Episode 606 - The Hard Drive Sniffin’ Black Labs

Dogs are being trained to detect chemicals used on the memories and hard drives of all digital devices. These dogs can sniff out thumb drives, smartphones, external drives, and other devices used to store illicit content, including child pornography and financial crime data. We go to the inner sanctum of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Fraud & Cybercrimes Bureau located at a secret location in south Los Angeles County – a first for a journalist. Sergeant Pete Hish handles ‘K-9 Satoshi’ and Sergeant Sergio Reyes handles ‘K-9 Zypher’. They tell us how their specially trained Electronics Detection K-9’s are being used to help solve cases and catch the bad guys. It’s part of our ongoing ‘Crime-Fighter Series’.

Episode Transcript

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You're listening to KFI AM six fortyon demand, KFI AM sixty live everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app. On anygiven day in southern California, hundreds of

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investigators are working more than ten thousandunsolved cases. That's thousands of friends and
families who have lost loved ones,thousands of people who got away with a
crime, and thousands of murderers whostill walk the streets. Killers who may
be your neighbor, go to yourchurch, or could be dating a close
friend. For the next two hourswill highlight cases that have gone cold,

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baffled investigators, or just needs thatone witness to speak up. This is
a solved with Steve Gregory. Inthis episode, we go where no journalists
have gone before, the inner sanctumof the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Departments Fraud

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in Cybercrimes Bureau. The campus iswell hidden and serves as the nerve center
for monitoring cybercrime, conducting investigations,and training. We were invited by Sergeant
Pete Hish, a team leader whoalso became the handler for the region's first
electronics detection canine. And You're notgoing to believe what these dogs can do.
It's part of our ongoing crime Fighterseries. Sergeant, thank you for

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joining us. Welcome, great tobe here. One of the things I
wanted to talk about. First ofall, let's get an overview of what
your role is here, and thenI want to get right in to one
of the coolest pieces of tech thatyou have, which really isn't high tech
but does a high tech mission.But first give us an overview what you
do here. Sure, I'm asergeant here with the Department. I supervise

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our cyber Fraud Crimes Team, andbasically we investigate everything cyber if it has
to do with the Internet, weget the cases and we investigate it.
We have a team of seven detectives. Another sergeant, my partner, Sergeant
Sergio A. Reyes, He isalso a part of the team and supervises

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our North part of the team.We do cryptocurrency investigations, we do cyber
fraud, we do extortions, Wedo online narcotics and gun trafficking cases,
and basically anything that has to dowith the media or correction with the with
the Internet, we we deal with. Well, when you when you talk

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about with the media, you're talkingbecause media is also not only is it
journalism, but it's also like youyou call hard drives and whatnot, that's
also media. Oh yeah, that'sall digital media, all digital media.
So that's what you're dealing with.How busy are you? Extremely busy.
It's it's incredibly big, and itis getting busier exponentially as time goes on,
and as technology advances and makes iteasier for criminals to do things,

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they do it more frequently, easier, and they are really fleecing the citizens
of La County out of a lotof money. Going back then, historically,
sergeant, do you remember and recallwhen this bureau came to be.
I do recall it was called theCommercial Crimes Bureau before that was forgery,

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fraud, then Commercial Crimes Bureau.Then several years ago the department saw a
need to include the cyber portion ofit because that was becoming more prevalent.
This is fifteen years ago or so. When this occurred, it started to
becoming more prevalent. You know,we're seeing crimes in cyber. So they
changed the name again to the Fraudand Cyber Crimes Bureau and started a cyber

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mission as well. And along theway, in addition to you having to
keep an egle eye on how technologyhas evolved. You've got to keep up
with that too. Not only areyou keeping an eye on what the technology
is out there, but you alsohave to figure out a way to combat
that tech being used for bad Andso what kind of challenge is that?

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Keeping up with the bad guys?It's a huge challenge. There's a couple
aspects to that, and one isgetting a detective onto the team who is
first of all, a good detective. And that's not the hard part because
these detectives come up through the departmentas detectives in other places. When we
get them, they're good detectives,but they don't have the cyber background,

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and that's where we start. Wehave to get them the cyber training.
And that's not something you can justlearn overnight. It takes years sometimes to
learn certain aspects of cyber to beable to be an effective detective at it.
And it's not only time consuming,it's very costly. The training that's
out there that we need to getour detectives to can range from maybe one

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thousand dollars up to ten thousand dollarsfor a one week class, and that
becomes expensive One of the things Iwant to talk about what really draws me
to your agency is the use ofa canine in your department and your bureau.
Now. I did a new storya long time ago, but I

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don't think people truly understand that youhave a canine program here talk about that.
Yes we do. And quite honestly, I was where you were thinking
dogs and cyber Wait a bit,how does that go together? How does
that mix? You got the oldestdogs on the planet and you know that
species next to some of the mosthigh tech stuff in the world, exactly,
And like you opened up the showwith, it's not a high tech

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thing. It's very low tech.It's very traditional. We've had canines doing
hunting for things and using to workto do jobs forever, right, and
now we're have them in the digitalage, and they're quite honestly, very
effective. And it surprised me atfirst. I was kind of apprehensive at
the whole idea, is I reallycan this happen? When I first heard
about them a few years back,and I started doing research and seeing stories

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put out by other places that thesedogs are actually becoming a valuable asset to
those departments and coming up with withvaluable evidence that's being used to convict people
criminals and put them in jail.So I decided to do some research into
it and educate myself on the programand see, you know, how this
whole program works, and and wroteup a plan to be able to get

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it here at the Sheriff's Department.Where did you first see it in motion?
Well, I didn't see it.I heard it the Homeland Security Investigations.
We were doing a mission with themunrelated to K nine's, and one
of the special agents came up tome and says, hey, did you
know that there was a program outthere that can assist your department in obtaining

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a trained K nine and using them? And he kind of let me in
on the program and who this nonprofitorganization was, and so I did some
research on them and they and aftera while I contacted them and said,
hey, you know we might beinterested in this. Can you explain to
me what how this works? Theydid, gave me all the information they

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they gave me, and I wroteup the plan and presented it to my
chain of command all the way up. They very apprehensive too, like I
was like, wait a minute,we never heard of this what's going on
right? Right? And but aftera while they warmed up to it and
just give it a shot and seewhat happens. And that's a good thing
about our department is we're very wealways try to look for the leading edge,

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even if we're going to take achance on something if it can help
the community, if it can besomething that's going to set our department,
you know, ahead, let's giveit a shot and see what happens.
And what year were we talking about? This was twenty twenty is when when
we started to put all this togethera few years back. Yeah, I'm
trying to remember, yeah, becausethat was right at the forefront of the
pandemic, correct, Yeah, AndI think I did my first story on

