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The Dark World Of Sites That Recruit People Into Scam Slavery
Frank McKenna
July 18, 2023
The more I dig into the dark world of Pig Butchering, the more I realize that something very big and very evil is at play.
This week I went down the rabbit hole of shell companies set up specifically to recruit people into slavery and scamming. Itâs a real eye opener and quite shocking how quickly it is growing.
In addition to Pig Butchering, these stories also caught my eye;
T Mobile has an insider fraud problem.
Charlie and the Fraud Factory was in court again.
The SBA and IG Are Clashing on PPP Fraud.
Rapper goes viral with his Wire Fraud Tutorial.
Another Founder was charged with fraud.
A new dangerous AI called WormGPT emerged
A Fintech Unicorn faces a $1 Billion fraud scandal
NAB released an amazing success in Scam Interdiction
Breaches are setting record pace in 2023
Letâs get to the top stories of the week!
The Dark And Incredibly Evil World Of Scam Slave Recruiting
Trionix Multitech, âa cryptocurrency company,â is looking for female models to join them in exotic locations. They pay $5,000 a month, which doesnât even include room and board.
However, if a girl accepts a job from one of these sites, she will join the estimated 100,000 other girls the Los Angeles Times estimates are enslaved and forced to carry out scams.
This is an advertisement for a Pig Butchering Job, they all advertise 4 meals a day, plane tickets and room and board.
Gary Warner with Dark Tower wrote a stunning blog that reveals the extent of Pig Butchering Scam recruitment and how slick job postings and fake websites entrap innocent victims into slavery.
Did We Get All Our Fraud Predictions Wrong? Or Right?
Mary Ann Miller, Karisse Hendrick, and I made some bold predictions for fraud for 2023.
You can check out what we thought would happen here - Dawn Of The ShapeShifter â 10 Fraud Predictions for 2023.
I don't know if we got everything right, but some predictions have come true, and others are still developing.
T Mobileâs Insider Fraud Problem - Another Employee Arrested For Sim Swap Fraud
A T Mobile retail employee Tamber Blackmore was arrested in New Orleans for making 32 fraudulent Sim Swaps.
She was arrested after her manager found a spreadsheet logging all the sim swaps she had done from May to July. They turned over the spreadsheet and surveillance video showing her making the sim swaps using T Mobileâs proprietary in-store tablet.
T-Mobile âInnysâ are heavily advertised on Telegram and other dark web locations because they offer a far simpler method for taking over someoneâs complete identity with their phone.
NAB Program Shows That Scam Interdiction Holds Enormous Promise
In only four months, NAB has intervened in more than $270 million worth of customer payments which they believed might be scams, and they believe they stopped millions in fraud from occurring.
At least $32 million in customer money was saved by introducing a simple prompt to customers before they hit enter to send the real-time payment.
NAB looks for suspicious patterns and then pops up this screen requiring the consumer to read a checklist before continuing.
I am more than ever convinced that Scam Interdiction - automatic blocking, quarantining or pausing suspicious payments, text messages and emails is the right way to go to stop scams. Education can only go so far!
Thanks to Ken Palla for alerting me to this development.
Malicious AI âWormGPTâ Designed Specifically for BEC Fraud Attacks
A hacker has released a new Generative AI tool called âWormGPTâ and it is designed specifically for malicious activities like BEC Fraud.
The features of the platform include unlimited character support, chat memory retention, and code formatting, and WormGPT has been trained on malware-related datasets.
The blog posted by SlashNext says that this new variant greatly lowers the bar on BEC attacks because it opens to the door to much less skilled scammers to target victims.
Charlie Javice Canât Believe People Think She Committed Fraud
Many fraud fighters are surprised at the audacity of Charlie Javice.
Sheâs the recent college grad accused of allegedly conning Jamie Dimon and Chase out of $175 million by creating millions of fake accounts and then pawning her company off on them for a total loss.
