Hello Fraud Fighters,

Scams. Here is a statistic for you. 50% of the worlds population experiences a scam attempt every single week. That means 4 billion people are getting scammed 52 times a year. Do you realize how much wealth is being transferred to scammers right now?

Let’s check out the top stories this week.

This Week’s Top Fraud Highlights 

• Fashion Statement - Convicted fraudster Anna Delvey walks the runway with her ankle monitor on her leg. Another sign of the very weird times we live in. See It.

• Card Fraudster Killed Reporter - A woman accused of killing a Telemundo reporter in New Orleans to cover the Super Bowl was arrested. She has a history of drugging man and credit card fraud. Read More

• AI Deepfake Betrayal - A woman’s best friend harassed her with a campaign of deepfake nudes and porn. This new crime is a sign of the times. Read More

• Scam City - An entirely new city of high-rises built to scam foreigners? This is the story of Shwe Kokko, where everyone is a scammer. Read More

• Ground Floor - Fintech Plaid is planning on doing an IPO and giving people a chance to buy shares early. The company is now valued at $85 Billion! Read More

• Deepfake Applicant - Watch this surreal video of an applicant using AI to Deepfake the founder of a company during an interview for a job. Many suspect it was a Korean IT Worker trying to get a job. Read More

• Frank Borg - A $2 million romance scam spirals into tragedy as an Illinois widow falls victim to "Frank," leading to him draining her accounts and then involving her in a complex money-laundering operation. Read More

• Canadian Auto Fraud - Auto fraud in Canada has soared 54%, and experts now say the problem is over $1 billion annually for Canadian lenders. Read More

• New Credit Card Scam - A new bank impersonation scam where victims are told to put their credit cards in the outgoing mailbox so bank investigators can ensure the Chip isn’t compromised. Read More 

• Charlie - Charlie Javice’s long awaited startup fraud trial starts this week. I think the case against her is very strong, after all, her fraud and deception was all captured in an extensive email trail. Read More.

• Got A Glitch? - 240,000 US Bank customers debit cards were deactivated yesterday due to an errant glitch. This according to a customer post on Reddit. Read More

How A Hyundai Dealership Lost Millions Due To A Very Bad Employee Fraud

A Hyundai Dealership was shocked when they found 239 cars in a storage lot that used to carry only 10 cars. They soon discovered that their Director of Used Cars was operating a kickback scheme to buy cars online for inflated prices from people he worked with and then split the proceeds.

It took the dealership months to sell the cars, eventually resulting in $2 million in losses.

Click To Read

Pig Butchering Operations Move To Hotels In India As Scam Virus Spreads Globally

From luxury hotel rooms in Pune to sophisticated courier networks, Cambodia-based cyber syndicates orchestrate elaborate pig butchering operations across India.

These shadow networks employ everyone from small-time snack vendors to aspiring Bollywood models and show how Pig Butchering operations are spreading like a virus to countries worldwide.

Click To Read

Coinbase Suffers Massive User Losses In New Crypto Scam Epidemic

The Crypto resurgence is fueling a new scam epidemic, and security researchers say Coinbase users are taking the brunt of it.

Scammers have been exploiting Coinbase users by faking security alerts. Victims receive calls from spoofed numbers, and scammers, equipped with personal data likely sourced from data breaches, warn them of “unauthorized attempts” to log in to their accounts.

Click to Read

Rule HellScape - Shopify Shuts Down Fraud Filters Solution Merchants Scramble

Shopify has over 2 million merchants, and some are scrambling after the company decided to shut down its Fraud Filter system, forcing them to upgrade to a new system called Shopify Flow.

One merchant said they have 20,000 fraud rules and have “no idea” what to do with them. Another claimed to have 1,942 rules, but they could only migrate three. 

Click to Read

They Cut The Power To Scam Centers, But Scammers Have The Last Laugh

The Thai government thought they had the perfect cure to shut down the scam centers in Myanmar; they cut off all the power.

But it doesn’t appear to be working. A bustling smuggling operation is bringing gas and fuel to power generators, and in some cases, the scammers just went to Laos to bring the power in.

I perused Telegram, took some pictures, and posted what I found. It seems that no matter what you do, you can’t stop these scam ops.

Click to Read

GeoSpy AI Can PinPoint The Exact Location Of A Person With A Single Indoor Photo

A demo of a powerful AI tool that detects a person’s location by analyzing their background is creating quite a stir. But fraud investigators would also love to have this tool.

GeoSpy AI is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to guess where a photo was taken by analyzing the image’s details. Instead of relying on hidden data like GPS tags, it studies features such as building styles, types of plants, soil textures, and even the spacing between objects to narrow down a location

Click to Watch

Krebs: Doge Teen Linked To Cybercriminal Communities

Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old member of the DOGE team, is raising security concerns due to his association with cybercriminal communities.

Coristine, who operates under various online aliases including "Rivage" and "Big Balls," has a troubling history: he was fired from an anti-DDoS company for allegedly leaking internal documents, solicited DDoS-for-hire services, and maintained connections to "The Com" - a network of cybercrime-focused Discord and Telegram channels

Click to Read

Romance Scammers Using New DeepFake AI That Brings Single Image Photo To Life

Based on examples I found online, romance scammers are now using new single image deepfake AI tools. They upload a single photo and using a prompt can turn the image into a video that they use against their victims.

Click to Watch

He Went To Jail For Stealing Someone’s Identity. It Was His All Along

The New York Times covers the tragic story of William Woods, a homeless man who was jailed for identity theft for using his own identity. He says he was sent to jail for being “nothing more than himself”.

Click to Read

Stunning New Deepfake AI Will Be A Scammers Dream

This video was created by a new model called OmniHuman 1, developed by TikTok's parent company ByteDance.

This technology transforms a single photo (face or whole body) into a complete and 100% realistic deepfake video. For example, this video was created using a single photo of Albert Einstein. 

Deepfake scams are about to get very real.

Click to Watch

Was This A Scam, Or Am I An Idiot?

I am legit trying to figure this out. I have been getting texts that appear to be from the wrong number, and I have gotten in the bad habit of replying because I think they are scammers.

This weekend, though, I can't figure this out for the life of me. I got a text, “Are you going to play golf tomorrow?” I replied, “Yeah.” Then, they wanted to know the time of the appointment on Saturday. I replied, “8 a.m.,” and they said, “Great, see you there!”

At 9, I started getting phone calls from the person looking for me. I froze and didn’t answer the phone. Was this a real person I had just misled, or was it a scammer? They kept calling me back several times!

I have never seen Pig Butchering scammers be this forward. What is scary is that even a hardcore fraud person like me is left doubting themselves.

What do you think is this a scam or am I an idiot? Help me out fraud fighters! Take the poll below by clicking on what you think.

TD Bank Employee’s Internal Fraud Leads Them To File Data Breach Notification

TD Bank released a breach notice indicating that an employee had accessed customer records and shared them with external parties.

While this appears a classic case of internal fraud, what is interesting is that they filed a data breach notice which opens TD up to a whole new can of worms.

Click to Read

You Won’t Believe How Well This New Scam In China Works

A surveillance video in China is showing how a new impersonation scam in China works. She is stunned.

Click To Watch

Well that’s a wrap for another weekly edition of FrankonFraud.

I hope you have an amazing week ahead fighting fraud.

FrankonFraud