Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Casino Hacked for Millions | Inside a Massive Cyber Extortion Scheme

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Stop leaving yourself vulnerable to data breaches. Go to my sponsor https://aura.com/matt to get a 14-day free trial and see if any of your data has been exposed⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout.⁣ ⁣ Ricoh Danielson, a cybersecurity incident responder recounts how unsecured devices and vulnerable networks—particularly in hospitals—are easily exploited by organized ransomware gangs that infiltrate systems through credential theft or phishing, often remain undetected for months, and then demand millions in ransom based on the value of stolen data.⁣ ⁣ Ricoh's links ⁣ https://www.ricohd.us/about⁣ https://www.instagram.com/ricoh_danielson_/?hl=en⁣ https://www.youtube.com/user/dricoh22/videos⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And that's the easiest way to get in. I'm surprised at all these frauds, like how easy it is to do them. Nobody's really paying attention. What I do as a profession is an incident response, digital forensics, and ransom negotiation. And what that is is whenever there's a breach or a scam or something of the matter and someone is hurt or something of that and is extorted for X amount of money, money go in there and help them out and figure out what happened. Did you start, is this still for a government agency or did you start your own agency?

I have my own. It's called first responder. And so basically what we do is we just show up, team of 41 guys show up. If there's a breach, let's just look at the breach side, right? Let's say their hospital went down, a couple of thousand people. They went out of business or their patient date is gone. It's being sold on the dark web. We go track that down.

So how does that happen? You say that like it's not a big deal. Like that just happens all the time. It probably does. But I'm saying like how does someone get access to that? To me to get access to that means that I have to somehow or another get into the file room and grab the files or get access to the, you know, to their website or something. And how do you go about doing that? Right.

That's a good question. So a lot of times you'll see threat acting gangs like all these people get together. whether they're nation-state, like from Iran, China, Korea, or whatever. Or what they'll do is a bunch of, you know, gangsters will get together in the cyber community and say, hey, we need to go steal something. And what they do is they start doing door knocking, right? And essentially at the fundamental level is what ports are open, what networks are open, what servers are open, what computers are open.

And they start scanning. Once they start scanning and seeing things that are open, then they try to get into the door, right? So imagine this house or the studio that we're in. Imagine it being like a window's open. And they say, okay, I'm going to jump in the window. I'm going to lay low. It's called the LOL, living off the land. They're just going to say, hey, can I sit in that chair for six months without RICO noticing?

Right. Or can I turn on the light? What does this light do? They start testing the different things hearing that. How much noise could I make before somebody notices me? Usually it's about six to 18 months before anybody notices a threat actor or a ransom gang in their environment. because remember they they got in there via stealing their credentials right with those passwords password one two three right stealing grandma's information

because she went on a medical portal website saying hey I need to enter this information they just fake one of those like a fake address and they start captioning all that information they start running that information against the hospitals databases or environment if you will and at that point they start getting into the environment of the hospital and see how far down the rabbit hole they can go so if they get down to, let's just say, the big file room where all the medical patients stuff is at, that's when they start pulling the information slowly but surely. And they usually do that

over probably about a year's worth of time, right? This is a long pore. And so from there, once they get it to extortrate all the information, then they start encrypting everything because then it's useless. So you have to come back to me as a threat actor and say it decrypt my stuff. And that's when the ransom... You're saying ransomware. So, okay. So you're saying they're removing, so there's not like they're ranking copies. They're removing it so now the hospital doesn't have access.

That is correct. Okay. That is correct. So at that point, the hospital has nothing or it's completely encrypted or the copy that they have is unusable, right? And they pulled all their backups. Like they have no memory of anything else. So what happens is the hospital or the client will reach out to the threat actor and say, hey, look, can you help us out here? And they say, sure, no problem. I want a million dollars. the million dollars what they arrive to is based upon the value of the patient information. So social security address and a person's name usually goes for about $1.75 to $3 $3,000 depending on what type of information is.

So you times that by 40,000 people's information. That's how they arrive at the value of it. Have you ever Googled your name? With one quick search, I can find all of your information on very sketchy websites. Your phone number, your old addresses, want to know how. scammers get your information, this is it. And that's why today's video is sponsored by Aura. There are companies called data brokers that take your personal information without asking and sell it to anyone, marketers, scammers, even stalkers. That's why your phone blows up with

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for a free 14 day trial. And so from there, that's when they say, hey, I want my my money, right? Right. So a lot of times, a lot of hospitals, they don't, they're not equipped for that. They're not. The FBI, love the FBI, love the Secret Service, work with them quite a bit. they're not going to do much for you. Right. Yeah, they're not going to pay you. They're not going to go get your money back either. I hate saying that.