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it probably in twenty twenty one,twenty yeah, I think so early twenty
one, maybe like that. Yeah, yeah. And so what we're talking
about is Satoshi. Yeah, andtell us who Sitoshi is. Satoshi is
our dog, my dog. He'sa black English Laboratory Retriever at male and
I've had him for about two anda half years. He was donated to

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us by the nonprofit that I spokeabout, Operation Underground Railroad, And I
don't know if many people know aboutthis organization, but they're a nonprofit who
works in combating human trafficking and childexploitation and they if you've recently, there
was a movie that just came out, the Sound of Freedom I believe it
was, and that movie is basedon the founder who was who was a

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Homeland Security special agent himself who leftthat agency to start this organization and they've
been very a very good partner ofour department. Okay, we're going to
talk more about that and dig deepand we want to know all about Satoshi.
But first, this is Unsolved withSteve Gregory on KFI AM six forty.
You're listening to KFI A M sixforty on demand AM six forty live

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and on demand on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved.
Welcome back. We are at theLa County Sheriff's Departments Fraud Cybercrime Bureau.
We've been talking with Sergeant Pete Kish, not only about the bureau itself,
but part of the tools that makethem one of the leading sort of

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crime fighters in the cyber fraud andcybercrimes industry. Sergeant. Before the break,
we were just getting into your blacklab Satoshi and talking about the nonprofit
that sort of makes it possible.You did the research. When was the
first time you actually saw either eitherSatoshi or one of these dogs in training

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and it convinced you that it wasgoing to be valuable. No, I
didn't. It was all on aleap of faith. I didn't see an
actual dog do this job until Iflew to Indie to where the trainer is
for Satoshi and watched the dogs actuallydo the job. I went on video
on YouTube. If you go onYouTube or any other video online, you

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could look these dogs up and there'sdemonstrations on there and things like that that
I looked at just to see,you know, how these dogs work.
But I didn't see it live untilI went to the training. So it
was a completely faith by myself andby my department and the executives to to,
you know, to do this andso do you how does it work?

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Because I know nonprofits a lot ofdogs like the accelerant dogs at La
County Fire has the other knines thatare on tactical with LAPD that I know.
I mean, they've all got veryspecialized training, but the handler has
to be a part of that trainingtoo, is that was that the case
with you, Yes, that's verymuch the case. These dogs are quite

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different in the way they work thenyou would see a narcotics dog or a
gun dog or a money dog.They work differently, and the training the
handler has to have to be ableto work a room or an area its
specific way is quite different than howanother type of dog would work. It's
a little bit more intimate, alittle bit more detailed in the way you

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find things, because, quite honestly, the odor that these devices emit is
very minute, it's very small,and it's very very difficult for a canine
to pick up this odor in mostcircumstances. So it's very important that the
handler is trained in a way tobe able to see the room and work
the room in a particular way togive the dog the best opportunity to pick

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up these scents. In that sense, it's a very faint scent. And
if memory serves it's the coating that'son the hard drive right correct. The
manufacturers of these chips that store thedata coat the chip with a particular chemical
that keeps it from overheating. Soevery device that can store data into it

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has this coding on it, andthat's the chemical that these canines are trained
to identify. Now, who cameup with that, you know, I
don't know who came up with that, however, Uh, the our trainer,
Todd Jordan out in Jordan Detection Canines, I believe is his company's named
out in Indiana, refined it.He took the skills he knew from an

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accelerant dog and incorporated them into justand just for people to know. An
accelerant dog is what fire departments use. They sniff out like gasoline and paint
thinner, and they they sniff outlike petroleum products. Correct, They are
used to start fire. Correct ifyou have an arsen arson dog. Yeah,
if you have an arsen in thehouse and the person who started the
arson port kerosene in a particular corner, they sniff that out correctly, give

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the detective a way to start investigatingthat arsen. Yeah. I just wanting
to make sure people knew what thatwas going correct. Yeah. So so
yeah, so they So he kindof transitioned an excel dog into a electronics
dog because of the chemic the chemicalsense. They're not similar, but it's
kind of the same process In traininga dog. It's a whole different thing

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when you get a brand new greendog and you have to train them to
smell something and tell you that theysmelled it and here it is. So
that's a whole process that took fourto five months. So Toshi had to
do that four to five months withoutme in Indiana to learn how to identify
that smell, link it with hisreward, and then tell me where that

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smell is exactly, pinpoint it whereit's at. So when did you meet
Satoshi? I mean, how doesthat partnership work or how do they partner
you up with a dog. Sothe trainer, prior to me arriving in
Indiana, sent me this questionnaire aboutme, my personal life, what I
do, my family, all thesedifferent things, and he picked a dog

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that he thought would match my personalityand that way that increases the chances of
that dog bonding with you. Thebond that that dog has with the handler
is highly important. It can't thatthese dogs can't be switched around from handle
to handler because there's a certain bondthat these dogs achieve with their handlers that
they will they'll jump through fire foryou, really and they'll they'll do a

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lot for you, including trying tofind that scent because of that bond,
and what kind of questions were onthat questionnaire, like what hobbies do I
have? What's my family life like? Do I like to drink? Do
I like to party? Or doI like to you know, sit on
the couch and watch TV? AmI am? I am I outdoors person?
You know, all those kind ofquestions about me to try to kind

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of like a profile about me,so that way he can say, Okay,
I have ten dogs here, whichdog is going to go to Pete?
So are they always black labs?You don't have like a Chihuahua or
a pommer. You know, Idon't know that a chihuahu would have the
the I want to do this job. Predominantly the dogs that come out of

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his organization are laborator retrievers. Hedid try to work with golden retrievers,
but I don't know that they worked. As they worked, but they didn't
work as efficiently as a black labour dogs. Here are Sotoshi's an English
laborator retriever. The difference between anAmerican lab and an English lab they're quite

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significant. If you could think inyour head a lab. You think of
a tall, kind of thinner dogwith a pointy faced, right, that's
an American lab that are trained tohunt. You know, you should have
bred out of the sky. Thedog goes across the lake and picks the
dog up, the bird up forand brings it back. Right, that's
a sporting dog. These guys areare English labs. They were bred in

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England to assist the fishermen back inthe eighteen hundred seventeen eighteen hundreds, to
pull nets out of the water forthe fishermen. So they're very they're very
stocky. They have a broadcast,a big head, very strong dogs and
very low profile to the ground.And their work is what they are.
That's what they want to do.And when you first met Satoshi, what

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was that like? It was interesting. I drove up to the day the
first day of training. I haven'tmet Sutoshi since before that, and I
drove up to the trainer and theSatoshi is in the back of his tahoe
in a cage and he lets himout and Satoshi jumps out, looks at
me and he's like, who theheck are you right? Like, what's

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going on here? So and Toddthe trainer hands me the leash and says,
here you go. Here's here's yourdog. And his name wasn't Satoshi
at first, his name was Bear. But I could tell you a little
bit if you want to know whyor how we came up with his name.
Good, then let's hold on fora second. There. We've got
to take a break. When wecome back more with Sergeant Pete Hitsh.
But first, this is Unsolved withSteve Gregory on KFI AM six forty.

