting prior odds are 9 to 1. Next, let's pass it through clues. If the other party is willing to pay a 30% deposit upfront, hey, looking at your statistical data, among customers who honor their agreements, 8 out of 10 are willing to pay a deposit; whereas among those who intend to default, only 2 out of 10 are willing to pay a deposit. At this point, that's 0.8 divided by 0.2, which equals roughly 4. Multiplying 9 by 4 gives you 36 to 1. If the other party doesn't negotiate the price at all and instead fucking keeps rushing you to ship the goods, hey, what do you find? Among normal customers, only 2 out of 10 would do this, whereas in the defaulting group, 6 out of 10 would do this. That's 0.2 divided by 0.6, which equals roughly 0.33. Multiplying 36 by 0.33 gives you roughly 12 to 1. That means the probability of you failing to collect the money is roughly 8%. 8% multiplied by 100,000 yuan equals 8,000 yuan. This means that if you do a hundred orders like this, on average, you will lose 8,000 yuan per order. If this single order can net you a profit of 20,000 yuan, since 20,000 is larger than 8,000, then you can take it. But if it only nets you 5,000 yuan, then you should demand the other party raise the deposit to 50%; if they won't raise it to 50%, stop negotiating altogether. In fact, there are many application scenarios for this. To put it simply, what tool am I providing everyone with? It's turning empirical knowledge like statistical data into something reusable over and over again, while quantifying your experience into data. This phone call was actually pretty amusing—it put CCP scammers and Bayes in the very same framework. You might ask if it feels out of place? Yeah, I think it feels pretty out of place. But you might ask if it's reasonable? I think it really is reasonable. So in the future, if you run into any issues that require you to make a judgment—like reviewing resumes when hiring, a friend inviting you to invest in something, or a terrifying piece of news circulating in a chat group—you can actually follow this sequence: find the proportion first, then divide the clues, and finally multiply the probability by the consequences to determine your action.