Surviving & Preventing Online Scams: Insights from a Victim of a $1.7M Fraud
Surviving & Preventing Online Scams: Insights from a Victim of a $1.7M Fraud David Fradin tells his harrowing story of a how he lost $1.7 million to a sophisticated online pig butchering scam.
Learn key insights and practical tips to protect yourself from similar scams. Discover the complex tactics scammers use to build trust and exploit victims, and explore actionable solutions to help prevent these crimes.
Tune in to become more aware and better equipped to safeguard your finances and personal information
00:00 Introduction and Crypto Scam Experience
00:32 Guest Introduction and Mission
01:09 Keys to Product Success
02:06 Podcast and Professional Background
03:21 Detailed Scam Story
08:18 Scam Aftermath and Financial Impact
10:31 Government and Law Enforcement Involvement
13:02 Global Scam Operations and Solutions
14:00 Social Media's Role in Scams
22:25 WhatsApp and Social Media Accountability
24:08 Apple's Values and Final Thoughts
25:05 From Political Campaigns to Product Management
25:34 The Staggering Impact of Pig Butchering Scams
25:50 Victim Blaming and Stigma
26:23 Creative Solutions to Combat Scams
26:42 Recognizing Scam Tactics
29:19 The Role of AI in Scams
32:09 Crypto and Financial Fraud
34:16 Charity and GoFundMe Scams
35:04 Bike Theft and Recovery
40:11 Final Thoughts and Advice
Social Media: Connect to Joe, Mike, and David on social media platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram
Co-Host: Joe Erle, Cyber Group Practice Leader at C3 Insurance
X/ joeerle
Insta/ itscyberjoe
Tiktok/ itscyberjoe
Meta/ joeerle
LinkedIn/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeerle/
Questions about cyber insurance?
Email joe@c3insurance.com
Get the PDF - 14 Steps to Protect your Company's Data
Co-Host Mike Dowdy, Cloud Solutions Consultant at RapidScale
LinkedIn/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedowdy/
Questions about cloud security?
Email mike.dowdy@rapidscale.net
Special Guest David Fradin
Operation Shamrock (helps people who've been victims of internet fraud and pig butchering): https://operationshamrock.org/
David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidfradin
David's Consulting Company: www.spicecatalyst.com
David's Book - Letters from my Hymie: https://a.co/d/4GnKUOW
Don't forget to subscribe. Check out our other episodes & thank you for listening.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I had this beautiful
(00:01):
Asian woman that was teaching me crypto
and I think I know I'm broke
can you help me
they do make the contact develop trust
and then they fatten you up like a pig
and then they butcher you
and if you train the generative AI on garbage
it's gonna spit garbage out
if you want to ruin the Zuck
stop letting him run his app on your platform
(00:22):
because it is Apple's devices
and they run a tight ship over there
you're listening to the Ransomware Rewind
where we break down the latest cyber threats
data breaches and security
solutions that matter to you and your business
stay secure
stay informed
enjoy the show
(00:44):
David
I know you're a professor
you have a consulting company
I'd like you to just go ahead and introduce yourself
tell us about you and what you do and why you do it
my goal in life is to help reduce the
percentage of product failures worldwide
(01:05):
which
about 35% of all new products that go through research
and develop and are introduced
fail in the marketplace
which represents a waste of about $1 trillion a year
uh if that could be reduced
there's more resources available to pay people
and to help work on protecting the environment
(01:26):
so I developed 5 keys to Product Success
which is a for the first word of my company name spice
where the s stands for product market strategy
P stands for repeatable processes
which have come mature I stands
for having the information
necessary to make a decision
(01:47):
the C stands for understanding the customer
what it is that the customer wants to do
why they wanna do it when they wanna do it
where they wanna do it how they wanna do it
how important is it
for that thing that they wanna get done
and how satisfied are they with the current solution
and the E stands for making sure that your employees
(02:08):
have all of the hundred and thirty competencies
or skill sets that I've identified in my books
and in my research and I teach in my trainings
to be able to have successful products
and successful services
you had a I don't know if it's you still do it
but you had a podcast too right
(02:28):
yeah I did
10 episodes of product success issues
and then I did 10 more episodes for the
Business Podcast Network
so I've got about 20 episodes out there
on each of the topics that I just mentioned
short bite size
easy to listen to
so typically about a half hour
(02:49):
and on my product management
or product success management issues
I interview VP level and higher
the VP of Product Management of Pitney Bowes
and so forth
about their issues their challenges
their successes
what they look for in prospective product managers
(03:11):
and so forth
awesome
I had a person that connected with me on LinkedIn
hmm
which is very unusual because I know the scams going
on with I get a text message and someone says hey
or or you wanna play golf tomorrow
(03:32):
or I found you in my address book
and where did we meet that kind of thing
that's a typical lead on it's from a text message
but this was a person that was in financial services
on LinkedIn and connected with me
and said that
they wanted to learn more about product management
(03:52):
that's sophisticated
yeah so they're essentially asking for some mentoring
and generally I'm a sucker to try to help people
and I got sucked into that
discussion over a number of months
then they said that
they had an uncle that runs a bank up in Seattle
branch manager
(04:12):
and he's got a bunch of analysts in China
and they can predict spot gold prices
and I've had friends tell me you should invest in gold
and I've never really pulled the trigger to do
do that because I thought it was somewhat speculative
but the scam artist convinced me by
(04:34):
saying that they can help me trade and spot gold
and sent me to a website called Fire Phoenix
FX dot com
oh
you go there and you can open up a trial account
and you can bet on opening and closing prices
(04:55):
or something like that and allegedly
this scammers uncle could tell me ahead of time
at what time and day if I get on and I trade
buy spot gold and sell spot gold I can make money
and then
that's really sophisticated not to talk about it
(05:17):
first of all it wasn't crypto
it was gold
and then they mentioned people that in your own area
they mention something that you're interested in
with the cause you're obviously very passionate about
the product development and product life cycle
they had to do their research
it wasn't random their situation is unique in that
(05:40):
they didn't mention the crypto
and then say hey handsome
give me your wallet this took time and effort
yeah
and they suggested that they were based in Hong Kong
or in England it wasn't really clear to me
and I did background searches on all this
and everything came up clean
so I wasn't able to spot the scam
(06:00):
and what they did is
after I made my first purchase of spot gold
the way money was transferred was through crypto
which I've since have Learned
the reason they wanted that is you can't trace it
right so
I would send money to Coinbase or Kraken from my bank
(06:24):
bank of America or Chase Bank
and they in turn
Kraken or Coinbase would transfer it to Fire Phoenix
and with my account at Fire Phoenix
I would then do the trades
and then very early in the scam
they um
wanted to prove to me that I can get my money out
(06:47):
so I forget I put in I don't know 20
30 and I was able to very easily
take out
so what my plan was if I put in say 100,000
I would take 100,000 out
and any profits that were left over
that's what I would use for trading spot gold
and make profits off of that
(07:07):
so I forget the exact numbers
because it's been over a year ago
so I got up there maybe to $1 million
and this uncle banker kept telling my scam artist that
I couldn't trade
unless I got above a certain financial threshold
and then when I made a million dollars in profits
(07:29):
and maybe had to in
I tried to take it out and they said no
you can't take it out till you pay your taxes
which was 23% of my profits
and that
my account had been frozen by the tax collector
in England
and I tried to find the tax collector in England
I forget the name of
our equivalent to the Internal Revenue Service there
(07:51):
King Henry the fourth
yeah and I emailed them and said
is this fire Phoenix effects legitimate no response
wow that's a significant amount of money
I gotta ask did you get your money back
nope none of them
not a nickel
