In this episode of the Smarticle Scams podcast, Brandon welcomes Intel analyst Paul Raffile to discuss his extensive work in fighting financial sextortion. Raffile shares his background in tracking online threats and details how financial sextortion scams have evolved to predominantly target males aged 14-17 years old. He explains the methods these criminals use to coerce victims and the psychological impacts on young people, including devastating cases leading to suicides. Raphael also examines the roles of social media platforms and payment services, like Cash App, in perpetuating these scams and their responsibility in combating them. He highlights the importance of awareness and offers resources and steps both parents and policymakers can take to protect children from becoming victims. The episode emphasizes the need for substantial action from social media companies and legislative bodies to curb the growing threat of financial sextortion that endangers children's lives globally.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Background 01:44 Understanding Financial Sextortion 04:49 The Tactics of Sextortion Scammers 09:12 The Role of Social Media in Sextortion 15:01 Impact on Victims and Families 19:36 Efforts to Combat Sextortion 26:18 Call to Action and Resources 27:39 Paul's Motivation and Final Thoughts smarticlepodcast@gmail.com FBI - Sextortion National Center For Missing and Exploited Kids Canadian Center For Child Protection @Smarticleshow @BDDoble @larryolson threads.net/@smarticleshow @brand.dobes The Smarticle Podcasthttps://www.smarticlepodcast.com/
#paulraffile #yahooboys #sextortion #financialcrimes #financialsextortion #cashapp #facebookscams #scams #onlinescams #smarticlescams #coinbase #smarticlepodcast
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Episode Transcript
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(00:54):
Welcome Paul Raffile to theSmarticle Scams podcast.
It is a true honor andprivilege to have you on here.
Before we get started, I love for you,and then I'll explain how I found you and
what that's about, but I'd love for youto give us a little bit of your background
because we're doing the Smarticle Scams,we're talking about scams, tell us a
(01:14):
little bit about yourself, where you comefrom and how you got into fighting scams.
Hey, thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, I've been an Intel analystfor the past 10 years in my career.
What is an Intel analyst?
We are the folks who monitor thingsonline, threats against the nation,
threats against corporations,threats against regular people.
(01:36):
I started out tracking ISIS on socialmedia for the government, early part
of my career, and then moved overto the corporate sector after that.
Most recently, I've been focused oncombating a dangerous scam and pervasive
scam called financial sextortion.
That's the overarching basis of thisshow is to talk about 6th Dorsian.
(01:57):
So, Paul is, he's a littlebit humble, I think.
He has incredible pedigree interms of this sort of work.
I found Paul because as I starteddoing research for this show, I started
hearing these people, I like to callthem fraud warriors, but Paul is
definitely a fraud warrior, has postedprolifically about these different
scams, specifically sextortion scams.
(02:19):
So let's start there, and do me a favor,there's, by the way, there's a great
introduction or a great explanationon the FBI website that I will post
in the show notes, but tell us what issextortion, what is financial sextortion?
Financial sextortion is a crime wherecriminals are coercing young people,
usually, into sharing intimate photosor videos and then the criminals
(02:42):
immediately blackmail their targets,threatening to share those photos or
videos and ruin their victims livesunless they continue to pay money.
Sextortion is not a new crime.
It historically targeted females,victims of intimate partner violence.
But what we've seen rapidly growingover the past two to three years is
(03:03):
this financial version of sextortion,where it is essentially a scam combined
with child sexual exploitation.
So in the past, it would be some,somebody, maybe a boyfriend or a friend or
whatever would ask for Uh, a young person,typically a young lady, to send them
naked photos or whatever of themselves.
I was a teacher for a long timeand you'd see these bullying
(03:25):
things come out around this.
But that's not what we're seeing now.
That's not typical anymore.
Is that correct?
What we're seeing with sextorture is the script is flipped.
Now the typical victim is a male,typically 14 to 17 years old is
the most common victim profileaccording to the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children.
The motive for the scam has changed.
(03:48):
Now we're seeing an entirely newcriminal element, criminal enterprise,
entering into the space of childsexual exploitation for money.
And these criminals have realizedthat they can target young boys
and young men with the scamand get very rich very quickly.
But why is it 14 to 17?
Is that just like they'reparticularly vulnerable?
(04:11):
You think maybe a 21 year old kid,I'm sure it happens to people older,
but why is it that age in particular?
Interesting.
I would say that university age and kindof young adult age is a very commonly
targeted group as well, except we justdon't have good data on this age group.
We have better data on minors simplybecause these crimes are being reported by
the social media platforms to the NationalCenter for Missing and Exploited Children.
(04:35):
Got it.
And that's going to lead me to aquestion about social media later on.
But before we get to that,tell me what it looks like.
How do they typically approachor find or coerce their victims?
I know that's three questions, but I'mwondering how this even gets started.
Yeah.
So here's what the scam looks like.
Imagine you are a young person onInstagram and you receive a request from
(04:59):
someone to follow you and that personhas 15 to 20 mutual friends in common.
They appear like they're someonepotentially who goes to school with
you or lives on the other side of town.
Maybe someone that you don't knowpersonally but appears to be in your
circle, outer circle of friends.
The conversation starts out normal.
(05:21):
They will ask you about your day, askwhat you're up to, and they will very
quickly turn the conversation flirtatious.
They'll ask for a selfie, a photo, andthen the criminal gets very deceiving.
They actually send a nude photofirst, and then they demand and
coerce their victim to reciprocate.
The moment that happens, that'swhen the blackmail begins.
(05:44):
These criminals have scripts and it'sa verbatim, Hey, I have your nudes and
everything needed to ruin your life.
I'm going to send it toyour school, your family.
You're going to get expelledand lose your scholarships
unless you pay me 500 right now.
You've said something, theyusually have 20 friends in common.
How does that happen?
How do they get the 20 friendsin common on social media?
(06:06):
Right.
These criminals are very adeptat making themselves look like
legitimate personas online.
One of the tactics that these criminalsuse is what they call bombing.
And bombing is when they flood a wholebunch of friend requests and follower
requests into a specific community.
