[00:00:04] This is Scams and Cons news with Jim Grinstead.
[00:00:09] In this week's news, Karnartists are praying on people released from jail, telling them
[00:00:14] that there are expenses that must be paid.
[00:00:18] And scammers are scamming scam victims with promises of getting their money back.
[00:00:23] But we begin with a group of Karens in California.
[00:00:34] A long-lost shores of Malibu, a group of homeowners have been placing private properties
[00:00:39] and signs along the beach outside their homes.
[00:00:42] The signs say trespassers will be prosecuted.
[00:00:46] It's an empty claim because the California Coastal Commission says ocean front land is public
[00:00:50] property.
[00:00:52] Our AI voice Tamika reads from a article on the SF Gate website.
[00:00:57] This is only the latest example of ongoing fights between owners of Malibu's multimillion-dollar
[00:01:04] beachfront homes and beach visitors in the upscale coastal community of Los Angeles.
[00:01:10] Confrontations like these have become part of a broader pattern in California of wealthy
[00:01:14] home owners living near California's popular hikes, beaches, and other natural attractions
[00:01:20] taking matters into their own hands to limit visitors.
[00:01:24] Last year, the California Coastal Commission penalized homeowners in Malibu who had spent
[00:01:30] a better part of four decades obscuring access to Escondito Beach and in a separate incident
[00:01:36] posted to TikTok, a woman can be seen angrily roping off an area of Laguna Beach in front
[00:01:42] of her home and yelling at beachgoers to leave.
[00:01:46] Earlier, the city of Malibu was accused of removing signs posted by the Coastal Commission.
[00:01:52] The signs directed people to areas that were difficult to find in which had great views
[00:01:57] or interesting rock formations.
[00:01:59] Malibu said the Coastal Commission did not have permission to install the signs,
[00:02:03] the signs were not on beach commission land.
[00:02:08] It was a big gamble and it didn't pay off for some contours to try to rip off Sam's
[00:02:14] town casino in Las Vegas.
[00:02:16] The setup was for someone impersonating one of the casino's lawyers to contact an employee.
[00:02:22] The employee took the bait and delivered $750,000 to a location in North Las Vegas
[00:02:28] where a UPS driver and the fake lawyer were waiting for the payment.
[00:02:34] She handed over the money then went back to the casino.
[00:02:37] The more she thought about it, the more she thought she'd been scammed so she told a supervisor.
[00:02:43] One woman was arrested in connection with the crime and as of this writing, she had not yet
[00:02:48] a raid.
[00:02:49] Several similar incidents have targeted Vegas casinos over the past several years.
[00:02:55] An Arizona company was fined $5.2 million for promising scammed victims they could get
[00:03:00] their money back.
[00:03:02] The Federal Trade Commission levied the fine, the scammer sold kits priced at $499 and targeted
[00:03:08] people who fell for work at home schemes.
[00:03:12] Vexico's drug cartels are diversifying.
[00:03:15] They're now targeting time shareholders and they're doing in-depth research on the targets
[00:03:20] to pull it off.
[00:03:22] WGAL and Lancaster Pennsylvania explains how it works.
[00:03:26] It begins with the scammer contacting a potential victim and pretending to be a broker or
[00:03:31] a salesperson.
[00:03:32] They know a lot about the property.
[00:03:33] The victim is then presented with the option of exiting the time share, but they have to pay
[00:03:37] taxes and fees upfront.
[00:03:39] The second step, that involves the scammers posing as someone from a law firm that wants
[00:03:44] to help the victim recover some of the money they already lost in that first phase.
[00:03:48] At this point, they're asked to pay legal fees.
[00:03:51] And in the third and final phase, the con-autist are now posing as a member of a government
[00:03:55] agency like the Mexican government's financial intelligence unit or Interpol.
[00:04:00] The Mexican cartels are drawn to these time share scams according to the FBI because
[00:04:05] of the low overhead involved in setting up the operation and the lack of attention it receives
[00:04:10] compared to drugs or weapon schemes.
[00:04:13] This is Scams and Cons news.
[00:04:24] A city near Boise, Idaho will get nearly all its money back after being hit by scammers.
[00:04:30] The city of Gooding, lost nearly $1 million KTVB reported.
[00:04:34] The FBI investigated after scammers stole money intended for the city's wastewater project.
[00:04:40] The city's attorney says they pretended to be representatives of the contractor targeting employees.
[00:04:47] The money that we ultimately would have had to replace it with would have just been financed
[00:04:51] over the life of the project, but not having to do that more and a much better situation.
[00:04:56] The city of sense added protocols and training to help prevent another scam.
[00:05:02] Sometimes it just doesn't pay off to help your fellow human being.
[00:05:06] Let me tell you about a scam being run into Toronto.
[00:05:09] In a busy area of the city, a fake taxi and driver are parked.
[00:05:14] A fake customer is outside the cab.
[00:05:17] The fake cabby says he won't take cash and his credit card machine isn't working.
[00:05:23] The passenger asks the passenger by if their debit card can be used and exchanged for the cash
[00:05:27] that was intended for the cabby.
[00:05:29] The sucker inserts the card, itters the pen number, and the transaction goes through.
[00:05:35] The cabby then hands the sucker a card similar to the one used for the transaction.
[00:05:41] The cabby now has the real card and pen number so the bank account can be quickly cleaned out.
[00:05:47] If you're someone who's concerned about artificial intelligence, that's AI.
[00:05:51] Then you're not going to like this. Scammers are putting up small fake cell towers
[00:05:56] that automatically connect to telephone in the area. They are small enough to fit into cars or even
[00:06:02] backpacks. The idea is to blast text messages to you and those around you did disappear.
[00:06:10] Fox 59 in Indianapolis lays it out.