wow and then
the bank of America was slow on the whole thing
(08:16):
but they were very quick
after me being with them for 45 years
they canceled my bank account at bank of America
so now I'm without a bank account
and many months later they contacted Social
Protective Services of Santa Clara County
and the police department of my local city
(08:41):
and it was the police sergeant that called me
that told me what was going on
bank of America did not tell me what was going on
Chase Bank did not tell me what was going on
and this whole concept
this started in like July of 2,023
culminated by December of 2,023
(09:04):
and all of this was very young
during that period of time
so
it's possible that the bank and the police department
and the district attorney
somewhat unaware of it
and it was through Detective Bill Hoyt
that I figured out what was going on
and I cut the thing off but by that point in time
(09:26):
an inspector that claimed to be in the same scam ring
wherever they were
I think they said even in Miramar at that time
said that they're trying to shut the thing down
and he turned out to a continuation of the scam
I needed to send him money to pay taxes oh
so I cut that off right away
(09:50):
the good news is that my
stock market investments have gone up
enough to cover the $1.7 million that I lost
two years ago
the bad news for city county
state and federal government is
I'll never have to pay income taxes again
(10:10):
because I'll take this as a theft loss
oh
I
talk to Gayle Perrin who is my local
assemblywoman in California
because the social services guy that I met with
who hadn't heard of this level of detail
(10:32):
he says
there were several other people that are very wealthy
in the Saratoga Los Gatos
Santa Clara area that were victims of similar scams
but he he does not have the resources
he needs to get the full job done
and hopes and I said
if I can persuade the Santa Clara County supervisors
(10:56):
and the federal government to spend some resources
and I explained to Gail
the governments are losing more money
as a result of these thefts
and they really should be
spending some resources on that
shutting it down not to talk over
but that's a very valid point
it sounds like a Tom Clancy novel
this is fascinating and I really like your point about
(11:18):
the state and the federal government's losing
they're losing money
if you want to talk about something
that's going to get their attention
it's like calling 9 1 1 and saying hey
armed citizen response
so
I gotta follow up with did they ever follow up with you
and put any laws in place
because no you
(11:41):
cause
you did have a financial loss in the seven figures
so you can deduct that
there's nothing that says otherwise
so I
I've heard back from Gail
or for anybody else that I've contacted wow
but just the other day a lady by the name of
(12:01):
let me see if I can get her name here
I'll search for it while I'm talking with you
who was with the Santa Clara County
District Attorney's Office
she retired
and she started a business called Operation Shamrock
(12:22):
in a late 2023
about the same time that I was getting scammed
and I forget her name off the top of my head
but I just connected with her
with her on LinkedIn
and she's holding a conference here in Silicon Valley
with 180 law enforcement agencies around the country
around the world to collaborate with each other
(12:43):
to try to shut this thing down
it really boils down to several key uh
points of pressure
one is pressure on the Chinese government
Laos and Cambodia and Thailand to raid these slave
(13:05):
scam activities in Myanmar and shut them down there
they are reaping trillions of dollars a year
it's huge and they built huge dormitories there
torture their people to scam other people
and they're in bad working conditions right
(13:27):
yeah horrible living conditions and they're enslaved
this person that was being impersonated on LinkedIn
pictures taken from Instagram and then put on LinkedIn
Lincoln could do a scan of Instagram
(13:48):
and other pictures on TikTok
and on Facebook and so forth
if Facebook would allow such scans to occur and
remove accounts on LinkedIn
that are using somebody else's pictures
eliminating that point of the fraud
this person was using a Gmail address
(14:10):
so Gmail knows what IP address
these emails are coming from
they are also using a phone number
and I think it was a WhatsApp phone number
Facebook meta knows who that person is
and if alerted right away
could shut it down and shut these scams off right away
(14:31):
so if better Twitter
Facebook Instagram
LinkedIn Google
YouTube would put together a task force to collaborate
share information and use their AI
which they can use greatly
to tell us lies and scan what's going on
(14:52):
when people's identities are being used
to fake other people's identities
a lot of this could be shut down very quickly
because it would it break the chain
cause the first step in the process
their outrage and probably jeez
I don't know
millions of people every day get these messages
and what again
(15:13):
I think what's concerning is they looked at you
they looked at your zip code
they looked at other wealthy people around you
and attacked them
it's really sophisticated
quite frankly and you're a smart
sophisticated man and other people in your area did it
that's what I find so concerning
is that they were able to pull it off
and then no one's stopping them
(15:35):
and if they just couldn't
if you could just block the subness that they're on
so you see the company
that alone that would break your whole operation
cause it's really fragile you cut
yeah and if you went well
I think the Fire Phoenix
FX dot com website is no longer there
but if you'd go there you could pick whatever it is
(15:59):
gold I guess
and other precious metals
and you could watch the put calls or price
or whatever it may be going up and down
on the website in real time
and they'll give you some fake money just to play with
so you can put some in so
I have a feeling that my scammer was behind
part of that and they had controls
(16:21):
so when they told me to sign on five twenty PM
and to get ready that at 5:30 will be the time to buy
and then they'll tell me sell
we're actually manipulating the graph
showing me the appreciation
or the depreciation
of spot gold at that particular time
(16:44):
but the fact that you're able to get the money back
they were playing the long game at first
you know
how you started in with a lower amount of money
and you got your money back
that's a different level of criminal
yeah they were essentially giving my money back
yeah it's true
but but
it's true but they're building credibility
(17:04):
run it off with it
like a hoodlum on the street with a gun
what they're doing is building trust what
so I think John Oliver back in April of last year
did a piece on The John Oliver Show Last Week Tonight
about pig butchering
(17:25):
and I think the Wall Street Journal
and the Washington Post
over the last year have done articles on the topic
so it's becoming more and more known
but many people aren't paying attention to those things
and it would seem to me that all the social media
I just mentioned
(17:46):
could be put up warnings about these kinds of things
and it's well described in the Shamrock dot org website
of this pattern of what they do
in terms of what you just mentioned
did you hear about
about this article that came out today or yesterday
where this woman was tricked by
(18:08):
a pig butcher
who was posing as Brad Pitt in the hospital
I just saw a headline and she lost like $800,000
I thought she was talking to Brad Pitt for real
hmm yeah
and Brad feels very bad about that
I'm sure sure yeah
using your name to scam someone else
even if it was me or that gentleman that scammed you
(18:32):
he probably feels bad
that his likeness was used to scam you
so it's just it's like people
you know what people
they think that they can't get scammed
that's the problem
I know you're a professor
you're a consultant
you've worked with Fortune 500 companies
I was reading
(18:52):
there was a Nobel laureate that was pig butchered
these are people from all walks of life
and I think the
one thing that people can take home with this
is that don't think that you're above getting scammed
because you know
anybody can know the warning signs or
and all that but still fall for it
(19:13):
because they use emotional manipulation
it looked like a way to make a lot more money
relatively easily
as opposed
goes to a romance scammer or something like that
yeah but that's human nature
and it's actually more compelling than a romance scam
especially the guy that's been divorced haha
(19:34):
if you look at it this way
they did come in asking for you like to mentor them
that was like creating a mentor mentee relationship
these are some of the signs
so I'll read them out to you
and if any of these ring a bell