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You're listening to KFI AM six fortyon demand kf I AM six forty live
and on demand on the iHeartRadio app. This is Unsolved with Steve Gregory.
Welcome back. We're at the LosAngeles County Sheriff's Departments Fraud and Cybercrime Bureau
were at an undisclosed location in SouthLa County talking with Sergeant Pete Hish Before

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the break, Sergeant, you weretelling us about Satoshi, the electronic sniffing
dog, the first that you hadin the Sheriff's Department here. But something
I didn't realize is that his namewasn't really Satoshi to begin with. It
was Bear. Why was that correct? Yeah, his name was Bear when
we got there and I thought aboutit, and if you don't know,

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there was an incident several years backwhere it was a pretty publicized incident where
Jared Fogel was arrested for for aoh, the subway guy, the subway
guy, the subway guy. Itwas a child pornography case. Well,
this trainer, Todd Jordan, trainedup Bear, the initial Bear, not
not my dog, but the initialBear that he used to test and to

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figure this whole electronic detection thing out, and took his out to where that
crime scene was, the house,and tested it on that and tried to
find other evidence on the Jared Fogelcase, and he did the The dog
actually located a storage device hidden behinda socket, a plug plate socket in

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the wall. Really yeah, andon that media was evidence that ultimately led
to the conviction of Jared Fogel.So in the electronic detection K nine world,
I guess Bear is kind of aniconic dog. He was the first
one high profile case. So Iwas like, you know what, I

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don't want my dog to be Beartoo. The show nby one Bear in
this industry, right, So Itold the trainer I want to rename him
I said, what do you wantto rename him to us? I don't
know. What I want to dois give that task to my detectives and
say, he detectives, we're gettinga dog. You guys name them.
Whatever you guys come up with isgoing to be his name. So they

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got together and they came up withSatoshi. And the significance with Satoshi is
it's a cryptocurrency reference. The allegedpseudo name of the person who invented bitcoin
was Satoshi Nakamoto. Oh right,So we wanted kind of a name to
have a link to cyber in away. So we said, they came

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up with Satoshi. I'd liked it. It's different, it's a unique name.
There's no other dogs out there namedSatoshi. So that's it. How
do you so the dog was youngenough to but the dog was answering to
bear and then you decided to changeits name, and it and it took.
Any dog will listen to whatever youcall them as long as you pet
them and give them food. Ohthat's it. Do that a few times

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and long enough. Oh he's callingme Satoshi, I giving me food.
My name is Satoshi. Now I'mgood. Yeah. So then you a
Satoshi, I presumably did you driveall the way out there? Did you
fly? No? We flew.We flew well, I flew out to
Indiana by myself, met Satoshia,and we both flew back together. How
much time did you spend together outthere before he came back? Two weeks?

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Two weeks? Yeah? The firstday I showed up the training,
got the dog, and we didsome very basic things in training for the
whole day, very you know,introductory things. And then the trainer was
like, okay, take them toyour hotel room, see yea, And
sure enough I took him to thehotel room, got as bowl of water
as food there and it was timeto go to bed. It laid down

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on the bed and the cup popsup on the bed with me. Okay,
I'm gonna sit here, lay herewith you. Okay, cool,
that's a good sign. Right.And then just day after day that was
his program. And after that twoweeks, the bond was already starting to
form. You know, I wasthe only one handling them, I was
the only one feeding them, Iwas the only one giving them attention.

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So after a while, these dogsare very very like, they're loyal to
their to their person, whoever thatmight be, and after a while,
that's your that's your dude. Sothat relationship, that bomb that you created
early on in the beginning. Didyou have a dog already back home or
is this your first dog? OrI did? I had a huge poodle.

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He's probably the big large the largesized poodles right at home. And
so I brought Satoshi home and justintroduced them slowly at the front door and
took maybe five minutes, and they'rerunning around best friends. Sotoshi has that
there's not a mean bone in hisbody. He wants to play with kids,

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he wants to play with other dogsand all that, and he really
gets along with whoever. So you'vegot Satoshi now back here in La County.
And was that the first dog ofits kind in the region? It
was in La County. Was thefirst one in La County? Yes,
the FBI had one around the sametime, and I knew the FBI had

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one. Her name was Ginger.Unfortunately she passed away a couple of years
ago, but that was another dogthat was being used as well, but
then she passed away. And asfar as a state or local agency,
this was the first dog that wasworking for the state and local agencies,
and how long after you got backbefore your first call. It was almost

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immediate. It was a case wheredeputies got in a vehicle pursuit and which
switched off into a foot pursuit ofsome sort on the bank of a freeway,
and the freeway the bank went straightup a lot of bushes and stuff,

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and the suspect went up there.The deputy went up after them,
and the deputy lost his body worncamera up there somewhere. So I'm like,
okay, this is our first time, and you want Mia Satosha to
climb that hill and try to finda bodywork camera that's bit up there for
a week already somewhere. I'm like, you know what, we'll give it
a shot. I don't know ifit's going to work or not, but
we'll give it a shot. AndSutoshi went right up the hill with me.

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When we went up and looked around, we didn't find it, unfortunately,
But that was the first actual callout that we did to find one
of our own devices that got lost. Was it ever found? It was?
I don't believe it was. I'mnot sure. I'm not sure,
but I'm not sure then then howsoon after that on the next call,
and then I mean, and thenwhen was the first call where Satoshi had

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a hit? It was I rememberone call. I don't know if it
was the very next call, butit was in that first few months of
us being working. And what yearare we talking again? This was?
This was late twenty twenty. Okay. The FBI called this out for a
secret service, and FBI believe it. It was a It was a fraud

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case where the person was using electronelectronics technology to defraud people. And they
served a search warrm at a houseand the entire house and found what they
found. But the dog went inafter them to try to find as a
backup to see if they missed anything. Well, we're going through the house

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and Satoshi hits on a magazine racknext to the bed of the suspect where
the suspects sleeps next to his bedthere and if you can imagine, you
hit a magazine rack where it themagazines just stand upright and there's like ten
or fifteen of them in there's nextto each other. Well, in there
was a very thin laptop computer inthe middle of these magazines. It looked

