Fraud Fighters 👋 

Welcome to another wild week in fraud. Wow.

Let’s get to the stop stories and trends this week.

Fraud News Roundup 🗞️ 

• Ming Family Brought To Justice - China has sentenced 16 members of the Ming Family to death, and another 23 to severe sentences for running Pig Butchering operations in Myanmar.

• Founder falls for Fake Zoom Call - A crypto founder lost $1.35 million after joining a deepfake Zoom meeting that enabled hackers to install malware that gave them access to his private keys.

• RBC Bank Employee Arrested - Telegram fraudsters are actively recruiting Canadian bank employees, paying $500 for setting up accounts, lines of credit and even intel on politicians. A recent arrest revealed the scheme.

• Charlie - The infamous Charlie Javice gets a 7-year sentence for her fraud against Chase and even thought she only made $21 million has to pay them back $288 Million in restitution.

• LA Clippers Fraud Worsens - Steve Ballmer’s actions seem to implicate him further in the salary cap fraud case.

• ABA Going After Credit Washers - The ABA and AFSA jointly sent letter to congress to implore them to stop the plague of credit washing with a new law which would eliminate the shady practice.

• Biggest DDOS Attack In History - Cloudflare thwarted a massive 22 Terabit a second DDOS attack, which is twice as large as the prior record. Hackers are taking their skills to new heights.

• Sickos - Criminals hacked the Kido nursery school chain in the UK, posting children’s photos and personal data online. They are now phoning parents, threatening to release more information if the company doesn’t pay.

• Tai Lopez Downfall - The viral YouTube sensation, who once showcased his garage filled with Lamborghinis and books, has been accused of running a Ponzi scheme, allegedly defrauding investors of $16 million.

• LA Film School Massive Scam - Two whistleblowers allege that the LA Film School has operated a massive scam, stealing tens of millions in student aid annually and setting up thousands of fake jobs for graduates.

• Check Fraud Crackdown - California announced 72 felony convictions involving $6 million in washed checks that happened across the state.

• “It Was My Son!” - A 71-year-old Houston man falls victim to a deepfake voice clone, and he swears it was his son who called him.

• The Return Of RevengeHotels - A hacking group targeting hotel guest credit cards across Brazil, Mexico, and Spain is attacking hotels through fake reservation emails.

• “For Motion Picture Use Only” - Unbelievably, retailers across New Jersey, Florida, and New Mexico are accepting prop money from customers as payment, prompting police to warn businesses to be on the lookout for this new scam.

• Lloyds Impersonation Audio - Jim Browning captures real audio and video of a scammer doing a Lloyds Fraud Analyst impersonation scheme.

• Investigators Locked Out! - A bizarre story of how investigators are being locked out of auto lender that imploded in a $1 billion fraud scheme.

• 75 Million Spammy Songs Torched - Spotify eliminated 75 million deepfake songs and AI slop that have been used to boost streams and steal from artists.

• India’s KYC Boom - As fraud and scams collide with an increasingly digital India, the KYC business is booming in the country as new players grow quickly.

• 100 Times A Month - The average American battles 100 scam attempts a month and are the attacked by fraudsters twice as much as any other country.

• 10 Fraud Experts Weigh In - And provide the biggest financial scams they have seen happen themselves.

Deepfake Fraud Testimony Caught In Court. Judge Throws Out $8.7 Million Lawsuit

Deepfake videos in the courtroom are no longer a hypothetical situation.

Last week, a judge dismissed a case in which the plaintiffs presented nine different pieces of deepfake evidence, including photos, videos, and altered text messages. The judge investigated for 5 months and then tossed out the $8.7 million lawsuit.

This is crazy!

OCC Slaps Five Bank Insiders With A Lifetime Ban for Their Fraud

Bank insiders from Wells Fargo, TD, and PNC were banned from working at any depository institution after they were implicated in various internal fraud schemes.

The schemes include everything from crediting their own accounts with customer funds to applying for fraudulent PPP loans.