for emotional manipulation
they ask you about your finances a little bit
(19:57):
they Learned about my finances
based upon money that I would transfer to fire Phoenix
and that told them whether I had the money or not
they encourage you to do more with your life
is that not something like you're happy
like you you can make a lot of money
(20:18):
uh they ask you personal questions
sometimes this is more geared towards like
your love life if it's
they meet you on dating sites
and that kind of emotional manipulation no
a lot of times there are weaponizing fears
like fear of getting
(20:39):
your taxes
like getting screwed by the IRS or something like that
not this one but I get a PDF letter
which
Apple Mail immediately throws into the junk category
where this individual
wants me to send them a little less than $2,000
so that they won't release the videos
(21:00):
they've taken of me on my computer
yeah I've gotten that one too
they want to send it to all my friends
I don't have any friends so they can't
they pick the wrong guy they pick the wrong
I'll be your friend
I'll send you the letter
(21:23):
go ahead with your list
please send it to my family
I got in I was like
they know my taste I don't know
is this real or not but then they say
they could see through the electrical tape that
I stuck on the camera
with mine they had a picture of my house
(21:43):
you gotta do better than that buddy
from Google Maps
like it was the exact same thing from Google Maps
get it direct from Street View
or from Zillow or Redfin or something
yeah okay
let me ask you this about your situation
did they keep the conversation going on LinkedIn
or did they ask you to go to a end to end
encryption type website like WhatsApp
(22:07):
they quickly asked me to go to WhatsApp
and see that's another place where Zuckerberg
or I call him suckerberg
step in
and stop these scams being
perpetrated on the WhatsApp platform
but I forget where I think it was in India
(22:27):
several hundred people were killed
because one religious sect
accused another religious sect of killing a cow
which is sacred
that spread this like 2 3 years ago
that spread like wildfire on WhatsApp
and people were killed over it
and what did Zuckerberg do about it
he went on Joe Rogan's podcast just the other day
(22:51):
and said apple hasn't invented anything new lately
why does he feel so threatened by apple
that he asked to constantly attack apple
he should clean up the act that's occurring on Facebook
WhatsApp and Instagram first
before he starts accusing
other people of not being innovative
(23:12):
yeah I wanna answer your question he's concerned about
Instagram uh
WhatsApp and Facebook getting pulled from this platform
cause that's where all his money comes from
and apple can do that
and what you described is absolutely horrific
and that's just the tip of the iceberg
(23:32):
we don't know what else is going on
so yeah
if you want to ruin the Zuck
stop letting him run his app on your platform
because it is Apple's devices
and they run a tight ship over there
so that's what he's really scared about
well
I would hope Tim Cook would do that
and one of the key things here that I talk about
(23:53):
is company values
and when Steve Jobs
who I was at the same management level with
when I was at apple wow
Steve when he came back to apple said
the important thing about apple
this is the late 90s is our values
and Tim Cook has spoken many times on the importance
of company values
(24:15):
and one of their values is empathy for the customer
another one is positive social contribution
another one is good management
and those all point to them saying
wait a minute
if Zuckerberg won't police the misuse of his platforms
(24:37):
then we'll remove those apps from the App Store
exactly that's my whole point
but that's what I'm hoping
that I could do with this lady from Shamrock
and do through my connections with state
local government
(24:58):
before I got into product management
I was a political campaign manager
for a successful gubernatorial campaign
and an unsuccessful John Connelly
presidential campaign
so I know a little bit about government relations
yeah this is a big problem
in 2023 5 billion in losses were reported
(25:23):
but they think the actual is 30 to 50 billion in losses
due to pig butchering
and I've seen numbers up to 75 billion being cited
yeah it's a
terribly embarrassing thing
for someone to have to come out and say I was stupid
it's just it's human nature
no one wants to be whole yeah
(25:43):
yeah and I think
if we can get some of the stigma away from that
victim blaming then we can have some people
like actually do something about this
and I think
it's really brave of you to come out on our show
and tell your story
so that people out there can learn from it
and hopefully not go through the same thing
(26:05):
I'm not just bitching about it
I'm offering I think
Creative
Hardcore Solutions
to cut the whole thing off at its knees
if the organizations that are perpetuating this
are willing to do so
yeah like I was looking through my LinkedIn messages
(26:28):
and at least once a month
I get a very attractive
Asian woman that has MBA in her title
and talking about connecting
and my wife gets on Facebook
she gets invites from these men that are just widowers
that have mbas and they'll have a very western name
(26:50):
and be very handsome but then when they talk
they'll say dear
my dear
and you can just look at the language and say that
that's like Middle Eastern
like they might as well just throw a hobby in there
but and it's so funny
cause we keep going back and forth with these
but what's scary is
let's say they hit up a woman that's single
that's the female architect of the man
(27:11):
he's rich he's a doctor and all this stuff
and has all these social norms
if he can only speak English
when he said he's born in Milwaukee he'd be perfect
I'm from Detroit no one in Milwaukee speaks English
they just talk about beer
and they're pretty good at it too
here's some openings that
(27:33):
they cast a wide net to people through WhatsApp
Facebook LinkedIn
LinkedIn
dating sites of course
probably like shopping sites like offer
targeted as well and they ask you things like Kathy
it was a pleasure meeting you at the charity event
last week or this is my number
(27:58):
I have no want to be a bother
but I would like to meet your acquaintance
or there's always just hello or are you busy
are you busy yes
very much thank you why
why don't you respond
so they use intimidate that one yeah
so I now whenever I see one of those
(28:18):
I immediately block it and then I use
there are
several websites where you can put an image in
and it'll come back and tell you if that image is used
elsewhere
Google Images is very bad at that in terms of people
but they should improve that in order to again
(28:41):
cut down on the scam
yeah
they definitely have the resources
they're very poor
poor companies they're about to go bankrupt
so I don't know why Google would do that
are they better take my
it's not like they don't have any data centers
it's not like they don't know anything about AI
our databases yeah
they got enough AI for example
(29:02):
I use a little tool called perplexity
which is a conglomerate of AI
so I can ask it a question
it will crawl the net
which has probably been crawled before
come back with an answer and maybe 20
30 seconds
and the answer they would give me
would also give me the references
(29:23):
as to where they got the information from
so I put in my name for example
it comes back and called me renowned
so I like that and I went to Bard
which is I think Microsoft's AI
and I haven't been a fan of Microsoft
for a number of years Microsoft is co pilot
(29:47):
is it co pilot okay
so I went there and I put in my name
and it was about half right
said I worked at Sun Microsystems
I never did I used to sell their workstations
and a couple of other things
and then
I put in the name of my business partner at the time
and it came back and said
he had a MBA from Harvard and went to MIT
(30:07):
and the guy never graduated
graduated from college
he was a supply officer during the Vietnam War
do you a profile pic of you as a black man
no I didn't do that
they know I was from Detroit
I would shoot them if they did so
so that's the way I test these a I's
and if you train the generative AI on garbage
(30:31):
it's gonna spit garbage out
and Zuckerberg is now training his AI
that he's offering for free
on the shit that we post on Facebook
I can't imagine how bad its results are gonna be
because
the information that's going in is not even true
based upon what people post on Facebook
(30:53):
garbage in it's okay
his BFF now was Donald Trump yeah they're homies
one thing I has
what can other people do
to prevent this from happening
to them
I like what if you look back on it were there
any red flags that you overlooked
(31:14):
and like now you're like oh shit