It could be a high school.
It could be a sports team.
(06:26):
When numerous people, uh,within that community accept
that scammer's follow request.
It makes their account seem moreauthentic, more legitimate, that that
is an actual person in the community.
But nobody in the communityactually knows this person.
This is just sort of part of thecon, is that they get one person to
accept and then it's like, oh, soand so accepted, they must be okay.
(06:49):
Is that the psychology behind it?
That's exactly right.
Okay.
Are these, maybe you don't have ananswer to this, but who are these people?
Who is doing this extortion?
Is it just across the board?
Well, we actually have apretty good answer here.
And most of the financial sextortion isactually being driven by one particular
(07:09):
threat group out of West Africa,and they call themselves Yahoo Boys.
Why the Yahoo boys?
Yahoo boys are the Nigerian princescammers from about 20 years ago.
They have moved on to theromance scams on Facebook.
They've moved on to thecrypto scams on Twitter.
And now the scam that they are findingto be very quick and very lucrative
(07:31):
for them is financial sextortion.
They call it the blackmail scam.
What's funny, there's one theme thatI'm hearing over and over and over
when we look at these digital onlinescams is The creation of trust in the
victim through things like what youjust said, bombing, getting people
to accept requests, it's happeningon LinkedIn, it happens everywhere.
(07:52):
So you're like, Oh, they must belegit, even though they're not.
Are there any hells?
So if I was talking to my son ordaughter and I was saying, look,
this is what you need to be aware of.
What are the tells, what are the kind oftricks that one might look for in this?
Here's the scary thing.
Some victims have sent me differentaccounts that they know are being used
(08:15):
in sextortion, the accounts that targetedthem, and I've looked at these accounts,
and they are entirely indistinguishable.
From real people, theirprofile looks legitimate.
It looks several years old.
The criminals are purchasing or hackinginto accounts that have authentic
activity on the social media platform.
So they look legit.
(08:35):
And then once they have those 10, 15,20 mutual friends in common, there's no
telling just based on the account alone.
Then I'll give some other red flags about.
Ways that you can detect a sextortionscam, hopefully before it happens.
Number one, the criminal comes offvery flirtatious, very quickly.
Nobody online with good intentionsis going to be asking or coercing
(08:58):
you to send a compromising photowithin 48 hours of knowing them.
And oftentimes that's all ittakes for this scam to execute.
It could be as short as 30minutes, or it could be extended
out through a couple of days.
But this is a very fast moving scam.
Secondly, I think it's important to knowthese criminals very often try to move
the kids or the victims onto Snapchat.
(09:21):
And the reason they dothat is for two reasons.
Number one, young peoplethink that Snapchat is a less
risky place to share photos.
And the reason for that is Snapchat isknown for its disappearing photo feature.
That's the maincharacteristic of Snapchat.
However, what these criminals have beenable to do is they are able to, number
one, send pre recorded videos and liveand pre recorded photos to make it appear
(09:46):
as though they are live photos and livevideos being sent to the victims using the
platform's own features to make it seemconvincing, and number two, the criminals
have been able to Screenshot and screenrecord of things that are happening on
Snapchat without that notification goingoff, which typically notifies people
that their Snapchats are being saved.
(10:07):
How are they doing that?
What's the, do you know whatthe technology behind that is?
We're not making that public.
Okay, so it's, but it's a thing.
It's a very rudimentary technologyaround that they are using.
And the reason I ask that is I oftenwonder what is the responsibility
of Snapchat to combating thisor is Snapchat combating this?
(10:30):
Snapchat has done a few things since thishas become a major topic on their radar.
Number one, I do want to highlightSnapchat's research that recently came
out that showed 51 percent of Gen Zhave been targeted for sextortion.
23% Have reported saying that they havefallen victim to a sextortion and a
(10:51):
large chunk of that financial sextortion.
So that's not a small number thenthere's millions of gen z ers online
and on snapchat Do we have any ideaof the rough numbers when we say 23?
What does that look like?
That aligns with the huge spike we'reseeing out of the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children.
Back in 2021, there were only 139reported cases of financial sex
(11:14):
torture in minors here in the U.
S. Fast forward just two years to2023, and instead of 139 cases,
there were over 26, 000 cases.
That's an 18, 000 percentincrease in the span of two years.
139 cases they were reviewing onan annual basis, and now they're
reviewing 900 cases a week.
Oh my goodness.
(11:34):
They're completely inundated with this.
Okay, you said it's one gang, theYahoo Boys or whatever out of Nigeria.
Are they working similar towhat the pig butchering scams
are working out of compounds?
What does this look like?
The Yalopoys have elements oforganized and disorganized crime.
So no, they are not operating out ofa centralized scam center or compound.
(11:56):
They're actually very geographicallydistributed across West Africa,
primarily in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.
These criminals operate insmall gangs, small groups.
Often times one person is the moneyperson running the, the money accounts.
Another person is the chatter whosends all these friend requests
and initial conversations out.
(12:16):
And they work in groups in order to,uh, extort as many people as they can.
We know one criminal is responsiblefor over a thousand victims.
And I will say eight figures inextorted payments from these victims.
Just one person.
Oh my goodness.
I guess the question I would ask,and then I really do want to get into
(12:38):
the victims themselves, but is AIplaying a part in any of this now?
I have been gone down an AI rabbithole, working on podcasts, working
in technology, you just, it'severywhere, it's prolific, but
I am amazed at how good it is.
I got to imagine there'ssome level of this.
Is this happening with AI at all?
Yes.
(12:58):
Right now it's a smallpercentage, but it's growing.
There's two ways that these criminalsare using AI to enhance their
financial sextortion operations.
The first one, for example, Let's saywe just met on social media, we are
exchanging selfies, and some of thesevictims do get a little suspicious,
and they ask or request somethinglike They'll send me a photo of you
(13:22):
touching your nose or with a thumbsup or a peace sign, some sort of proof
of life to make sure that that personis actually who they say they are.
And we are already seeing thesevictims using AI tools to manipulate
the models that they are catfishingas in order to show us those poses
to prove that they are that person.
