Aloha FraudFighters 🌴 ,

I’m taking a vacation in beautiful Maui this week with family before school starts. What a beautiful place, and it's nice to take some time away from the daily grind.

Let’s check out the top stories this week!

• Airbnb Hopping - 404 media exposes a new scheme where hackers use stolen identities to hop from Airbnb to Airbnb to avoid capture. The hackers change their location to avoid to stay one step ahead of violent criminals who want to kill them.

• Surrogacy Scammer - An aspiring rapper from Houston stole thousands in an elaborate surrogacy scam. Couples deposited up to $50k each with her but she used the money to start her music career and launch a clothing label.

• Deteriorating - Fraud Fighter Tigran Gambaryan’s health continues to deteriorate in Nigerian prison. His wife say’s he now requires two different urgent surgeries.

• Scamnetic - ScamTech is the real deal. Industry vet Al Pascual has launched the start-up to provide real-time scam detection for consumers and businesses. You’ve heard of Fintech, right? Well, ScamTech, in my mind, is the next big thing.

• Telegram Fraud Ring—Houston area police have unearthed a huge fraud ring involving over 40 people. The fraudsters obtained bank information from the dark web and made fraudulent wire transfers.

• PimEyes Maybe - Dumb post office mail robbers dropped their iPhones, and investigators used facial recognition on one of the photos on it to arrest them. Have you ever tried PimEyes? It’s scary good.

• Foiling a Deepfake - An employee of Tri-Cities Credit Union foiled a deepfake kidnapping ransom scam when a customer came in claiming she needed to send money to some men who played the voice of her daughter to convince her she was really kidnapped.

• Massive Loss - LoanDepot reported losing over $27 million to ransomware hackers in January.

Cheap Gifts From Scammers Are A Pack Of Lies

To a scammer, sending a gift is worth a thousand WhatsApp Text messages. To a victim, receiving that gift might just be what they needed to push them over the edge.

And now, one investigator, Troy Gochenour of the Global Anti Scam Organization, has stumbled upon a new disturbing scam service emerging online to do just that.

Find out what all the Pig Butchering Scam bosses are doing now to up their scams.

Click to Read 👇️ 

Fraud Shapeshifters In The Age Of AI - Buckle Up 🚀 

Deepfakes, voice clones, and digital doppelgangers. If you think the threat of AI is just a bunch of non-realistic hype. I have a warning for you. It is real. It is happening now. And we are only just getting started.

Buckle up, it’s going to be an interesting journey

Click To See The Blog and Video 👇️ 

Indistinguishable - “AI Turns Old Men Into Beautiful Women”

A Twitter post by @unikoukokun is shocking people. “Anyone worried about being unable to show their face should learn about AI Technology,” he says. “AI Turns old men into beautiful women. The world of science fiction has turned into reality”

Click to Watch 👇️ 

Fraud CEO Warns Industry - His Wife Fell For A Devastating Scam

Thanks to Karisse Hendrick for the heads up on this one.

Rhon Daguro, the CEO of AuthID is sharing an absolutely devastating scam that victimized his wife and the scammers drained $50,000 from their account. And let me tell you, I think any of us might fall for it.

It started as a simple message you might get from the bank, 👉️ ““Are you sure you want to send a wire transfer of $5,000 to Jack Rowen? Please text Yes or No”

The next thing you know, you are in the throes of a very convincing impersonation wire scam. Read how the scam operated and his warning to the world.

Click To Read 👇️ 

A Chinese “Smishing Triad” Defrauded His Wife, So He Destroyed Them

Talk about a chivalry. When a Chinese based hacking group called “The Smishing Triad” defrauded his wife after she clicked on one of those USPS text messages, he decided to do something about it.

Detailed in Wire Magazine, Grant Smith, a security researcher decided to investigate who defrauded his wife, and stumbled upon the Chinese hacking group who is responsible for sending over 100,000 of those USPS messages a day.

He hacked into their servers and found over 480,000 credit cards, over 1000 fraudulent domains and 1.2 million pieces of customer information.

Thousands of people across the world owe a debt of gratitude for this guys work!

Click to Read 👇️ 

North Korean Laptop Farms In Nashville?

It’s not the first place you’d think of if you imagined hundreds of North Korean remote workers on their computers, but that’s exactly what happened. Matthew Knoot’s home in Nashville served as a laptop farm where workers from China and North Korea could dial into and defraud US companies.

Worst of all? All the money they made from the US companies went to North Korean Nukes!

Click to Read 👇️ 

Much-Hated Tow Truck Company Raided And Charged With Fraud

People in San Francisco are cheering FBI agents who have charged the much-maligned Tow Truck Company - Speciality Towing - with fraud and money laundering.

The company became the most hated tow truck company in the city when this video went viral of one of the drivers hooking up a car with a person inside in the middle of the street.

Click to Read 👇️ 

Fraudster Made Cashier Fear For Her Life, Then Home Depot Fired Her

70-year-old Carleen Acevedo feared for her life that day when a fraudster leaned over the counter and said, “Don’t call them”. She tried calling her supervisor when she became suspicious of a man using a card to buy $5,000 supplies from Home Depot.

Even though she tried to do the right thing and had won “ Home Depot Cashier Of The Year”, the company still fired her for failing to stop the fraud. Or so she alleges.

Now she is fighting mad and fighting back.

Click to Read 👇️ 

Fraud Executive From Santander Deepfaked

Chris Ainsley, head of fraud for banking giant Santander, got deepfaked.

Well, he knew it all along. In fact, he did it as part of an educational campaign to warn customers about how good these deepfakes are in helping impersonation scammers.

Check it out! I could have been fooled.

Click to watch 👇️ 

Gen AI: 5 Ways It Is Being Used For Payments Fraud

Can Generative AI break the payment fraud spiral? A report from Pymnts reports on how big companies are using Gen AI to tackle the problem.

Click to Read 👇️ 

That’s a wrap for another weekly edition of FrankonFraud. I hope you have an amazing week ahead fighting fraud.

FrankonFraud