In the inaugural episode of Stolen, a podcast, Erin West shares her journey from being a local prosecutor to becoming a crusader against transnational organized crime. Joined by producer Brandon Doble, Erin discusses the compelling reasons behind starting this podcast and the staggering scale of financial scams orchestrated by organized criminals. She reveals her motivation rooted in witnessing countless victims lose their life savings and the little-known aspect of human traffickers driving these scams from compounds in Southeast Asia. The episode sheds light on the intersection of financial crime, technology, and human trafficking. Erin also introduces Operation Shamrock, her initiative to combat these crimes through education, seizure, and disruption. The conversation aims to raise awareness and educate listeners about the pervasive and sophisticated nature of these scams, emphasizing the need for a collective fight against them.
00:00 Welcome to Stolen: Meet the Hosts
01:34 The Spark Behind the Podcast
02:04 Unveiling the Financial Crime Crisis
03:24 From Prosecutor to Advocate
16:59 The Birth of Operation Shamrock
25:59 Understanding Pig Butchering
37:24 The Human Trafficking Connection
41:06 Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser
I giant thank you to our first sponsor: TRM Labs
TRM Labs - Blockchain Investigations & Risk Management -Investigate, monitor, and detect crypto and digital asset fraud and financial crime
stolenapodcast@gmail.com
https://operationshamrock.org/
#stolenapodcastwitherinwest #erinwest #operationshamrock #pigbutchering #cybercrime #organizedcrime #transnationalorganizedcrime #stolenpodcast #stolenapodcast #scams #fraud #TRM #TRMLabs
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00):
Hi friends.
Welcome to Stolen, a podcast.
This is episode one and we're excitedto have you with us on today's episode.
It's gonna be a littledifferent from the others.
You're going to meet my producer,Brandon Doble, and he's gonna ask me
some questions about who I am, how Ifind myself in this place, and what
(01:20):
we're going to be doing on this podcast.
So I'm excited for you tomeet him, and I'm excited to
get started with the podcast.
So join us.
Hello everybody.
I am here with my friend Erin West,who is launching her very own podcast.
(01:42):
Now, Erin, you've beenon a lot of podcasts.
I know that you've been interviewed bya lot of people, but I wanted to talk
to you as we launch this new podcast.
I wanted, before we even get started aboutwhat the topic is or anything I wanted to
talk to you about, what sparked the idea.
Of a podcast for you in general,there are millions of podcasts.
What made you think, Hey,I wanna start a podcast?
(02:04):
I wanna start a podcast because I've gotan unbelievably incredible story to tell.
What I've seen over the past threeyears is a deluge of financial crime
victims who have come to me and whohave lost every cent that they had,
that they built up over their life.
And when I dug further into it and Ifound out that the people stealing their
(02:27):
money were Chinese organized criminals,and then I dug even further and found
out that the workforce enabling thesescams are victims who have been human
trafficked into doing this work andare forced to live inside compounds
and work 16 hour days or be tortured.
(02:49):
I really couldn't believe whatwas happening in this world.
And I couldn't believe the scale, themagnitude, the amount of money being
moved, the number of people beingvictimized in both the compounds and in
losing all of their financial wherewithal.
We've got an amazing, andI say amazing in a big way.
It is a jaw dropping amount ofcriminal activity that is devastating
(03:13):
people on every corner of this globe.
Okay, here I am, Johnny, on the street.
I didn't know anythingabout this before I met you.
How did you get involved in this?
To start with, I got involvedin these type of crimes because
I was a local prosecutor.
I worked at the Santa Clara CountyDistrict Attorney's office and
(03:34):
for over 26 and a half years, Iprosecuted all kinds of crimes.
In the last few years of my career,I prosecuted high tech crimes and was
attached to a high tech task forcemade up of detectives who specialize
in crimes that were happening on theinternet and involving cryptocurrency.
For the last three years, allI did were these type of cases.
(03:57):
We saw a major shift in how peopleare being victimized worldwide.
I. They're being victimized onan industrial scale from scam
centers located in Southeast Asia.
So you retire from the district attorney'soffice, and I'm just trying to wrap my
head around how you even get started.
(04:19):
Was it just a naturalflow into this world?
Because you are dialed into it now.
So I'm wondering, was it justa natural flow, just a natural
curiosity to start with?
Or was it the problem just so bigthat you're like, wait, nobody's
doing anything about this?
The reason I got so deep into thisis because I could not believe
that something this big was goingundetected, unreported, unchallenged.
(04:43):
I'm a naturally curious person, andwhat I found when I started looking into
who's behind this was an unbelievablylarge scale targeted operation that
is got its cross hairs on takingwealth from the rest of the world.
Yeah, it's unusual that a localprosecutor would find herself in
(05:05):
this position, but what I found wasthat the more I looked into this, the
more I could not believe what I wasseeing, hearing and understanding,
and I couldn't stop talking about it.
So was there a moment, I guess an ahamoment where you was like, wait a second,
I'm gonna dedicate my life to this nowbecause this, it's a passion for you.
(05:28):
Anybody that's been around yournose, this is your passion and
it's amazing to watch and hear.
So was there a moment wherethat happened for you?
The moment that I realized Ineeded to retire from my job at the
District Attorney's office and focusfull-time on this was in September
of 2024 when I was asked to testifybefore Congressional hearing about
(05:53):
how massive this problem was.
And Aaron West from the Districtattorney's office sat next to US
Treasury and the US Secret Service.
I was the one that had the on theground information that really
could convey to Congress what washappening in their own jurisdictions.
And I realized that this was avoice that needed to be heard and
(06:16):
that I don't just represent thecitizens of Santa Clara County.
I represent the tens of thousandsof people who are getting victimized
by this crime, both in the UnitedStates and abroad, that nobody's
hearing from this crime is.
So massive.
Why is Aaron West prosecutedfrom Santa Clara County?
(06:38):
Why have you become the voice of this?
You are really the canary inthe coal mine in a lot of ways.
Why is it you that's doing this and notthe treasury Department or whatever?
I. One of the problems with workinginside government is that you are not
really allowed to use your own voiceand you are you, you're a representative
of the US government or you're arepresentative of Santa Clara County and.
(07:02):
To have the freedom to say what needed tobe said, I had to leave my government job.
And that gives me the opportunityto say the things that need to be
said that perhaps our colleaguesin government just can't say.
And especially today, it's very difficultto say things that need to be hurt.
Yeah.
And it's not like you're sayingthat the government people,
(07:22):
the working government are bad.
It's just the system that's set upmakes it hard for them to do this.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
I think that what happens whenyou're inside government is you are
accountable to bosses who your personalviews about what needs to be done
may not match what the government'sinterest is in executing those plans.
So I really, I have the opportunitythat none of my colleagues in
(07:46):
local and state government have.
I can talk and there's a lot of peoplewith a lot of information who just.
As a result of where they workaren't allowed to talk about this.
And so that leaves me to talk about it.
So I think I know the answer tothis, but I'm gonna ask it anyway.
Why now?
Why start this podcast now?
(08:06):
In coming from the space of being alocal prosecutor and having a limited
amount of ways to get this informationout, I turned to LinkedIn and I started
posting frequently on LinkedIn about whatI was seeing on the ground floor, and
suggesting ways that we could disruptthis industry, educate about this
(08:26):
industry, seize money from this industry.
I've gotten awareness out to a goodchunk of people, and I've gotten
some good media interest, but thefact is this crime will not stop
until my Aunt Judy knows about it.
And so I needed a podcast to beable to reach regular people.
I needed a podcast to be able to reachmy neighbor and my kids' friends' parents
(08:50):
and their grandparents and their kids.
It's just this crime is going to hit.
Everyone who has a smartphone,so everyone from 12 to 80
90, this crime hits everyone.
And so I needed a broader,a bigger microphone.
And so now is the time that we stillwe're three and a half years into this.
(09:12):
And I'm not seeing positive change.
I'm not seeing thesituation getting better.
In fact, I'm seeing itget exponentially worse.
So I need to start sendingthis message more widely.
What happened three and a half years ago?
You've referenced that timethere's been fraud forever.
This isn't a new thing, in terms offraud itself, but what happened three
(09:33):
and a half years ago that launched?