that's a tough one I think switching to
WhatsApp should have been a red flag
but I did not know that at the time
um west too
at the time when I searched Fire Phoenix
(31:35):
I could only find two bad reviews of it
and it was referring to what I think
was a different company
dealing with Phoenix Arizona and firefighting
that's some experience just now
another red flag would be
they ask you to transfer
untraceable money using crypto
(31:56):
and now
that Trump's coming into office in a couple of days
and he's going to put national funds into crypto
that all begins to make me wonder
what's gonna happen after that
that's concerning so the Federal Reserve will be crypto
they view it like investing in gold
and putting it in Fort Knox
(32:18):
the crypto industry
and that's why they have put so much money into
Trump's campaign hundreds of millions of dollars
dark money not directly
but through other political action committees
because they can force the price
people are willing to pay for crypto up
(32:39):
and so they can profit off of it
but I don't understand what crypto is
it has no intrinsic value like gold does
or silver or platinum or uranium
so I don't know
I understand that only I don't need
I'm thinking about Kuwait
they have the highest currency in the world
cause it's based on oil there's actually
(33:01):
we're going back to old Tricky Dick
when he got rid of the gold standard
and here we are all these years later
I wanna create my own fiat currency called the dowdy
and I have the dowdy coin
the problem is I can't find any suckers
the real question is just got a
this is a website called
pump fund.com Pump fund
(33:21):
and you can create whatever coin you want and get like
people to invest in it and yeah yeah
but when you start getting into the Federal Reserve
and the president United States
I guess playing devil's advocate
you could say
fiat currency doesn't have intrinsic value
it's just that everybody believes in it
that's a valid point and it's still running on the old
(33:42):
if we're gonna go to like actual value
I mean like the barter system is great
I will trade you a bottle of vodka for a haircut
that kind of thing
that's fine
a new scam is being talked about through gofundme
where people in LA fires have had a loss
and they
(34:03):
or their friends put up a gofundme page for that
and then a scammer will go
take the images off of that gofundme page
and create a new one
and the money goes directly to them with a similar URL
yes
yes charity scams are hard
they're just brutal yeah
(34:23):
and why doesn't gofundme police its own website
so that the same images can't show up on two
different gofundme campaigns
yeah I was listening to one of our favorite podcast
Darknet Diaries this morning
if you're out there you know we love you
and
they were talking about this website called Bike Index
(34:47):
and it indexes all the bikes
so that you can report stolen bikes
and he was complaining that offer up
where all these bikes are fenced or sold
does not do anything
even when he can send them information
proving that the bike being sold is stolen
(35:08):
wow that's horrible
so if your bike's ever stolen
you can check out Bike Index hahaha
non profit
and he uncovered this crazy bike stealing ring where
bikes around the Bay Area were being taken to Mexico
and and sold
(35:30):
and
they took down the American connection there but the
he just diversified and the scam still going on
so if you've ever gotten your bike stolen
you might want to listen to that episode
I have a bike from Holland
an electric bike
(35:51):
I forget the exact name of it
but the company went out of business and they had
I forget how much and if my bike is stolen
they can recover it because it has tracking on it
and if they can't recover it
they'll give me a brand new bike nice
cool that's good
I know that in China
(36:12):
pig butchering is called shazupan
and the direct translation is the killing pig game
I thought that
that's right
that'd be a good name for a Chinese restaurant
I'll order the Shazam pan
cool yeah
(36:33):
I think that this is a huge problem
and I think
politicians and people should start paying attention
the biggest pig butchering
a scam that I found was a CEO of a Kansas bank
that embezzled $47 million
in order to secure his crypto
(36:55):
and the entire bank went bankrupt
ouch CEO yeah
I heard about that ouch yeah it was back in 2,023
they're going after professionals
people that anyone really
they're casting that huge net
they're probably using AI to send these first messages
(37:18):
right like the hello or whatever
and then it's going to like some call center
dormitory compound where people are
on computers with AK 40 sevens to their head
and it's just like
how do we stop this
I did mention
(37:39):
but early in the chats with my scammer
we talked we had a sort of a Facebook call
I think on WhatsApp
and they I found out later
what they did is they used AI and their images
which they stole from Instagram
(37:59):
and were able to have a conversation
just like we're having now
and they look very real yes they
a deep fake yeah
yeah video are more prevalent
oh another side was that they were using a translation
(38:21):
app or something perhaps Google Translate
so they would type in whatever language they knew
and the English would come out
and sometimes it was quite awkward
so that indicated
but this person was not pretending to be American
this person was pretending to be Chinese
(38:42):
but the images that
the inspector that was part of the ring
that's trying to take the
that scam ring down
who also was just nothing more than a
continuation of the scam
sent me the a link to
(39:04):
an Instagram page that had the same images
that my scammer had damn it
wow
so that's why I said
if some of these image search services
could have showed me
when I tried to search the scammers image
that it was somebody else
which was Korean
(39:25):
and I would have been immediately suspicious
and shut it off
one tip is if you're using search
you can right click on a picture and do an image search
Google is a little bit more difficult
we have to upload the image or put it in the search
is there any
(39:45):
last word of advice you want to give our audience
I think I pretty much spit it all out
where can people find you
they can go to my website spice
catalyst.com and my contact information is there
awesome
great
anything else that you wanna talk
(40:06):
I don't I know
you didn't get a chance to say anything about
rapid scale no
I didn't cloud computing
if you're out there looking for secure cloud computing
yeah talk to Mike if you're looking for cyber insurance
talk to me and
yeah can I buy some of your ears
yeah
exactly so there is personal cyber insurance
and you could get insured up to $1 million
(40:28):
that may cover something like that
cause it's covered under social engineering
and financial fraud that's interesting
so there are products like that
that we can help people buy
but yeah like you said
scammers are out there on even on my business clients
one of my restaurant owners
(40:50):
got tricked into a payment processing loan scam
where the guy was taking money from people
promising 20
30% returns they were getting the returns right
but he was paying them with other people's money
pyramid scheme
and eventually just like the return stopped
(41:10):
and luckily
he had bought a business insurance policy for cyber
and that got covered under social engineering
so he got his like hundred fifty
four thousand dollars back
I have State Farm home insurance
and I have a rider on that
for something like this they refuse to cover it oh
(41:31):
that sucks the identity yeah
it's usually like 15,000 for like
identity theft expense that's bad
they said we don't cover that yeah
I live on a Hilltop in Los Gatos
and I have a atrium
which has a drain that runs out to the street
the previous owner had put in tile in the atrium
(41:54):
and instead of sloping towards the street
it sloped towards the house when it rained
it turns out after we dug up the drain pipe
it had collapsed a long time ago
there was no drain pipe it was filled with MUD
wow so now I'm out about 45,000
for a new drain pipe and new flooring
(42:15):
throughout the first floor of the house
and the insurance company
State Farm
will pay nothing on that
because the water did not come in from the roof
and they called it a flood
and you can't get flood insurance
if you live on the top of a hill
so like the what is it
the post underwriting after you file a claim
(42:39):
is that what's going on that kind of situation
so you file a claim and it goes to post underwriting
and some the adjuster
I didn't bother to file a claim on the flood
because my insurance agent said they won't cover it
I don't know how long ago you bought the house
but there could be non disclosure issues
with the guy that sold the house
or the real estate agent but yeah
(43:01):
it's probably water if you want to deal with that