(24:33):
like a magazine and Satoshi went bythere hit on it, boom, and
so I was like okay. Theinvestigated further and sure enough, there's a
laptop sitting in there. The FBIretrieved that laptop and it turns out that
that laptop was the suspect's laptop andhad evidence on it that was important to
the case. More with Sergeant PeteHissh from the La County Sheriff's Department's Fraud

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and Cybercrime Burea. But first,this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on KFI
AM six forty. You're listening toKFI AM six forty on demand KFI AM
six forty live and on demand onthe iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and
this is Unsolved. Welcome back tothe Los Angeles County Sheriff' Departments Fraud and

(25:27):
Cybercrime Bureau. We're in South LosAngeles County at an undisclosed location. We've
been speaking with Sargeant Pete hisch whohas been telling us about one of the
best tools that the Fraud Cybercrime Bureauhas, and it's Satoshi, a black
lab who was trained in Indiana andwho has been partnered with Sargeant hish Now

(25:48):
for gosh at least three years,and you were telling us about it the
first time that you recall where Satoshigot a hit and went through and found
a thin little laptop nestled between allof these upright magazines and you we realized
that this had the evidence you werelooking for. That must have made you
feel pretty cool. It did it? Did it? It just reinforces why

(26:14):
we have the dog while we're outthere and what we do, and it
it reinforces it with the detectives aswell, or with the FBI or whoever
is investigating that case. It's like, wow, this resource is really good.
We would have missed that if thedog didn't find it for us.
So and it hopefully it led toa conviction. And you know, and
this person doing these crimes to getsome prison time. Yeah, because that's

(26:37):
kind of kind of what you do. You just you just helped gather the
evidence, but you don't you don'tever see it all the way through.
You're just you're just there to inthe gathering phase, right, correct.
Majority of our callouts are are justin the in the gathering phase of find
evidence. We do to play ourdog on our team as well when when
our detectives have a case, we'llto play the dogs there as well,
and those I could follow through.But I would say eighty percent of our

(27:02):
callouts are with other agencies. Stateand local agencies call us out, the
federal agencies call us out, Probationcalls us out. Just a big list
of agencies that use US search andsee if I can ask us the right
way. Has there ever been anykind of a challenge to having a canine

(27:26):
looking for evidence? And does thecanine have to be certified in any way?
And you know when it comes inthe court As far as the court's
concerned, there hasn't been a challengein court yet. However, different than
a narcotics dog, a narcotics caninehas to be certified a specific special way

(27:48):
because they can generate probable cause tosearch. So if you run a dog
around a car and that dog hitsa drug, dog hits that if that
dog certified properly, that dog givesthat officer or deputy the probable cause it
searchs that car right. Well,in this case, it's not illegal to
own a flash drive or a ora cell phone or a laptop. It's

(28:11):
not illegal in and of itself.So basically, what the dog is to
us, if you can imagine,is basically like us use it a flashlight
inside a house trying to find something. It just basically tells us here,
here's a place of interest. Thisis where you want to look, and
we'll go and look and find thedevice. So, but you're only going
in when you have a warrant,correct, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

(28:33):
all the keys of the castle apply. As far as search and SIES
is concerned, we just don't goin and search, just walk into someone's
house in search, we can't dothat. And you were talking about eighty
percent of your call outs or otheragencies, and do they reimburse your agency
when they No, No, wedon't charge other agencies for our services.
We're a state funded task force,like I said, and what part of

(28:56):
our charter is to assist everybody.We're not just all about our selves.
We want to make sure that crimescrime and if it doesn't matter if this
police department or this Fed agency catchesthe guy, as long as we could
do justice somehow or another, wewe will help him. And and that's
that's satisfying. What was the costin Because you say a nonprofit helped you
acquire Satoshi. So what was thetotal costs for him? I believe the

(29:21):
nonprofit with with the dog and theinitial training was about eleven thousand dollars for
the dog and my training and everything. Initially, that doesn't seem like a
lot for what you're getting in return. Huh No, I thought that was.
I mean, we didn't pay it. They did, but still it
seemed like a very good reasonable priceto get a dog that. He was

(29:42):
a year and a half when Igot him, so you know, he
could work for six, seven,eight years. So that's a lot of
work that we're going to get outof Satoshi before he retires. And how
does that work? Then? DoesSatoshi have to be who? God,
how can I say this recalibrated?Does he have to keep going through more
training or and then as technology changesand maybe the coding changes, will he

(30:03):
have to be retrained? Sure?Yeah, he trains with us here all
the time. We run through differenttraining scenarios all the time. Once a
year we go back to Jordan anddo a recertification. The certification isn't for
legal purposes. Basically, it's forthe trainer to take a look at us,

(30:26):
because it's just if it's just meand the dog, I might not
be seeing things that I'm messing upon or I could make I could do
better. So it's basically an opportunityto go back to the trainer and get
tightened up on certain things and refresheror refresher. Yeah, and maybe some
new new skills that the trainer hasdeveloped that he wants to teach us.
This last time, we taught Satoshihow to find a cell phone underwater by

(30:51):
eighteen inches of moving water in astream. Really, yeah, it may
I didn't believe it, but hedid it. And the scent comes up
through water. It doesn't cut well, it does, but I guess dogs
smell in a different way. Hewas tasting the water. So I would
start him downstream from where the devicewas and work upstream, and I would

(31:12):
give him the commands that would normallydo to start searching, and he would
start searching and sticking his nose inthe water tasting the water. Boom boom
boom, and then he'd pick itup and then work himself right up to
the phone and sat down in thewater right where the phone was, and
there it was. Yeah, I'llbe damn. Yeah, you say that

(31:33):
eighty percent of call outs or otheragencies. So I'm it's it's probably a
safe bet that you're busy, verybusy. We yeah, I started to
get a lot of call outs.I was. I was running all over
the county from from Palmdale all theway down to out to Wallet, all
the way down to Marina Del Rey. It was just everywhere, you know,

(31:53):
even outside the county. We getcalled by other agencies outside the county,
UH to help help them, andwe would help them. About how
many cases a week are you onright now? I'd say currently a week.
It's not several a week. Ithink it's because remember I run an
investigative team as well, so soToshi is a collateral. It's not my

(32:15):
only job, right So I'd saymaybe two or three a month is what
is what I'm getting called out onusually, and those are all day events
when when we get called Yeah.Yeah, but then on top of your
other duties, on top of myother duties. So let me ask it
this way, how many cases aweek does your bureau handle in total?