So I was happily working with my taskforce doing hacking cases and going
after other bad guys who were usingthe internet and using cryptocurrency.
And we heard from our firstvictim of this type of crime.
He was a 30-year-old softwareengineer and he told us.
(09:53):
That he had been involved in aromance scam slash investment
scheme, and he had lost everything.
Now, we were familiar with general romancescheme type things, and we were familiar
with how people could be tricked out ofcryptocurrency, but we had never seen
a situation that led to someone losingeverything before this first victim.
(10:16):
The initial instinct when yousee a victim like that is to say,
oh, well the money is overseas.
The bad guys are overseas.
What are we gonna do with this?
But I came from a task force that usesa mantra of, what if we could, what
if we could find that money for him?
What if we could help this guy?
And so we did.
And so my task force got to work ontracing that cryptocurrency, figuring
(10:40):
out where his money was, and figuringout how to get it back to him.
That was our first case.
And then the cases started to floodin and we realized that there was a
crisis here, that this wasn't a one-off.
This was the first person who waswilling to tell us what happened.
And it all started there.
And once we realized, oh, thisis a phenomenon, there's never
(11:02):
been a day since that I haven't.
Heard about some type of this scamhappening to someone or been contacted
myself in my email or on my phonewith some sort of come on to be
involved in this scam situation.
In our second show Little, wecall this in the Biz a teaser.
We're gonna talk about why thishappened 3, 4, 5 years ago, and
(11:28):
I'll give you a little hint.
It has to do with Covid, but we'lltalk about the roots of this.
Where we go from here.
Who do you, and I again, I think you'vesort of answered this, but who do you
hope to reach with this show as we'velaunched this podcast into the world?
Who are we?
Who are we hoping hears it?
I think that this podcast will appealto really anybody I'm hoping to attract.
(11:53):
The first group of people whowill say, wow, I heard about a
crazy scam, and I heard about.
That it turns out that the scam iscoming from overseas in a really
industrialized manner, and I hope thatthey'll tell their friends about it and
they'll tell their friends about it.
The goal of this podcast is tomake this type of transnational
(12:17):
scamming the new Nigerian prince.
When I said that to a millennial recently,they didn't even know what the Nigerian
prince was, but the fact is, plenty ofus do, and plenty of us know that if you
get a scam request that says, Hey, I'm aNigerian prince and I need help getting
my inheritance, we know that's a scam.
What I want to do is reach everybody.
Worldwide to say, Hey, anythingthat is coming at you on your
(12:41):
phone or your computer is a scammeruntil proven otherwise, that needs
to be our outlook these days.
Time now for a quick breakto thank our sponsors.
Hey friends, I want to let you knowthat our first ever sponsor of stolen
a podcast is TRM Labs, and if youknow anything about me, you will not
(13:05):
be surprised by this because I haverelied on TRM labs a number of times
in the past and they have come forward.
To provide training, to provide tools,and now to provide me with the assistance
to bring you this important podcast.
So thank you so much, TRM.
I'm grateful.
(13:27):
We're gonna be talking about thingslike sextortion, as well as pig
butchering, uh, things, and some of thenames you're gonna hear on this show
right now will make more sense as wego along as we begin to explain this.
But are you aiming to educate everydayusers, speak to professionals,
or maybe a little bit of both.
Because I know there arepodcasts out there that speak
to this professional audience.
(13:48):
Who are you specificallyyou want to be talking to?
I want real life people, real,my neighbors, my cousins.
I want them to hear this and recognizethat, wow, this is happening to people
I know, and this could happen to me.
I want us to get over that humpwhere people see a news story.
(14:09):
It's always an elderly woman, andeverybody looks at that news story and
says, oh, well that wouldn't happen to me.
The fact is it can happen to you.
It is happening to you.
You know, somebody thatthis has happened to.
So we need to broadcast that.
But secondly, yes, on this podcast,we're not just going to sensationalize
the crime and what's happening, butwe're gonna talk about solutions.
(14:32):
And when we talk about solutions,we're gonna talk to experts
who have thought this through.
We are gonna talk to practitioners whoare in the weeds on this and who will tell
us, gosh, if we could make these changes.
That would really make adent in what's happening.
So this podcast isn't just going tobe, here's this week's latest scam.
It's, here's this week's latest scam,and here's the crisis that we're
(14:54):
in, and here's what we can do aboutit and what we must do about it.
From that, what are the type of topicsyou're gonna dive into on the show?
What I want is to normalize talkingabout scams, and what I mean by that is.
We fall for scams all the time.
I was on TRM talks and I talked toAri Red board about the time, not
(15:20):
very long ago, that I clicked on aphishing attempt, and I think we need to
normalize that this happens to everybody.
So we're gonna, we'regonna work on normalizing.
The scam situation and talk aboutthe benefits of letting people know
that I too have fallen for this scam.
Don't fall for this one.
I also wanna educate about what specificscams are out there so that people can
(15:42):
talk to their kids and their parentsso that they don't fall for them.
And I wanna talk about the specificscams that are out there so that
people can educate their kids andtheir parents and their grandparents
so that they are not victimized inthe same way that so many people are.
I also wanna talk about the stigma thatcomes when we brand people stupid, and
(16:06):
I would never have fallen for that.
I wanna talk about the languagewe use that makes victims
less likely to come forward.
I. I wanna talk about the data that weneed that in order to quantify whether
this problem is getting bigger or thework we're doing is helping, we need
to have a baseline data set to reallyunderstand how big this problem is.
(16:28):
I wanna talk about how we get there.
When you started this, you leavethe district attorney's office.
What's the first step for you?
Aaron West.
The crime fighter.
I love that you're a crime fighter.
If anybody saw you with your great glassesand your cat, Steve, behind you, the fact
that you are doing this is incredible.
(16:49):
Gimme the steps that lead us to here,because I know you started a couple
of organizations along the way andyou've tried to educate some people.
What have you done up to thispoint and moving forward?
When I started to work really deeplyon what's happening with these type of
scams that are coming at us primarilyfrom Southeast Asia, I started talking
about what we could do today, and Ilabeled it as Educate Ceases Disrupt, and
(17:13):
I wrote a lot about it on LinkedIn, andevery post I'd end with Educate ceases
Disrupt when I made the change fromworking at the district attorney's office
to going out on my own to fight this.
I was ready to put together a team whowanted to make things better with me.
(17:33):
I did.
I called it Operation Shamrock.
We are currently pending nonprofit status.
We are waiting for the government to deemus a nonprofit, but we are very much a
organization that is focused on educatingthe population about what is happening,
educating law enforcement about how torespond to this, educating banking about
(17:55):
what to do when a victim wants to takeall their money out of their accounts.
We focus on seizing how toseize this money and get it
back in the hands of victims.
We talk about disrupting.
How can we put a dent inwhat is happening out there?
How can we make it harder, more difficult,more expensive, more time consuming
(18:16):
for the bad actors to do this work,and how we can mobilize people who care
about this to join the fight with us.
So I built that.
I called it Operation Shamrock.
Operation Shamrock is in thebusiness of bringing together the
entire life cycle of these crimes.
We bring together banking, lawenforcement, social media, telco,
(18:38):
diplomacy, crypto exchanges, peopleon the ground, overseas, NGOs, and
victim services to really look atthe whole lifecycle and to start.
Trying to fill any gap we can find andtrying to exploit any weaknesses that
are exhibited by these bad actors.
(18:58):
And a big part of that is awareness.
A big part of that is letting peopleknow what is happening out there.
So starting a podcast is a very naturalfit for the next step of what you
do when you are trying to educate aglobe about this incredible threat.
You have just laid out one of the mostdaunting goals and tasks I think I've
(19:22):
ever thought about in terms of stoppingthe amount of crime that's going on
out there, and we're not talking.
Can you give us some basic idea of whatkind of money are we talking about here?
I can certainly quantifyit in tens of billions.
Others will say hundreds of billions.
The fact is it is a wealth transfer.
From ordinary citizens into thehands of bad actors that we have
(19:47):
never seen before in history.
We're talking about household byhousehold, cleaning out entire
families and putting that moneyin the hands of bad actors.
Why in the world, and you've touchedon this a little bit about government,
if somebody was robbing us, ifsomebody was coming to our houses
left and right and just robbing us.