(13:44):
Before we get to the second part,for my uncle Lou in Iowa, for
people that aren't aware, definecatfishing really quickly for us.
Yeah, catfishing is essentially pretendingto be someone that you are not online.
Here's the other way that AI isbeing used by these extortion
criminals, and this part I think hasa big potential for abuse at scale.
(14:05):
We are already seeing these criminals,if they fail, at convincing a victim to
send a nude photo, or a revealing photo.
We're already seeing thesecriminals artificially generate nude
photos of their victims using AI.
They are finding normal photos onthese victims Instagram accounts,
for example, uploading these photosto nudifying apps that are readily
(14:29):
available online these days, and thenusing those photos, that material, to
extort their victims, threatening tosend that material out unless they pay.
So a person could do absolutely nothingother than make contact with this.
And it could be extorted topay for these fake photos.
That's exactly right.
You can do everything correct.
(14:50):
You can decide not to sendthe photo and you can still
become a victim of this crime.
All right, I'm about ready tojust shut down my computer.
Lock my daughter in a bunker somewhere.
The reality is obviously we can't.
Let's talk a little bitabout the victims themselves.
Is there a certain demographic?
We said it's the age.
I'd love to hear about what'sthe fallout for the victims.
(15:13):
I can imagine it's terrible andthings I've read from you and others.
It looks horrific.
So what's going on once thescams start or they get hooked
into it or catfished into it?
So as I mentioned, these criminalsare using ruthless tactics,
threats, manipulation in orderto get their victims to pay.
They're legitimately threateningto ruin these kids lives.
(15:35):
I mentioned before, like, they arethreatening to leak these photos to,
uh, the kids teachers, to their school,to get them expelled, saying that their
scholarships are going to get revokedor they'll be taken off the sports team.
In some instances, we even see thesecriminals texting the kid from a
different phone number, pretending tobe law enforcement, and that the kid
(15:58):
is now under investigation for theactivity that they're involved in.
Just really relentlessthreats and blackmail.
What's the fallout forthese kids themselves?
What's happening to them?
As of today, we are aware of at least44 teen suicides of teenagers that
were being victimized in a financialsextortion scam who took their own lives.
(16:20):
They had no other way out or theythought that they had no other way out.
I believe this is aterribly low underestimate.
Most of these cases have only beendiscovered by happenstance, by chance.
These victims are not leaving notes.
They're taking this embarrassingsituation to the grave with them.
I would not be surprised if theactual casualty count was in the
(16:42):
several hundreds at this point.
We're only happening to discoverthese cases when a friend just happens
to remember the pin to the victim'sphone or police happen to crack
into the phone three or four monthslater after the, after the fact.
As a parent, I can'tthink of anything worse.
(17:03):
I just can't think ofanything worse than this.
Something happened to your childthat you can't protect them from.
What is the landscape looklike for these families that
are caught up in these scams?
And is there anythingthey can do about this?
The scary thing is, all ofthose, all the families.
Have done everything correctly.
The families that lost their kidsto this, they were loving families.
(17:24):
They supported their kids.
They talked about digital safety.
They talked about not sending imagesto people online, but these kids
are victims and these criminals aremore manipulative than ever before.
It is a rapid fire.
Groaning and coercing the kidsinto a terrible situation.
Lots of parents, of course,have the conversation.
(17:45):
Do not send photos tofolks you just met online.
Right.
At all.
I think there needs to be apart two of that conversation.
That sounds a little bit like, if thisdoes happen, There are things that we
can do, resources that, that we can doto make sure those photos are not leaked,
posted, you will be okay, you'll be fine,uh, come to us as a supportive parent,
(18:10):
you know, be this off landing space.
Um, let them know that you aren't goingto be mad and take away the phone and
they're, they're going to be punished.
Let them know that they can come to youas the parent for those sorts of things.
If you were talking to a room full ofkids, and I was a middle school principal
and teacher, I always would say tothem, remember, even though it says
(18:32):
that it's disappearing, once it's inthe digital space, it's there forever.
What would you say, as somebody that's sodeeply embedded in this, to a room full
of 14 to 17 year olds or college kids?
What would you say to them about this?
In other words, how do youprepare them, is what I'm asking.
Yeah, you might have to fact check meon this, but I saw a statistic that
if you know how a scam works, you're80 percent less likely to fall for it.
(18:56):
If I were to wave a magic wand, just Inthe awareness element of letting teens
know that, Hey, historically, you maynot have been a huge target or a victim
of online exploitation, but the entiredemographic has shifted these criminals.
Their target is everybody you willbe targeted by this crime, and you
(19:19):
just have to recognize those signs.
And if it happens to you, just thereare resources out there to help out.
All right.
So that leads us to the.
What can or what are socialmedia, law enforcement, what
are people doing to stop this?
Or is anybody doing anything to stop this?
(19:39):
The social media platformshave taken some steps over the
past year to try to curb this.
We've seen some press releases andfeature updates from Meta, from
Instagram, from Snapchat, and fromCash App on this issue, and those
three platforms are the most affectedby financial sextortion right now.
On the law enforcement front,we have seen some promise.
(20:01):
It's very rare to have anextradition of a scammer from
Nigeria being brought to the U.
S. for justice.
Just a couple months ago, however, wasthe very first extradition for financial
extortion for a child who died by suicide.
Those criminals are now infederal prison serving 17 years.
There are a couple other extraditionspending out of West Africa
(20:21):
from the Ivory Coast as well.
And it's a problem where we can'textradite our way out of it.
There are thousands ofcriminals doing this crime.
So we really have to rely on thesocial media platforms to ensure
that they are safe by design.
Are they safe by design?
No.
And that's what I'm seeingover and over again.
(20:42):
And I'm not trying to cast aspersions ateverybody's It uses social media, but I
think that the one thing, theme that I'mconstantly hearing is social media needs
to do more and it's across the board.
It's every one of these typesof scams that are out there.
So let's talk about one thing that whenyou were saying that I was thinking, how
do the kids get the money to pay for this?