They might do a stop on an e-wallet, but they're not going to do it. So what happens is they call somebody like us, right? First Bonoan, Rico, they'll say, hey, man, can you go over here, talk to this threat actor? And depends who it is. Depends on how unscrupulous they are. Like, someone will put you in double jeopardy. I mean, I'm assuming if this is, you know, you're unscrupulous, you know, to the max, right? Or you say, no, no, sometimes they'll pay you if you pay them, they really won't do anything.

Because I would think you might pay them, and then they might still go ahead and sell your information. So both, right? So there are some threat accurate act in groups. Let's just say B and Liam. B and Liam is a Chinese organization, right? And I know it's a really odd name, right? But what they'll do is they'll say, hey, if you pay us a million dollars, we will give you the decryption key. There's honor months thieves here, right?

what happens is one threat actor gets pissed off and is like, hey, you didn't pay me my cut, right? Because each phase of the threat acting gang or each phase of the breach, you get paid, right? So they're like, hey, dude, I didn't get paid. So the thing called double jeopardy, right? They'll say, well, I'm going to give you the encryption key, but only part of it. Or I'm going to encrypt only a certain amount of it. Now you got to pay me more. And then when you decrypted, I'm going to come right back and re-crypt it again.

Then you got to pay me again. So there's this levels of honor amongst these. because there are surprisingly good threat actors, right? And then there are just ones that are just downright dirty. Like they'll just do it. By the time you're already paid or you're not going to pay, it's already for sale and it's on the dark web somewhere. I was going to say it might work to their advantage to actually

decrypt it and not resell the information because that way they can always say, okay, listen, you know, whatever, you know, St. Michael's, you know, hospital where you can say, hey, listen, we'll pay you. Well, how do we know you're going to keep your word? You go, well, call, call St. John's Hospital and you can call such and such, you know, AMC Casino. We did this to them last year. You can call, here's the people's names. You can look them up. You can call them. They'll tell you. They've never had a problem since. If that's the case, and they might make a couple calls and be like, hey, damn, you know, I'll give

you the half a million or a million or whatever it is. So on the scorecards, so the way we rate these individual threat action gangs. It's like, and what affiliate you're dealing with? They'll be like, hey, is being Liam more than likely to, if we pay, what is the rate of probability that they'll honor it? And they're like, yeah, they're pretty good about it.

I might come back in six months, you know, and try to screw you up again. But this one over here versus, you know, Mystic Snow Leopard or somebody else or the Russian Trude School, right? Fancy Bear, like, they're unscrupulous. They're like, yeah, we're going to take your hospital down

and we're going to take it down. We're going to sell it, all the data. And on top of that, we're going to cause more and more damage. We're going to come back and hit you even harder. And that's where you have to delineate who you're dealing with, right? Because whenever you're dealing with a threat acting group or a ransom gang, remember, this is a billion-dollar business to them. Right. And so I have a theory about that if you ask me.

Right. What? I think it's a, I think the United States government created ransomware. And it's such a big industry now that is too big to fail. Okay. Yeah. That's what I think. I mean, so you mean that the United States government is involved in it themselves?

I think much like the CIA was a long time ago with some other stuff. I think I think this spawn from a... Or like the Chinese. The Chinese have like a whole wing that does this, don't they? And the North Koreans? North Koreans are pretty good about that. Right. Yeah.

Isn't that a portion of their, a large portion of their revenue are illegal businesses in other countries? And I mean, that's my understanding is that they have, they have like stores and they sell products and stuff in different African countries and different. They actually bring their own citizens over there to work like stores and stuff to make money and to do things like sell. What was it? The supernote? Yeah. And they've got it. And I know that, well, at least I know that crypto, crypto scams is a part of their thing because there was that big crypto.

Yeah. I forget the name of it. If you said it, I remember. They sold like, it was ridiculous. It was like 80 million dollars in crypto or something. Was that the Chinese or was that the Chinese? That was the Chinese. Yeah, North Koreans are really good about intellectual property theft.

Oh, okay. Yeah, they're really good about sending plants like, hey, you know, my daughter's 18. Right, right, right. We'll send them over here. We'll send them to University of Stanford or whatever. We'll pay for everything. We want you to go work in this specific electronic medical company. and we want you to be there as much as you,

and we'll make it so to where you cannot leave, right? And then they start exploiting IP and intellectual property, and then at that point they extort the company, right? Right. So the Chinese and North Koreans are more so aligned like that versus ideological type deal. That's more of the Air Brotherhood ransom gang. They're more ideological based what you're talking about.

But yeah. I was thinking that I had heard, I want to know if it was either the Chinese, Chinese or the North Koreans, where they were getting their citizen or their, you know, whatever, their agents or whatever hired by American companies remotely, you know, not realizing that, you know, they think this guy is in South Korea or they think he's in, you know, whatever, Malaysia, somewhere like that, and they don't realize that he's a North Korean. And he's worked there for like 18 months or a year. And he eventually he has total access to everything.