water under the bridge no pun intended
oh it's water through my living room
the uh
they would not have known
and whoever hired the tile contractor who did it wrong
who knows who that was yeah you don't
I remember when I was in college
at the university of Michigan
(43:23):
people selling life insurance was really important
so I bought a 5,000 dollar life insurance policy
I have no idea why
because I wasn't married at the time or anything
and made payments on it for a number of years
it was worth $5,000 and they
(43:44):
one of the basis of selling it to me
is that it accrued all my payments
so if I ever want to cash it out
I can get my money back plus some return
The Central Life Insurance Company of Iowa
went out of business business a number of years ago
and I can't find who took over their business
so I can get my 5000+ dollars
(44:08):
through a life insurance party
I probably have to kill myself to collect
that kind of breaks it
alright it was nice meeting you David
maybe later good to meet you
yeah
be good out there
and we appreciate you coming and sharing your story
and yeah it's interesting
yeah please keep in touch and we will talk to you soon
(44:29):
okay
sounds good
I had this beautiful
(00:01):
Asian woman that was teaching me crypto
and I think I know I'm broke
can you help me
they do make the contact develop trust
and then they fatten you up like a pig
and then they butcher you
and if you train the generative AI on garbage
it's gonna spit garbage out
if you want to ruin the Zuck
stop letting him run his app on your platform
(00:22):
because it is Apple's devices
and they run a tight ship over there
you're listening to the Ransomware Rewind
where we break down the latest cyber threats
data breaches and security
solutions that matter to you and your business
stay secure
stay informed
enjoy the show
(00:44):
David
I know you're a professor
you have a consulting company
I'd like you to just go ahead and introduce yourself
tell us about you and what you do and why you do it
my goal in life is to help reduce the
percentage of product failures worldwide
(01:05):
which
about 35% of all new products that go through research
and develop and are introduced
fail in the marketplace
which represents a waste of about $1 trillion a year
uh if that could be reduced
there's more resources available to pay people
and to help work on protecting the environment
(01:26):
so I developed 5 keys to Product Success
which is a for the first word of my company name spice
where the s stands for product market strategy
P stands for repeatable processes
which have come mature I stands
for having the information
necessary to make a decision
(01:47):
the C stands for understanding the customer
what it is that the customer wants to do
why they wanna do it when they wanna do it
where they wanna do it how they wanna do it
how important is it
for that thing that they wanna get done
and how satisfied are they with the current solution
and the E stands for making sure that your employees
(02:08):
have all of the hundred and thirty competencies
or skill sets that I've identified in my books
and in my research and I teach in my trainings
to be able to have successful products
and successful services
you had a I don't know if it's you still do it
but you had a podcast too right
(02:28):
yeah I did
10 episodes of product success issues
and then I did 10 more episodes for the
Business Podcast Network
so I've got about 20 episodes out there
on each of the topics that I just mentioned
short bite size
easy to listen to
so typically about a half hour
(02:49):
and on my product management
or product success management issues
I interview VP level and higher
the VP of Product Management of Pitney Bowes
and so forth
about their issues their challenges
their successes
what they look for in prospective product managers
(03:11):
and so forth
awesome
I had a person that connected with me on LinkedIn
hmm
which is very unusual because I know the scams going
on with I get a text message and someone says hey
or or you wanna play golf tomorrow
(03:32):
or I found you in my address book
and where did we meet that kind of thing
that's a typical lead on it's from a text message
but this was a person that was in financial services
on LinkedIn and connected with me
and said that
they wanted to learn more about product management
(03:52):
that's sophisticated
yeah so they're essentially asking for some mentoring
and generally I'm a sucker to try to help people
and I got sucked into that
discussion over a number of months
then they said that
they had an uncle that runs a bank up in Seattle
branch manager
(04:12):
and he's got a bunch of analysts in China
and they can predict spot gold prices
and I've had friends tell me you should invest in gold
and I've never really pulled the trigger to do
do that because I thought it was somewhat speculative
but the scam artist convinced me by
(04:34):
saying that they can help me trade and spot gold
and sent me to a website called Fire Phoenix
FX dot com
oh
you go there and you can open up a trial account
and you can bet on opening and closing prices
(04:55):
or something like that and allegedly
this scammers uncle could tell me ahead of time
at what time and day if I get on and I trade
buy spot gold and sell spot gold I can make money
and then
that's really sophisticated not to talk about it
(05:17):
first of all it wasn't crypto
it was gold
and then they mentioned people that in your own area
they mention something that you're interested in
with the cause you're obviously very passionate about
the product development and product life cycle
they had to do their research
it wasn't random their situation is unique in that
(05:40):
they didn't mention the crypto
and then say hey handsome
give me your wallet this took time and effort
yeah
and they suggested that they were based in Hong Kong
or in England it wasn't really clear to me
and I did background searches on all this
and everything came up clean
so I wasn't able to spot the scam
(06:00):
and what they did is
after I made my first purchase of spot gold
the way money was transferred was through crypto
which I've since have Learned
the reason they wanted that is you can't trace it
right so
I would send money to Coinbase or Kraken from my bank
(06:24):
bank of America or Chase Bank
and they in turn
Kraken or Coinbase would transfer it to Fire Phoenix
and with my account at Fire Phoenix
I would then do the trades
and then very early in the scam
they um
wanted to prove to me that I can get my money out
(06:47):
so I forget I put in I don't know 20
30 and I was able to very easily
take out
so what my plan was if I put in say 100,000
I would take 100,000 out
and any profits that were left over
that's what I would use for trading spot gold
and make profits off of that
(07:07):
so I forget the exact numbers
because it's been over a year ago
so I got up there maybe to $1 million
and this uncle banker kept telling my scam artist that
I couldn't trade
unless I got above a certain financial threshold
and then when I made a million dollars in profits
(07:29):
and maybe had to in
I tried to take it out and they said no
you can't take it out till you pay your taxes
which was 23% of my profits
and that
my account had been frozen by the tax collector
in England
and I tried to find the tax collector in England
I forget the name of
our equivalent to the Internal Revenue Service there
(07:51):
King Henry the fourth
yeah and I emailed them and said
is this fire Phoenix effects legitimate no response
wow that's a significant amount of money
I gotta ask did you get your money back
nope none of them
not a nickel
wow and then
the bank of America was slow on the whole thing
(08:16):
but they were very quick
after me being with them for 45 years
they canceled my bank account at bank of America
so now I'm without a bank account
and many months later they contacted Social
Protective Services of Santa Clara County
and the police department of my local city
(08:41):
and it was the police sergeant that called me
that told me what was going on
bank of America did not tell me what was going on
Chase Bank did not tell me what was going on
and this whole concept
this started in like July of 2,023
culminated by December of 2,023
(09:04):
and all of this was very young
during that period of time
so
it's possible that the bank and the police department
and the district attorney
somewhat unaware of it
and it was through Detective Bill Hoyt
that I figured out what was going on
and I cut the thing off but by that point in time
(09:26):
an inspector that claimed to be in the same scam ring
wherever they were
I think they said even in Miramar at that time
said that they're trying to shut the thing down
and he turned out to a continuation of the scam
I needed to send him money to pay taxes oh
so I cut that off right away
(09:50):
the good news is that my
stock market investments have gone up