(21:04):
The number one payment platformused by minors in financial sex
tortion schemes is Cash App.
Roughly 40 percent of payments beingremitted in financial sex tortion
schemes are through Cash App now.
Um, that has superseded gift cards, thathas superseded cryptocurrency, and that
has superseded all the other peer to peerpayment platforms like Venmo and PayPal.
(21:27):
So why CashApp, and why didthis crime spree actually
start in quarter four of 2021?
CashApp was the first of the peerto peer payment platforms, uh,
that allowed for teen accounts,what they call sponsored accounts.
Which rolled out in quarter four of 2021.
(21:48):
At the very same time that these paymentplatforms were extending their services
now to minors aged 13 to 17, very quickly,the scammers, uh, realized that they
had new targets that were now connected.
So the international payment systemwhen we say peer to peer, we mean
things like Venmo or I have it attachedto my bank account and you and I go
(22:12):
out for dinner and I say, I'm goingto Venmo you 40 bucks or cash app you
40 bucks or whatever, should they,and you don't have to answer this.
You maybe you can't answer this,but should cash app put the
kibosh on the access for if wesee direct results of this should
cash app do something about that.
They certainly have the dataand the signals to act on this.
(22:35):
They are seeing anomalous activity, theyare seeing money flowing out towards West
Africa inexplicably from, uh, victimswho have never paid money there before.
Uh, they are seeing teens empty theirentire accounts, uh, sending them to
accounts that they have never interactedwith before, and accounts that have
also received a whole lot of moneyfrom a whole bunch of other teenagers
(22:57):
in a very short period of time.
Um, they are seeing The direct messagesthat occur on Cash App, because you can
send payment requests to people and thesecriminals are sending payment requests
to their victims with threats in them.
So all this data is visible to Cash App.
(23:18):
And you don't have to answer this if youdon't feel comfortable answering it, but
why isn't Cash App doing something then?
Ugh.
It's complicated.
I could go into the thingsthat they are doing, but they
aren't particularly helpful.
They committed to a White Housepledge to combat image based
(23:41):
abuse and all these things thatdon't really have teeth into them.
I don't have a good answerto that question, really.
One of the things that I'm seeingfrom people is people are genuinely
and realistically worried aboutlitigation from companies because
You can't prove some of this stuff.
So I'm not saying thatcash app is doing this.
I'm not saying that Instagram isdoing this, but it does feel like
(24:01):
there's a lot of data out thereto support some of this work.
So the next question I would ask them,let's say that cash app is just a solace.
Uh, machine, and they're not goingto do anything until they're forced.
Who forces these companiesto make these changes?
Is it Congress?
Is it the president?
Is it law enforcement?
Where do these changes come from?
(24:23):
At this point, I'll take anybodybecause social media platforms have
operated with impunity for 20 years.
They are immune from any sortof liability based on criminal
activity on the platforms.
COSA was just shot down in the Houseof Representatives in December.
What's COSA?
The Kids Online Safety Act, and thatwas the first significant online safety
(24:46):
legislation for kids in 20 years.
It passed in the Senate 91 to 3,and when it moved over to the House
for a vote, Speaker Johnson did noteven bring it up for a vote, despite
the majority of attorney generalsurging him to do so, despite leaders
of the Senate urging him to do so.
Now he's been in a state that'spushed for online protection,
(25:09):
anti pornography, all this stuff.
Louisiana has been atthe forefront of that.
So what was his.
Did he give any reasoning why hekilled the, killed it in committee?
It actually passed through a committee andit was due for a vote in the full house.
It was just never raised for a vote.
I don't suppose that has anything to dowith MEDA's decision, an announcement
(25:32):
to invest a 10 billion data centerin Louisiana earlier in December.
Interesting.
We're not saying that Mike Johnsondid that because of that, but
there does seem to be a monetary.
Rationale for a lot of this stuff.
I will editorialize.
You don't have to Paul, but our kidsare more important than anything else.
(25:53):
And they're certainly more importantthan the shareholder stock price of meta.
So what can the people listening todaydo to push things like HOSA and bills to
protect our kids, because the other crimeswe've talked about, they've affected older
Americans, pig butchering is everywhere.
This is attacking our children.
(26:14):
This is a very serious.
Issue.
Children are dying.
We talk about all sorts of things,but here's an opportunity for us
to actually do something about it.
What can the average person listeningto this right now do to combat this?
Number one, contact yourrepresentatives, especially in the house.
Make them know that this is a priorityin passing COSA in 2025's Congress.
(26:38):
Number two, talk to families, talkto kids, talk to teens in your life.
Let them know that this crimeexists and hopefully they're less
likely to become victim to it.
And if they do, they know that you can bea resource and help them get out of it.
Is there any place youwould send families?
I know you do a lot of thiswork, but you're just one person.
(26:58):
Is there, are there any resources?
And I know there are, butwhat are the basic resources
that a family would look for?
Yeah.
So both for awareness, but alsoreporting it if it happens.
Great resources out of the National Centerfor Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC.
org.
There's also some great educational andawareness material put out by THORN.
(27:21):
And lastly, I would recommend theawareness materials and education
materials from the CanadianCenter for Child Protection.
They've done a lot of greatwork on the subject too.
Because it's not just affectingAmerican kids, it's affecting
kids worldwide, I'm assuming.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
I am now depressed, thank youPaul, but I am grateful that people
(27:41):
such as yourself are out there.
Doing battle for this lastquestion I have for you.
And maybe it's an obvious questionto answer, but what motivated you to
get involved in this battle and thisfight, you've got a job, you're doing
your security stuff, why this topic?
This is the worst scamthat I can think of.
I have previously went head to headwith the Yahoo boys in previous roles
(28:06):
where they were doing fake job scamstargeting my company and other cyber
enabled fraud targeting one of thefinancial institutions I work for.
And when I saw them make this transitionover to committing child sexual
exploitation and blackmail, resulting insuicide at scale, I can't imagine a worse
(28:28):
Financially motivated crime, and the factthat nobody was really talking about it,
like organized crime, we were looking atthese individualized cases, the individual
tragedies, but nobody was saying,Hey, these cases are all connected.
