Hey Fraud Fighters 👋 

I hope you had an amazing Father’s Day Weekend. My son gave me the best present ever: a list of reasons why he thinks I am the best dad.

Check it out.

I just loved the sweet note.

Now, let’s get to the stop fraud stories of the week!

• Coming Home (maybe) - Fraud Fighter Tigran Gambaryan had some charges dropped by the Nigerian Government, a sign that he might soon be released.

• $1 Million - That’s the price tag hackers are putting up for a Truist employee database they hacked into that contains information on employee accounts, including names, balances, and IVR information.

• 200,000 Mules—The Bank of Thailand has closed down an astounding 200,000 money mule accounts in 12 months, which were used to transfer scam funds and other crimes.

• Slapped - Evolve Bank was hit with a pretty significant Cease and Desist Order for lax money laundering, fraud and risk controls. They can’t engage in any more partnerships or new products until they make pretty big fixes.

• Mobsters Fraud Racket - MS13 and Russian mobsters are pulling off elaborate insurance frauds in New York using recent migrants who are often forced to get spinal surgeries after fake falls. One insurer claims they have taken 650 fraudulent claims in the last 4 years.

• Serial Fraudtrepreneurs - Two serial fraud entrepreneurs were arrested again for engaging in over 4 million separate sales of drugs, PII, and stolen account information for an online marketplace they set up called “Empire Market.” They netted close to half a billion in profits.

• Deepfake Gang - An “AI Gang” is successfully bypassing selfie facial recognition and breaking into people’s crypto accounts. One crypto user lost over $11 million.

• Sleepy Pickle - a stealthy and novel attack technique has emerged that inserts malicious code into AI models that can jailbreak AI into spitting out disinformation, stealing user data, phishing users, and other harmful output.

• AI Steve - A UK politician is letting his AI Co-pilot call all the shots, saying constituents will prefer AI because it is “always on and available for them to talk to. 🙃 

• Digital Doppelgangers - Your digital twin clone may soon arrive for Zoom Calls, according to their CEO, who wants to make it a reality. Can you imagine how badly fraudsters will want to hack into your Zoom now?

Millions of Frankenstein Identities Discovered In The UK

A Lexis Nexis study, on a comprehensive analysis of more than 72 million consumer profiles, has uncovered a disturbing trend that experts have termed “Frankenstein cloning.”

The research revealed that 2.8 million profiles exhibited clear indications of this fraudulent technique, in which criminals meticulously combine authentic personal information with fabricated details to construct novel synthetic identities.

Doing the math means close to 4% of identities in the UK public profiles are synthetic.

Click Here Or Image Below To Read

Scammers Exploit Call Center AI To Scale Up Their Efficiency

404Media received a treasure trove of scam center documents and discovered that a scam call center has been using Voiso, an AI-powered enterprise call center tool, to streamline its fraudulent operations.

The software called Vosio Voiso offers capabilities like automatically detecting voicemail, voice recognition, and an “AI Dialer” to maximize agent efficiency and scam compounds appear to be using that freely available software to scale up their own operations.

Click Here Or Image Below To Read

“Shot In The Face For His Arrow Key” - SaySide Gang’s Check Fraud Racket

The spoils of check fraud are linked to some horrific violence on the street, and none were more violent or destructive than Philly’s notorious Sayslide Gang.

Twenty-six members of the gang were indicted for depositing $1.2 million worth of stolen, altered, and counterfeit checks into dozens of bank accounts, successfully withdrawing over $200,000 before the fraud was detected.

There were crimes aplenty, but in one incident, a man was shot in the face and robbed of his wallet and an arrow key used to access postal mailboxes to siphon for stolen checks.

Click Here Or Image Below To Read

The Downfall of Joonko: A Brazen AI Washing Scheme That Stole Millions

The AI bubble is in full swing, and fraud is everywhere. The SEC continues to crack down on "AI washing" as venture investment in AI companies soar.

They charged Ilit Raz, founder of AI-powered hiring startup Joonko, with defrauding investors of $21 million. Raz allegedly made false claims about Joonko's AI capabilities, customer base, and revenue. He is accused of inflating his customer count to 100 when he only had 30, and he allegedly forged bank statements and customer contracts to pull in investor money.

Click Here Or Image Below To Read

DoubleCrossed - She Had To Help Scammer Meet Quota To Escape

Now this is an interesting twist. A woman in China fell in love with a scammer and lost $14,000 to a Pig Butcherer working from a scam compound in Myanmar.

But that wasn’t the end of the scam. He told her he only did it to meet his daily quota she agreed to help him escape so they could be together in China. Blinded by love, she obediently followed the scammers instructions to her, using her own bank account to receive and launder the money that was received from other victims.

Bunc Bank Under Fire For High Levels of Scams and Fraud

It’s not just Fintechs in the US that are under fire for lax fraud controls; Fintechs worldwide are getting slammed.

Online Dutch Neo Bank Bunq claims to be the Bank of the Free, but customers and employees have been ranting about the bank's fraud levels in the past month. First, there was this article How online bank bunq leaves its scammed customers out in the cold. (behind the firewall), that claimed the bank was ignoring fraud to grow at all costs.

And now employees are ranting on social media. How sustainable are these fast-growing Fintechs that ignore fraud?

Faking Work - Wells Fargo Employees Used Mouse Jigglers. Got Fired.

Banks are reporting new types of internal fraud with remote workers. From hiring North Korean IT Workers to remote employees holding multiple full-time jobs, wage theft, and fraud have never been higher.

Wells Fargo & Co. fired over a dozen employees last month after investigating claims that they were faking work.

The staffers, all in the firm’s wealth- and investment-management unit, were fired after investigations showed they used mouse jigglers to simulate they were working.

Click here or image below to read

Who Tried To Steal Graceland ? A Trail Of Clues Leads To Grandma In Missouri

An NBC News investigation traces the failed Graceland foreclosure scam to Lisa Holden, a grandmother in Branson, Missouri, with a long history of fraud.

The evidence suggests Lisa created the fictitious company and personas to carry out the scheme, but when confronted she denies the whole thing.

This is a great investigative read!

Click Here Or Image Below To Read

Elderly Walker Made Only Pennies On The Dollar For Draining Victim’s Accounts

Dramatic arrest footage shows a 61-year-old “Walker” arrested using a stolen identity in a branch. She met the fraud gang through a mutual friend. They took a picture of her, made many fraudulent identity cards, and then shuttled her from bank to bank so she could withdraw funds.

Sadly, she needed $500 to make her car payment.

Why Won’t Facebook Take Down This Massive Yahoo Boy Scam Group?

It’s one of the largest Yahoo Boy recruiting and scam groups on Facebook. It’s called FREE BOMBING AND BILLING FORMAT 🤑 🤑, has over 194,000 members, and is dedicated to perpetrating romance scams against victims worldwide.

Yet, after other fraud fighters and I repeatedly requested that Facebook remove the group for fraud, we received this message 👇️ 

Why does Facebook let scammers run amok on the platform and refuse to take down these obvious scammers?

The answer to that question is obvious—they have no financial interest or penalty for doing so.

That has got to change if we want to tackle scams.

So that’s a wrap for this week. I hope you have an amazing week and Happy Fraud Hunting.

FrankonFraud