More insider craziness. It’s heating up!

21 Arrested In Major Bust Out Fraud Takedown

Straw buyers are flooding Miami dealerships with fraudulent documentation and scooping up as many cars as they can.

Yesterday, a Miami task force arrested 21 people involved in this major coordinated bust-out ring, which attempted to fraudulently steal over $5.5 million in vehicles.

“A single straw buyer can purchase as many as 20 vehicles over the course of a week,” police said. “They are either lien-washed, in which the lien is fraudulently removed, they’re exported overseas with counterfeit VINs, or they’re illegally subleased. And too often, those illegally subleased cars are used in shootings, robberies, and other violent crimes.”

Couples’ Fraud Nightmare Started When CertifID Would Not Load

When a couple wanted to wire their closing funds, the CertifID link their title company didn’t work, so they decided to wire the funds based on an email they received. Big Mistake!

Thankfully, the receiving bank's fraud department blocked the funds, but they spent 7 months while two fraud departments battled it out, holding their money hostage.

Secret Service Dismantles 300 SIM Farms Running 100,000 SIM Cards In New York

Secret Service agents discovered a massive SIM Farm near UN headquarters capable of crashing cellular networks and sending 30 million anonymous texts per minute -500,000 text a second!

They say the equipment had ties to foreign nations and criminals and was used in fraud and scams.

Now you know where all those scam text were coming from!

“Order Whatever You Want, I’m Just Going To Mark It As Fraud” 😲 

A server in LA was shocked when she heard a customer tell 10 guest at the table that she was going to claim fraud on their order, encouraging them to order whatever they wanted.

First Party Fraud is out of control!

Ghost Riders and DeepFake Doctors - Inside Brazil’s AI Crime Surge

Criminals in Brazil are using AI to create fake identities and bypass bank systems.

In Rio, for example, fraudsters generated 2,000 fake Uber trips using AI-created driver and passenger photos, which were used to successfully bypass identity checks on the platform. Armed with these completely deepfake accounts, they create ghost rides.

In another scheme, fraudsters recruited individuals who resembled real doctors and used AI to create fake ID cards, thereby impersonating the real doctors. Those deepfake doctors laundered money for criminals

'Wildboy' and 'Jizzle' Busted for Stealing $2 Million from Navy Fed Members

The Feds took down 10 scammers with unusual names who operated at Gas Stations and ran a phone scam on hundreds of Navy Federal military customers.

Working in pairs called “talkers” and “draggers”, they asked to borrow the victim’s phones and then drained their Navy Fed accounts. If the victims were reluctant, they would brandish guns and threaten to visit them at their homes. Yikes!

The FBI Now Lets You Chat With Them In Chinese? 🤔

This is kinda crazy.

Fraudsters are setting up spoof sites like I3CGov.com to phish people’s detail. The domains route to this central website, called Practicing Lawyer, which fools people trying to report fraud. The FBI recently alerted this was a major issue last week!

How a Miami Man's Fraud Shell Game Brought Down An Entire Puerto Rican Bank

A Miami bank chairman discovered the perfect crime - steal from your own bank by running a shell game and lending millions to yourself.

Juan Ramirez turned the bank into his own ATM machine creating fake investments and funneling $13 million to himself.

When regulators demanded new capital, he got even more braze and used the stolen money to “save the bank”. After six years the bank collapsed.

Watch Walmart Hero Save Old Lady From Elon Musk Scam

This is so cool, watching a Walmart cashier take down a scammer. This poor lady was about to give up her life savings, and he steps in like a boss and blocks the scammer.

Smuggling iPhones Into Myanmar

A recent news article reported that two woman were caught crossing the border with a staggering 91 iPhones strapped to their waist trying to smuggle them into scam centers this week.

Are We Cooked? This AI Blows My Mind

Alibaba’s WAN 2.2 Animate takes a single picture and lets this guy create a mind-blowing deepfake.

That’s all for this week.

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FrankonFraud