It's by the same threat group, they'reusing the same scripts, they're
using the same images, and they aredeploying this at scale to target
(28:51):
hundreds of thousands of teams.
The gravity of the situationwasn't lost on me, and I definitely
felt a responsibility to.
Step up and talk about it and,and rally the groups to combat
it in several different ways.
I will be posting in the show notes someof the material that you talked about,
some of the resources for families.
The one thing that we're, the whole reasonwhy we're doing these Barnacle Scams is
(29:14):
to get the word out as much as possible.
There is awareness, butthere's not enough awareness.
So thank you, Paul, for doingthe work that you're doing.
I appreciate you taking the time to talkwith us today and be part of this project.
Thank you for having me.
Welcome Paul Raffile to theSmarticle Scams podcast.
It is a true honor andprivilege to have you on here.
Before we get started, I love for you,and then I'll explain how I found you and
what that's about, but I'd love for youto give us a little bit of your background
because we're doing the Smarticle Scams,we're talking about scams, tell us a
(01:14):
little bit about yourself, where you comefrom and how you got into fighting scams.
Hey, thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, I've been an Intel analystfor the past 10 years in my career.
What is an Intel analyst?
We are the folks who monitor thingsonline, threats against the nation,
threats against corporations,threats against regular people.
(01:36):
I started out tracking ISIS on socialmedia for the government, early part
of my career, and then moved overto the corporate sector after that.
Most recently, I've been focused oncombating a dangerous scam and pervasive
scam called financial sextortion.
That's the overarching basis of thisshow is to talk about 6th Dorsian.
(01:57):
So, Paul is, he's a littlebit humble, I think.
He has incredible pedigree interms of this sort of work.
I found Paul because as I starteddoing research for this show, I started
hearing these people, I like to callthem fraud warriors, but Paul is
definitely a fraud warrior, has postedprolifically about these different
scams, specifically sextortion scams.
(02:19):
So let's start there, and do me a favor,there's, by the way, there's a great
introduction or a great explanationon the FBI website that I will post
in the show notes, but tell us what issextortion, what is financial sextortion?
Financial sextortion is a crime wherecriminals are coercing young people,
usually, into sharing intimate photosor videos and then the criminals
(02:42):
immediately blackmail their targets,threatening to share those photos or
videos and ruin their victims livesunless they continue to pay money.
Sextortion is not a new crime.
It historically targeted females,victims of intimate partner violence.
But what we've seen rapidly growingover the past two to three years is
(03:03):
this financial version of sextortion,where it is essentially a scam combined
with child sexual exploitation.
So in the past, it would be some,somebody, maybe a boyfriend or a friend or
whatever would ask for Uh, a young person,typically a young lady, to send them
naked photos or whatever of themselves.
I was a teacher for a long timeand you'd see these bullying
(03:25):
things come out around this.
But that's not what we're seeing now.
That's not typical anymore.
Is that correct?
What we're seeing with sextorture is the script is flipped.
Now the typical victim is a male,typically 14 to 17 years old is
the most common victim profileaccording to the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children.
The motive for the scam has changed.
(03:48):
Now we're seeing an entirely newcriminal element, criminal enterprise,
entering into the space of childsexual exploitation for money.
And these criminals have realizedthat they can target young boys
and young men with the scamand get very rich very quickly.
But why is it 14 to 17?
Is that just like they'reparticularly vulnerable?
(04:11):
You think maybe a 21 year old kid,I'm sure it happens to people older,
but why is it that age in particular?
Interesting.
I would say that university age and kindof young adult age is a very commonly
targeted group as well, except we justdon't have good data on this age group.
We have better data on minors simplybecause these crimes are being reported by
the social media platforms to the NationalCenter for Missing and Exploited Children.
(04:35):
Got it.
And that's going to lead me to aquestion about social media later on.
But before we get to that,tell me what it looks like.
How do they typically approachor find or coerce their victims?
I know that's three questions, but I'mwondering how this even gets started.
Yeah.
So here's what the scam looks like.
Imagine you are a young person onInstagram and you receive a request from
(04:59):
someone to follow you and that personhas 15 to 20 mutual friends in common.
They appear like they're someonepotentially who goes to school with
you or lives on the other side of town.
Maybe someone that you don't knowpersonally but appears to be in your
circle, outer circle of friends.
The conversation starts out normal.
(05:21):
They will ask you about your day, askwhat you're up to, and they will very
quickly turn the conversation flirtatious.
They'll ask for a selfie, a photo, andthen the criminal gets very deceiving.
They actually send a nude photofirst, and then they demand and
coerce their victim to reciprocate.
The moment that happens, that'swhen the blackmail begins.
(05:44):
These criminals have scripts and it'sa verbatim, Hey, I have your nudes and
everything needed to ruin your life.
I'm going to send it toyour school, your family.
You're going to get expelledand lose your scholarships
unless you pay me 500 right now.
You've said something, theyusually have 20 friends in common.
How does that happen?
How do they get the 20 friendsin common on social media?
(06:06):
Right.
These criminals are very adeptat making themselves look like
legitimate personas online.
One of the tactics that these criminalsuse is what they call bombing.
And bombing is when they flood a wholebunch of friend requests and follower
requests into a specific community.
It could be a high school.
It could be a sports team.
(06:26):
When numerous people, uh,within that community accept
that scammer's follow request.
It makes their account seem moreauthentic, more legitimate, that that
is an actual person in the community.
But nobody in the communityactually knows this person.
This is just sort of part of thecon, is that they get one person to
accept and then it's like, oh, soand so accepted, they must be okay.
(06:49):
Is that the psychology behind it?
That's exactly right.
Okay.
Are these, maybe you don't have ananswer to this, but who are these people?
Who is doing this extortion?
Is it just across the board?
Well, we actually have apretty good answer here.
And most of the financial sextortion isactually being driven by one particular
(07:09):
threat group out of West Africa,and they call themselves Yahoo Boys.
Why the Yahoo boys?
