Voice Deepfakes Cross the Uncanny Valley: Brace Yourselves
Michelle thought the message from her newfound internet love Michelle sounded perfect. The voice had the same warmth and familiar cadence of a real message, including pauses and um’s in just the right places. Michelle’s experience is exactly what many victims are finding- Voice clones are perfect now. But They Just Made A Quantum Leap […]
SMS Blasters: The Fraud Machine Anyone Can Buy Online
It’s December 2022 and five men are driving the streets of Paris on a mission. That mission is to steal information from as many people as possible: they are sending text messages to people all over the city. The messages are phishing attempts to get people to enter their personal information into a bogus health […]
New SAR Data: ATO, Identity Theft and Wire Fraud Are Up Big
Newly released SAR filings data for 2024 is hot off the press. And it is revealing a troubling trend in fraud for banks; fraud is up significantly in three problem areas – account takeovers, identity theft and wire fraud. The new data filed by US financial institutions, reveals a startling trend: reports of account takeover […]
Fraudsters Win Lotto With Stolen Card, Can’t Cash In
This is a wild story that probably has two men scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do. Two credit card fraudsters in France stole a credit card and bought a lotto ticket which is now worth $523,000. Understandably, the have fled before cashing in their winnings. The victim, Jean David E., now […]
Disturbing Deepfakes Used For Kidnap and Ransom Scams
A woman sits in a chair. A man with a large machete on one side, and another with a gun to her head on the other. Her mouth is duct-tapped and she looks into the camera teary-eyed – seemingly begging for help with her eyes. David Maimon, Head of Fraud Insights for Sentilink, posted a […]
The High Risk Merchant Next Door: IBO Scheme Devastates Lives
Trusting an online influencer she had met online came at a devastating price. For Lisa Smith (not her real name), a veteran Financial Services Officer at a credit union, the trouble started when a bariatric surgeon she followed online gave advice on how to make additional spending money. His recommendation seemed simple enough: $750 monthly […]
Pig Butchering Soars 40% As Scammers Turn To AI
In a dimly lit room somewhere in a border town near the Thailand border a scam boss opens his laptop and logs into Huione Guarantee, a marketplace that has become the Amazon of fraud. With a couple of clicks, he purchases a package that includes AI software to create deep-fake videos, stolen personal data of […]
My Name Is Oliver. I Am Horrible At Fraud And That’s OK
Guest post. Written By Oliver Fendley When my high school offered us 12-graders the chance to do a month-long January internship , I knew exactly who I wanted to work with; my Uncle Frank who goes by the name FrankonFraud. Little did I know that my internship would lead me down a deep hole of […]
Romance Scammers Are Using This New Cunning AI Trick
Ever see how people post photos of themselves holding up a sign that says the name of the person or the date to show that they are legitimate? These are also called “proof of life” photos and they are widely used on social media to prove its not a scam. Well, Nigerian Romance scammers are […]
DeepTrump.AI Uses DeepSeek To Make Trump Say Anything
China’s new Deepseek model may be leveraged on a new website called DeepTrump.AI which allows users to create deepfakes of President Trump. The site allows a user to type in any text, create a deepfake video of Trump reading that text, and then download the video. The site appears to be setup to promote a […]
TextVerified Helps Fraudsters Bypass Your OTP Checks
A recent LinkedIn post by Johnny Ayers of Socure is shedding light on a new attack vector that bypasses banks identity checks. This is a warning banks, fintechs and lenders should be well aware of because it threatens the heart of their fraud control systems. The post shares an email he received from a customer […]
HGTV DeepFake “Remodel” Scam Almost Worked
A Reddit user named Ok_Calender_851 posted an alarming deepfake video that was so convincing that it almost fooled his friends parents. His friends parents thought they had won a contest and they were just about ready to send in money before he saved them. The HGTV Remodel Contest Scam “My friend had parents (60+) win […]
How Scammers Did Those Brad Pitt AI Hospital Deepfakes
A French woman was conned out of $850,000 after a scammer created crude deepfakes of Brad Pitt in the hospital and convinced her that he urgently needed her help. The scam was undoubtedly carried out by Yahoo Boy scammers who use the technique as one of their primary formats to steal money from their victims. […]
Bank Recording Reveals Details Of LA Dodger Stars Fraud
The Athletic reports that Federal prosecutors released a four-minute audio recording which they said showed Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter convicted of defrauding Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, attempting to push through a $200,000 wire transfer from one of the player’s accounts. The recording which was released by the bank to prosecutors and then […]
Living In Hell – Scammer Post A Plea For Help
A man trafficked into various scam operations in Cambodia has posted a plea for help, describing his conditions as “Living in Hell”. The message, which was posted in a Telegram Bounty channel called Southeast Asia Reward Wanted, includes a disturbing video of him being beaten and a plea to his old scam bosses to let […]
Voice Changers Used By Scammers Work Scarily Good
Yahoo Boi always post interesting videos on his Youtube channel. The videos which are listed as “For Educational Purposes Only, provide a glimpse into the technology and methods that Nigerian romance scammers are using to con their victims. In this video, Yahoo Boi demonstrates how voice changers can be used by scammers to fool their […]
Tiny Bank Sues Navy Fed For Poor Fraud Controls
Tiny Buckholts State Bank has filed a class action lawsuit against Navy Federal Credit Union for systematic failures in fraud prevention saying that is is costing banks across the nation millions of dollars. The lawsuit which was filed in Texas is bringing to light what many small banks have complained about for years: the lax […]
Famous Actors Being Trafficked Into Pig Butchering
A famous Chinese actor in pursuit of a role in an international film ended up in a harrowing nightmare situation. According to the SCMP, Chinese actor, Wang Xing who went missing near the Thailand-Myanmar border has confirmed he was a victim of human trafficking following his rescue from a scam compound. And Wang Xing is […]
A Big Collapse Of Trust: Our Fraud Predictions For 2025
It was one for the history books. As expected, 2024 was “Fraud At Full Throttle” as fraudsters upped their attacks. But it was the breakneck speed of everchanging scams that surprised us most. Just when we thought they could not get worse, they did. And when we felt that AI deepfakes were years away, they […]
Binance Scam Interdiction Saved Over $130M Last Year
A Binance blog post is shedding light on how their anti-scam team helped stopped over $130 million from being stolen from their customers. The report highlights their “2024 Anti-Scam Refund Initiative” which uses the classic Prevention, Detection and Recovery approach most banks fraud programs use. But it’s their novel 24 Hour Safety Net that I […]
CPN Wizard Is A Synthetic Identity Creating Robot
It’s only a matter of time before someone figures out how to mass-produce synthetic identities using CPNs. When that happens, we could see significant increases in fraud. CPN stands for Credit Privacy Number, which is a clever way to encourage people to use stolen social security numbers to create fake profiles. Credit Wizard Automates The […]