Yeah. And I'd seen something where they were talking to one of the, I never read an article where the owner or the man, one of the top managers was like, listen, he was the best employee. Yeah. He was amazing. Like they know everybody, they had nothing but good things to say about them. They're punctual.

They show up on time. They do the damn job. Yeah. Yeah. That is very. Double dipping too. Exactly. The remote work, there's so many remote work scams going on right now, which I, I hate

saying this, but I thoroughly enjoy. because you see how well these guys have cultivated a pseudo personality. Like even as a ransom negotiator ourselves, we have to have personality we have to develop for 11 years, right? So we have this fake persona. And we're like, hey, this is who we are. The same thing as the premise applies with them, right? And the fact that they can get so far down the rabbit hole,

so far down servers, payroll systems, human resources, stuff. it's pretty exciting to see how well they do with so little that they have. So what happens with the hospitals? I mean, with a hospital like this, you eventually just, do they, do you have an example of one of these cases? Yeah. So I'll give you a walking one, right? This was in 2003, 2003, 2003, Jesus, that's a while ago.

2003, I was sitting there with my wife. And I was like, hey, honey, you know, nice little Sunday just hanging out, you know, BS. And she's like, hey, let's get some coffee. Cool, no problem. And I get in the car. And she's like, hey, you got a phone call. And it's this guy named Scott Autumnbaum. If you don't know who he is, I highly recommend that he's a former FBI field desk agent

and the technology crimes in Nashville, right? Super nice guy. And he's like, in the funniest New York, guys is like, hey, what are you doing? What are you at? And I was like, hey, what's going on, man? He goes, so I got a client for you. You need to talk to the CEO now. And I'm like, all right, so we're on the way to Nashville.

I'm like, oh, let me take this call. So I get on the call. And next to you know, this CEO is just yelling at me. And he's like, get your ass down here right fucking now. And I'm like, whoa, guy, who are you? What's going on? He's like, the whole hospital is down. And I'm like, I've seen down hospitals before, but not like down down.

Not like non-functioning. Non-functioning, right? That happened here in. Jacksonville too, another one I'll tell you about. So I said, all right, cool. Let me do this. Let me have breakfast. He's like, no, you don't understand. You need to get your ass down here now. And I'm like, all right, so it's in the middle of Tennessee. And I'm in Nashville. So it's an hour and a half drive. And I said, all right, let me wrap up my wife, love her to death. I'm like, hey, let's get you some coffee. Let's get you some breakfast. Cool. Call my partner. I'm like, hey, send him a statement

of work. And usually those take about an hour and a half, two hours. Come back in five minutes. And I'm like, all right, no stipulations, no red line, no nothing. I'm like, okay, we got a problem. Right. These guys are terrified. Yeah. Something's happening. Yeah. And I'm like, well, the wire transfer is like, I got cash. And I'm like, whoa, okay.

So, you know, these is a $100,000 week of jobs, right? All right, cool, no problem. So I call my bud and I'm like, hey, man, I'm gonna go down there right now. I'm gonna see what's going because something's awry. So I show up at the hospital. And I remember looking at it. I'm like, I've never seen a lifeless hospital. Like, no life.

Mm-hmm. Okay. And out the side access door comes this guy. And he's like, hey, are you? Insurance isn't a one-size-fits-all, and shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives' name-your-price tool for years. With the name-your-price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages.

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I'm like, who are you? And he was like, well, I'm the IT guy. I'm like, okay, all right, we're not the guy I wanted to see, but okay. So I go in, AC's not on. No electricity. And I'm like, okay, this is really, really weird. So I go upstairs, sit in the conference room,

and there's this big CEO, which is call him Jay. And he's just fucking yelling. He's like, you better get this shit on down, blah, blah. And there's a secret service guy, and I think an FBI guy. And they're like, I was like, Oh, hey, what's up, guys?

Good to see you. They're like, hey, what's up, Rico? What's going on? I was like, so what are we talking about? He's like, well, the whole fucking hospital was out. I'm like, okay, okay, I got it. But we need to start from square one. What happened?