(20:07):
There would be nothingbut police everywhere.
Why aren't we seeing that this isnot a criticism of law enforcement?
This is more of a real question ofwhy hasn't this been raised to the
level that it seems like it should be?
It's an interesting intersection of anumber of crime types here, and there's
probably a lot of reasons why it hasn'tgotten the attention it deserves.
(20:28):
One of them is this fraud?
Is this typical fraud?
Does this fit in the bucket of high tech?
Does this fit in thebucket of cryptocurrency?
What bucket does this crime fitin, and who should be responsible
for doing the work to make it stop?
The second piece of it is.
And I think it's a natural, unfortunately,a natural response to, in a lot of
(20:53):
situations for people to say, that'snot in my wheelhouse, that belongs to
this organization or that organization.
The fact is, we don't have time anymore tobe trying to figure out who it belongs to.
We need every group, every, we need fraud,high tech, crypto, everybody in the room
to say, okay, I'll take this piece of it.
I'll take that piece of it.
(21:13):
So that's one thing is thatit's not easily categorized.
The second thing is I think that thereis a large part of the population that
thinks that this only happens to oldpeople who are incapacitated in some way.
I. And that is simplynot what we're seeing.
Statistics from the FBI will showyou that there are as many victims
(21:36):
under 50 as there are over 50.
This is happening to ourentire population, and people
just aren't hearing that yet.
Media is showing this to them as well.
Let's talk to Eunice, who lost hermoney and thought she had a boyfriend.
And that's not a good representationof what is really happening.
(21:59):
We're gonna have a lot of examples ofpeople that have been victimized by this.
And the one thing that for me personally,that got me interested in working with
you and doing this is that that happens.
People say, oh, they must just be dumb.
They just must be dumb people.
They must just be naiveand it's just not true.
It is happening everywhere all the time,and our job is to try to illuminate that.
(22:23):
So in our last few minutes together ontoday, on our very first Origin Story
podcast and I'm, we're very excitedto be bringing this to the world.
It's that important.
Give us an example of a victim storythat's happened that you are aware
of that really struck you as a personinterviewing or talking with them.
(22:44):
There's a lot of belief that this couldn'thappen to me, and there's a lot of
misunderstanding about what this crime is.
So when I spoke to a woman in hermid forties who is a PhD, who is a
triathlete, who is a lovely person, anattractive person, a warm and kind person.
(23:11):
And she told me about the amount ofmoney she lost in a romance scam.
It was an eyeopener for me becauseuntil you really hear a story from
someone that sounds like you, it'shard to believe it could happen to you.
Mm-hmm.
And so when I spoke to this woman,she was willing to share with me her
(23:34):
account of it, and she had writtenup this really well-written paper
about how this happened to her.
And all the things, every time she gotto a left or to a fork in the road,
like he wouldn't meet me in person.
I always think, okay, wellthat would be the deal breaker.
And then she would write or tell meabout, here's why he made that make sense.
(23:57):
And then when I heard theexplanation, I thought, oh, okay.
I could see that too.
There was a lot of delaying what.
What they both looked forward tothat they knew when they finally
met, it would be this amazing moment.
And so he talked her into the dream ofthe delay is okay because it's gonna
be so great when we finally do meet.
(24:19):
But the point of what I'm tellingyou is that I. In listening to her
and having her explain why when thishappened, he explained it this way.
When this happened, heexplained it this way.
All of a sudden it made sense and itmade sense in a way that I could see
how this would happen to someone inisolation, which is a huge part of this
(24:40):
whole thing, is that when we are ableto normalize this and allow people to
share their stories with each other,a best friend might say, oh yeah,
but I don't think that makes sense.
But what these scammersdo is they isolate people.
And so I can see howshe got where she got.
So my point in telling you about thiswoman is that what happened to her could
(25:03):
happen to your sister or your cousin.
And it's stories like that thatneed to be told so that we can take
ourselves away from this mistaken.
Actually quite rude and conceptthat I'm too smart for this.
This would never happen to me.
Time now for a quick breakto thank our sponsors.
(25:26):
Hey friends, I just wanna thank TRM Labs,our first ever sponsor of the podcast.
I love their message.
They're building a safer financialsystem for billions of people, and that's
exactly what we are trying to do as well.
Create a safer situation for peoplewho are going about their daily lives
(25:46):
and engaging with digital media.
You have given us the origin story.
We now know why Erin West is doing whatshe's doing, or at least we think we do.
And I know you've been super busy withthis, but it would be helpful for our
audience as especially this is our firstepisode, is to give an example of one of
(26:08):
the major frauds that are out there today.
People are probably hearing aboutit if you've read The Economist
article or listened to pies ona thing called Pig butchering.
I had never heard of it before Iactually met you, pig butchering.
I'm sure a lot of people haveheard of it now, but it was
pretty much under the radar.
Can you tell us what pig butchering is,what its roots are, where it comes from,
who's doing it, so on and so forth.
(26:29):
Pig butchering is one of themost vile crimes to hit the
United States in decades.
It is a combination romance scamslash investment scheme, and it's
really decimating our population.
What's, and I know thatsounds outrageous, but I'm.
I'm here to tell you, I spend myFridays talking to victims of this
(26:52):
scam, and this morning I talkedto somebody who lost $1.7 million,
400,000 of that was his own money.
Ouch.
And then he saw how great thisinvestment was performing and
he asked his friends to join.
Oh, so this gentleman told me about hisloss, how he feels so responsible for his
(27:13):
friends' losses and how it landed him.
In a psychiatric facility for a week.
Whoa.
People are losing tens of billions ofdollars to Chinese organized crime.
And I wanna tell a little bitmore about how this scam works.
I first heard about pigbutchering in March, 2023.
(27:35):
At that time, I was a prosecutor workingwith an elite high tech task force
of local and state employees, and.
One of the detectives saidhe's working on a case.
Had I ever heard of Pig Butchering?
And I said, Nope, I sure hadn't.
And he told me about a victimwho had reported to us.
He was 30 years old, hewas a software engineer.
(27:58):
And over the course of just a fewmonths, he had become acquainted
with someone online that he fellin love with and believed that
this person was his true love and.
Had never found someone who understoodhim the way this person did.
And over time, this person showed him areally enviable lifestyle that she had.
(28:22):
She was wealth, she traveled, she drovea nice car, she played golf and did yoga.
But most importantly, she wasso interested in him and he fell
in love with this person and wassold a dream of being with her.
Where did he meet her?
He met her online on a dating appand had every reason to believe that
(28:42):
she was a legitimate person and waslegitimately interested in him, and
after a while she told him that theway she had made her money was in
cryptocurrency investments and isvery standard in these type of cases.
She said she didn't knowhow to do it either.
But that she, her uncle taught her andher uncle could teach my victim as well.
(29:06):
And so over the next few months,my victim was lured into this fake
investment platform where he startedwith just a little bit of money.
It's important to understandhow the scam works.
Our victim took money outof his checking account.
Moved it into a cryptocurrency platform,an exchange that is a legitimate exchange.
(29:29):
It's usually Coinbaseor crypto.com or Kraken.
From there, the scammer taughtour victim how to change that.
Those US dollars into USDT,it's a crypto stable coin.
It trades for one-to-onewith the US dollar.
So instead of having 5,000 USdollars, this person now had 5,000
(29:51):
tether or 5,000 USDT, and all ofthat remained in the victim's custody
and still remained his money inhis legitimate account at Coinbase.
But where the theft comes in is thescammer will then say, my uncle says
that this is the best platform to doyour trading in, and the scammer will
(30:11):
give the victim A-U-R-L-A website.
Our victim will go to that website,set up an account, and our victims
will have every reason to believethat this is a legitimate website.
They prey on people who are new tocryptocurrency and won't be able
to easily tell the difference.
But I can also tell you thatthey're so sophisticated that it's
(30:32):
not easy to tell the difference.
Sometimes with some of these websites,our victim will create an account,
have every reason to believe it'sa legitimate account, and then the
scammer will tell the victim to movethe money into this account, and
the scammer will give our victim acryptocurrency address to move that money.
Now, if you're not.
(30:53):
Super familiar with cryptocurrency.
That's okay.
All you need to understandhere is that victim was given
a location to send the money.
