Hello Fraud Fighters 👋
What a strange week in fraud. I was particularly hard to find new frauds and trends in the news. Did fraud go away?
Nope, but one story dominated the headlines. 👉 The Letita James occupancy fraud indictment took over the news cycle last week. There was so much coverage of it that it literally buried all other fraud news. Never seen anything like it, but it shows how fraud and politics are reaching a fever pitch. 🌡
Let’s get to the top news stories - that were buried under all the noise!
Fraud News Roundup 🗞
Scam Reimbursement Up Big In UK - A new dashboard reveals how scam reimbursement has increased from 68% of claims to 88% of claims in the UK, but in the last year rejected claims for bank customers not being responsible has doubled!
PNC Bank Teller Jailed - Rhodesia Jones was jailed for failing to report $80,000 she stole from bank customers’ accounts as income to the IRS. I guess that’s one way to nab a crook.
Citizen Banks Cool Check Fraud Map - I love when banks create novel fraud content and this bank created a cool Check Fraud Map which shows just how risky fraud is state by state.
Chase Got Screwed - Did you hear that Chase had to fork over $115 million to pay for Charlie Javice’s dream team group of high-priced lawyers? Apparently, it was part of the merger agreement, which stated they had to pay her legal bills.
BofA Settles On Insider Fraud Case - A Merrill Lynch Broker used his access to steal $1.56 million from an NFL star. The bank settled with him, paying $9.5 million for the fraud.
7th Times a Charm? - Wells Fargo denied a customer’s Zelle fraud claim 6 times before relenting and crediting his account.
1,000 Free Meals - An unemployed Japanese man created 124 food delivery accounts and ate to his hearts delight by getting meals delivered and then claiming fraud.
Sora Scam Education - Ken Palla’s has been using SORA to create quick consumer education videos. Should banks consider using this technique on social media?
Santander “Fat Jab” Scams Soaring - The bank says that customers reporting losing money to weight loss scams online have increased 386% this year. The popularity of Ozempic is to blame.
Employee’s Say Crypto ATM’s A Sham - Employees of crypto ATM companies are coming forward claiming that those Crypto ATM machines are being propped up profits on fraud. If there were no fraud, the machines would not make money.
Influencer Deepfaked Bodycam Footage - A popular Youtuber deepfaked altered police bodycam footage to make it seem like a police officer was a very big fan of his.
Mother who shot her four kids - Was running a credit card and identity theft fraud racket from her home which police discovered when they found tons of identity cards, SSN’s and credit cards in her home.
North Korean Fake Architects - Matt Burgess of Wired uncovers how North Korean scammers are expanding their schemes to architectural and civil engineering services under fake identities. Summary not behind a paywall.
No Help For Scam Workers - In Cambodia, officials have made it ridiculously hard for scam workers to get saved with impossible reporting procedures. Hmm, I wonder why?
Mortgage Fraud Up! - Yes its making headline news, and Cotality’s Annual Mortgage Fraud Report shows that it is up to 86 basis points from 81 basis points last year - thats 8% increase driven by investment fraud schemes.
SalesForce Gets Tough - Salesforce isn’t going to pay any ransom to hackers for the 1 billion record breach they just suffered. They are going toe to toe with the hackers and its’s a big mess.
Qantas Debacle - Qantas refused to pay a ransom for a data breach so hackers released 5 million customer records to the world. This is turning into a battle of wills!
Lexis Data Scientist Warns Of Next Big Threat - Great article on what the next big risk is for credit unions - Viral Fraud!
Payroll Pirates - Microsoft exposes a hacking group targeting universities across the US, sending phishing emails to employees about an “illness outbreak” to steal credentials and divert payroll. They have targeted 25 schools.
Baltimore Foreclosures Spike After Fraud - A fraud ring in New York purchased 700 homes in Baltimore and wildly inflated prices and used hard money loans to finance them.
Credit Washers Resort To “FTC Bypass Methods” To Keep Fraudulent Sweeps Going
The government shutdown is having at least one expected benefit - credit washing is likely to dip.
