Greetings, cool cats of anti-fraud 😺 ,

Have you noticed how many Telegram professional refund fraud groups are getting caught up and indicated lately? Rekk Refunds, Noir Luxury Refunds, and Artemis Refunds have all toppled. It’s all thanks to fraud fighters and the FBI, who have launched “Operation Chargeback” 👮 to target the criminals.

Let’s shout out to Brett Johnson, Karisse Hendrik, and Donna Gajic, who have been blowing the whistle on the trend since 2016 🙌 . It’s nice to see some of these fraudsters facing justice. It’s only fitting that many of these fraud fighters are at MRC this week in Vegas. Give them a high five as you pass them by in the hallway.

If you need a primer on the pro refunder fraud scam, check my article on it here 👉️ Fraud Hitman for Hire

• Bank Will Block Scam Payments -Westpac is taking scam interdiction to the next level with SaferPay. It will alert customers to potential scams through a series of questions. If customer responses suggest the payment is highly likely to be a scam, Westpac will block the payment.

• New Scam Wave - The FTC is seeing a wave of impersonation scams using real FTC employee's names to demand Bitcoin from victims.

• TransUnion’s Fraud Finding - In its newly released 2024 Omni Channel Fraud Report, TransUnion says 1 in 7 accounts opened online are fraud.

• AI-fueled Phony Funerals - Scammers are exploiting the dead by using AI to generate fake obituaries that rank highly in search results. Unsuspecting mourners are bombarded with adware, unwanted programs, and subscription scams.

• Crypto Crook Cleans Billions—Money launderer Wen Jian was very good at her job laundering money. In a massive scheme, she laundered over $3 billion in Bitcoin for Chinese investment fraudsters.

• Deepfake Nightmare Ensnares Celebs - A UK investigation exposes a disturbing trend: over 4,000 celebrities have been victimized by deepfake porn, drawing 100 million views in just three months.

• Strangest Housing Fraud Story Ever - A man who checked into the New Yorker hotel for a night paid $200 and somehow took over ownership of the 1.2 million square foot building.

• Hot New AI Washing Scam - Companies are slapping AI on everything these days, catching the SEC’s attention. They charged two firms with deceptive claims about how they use AI, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

• Candy Crush Crackpot - A payroll clerk of a mushroom farm company stole $181,000 from her employer and used it play Candy Crush day and night. I guess her boss wasn’t a fun-guy. 😆 

• $6.1 Million iPhone Fraud - A family-run counterfeiting ring swapped over $6.1 million worth of fake iPhones from China for real ones; they would get the counterfeit phones from China, break them, and then send them to Apple for a replacement.

The BillPay Savior Scam That’s Running Amok on Facebook

The Facebook group boasts over 35,000 members, making it one of the most popular groups on the platform. It’s a group of “Good Samaritans” who claim to want to help needy people pay their bills.

But it is anything but that, and now causing a new wave of first-party fraud and money muling that banks, finance companies, and utilities can’t get under control.

Click to read

FBI’s “Operation Chargeback” Is Bringing Down Professional Refunding Operations

The FBI’s sweeping “Operation Chargeback” has Professional Refunders in its scope, going after the organized criminals that run those operations to steal billions from retailers worldwide.

What is the single most surprising thing about these criminal groups? Hardened criminals do not run them, but college-age kids (some of whom run the refunding operations from their dorm rooms). I got my hands on the Artemis Indictment if you want to read how these operations were run globally.

I also covered another one of the refunding groups and how they did it. Noirs Luxury Refunds, ran the scheme that the FBI eventually toppled, working hand in hand with fraud fighters at major retailers.

Click to read

Repeating Digits - The Lazy Man’s Synthetic Identity

Fat fingers or fraud fingers? I came across an interesting phenomenon that had me asking just that question.

Thousands of people have created identities using invalid social security numbers and repeating keyboard combinations. You know, enter 123123…, 234234… or 987987… for social security numbers when they apply for a credit card or loan. The most interesting thing is that their techniques seem to work with these lazy social security numbers.

In a recent analysis, I found a surprising number of people using these lazy SSNs in public records:

• 456456*** - 1,000 people using that SSN simultaneously

• 654654*** - 500 people using that SSN simultaneously

• 321321*** - 600 people using that SSN simultaneously

• 123123*** - 117 people using that SSN simultaneously

Do you have these “lazy synthetics” in your portfolio? It’s worth checking since it's a no-brainer to kick them out.

Telegram Fraudsters Love “Verif Tools” For Fake Docs And Bypassing KYC

You’ve heard about OnlyFakes, but do you know there is another site that fraudsters love to create fake docs on the fly?

It’s called Verif Tools, and surprisingly, just like OnlyFakes, it is available on the open internet. Not surprisingly, they also have a channel on Telegram too where they tout all sorts of hacking and other suspicious activity.

So, how easy and good is the service? For $1.99, I created this SSN card and got an image download in about 60 seconds. The image even comes laid down on a surface, exactly the way that people would normally take a picture of their identification when supplying documents to get a loan.

And my Texas Driver's License. This took 60 seconds for me to create and download. It's not my picture, obviously 📷️; I used an AI-generated one.

Did This Student Aid Startup Founder Exaggerate Her Company’s Success?

Activist-turned-entrepreneur Amira Yahyaoui's student aid startup, Mos, faces scrutiny as her bold claim of over 400,000 student aid accounts unravels, revealing that the company only has 30,000.

After Mos expanded into online banking in September 2021, less than 10 percent of Mos's roughly 153,000 bank users had put their money into their accounts. 95% of their bank accounts had less than $5.

This is reminiscent of Charlie Javice’s Student Aid company Frank, isn’t it?

Click to read

iCloud Hijacks - OTP Blitz Attack, Victim Suspects People Data Labs data was used

Originally reported by Brian Krebs, attackers have found a way to hijack iCloud accounts.

Attackers bombard the victim's device with push OTP requests, hoping that the user will eventually click "yes" either by accident or out of frustration. Parth2020 details how the scammers used personal information gathered from People Data Labs to pose as Apple representatives, tricking him into verifying a one-time code that ultimately would allow them to commander his iCloud account.

Cyber Gangs Engaging In Freight Fraud At Alarming Rate

Rampant double-brokering schemes are hitting the trucking industry. Fraudsters are impersonating carriers, stealing loads, and holding cargo hostage, leaving a trail of financial devastation in their wake.

With losses soaring to $500 million last year, the industry is scrambling to combat these sophisticated crime rings. Follow the harrowing tale of one CEO's battle against the hijackers who threatened to destroy his business in a Yogurt heist; the Wall Street Journal covers this new and growing fraud.

Click to read.

Did You Know ChatGPT Can Detect Deepfakes?

Research scientists have discovered that ChatGPT can be directed to detect deepfakes with pretty good accuracy. Perhaps best of all, the AI can tell you exactly why it thinks it is a deepfake.

It works like this 👇️ 

This could be a very good investigative tool for fraud analysts because it describes why something might be fraudulent!

That’s all I have this week for you. So whether you are the MRC with the rest of the fraud fighters or grinding away in the office, keep the positive fraud-fighting spirit. 💪 

Keep learning, keep innovating, and keep supporting one another. Wishing you all a fantastic and fraud-free week ahead! Until next time, stay vigilant and stay connected.

FrankonFraud