You can think of it as a bankaccount or a stock exchange
account or anything like that.
Basically, the scammer told thevictim where to send the money.
The victim sent the money andit was not a real platform.
(31:14):
It was straight into the wallet of thescammer, but our poor victims think that.
It's real because they're shown adashboard and it looks just like
any other investment dashboard.
And what they will see is that in withina week, their money will go from 5,000
Tether to 6,800 to 7,500, and beforethe end of the week, they've doubled
(31:37):
their money and they have 10,000 tether.
And the scammer may even allow ourvictim to take some of that out as
proof that they control this money.
Mm-hmm.
And then what happens is that our victimis led to believe that this is legitimate
and there are more opportunities, andthe victim is coerced over time to
liquidate their retirement accounts,liquidate accounts they've set up for
(32:01):
their children's college, and beforethey realize that they've invested every
penny into this and they think they'rea millionaire, they think they've got
more than a million in there, and they.
They believe that they're going tomarry this person and their dreams
have all come true, and they'vecreated wealth for themselves.
I think that a lot of people who aren'tfamiliar with this think, I don't
(32:23):
know why you would give away yourmoney to someone you don't know, but
that's not what's happening at all.
Our victims believe that they arebuilding wealth for themselves and
their family, that they have beenblessed to have become acquainted
with someone who can teach them.
How to triple their money.
(32:44):
And then the hammer hits.
When our victims then try to takesome money out, the scammer will
say, okay, now you have to pay taxeson the money that you've taken.
And our victims say, oh,we didn't know about that.
Take it out of my gains.
And the scammer will say,Nope, it has to be clean money.
And that's when our victims reallybelieve that they're gonna be
(33:05):
able to turn this around quickly.
They just need a quick loan sothey can pay those taxes, get their
money out, and pay back the loan.
So they will go to their bank andthey'll get a home equity line.
They will get a secondmortgage on their house.
They will borrow from friends and family.
They will get payday loans,they will get anything just to
turn this money around quickly.
And that's when they realize theypay their taxes, their fake taxes.
(33:28):
And then there's another fee.
And that's when our victims realized,oh my God, this thing was a scam.
And not only is all their money goneand they're in debt, but the person
behind this whole thing was thisperson that they'd fallen in love with
and they realized, oh my God, thisperson was planning my demise from the
(33:50):
first text, from our first meeting.
And what we're seeing is that people arenot set up to deal with that mentally.
We rely on our financialfooting to help us feel secure.
We rely on our connections withpeople to help us feel secure.
And when you can't trust people and youdon't have financial footing anymore, it's
(34:12):
frequently too much for people to bear.
And we are seeing suicides.
We are seeing people hurting themselves.
We are seeing people checkingthemselves into psychiatric facilities.
It is a devastation, unlike anyone Ihave seen in my 26 and a half years as a
prosecutor before I retired in November.
So wait a second.
(34:34):
The thing that gets me, that I guessI am still befuddled by, and you
and I talk about this all the time,is how come no one, why are they
not ringing bells from the rooftopsabout this and letting everyone know?
Unfortunately, the scammers areusing really good tricks against
these victims, and they're usingpsychological coercive techniques.
(34:58):
And by the time our victimsrealize what has happened to
them, they're very self-blaming.
They are very quick to blame themselvesand feel guilty and feel stupid.
And when someone feels guilty,stupid, humiliated, they aren't
likely to come forward and talkabout what happened to them.
(35:20):
They're likely to think, I can't believeI fell for this and lost all my money.
But the reality is we can't expect peopleto beat a. Tried and true practice.
This is, that has been working for fiveyears now where this works over and over
and over, and these scammers have honedtheir craft and they're excellent at this.
(35:44):
And so unfortunately what happenswith our victims is they don't
see that or understand that.
They know that they've lost a lot ofmoney and they've lost a loved one.
And between the humiliation of losingeither one of them, but combined together.
It's too embarrassing to go forward.
And I'll tell you another problem, andI heard this directly from a victim
(36:06):
two hours ago, was that when he went into report this to law enforcement and
he showed up with a stack of documentslaying out exactly how this went down.
The local police officer said,I'm not gonna read your documents,
not gonna go through it.
I don't have time for this.
How much money did you lose?
(36:27):
My victim told him the 1.7 millionthat he had lost, and the officer
laughed at him and said, I can'tbelieve you were so stupid.
That's why people don't come forward.
Oh my God.
And that's gotta change.
Yeah.
Because we're gonna talk aboutthe law enforcement side of all
this, and there are law enforcementpeople that really get it and on
top of this and are working hard.
But you're right, that kindof stuff still happened.
(36:48):
We have the victims.
But as I understand it, and maybeyou can correct me if I'm wrong
on this, there's another side.
There's a whole nother group ofvictims that are involved in this
scam, and you've been visiting, Iknow you just got back from a trip
in Myanmar and Cambodia and also thePhilippines where you're visiting these.
I guess they're like business parkswhere the scammers are working.
(37:11):
Can you give us a brief overview of that?
I know we're gonna go intogreat detail in the future.
Again, I keep saying that, but wereally are gonna go into great detail.
But can you give us just a littlebrief idea of what that other side is
and what the other victim status is?
When I first found out aboutpig butchering, I was really
curious to understand who'son the other side of this.
And so I did a deep dive onlineand there wasn't much in 2022
(37:34):
that was written about this.
But what I did find out.
Early on was there were some greatreporters on the ground in Southeast
Asia and they let me know that it'shappening at an industrialized level
in these compounds and that the humanworkforce that's needed to run this
kind of a scam was human trafficked and.
(37:55):
That was a mic drop moment for me.
It was one thing to realize this ishappening in an industrialized way.
Then I found out that it was Chineseorganized crime behind the whole
thing, and then I found out that theirhuman trafficking bright, intelligent.
Workers who are looking for anopportunity when there's 20%
unemployment in China, they need tobring money home to their family.
(38:18):
And so they took these jobs thatthey thought were white collar plus
jobs with a great pay and they couldlive and work there, send money home.
This was appealing and they recruitedsmart people with language skills.
They were looking for English speakers.
What happened was thesevictims of human trafficking.
Just like our financial victims hadevery reason to believe that this was
(38:42):
a legitimate business opportunity.
It looked legit.
The scammers put up legitimate lookingwebsites showing the industrial park that
you'll work in, and then they conductedinterviews, legitimate seeming interviews
where victims were interviewed more thanonce, and then ultimately given the green
light that they had been chosen for this.
(39:03):
What really happened to thesevictims is they were given an
airline ticket to Bangkok where theythought they were going to work.
They arrive in Bangkok.
They are ushered onto a bus.
Their passports are taken, their cellphones are taken, and they are driven
straight into another country wherethey are put behind a locked gate armed
(39:24):
with men with AK 40 sevens and told.
Your job is to scam, and that's whatyou're gonna do now, and the punishment
is severe if you don't comply.
The nature of this is violent and eviland humans are beaten with baseball bats.
They are.
They're required to do excessiveexercise in the heat and
(39:46):
humidity of Southeast Asia.
They are tased, they're injuredin ways that are horrifying.
And that's what's, that's the level ofviolence it requires to get people to
take financial advantage of their fellowhumans, and that's what's going on.
This is a worldwide crisis of massivemagnitude in which there are victims
(40:11):
on both sides, and the only winnersare transnational organized crime.
You gave a little bit of atease there and we are gonna be
talking about these compounds.
We're gonna get interviews withsome of these people that are, have
been there, victims of these crimes,and victims of the people that are
actually doing the scamming, butthat they're victims themselves.
(40:34):
Time now for a quick breakto thank our sponsors.
Thank you so much to our sponsor, TRM.
If you don't know what they do, TRM andits blockchain analytics capability is
what makes it possible for law enforcementto be able to trace these funds back
to the bad actors and recover them.
(40:55):
We couldn't do the work we do for victimswithout TRM labs, so I'm so grateful
that they decided to sponsor our podcast.
We would like to thank you forlistening to the very first episode
of Stolen a podcast with Aaron West.
We are grateful that youtook the time to be with us.
What we talked about is just the tipof a very large iceberg, but that
(41:19):
is all the time we have for today.
We'll be back with a brand new shownext week in which Aaron speaks
with investigative journalists SariPod, about their recent visit to
scam compounds in the Philippines.
