Mom-and-pop stores look like easy prey, but sometimes they bite back. Many successful scams are perpetrated by threat actors who have gained insider knowledge, but this week’s episode takes specialization to the nth degree with a point-of-sale attack. And with disastrous results for the scammer! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Being a gig worker is great if you’re looking for flexibility or you need extra cash. But it can be somewhat less than awesome when something goes wrong, as this week’s guest found out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When it comes to scams, we usually focus on the How rather than the Why. This week, we spoke to psychologist Dan Simons, co-author of Nobody’s Fool to find out why we’re all much easier marks than we like to think. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We get to hear a lot of crazy stories in our line of work, and the best ones are sometimes a little too newsworthy to make it on our show (because–hush, hush–they never made the news). But then we realized, we could tell those stories so long as you can’t guess who they’re about. So, here you go. Our not-so-secret episode of secret crimes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When Massimo moved to a new house in Toronto, he faced the age-old problem of what to keep and what to jettison. When he tried selling stuff from the rejection pile he got an offer that was too good to be true. Check out this week’s episode to hear how to spot an online marketplace scam and how to protect yourself both as a buyer and as a seller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Was she a survivor of sex trafficking at the hands of her mom, a serial victim, Mormon convert, cancer patient, or was she just a liar and a fraud? Coco Berthmann’s story is anything but cogent. Whether it was summoned from the depths of mental illness or deviously designed to swindle friends and well-wishers online is this week’s burning question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Can you imagine being so rich that the check to pay your vacation property tax is four years' worth of full tuition at a public university? Neither can we, but that’s how it found its way into a thief’s life, but not by dint of a super high-tech hack (unless stealing an envelope qualifies as whizbang). This week’s episode will seriously make you want to shred your checkbook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
True or False: Scams have reached a crisis point, especially among older adults. The AARP’s Director of Fraud Prevention Kathy Stokes surprised us with the answer: Scammers aren’t ageist at all. In fact, digital natives may be far more susceptible to online crime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A gemologist decided to trademark her company, and, of course, there’s a scam for that. Spoof calls are everywhere, homing in on any money due that can be small-time scammed. This episode applies equally for any government application that involves a public notice: Once your information goes live, it could pop up on the radar of a scammer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The isolation caused by the Covid pandemic led to record pet adoptions, and more than usual activity online. It was like chum to sharks for scammers who flooded social media accounts with adoption opportunities for popular breeds. This week’s guest, Holly got in touch with us about her friend Carl who joins us too to talk about his St. Bernard-sized scam. To find out about his parting gift, you have to listen! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We all got the memo that Social Security numbers are a big part of identity theft, and as more of us take measures to protect against SSN-based crime, scammers found a new favorite tool: your driver’s license. Criminology professor David Maimon discusses all of the above and how Covid made our identities less secure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We’ve been hearing a lot about pig butchering, but hadn’t found a great example until we lucked onto Shreya Datta’s story. In this episode we learn about pig butchering from Shreya who was swindled out of more than $450,000 through an elaborate investment scheme where she won like crazy until she lost everything. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week, we’re celebrating our hundredth episode! Featuring listener questions, Adam, Beau and Travis look back on one hundred episodes of scams, hacks, Tin Foil Swans, experts, novices and dad jokes. A special thanks to you listeners. Come back for another 100! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Charlie Webster hosts the hit podcast “Scamanda,” which takes us on a dark journey of discovery with a young woman who pretended to have cancer to bilk Good Samaritans on GoFundMe. Listen to hear the kinds of scams you can find on all crowd-sourced micro donation sites and how to avoid them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Karen Johnson is a catfisher-turned-scam avoidance coach turned–you guessed it–catfishing victim. The scam that got her is a classic, opening the door to a Pandora’s Box of the usual advice about avoiding the most common scams out there. But the thing that really got us thinking is the role AI played in almost every aspect of this week’s show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Identity theft is the third certainty in life behind death and taxes, but the way scammers come at you changes all the time. That’s why we invited ITRC head Eva Velasquez to fill us in on the three biggest trends in identity-related crime this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jen Destefano’s story made national news. Her daughter Brie was abducted and the kidnappers let them speak to each other to prove it. But while they had demands for big money, they didn’t actually have her daughter. Was it a deepfake, a really good actor or a prank taken way too far? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When we first heard about this, Adam was like, “come on, guys, jury duty scams?.” That said, Travis and Beau didn’t know so much about them. The upshot, an intro to jury scams with a State Department employee who saw it coming, not because he’s a G-man, but because he’s addicted to Halloween decorations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
As a Daily Show correspondent, comedian Roy Wood, Jr. knows a thing or two about fake news and truthiness as well as the truth-and-a-half that is comedy. By skewering the media and the people in the news, he has special insight into how misinformation affects the way we think about the world and what we know. This episode originally aired December 12, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lola Blanc and Meagan Grainger are the hosts of Trust Me, a podcast about cults and scams, and are this week’s guests. They're here to help us figure out the gooey center of the Venn diagram formed by cults, cult leaders and scam artists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Robert Kerbeck rubbed elbows with some of the top actors of his time including Calista Flockhart, Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman and George Clooney. But like all working actors, he needed a side gig to survive. This week we talked to starving actor turned millionaire corporate threat actor about the sensitive information he was able to snooker out of his targets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Author, Actor, Comedian Dan Ahdoot is no stranger to What the Hack or actually being hacked. Which is why it’s kind of weird he’s back on the show to talk about how he’s done nothing to keep himself from getting hacked again. (It’s funnier than it sounds.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nicole Perlroth’s book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is a masterpiece on the topic of cyberwar and the zero-day hacks that make it deadly. Join us as we explore with Perlroth a cyberscape where mistakes are weaponized, backdoors abound and we all have zero degrees of separation from spies and the people they spy on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When he graduated from college, Jason was heading into a big career in television. He had the apartment in the big city, and a wide-open vista of opportunity–and then he got hacked. Check out this week’s episode to hear how a few pieces of purloined mail was a major detour on the way to success and fortune. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You may be surprised to hear that celebrity culture extends to catfishing profiles. We talked to the man behind the most-used face in dating scams. You’re going to want to hear what he had to say. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If you only learn one thing about cybersecurity, it should be that all new technology, in the wrong hands, is a crime waiting to happen. Rob Shavell of Delete.Me started a company based on this truth. So we decided to have a nice long conversation about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
April’s mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and decided she needed to have some fun. On a dating site, she met a much younger man who owned a diamond mine. What followed was either Stockholm Syndrome or a pastiche of the sunk cost fallacy. Was she addicted to her scammer? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Solana Foundation hype man Austin Federa was kind enough to join us this week to discuss one of the bedrock truths when it comes to money: People like to steal it. Seriously, listen to this one if you think cryptocurrency has its own special category of crime, because you might be missing the forest for the trees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Michelle Dennedy is to privacy what Einstein is to relativity but with the addition of rules that involve proper panty protocols. If there’s a new trend in identity-related crime, she knows about it, has an opinion and can help guide you to a better place without getting got by it. A must-listen episode especially if you’ve ever researched mental health care online. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
China’s spying via dirigible is incorrigible but in sync with its many digital deviancies. We tried to get Xi Jinping as a guest this week, but didn’t hear back so we decided to explore the news about Chinese spy balloons in context with other attacks, why it matters (or doesn’t) and why (at least one of us thinks) Mark Zuckerberg is just as bad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
