Hi Fraud and Scam Busters,
Hope you had a great weekend.
Let’s get to the top fraud trends this week!
Top Fraud News 🗞
One Bank Reports 59% Jump in Payment Fraud - Ireland’s AIB bank reports that payment fraud soared after impersonation scams rocked their customers.
Lexis Shuts Down Servers - After detecting suspicious activity the company shut down servers including their “Diligence” server and are working with a cybersecurity company.
Not Skimming, Something Else Entirely - Fraudsters in Argentina swapped a gas station's card payment terminal for one they controlled. For 4 months they routed all payments to their own bank accounts.
Epic Cartel Fraud - The DOJ indicts 5 top ranking cartel members for drug trafficking and running over $400 million in time-share fraud schemes against Americans.
Claude Hacked a Gym - An AI agent hacked a gym's booking site just to move its owner up a waitlist. The owner didn’t ask, the AI just did it on its own to achieve its objective.
FBI Agent Steals $1 Million - Former agent Patrick Steven Yaroch was charged with stealing $1 million in cryptocurrency that was seized.
Catch Me If You Canada - Dallas Pokornik used fake pilot identification card to get hundreds of free flights with various Canadian airlines even getting cockpit seats reserved for pilots.
Three Levi Employees Targeted - Hackers socially engineered three employees, hacked into their computers and stole corporate files.
The Fraud Ledger - Fraud is going big time. The White House just launched a new webpage scoreboard called The Fraud Ledger which shows that they have identified $230 billion in fraud in the last year. The site appears to be entirely generated by Claude btw.
Big Tech Are Prolific Hackers! - First OpenAI, then Anthropic, and now Meta is reporting that their AI autonomously hacked a company. That’s 3 lab escaped AI’s in the last month.
Only Fan’s AI Scam - OnlyFan’s stars are having their images cloned with AI for “sob story” scam videos that lure victims into sending thousands via cashapp.
Shady McGrady Credit Repair - The FTC goes after Credit Glory is a credit repair company that ripped off customers including using staged fake calls with creditors to fool consumers into thinking they were doing something.
Another Hallow Apology - Meta’s chief of global affairs apologized to India’s Prime Minister for child sexual abuse materials and deepfakes that they can’t seem to control on their platform.
Mortgage Fraud Flashes Red - Cotality’s Mortgage Fraud Index is flashing red as mortgage fraud climbed 9% last quarter driven by Investment Fraud. Fun fact? Tim Grace and I created that index in 2007 at BasePoint and its carried through almost 20 years.
Watch Live As Bots Pound Unlocked Server - Knock-Knock.net puts a honeypot on public display: a live dashboard of break-in attempts. This is wild how many hackers are out there using bots!
The Tooth Scammer - A Japanese man told police, “I’ve been doing this since 2002. I’ve done it about 100 times and taken in a total of around 40 million yen.” His scam? Bumping into people and then accusing them of breaking his tooth and then extorting them.
AI Voice Clone CyberAttack Rattles Top Investment Companies
The CEO voice clone scam has ramped up with major investment banks and hedge funds across the country reporting that their employees are being targeted in a sophisticated AI scam designed to infiltrate their core systems.
AI fraud and scams gets wilder!
She Ran Scam Prevention At Chase, Now She Says They Wrongly Denied $100 Million In Claims
Christy Lillie got a job heading up Chase’s Scam Prevention efforts in 2021 and things did not go as she had thought.
After she got the job she says the bank failed to use voice technology widely and relied on OTP too much leaving their customers vulnerable to scams. She also says that the bank tried to minimize their own losses by holding customers responsible.
So she became a whistleblower and the bank put her on administrative leave.
Broker Freezes 86-Year-Old Man’s $3 Million - He Is Pissed 😠
When Larry Williams wanted to send some of $3 million out of his brokerage Edward Jones, they balked.
"They alluded to the fact that I'm 86 years old and probably have dementia," he told the press.
