Hi Scam Stoppers 🥷 

Happy post Labor Day Tuesday! It's always a bit hard to get back in the grind, but here we are.

Let’s get to the top stories this week!

Fraud News Roundup 🗞️ 

• New Banking FinCEN Alert - The Treasury Department is urging banks to monitor for Chinese nationals, including students, retirees, and housewives with unexplained wealth, since they might be working with the Cartel to launder money. Read More

• Santander Bank Launches “Blur Tech” - Santander launched a new feature in their banking app that detects when scammers are using screen sharing to steal from victims, and it blurs the screen. Read More

• Hackers Want Two Google Employees Fired - Hackers are threatening to release a trove of Google data from the Salesforce breach unless the company fires two employees. Read More

• Autistic 4-Year-Old - A four-year-old girl with Autism was denied benefits because someone used her SSN for a synthetic identity. Who says synthetic identity is a victimless crime? Read More

• Credit Bureau Hack Larger Than First Thought? - A report highlights that the TU Salesforce breach may actually impact 13 million people, with 4.4 million of those people in the US. Read More

• “Weeping Virgin Mary” Shock - An Italian town is shocked to learn the true reason for the iconic “weeping Virgin Mary” that brings flocks of tourists to their town. Read More

• Babe Ruth Is A Fraudster - It’s not what you think. A man used the names of hundreds of dead or retired ballplayers to make phony class action settlement claims. Ironically, his name is actually Babe Ruth. Read More

• Scooter Scam Scandal - Lightning Scooters rode the post pandemic scooter wave and it all came tumbling down, exposed as a massive scam. Read More

• Check Fraud 31X Riskier Than Zelle - Check fraud risk is 31 times higher than payment fraud. Let’s kill the use of checks, please. Read More

• Recruited to Spy For China On Instagram - Stanford girls are being recruited to spy for China on Instagram in a sophisticated catfish scheme. Read More

• The “Platinum Age Of Fraud” - One expert says we have moved past the Golden Age of fraud to the Platinum Age and predicts we are set for a bust-cycle driven by AI. I think he’s right! Read More

• The Real NFL Tinder Swindler - Buster Skrine allegedly defrauded victims in the US and Canada with romance and then sob stories, bilking them of over $300,000. Read More

• YouTube Fraud Heroes - YouTube scambaiters Pierogi and Trilogy Media helped break up a $65 million fraud ring. The DOJ stated that they were instrumental in bringing the fraud ring to justice. Read More

• Scammers Weaponize Fake Reviews - Scammers from Pakistan are pummeling small businesses with horrible fake Google reviews to hurt their ratings and then extorting them for money to remove them. Read More 

• South Africa Fraud Spike - Digital Banking fraud has nearly doubled there, as fraudsters target banking apps. Read More

• Companies Liable For Employee Fraud - A new law in the UK holds companies liable for fraud committed by their employees, even if they did not know. Read More

Massive PayPal Fraud Glitch Results In Billions Of Frozen Transactions

Last weekend, PayPal’s fraud detection system in Europe malfunctioned, allowing thousands of fraudulent debit transactions to be processed without fraud checks before being posted to bank accounts.

In Germany, where PayPal accounts for nearly 30% of all merchant transactions, it was a disaster, and banks in the country froze billions of dollars in debit cards, mistakenly believing that PayPal had been hacked.

New “ATM Cash Trapping” Scheme Is A New Twist For Banks

An arrest in Texas is drawing attention to a new scam spreading across the country, involving “ATM cash traps”. Scammers are inserting metal devices on top of the cash slits, where the cash is dispersed, effectively trapping the cash.

Like this guy is doing 👇️ 

The scammer lurks nearby and when the victim leaves, they take the cash out of the cash trap.

The Fraud Fighter That Became The Fraudster

This dude sucks.

Scott Kelley ran the Mail Fraud Unit in Massachusetts for seven years and was responsible for intercepting cash-filled letters that victims sent to scammers, allowing the money to be returned to them.

Instead, he was pocketing the money, and when victims asked where the money was, he would tell them, “It’s your fault for putting cash in the mail.”

Fannie Can’t Get A Handle On Rampant Occupancy Fraud

Fannie Mae has recently launched an “occupancy fraud frenzy” by reviewing old loans and referring them for criminal investigations.

But the fraud has become remarkably common. In fact a recent study found that 33% of investors commit occupancy fraud by claiming they will live in the property to get better rates and lower down payments.

The problem? Those loans default at a rate 75% higher than other investment properties. So why can’t Fannie get a handle on rampant occupancy fraud?

Anthropic Threat Team Responds To The Super-AI Fraud Bot

A few months ago, I published my findings on Super-AI, a Telegram bot used by scammers to create deepfakes of victims and engage with them on WhatsApp.

Researchers from Anthropic investigated the AI Bot and found that AI is enabling “non-native speakers to craft persuasive, emotionally intelligent messages that bypass typical linguistic red flags.”

This bot represents a troubling development in the use of AI by romance scammers.

Bank Gave Fraud Analysts Twenty AI Agents Each - Productivity Soared 2000%

McKinsey just published an interesting study on how AI Agents are being used by banks to boost the productivity of their fraud and compliance analysts by 200 to 2,000%.

A global bank tested AI agents for KYC reviews with 50 analysts over four weeks. Each fraud analyst supervised approximately 20 AI agents, which were responsible for taking on 300 subtasks to verify an identity.

FBI Shutters Fake ID Site VerifTools, Then They Quickly Return

Perhaps the most notorious Fake ID site, VerifTools, was shuttered last week by the FBI. It was linked to at least $6.4 million in suspected fraud and has been used to create fake identity cards capable of bypassing KYC policies at banks.

Within a day, the site had returned to this location - https://veriftools.com/en/ and was operational again.

TikToker Posed As FBI Agent In Chase Bank Fraud Impersonation Scheme

22-year-old Jessica Bahu (an avid TikToker) certainly doesn’t fit the profile of an FBI agent, but according to police in Texas, she allegedly helped steal the life savings of an elderly couple with her impersonation scam.

So what did she do with the money? She went to Florida to spend two weeks on a Yacht, obviously.

Police Officer Tricked Into Working At Pig Butchering Scam Compound

This is a head scratcher. 🤔 

A policeman from Hong Kong was somehow tricked into going to Cambodia to work in a scam compound!

He managed to escape and went to a local police station in Phnom Penh, where he was later rescued. But seriously, how does this happen?

SSA Whistleblower Quits, Then His Resignation Email Disappeared

The Chief Data Officer of SSA filed a whistleblower complaint last week, then resigned because of retaliation, and 30 minutes later, his resignation email was deleted from everyone’s computer.

He says that the Social Security numbers and PII of 300 million Americans are being stored on insecure cloud servers, representing a significant risk.

She Begs Scam Boss To Return Her Brother

How sad is this? She has been fighting for her brother for months!

Thank you for reading FrankonFraud, and thank you to all the readers who send me story tips and trends each week.

FrankonFraud