enough to cover the $1.7 million that I lost
two years ago
the bad news for city county
state and federal government is
I'll never have to pay income taxes again
(10:10):
because I'll take this as a theft loss
oh
I
talk to Gayle Perrin who is my local
assemblywoman in California
because the social services guy that I met with
who hadn't heard of this level of detail
(10:32):
he says
there were several other people that are very wealthy
in the Saratoga Los Gatos
Santa Clara area that were victims of similar scams
but he he does not have the resources
he needs to get the full job done
and hopes and I said
if I can persuade the Santa Clara County supervisors
(10:56):
and the federal government to spend some resources
and I explained to Gail
the governments are losing more money
as a result of these thefts
and they really should be
spending some resources on that
shutting it down not to talk over
but that's a very valid point
it sounds like a Tom Clancy novel
this is fascinating and I really like your point about
(11:18):
the state and the federal government's losing
they're losing money
if you want to talk about something
that's going to get their attention
it's like calling 9 1 1 and saying hey
armed citizen response
so
I gotta follow up with did they ever follow up with you
and put any laws in place
because no you
(11:41):
cause
you did have a financial loss in the seven figures
so you can deduct that
there's nothing that says otherwise
so I
I've heard back from Gail
or for anybody else that I've contacted wow
but just the other day a lady by the name of
(12:01):
let me see if I can get her name here
I'll search for it while I'm talking with you
who was with the Santa Clara County
District Attorney's Office
she retired
and she started a business called Operation Shamrock
(12:22):
in a late 2023
about the same time that I was getting scammed
and I forget her name off the top of my head
but I just connected with her
with her on LinkedIn
and she's holding a conference here in Silicon Valley
with 180 law enforcement agencies around the country
around the world to collaborate with each other
(12:43):
to try to shut this thing down
it really boils down to several key uh
points of pressure
one is pressure on the Chinese government
Laos and Cambodia and Thailand to raid these slave
(13:05):
scam activities in Myanmar and shut them down there
they are reaping trillions of dollars a year
it's huge and they built huge dormitories there
torture their people to scam other people
and they're in bad working conditions right
(13:27):
yeah horrible living conditions and they're enslaved
this person that was being impersonated on LinkedIn
pictures taken from Instagram and then put on LinkedIn
Lincoln could do a scan of Instagram
(13:48):
and other pictures on TikTok
and on Facebook and so forth
if Facebook would allow such scans to occur and
remove accounts on LinkedIn
that are using somebody else's pictures
eliminating that point of the fraud
this person was using a Gmail address
(14:10):
so Gmail knows what IP address
these emails are coming from
they are also using a phone number
and I think it was a WhatsApp phone number
Facebook meta knows who that person is
and if alerted right away
could shut it down and shut these scams off right away
(14:31):
so if better Twitter
Facebook Instagram
LinkedIn Google
YouTube would put together a task force to collaborate
share information and use their AI
which they can use greatly
to tell us lies and scan what's going on
(14:52):
when people's identities are being used
to fake other people's identities
a lot of this could be shut down very quickly
because it would it break the chain
cause the first step in the process
their outrage and probably jeez
I don't know
millions of people every day get these messages
and what again
(15:13):
I think what's concerning is they looked at you
they looked at your zip code
they looked at other wealthy people around you
and attacked them
it's really sophisticated
quite frankly and you're a smart
sophisticated man and other people in your area did it
that's what I find so concerning
is that they were able to pull it off
and then no one's stopping them
(15:35):
and if they just couldn't
if you could just block the subness that they're on
so you see the company
that alone that would break your whole operation
cause it's really fragile you cut
yeah and if you went well
I think the Fire Phoenix
FX dot com website is no longer there
but if you'd go there you could pick whatever it is
(15:59):
gold I guess
and other precious metals
and you could watch the put calls or price
or whatever it may be going up and down
on the website in real time
and they'll give you some fake money just to play with
so you can put some in so
I have a feeling that my scammer was behind
part of that and they had controls
(16:21):
so when they told me to sign on five twenty PM
and to get ready that at 5:30 will be the time to buy
and then they'll tell me sell
we're actually manipulating the graph
showing me the appreciation
or the depreciation
of spot gold at that particular time
(16:44):
but the fact that you're able to get the money back
they were playing the long game at first
you know
how you started in with a lower amount of money
and you got your money back
that's a different level of criminal
yeah they were essentially giving my money back
yeah it's true
but but
it's true but they're building credibility
(17:04):
run it off with it
like a hoodlum on the street with a gun
what they're doing is building trust what
so I think John Oliver back in April of last year
did a piece on The John Oliver Show Last Week Tonight
about pig butchering
(17:25):
and I think the Wall Street Journal
and the Washington Post
over the last year have done articles on the topic
so it's becoming more and more known
but many people aren't paying attention to those things
and it would seem to me that all the social media
I just mentioned
(17:46):
could be put up warnings about these kinds of things
and it's well described in the Shamrock dot org website
of this pattern of what they do
in terms of what you just mentioned
did you hear about
about this article that came out today or yesterday
where this woman was tricked by
(18:08):
a pig butcher
who was posing as Brad Pitt in the hospital
I just saw a headline and she lost like $800,000
I thought she was talking to Brad Pitt for real
hmm yeah
and Brad feels very bad about that
I'm sure sure yeah
using your name to scam someone else
even if it was me or that gentleman that scammed you
(18:32):
he probably feels bad
that his likeness was used to scam you
so it's just it's like people
you know what people
they think that they can't get scammed
that's the problem
I know you're a professor
you're a consultant
you've worked with Fortune 500 companies
I was reading
(18:52):
there was a Nobel laureate that was pig butchered
these are people from all walks of life
and I think the
one thing that people can take home with this
is that don't think that you're above getting scammed
because you know
anybody can know the warning signs or
and all that but still fall for it
(19:13):
because they use emotional manipulation
it looked like a way to make a lot more money
relatively easily
as opposed
goes to a romance scammer or something like that
yeah but that's human nature
and it's actually more compelling than a romance scam
especially the guy that's been divorced haha
(19:34):
if you look at it this way
they did come in asking for you like to mentor them
that was like creating a mentor mentee relationship
these are some of the signs
so I'll read them out to you
and if any of these ring a bell
for emotional manipulation
they ask you about your finances a little bit
(19:57):
they Learned about my finances
based upon money that I would transfer to fire Phoenix
and that told them whether I had the money or not
they encourage you to do more with your life
is that not something like you're happy
like you you can make a lot of money
(20:18):
uh they ask you personal questions
sometimes this is more geared towards like
your love life if it's
they meet you on dating sites
and that kind of emotional manipulation no
a lot of times there are weaponizing fears
like fear of getting
(20:39):
your taxes
like getting screwed by the IRS or something like that
not this one but I get a PDF letter
which
Apple Mail immediately throws into the junk category
where this individual
wants me to send them a little less than $2,000
so that they won't release the videos
(21:00):
they've taken of me on my computer
yeah I've gotten that one too
they want to send it to all my friends
I don't have any friends so they can't
they pick the wrong guy they pick the wrong
I'll be your friend
I'll send you the letter
(21:23):
go ahead with your list
please send it to my family
I got in I was like
they know my taste I don't know
is this real or not but then they say
