Hey FraudFighters 👋 ,

Did you catch the Unit21 Fraud Fighters event last week? It was so cool. Over 2,000 fraud fighters interacted live online, while speakers covered a wide range of fraud and scam topics.

Let’s check out the top stories this week!

• Zelle Fraud Rate Plummets - Zelle fraud dropped to 5 basis points (that’s lower than credit card fraud), Ben Chance the Chief Fraud Risk Manager says it dropped 50% over the last year.

• Big Shutdown - The President of the Philippines ordered an immediate ban on mostly Chinese-run online gaming operations, accusing them of venturing into crimes, including financial scams, human trafficking, torture, kidnappings, and murder.

• Professor Scam - The latest scam where fake professors use phony loans to trick people into a major crypto scam.

• ElevenLabs - The company tied to the Biden deepfake is partnering with Reality Defender and is taking measures to prevent scammers from using voices of celebrities and politicians to crack back on fraud and disinformation.

• Deepfake’s Smoking Gun - Want to be an expert in spotting deepfakes? Closely look at the eyes and it is a dead giveaway according to experts. Reflections in the eyes are string and don’t make sense in deepfakes.

• Chinese Dominate Fentanyl Laundering - Chinese money launderers are facilitating the fentanyl epidemic and helping international drug traffickers, like Mexican cartels and the Italian mafia, launder the proceeds of crime.

• Check Fraud Kill Chain - Refine Intelligence releases a free Check Fraud Ebook on how to tackle modern check fraud schemes.

CashApp Wipeout. Thousands Of Accounts Impacted In Rumored Risk Purge

Rumors of a mass purge have hit social media. Thousands of CashApp account closures are being reported on Reddit in what is being called a “Risk Sweep” to pass regulatory scrutiny.

In 2023, a bombshell report by Hindenburg Research projected that up to 40% of accounts on the platform were fake, so this could be the company’s response to address the issue.

Reddit user MBIHold called it an algorithmic purge "orchestrated by their AML/KYC team, in consultation with partners Marqeta (debit card issuance) and troubled Sutton Bank. He calls the purge a test to show regulators that they can control the fake account problem.

While CashApp has not officially announced the closures yet, many platform users reported unexpectedly having their accounts shut down.

In 2024 we predicted account purging would take place by large fintechs looking to clean their portfolios of fake or risky accounts.

Click to Read👇️

Beautiful Scammers For Hire. They Will Even Meet Victims Offline

A dark world of beautiful people who are all too eager to help scammers bilk billions from victims online is emerging.

Advertisements on social media now boast “Pure European real-life models” available for hire. Surprisingly, their services aren’t for photo shoots but something more sinister. These real-life models offer a suite of services tailor-made for deception: video calls, voice calls, identity verification, and even in-person meetings.

In the high stakes world of pig butchering and romance scams, scammers are shifting their tactics to leverage real life meetings and encounters to deal the final lethal blow to their victims.

Click to Read👇️

Scammers Pounce on CrowdStrike Chaos

The CrowdStrike bug only impacted about 8.1 million of the 2 billion computers in the world, but that didn’t stop it from sending the world into chaos.

Almost immediately, researchers began warning that attackers are reserving domain names and starting to spin up websites and other infrastructure to run “CrowdStrike Support” scams targeting the company's customers and anyone who might be impacted by the chaos.

Nate Kharrl, CEO of Spec also reported that credential stuffing against banks and fintechs spiked dramatically throughout “CrowdStrike Weekend” following the outage.

Click to Read👇️

The Taco Bell “One Sauce Pack” DoorDash Scam 🌮

Quero Taco Bell? A new scam is forcing DoorDash drivers to think outside of the bun.

Scammers submit orders for a single packet of sauce on DoorDash to pull off a bizarre new impersonation scam that could result in a hostile tacover 🌮 of their driver account.

Click to Read👇️

Fraudology - Why Won’t Facebook Take Down Scammers?

I went on Karisse Hendricks wildly popular Fraudology Podcast to talk Big Tech and perhaps rant a bit on the problem with social media turning a blind eye to fraud.

I am still sore about Facebook denying my many request to remove Fraud University, Scam University and hundreds of other fraud channels that have proliferated the platform.

Click to Listen👇️

Synapse Programs Were Nightmare Fuel For Nigerian Scammers

Synapse employees are coming forward and the picture they are painting isn’t pretty. Jason Mikula reports he talked to 20 former employees who describe their Juno program as “preferred haven for Nigerian scammers,” who used the accounts to carry out scams.

But it didn’t stop there. Sejal Patel, who was vice president of compliance at Synapse from March 2022 to November 2023 told Fintech Business Weekly that “the reality was Synapse’s sanctions screening process was home grown and the code didn’t work. Multiple BSA audits revealed the model was broken”

Mikula even found evidence of massive fraud ring links including 5,393 Mercury bank accounts that list the same address of 30 N. Gould Street in Sheridan, Wyoming, a known scam nexus used for shell corporations and cyberattacks.

Click to Read👇️

The Wolf of Airbnb - He Was Ruthless To Get To The Top Of The Game

Konrad Bircher adopted the name “Wolf of Airbnb” as a reference to the “Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort because he was hungry and ruthless enough to get on top of the financial ladder.

And now he has been sentenced to spend close to 6 years in prison for his fraud.

Prosecutors said he leased apartments in Manhattan that the city had barred from short-term rental to third parties or that couldn’t be subleased without the consent of the owner. They say he failed to pay the rent while listing the units on marketplaces, including Airbnb. He and his associates made at least $1.17 million in income from the units while withholding more than $1 million in rent between July 2019 and April 2022, according to the US.

Click to Read👇️

Revolut Scam Complaints Soar 35%, Faster Than Any Other UK Bank

Fintech giant Revolut is under scrutiny. In late 2023, fraud complaints surged 35%, outpacing other major UK banks.

The Financial Ombudsman Service reports thousands of cases in which Revolut denied reimbursement to scam victims, and one firm, CEL Solicitors, says that Revolut denies 99% of the complaints it receives.

Revolut is responding by saying that it has hired more than 4,000 fraud staff and data scientists and prevented more than £475 million of potential fraud last year.

Click to Read👇️ 

That’s a wrap for another weekly edition of FrankonFraud. I hope you have an amazing week ahead fighting fraud.

FrankonFraud