So in the process, we're working this deal, and the Secret Service guy and I were exchanging this thing called IOCs, right? Indicators of compromise of how the compromise may have happened. And we see a specific user, like an admin user, which is like the guy who holds the keys of the kingdom. right cool and he's like hey this this thing is compromised like the password the password is in the wild it's open to the universe like this is not good like the computer their servers everything the firewall is completely open all right so we sit down with them we started doing some logs of

like collecting evidence and in that process we spent about a week and a half on site building their whole network back up together building different things um you know redeploy like 1,500 computers at one time, which is a lot, right? And then bringing this hospital kind of back to live. We get the threat actor on the outside, which means we were able to find out where they were within the systems within, you know, the files and whatnot, and kick them out. Right, kind of lock them out so they can't reaccess so they can't start undoing the corrections that you're making. Exactly. Did they ever ask for any money? Well, this is where it gets kicker, right? So they're like, hey, man. I was like, you know what I'm saying? Like, what's the fucking goal of this? Are you a

bunch of kids? You'll be surprised. There's those things called script. kiddies where they just kind of screw around see how far they can get, but those are amateurs. Right. So the threat actor was like, okay, cool, you must be the IR firm. And I'm like, I don't say anything because you don't want to give out that card, right? Right. So I like, all right, cool. And he's like, cool, no problem.

Then he starts calling the office. He's like, hey, I want to talk to the IR guy. And it's like, all right, guy gets on the phone, super, super, like very, very Asian accent. And I'm like, okay, what's going on? He's like, I want a million dollars. And I said, well, how did you arrive at? at that. And at this point, we're in a negotiation, right? We're sitting down, phones on, secret service there, CEO, CFO, and I put him on mute,

and he's like, do we have any data? I was like, you guys have nothing. Like, it's gone, man. And the stuff you do have is completely useless. And he's like, how much will he take? I'm like, you don't want to do this. Like, you don't want to do this. The secret service is going to tell you do not do this. FBI is completely against this. And he's like, paying? Yeah, pain. Oh, or I was going to say, or negotiate. Well, there's always negotiation, right? And one of the things, there's ways of paying what he's not to pay, right? So we get to the point where like, all right, well, we negotiate it down about three and a half

hours of negotiation of like, hey, fuck you, fuck me, whatever. Right. What do you want? What do you willing to take on? He's like, I'll take $100,000. And he's like, God damn it, put on the company credit card. I'm like, that's not the way it works, man. So you have the, you have the thing called a Tumblr, right?

A Tumblr wallet. It's much like money laundering, right? So what you do is you get a wallet and then you have a wallet. and then you have a Romanian-based wallet or Algerian or Romanian-based wallet or another one over there in Ukraine. And you transfer money of that one because you never want to pay directly from your wallet because they're going to compromise that. Okay.

So at this point, you're like, all right, so we're going to fund this. FBI and Secret Service is like, don't do that because you're about to pay an OFAC nation, a sanction state, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's just not good. Your insurance is going to be pissed off to. they make the payment. They're like, hey, we're going to make the payment.

Cool, no problem. Remember that bit I'll tell you about, like, they're unscrupulous? Yeah, so they just show up again, and they're like, we'll give you part of the key. Now we want the rest of the money. And at that point, you're like, dude, come on. We agree to $100,000.

Yeah, and they're like, well, that's what you agreed to this affiliate over here. We're a different affiliate. Whatever. Okay, yeah. How much do you guys want? 100 grand. So we give them 100 grand for the other part of the key.

Cool. They only decrypt is so much. of the files. And now you've got to go back and be like, all right, so these guys are just complete assholes, right? Like, they're not working with us. How far can we go back to recover? Because you have 4,000 patients

whose their data is out there now. Now you have to do remedy around that. So. So you have to notify everybody also that it's been compromised? Okay. Which they don't want to do. That's embarrassing. Oh, that's hugely embarrassing. And very costly. Because you have to provide credit monitoring to 4,000 people for three years minimum.

Yeah, so that's what $35 a person per month, you do the math, right? And then I hate saying this, you know, I've been in the legal field myself. Like, then you get the damn illegal attorney fees are completely useless there. Like, well, you should notify. I'm like, well, no, shit, we know that, right? So you start doing these things and you get like, you know, the breach itself is going to cost anywhere from like $1.5 million to $2 million, just in fees and services you're going to have to do. Then you have to pay the threat actors, right?

So all in all, I mean, it was about a $2 million breach. And that's kind of the hard part around that. It's a no win game. Well, did they eventually, so far you paid $200,000? Yeah. And you said, you still haven't got everything back. We got to a certain point. Did you get to a certain point?

We just said, fuck it. We're not paying anymore. You're going to keep doing this. Yeah. So there comes a thing of, it's called RPO RTO, recovery point of objection, recovery time of object, like, how far back can we go? And at what point can we go? And you have to make a decision as a business owner or even a CEO or whatever.

right and you say hey we can go back to last month's data and be okay with that and they're like all right cool let's just do that uh we'll take the hit no problem because i think what's going to happen is they already paid $200,000 a ransom and i think what's going to happen they're going to ask for another two or three hundred thousand at that point you're you're scaling up to a million dollars you might as well take that money and just put it back into the to do what's right you know right well and well and and and then of course there's you're you're incentivizing them to come back again because they know you'll pay. And then,

I don't know. Yeah, yeah, you're just, you're just incentivized it. I was going to say if you paid them and thought they'd go away, but I don't see that anybody just going to go away. They never go away. They're just not going to go away. They never go away. So, yeah, what happens? Like, after the breach happens, right? After the money's paid and whatnot, then the FBI tries to track them down. And it's always like some Serbian base dudes in the middle of nowhere.