But they say it wasn’t that at all.
They say they were protecting him from a possible scam, and leaned on FINRA Rule 2165, which lets a brokerage that suspects financial exploitation of an older client stop money from going out the door for up to 55 days.
Visa Cuts 2,600 Jobs Days After Paying $2.4 Billion For BioCatch
Visa is cutting 2,600 jobs, about 7 percent of its workforce, including bigwigs who earned as much as $458k a year.
The CEO cited AI as a driving force that is reshaping how they do business, but the timing was just days after they announced the massive acquisition.
They Live-Trapped These North Korean AI Scammers
This is wild.
Cybersecurity researchers created a fake company and hired members of Lazarus to offer a rare glimpse of how North Koreans operate behind the scenes.
You get to see it all in this expose of how they operate.
The “AMEX Police Scam” Hits Victims Nationwide
Victims all over the country are reporting the same “AMEX Police Scam” on social media and its’s getting worse by the week.
Most report being contacted by AMEX or Citibank for suspicious activity and then being transferred to the FBI or New York Police Department and being accused of serious crimes. The most interesting aspect is that these are all being done by Zoom calls with fake police backdrops - all the hallmarks of digital arrest that has crushed India in the last year.
If you’re in banking, watch out for this red alert fraud happening now ⏰
Mountain Of Synthetic Identity And Fake Accounts Fuel AI’s Newest Fraud
It’s called Poison Claude, and schemers are setting up hundreds of fake accounts created with synthetic identities, possibly stolen credit cards, and other methods to get free tokens and then sell Claude for 85% discounts.
This is a new variant of promo-abuse hitting fast-growing AI companies that are trying to outdo each other to capture market share.
Check out this ad from the underworld for how the service runs.
High Drama In Cambodia - They’re Raiding The Compound 🤯
It’s hard not to look at this video and think this is all one big police performance during a scam raid. It appears carefully choreographed. It’s certainly action-packed as you might expect in a movie!
The Rich Scammer Is Your Neighbor In Laguna Niguel
You always think of Chinese Scam bosses living on the other side of the world, but check out this $5.6 million mansion that one of the top brass at the Prince Group purchased.
Crazy scam wealth could be right next door to you.
Something Great For FrankonFraud Readers!
I am proud to partner with The Global Anti-Scam
Alliance in their upcoming Summit America and their efforts to reduce scam and fraud worldwide.
This year it’s taking place in San Francisco, September 2-3, less than 3 weeks away!
Because so many fraud and scam fighters read this newsletter, they wanted me to offer you a 40% discount on tickets to show their appreciation. Thank you, GASA 🙏
Click below to get your tickets! 👇
I’ve Teamed With Matt Vega To Terminate AI Dealer Clones
When I started tracking AI dealer cloning back in March of 2025, there were just a handful of cloned dealers selling tractor equipment.
A little over one year later we have now identified 908 dealer clones, 439 are active right now ripping of banks and consumers. Most of those active ones are clones of legitimate dealerships created entirely with AI!
I’ve identified over $6 million in losses mostly through wire transfers including this one a few weeks ago for a $389,000 Porsche.
Every weekend, I comb for new dealers, add them to a spreadsheet and than Matt Vega and I try to get the dealer sites taken down. Its tough work, since no one believes they are fake and run us in circles. Why won’t they believe us?
Want to download our spreadsheet and help us identify more?
Holy Heck - Don’t Fall For This Fuel Saver Plug Silliness 🚘
With fuel prices rising, scammers are on the prowl for suckers.
So can you really plug this device in the cigarette lighter in your car and have it triple your gas mileage? Scammers would want to believe it - in reality its’s just a blinking blue light.
As sold on Amazon with what appears to be all fake reviews from people who got it for free and a 5-star rating - hogwash!
Well that’s all I have for this week.
Hope you have a great week fighting fraud and stopping scams!