(32:36):
We I can't even come up witha number, it's so many we get
case I have cases in my bufferright now and then that I need to
look at. I probably have twentyof them in there that I need to
to to do something with, somethingwith instead of see you're talking with us.
Yeah, well no, I lovetalking to you guys. You're great
guys. I mean, I guessyou know, but but you keep very,
very busy, and you have alot of unsolved ones. We do

(32:59):
a lot of and that's one ofthe things with cyber crime. If the
cyber criminal is good enough and doeshis job the right way, it's extremely
difficult for us to catch them.So a lot of our cases go unsolved.
Okay, when we come back,we'll talk more with Sergeant Pete Hitch.
But first, this is Unsolved withSteve Gregory on KFI AM six forty.

(33:20):
You're listening to KFI AM six fortyon demand I AM six forty live
and on demand on the iHeartRadio app. This is Unsolved with Steve Gregory.
Welcome back. We are inside theLos Angeles County Sheriff's Departments Fraud and Cybercrime

(33:42):
Bureau, undisclosed location, South LACounty, talking with Sergeant Pete Hish and
we've been learning about Satoshi one ofthe new secret weapons inside the Fraud and
Cybercrime Bureau. And before the break, Sergeant you we were talking about in
the very beginning, you would getcalled out to maybe three maybe three calls
a month. But we were talkingduring the break and you said that now,

(34:05):
because everyone wants in on the action, you as many as twelve calls
a month. That's correct. Yeah, initially it was about three to four.
But as the word spread to otheragencies and got out there about the
effectiveness of these dogs. Yeah,currently we're running between nine and twelve deployments
a month, and so is outtoo much for one person and one dog?

(34:29):
It was getting to be, Yes, it was getting to be.
It was getting to the point towhere I was away doing that more than
I was here supervisor managing the investigativeteam. I mean, that's an awful
lot of work for just one person, one dog, right, Yes,
it began to become quite burdensome onour deployments. So I was away doing

(34:52):
deployments more than I was here.So at that point is when we went
back to the drawing board and addedanother dog the team. So when would
this have been This would been abouta year and a half ago about is
when the second dog came on board. So in twenty twenty two, twenty
twenty two, yes, okay,so how did you decide you needed another

(35:16):
dog? It would just became anecessity based on the workload that we had.
We needed to be able to havetwo dogs to pick up the work
that we were generating. And notonly that, as I became more versed
in how to work these dogs andhow to deploy them, it became evident

(35:37):
that with these particular dogs in theway they work, it was there was
two reasons. One is having twohandlers in the room when one dog is
working, because a second handler alsoknows how these dogs work and can pick
up certain things that this dog isdoing when I'm paying attention to other things.

(35:58):
So it gives us a better abetter opportunity to pick up very very
slight behaviors that the dog might dowhen it thinks it might have smelled something,
but not sure. Like I said, it's a very faint smell.
So sometimes a dog will come acrossit and maybe just move his head or
eyes to a particular direction real quick, and then and then discount it and

(36:19):
keep on going. Well, that'sa clue to us that that dog picked
something up but wasn't. It wasso faint that they weren't sure and it
kept moving. Well, the secondhand will pick that up and then we'll
readdress that particular area. So ifI understand this now, whereas you were
one team with one dog, onehandler, now the call has two dogs,
two handlers. Correct, And anotherreason why we did that, Yes,

(36:43):
we would roll two dogs to alocation, especially a bigger house.
If the house's twenty five hundred scorefeet three thousand and four thousand square feet.
These dogs, like I said,that odor is very faint, So
these dogs are exchanging a lot ofair and working really hard to pick up
these scents trying, and what thatdoes is makes him tired really quick.
So we can actually run a dogthrough a couple of rooms, then go

(37:07):
put him away back in the tahoe, let him relax, cool down,
and bring the second dog out andcontinue the mission and then swap him back
and forth. And it makes it'smore efficient at doing it that way.
And how would you know that thedog was fatigued? They lose interest in
doing the job. They're breathing reallyhard when they're not trying to detect something

(37:30):
they maybe they don't want to jumpup onto an object that we want them
to jump onto to smell. Differentthings like that. We can tell just
by knowing the dog. Yeah,you know, I know this dog.
I know how he looks when he'smotivated. He was ready to go,
and I know what his mannerisms arewhen he's fatigued. You know, there
is an indirect connection to Satoshi andthis show. In fact, the very

(37:52):
first episode of Unsolved with Steve Gregory, episode one zero one was Anthony Velasquez
and his father and well the fatherand son that were charged with the murder
of three people. And I rememberbeing on scene in East La very early
morning, and there you were withSatoshi. Do you remember that call?

(38:13):
I do, Yes, I do. That was when our Homiciberia called us
out to system on the service ofsome search warrants that they had related to
a murder their investigating, and werolled out there and they had us look
through a house I believe, anda couple of cars out there. Yeah,
do you remember If I don't wantto jeopardize the investigation, because I
believe it's still being adjudicated, Idon't think. I don't even think it's

(38:36):
going to trial yet. Memory serves, But do you remember if that was
a successful day for you guys.I do remember the dog did alert on
some things. We found some things. Whether or not they were collected as
evidence, or if they were,they had any evidentary value on it,
I don't know. That's one ofthe things about our job is we'll go
out there and find this stuff forthe investigators, but a lot of times
we don't hear back as to whatthe result of that fine was. Sometimes

(39:00):
we will. We've gotten an emailup. We just got one recently from
a Long Beach PD that UH thattold us that we assisted them two years
ago on a case where it wasa child a child pornography case and the
suspect so socially found some stuff inthe suspect ended up getting twenty four years
in prison behind that. So shewas she fed us back information as to

(39:23):
what happened, you know what theoutcome was. But a lot of time,
most of the time, we don'thear back. So you know,
in one of the common themes thatyou've described, even going right up to
I guess dog zero or canine zerobear UH has to do with child pornography.
That seems to be one of yourbigger call outs. It is.

(39:44):
Yes, a lot of our callouts. I would say the majority of
our callouts have to do with childexploitation, child abuse like child sexual exploitation
and things like that. The organization, oh you are who donated the dodgs
to us, they're they're they're antihuman trafficking organization. So they uh,
their main, their main charter andpurpose for these dogs is for that.