And they're just like, I got, especially during the winner. Well, even if you found a, They're not giving up their citizens to the U.S., right? Like, don't you have to kind of go in and grab them and bring them back? Like the cops there aren't going to, you know. It's so only from obviously being locked up is that whenever people talked about me being on the run and I had passports and everything, there was like, why didn't you go to, you know, another country? And I used to think about Scott Pritchard, which was Scott Pritchard and Naomi. I'm sure I'm butchering her name, but her last name was Nova.

What was her first name, Nova? Anyway, they were bank robbers. And they had fled to South Africa, I want to say during a part-thi. And they'd robbed a bunch of banks. And no, and so the South Africans are not extradite. There was no extradition treaty. and the FBI, it turns out that basically a U.S. citizen had actually come back to the United States, and this was back when they had wanted posters, and saw a wanted poster, and was like, that was my waitress.

Told the FBI, FBI sent some guys down there, watched her, got a hold of her fingerprints, ran the prints, found out, okay, definitely her, watched her for a few days. And they're doing all of this in South Africa. South Africans have no idea. realize she's going back and forth to her apartment where they realize that Scott is. And they watch the apartment one day. And one day when they realize she's coming home, she's going to go in. When she goes in, he typically meets her at the door. The very least she opens the door.

We feel like we can squeeze it right in. Yeah, we can get in there. They called the local police station and said, where the FBI, there's a dozen of us. We're going into the apartment. We're taking it. Do not have any police cars in this general. area. This is one of, two of our citizens. We have warrants. We're taking them. They said, thank you for calling. And they stayed out. Like they rushed in, grabbed them through black

bags over their head, threw them into a van, drove them to the airports, threw them onto an FBI jet and flew them out of South Africa. There was no, so you know what I'm saying? There's no, there was no extradition. Like extradition is when the local cops will grab you for them and then bring them, go through their court system, bring them to you, but no country's really going to give a shit if you come and get your own fucking citizens. So I knew that going into prison. And then when I went into prison, I would meet these guys that had been in their own country that had been essentially kidnapped.

So let's say you're a huge drug smuggler, whatever, cartel member, whatever. And they know where you live and you've been indicted. and the opportunity arises where the, and usually they don't even know that it's a government agency, right? So they think it's a private security form. Well, they don't even know. That to be on, I don't think, and other people don't think. And one of them would be like Frank Amadeo, like these guys, like they don't, they didn't think that the U.S. government did it. But it's more like it was a contract.

And a contractor company finds out where the guy is, watches him for a while. and then one day learns his routine. The guy goes and gets, you know, he goes and gets a latte every morning at the cafe. And so they just, boom, they throw back black bag over his head. They tase him, throw him in a van, drive him to the airport, put him on a plane, fly him out. And so I would meet these guys after they got 20 or 30 years. Oh, and then the other funny thing is, too, they'd say they were screaming and hollering the whole time. Like, I'm a, I'm a Colombian citizen.

You can't do this. They'd bring them back to the United States, get them in front of the judge. they'd scream in front of the judge like, I'm a Colombian citizen. These guys just kidnapped me. And the judges be like, well, look, I don't know anything about that, but you are indicted and you are here. So, and then they'd move forward. And they complained the whole time.

There's nothing they could. Of course, their lawyers are like, okay, well, all I know is that you were delivered on U.S. soil and you got picked up by the DEA. And the DEA is saying that they got a phone call and that they picked you up. They're not admitting to running an operation in another country. And that's why we had always kind of assumed or figured that it was some kind of a private entity. Maybe it was the United States government or maybe it was a contracting company. I don't know.

Anyway, they get them here. Then they get prosecuted. They get 20 or 30 years. They end up at Coleman. Then we'd beat them. And they'd be like, I was in my own country. So if they're going to do that, if they're willing to go in, the U.S. government's willing to go in or pay someone to go in and grab people in other countries and bring them. and we know that they'll grab them themselves in another country,

if they're their own citizens. Like, there was no place safe for me to go. No. You know, in another country and get, where I wasn't going to get grabbed, I would have to have gone and lived as another person and then been able to skate under the radar. And at the time, when I was on the run, I always thought to myself, I could do it.