She was in court this week, shaking her head as prosecutors rattled off how she committed fraud, incredulous that they could think such a thing.
Her attorney, on the other hand alluded to the fact that they might drop a bombshell - proof that senior executives at Chase knew about the accounts and that nothing illegal had happened.
Clash Of The PPP Fraud Estimate Titans
Itâs a Clash Of PPP Fraud estimates by government leaders.
Mike Ware of the OIG says PPP fraud losses were $200 billion. But the administrator of the SBA, Isabella Casillas Guzman, says that fraud in the program was only $36 billion.
They are miles apart, and Congress is demanding answers why there is such a big discrepancy in the governmentâs own estimates on their own programs.
âThe findings in these two reports are wildly different and, quite frankly, confusing, I understand there will be discrepancies in the reporting, but Iâm concerned over the degree to which the estimates varied.â
Guzman was a no-show at the hearing, and Mike Ware, who did show up, said she was mistaken and that his numbers were right.
They are both probably wrong, and the estimates should probably be much higher!
Wire Fraud Tutorial Is A Viral Success For Rapper Punchmade Dev
Wire Fraud has gone mainstream thanks to rapper Punchmade Dev. He is the latest scam rapper, a genre made famous by Teejayx6, to hit it big by instructing people how to commit fraud.
His song Wire Fraud Tutorial has over 1 million views, and he goes into great detail about best practices for committing wire fraud.
Itâs pretty trash and doesnât go into enough detail to help someone commit wire fraud, but it does show just how âcoolâ and acceptable itâs become to do fraud and scams.
Youtube caught wind of his video and removed it, so you can only watch it for a short time before it gets removed again!
Founder Fraud - He Knew All The Money Was Fake!
2023 is the year of Founder Fraud.
High profile, high-flying, high dreaming founders caught up in billion-dollar scandals.
This week, Alex Mashinsky, co-founder and CEO of Celsius Networks, was charged with 7 counts of fraud by the DOJ. His referred to his company as a lending platform that worked just like a bank - but it was all a house of cards.
He is accused of creating Celsiusâs own Digital Tokens and than manipulating the demand and price of the tokens and then raising money of the value. Sound familiar?
Breaches Are Setting BreakNeck Clip for 2023 - Year End Will Be âEye Poppingâ
The Identity Theft Resource Center is warning that Breaches are on pace to set an all-time high record this year.
For the first half of the year, over 951 publicly recorded data breaches occurred impacting over 151 million victims.
Thatâs up a whopping 114% for the year!
This puts 2023 on pace to set a record for the number of data compromises in a year, passing the all-time high of 1,862 compromises in 2021.
Insurance Fintech Unicorn Vesttoo Embroiled In Alleged Fraud Scandal
These Fintech fraud scandals continue to emerge daily.
A fraud potentially amounting to billions of dollars has allegedly been uncovered at Israeli unicorn Vesttoo, reports The Calcalist.
The company, which had just raised $80 million in October, was valued at $1 billion, but this week it was discovered that collateral presented by the company was fraudulent.
The company deals in Insurance Linked Securities (ILS) where transactions are largely backed by collateral. Any fabrication of the collateral means a lot of people can lose a lot of money.
When they became a Unicorn, many were surprised at the valuation since the prior year; the company was only valued at $22 million. They have been growing very rapidly.
The company, which is now trying to raise money at a $1.5 billion valuation, raised eyebrows in May when one of its long-time investors - SureTech, sold its minority stake in the company at a 20% discount.
Itâs Like Speed Dating But For Fraud Advice
Jim Voigt is creating an exclusive event for fraud leaders called The Fraud Leadership Summit.
The event runs from July 27th from 2:00 - 5:00 Eastern and in Jimâs own words itâs âlike speed dating, but for fraud adviceâ. Attendees get 4 CE credits and get to listen to a whole host of fraud experts in one session!
I will be there!
Thank you all for catching up on the fraud trends with me again.
I hope you have an amazing week fighting fraud. Thank you for all you do đ