(40:05):
And if you think about it,somebody who is dealing in child pornography they
call it c SAM now is anew technical name for it. Is they'll
hide them on little micro SD cardsand things like that and tape them up
under a table or put them somewherewhere a human being going into a house,
a three thousand square foot house lookingfor one micro SD card, it's

(40:29):
not gonna happen. You're just notgonna find it. If it's if it's
really secreted a place to where thatsuspect doesn't want you to find it.
But the dogs come in and theyfind it. So so it's uh,
it's child pornography. A child exploitationis a big, a big part of
our our mission. When we comeback, I want to talk about some
more cases that Satoshi and uh inyour new dog. What's your new dog's

(40:53):
name? Our new dog is Zeifer. Zipher. Yes, and Sergeant Sergio
Reyes is the handler for Zeipher.Male or female. She's a female.
She's about a year younger than Sutosha. Got a boy and a girl.
Now got a boy and a girland they're best of friends. Okay,
very good. So when we comeback, I want to talk about some
cases that your canine team has helpedsolved. But first, this is Unsolved

(41:14):
with Steve Gregory on KFI AM sixforty. You're listening to KFI AM six
forty on demand, kf I AMsix forty live and on demand on the

(41:44):
iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory,and this is Unsolved. We're at the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Departments Fraud andCybercrimes Bureau. We're inside of a building
in an undisclosed location in South LaCounty. It's all part of the Southern
California's state funded high Tech Task Force. Joining us now Sergeant Sergiolrayes. He's

(42:07):
the handler for Zipher, the latestaddition to the canine program here at the
Fraud and Cybercrime Bureau. And asyou heard Sergeant his say before the break,
Zipher is a female dog and nowthey have a boy and a girl
on the canine unit. Sergeant,thank you for being here, appreciate it,
Thanks for having Sergeant. Let's talka little bit about Zipher's addition to

(42:28):
the canine unit. Did Ziper findyou or did you find Zipher? Well,
there's a funny story behind that.Cipher actually try to bite my face
off the first time she met me. Really, she did, much like
my partner Pete. I met mydog for the first time when I went
to Indiana to pick her up andmy flight was delayed, so the handler

(42:52):
taught how already dropped off the otherdogs for the other handlers, so I
had to drive over to his houseto pick her up. I got there
a little late, so when Igot there, he said, Okay,
I'm gonna introduce you to Cipher,and he brought it from his garage and
she was on a leash and assoon as she saw me, she started
to bark, and you know,Todd told me, hey, just start

(43:15):
talking to me. Make sure thatyou don't look menacing make sure that everything
you know that she realizes that everything'sgoing to be good. And this dog
would just not break. She justkeept barking and barking and barking and growling.
And I'm looking at her like,oh man, this is going to
be interesting. Todd looked at Cipherand and I was like, look,
I've never seen this before. Ihave another dog if you want, And
I said, nah, this isgoing to be my dog. I like

(43:36):
her already, So put her inthe kennel, give me a bag of
food, and off we went.So, yeah, Cipher, try to
bite my face off the first timethat I met her. And now I
assume you're much better now, Yes, that dog, like my partner said,
and the previous segment will go through. Find my dog. Actually I
told her to climb up a tree. We were a dog park. I
messing around, said get up thetree. She got up the tree and

(43:59):
I literally had to bring her down. Wow, sergeant, how long have
you been at cybercrimes? About twoand a half years. Two and a
half years. And where'd you comefrom? I came from the majority of
my career has been gangs, andso what attracted you to cybercrimes. Well,
I promoted, and since I've beena detective, I I wanted to

(44:20):
run a detective team, and cyberit is something that I knew. It
was an up and coming crime,and a lot of the gangsters nowadays they're
actually dabbing pretty deep into cyber becauseit's a lot easier to get a lot
of money and just one hit.So did you know when you were promoting
and coming into this unit that youwere going to be a canine handler or
was that something you didn't find outtill you got here. I had no

(44:43):
idea, and once I got here, that's what happened. Now it sounds
like you're having a good time withit. Oh, I'm having a blast.
Yeah. Tell us about your firstbig case with cipher. Well,
my first big case is the onethat actually my partner spoke of earlier.
I want to talk about one whereit was a little more specific, just

(45:04):
my dog. Oh okay, sure. My partner was busy with the teams,
with the detective team, and Ideployed on a federal probation case.
Federal probation people there on federal probationfor se SAM possession of c SAM.
They are allowed to have electronics aslong as they disclosed them. And talk
again, remind everyone what se SAMstands for. It stands for child sexual

(45:27):
abuse material. Okay, that's fine, and which is short for child porn
or yeah, okay, right,got it. So they are allowed to
either have one device that is monitoredor this want this particular case, he
was a podcaster, so he wasallowed to have multiple devices as long as
he disclosed them. We went intothe room. His room. He lived

(45:49):
in an apartment in the Hollywood area, and it was a small six hundred
maybe five hundred square foot apartment,pretty small studio apartment, but it was
riddled with electronics. Not only washe a podcaster and he had the electronics
to do the podcast, he alsohad he was a collector, so he
had all the Nintendo's, all thePlayStations he had. It was just electronics

(46:13):
calore in there. I looked atthe room, looked at the case agent
and said, I'll help you search, but my dog's gonna do that's not
gonna that's not gonna do us anygood here. And the reason why is
because when she gets in here,she's gonna be inundated with so much scent
that she's just gonna probably sit inthe middle of the room and tell me
here it is. Find it,because there was just smell everywhere. So

(46:37):
I looked at the room, andmy dog has to and on the world,
on the canine world, the doghas to be rewarded every time they
get deployed. If not, itkind of becomes mundane to them. So
I sanitized the bathroom. I wentin, I stashed the device, and
I went in there and I ledher there to go find it. So
she went and she found the device, she got her reward. It was

(46:57):
all good. So I went assoon as I opened the door to the
to the bathroom, she ran towardsthe closet and took a hard dive into
the corner. And I kind ofgot a little shocked because I said,
hey, anybody checked here. Oneof the agents said, yeah, we
checked there, and this is therewas a box full of something boxes like.
I couldn't really tell what was inthere, so I figured with the

(47:21):
room being full of electronics, itwas probably other electronics. So I took
my dog out and I went tothe car, put in a towel so
she can relax, and then Ithinking that coming back down the hallway.
I said, that was that wasa pretty hard dive for for that box.
So I went and I looked,and when I found in those boxes
where there was a tuner like forguitar, my dog wouldn't have that kind

(47:45):
of reaction for a guitar tuner.So I started to, you know,
pad down the shirts and I foundhold on, We're gonna take a break.
When we come back, Sergeant Raysis gonna tell us exactly what he
found because of his dog, Zeipher. But first, this is Unsolved with
Steve Gregory on KFI AM six forty. You're listening to KFI AM six forty

(48:07):
on demand k I AM six fortylive and on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
This is Unsolved with Steve Gregory.We've been talking with Sergeant Sergio Reyes

(48:30):
at the La County Sheriff' Department's FraudCybercrime Bureau. And before the break we
kind of left the cliffhanger you toset the scene again. You and your
dog Zeipher was just the latest additionto the canine program here at Cybercrimes.
You were in a small apartment inHollywood. A podcaster who was sort of