But now looking back on it, I realized I would have never been able to go 20 years, the rest of 30, 50 years, the rest of my life without showing up on the radar at some point, technology at the very least would have caught up with me at some point, even with a U.S. passport or anything, at some point, it would have, I guess maybe Cambod, if I wouldn't like Cambodia.

No, you have to go further than Cambodia. You probably go further than Cambodia. You probably go to like, Chad or like Cameroon. I'm not doing that. I'd rather do my time. I'll go to Goldman. Like you'll be able to get away. I would say a good 10 years.

I think you would have been able to get away. But after that, but like you would have been just exhausted. You're like, oh, fuck, I'm going to go. Yeah, at some point. Yeah, it's... When you talk about the guys who go pick up people,

that's what we did, you know, for a very long time. I did that for a very, very long time. You know, you get the op-order, you get a con-op, and you're like, all right, it doesn't matter what our agency is. Who's our guy?

Who's our target? Right. And we just sit there for a month, just watch them, hang out. I'm like, all right, I'm snatched and grab them. Where do we drop them off at some shitty airport and runway? Just put them on the C-130, get them going,

and then hand them over to, you know, guys in Hawaiian shirts. Right. Yeah, that's it. And then a check gets cut. So operator pays about $1,000 a day. So you get paid $30,000 a month. I ain't more than that. Like, bro, I'm in another car.

I'm like, let's go bad. Well, then also on top of that, you have hazard pay, then you have your expectancy pay, which is like, so depending on certain operations, if you're burning like an opium field or whatever, you have 14 days of life expectancy. That means they're expecting to live only 14 days. Right.

If you make a pass, then game on you get more money, right? So very much like, you know, mercenary of the year, like, or the universal soldier type shit. Yeah, definitely. It's still very real. So whenever you tell me the things, I'm like, yeah, that checks out. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's, I don't know, it seems, so it seems like it's like in a, a Rambo,

movie or something, but, you know, those things are based in, you know, it's very real, you know, Rambo, but so whenever, like, he killed 400, he'll kill 400 guys with the fucking, with a buck knife, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things I was looking at was like, okay, so one of the questions that clients will ask was like, okay, Rico, are you going to go get this guy or whoever did this, like took our money or whatever? There are services where you pay, but like, dude, you're going to pay another million dollars just for a small team, helicopter, diplomatic passports, weaponry and then bribes bribes are big like to get into the country

is a pain in the ass and then to snatch somebody like a human being you're going to snatch them like who's doing cyber crimes like that's very hard to do but there's there are services to do it though right you can actually absolutely snatch somebody up very easily but it takes a lot more effort right it would

the it would determine whether I was going to go someplace what country it was like you're not going to I'm not going to sneak into Russia and grab some. Insurance isn't a one-size-fits-all. And shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives' name-your-price tool for years. With the name-your-price tool, you tell them what you want to pay,

and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy. Or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple for you to see your options. No guesswork. No surprises. Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit progressive.com and give the name your price tool a try.

Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life. On your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and Coverage Match Limited by State Law. funny but if it was some side former you know if it's chastinia or something where you could get right on a boat you know off the dock or if it was something like some south american country where there you know where you could basically if you got caught you could you could you could pull out a few thousand dollars and probably bribe somebody and walk away you know there was um i i would there's

some countries it was like oh no i'm not i would i wouldn't go in and grab anybody there because it could go so badly you know yeah and if they grab you you know if you're in north Korea and they grab you. You're in there. I don't even know if you're going to be walked down the street in North Korea. Oh, they'll just kill you right there. Yeah. And it's just, and it's such a police state. Like some places, like the police are so such a minority, you can really probably, you could probably operate for a long period of time and really have no communication or contact with the police. But at some point, you got to, you grab up somebody and you got to get to an airport and you don't want to be running in. You don't want to run into a roadblock or anything like that.

I think if you had to do that, I think Haiti would be one of your spots, even though It's a, the economy has collapsed. You can still bribe your way through there. Yeah, absolutely. Haiti, though, I was going to say it's run. It's basically run by a gang at this point, by the gangs. There's, I think like four different gangs run in the whole country right now. It might be even worse.

Might be even worse. Might get shot and just left in the street. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of how it rolls. So we're talking about the middle state Tennessee breach, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay.

So, you know, there's, there's another one, but do you, want to stick on the rent. Go ahead. Well, what I'm saying, so, okay, so the, the Tennessee one where you finally, you finally got to a point where you got, you got, you went back a month or so, you get everything back. It's going to spend, they, then they're going to spend millions. I mean, are, do you have any successful? I mean, that probably is a success. That's, you really have to. So there was, to me, a success is, you know, you went in and, and you, you, you kicked the guy out and you recovered all this stuff and you didn't pay anybody. Here. Yeah. What, here?