[00:06:13] There have been some reports of scammers walking around with them in their backpack,
[00:06:16] so if you're close to it, your phone might automatically connect to it instead of your
[00:06:20] Verizon or AT&T or whatever you're on. If that happens, you can be a trouble because the signal
[00:06:26] from the SMS Blaster bypasses all the security that your network uses to filter out spam calls
[00:06:31] and texts. So the bad guys at that point can just blast you with as many messages as they want,
[00:06:37] as long as you're connected to their signal. And of course that's how they often get people
[00:06:40] to click on bad links or upload malware to devices. As far as protecting yourself, there is good news.
[00:06:47] But also bad news. SMS Blasters use the mostly obsolete 2G network. Remember that, carriers don't even
[00:06:53] use it anymore, but it's still out there and phones can still connect to it if there's a signal.
[00:06:58] Google says Android users can go into their settings and disable 2G on their phones.
[00:07:03] And if you do that, you're safe from the device. You're good. Your phone won't connect to it.
[00:07:07] However, there's currently no way to disable 2G on the iPhone without putting it into
[00:07:12] lockdown mode. So iPhone users could be more at risk from these devices right now.
[00:07:18] You may have heard the phrase pig butchering. It's a scam and it's much like a romance scam.
[00:07:24] They build a relationship with someone, usually online,
[00:07:28] then take all their money. Text messages are a common way to build the relationship,
[00:07:33] but the Wall Street Journal says many of the people who are sending those text messages are victims
[00:07:37] themselves. Feliz Solomon is a journalist based in Southeast Asia.
[00:07:43] We started seeing reports out of places like Cambodia and Myanmar where people had been escaping from
[00:07:50] these mysterious compounds that we always sort of thought were associated mostly with casinos.
[00:07:55] But they were coming out with these really strange stories that they had been held captive
[00:08:00] and abused and forced to carry out illegal work like scams.
[00:08:06] The story's only got more intense. And Solomon told in PR that she focused some of her
[00:08:11] reporting on one person. Billy had a really powerful story. I met him in Thailand
[00:08:16] early this year. Shortly after he had gotten out of a scam compound in Myanmar just across the border.
[00:08:22] And when we met he had wounds on his body, he visibly was very traumatized.
[00:08:31] What had happened to him was still really, really fresh. And he also speaks really good English.
[00:08:36] So he was able to tell his story in a really powerful way. And what happened to him was
[00:08:41] really emblematic of what has happened to many, many other people who have been caught up in this.
[00:08:47] He was tricked by a recruiter online into taking what he thought was a legitimate job.
[00:08:55] He then went to Bangkok and was met by someone who said they represented a legitimate company,
[00:09:01] who then took him to the Myanmar border snuck him across. And he ended up enslaved there for about
[00:09:07] 16 months between there and other scam compounds. Yeah. His captors had him posing as a woman.
[00:09:14] A rich woman from Singapore named Alicia. He had a script. He had photos. He had videos to scam
[00:09:20] hundreds of victims. That's right. So once he had arrived in one of these scam compounds,
[00:09:25] he was trained. He was given laptops and mobile phones that were loaded up with pictures,
[00:09:33] videos and a PDF that had a script. It told him everything that he should say to engage with victims,
[00:09:40] how to convince them that they should invest their money, what exact words to use, how to
[00:09:46] calm them down if they started to feel nervous about what was happening. It was a whole package
[00:09:51] that had been prepared for him and other scammers that just walked them through all the steps of
[00:09:57] a scam. And how much money has to be made here? Like how much money are people giving?
[00:10:02] It depends. Some people lose a little bit of money and some people lose a lot. I have also
[00:10:07] interviewed one man who lost his entire life savings. It was more than $750,000 in the course
[00:10:13] of about two months engaging with a scammer. But we've heard everything from a few hundred to a
[00:10:19] few thousand to a million or so. Solomon says the call centers are built on an industrialized
[00:10:25] scale and need hundreds of workers. Well, what we know is that the places where these scam centers
[00:10:32] operate are run by well-known Chinese fugitives. There are a few of them, most of them are already
[00:10:39] on US sanctions lists and are wanted in China, but they've sort of found a place for themselves
[00:10:45] in lawless parts of Southeast Asia, for instance in the borderlands of Myanmar and in parts of
[00:10:52] Cambodia. These are just places where it's really hard for law enforcement to reach them and
[00:10:58] they're just kind of lawless areas. Police are trying to crack down on the problem,
[00:11:03] but the captive's families often pay a ransom for their release.
[00:11:08] At the buffet, the sliced primary bail look delicious. The banana cream pie will definitely be on
[00:11:14] your tray and probably some salad so you don't feel as guilty. But it's the portion of the
[00:11:20] succulent. That'll be a must have even if it doesn't fit on the tray. A couple of guys in the
[00:11:26] total Kentucky ran such a buffet, but the cars were sold only at night and never existed.
[00:11:34] Prosecutors say the brothers in their co-conspirators stole $6 million from luxury
[00:11:38] car dealers all around the country. They've been sentenced to about four years in jail.
[00:11:43] The scammers overseas began the con by contacting dealers of high-end cars in the United States.
[00:11:50] They told the dealers they were interested in buying vehicles costing hundreds of thousands of
[00:11:55] the dealers provided photos of the cars, their titles and vehicle identification numbers.
[00:12:01] Using that information, the scammers pretended to be dealers themselves
[00:12:05] in contacted other US car dealers trying to sell the cars.
[00:12:10] When a sale was made, the money was sent to a US bank account created by the brothers
[00:12:14] then was transferred overseas for laundering. Prosecutors say seven dealers were taken in
[00:12:21] and lost six million dollars to overseas accounts.
[00:12:25] This is Scamting Cons News.