It's an incredible story and wecan't wait to share it with you.
Finally.
Once again, we'd like tothank our sponsor, TRM Labs.
We could not do this without them.
(41:40):
If you're interested in sponsoringStolen, please reach out to us at
the email in the show notes below.
Remember to follow, like and subscribewherever you get your podcasts.
And once again, thank youso much for listening.
Have a great week.
Thanks for listening.
This podcast is hosted byErin West, produced and
(42:03):
edited by Smarticle Media.
The show's executiveproducer is Brandon Doble.
I. Music is provided by Epidemic.
Sound Stolen is a fully ownedmedia product of Purple Glasses,
and most importantly, a bigthank you to our sponsors.
We couldn't do it without your support.
Until next time, take care.
Hi friends.
Welcome to Stolen, a podcast.
This is episode one and we're excitedto have you with us on today's episode.
It's gonna be a littledifferent from the others.
You're going to meet my producer,Brandon Doble, and he's gonna ask me
some questions about who I am, how Ifind myself in this place, and what
(01:20):
we're going to be doing on this podcast.
So I'm excited for you tomeet him, and I'm excited to
get started with the podcast.
So join us.
Hello everybody.
I am here with my friend Erin West,who is launching her very own podcast.
(01:42):
Now, Erin, you've beenon a lot of podcasts.
I know that you've been interviewed bya lot of people, but I wanted to talk
to you as we launch this new podcast.
I wanted, before we even get started aboutwhat the topic is or anything I wanted to
talk to you about, what sparked the idea.
Of a podcast for you in general,there are millions of podcasts.
What made you think, Hey,I wanna start a podcast?
(02:04):
I wanna start a podcast because I've gotan unbelievably incredible story to tell.
What I've seen over the past threeyears is a deluge of financial crime
victims who have come to me and whohave lost every cent that they had,
that they built up over their life.
And when I dug further into it and Ifound out that the people stealing their
(02:27):
money were Chinese organized criminals,and then I dug even further and found
out that the workforce enabling thesescams are victims who have been human
trafficked into doing this work andare forced to live inside compounds
and work 16 hour days or be tortured.
(02:49):
I really couldn't believe whatwas happening in this world.
And I couldn't believe the scale, themagnitude, the amount of money being
moved, the number of people beingvictimized in both the compounds and in
losing all of their financial wherewithal.
We've got an amazing, andI say amazing in a big way.
It is a jaw dropping amount ofcriminal activity that is devastating
(03:13):
people on every corner of this globe.
Okay, here I am, Johnny, on the street.
I didn't know anythingabout this before I met you.
How did you get involved in this?
To start with, I got involvedin these type of crimes because
I was a local prosecutor.
I worked at the Santa Clara CountyDistrict Attorney's office and
(03:34):
for over 26 and a half years, Iprosecuted all kinds of crimes.
In the last few years of my career,I prosecuted high tech crimes and was
attached to a high tech task forcemade up of detectives who specialize
in crimes that were happening on theinternet and involving cryptocurrency.
For the last three years, allI did were these type of cases.
(03:57):
We saw a major shift in how peopleare being victimized worldwide.
I. They're being victimized onan industrial scale from scam
centers located in Southeast Asia.
So you retire from the district attorney'soffice, and I'm just trying to wrap my
head around how you even get started.
(04:19):
Was it just a naturalflow into this world?
Because you are dialed into it now.
So I'm wondering, was it justa natural flow, just a natural
curiosity to start with?
Or was it the problem just so bigthat you're like, wait, nobody's
doing anything about this?
The reason I got so deep into thisis because I could not believe
that something this big was goingundetected, unreported, unchallenged.
(04:43):
I'm a naturally curious person, andwhat I found when I started looking into
who's behind this was an unbelievablylarge scale targeted operation that
is got its cross hairs on takingwealth from the rest of the world.
Yeah, it's unusual that a localprosecutor would find herself in
(05:05):
this position, but what I found wasthat the more I looked into this, the
more I could not believe what I wasseeing, hearing and understanding,
and I couldn't stop talking about it.
So was there a moment, I guess an ahamoment where you was like, wait a second,
I'm gonna dedicate my life to this nowbecause this, it's a passion for you.
(05:28):
Anybody that's been around yournose, this is your passion and
it's amazing to watch and hear.
So was there a moment wherethat happened for you?
The moment that I realized Ineeded to retire from my job at the
District Attorney's office and focusfull-time on this was in September
of 2024 when I was asked to testifybefore Congressional hearing about
(05:53):
how massive this problem was.
And Aaron West from the Districtattorney's office sat next to US
Treasury and the US Secret Service.
I was the one that had the on theground information that really
could convey to Congress what washappening in their own jurisdictions.
And I realized that this was avoice that needed to be heard and
(06:16):
that I don't just represent thecitizens of Santa Clara County.
I represent the tens of thousandsof people who are getting victimized
by this crime, both in the UnitedStates and abroad, that nobody's
hearing from this crime is.
So massive.
Why is Aaron West prosecutedfrom Santa Clara County?
(06:38):
Why have you become the voice of this?
You are really the canary inthe coal mine in a lot of ways.
Why is it you that's doing this and notthe treasury Department or whatever?
I. One of the problems with workinginside government is that you are not
really allowed to use your own voiceand you are you, you're a representative
of the US government or you're arepresentative of Santa Clara County and.
(07:02):
To have the freedom to say what needed tobe said, I had to leave my government job.
And that gives me the opportunityto say the things that need to be
said that perhaps our colleaguesin government just can't say.
And especially today, it's very difficultto say things that need to be hurt.
Yeah.
And it's not like you're sayingthat the government people,
(07:22):
the working government are bad.
It's just the system that's set upmakes it hard for them to do this.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.
I think that what happens whenyou're inside government is you are
accountable to bosses who your personalviews about what needs to be done
may not match what the government'sinterest is in executing those plans.
So I really, I have the opportunitythat none of my colleagues in
(07:46):
local and state government have.
I can talk and there's a lot of peoplewith a lot of information who just.
As a result of where they workaren't allowed to talk about this.
And so that leaves me to talk about it.
So I think I know the answer tothis, but I'm gonna ask it anyway.
Why now?
Why start this podcast now?
(08:06):
In coming from the space of being alocal prosecutor and having a limited
amount of ways to get this informationout, I turned to LinkedIn and I started
posting frequently on LinkedIn about whatI was seeing on the ground floor, and
suggesting ways that we could disruptthis industry, educate about this
(08:26):
industry, seize money from this industry.
I've gotten awareness out to a goodchunk of people, and I've gotten
some good media interest, but thefact is this crime will not stop
until my Aunt Judy knows about it.
And so I needed a podcast to beable to reach regular people.
I needed a podcast to be able to reachmy neighbor and my kids' friends' parents
(08:50):
and their grandparents and their kids.
It's just this crime is going to hit.
Everyone who has a smartphone,so everyone from 12 to 80
90, this crime hits everyone.
And so I needed a broader,a bigger microphone.
And so now is the time that we stillwe're three and a half years into this.
(09:12):
And I'm not seeing positive change.
I'm not seeing thesituation getting better.
In fact, I'm seeing itget exponentially worse.
So I need to start sendingthis message more widely.
What happened three and a half years ago?
You've referenced that timethere's been fraud forever.
This isn't a new thing, in terms offraud itself, but what happened three
(09:33):
and a half years ago that launched?
So I was happily working with my taskforce doing hacking cases and going
after other bad guys who were usingthe internet and using cryptocurrency.
And we heard from our firstvictim of this type of crime.
He was a 30-year-old softwareengineer and he told us.
(09:53):
That he had been involved in aromance scam slash investment
scheme, and he had lost everything.
Now, we were familiar with general romancescheme type things, and we were familiar
with how people could be tricked out ofcryptocurrency, but we had never seen
a situation that led to someone losingeverything before this first victim.
(10:16):
The initial instinct when yousee a victim like that is to say,
oh, well the money is overseas.
The bad guys are overseas.
What are we gonna do with this?
But I came from a task force that usesa mantra of, what if we could, what
if we could find that money for him?
What if we could help this guy?
And so we did.