Here in Jacksonville. Oh, okay. So there was a very small county hospital. I'll never forget it. Sweet, sweet old lady called me up. Her name was Tiff. She's like, hey, Rico, I got your name. And I'm like, oh, how'd you get my name?

Like, people just don't call me. Like, I'm not that guy. What can I do for you, man? She's like, I need you to come down to Jacksonville. Your name was given me by a company called Trolli. They do penetrations. I'm like, perfect, no problem. So I show up.

I'm like, hey, how you doing? She's the sweetest, sweetest lady. And I go, okay, what's, what's going on? She was like, I don't know what's going on, something about a note on the computers. And I go, okay, and our MRI machine, it just don't work. And I go, oh, well, where's your MRI machine? And so you've ever seen the semi-trucks with MRI machines? Yeah.

Yeah. So imagine that being useless, just a break. And I go, okay, okay. So all of these things are tied into the computer system. They're not separate. No, I don't know. Remember, everything has to call back to a centralized nervous system. like a computer, server, server room, something like, imagine the transmission engine, right?

They all work in conjunction together. Yeah. Okay. So I show up and she's like, I just don't know, honey. Can you just help me out? I'm like, yeah, you got it, ma'am. So I sit down to her computer and I'm like, oh, my God. Like, all this is just read me in a little file.

And I open that thing up and I'm like, well, got some good news, the bad news. The computer still works, right? Can I go in your server room and everything else? She's like, yeah, I've got a few appointments that are showing up. Mind you, this is like the only hospital in this rural area that serves the elderly. And it's like, okay. How small is this hospital that this woman's running it? Oh, well, she was a CEO.

So she was like, I want to say like less than, less than 50 beds. Okay. Yeah, so it was a county hospital, right? Sit down with her. I'm like, I got you. No problem. And I'm like, oh, shit, this is bad. Like, this is really bad.

Like, this read me file, which is the ransom note. Right. has encrypted everything is everywhere, right? So I'm like, all right, cool, let me see what's up. I read the note. It says, the threat actor says, reach out to me on this. Usually whenever there's a string and it's like tour or something like that, you can determine whether the experience level or the maturity level of a threat actor, right?

If it's a tour, they're pretty sophisticated. But if it's like a WhatsApp, then you're like, all right, this guy's a fucking idiot, right? So it's like there's a WhatsApp number and a tour. And I'm like, all right, get them on the tour. I'm like, how can I help you? like, I want $20 million. I'm like, bro, this building, this building ain't even worth it right now.

So I have all your data. I'm like, we'll see about that. So I spent some time with the IT team, and I'm like, hey, guys, where's your backups? Let's take a look here. And my guys are doing the analysis, right? And you're trying to figure out where this person is. We figure out the guy was from India, right?

We figured out what street he lives on. And we're able to figure out who his parents are. I'm going to call your mother. Yeah, exactly. We call the cops. We call Interpol. Interpol is like, well, we'll go over there, check it out, right?

Cool no problem. In the meantime, thank God somebody has somewhere with this little stupid backup. It was already max out overheating. They're like, I think this is it right here. I was like, all right, man, let's go take a look. I'm like, oh, thank God. It just backed up yesterday. I'm like, cool.

A couple days ago. Right. Perfect. So I'm like, we're not paying. And he's like, fuck you, motherfucker. I'm like, oh, that's not good customer service, buddy. You got to do the Indian access. Oh, fuck you.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck, mother. because they can't put the shit together, you know what I'm saying? The best one was dealing with an Indian guy from Chenai. He's like, sons of mothers of bitches. I was like, yeah, sure, man. So I was like, let's get on the chat, man.

Let's do it. And he's like, all right, no. And I was like, do me fair. Can you get on camera with me? And this is when you know this is how fucking junior they are. Right. And it's like, fine, I'll show you who I'm. Like, perfect.

This is what I want to see. Start recording it. Get in touch with the FBI. And they're like, man, how the hell did you call? him to get on camera. And I'm like, I don't know. I just asked. And he's like, all right, cool.

So the good thing about this is that Tiffany was, Tiff was ready to pay. She was like, how much do they want? I'm like, we're not paying a fucking dime. Right. So she was like, how much to get us back and be gone? I was like, as a matter of fact, other than me being here or us being here, like, it's not going to cost you anything. Like, maybe 10,000 bucks.

Like, you guys are a small hospital. You guys don't do $100 million of revenue. Right. Let's check it out. So we're able to put her stuff back up, reconfigure her stuff. and bring that MRI machine back to life, right? Because factory reset work with Samsung, all that good stuff. And the successful story is, like, people got care within a week, which is awesome, right?

