Despicable donation request scamming.
Jan 30, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
On Hacking Humans, Dave Bittner, Joe Carrigan, and Maria Varmazis (also host of N2K's daily space podcast, T-Minus), are once again sharing the latest in social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines to help our audience become aware of what is out there. This week, Dave has the story from Ampyx Cyber that has a scam reporter on staff to do awareness videos and this latest one is about an amazing sale on fake leather bags. Joe has two stories this week. The first one sent Joe down a rabbit hole and is about romance scams where 3 people were recently sentenced. The second one is about one of the victims of that previous romance scam. And finally, Maria's story is about Restaurant Week in NYC and third-party brokers who do restaurant reservation auctions. Our Catch of the Day involves a GoGetFunding gift card scam related to a campaign looking for donations to help pay for a child's medical costs.
Resources and links to stories:
Fake leather, fake people: AI sellers generate numerous complaints
Romance scam "money mules" sentenced in case that ended with Illinois woman's death
When her mother went missing, an Illinois woman ventured into the dark corners of America's romance scam epidemic
Security Alert: Bots Target NYC Restaurant Week
GoGetFunding Scamming Donations Alert
You can hear more from the T-Minus space daily show here.
Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@n2k.com.