they could see through the electrical tape that
I stuck on the camera
with mine they had a picture of my house
(21:43):
you gotta do better than that buddy
from Google Maps
like it was the exact same thing from Google Maps
get it direct from Street View
or from Zillow or Redfin or something
yeah okay
let me ask you this about your situation
did they keep the conversation going on LinkedIn
or did they ask you to go to a end to end
encryption type website like WhatsApp
(22:07):
they quickly asked me to go to WhatsApp
and see that's another place where Zuckerberg
or I call him suckerberg
step in
and stop these scams being
perpetrated on the WhatsApp platform
but I forget where I think it was in India
(22:27):
several hundred people were killed
because one religious sect
accused another religious sect of killing a cow
which is sacred
that spread this like 2 3 years ago
that spread like wildfire on WhatsApp
and people were killed over it
and what did Zuckerberg do about it
he went on Joe Rogan's podcast just the other day
(22:51):
and said apple hasn't invented anything new lately
why does he feel so threatened by apple
that he asked to constantly attack apple
he should clean up the act that's occurring on Facebook
WhatsApp and Instagram first
before he starts accusing
other people of not being innovative
(23:12):
yeah I wanna answer your question he's concerned about
Instagram uh
WhatsApp and Facebook getting pulled from this platform
cause that's where all his money comes from
and apple can do that
and what you described is absolutely horrific
and that's just the tip of the iceberg
(23:32):
we don't know what else is going on
so yeah
if you want to ruin the Zuck
stop letting him run his app on your platform
because it is Apple's devices
and they run a tight ship over there
so that's what he's really scared about
well
I would hope Tim Cook would do that
and one of the key things here that I talk about
(23:53):
is company values
and when Steve Jobs
who I was at the same management level with
when I was at apple wow
Steve when he came back to apple said
the important thing about apple
this is the late 90s is our values
and Tim Cook has spoken many times on the importance
of company values
(24:15):
and one of their values is empathy for the customer
another one is positive social contribution
another one is good management
and those all point to them saying
wait a minute
if Zuckerberg won't police the misuse of his platforms
(24:37):
then we'll remove those apps from the App Store
exactly that's my whole point
but that's what I'm hoping
that I could do with this lady from Shamrock
and do through my connections with state
local government
(24:58):
before I got into product management
I was a political campaign manager
for a successful gubernatorial campaign
and an unsuccessful John Connelly
presidential campaign
so I know a little bit about government relations
yeah this is a big problem
in 2023 5 billion in losses were reported
(25:23):
but they think the actual is 30 to 50 billion in losses
due to pig butchering
and I've seen numbers up to 75 billion being cited
yeah it's a
terribly embarrassing thing
for someone to have to come out and say I was stupid
it's just it's human nature
no one wants to be whole yeah
(25:43):
yeah and I think
if we can get some of the stigma away from that
victim blaming then we can have some people
like actually do something about this
and I think
it's really brave of you to come out on our show
and tell your story
so that people out there can learn from it
and hopefully not go through the same thing
(26:05):
I'm not just bitching about it
I'm offering I think
Creative
Hardcore Solutions
to cut the whole thing off at its knees
if the organizations that are perpetuating this
are willing to do so
yeah like I was looking through my LinkedIn messages
(26:28):
and at least once a month
I get a very attractive
Asian woman that has MBA in her title
and talking about connecting
and my wife gets on Facebook
she gets invites from these men that are just widowers
that have mbas and they'll have a very western name
(26:50):
and be very handsome but then when they talk
they'll say dear
my dear
and you can just look at the language and say that
that's like Middle Eastern
like they might as well just throw a hobby in there
but and it's so funny
cause we keep going back and forth with these
but what's scary is
let's say they hit up a woman that's single
that's the female architect of the man
(27:11):
he's rich he's a doctor and all this stuff
and has all these social norms
if he can only speak English
when he said he's born in Milwaukee he'd be perfect
I'm from Detroit no one in Milwaukee speaks English
they just talk about beer
and they're pretty good at it too
here's some openings that
(27:33):
they cast a wide net to people through WhatsApp
Facebook LinkedIn
dating sites of course
probably like shopping sites like offer
targeted as well and they ask you things like Kathy
it was a pleasure meeting you at the charity event
last week or this is my number
(27:58):
I have no want to be a bother
but I would like to meet your acquaintance
or there's always just hello or are you busy
are you busy yes
very much thank you why
why don't you respond
so they use intimidate that one yeah
so I now whenever I see one of those
(28:18):
I immediately block it and then I use
there are
several websites where you can put an image in
and it'll come back and tell you if that image is used
elsewhere
Google Images is very bad at that in terms of people
but they should improve that in order to again
(28:41):
cut down on the scam
yeah
they definitely have the resources
they're very poor
poor companies they're about to go bankrupt
so I don't know why Google would do that
are they better take my
it's not like they don't have any data centers
it's not like they don't know anything about AI
our databases yeah
they got enough AI for example
(29:02):
I use a little tool called perplexity
which is a conglomerate of AI
so I can ask it a question
it will crawl the net
which has probably been crawled before
come back with an answer and maybe 20
30 seconds
and the answer they would give me
would also give me the references
(29:23):
as to where they got the information from
so I put in my name for example
it comes back and called me renowned
so I like that and I went to Bard
which is I think Microsoft's AI
and I haven't been a fan of Microsoft
for a number of years Microsoft is co pilot
(29:47):
is it co pilot okay
so I went there and I put in my name
and it was about half right
said I worked at Sun Microsystems
I never did I used to sell their workstations
and a couple of other things
and then
I put in the name of my business partner at the time
and it came back and said
he had a MBA from Harvard and went to MIT
(30:07):
and the guy never graduated
graduated from college
he was a supply officer during the Vietnam War
do you a profile pic of you as a black man
no I didn't do that
they know I was from Detroit
I would shoot them if they did so
so that's the way I test these a I's
and if you train the generative AI on garbage
(30:31):
it's gonna spit garbage out
and Zuckerberg is now training his AI
that he's offering for free
on the shit that we post on Facebook
I can't imagine how bad its results are gonna be
because
the information that's going in is not even true
based upon what people post on Facebook
(30:53):
garbage in it's okay
his BFF now was Donald Trump yeah they're homies
one thing I has
what can other people do
to prevent this from happening
to them
I like what if you look back on it were there
any red flags that you overlooked
(31:14):
and like now you're like oh shit
that's a tough one I think switching to
WhatsApp should have been a red flag
but I did not know that at the time
um west too
at the time when I searched Fire Phoenix
(31:35):
I could only find two bad reviews of it
and it was referring to what I think
was a different company
dealing with Phoenix Arizona and firefighting
that's some experience just now
another red flag would be
they ask you to transfer
untraceable money using crypto
(31:56):
and now
that Trump's coming into office in a couple of days
and he's going to put national funds into crypto
that all begins to make me wonder
what's gonna happen after that
that's concerning so the Federal Reserve will be crypto
they view it like investing in gold
and putting it in Fort Knox
(32:18):
the crypto industry
and that's why they have put so much money into
Trump's campaign hundreds of millions of dollars
dark money not directly
but through other political action committees
because they can force the price
people are willing to pay for crypto up
(32:39):
and so they can profit off of it
but I don't understand what crypto is
it has no intrinsic value like gold does
or silver or platinum or uranium
so I don't know
I understand that only I don't need
I'm thinking about Kuwait
they have the highest currency in the world