Yahoo boys are the Nigerian princescammers from about 20 years ago.
They have moved on to theromance scams on Facebook.
They've moved on to thecrypto scams on Twitter.
And now the scam that they are findingto be very quick and very lucrative
(07:31):
for them is financial sextortion.
They call it the blackmail scam.
What's funny, there's one theme thatI'm hearing over and over and over
when we look at these digital onlinescams is The creation of trust in the
victim through things like what youjust said, bombing, getting people
to accept requests, it's happeningon LinkedIn, it happens everywhere.
(07:52):
So you're like, Oh, they must belegit, even though they're not.
Are there any hells?
So if I was talking to my son ordaughter and I was saying, look,
this is what you need to be aware of.
What are the tells, what are the kind oftricks that one might look for in this?
Here's the scary thing.
Some victims have sent me differentaccounts that they know are being used
(08:15):
in sextortion, the accounts that targetedthem, and I've looked at these accounts,
and they are entirely indistinguishable.
From real people, theirprofile looks legitimate.
It looks several years old.
The criminals are purchasing or hackinginto accounts that have authentic
activity on the social media platform.
So they look legit.
(08:35):
And then once they have those 10, 15,20 mutual friends in common, there's no
telling just based on the account alone.
Then I'll give some other red flags about.
Ways that you can detect a sextortionscam, hopefully before it happens.
Number one, the criminal comes offvery flirtatious, very quickly.
Nobody online with good intentionsis going to be asking or coercing
(08:58):
you to send a compromising photowithin 48 hours of knowing them.
And oftentimes that's all ittakes for this scam to execute.
It could be as short as 30minutes, or it could be extended
out through a couple of days.
But this is a very fast moving scam.
Secondly, I think it's important to knowthese criminals very often try to move
the kids or the victims onto Snapchat.
(09:21):
And the reason they dothat is for two reasons.
Number one, young peoplethink that Snapchat is a less
risky place to share photos.
And the reason for that is Snapchat isknown for its disappearing photo feature.
That's the maincharacteristic of Snapchat.
However, what these criminals have beenable to do is they are able to, number
one, send pre recorded videos and liveand pre recorded photos to make it appear
(09:46):
as though they are live photos and livevideos being sent to the victims using the
platform's own features to make it seemconvincing, and number two, the criminals
have been able to Screenshot and screenrecord of things that are happening on
Snapchat without that notification goingoff, which typically notifies people
that their Snapchats are being saved.
(10:07):
How are they doing that?
What's the, do you know whatthe technology behind that is?
We're not making that public.
Okay, so it's, but it's a thing.
It's a very rudimentary technologyaround that they are using.
And the reason I ask that is I oftenwonder what is the responsibility
of Snapchat to combating thisor is Snapchat combating this?
(10:30):
Snapchat has done a few things since thishas become a major topic on their radar.
Number one, I do want to highlightSnapchat's research that recently came
out that showed 51 percent of Gen Zhave been targeted for sextortion.
23% Have reported saying that they havefallen victim to a sextortion and a
(10:51):
large chunk of that financial sextortion.
So that's not a small number thenthere's millions of gen z ers online
and on snapchat Do we have any ideaof the rough numbers when we say 23?
What does that look like?
That aligns with the huge spike we'reseeing out of the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children.
Back in 2021, there were only 139reported cases of financial sex
(11:14):
torture in minors here in the U.
S. Fast forward just two years to2023, and instead of 139 cases,
there were over 26, 000 cases.
That's an 18, 000 percentincrease in the span of two years.
139 cases they were reviewing onan annual basis, and now they're
reviewing 900 cases a week.
Oh my goodness.
(11:34):
They're completely inundated with this.
Okay, you said it's one gang, theYahoo Boys or whatever out of Nigeria.
Are they working similar towhat the pig butchering scams
are working out of compounds?
What does this look like?
The Yalopoys have elements oforganized and disorganized crime.
So no, they are not operating out ofa centralized scam center or compound.
(11:56):
They're actually very geographicallydistributed across West Africa,
primarily in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.
These criminals operate insmall gangs, small groups.
Often times one person is the moneyperson running the, the money accounts.
Another person is the chatter whosends all these friend requests
and initial conversations out.
(12:16):
And they work in groups in order to,uh, extort as many people as they can.
We know one criminal is responsiblefor over a thousand victims.
And I will say eight figures inextorted payments from these victims.
Just one person.
Oh my goodness.
I guess the question I would ask,and then I really do want to get into
(12:38):
the victims themselves, but is AIplaying a part in any of this now?
I have been gone down an AI rabbithole, working on podcasts, working
in technology, you just, it'severywhere, it's prolific, but
I am amazed at how good it is.
I got to imagine there'ssome level of this.
Is this happening with AI at all?
Yes.
(12:58):
Right now it's a smallpercentage, but it's growing.
There's two ways that these criminalsare using AI to enhance their
financial sextortion operations.
The first one, for example, Let's saywe just met on social media, we are
exchanging selfies, and some of thesevictims do get a little suspicious,
and they ask or request somethinglike They'll send me a photo of you
(13:22):
touching your nose or with a thumbsup or a peace sign, some sort of proof
of life to make sure that that personis actually who they say they are.
And we are already seeing thesevictims using AI tools to manipulate
the models that they are catfishingas in order to show us those poses
to prove that they are that person.
(13:44):
Before we get to the second part,for my uncle Lou in Iowa, for
people that aren't aware, definecatfishing really quickly for us.
Yeah, catfishing is essentially pretendingto be someone that you are not online.
Here's the other way that AI isbeing used by these extortion
criminals, and this part I think hasa big potential for abuse at scale.
(14:05):
We are already seeing these criminals,if they fail, at convincing a victim to
send a nude photo, or a revealing photo.
We're already seeing thesecriminals artificially generate nude
photos of their victims using AI.
They are finding normal photos onthese victims Instagram accounts,
for example, uploading these photosto nudifying apps that are readily
(14:29):
available online these days, and thenusing those photos, that material, to
extort their victims, threatening tosend that material out unless they pay.
