Scamming the Scammers

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Border Patrol is calling: A drug cartel has your bank information, so you need to transfer all your money to a safe Bitcoin account—right now!

Millions of people will be familiar with calls like this, in which scammers, often in other countries, use threats or promises to rob you. In 2023, individuals and businesses lost an estimated $485 billion to fraud schemes, according to Nasdaq's Global Financial Crime Report.

Law enforcement will only do so much to recover losses. That is why some online streamers are taking matters into their own hands. And they have become famous for fighting back.

Endless Thread's Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson explore the complicated, criminal world of scambaiters.

*****

Credits: This episode was produced by Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Funding for this podcast comes from Math Works, creators of Mat Lab and Simulink software,
0:06.0	accelerating the pace of engineering and science. Learn more at Math Works.
0:11.0	Come. Support for this podcast comes from the Peabody Essex Museum presenting
0:16.0	drama Ishmael the book arts of Moby Dick. Artists and bookbinders offer new
0:21.1	takes on the white whale. On view now learn more at PEM.org.
0:27.0	W-B-U-R Podcasts, Boston. And
0:33.1	Mary, I want to introduce you to a guy I know.
0:39.1	This is name Ted.
0:41.1	I feel like every story you tell, there's a guy named Ted or Gary.
0:45.0	Yep. Or that's really it.
0:48.0	Ted and Gary are your boys.
0:50.0	We could call him Ted. I was going to call him Charles. I live in Massachusetts and what I do is I'm a consultant and trainer around governance and social change kind of related things.
1:04.0	And we're neighbors.
1:06.0	And yeah, you and I are neighbors.
1:09.0	I'll be honest, Charles doesn't sound all that thrilled to be your neighbor.
1:12.0	I know.
1:13.7	He is though, I swear.
1:15.3	Like, we're pretty close.
1:17.5	We serve on some neighborhood committees together.
1:21.0	I think if he sounds a little rueful at first it's more the story he is about to tell
1:25.5	About something that happened to him over the course of five or six crazy days in the summer of 2021
1:31.5	The nature of which is also why we're not going to use his real name because, well, what has been
	...

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