cause it's based on oil there's actually
(33:01):
we're going back to old Tricky Dick
when he got rid of the gold standard
and here we are all these years later
I wanna create my own fiat currency called the dowdy
and I have the dowdy coin
the problem is I can't find any suckers
the real question is just got a
this is a website called
pump fund.com Pump fund
(33:21):
and you can create whatever coin you want and get like
people to invest in it and yeah yeah
but when you start getting into the Federal Reserve
and the president United States
I guess playing devil's advocate
you could say
fiat currency doesn't have intrinsic value
it's just that everybody believes in it
that's a valid point and it's still running on the old
(33:42):
if we're gonna go to like actual value
I mean like the barter system is great
I will trade you a bottle of vodka for a haircut
that kind of thing
that's fine
a new scam is being talked about through gofundme
where people in LA fires have had a loss
and they
(34:03):
or their friends put up a gofundme page for that
and then a scammer will go
take the images off of that gofundme page
and create a new one
and the money goes directly to them with a similar URL
yes
yes charity scams are hard
they're just brutal yeah
(34:23):
and why doesn't gofundme police its own website
so that the same images can't show up on two
different gofundme campaigns
yeah I was listening to one of our favorite podcast
Darknet Diaries this morning
if you're out there you know we love you
and
they were talking about this website called Bike Index
(34:47):
and it indexes all the bikes
so that you can report stolen bikes
and he was complaining that offer up
where all these bikes are fenced or sold
does not do anything
even when he can send them information
proving that the bike being sold is stolen
(35:08):
wow that's horrible
so if your bike's ever stolen
you can check out Bike Index hahaha
non profit
and he uncovered this crazy bike stealing ring where
bikes around the Bay Area were being taken to Mexico
and and sold
(35:30):
and
they took down the American connection there but the
he just diversified and the scam still going on
so if you've ever gotten your bike stolen
you might want to listen to that episode
I have a bike from Holland
an electric bike
(35:51):
I forget the exact name of it
but the company went out of business and they had
I forget how much and if my bike is stolen
they can recover it because it has tracking on it
and if they can't recover it
they'll give me a brand new bike nice
cool that's good
I know that in China
(36:12):
pig butchering is called shazupan
and the direct translation is the killing pig game
I thought that
that's right
that'd be a good name for a Chinese restaurant
I'll order the Shazam pan
cool yeah
(36:33):
I think that this is a huge problem
and I think
politicians and people should start paying attention
the biggest pig butchering
a scam that I found was a CEO of a Kansas bank
that embezzled $47 million
in order to secure his crypto
(36:55):
and the entire bank went bankrupt
ouch CEO yeah
I heard about that ouch yeah it was back in 2,023
they're going after professionals
people that anyone really
they're casting that huge net
they're probably using AI to send these first messages
(37:18):
right like the hello or whatever
and then it's going to like some call center
dormitory compound where people are
on computers with AK 40 sevens to their head
and it's just like
how do we stop this
I did mention
(37:39):
but early in the chats with my scammer
we talked we had a sort of a Facebook call
I think on WhatsApp
and they I found out later
what they did is they used AI and their images
which they stole from Instagram
(37:59):
and were able to have a conversation
just like we're having now
and they look very real yes they
a deep fake yeah
yeah video are more prevalent
oh another side was that they were using a translation
(38:21):
app or something perhaps Google Translate
so they would type in whatever language they knew
and the English would come out
and sometimes it was quite awkward
so that indicated
but this person was not pretending to be American
this person was pretending to be Chinese
(38:42):
but the images that
the inspector that was part of the ring
that's trying to take the
that scam ring down
who also was just nothing more than a
continuation of the scam
sent me the a link to
(39:04):
an Instagram page that had the same images
that my scammer had damn it
wow
so that's why I said
if some of these image search services
could have showed me
when I tried to search the scammers image
that it was somebody else
which was Korean
(39:25):
and I would have been immediately suspicious
and shut it off
one tip is if you're using search
you can right click on a picture and do an image search
Google is a little bit more difficult
we have to upload the image or put it in the search
is there any
(39:45):
last word of advice you want to give our audience
I think I pretty much spit it all out
where can people find you
they can go to my website spice
catalyst.com and my contact information is there
awesome
great
anything else that you wanna talk
(40:06):
I don't I know
you didn't get a chance to say anything about
rapid scale no
I didn't cloud computing
if you're out there looking for secure cloud computing
yeah talk to Mike if you're looking for cyber insurance
talk to me and
yeah can I buy some of your ears
yeah
exactly so there is personal cyber insurance
and you could get insured up to $1 million
(40:28):
that may cover something like that
cause it's covered under social engineering
and financial fraud that's interesting
so there are products like that
that we can help people buy
but yeah like you said
scammers are out there on even on my business clients
one of my restaurant owners
(40:50):
got tricked into a payment processing loan scam
where the guy was taking money from people
promising 20
30% returns they were getting the returns right
but he was paying them with other people's money
pyramid scheme
and eventually just like the return stopped
(41:10):
and luckily
he had bought a business insurance policy for cyber
and that got covered under social engineering
so he got his like hundred fifty
four thousand dollars back
I have State Farm home insurance
and I have a rider on that
for something like this they refuse to cover it oh
(41:31):
that sucks the identity yeah
it's usually like 15,000 for like
identity theft expense that's bad
they said we don't cover that yeah
I live on a Hilltop in Los Gatos
and I have a atrium
which has a drain that runs out to the street
the previous owner had put in tile in the atrium
(41:54):
and instead of sloping towards the street
it sloped towards the house when it rained
it turns out after we dug up the drain pipe
it had collapsed a long time ago
there was no drain pipe it was filled with MUD
wow so now I'm out about 45,000
for a new drain pipe and new flooring
(42:15):
throughout the first floor of the house
and the insurance company
State Farm
will pay nothing on that
because the water did not come in from the roof
and they called it a flood
and you can't get flood insurance
if you live on the top of a hill
so like the what is it
the post underwriting after you file a claim
(42:39):
is that what's going on that kind of situation
so you file a claim and it goes to post underwriting
and some the adjuster
I didn't bother to file a claim on the flood
because my insurance agent said they won't cover it
I don't know how long ago you bought the house
but there could be non disclosure issues
with the guy that sold the house
or the real estate agent but yeah
(43:01):
it's probably water if you want to deal with that
water under the bridge no pun intended
oh it's water through my living room
the uh
they would not have known
and whoever hired the tile contractor who did it wrong
who knows who that was yeah you don't
I remember when I was in college
at the university of Michigan
(43:23):
people selling life insurance was really important
so I bought a 5,000 dollar life insurance policy
I have no idea why
because I wasn't married at the time or anything
and made payments on it for a number of years
it was worth $5,000 and they
(43:44):
one of the basis of selling it to me
is that it accrued all my payments
so if I ever want to cash it out
I can get my money back plus some return
The Central Life Insurance Company of Iowa
went out of business business a number of years ago
and I can't find who took over their business
so I can get my 5000+ dollars
(44:08):
through a life insurance party
I probably have to kill myself to collect
that kind of breaks it
alright it was nice meeting you David
maybe later good to meet you
yeah
be good out there
and we appreciate you coming and sharing your story
and yeah it's interesting
yeah please keep in touch and we will talk to you soon
(44:29):
okay
sounds good
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