And so my task force got to work ontracing that cryptocurrency, figuring
(10:40):
out where his money was, and figuringout how to get it back to him.
That was our first case.
And then the cases started to floodin and we realized that there was a
crisis here, that this wasn't a one-off.
This was the first person who waswilling to tell us what happened.
And it all started there.
And once we realized, oh, thisis a phenomenon, there's never
(11:02):
been a day since that I haven't.
Heard about some type of this scamhappening to someone or been contacted
myself in my email or on my phonewith some sort of come on to be
involved in this scam situation.
In our second show Little, wecall this in the Biz a teaser.
We're gonna talk about why thishappened 3, 4, 5 years ago, and
(11:28):
I'll give you a little hint.
It has to do with Covid, but we'lltalk about the roots of this.
Where we go from here.
Who do you, and I again, I think you'vesort of answered this, but who do you
hope to reach with this show as we'velaunched this podcast into the world?
Who are we?
Who are we hoping hears it?
I think that this podcast will appealto really anybody I'm hoping to attract.
(11:53):
The first group of people whowill say, wow, I heard about a
crazy scam, and I heard about.
That it turns out that the scam iscoming from overseas in a really
industrialized manner, and I hope thatthey'll tell their friends about it and
they'll tell their friends about it.
The goal of this podcast is tomake this type of transnational
(12:17):
scamming the new Nigerian prince.
When I said that to a millennial recently,they didn't even know what the Nigerian
prince was, but the fact is, plenty ofus do, and plenty of us know that if you
get a scam request that says, Hey, I'm aNigerian prince and I need help getting
my inheritance, we know that's a scam.
What I want to do is reach everybody.
Worldwide to say, Hey, anythingthat is coming at you on your
(12:41):
phone or your computer is a scammeruntil proven otherwise, that needs
to be our outlook these days.
Time now for a quick breakto thank our sponsors.
Hey friends, I want to let you knowthat our first ever sponsor of stolen
a podcast is TRM Labs, and if youknow anything about me, you will not
(13:05):
be surprised by this because I haverelied on TRM labs a number of times
in the past and they have come forward.
To provide training, to provide tools,and now to provide me with the assistance
to bring you this important podcast.
So thank you so much, TRM.
I'm grateful.
(13:27):
We're gonna be talking about thingslike sextortion, as well as pig
butchering, uh, things, and some of thenames you're gonna hear on this show
right now will make more sense as wego along as we begin to explain this.
But are you aiming to educate everydayusers, speak to professionals,
or maybe a little bit of both.
Because I know there arepodcasts out there that speak
to this professional audience.
(13:48):
Who are you specificallyyou want to be talking to?
I want real life people, real,my neighbors, my cousins.
I want them to hear this and recognizethat, wow, this is happening to people
I know, and this could happen to me.
I want us to get over that humpwhere people see a news story.
(14:09):
It's always an elderly woman, andeverybody looks at that news story and
says, oh, well that wouldn't happen to me.
The fact is it can happen to you.
It is happening to you.
You know, somebody thatthis has happened to.
So we need to broadcast that.
But secondly, yes, on this podcast,we're not just going to sensationalize
the crime and what's happening, butwe're gonna talk about solutions.
(14:32):
And when we talk about solutions,we're gonna talk to experts
who have thought this through.
We are gonna talk to practitioners whoare in the weeds on this and who will tell
us, gosh, if we could make these changes.
That would really make adent in what's happening.
So this podcast isn't just going tobe, here's this week's latest scam.
It's, here's this week's latest scam,and here's the crisis that we're
(14:54):
in, and here's what we can do aboutit and what we must do about it.
From that, what are the type of topicsyou're gonna dive into on the show?
What I want is to normalize talkingabout scams, and what I mean by that is.
We fall for scams all the time.
I was on TRM talks and I talked toAri Red board about the time, not
(15:20):
very long ago, that I clicked on aphishing attempt, and I think we need to
normalize that this happens to everybody.
So we're gonna, we'regonna work on normalizing.
The scam situation and talk aboutthe benefits of letting people know
that I too have fallen for this scam.
Don't fall for this one.
I also wanna educate about what specificscams are out there so that people can
(15:42):
talk to their kids and their parentsso that they don't fall for them.
And I wanna talk about the specificscams that are out there so that
people can educate their kids andtheir parents and their grandparents
so that they are not victimized inthe same way that so many people are.
I also wanna talk about the stigma thatcomes when we brand people stupid, and
(16:06):
I would never have fallen for that.
I wanna talk about the languagewe use that makes victims
less likely to come forward.
I. I wanna talk about the data that weneed that in order to quantify whether
this problem is getting bigger or thework we're doing is helping, we need
to have a baseline data set to reallyunderstand how big this problem is.
(16:28):
I wanna talk about how we get there.
When you started this, you leavethe district attorney's office.
What's the first step for you?
Aaron West.
The crime fighter.
I love that you're a crime fighter.
If anybody saw you with your great glassesand your cat, Steve, behind you, the fact
that you are doing this is incredible.
(16:49):
Gimme the steps that lead us to here,because I know you started a couple
of organizations along the way andyou've tried to educate some people.
What have you done up to thispoint and moving forward?
When I started to work really deeplyon what's happening with these type of
scams that are coming at us primarilyfrom Southeast Asia, I started talking
about what we could do today, and Ilabeled it as Educate Ceases Disrupt, and
(17:13):
I wrote a lot about it on LinkedIn, andevery post I'd end with Educate ceases
Disrupt when I made the change fromworking at the district attorney's office
to going out on my own to fight this.
I was ready to put together a team whowanted to make things better with me.
(17:33):
I did.
I called it Operation Shamrock.
We are currently pending nonprofit status.
We are waiting for the government to deemus a nonprofit, but we are very much a
organization that is focused on educatingthe population about what is happening,
educating law enforcement about how torespond to this, educating banking about
(17:55):
what to do when a victim wants to takeall their money out of their accounts.
We focus on seizing how toseize this money and get it
back in the hands of victims.
We talk about disrupting.
How can we put a dent inwhat is happening out there?
How can we make it harder, more difficult,more expensive, more time consuming
(18:16):
for the bad actors to do this work,and how we can mobilize people who care
about this to join the fight with us.
So I built that.
I called it Operation Shamrock.
Operation Shamrock is in thebusiness of bringing together the
entire life cycle of these crimes.
We bring together banking, lawenforcement, social media, telco,
(18:38):
diplomacy, crypto exchanges, peopleon the ground, overseas, NGOs, and
victim services to really look atthe whole lifecycle and to start.
Trying to fill any gap we can find andtrying to exploit any weaknesses that
are exhibited by these bad actors.
(18:58):
And a big part of that is awareness.
A big part of that is letting peopleknow what is happening out there.
So starting a podcast is a very naturalfit for the next step of what you
do when you are trying to educate aglobe about this incredible threat.
You have just laid out one of the mostdaunting goals and tasks I think I've
(19:22):
ever thought about in terms of stoppingthe amount of crime that's going on
out there, and we're not talking.
Can you give us some basic idea of whatkind of money are we talking about here?
I can certainly quantifyit in tens of billions.
Others will say hundreds of billions.
The fact is it is a wealth transfer.
From ordinary citizens into thehands of bad actors that we have
(19:47):
never seen before in history.
We're talking about household byhousehold, cleaning out entire
families and putting that moneyin the hands of bad actors.
Why in the world, and you've touchedon this a little bit about government,
if somebody was robbing us, ifsomebody was coming to our houses
left and right and just robbing us.
(20:07):
There would be nothingbut police everywhere.
Why aren't we seeing that this isnot a criticism of law enforcement?
This is more of a real question ofwhy hasn't this been raised to the
level that it seems like it should be?
It's an interesting intersection of anumber of crime types here, and there's
probably a lot of reasons why it hasn'tgotten the attention it deserves.
(20:28):
One of them is this fraud?
Is this typical fraud?
Does this fit in the bucket of high tech?
Does this fit in thebucket of cryptocurrency?
What bucket does this crime fitin, and who should be responsible
for doing the work to make it stop?
The second piece of it is.
And I think it's a natural, unfortunately,a natural response to, in a lot of
(20:53):
situations for people to say, that'snot in my wheelhouse, that belongs to
this organization or that organization.