(48:51):
on it was parole, probation,probation, excuse me on probation. And
you say that Zeipher literally dived ata closet in the corner and you found
a guitar tuner, and you thoughtthat was a very, very unusual thing
for your dog to pick up on. But I guess there was something else

(49:12):
going on, right, Yes,So, because I know my dog's behavior
and I trained with her constantly,I knew that that particular dive was a
little strange for her to just havedone for a guitar tuner. So I
wanted to explore a little bit further. I pulled out the guitar tuner.
I started looking at it, andI was pretty convinced. I wasn't why

(49:32):
she went back there to try tofind that stuff. So I started to
pat down the clothes and when Ipatted it down the clothes, there was
this jacket. And I patted downthe jacket and I felt what it appeared
to be a phone. So Icalled the case agent and I said,
hey, did you guys check overhere? Come take a look at this

(49:52):
jacket. So the case agent cameup and opened up the jacket and retrieved
a phone. The phone was oneof those phones. It was Samsung style
phone, but they had put tapeon the front camera and on the back
camera in itself a little weird.The guy had multiple phones of his own,

(50:15):
but this one was security in thejacket hidden. It turns out down
the line about two three weeks laterthey were they were able to crack that
phone and found several videos containing sesam and several, if not thousands of
images. So now this guy islooking at approximately thirty five additional years for

(50:36):
possession of that on that particular phone. And wasn't that a red flag when
he said he had multiple phones ofhis own, Well, that's kind of
a red flag, isn't it.It is? But he was disclosing those
So those phones were monitored and hedisclosed those phones. That phone was not
disclosed and was since his possession.And was there ever an idea of why
he had the cameras covered. Ididn't interview him, but I can assume,

(51:00):
would you assume, Well, hewas paranoid, He's he thought they
were watching him. Okay, interesting, So that was a that was the
success story for you. But it'skind of funny though, because Zipher kind
of went one way and then youjust took it and kind of went in,
you know, to its completion.Correct. Yeah, So which is

(51:20):
better, the female dog or themale dog? Well, they both actually,
they both have their strengths and weaknesses. My dog will destroy a room
because she has a semi aggressive alertand she will have You could put a
device in the middle of her roomon a table with multiple stuff around it,
and she will clear the table out, take that stuff and throw it

(51:42):
at you. Soshi won't, SoSoshi will will come around and very take
it, very very just very gingerly, like here, it's right there.
Cipher's also better out in the open, and so Soshi's better out in like
small confined spaces. So Toshi doesn'tlike to climb high stuff. Cipher doesn't

(52:04):
care. She'll go where I tellher to go. So they have the
strengths and witnesses. And that's whywe my partner and I are such a
great team. And we sometimes we'llsweep our room twice just to make sure
that we didn't miss anything, becausewe want to make sure that we take
everything out of there. Are youever told what the what the dog was
up to or a previous owner beforeyou get it? Yes? As a

(52:25):
matter of fact, both of ourdogs are second career dogs. My dog
was a She was trained to bean assistants dog, but she failed out
of the program because she's extremely protectiveof the handler. I can sit here
talking to here. She was layinghere and someone came up behind, she
will probably try to bite them,which is what she was doing when I

(52:46):
was introduced. When yes, andso I know exactly what it is,
you know, to be on thatend of cipher. So Tooshi was trained
to be a CE and I dog, but he has this affina for cats.
So you can imagine what happens ifhe is leading someone on the road
and there goes a cat. Itcould be very bad, a little crazy.

(53:07):
Yeah. So about how many casesdo you think you've handled since you've
been on board with the dog?Well, since I just tagally since May.
I mean, I can't give youan exact number since May, because
I just happened to look at this, and I know there's been thirty eight
cases that I've handled since May.Thirty eight cases? And how many of
those are La County Sheriff's cases asopposed to outside agencies? There is only

(53:32):
two sheriff department? Wow? Reallyyes, I would think you guys would
be a lot busier with the county. We would, we would like to
be, but unfortunately we are not. I think a lot of it has
to do with just the fact thatthis is all new and we we are
we have a hard time adapting tonew things that work. We've I would

(53:59):
like for the department to uses more, However, we can't force them to,
so we make our services available towhoever wants is you know, I
guess you're only subject to being calledout by either homicide or major crimes or
somebody right, correct? Yeah,yeah, correct? And then are you
subject to being called out at allhours of night? Yes. We make
ourselves available to whenever they need usto. Generally they give us the courtesy

(54:22):
to you know, hey, we'replanning this, we're planning that. Are
you available for here? Available forthat the particular days we're going to do
a search one or to do aprobation. However, if it happens to
be an emergency, which has happeneda couple of times, we will roll
out on the drop of a hat. Sergeant. When you know, when
the dog is sniffing for electronics.And it's all based on that faint scent

(54:43):
that is emitted from the hard driveof the device or the hard drive.
Does that scent ever dissipate over timeor is it always stay the same?
You know there is residual there willbe if it will gradually dissipate. Yes,
And that's where having two handlers willhelp, because when my partner talked

(55:05):
about earlier Sergeant p Hish, wherethe dog would look one way or maybe
turn its head. We call ita fish hook. It catches the attention
of the dog, but the dogis going to go for where they're the
stronger odor is. So if there'san order is further down that particular,
that secondary alert is what we callit. It's what I would particularly if
if Saitoshi is searching and I'm therewith my partner, I will focus on

(55:28):
that to try to see what's onthere that got his attention. So yes,
in short, the scent will dissipate. But then if it's if the
memory is activated again, does thatre energize the scent, Well, it's
not. The sense just the scentdoesn't have to be heated, it doesn't
have to be working, it doesn'thave to be connected. It's just the
chips are coated with that particular chemicalgosh. So, just like anything,

(55:52):
if it sits in an area fortoo long, it's going to impregnate that
scent on that area. Eventually itwill dissipate, but the dogs are still
able to pick it up. Gotit. So if you set your phone
on your bed, my dog willgo hit there because that's where the phone
was. Got it. Sergeant,I really appreciate your insight. Thank you
so much. Welcome. When wecome back, we're gonna wrap up with

(56:12):
Sergeant Pete Hish. But first,this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on KFI
AM six forty. You're listening toKFI AM six forty on demand I AM
six forty live and on demand onthe iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory,

(56:34):
and this is Unsolved. We're atthe Los Angeles County shriffs Departments Fraud and
Cybercrime Bureau. We are at anundisclosed location in South Los Angeles County.
This is the heartbeat of the cyberCrimes and Fraud Suppression and Investigative Arm for
the LA County Shriff's Department, butit's also part of a state funded Southern