So a person could do absolutely nothingother than make contact with this.
And it could be extorted topay for these fake photos.
That's exactly right.
You can do everything correct.
(14:50):
You can decide not to sendthe photo and you can still
become a victim of this crime.
All right, I'm about ready tojust shut down my computer.
Lock my daughter in a bunker somewhere.
The reality is obviously we can't.
Let's talk a little bitabout the victims themselves.
Is there a certain demographic?
We said it's the age.
I'd love to hear about what'sthe fallout for the victims.
(15:13):
I can imagine it's terrible andthings I've read from you and others.
It looks horrific.
So what's going on once thescams start or they get hooked
into it or catfished into it?
So as I mentioned, these criminalsare using ruthless tactics,
threats, manipulation in orderto get their victims to pay.
They're legitimately threateningto ruin these kids lives.
(15:35):
I mentioned before, like, they arethreatening to leak these photos to,
uh, the kids teachers, to their school,to get them expelled, saying that their
scholarships are going to get revokedor they'll be taken off the sports team.
In some instances, we even see thesecriminals texting the kid from a
different phone number, pretending tobe law enforcement, and that the kid
(15:58):
is now under investigation for theactivity that they're involved in.
Just really relentlessthreats and blackmail.
What's the fallout forthese kids themselves?
What's happening to them?
As of today, we are aware of at least44 teen suicides of teenagers that
were being victimized in a financialsextortion scam who took their own lives.
(16:20):
They had no other way out or theythought that they had no other way out.
I believe this is aterribly low underestimate.
Most of these cases have only beendiscovered by happenstance, by chance.
These victims are not leaving notes.
They're taking this embarrassingsituation to the grave with them.
I would not be surprised if theactual casualty count was in the
(16:42):
several hundreds at this point.
We're only happening to discoverthese cases when a friend just happens
to remember the pin to the victim'sphone or police happen to crack
into the phone three or four monthslater after the, after the fact.
As a parent, I can'tthink of anything worse.
(17:03):
I just can't think ofanything worse than this.
Something happened to your childthat you can't protect them from.
What is the landscape looklike for these families that
are caught up in these scams?
And is there anythingthey can do about this?
The scary thing is, all ofthose, all the families.
Have done everything correctly.
The families that lost their kidsto this, they were loving families.
(17:24):
They supported their kids.
They talked about digital safety.
They talked about not sending imagesto people online, but these kids
are victims and these criminals aremore manipulative than ever before.
It is a rapid fire.
Groaning and coercing the kidsinto a terrible situation.
Lots of parents, of course,have the conversation.
(17:45):
Do not send photos tofolks you just met online.
Right.
At all.
I think there needs to be apart two of that conversation.
That sounds a little bit like, if thisdoes happen, There are things that we
can do, resources that, that we can doto make sure those photos are not leaked,
posted, you will be okay, you'll be fine,uh, come to us as a supportive parent,
(18:10):
you know, be this off landing space.
Um, let them know that you aren't goingto be mad and take away the phone and
they're, they're going to be punished.
Let them know that they can come to youas the parent for those sorts of things.
If you were talking to a room full ofkids, and I was a middle school principal
and teacher, I always would say tothem, remember, even though it says
(18:32):
that it's disappearing, once it's inthe digital space, it's there forever.
What would you say, as somebody that's sodeeply embedded in this, to a room full
of 14 to 17 year olds or college kids?
What would you say to them about this?
In other words, how do youprepare them, is what I'm asking.
Yeah, you might have to fact check meon this, but I saw a statistic that
if you know how a scam works, you're80 percent less likely to fall for it.
(18:56):
If I were to wave a magic wand, just Inthe awareness element of letting teens
know that, Hey, historically, you maynot have been a huge target or a victim
of online exploitation, but the entiredemographic has shifted these criminals.
Their target is everybody you willbe targeted by this crime, and you
(19:19):
just have to recognize those signs.
And if it happens to you, just thereare resources out there to help out.
All right.
So that leads us to the.
What can or what are socialmedia, law enforcement, what
are people doing to stop this?
Or is anybody doing anything to stop this?
(19:39):
The social media platformshave taken some steps over the
past year to try to curb this.
We've seen some press releases andfeature updates from Meta, from
Instagram, from Snapchat, and fromCash App on this issue, and those
three platforms are the most affectedby financial sextortion right now.
On the law enforcement front,we have seen some promise.
(20:01):
It's very rare to have anextradition of a scammer from
Nigeria being brought to the U.
S. for justice.
Just a couple months ago, however, wasthe very first extradition for financial
extortion for a child who died by suicide.
Those criminals are now infederal prison serving 17 years.
There are a couple other extraditionspending out of West Africa
(20:21):
from the Ivory Coast as well.
And it's a problem where we can'textradite our way out of it.
There are thousands ofcriminals doing this crime.
So we really have to rely on thesocial media platforms to ensure
that they are safe by design.
Are they safe by design?
No.
And that's what I'm seeingover and over again.
(20:42):
And I'm not trying to cast aspersions ateverybody's It uses social media, but I
think that the one thing, theme that I'mconstantly hearing is social media needs
to do more and it's across the board.
It's every one of these typesof scams that are out there.
So let's talk about one thing that whenyou were saying that I was thinking, how
do the kids get the money to pay for this?
(21:04):
The number one payment platformused by minors in financial sex
tortion schemes is Cash App.
Roughly 40 percent of payments beingremitted in financial sex tortion
schemes are through Cash App now.
Um, that has superseded gift cards, thathas superseded cryptocurrency, and that
has superseded all the other peer to peerpayment platforms like Venmo and PayPal.
(21:27):
So why CashApp, and why didthis crime spree actually
start in quarter four of 2021?
CashApp was the first of the peerto peer payment platforms, uh,
that allowed for teen accounts,what they call sponsored accounts.
Which rolled out in quarter four of 2021.
(21:48):
At the very same time that these paymentplatforms were extending their services
now to minors aged 13 to 17, very quickly,the scammers, uh, realized that they
had new targets that were now connected.
