Greetings Fraud Fighters,

Hope you are all having a great summer. One thing is heating up for sure 👉️ Fraud! Let’s get to the top stories this week!

Fraud News Roundup 🗞️ 

• Banks Say Fraud Spiking - According to ABA, 33% of Banks say fraud has spiked in the last year, and most banks (635) say fraud prevention tops their list of investment priorities. Read More

• Rent Your Bank Account Out - Gary Warner exposes Facebook group with 4,500 members that focus on recruiting people to rent out their bank accounts. Can you guess which bank is worth the most? See the post

• Fraud Telethon - Did you listen to Hailey Windham’s fraud fighter telethon yet? Check it out

• ECBSV Upgrade - The SSA just made a major improvement to their identity verification service. Read More

• Alaska Air Cyberattack? - Rumors are swirling that Alaska Air grounded its fleet after a cyberattack that the FBI warned about. Read More

• Cambodia Crackdown - Authorities have been running a massive crackdown on scam centers, arresting over 2,000 people across 43 centers in the last three weeks. Read More

• “Bollywood” Scammers In Texas - An Indian couple in Texas blended entertainment with real estate and loan fraud, stealing $4 million from victims. Read More

• Pablo Escobar Phone - Surprise, surprise. The Escobar fold phone turned out to be nothing more than a scam. Read More

• Fake Police Reports - 3 police chiefs in Louisiana were charged with filing phony police reports for armed robberies that never happened to help immigrants get Visas to stay in the country. Read More

• Another “40 Under 40” - Another founder, who was highlighted in one of those list, was charged with a massive $300 million fraud for identity theft and completely faking the financial position of her fashion company. Read More

• Digital Arrests - Digital arrests are going bonkers in India right now. Another software engineer lost $465,000 after she let two men on a video call take out a massive loan in her name. Read More

• AI Voice Clone - A woman was 100% positive she was talking to her daughter over the phone before she was fooled into giving a pickup courier $15,000 in cash. Watch It

• Deepening Murder for Fraud Mystery - A San Diego woman is missing and police are looking for her body on her 20-acre ranch after many suspect her foster son of killing her and forging documents to take over her vast property. Read More

• He Fell For Deepfake ACH Fraud Scam- A scam-savvy journalist fell for a convincing celebrity deepfake promoting a product, and he could not believe it when he was scammed out of hundreds. Read More

• Remember Bazooka Gum? - Some guy created a fictitious Bazooka Gum company and used it to submit over $1.2 million in fraudulent checks. He was sentenced this week. Read More

• Heartbroken - A Belgian man travels 500 miles to meet his future wife, only to find he is the victim of an elaborate romance scam. Read More

• Tiger King - The Netflix’s Tiger King was sentenced to one year in prison for wildlife trafficking and money laundering. Read More

Watch My Mom Get A Deepfake AI Call From a Pig Butchering Scammer

Want to see Pig Butchering in action as your banking customers experience it? I commandeered communications with a scammer on my mom’s behalf, and I am bringing you rare footage of how these deepfakes operate and how flawless they are.

It started with those texts you all know far too well. 👇️ This is how it started for my mom.

Assuming the name “Betty”, I texted with the scammer for weeks on WhatsApp. Eventually, the scam developed to the point where they were ready to invest time in a deepfake video call using one of their famed “AI Models” to really set the hook.

AI models are hired to use software like Haotian AI to create highly professional face swaps, making the victim believe they are talking to the real person.

Three days after my mom received this call, the same AI model attempted to convince her to invest $50,000 in a specialized “gold trading” platform. Mom, obviously refused.

Watch the eye-opening video here.  

OCC Bans Four Bankers For Internal Fraud

The OCC announced that former bankers from TD, Chase, and Webster Bank have been officially banned from the industry due to internal fraud. Two of the bankers were from Webster Bank.

If you think that Check Fraud only happens through mail theft, think again. Cricel Santamaria (from Webster Bank) was taking photos of checks and selling them online! That’s bad news!

Murdering Dentist Killed Wife, Then Asked Daughter To Create Deepfake AI Video

A dentist who is accused of poisoning his wife with protein shakes and eventually killing her, asked his daughter to do the unthinkable - create AI videos that showed his wife begging for him to buy poisons to help her commit suicide.

From jail, he sent her a detailed letter instructing her on how to create the deepfake video which included buying a burner laptop, installing a dark web browser, and how to pay for the deepfake using a prepaid Visa card.

Read More

Old Landlines Are The New Frontier Of Identity Theft At Banks

Old landlines that customers forgot about are coming back to haunt them as their bank accounts get taken over.

A recent case is highlighting how fraudsters are finding old landlines and having mobile service ported to those phones, giving them backdoor access to your bank account.

Read More

Are Fannie and Freddie Examining 20-Year-Old Loans To Find Fraud With AI?

A couple of months ago, Fannie launched an AI crime unit to comb through loans and identify patterns of fraud that are undetectable by human investigators. They partnered with Palantir to license the powerful AI.

But are they now using it to detect fraud that dates back 20 years? Possibly. And that means a lot of very, very old fraud may start rising to the surface in the coming months.

Last week, a criminal referral was sent to the DOJ regarding occupancy fraud involving Adam Schiff, which involves loans dating back over 23 years.

Americans Are Now Going To Cambodia To Join Pig Butchering Operations

I was a little stunned to find two Americans who were actively looking for jobs in scam compounds in Cambodia.

The two fellas claim to be from Utah and have the “clearest and most authentic” American accents. This must be a plus because they can speak to victims and make the scam seem even more real.

Click to Watch

WSJ - Shocking Pig Butchering Case - Millions Stolen, Death Threats And More

Craig Hurt lost over $5 million to Pig Butchering scammers while his wife, Anamarie, was unaware.

When she found out, the scammers went on the attack, sending her death threats, sending her text messages letting her know that they were tracking her specific locations, and sending her blackmail photos of her in the shower that her husband had been manipulated into taking of her by the scammers.

The scammer infiltrated all of their devices and made their life a living hell for months.

She is fighting back and suing Arvest Bank for failing to stop the scammers.

Read More

The Fraud Hotel - Check Out The Luxury Hotel In Nigeria That You Helped Pay For

Did you know that you helped fund a luxury hotel in Nigeria? It’s true. A fraudster siphoned off millions of dollars in unemployment benefits while in the US on a Visa he got through a “fake marriage”, extracted the money with BofA debit cards, and sent the money over to Nigeria to build a massive resort that still stands today.

Check it out here - Oyins International Resort.

Abiola Quadri, the individual responsible, was just sentenced for his crimes last week, but his hotel is still generating revenue.

Read More

Record-Busting 96% of Americans Hit by Scam Attempt Once A Week

Scam messages are everywhere. A new survey finds that 96% of Americans (over 330 million people) receive a scam text each week.

The report, produced by CNET, attributes this record-breaking number to data breaches. I believe that scam operations originating from Southeast Asia are a contributing factor.

Read More

That’s a wrap of another edition of FrankonFraud’s newsletters.

Thanks for reading