(56:55):
California High Tech Task Force, whichmeans they basically work for anybody who asks
for help. Is that right,yes, sir, Yeah, they call
us, we will help them.We're talking with Sergeant Pete Hish Now.
We started the show with him.He's been a longtime friend to KFI News,
He's been on the show before.And what we wanted to do was
sort of highlight the tools in thetoolbox now for cyber crimes and also child

(57:22):
exploitation, sextortion and all these otherjust really nasty crimes that are going on
out there. But I just lovethat you're using the lowest of low tech
a dog. And I mean thatin the best possible way. But now
they are trained to do something remarkable, and that is to sniff out the
faintest of odors coming off of electronicdevices, and they're able now to detect

(57:46):
them in as we heard the sergeantbefore, you talk about a room full
of electronics, and yet with justthe right focus and calibration, that dog
can go right to where you needit to go. I just think it's
absolutely fascinating. This has got tobe pretty rewarding for you. It's highly
rewarding. It's actually when we getour dogs into a room and they find

(58:06):
something that's a that's a very uhlike high level reward for us. That's
that's that makes my day. Theyfind something, my day is complete.
You know, we've been talking aboutsome of the cases. That's some of
the more interesting cases that you've solvedover time. But there are some unsolved
cases in your bureau. Do anykind of just jump to the front of
mind for you. There are alot of unsolved cases, and it's getting

(58:30):
to the point nowadays where it's almosta crisis with the financial fleecing of citizens
in La County and I shouldn't evensay a La County. In the entire
nation. Cyber is being used tosteal a lot of money from people,
and it's uh. In my opinion, it's getting to the point to where

(58:52):
it's almost a national security risk withthe way it's depleting people's life savings and
investment and things like that, andit's becoming an issue. There are a
few different ones that come to mind. One of them is pig butchering.
I don't know if you know thatterm or what kind of crime that is

(59:14):
or how it happens, but it'san investment scam where somebody is using a
dating app, let's say some kindof dating app, and they're on a
dating app talking to people doing theirthing, and they get contacted by somebody
on this dating app. And initiallyit might be a normal conversation like,

(59:34):
you know, learning about each other, whatever, But then the suspect will
switch from that kind of conversation intoinvestments, and usually it's cryptocurrency investments.
Hey, have you heard of cryptocurrency? Another person might say, oh,
a little bit or not much orwhatever. Hey, let me show you
this information on how you can doubletriple ten times your investment over a short

(59:55):
period of time. So that otherperson gets interested. It's like, wow,
I can do that. Yeah,all you got to do is download
this app or go to this webpage and make an account. And you
know, I know we're only online, so you know you haven't met me.
So just to be safe, justinvest one hundred dollars and see see
what happens, and then if ifyou like it, then keep on going.

(01:00:19):
So they'll invest one hundred dollars andthey'll see increases in their investment and
over time they'll be like, ohwow, I have four hundred dollars in
it now. Can I get itout? So they'll they'll say, I
want to get my four hundred dollarsout there out of there. Sure enough,
here's your four hundred bucks back,and they get the four hundred dollars
back. Well, the reason it'scalled pig butchering is because the name pig

(01:00:43):
is really the suspect saying, Okay, they're being greedy, they're they're they're
they're getting sucked into something that's toogood to be true, and they keep
on doing it. So that person, the suspect reapproaches them and says,
hey, why don't you invest moremoney? Put a thousand dollars through ten
thousand dollars, And then they're lookingat their dashboard and on their website.

(01:01:04):
It's a fake website, and it'sgoing up and up and up, ten
thousand dollars and now twenty thirty putmore and put more in, four or
five hundred thousand dollars. Now youhave a million dollars in there. You
investor four hundred thousand dollars. Andwhen it gets to those levels of money,
when the victim tries to take thatmoney out, it doesn't come out.
It's gone. And that's a bigone that's a big series of cases

(01:01:25):
we have. We have hundreds ofthose of those cases just here in La
County where a big victim demographic inthat in that arena are Asian Americans living
in LA County that get sucked intothat. Why why that's why that demographic
Well, I don't know exactly whyit's Asian, but I do know that

(01:01:46):
the end result is the people whoare perpetrating this crime from the highest level
are in China. So maybe theyunderstand the culture that maybe they understand how
interact approach correct, and they suckthese people in and they're losing life saving
millions of dollars. We've had caseswhere people have lost a million dollars one

(01:02:08):
point five million dollars in big money. We're just not talking about dollars and
cents here. We're talking about bigmoney. And that's a big problem.
Right now, I'm just going toask you what countries are the most offenders.
This isn't something where someone down thestreet from where I live is doing
these cybercrimes, right correct. Andthe interesting part about it is, aside

(01:02:28):
from ce SAM and child pornography,is take the child sex sexual exploitation element
out for a minute and just talkabout financial exploitation. The people doing this
are not Americans. There are peoplein other countries victimizing Americans. Very rarely
will we have an American victimizing anAmerican. It's usually starting from other countries

(01:02:50):
India, Russia, China, thosetypes of countries where we have poor to
non existent diplomatic relations with those countries. And they know that even if we
track them down in China or Russiaor some former Soviet block country, we're
not gonna be able to do anythingbecause they're they're out there and the continue
to do it. In the lastfew seconds we have left, Sergeant,

(01:03:12):
what are things people can do toprotect themselves? Yeah, First, if
it's too good to be true,it's not true. Just accept it.
If you want to invest money,go to a regular investment company like Charles
Schwab or or one of those kindof companies. Investor money there. You
don't do these online things. They'reone hundred person. To be clear,
you're not endorsing Charles Schwab necessarily,that's an example. That's things. No,

(01:03:36):
I'm not. I'm just using thatright, that's what I have.
So I'm just like, okay,whatever, But Yeah, just use use
a reputable investment firm when you're whenyou're doing this stuff. Don't do this
online stuff because it's not true.Have strong passwords, don't click on anything
in your emails or your text messagesthat are going to lead you to another
website. Be very diligent in whatyou're doing online because these actors, the

(01:04:00):
cyber actors, have become very goodin manipulating things and making things appear legitimate
when they're not. It's a bigproblem right now, and it's a big
It all comes down to the educationof the citizens to be able to protect
themselves from this. Sergeant Petehish,always a pleasure, great information, and
thanks for all the great background onSatoshi. And good to meet Sergeant Rays

(01:04:24):
as well. So keep up thegreat work and thank you for your time.
You got to Steve, thank youfor having us. And that's going
to do it Unsolved with Steve Gregory. The radio show is a production of
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