Hello FraudFighting Friends 👋 

I must apologize for a few broken article links from last week’s newsletter. There was a bit of a snafu where some of the files were deleted.

Now, let’s get to the top stories this week!

Fraud News Roundup 🗞️ 

• Wells Fargo Employee Drained Account - A Wells Fargo employee used an elderly customer’s account to make her car payments, electricity bills, and stole over $26,000. Read More

• Sextortion Linked To Pig Butchering Compounds - The scams out of Southeast Asia are diverse, and over 500 sextortion cases have been linked to the region now. Read More

• Lawmakers Slam SSA “Fraud Indicators” - Lawmakers sent a blistering letter to the SSA for applying special “Fraud Indicators” to immigrants’ social security numbers, which essentially block them from getting loans and credit. Read More

• Disgruntled Employees “Kill Switch” - An employee of an energy company created a kill switch to lock the entire company out of the network if he were ever fired. He’ll be in the joint for 4 years for his crime. Read More

• The Cigarette Mistake - A fraudster who had been on the run for five years for stealing $13 million nonchalantly tossed a cigarette butt on the street, and it led to his downfall. Read More

• A Guy Named Daniel is selling modified Flipper Zero’s for between $600 and $1000 to help people steal 200 to 250 different car makes and models. Read More

• “Kafkaesque” Cancellation Practices- This isn’t fraud, but it does border on a scam for how hard LA Fitness makes it to cancel a membership. It took me 6 months to cancel mine. Now they’re getting sued. Read More

• 9,200 Attacks - The South Korean military claims that they have had a spike of thousands of hacking attacks from North Korea this year. Read More

• She Sold Her Boyfriend for $13,900 - A Chinese teen sold her boyfriend to a Myanmar scam compound where he was beaten so bad he lost his hearing. Read More

• AI-CEO Fraud - Over $200 million in fraud has been reported this year due to deepfake CEO fraud, making it one of the fastest-rising new scams, according to cyber experts. Read More

• The single deadly email - One single phishing email to the property management company, Milford, has resulted in $19 million in fraud and counting. Read More

• RapperBot - An Oregon man was behind over 370,000 BotNet attacks, leveraging a network of 65,000 compromised devices delivering over 2 Terabits per second against 18,000 victims - the most powerful botnet to ever exist. Read More

• Those Nigerian Princes Are Actually Chinese - Nigeria has enough scammers of their own. So, they reportedly deported 1,200 Chinese scammers who are there collaborating with Nigerians and bringing Pig Butchering into the country. Read More

• Victim Scammed For Whopping $91 Million - A hacker posing as a crypto-wallet support engineer social engineered a victim and stole $91 million in Bitcoin from them. Read More

• Mayor Identity Fraud - The former mayor of Stockton, California, is facing 30 years in prison for loan fraud after using a stolen identity to apply for a PPP loan. Read More

• Fraudulent Dentist - A woman was charged with fraud after super-gluing bad veneers on people’s teeth in Florida. She charged rock-bottom prices to lure victims in. Read More

Target Loan Fraud Glitch - Up To 700 Employees Fired In Single Warehouse

Target has reportedly fired hundreds of employees at a distribution center in Chicago after an internal investigation revealed that workers had exploited a glitch in the company’s healthcare loan program.

The fraud apparently cost Target about $1.3 million, and between 400 and 700 employees were fired at a single distribution center in Chicago.

Bad Manager At Cathay Bank Gets Caught Hoodwinking Loan Customers

Tony Chen was the branch manager at two Cathay Bank locations in Los Angeles. He sneakily helped customers apply for loans, but when the loans were actually funded, he told the customers their loans had been declined.

Instead, he transferred the money into checking accounts in their names that he controlled and then absconded with the money.

JP Morgan Exec - Nobody Is Immune To AI Scams. They “Hijack Your Brain”

Darius Kingsley, Head of Consumer Business Practices at Chase, says AI scams can “hit anyone”, which is why they are going on a major educational campaign to make consumers aware - over 1,000 workshops a year at branches all over the country.

The worst scams of the moment? Bank impersonation, he says, "People's brains are being hijacked a little bit because scammers know that customers are going to react to something from their bank."

Eight Bank Employees Faced OCC Enforcement Actions For Insider Fraud This Month

The OCC released its August Enforcement Actions report, which revealed a heavy month of internal fraud at banks.

8 bank employees from PNC, Chase, First National Bank of Killen, Santander, and TD Bank were subjects of enforcement for various internal fraud schemes and embezzlement.

Palantir and Fannie Mae Are Driving The Mortgage Fraud Crackdown

AI from Palantir is combing through billions of data points to root out fraud, and politicians are the first targets.

“We partnered with Palantir at Fannie Mae,” Pulte said on Bloomberg Television. “We said, look, everybody, beware: We are looking for mortgage fraud. We brought in Palantir. We have made tremendous efforts globally, across the population, across the data set, across the data set of loans from Fannie Mae.”

Chase Sued By Couple For Millions In Suspicious Fraud Transfers

A retired couple had $19 million drained from their savings by a financial advisor. They say that Chase enabled the fraud by allowing hundreds of suspicious transactions and forged signatures.

Scammer Poses As Owner And Convinces Employees To Break Open ATM Machine

In today’s weird fraud news, police raced to a gas station after reports of an ATM break-in.

When they arrived, two employees said they had been instructed by a scammer posing as the business owner to remove cash from the safe, registers, and ATM for an ‘emergency pickup.

Sentilink Drops Fascinating Findings In Latest Fraud Report

Here are some amazing and interesting findings from Sentlink’s latest fraud reports.

If you want to download a nice quantitative report on identity fraud, this report has it all.

Whistleblower Claims State Farm Systematic Fraud, Now DOJ and State Investigating

After State Farm lowballed him following a fender-bender, Chris Arrington documented everything and claims that he has discovered a systematic insurance fraud scheme and method that insurance companies follow to keep claim losses low.

He decided to take on State Farm, and now there is a state-wide fraud investigation, and the DOJ is getting involved.

AI Cloned Websites Are Exploding. Over 100,000 Fake Domains Proliferate

When Joanne Fabrics filed for Bankruptcy in January of this year, cybercriminals immediately launched dozens of AI-cloned sites that looked exactly like the real site to steal customer credit cards and PII.

Cybersecurity firm Netcraft says AI business cloning is exploding and has identified 100,000 fake domains created with AI cloning, impersonating 194 big brands. These sites can be spun up in minutes.

Scams Are So Bad That Banks In Thailand Limit Online Transfers To $1,500

Banks are running so rampant in Thailand that the government is forcing banks to drastically cut their daily transfer limits to just $1,500 a day.

They are also working on initiatives now to freeze funds so victims can get their money back.

That’s all I have this week, folks.

Thanks for reading