Lots of buzz on social media on how the shutdown is stalling out credit sweeps because people can’t file those FTC reports by the millions to erase their bad debt
But, of course, enterprising credit repair companies are resorting to a new bypass method, essentially reverting to signed affidavits instead of relying on FTC reports.
Fraud never goes away; it just changes.
Inside Fraud - Alleged Pig Butchering By Bank Teller In Beverly Hills
You’ve undoubtedly heard of Pig Butchering emerging out of Southeast Asian Scam compounds, but what happens when the scam moves into bank branches?
A new unusual case, was shared by a Reddit User about how an elderly victim was scammed out of her life savings by a Branch Teller who used the classic Pig Butchering scam technique. What’s unusual is that this is a face-to-face scam and involved a bank insider.
TransUnion Reports A Shocking 46% Increase In Fraud For US Companies
A new report released by TU last week reports that US businesses are losing 9.8% of their revenues to fraud - that’s up from 6.7% last year and far higher than the rest of the world.
What’s behind the spike? Account Takeover, which accounted for 31% of all fraud, followed closely by synthetic identity, which came in at 24%.
Traditional third-party fraud is not even the biggest problem in the US anymore. Scams, ATO, and Synthetic Identity are driving most losses now.
Face it - Crypto ATM’s Are An Abomination
Crypto ATM’s need to be banned and here is an excellent expose by CNN that explains why they are daily crime scenes.
They dug deep into hundreds of investigations and here is what they found. 👇
You’re Not Talking To A Pretty Girl. This Is Who Is Sending You Those Scam Text
Last week, police raided a scam compound in Cambodia and took photos of the scam workers at their desk.
Victims think they are talking to a pretty girl, but in most cases 👉 it’s one of these guys just pretending.
Up To 2 Million Photo Identity Cards Hacked Off Discord
Hackers breached Discord's support system for 58 hours last month, stealing government IDs, emails, and IP addresses.
The attackers (Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters) say that they stole 2.1 million ID photos comprising over 1.5 Terabytes of data, but Discord claims only 70,000 users were affected.
Whatever the real number is, that is a heck of a lot of stolen ID cards that could be used to bypass KYC controls at other companies.
Massive Digital Arrest Network With Ties To Cambodia Broken Up
Last week a man in India was found to have been held digitally captive for 51 days while scammers siphoned off every last penny he had.
The same week, government investigators broke up a massive fraud ring that was operating across 40 sites to conduct these digital arrests, and they all had ties to Pig Butchering compounds in Cambodia.
Shockingly, Americans are now being targeted with the same techniques.
Rental Fraud Is Booming - Half Applications In Some Parts Of Atlanta Are Fraud
Fake renters using stolen identities, CPN’s or AI-Generated documents are conning landlords across the country.
Property managers in some parts of Atlanta now reject close to half the applications they receive as fraud.
Fraud is so bad that recent surveys indicate that 94% of property managers have experienced at least one fraud last year.
The Cartel Is Headed To Your House - Now Pay Up
Cartel Escort Scams are everywhere now.
This scam involves “Mexican Cartel Members” who threaten victims over unpaid escort services. They claim the victim owes them money for wasting an escorts time or breaking an appointment.
I found this video that is being used to extort victims, and it's terrifyingly real. Would you pay up to avoid these machine gun-wielding guys from heading to your house?
Mother Gets Terrifying AI Call - Listen As Scammer Gets On The Phone
This mother captured her conversation with a scammer that had “virtually kidnapped” her daughter.
Police Stop Bitcoin ATM Scam Cold, Then Yell At The Scammer
Catch dramatic footage as an alert store clerk calls police after she is suspicious an older lady is getting scammed.
The cops swoop in and instruct her to “stop clicking buttons”, and then snatch her phone to yell at the scammer to stop.
These Bitcoin ATM’s have got to be banned.
New Webinar! Tell Me How To Stop The Scams
If you are free next week - this is worth checking out. Erin Vertin, Uri Rivner and I are going deep into scams.
What works and what doesn't? Do we have a detection problem, or is it more complex than that? What's the Scam Kill Chain, and how can we implement it effectively?
Click here to register 👇
That’s a wrap on the fraud trends this week.
Keep fighting fraud and scams wherever you find them!