The fact is, we don't have time anymore tobe trying to figure out who it belongs to.
We need every group, every, we need fraud,high tech, crypto, everybody in the room
to say, okay, I'll take this piece of it.
I'll take that piece of it.
(21:13):
So that's one thing is thatit's not easily categorized.
The second thing is I think that thereis a large part of the population that
thinks that this only happens to oldpeople who are incapacitated in some way.
I. And that is simplynot what we're seeing.
Statistics from the FBI will showyou that there are as many victims
(21:36):
under 50 as there are over 50.
This is happening to ourentire population, and people
just aren't hearing that yet.
Media is showing this to them as well.
Let's talk to Eunice, who lost hermoney and thought she had a boyfriend.
And that's not a good representationof what is really happening.
(21:59):
We're gonna have a lot of examples ofpeople that have been victimized by this.
And the one thing that for me personally,that got me interested in working with
you and doing this is that that happens.
People say, oh, they must just be dumb.
They just must be dumb people.
They must just be naiveand it's just not true.
It is happening everywhere all the time,and our job is to try to illuminate that.
(22:23):
So in our last few minutes together ontoday, on our very first Origin Story
podcast and I'm, we're very excitedto be bringing this to the world.
It's that important.
Give us an example of a victim storythat's happened that you are aware
of that really struck you as a personinterviewing or talking with them.
(22:44):
There's a lot of belief that this couldn'thappen to me, and there's a lot of
misunderstanding about what this crime is.
So when I spoke to a woman in hermid forties who is a PhD, who is a
triathlete, who is a lovely person, anattractive person, a warm and kind person.
(23:11):
And she told me about the amount ofmoney she lost in a romance scam.
It was an eyeopener for me becauseuntil you really hear a story from
someone that sounds like you, it'shard to believe it could happen to you.
Mm-hmm.
And so when I spoke to this woman,she was willing to share with me her
(23:34):
account of it, and she had writtenup this really well-written paper
about how this happened to her.
And all the things, every time she gotto a left or to a fork in the road,
like he wouldn't meet me in person.
I always think, okay, wellthat would be the deal breaker.
And then she would write or tell meabout, here's why he made that make sense.
(23:57):
And then when I heard theexplanation, I thought, oh, okay.
I could see that too.
There was a lot of delaying what.
What they both looked forward tothat they knew when they finally
met, it would be this amazing moment.
And so he talked her into the dream ofthe delay is okay because it's gonna
be so great when we finally do meet.
(24:19):
But the point of what I'm tellingyou is that I. In listening to her
and having her explain why when thishappened, he explained it this way.
When this happened, heexplained it this way.
All of a sudden it made sense and itmade sense in a way that I could see
how this would happen to someone inisolation, which is a huge part of this
(24:40):
whole thing, is that when we are ableto normalize this and allow people to
share their stories with each other,a best friend might say, oh yeah,
but I don't think that makes sense.
But what these scammersdo is they isolate people.
And so I can see howshe got where she got.
So my point in telling you about thiswoman is that what happened to her could
(25:03):
happen to your sister or your cousin.
And it's stories like that thatneed to be told so that we can take
ourselves away from this mistaken.
Actually quite rude and conceptthat I'm too smart for this.
This would never happen to me.
Time now for a quick breakto thank our sponsors.
(25:26):
Hey friends, I just wanna thank TRM Labs,our first ever sponsor of the podcast.
I love their message.
They're building a safer financialsystem for billions of people, and that's
exactly what we are trying to do as well.
Create a safer situation for peoplewho are going about their daily lives
(25:46):
and engaging with digital media.
You have given us the origin story.
We now know why Erin West is doing whatshe's doing, or at least we think we do.
And I know you've been super busy withthis, but it would be helpful for our
audience as especially this is our firstepisode, is to give an example of one of
(26:08):
the major frauds that are out there today.
People are probably hearing aboutit if you've read The Economist
article or listened to pies ona thing called Pig butchering.
I had never heard of it before Iactually met you, pig butchering.
I'm sure a lot of people haveheard of it now, but it was
pretty much under the radar.
Can you tell us what pig butchering is,what its roots are, where it comes from,
who's doing it, so on and so forth.
(26:29):
Pig butchering is one of themost vile crimes to hit the
United States in decades.
It is a combination romance scamslash investment scheme, and it's
really decimating our population.
What's, and I know thatsounds outrageous, but I'm.
I'm here to tell you, I spend myFridays talking to victims of this
(26:52):
scam, and this morning I talkedto somebody who lost $1.7 million,
400,000 of that was his own money.
Ouch.
And then he saw how great thisinvestment was performing and
he asked his friends to join.
Oh, so this gentleman told me about hisloss, how he feels so responsible for his
(27:13):
friends' losses and how it landed him.
In a psychiatric facility for a week.
Whoa.
People are losing tens of billions ofdollars to Chinese organized crime.
And I wanna tell a little bitmore about how this scam works.
I first heard about pigbutchering in March, 2023.
(27:35):
At that time, I was a prosecutor workingwith an elite high tech task force
of local and state employees, and.
One of the detectives saidhe's working on a case.
Had I ever heard of Pig Butchering?
And I said, Nope, I sure hadn't.
And he told me about a victimwho had reported to us.
He was 30 years old, hewas a software engineer.
(27:58):
And over the course of just a fewmonths, he had become acquainted
with someone online that he fellin love with and believed that
this person was his true love and.
Had never found someone who understoodhim the way this person did.
And over time, this person showed him areally enviable lifestyle that she had.
(28:22):
She was wealth, she traveled, she drovea nice car, she played golf and did yoga.
But most importantly, she wasso interested in him and he fell
in love with this person and wassold a dream of being with her.
Where did he meet her?
He met her online on a dating appand had every reason to believe that
(28:42):
she was a legitimate person and waslegitimately interested in him, and
after a while she told him that theway she had made her money was in
cryptocurrency investments and isvery standard in these type of cases.
She said she didn't knowhow to do it either.
But that she, her uncle taught her andher uncle could teach my victim as well.
(29:06):
And so over the next few months,my victim was lured into this fake
investment platform where he startedwith just a little bit of money.
It's important to understandhow the scam works.
Our victim took money outof his checking account.
Moved it into a cryptocurrency platform,an exchange that is a legitimate exchange.
(29:29):
It's usually Coinbaseor crypto.com or Kraken.
From there, the scammer taughtour victim how to change that.
Those US dollars into USDT,it's a crypto stable coin.
It trades for one-to-onewith the US dollar.
So instead of having 5,000 USdollars, this person now had 5,000
(29:51):
tether or 5,000 USDT, and all ofthat remained in the victim's custody
and still remained his money inhis legitimate account at Coinbase.
But where the theft comes in is thescammer will then say, my uncle says
that this is the best platform to doyour trading in, and the scammer will
(30:11):
give the victim A-U-R-L-A website.
Our victim will go to that website,set up an account, and our victims
will have every reason to believethat this is a legitimate website.
They prey on people who are new tocryptocurrency and won't be able
to easily tell the difference.
But I can also tell you thatthey're so sophisticated that it's
(30:32):
not easy to tell the difference.
Sometimes with some of these websites,our victim will create an account,
have every reason to believe it'sa legitimate account, and then the
scammer will tell the victim to movethe money into this account, and
the scammer will give our victim acryptocurrency address to move that money.
Now, if you're not.
(30:53):
Super familiar with cryptocurrency.
That's okay.
All you need to understandhere is that victim was given
a location to send the money.
You can think of it as a bankaccount or a stock exchange
account or anything like that.
Basically, the scammer told thevictim where to send the money.
The victim sent the money andit was not a real platform.
(31:14):
It was straight into the wallet of thescammer, but our poor victims think that.
It's real because they're shown adashboard and it looks just like
any other investment dashboard.
And what they will see is that in withina week, their money will go from 5,000
Tether to 6,800 to 7,500, and beforethe end of the week, they've doubled
(31:37):
their money and they have 10,000 tether.
And the scammer may even allow ourvictim to take some of that out as
proof that they control this money.
Mm-hmm.
And then what happens is that our victimis led to believe that this is legitimate
and there are more opportunities, andthe victim is coerced over time to
liquidate their retirement accounts,liquidate accounts they've set up for
(32:01):
their children's college, and beforethey realize that they've invested every
penny into this and they think they'rea millionaire, they think they've got
more than a million in there, and they.
