Hi Friends 👋 

I had an amazing week at several risk conferences last week and had the chance to meet so many of you who read this newsletter. The fraud-fighting network is stronger than ever! 💪 

Let’s get to the top trends!

Fraud News Roundup 🗞️ 

• Banks Next Target Of Major Hacker - Cybersecurity researchers have discovered that ShinyHunters (the Salesforce hackers) have begun creating domains to attack their next big target - banks. Get ready for this one if true.

• CFPB Viral TikTok Trend - TikTok influencers are racking up millions of views by wrongly telling people to file complaints with the CFPB to get refund checks for Zelle transactions where they lost money. 2025 is truly the year of social media fakery.

• Pope Doesn’t Want A Deepfake Clone - A “horrified” Pope Leo soundly rejected a proposal to create a deepfake AI Avatar of himself which would allow people to login and speak with his digital twin.

• X Employees Bribed To Unban Scam Accounts - Crypto Scammers used a bribery network run by middlemen to try to get employees to open up accounts that were closed for scam activity.

• Scammed Into Scamming - Probably the best pictorial and story on Pig Butchering scamming I have ever seen. This is worth checking out fraud fighters.

• Major Airports Hit By CyberAttacks - Heathrow, Brussels and Berlin airports were struck by cyberattacks that caused widespread travel disruption. Many suspect Russian-sponsored hackers.

• Stellantis Hacked - US Automaking giant was hacked by ShinyHunter but they did not provide details of the number of customers impacted yet. ShinyHunter has stolen over 1.5 billion pieces of PII from over 760 customers now.

• Singapore Mule Crackdown - Singapore will begin restricting access to banks and telecom services for people who have been linked to scam activity.

• Tax Refund SMS Wave - A new wave of Tax Refund scam phishing text are sweeping across multiple states prompting authorities to warn consumers.

• 12 Years - That’s the time that Charlie Javice could get for stealing $175 million from Chase (at least that is what prosecutors are recommending).

• Chinese Gangs Target Real Estate Agents - A new Reuters investigation reveals that scam compounds are now using ChatGPT to target real estate agents by trolling through Zillow listings.

• Morris Bank Family and Friends Special - The President of Morris Bank was sent to prison for a year for running a “family and friends special” for one of his important clients, who would turn around and keep the money for himself.

• $100 Million Hack Arrest - A teen too young to even name was arrested for his involvement in the MGM Grand and Caesar attack in 2023.

• Sick Fraudster - A sick man kept four people locked up in his basement, defrauded them by using their credit cards, and was only discovered after one of the victims died.

She Thought It Was a Normal Client Call Until Zoom Asked to Scan Her Body

Real Estate Agents are increasingly being targeted by AI scammers that are trying to create deepfakes of them for use in sophisticated wire fraud scams.

A Denver real estate agent narrowly escaped identity theft when a fake client asked her to perform a full-body scan during a Zoom call.

The scammer aimed to create an AI-generated deepfake version of herself to defraud home buyers. She ended the call after recognizing the suspicious verification process but the scammer persisted.

Pizza Shop Selling Face Cream? Walmart.Com Has A Big Identity Fraud Problem

Why is a Pizza Parlor selling expensive face cream on Walmart.com? Turns out it’s an identity theft scheme that is booming on the platform.

An expansive CNBC investigation has uncovered widespread fraud in Walmart's online marketplace, where they discovered at least 43 fake sellers that stole real business identities to push counterfeit beauty products and supplements.

Former Walmart employee Tammie Jones revealed she was told to "approve, approve, approve" seller applications even when documentation looked suspicious.

As Walmart tried to grow and compete with Amazon, it left the door wide open for fraudsters to run amok on the marketplace.

This USAA Bank Call Scam Nightmare Was Brutal, Lasting Over 5 Hours

A tech professional got caught in a really sophisticated USAA bank fraud scheme that lasted five hours, with fake employees, doctored account screens, and spoofed text messages that looked exactly like real bank alerts.

The scammers posed as fraud analysts claiming someone named "Tony Head" had stolen money.

The story illustrates how these bank impersonation calls are becoming increasingly more sophisticated each day.

NASA Scientist Engaged In Mortgage Fraud And Credit Washing And Now Faces Jail

Credit Washing is not extremely common in mortgages, but A NASA scientist used it to erase her bad debts after she had used forged documents to obtain a mortgage loan that she could not afford to pay.

The scientist and her husband had provided the phone number of a friend to perform an employment verification call after she had resigned for her job from the organization.

Banks That Catch Fraudsters Are Loyalty Machines, But If They Don’t, Well….

Banks spend millions preventing fraud, but new research suggests that even when fraud happens, there is an opportunity to increase loyalty with their investigations. When banks successfully identify who stole from customer accounts, those victims become 62 percent more loyal than customers who never experienced fraud at all.

The study of 422,953 customers at a major U.S. bank over five years shows that what really matters isn't preventing every attack. It's telling customers who did it.

But it gets bad, too. When banks can't identify the fraudster, the damage is severe. These customers leave at rates 40 percent higher than customers who have never faced fraud.

T-Mobile Has Known For Twenty Years That They Have An Inny Fraud Problem

Newly released court documents is revealing the extent to which employee credentials and T-Mobile employees themselves are being used to Sim Swap victims’ phones.

The report shows that going back to 2005, “fraudsters were targeting T‑Mobile store employees via social engineering and posing as T‑Mobile tech support in order to steal those credentials”.

One report found that 478 customer accounts were attacked using the credentials of a single employee.

After A 3-Day Relentless Digital Arrest Scam, Doctor Tragically Died Of A Heart Attack

A 76-year-old retired doctor collapsed and died of a heart attack after cyber fraudsters held her under "digital arrest" for three days.

She was kept on constant video surveillance as multiple scammers posing as police officers terrorized her and extorted her for $7,500. They told her she was implicated in Human Trafficking.

In the end she could not take it anymore and died of a heart attack.

New York Times Reporter Hooked With Chase Fraud Impersonation Scam

A reporter who has twenty years of experience writing about fraud and scams was almost scammed during a 16-minute spoofed call with Chase Bank, where they walked him through step by step on an outrageous Zelle payment.

What got him was the spoofed number and the fact that the fraud analyst escalated the call to his fraud supervisor.

7 Times As Many People Struck By Lightning Than Convicted Of Mortgage Fraud

Last year, seven times as many people in the US were struck by lightning as those who were convicted of mortgage fraud.

While it dominates that news cycle these days, the fact of the matter is that mortgage fraud convictions have plummeted to their lowest level in history.

That’s a wrap for another week in the weird and ever-changing world of fraud.

FrankonFraud