So the international payment systemwhen we say peer to peer, we mean
things like Venmo or I have it attachedto my bank account and you and I go
(22:12):
out for dinner and I say, I'm goingto Venmo you 40 bucks or cash app you
40 bucks or whatever, should they,and you don't have to answer this.
You maybe you can't answer this,but should cash app put the
kibosh on the access for if wesee direct results of this should
cash app do something about that.
They certainly have the dataand the signals to act on this.
(22:35):
They are seeing anomalous activity, theyare seeing money flowing out towards West
Africa inexplicably from, uh, victimswho have never paid money there before.
Uh, they are seeing teens empty theirentire accounts, uh, sending them to
accounts that they have never interactedwith before, and accounts that have
also received a whole lot of moneyfrom a whole bunch of other teenagers
(22:57):
in a very short period of time.
Um, they are seeing The direct messagesthat occur on Cash App, because you can
send payment requests to people and thesecriminals are sending payment requests
to their victims with threats in them.
So all this data is visible to Cash App.
(23:18):
And you don't have to answer this if youdon't feel comfortable answering it, but
why isn't Cash App doing something then?
Ugh.
It's complicated.
I could go into the thingsthat they are doing, but they
aren't particularly helpful.
They committed to a White Housepledge to combat image based
(23:41):
abuse and all these things thatdon't really have teeth into them.
I don't have a good answerto that question, really.
One of the things that I'm seeingfrom people is people are genuinely
and realistically worried aboutlitigation from companies because
You can't prove some of this stuff.
So I'm not saying thatcash app is doing this.
I'm not saying that Instagram isdoing this, but it does feel like
(24:01):
there's a lot of data out thereto support some of this work.
So the next question I would ask them,let's say that cash app is just a solace.
Uh, machine, and they're not goingto do anything until they're forced.
Who forces these companiesto make these changes?
Is it Congress?
Is it the president?
Is it law enforcement?
Where do these changes come from?
(24:23):
At this point, I'll take anybodybecause social media platforms have
operated with impunity for 20 years.
They are immune from any sortof liability based on criminal
activity on the platforms.
COSA was just shot down in the Houseof Representatives in December.
What's COSA?
The Kids Online Safety Act, and thatwas the first significant online safety
(24:46):
legislation for kids in 20 years.
It passed in the Senate 91 to 3,and when it moved over to the House
for a vote, Speaker Johnson did noteven bring it up for a vote, despite
the majority of attorney generalsurging him to do so, despite leaders
of the Senate urging him to do so.
Now he's been in a state that'spushed for online protection,
(25:09):
anti pornography, all this stuff.
Louisiana has been atthe forefront of that.
So what was his.
Did he give any reasoning why hekilled the, killed it in committee?
It actually passed through a committee andit was due for a vote in the full house.
It was just never raised for a vote.
I don't suppose that has anything to dowith MEDA's decision, an announcement
(25:32):
to invest a 10 billion data centerin Louisiana earlier in December.
Interesting.
We're not saying that Mike Johnsondid that because of that, but
there does seem to be a monetary.
Rationale for a lot of this stuff.
I will editorialize.
You don't have to Paul, but our kidsare more important than anything else.
(25:53):
And they're certainly more importantthan the shareholder stock price of meta.
So what can the people listening todaydo to push things like HOSA and bills to
protect our kids, because the other crimeswe've talked about, they've affected older
Americans, pig butchering is everywhere.
This is attacking our children.
(26:14):
This is a very serious.
Issue.
Children are dying.
We talk about all sorts of things,but here's an opportunity for us
to actually do something about it.
What can the average person listeningto this right now do to combat this?
Number one, contact yourrepresentatives, especially in the house.
Make them know that this is a priorityin passing COSA in 2025's Congress.
(26:38):
Number two, talk to families, talkto kids, talk to teens in your life.
Let them know that this crimeexists and hopefully they're less
likely to become victim to it.
And if they do, they know that you can bea resource and help them get out of it.
Is there any place youwould send families?
I know you do a lot of thiswork, but you're just one person.
(26:58):
Is there, are there any resources?
And I know there are, butwhat are the basic resources
that a family would look for?
Yeah.
So both for awareness, but alsoreporting it if it happens.
Great resources out of the National Centerfor Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC.
org.
There's also some great educational andawareness material put out by THORN.
(27:21):
And lastly, I would recommend theawareness materials and education
materials from the CanadianCenter for Child Protection.
They've done a lot of greatwork on the subject too.
Because it's not just affectingAmerican kids, it's affecting
kids worldwide, I'm assuming.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
I am now depressed, thank youPaul, but I am grateful that people
(27:41):
such as yourself are out there.
Doing battle for this lastquestion I have for you.
And maybe it's an obvious questionto answer, but what motivated you to
get involved in this battle and thisfight, you've got a job, you're doing
your security stuff, why this topic?
This is the worst scamthat I can think of.
I have previously went head to headwith the Yahoo boys in previous roles
(28:06):
where they were doing fake job scamstargeting my company and other cyber
enabled fraud targeting one of thefinancial institutions I work for.
And when I saw them make this transitionover to committing child sexual
exploitation and blackmail, resulting insuicide at scale, I can't imagine a worse
(28:28):
Financially motivated crime, and the factthat nobody was really talking about it,
like organized crime, we were looking atthese individualized cases, the individual
tragedies, but nobody was saying,Hey, these cases are all connected.
It's by the same threat group, they'reusing the same scripts, they're
using the same images, and they aredeploying this at scale to target
(28:51):
hundreds of thousands of teams.
The gravity of the situationwasn't lost on me, and I definitely
felt a responsibility to.
Step up and talk about it and,and rally the groups to combat
it in several different ways.
I will be posting in the show notes someof the material that you talked about,
some of the resources for families.
The one thing that we're, the whole reasonwhy we're doing these Barnacle Scams is
(29:14):
to get the word out as much as possible.
There is awareness, butthere's not enough awareness.
So thank you, Paul, for doingthe work that you're doing.
I appreciate you taking the time to talkwith us today and be part of this project.
Thank you for having me.
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