They believe that they're going tomarry this person and their dreams
have all come true, and they'vecreated wealth for themselves.
I think that a lot of people who aren'tfamiliar with this think, I don't
(32:23):
know why you would give away yourmoney to someone you don't know, but
that's not what's happening at all.
Our victims believe that they arebuilding wealth for themselves and
their family, that they have beenblessed to have become acquainted
with someone who can teach them.
How to triple their money.
(32:44):
And then the hammer hits.
When our victims then try to takesome money out, the scammer will
say, okay, now you have to pay taxeson the money that you've taken.
And our victims say, oh,we didn't know about that.
Take it out of my gains.
And the scammer will say,Nope, it has to be clean money.
And that's when our victims reallybelieve that they're gonna be
(33:05):
able to turn this around quickly.
They just need a quick loan sothey can pay those taxes, get their
money out, and pay back the loan.
So they will go to their bank andthey'll get a home equity line.
They will get a secondmortgage on their house.
They will borrow from friends and family.
They will get payday loans,they will get anything just to
turn this money around quickly.
And that's when they realize theypay their taxes, their fake taxes.
(33:28):
And then there's another fee.
And that's when our victims realized,oh my God, this thing was a scam.
And not only is all their money goneand they're in debt, but the person
behind this whole thing was thisperson that they'd fallen in love with
and they realized, oh my God, thisperson was planning my demise from the
(33:50):
first text, from our first meeting.
And what we're seeing is that people arenot set up to deal with that mentally.
We rely on our financialfooting to help us feel secure.
We rely on our connections withpeople to help us feel secure.
And when you can't trust people and youdon't have financial footing anymore, it's
(34:12):
frequently too much for people to bear.
And we are seeing suicides.
We are seeing people hurting themselves.
We are seeing people checkingthemselves into psychiatric facilities.
It is a devastation, unlike anyone Ihave seen in my 26 and a half years as a
prosecutor before I retired in November.
So wait a second.
(34:34):
The thing that gets me, that I guessI am still befuddled by, and you
and I talk about this all the time,is how come no one, why are they
not ringing bells from the rooftopsabout this and letting everyone know?
Unfortunately, the scammers areusing really good tricks against
these victims, and they're usingpsychological coercive techniques.
(34:58):
And by the time our victimsrealize what has happened to
them, they're very self-blaming.
They are very quick to blame themselvesand feel guilty and feel stupid.
And when someone feels guilty,stupid, humiliated, they aren't
likely to come forward and talkabout what happened to them.
(35:20):
They're likely to think, I can't believeI fell for this and lost all my money.
But the reality is we can't expect peopleto beat a. Tried and true practice.
This is, that has been working for fiveyears now where this works over and over
and over, and these scammers have honedtheir craft and they're excellent at this.
(35:44):
And so unfortunately what happenswith our victims is they don't
see that or understand that.
They know that they've lost a lot ofmoney and they've lost a loved one.
And between the humiliation of losingeither one of them, but combined together.
It's too embarrassing to go forward.
And I'll tell you another problem, andI heard this directly from a victim
(36:06):
two hours ago, was that when he went into report this to law enforcement and
he showed up with a stack of documentslaying out exactly how this went down.
The local police officer said,I'm not gonna read your documents,
not gonna go through it.
I don't have time for this.
How much money did you lose?
(36:27):
My victim told him the 1.7 millionthat he had lost, and the officer
laughed at him and said, I can'tbelieve you were so stupid.
That's why people don't come forward.
Oh my God.
And that's gotta change.
Yeah.
Because we're gonna talk aboutthe law enforcement side of all
this, and there are law enforcementpeople that really get it and on
top of this and are working hard.
But you're right, that kindof stuff still happened.
(36:48):
We have the victims.
But as I understand it, and maybeyou can correct me if I'm wrong
on this, there's another side.
There's a whole nother group ofvictims that are involved in this
scam, and you've been visiting, Iknow you just got back from a trip
in Myanmar and Cambodia and also thePhilippines where you're visiting these.
I guess they're like business parkswhere the scammers are working.
(37:11):
Can you give us a brief overview of that?
I know we're gonna go intogreat detail in the future.
Again, I keep saying that, but wereally are gonna go into great detail.
But can you give us just a littlebrief idea of what that other side is
and what the other victim status is?
When I first found out aboutpig butchering, I was really
curious to understand who'son the other side of this.
And so I did a deep dive onlineand there wasn't much in 2022
(37:34):
that was written about this.
But what I did find out.
Early on was there were some greatreporters on the ground in Southeast
Asia and they let me know that it'shappening at an industrialized level
in these compounds and that the humanworkforce that's needed to run this
kind of a scam was human trafficked and.
(37:55):
That was a mic drop moment for me.
It was one thing to realize this ishappening in an industrialized way.
Then I found out that it was Chineseorganized crime behind the whole
thing, and then I found out that theirhuman trafficking bright, intelligent.
Workers who are looking for anopportunity when there's 20%
unemployment in China, they need tobring money home to their family.
(38:18):
And so they took these jobs thatthey thought were white collar plus
jobs with a great pay and they couldlive and work there, send money home.
This was appealing and they recruitedsmart people with language skills.
They were looking for English speakers.
What happened was thesevictims of human trafficking.
Just like our financial victims hadevery reason to believe that this was
(38:42):
a legitimate business opportunity.
It looked legit.
The scammers put up legitimate lookingwebsites showing the industrial park that
you'll work in, and then they conductedinterviews, legitimate seeming interviews
where victims were interviewed more thanonce, and then ultimately given the green
light that they had been chosen for this.
(39:03):
What really happened to thesevictims is they were given an
airline ticket to Bangkok where theythought they were going to work.
They arrive in Bangkok.
They are ushered onto a bus.
Their passports are taken, their cellphones are taken, and they are driven
straight into another country wherethey are put behind a locked gate armed
(39:24):
with men with AK 40 sevens and told.
Your job is to scam, and that's whatyou're gonna do now, and the punishment
is severe if you don't comply.
The nature of this is violent and eviland humans are beaten with baseball bats.
They are.
They're required to do excessiveexercise in the heat and
(39:46):
humidity of Southeast Asia.
They are tased, they're injuredin ways that are horrifying.
And that's what's, that's the level ofviolence it requires to get people to
take financial advantage of their fellowhumans, and that's what's going on.
This is a worldwide crisis of massivemagnitude in which there are victims
(40:11):
on both sides, and the only winnersare transnational organized crime.
You gave a little bit of atease there and we are gonna be
talking about these compounds.
We're gonna get interviews withsome of these people that are, have
been there, victims of these crimes,and victims of the people that are
actually doing the scamming, butthat they're victims themselves.
(40:34):
Time now for a quick breakto thank our sponsors.
Thank you so much to our sponsor, TRM.
If you don't know what they do, TRM andits blockchain analytics capability is
what makes it possible for law enforcementto be able to trace these funds back
to the bad actors and recover them.
(40:55):
We couldn't do the work we do for victimswithout TRM labs, so I'm so grateful
that they decided to sponsor our podcast.
We would like to thank you forlistening to the very first episode
of Stolen a podcast with Aaron West.
We are grateful that youtook the time to be with us.
What we talked about is just the tipof a very large iceberg, but that
(41:19):
is all the time we have for today.
We'll be back with a brand new shownext week in which Aaron speaks
with investigative journalists SariPod, about their recent visit to
scam compounds in the Philippines.
It's an incredible story and wecan't wait to share it with you.
Finally.
Once again, we'd like tothank our sponsor, TRM Labs.
We could not do this without them.
(41:40):
If you're interested in sponsoringStolen, please reach out to us at
the email in the show notes below.
Remember to follow, like and subscribewherever you get your podcasts.
And once again, thank youso much for listening.
Have a great week.
Thanks for listening.
This podcast is hosted byErin West, produced and
(42:03):
edited by Smarticle Media.
The show's executiveproducer is Brandon Doble.
I. Music is provided by Epidemic.
Sound Stolen is a fully ownedmedia product of Purple Glasses,
and most importantly, a bigthank you to our sponsors.
We couldn't do it without your support.
Until next time, take care.
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