But it seems horrible that they're down a week. Dude, have you seen some of the bigger ones, like change health? Mm-mm. Oh, buddy. They're down for, like, what, weeks or months? That company's gone. Really? It was one of the biggest healthcare pharmacy breaches of the world's history.

It happened in Nashville. and they got hit because they never did the basic things to put things together, like the basic securities. Is that what's happened? Is that why the hospitals, because I'm just noticing you've got a lot of hospital examples. The hospitals are thinking what, that they're not targets or they don't have the, I mean, hospitals have money.

They do, but remember, it goes to patient first and also it goes to the doctors. Right. It has nothing to do with infrastructure. They can get away with the minimal infrastructure that, That's what they'll do. What seems like that that's catching up with them.

Now by law it is. So what happens is they'll say, well, we'll go ahead and roadmap that. We're not going to fund IT security. You've got to understand, like, less than 1% of a budget is dedicated to security. Dude, that does nothing for anybody. Especially for something that could cripple your entire or, you know, take you, well, like you just said, just not cripple it, but just put you out of business completely. Yeah, so what happened with change health, they, there's very, very sophisticated.

happened over a year, right? Basically, they took down their whole system 100% and now all these other huge organizations like United Health, Mercy, whatever, whatever, right? They can't work. And now you have a point of breach that has affected all these other places now. And I think they want to paying about $22 million in a ransom payment. And it was like pretty bad. And they're still not in business right now. And it screwed the whole world up right now. Are all of these hospitals? Well, some of them are universities. Some, yeah. Oh, the university, that was an interesting one. So there was a middle Missouri university that got hit up, right? And they want to call,

this actually start off as a due diligence. Like, hey, can you, we see something fishy, we just can't put our finger on it. Can you come to middle Missouri? Have you been in middle Missouri? No, no, who has? Exactly. Just I remember. Missourians, right? I remember seeing like this big super I was like this is the town of fucking Superman No shit and I'm like all right cool And they were like hey you know you gotta do two things Why here one be mindful of tornadoes

And I'm like okay That's the thing here and they're like And you gotta go to this place And get this chicken wings and I'm like Well I'm not here for that I'm cool no problem And I go there and I sit down with the CEO Or the president of the university

And the IT team and the security team And they're like We think something's going on And I'm like, okay, let's go see. We saw one of our alerts kicked off. And I was like, all right, let's go take a look, boys. So we sit there and I'm there for like a week and a half in the middle of fucking Missouri, right? And come to find out that they were not appropriately given money to do the right thing for security.

So they just had a bunch of just shit. Like, hey, we have a house alarm here. We have a car alarm here. And like, just hoshpots together, right? So upon the discovery, we see like, hey, dude, somebody's in here. Somebody's in it. It's a Russian Struutsku,

which is like fancy bear, right? Which is the, that's a threat acting name game. These, these names. They have to come over with scarier names. Not paying fancy bear. Fancy bear,

I don't care what's happening to my company. Fancy bear's not getting a check. So like, you know, we see it's like, okay, so this is a Russian nation state threat. This is the government of Russia is here. So we're working with them,

and we see the threat actor moving from computer to computer and he's good. They are good, right? And I'm like, man, this person like very smooth not sound NFL alarms, moving left and right, compromising credentials, increasing their permissions and privileges. I'm like, okay, so they made a call. They're like, we're just going to take the network. We're going to take it completely down.

And I'm like, you're going to take a university down. So you mean the university is going to take it down or the, okay? The university. Oh, they're saying we're just going to take it down. So that's like a bad worst case scenario. Bad worst case, good case scenario. The good thing is, is going to go down. The bad thing is everyone was about to find out here real soon how bad it is.

And this university was a pinnacle of the town. Okay. Okay, so like you are a provider of the internet to the town and you're going to take the whole thing down. He's like, yes. I'm like, I'm not making that call. That's you, pal. So they took it down. And I was like, oh, shit.

And sure shit, man. The news shows up. cops show up and I'm like all right they're like hey what's going on I'm like well we have this thing and the local cops like what are you talking about so I'm like what does that even mean I'm like we don't do those things here I'm like no it's like they do in Russia yeah and so at the end of the day it was it was a matter of them just not being able to have the right ability to defend themselves after we took the network down after we took the whole ISP down, we brought it back up.

And we're able, at that point, get the threat act on the outside. Again, like push them on the outside, right? But the problem is they actually had a bunch of call centers. So they just started doing all these automated phone calls throughout the whole city, just calling people, calling people, calling it, and text messages, pay me money, pay me, and to everybody. And it was hundreds of thousands of phone numbers, right? And it was, it's really easy to do to kind of do a Lambda function,

which is like, give me, do this on the hour, every hour, just text somebody, text them. Right. And they went through the whole city. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And after a while, they're like, hey, we got to pay these guys to stop. Just to stop that. I'm like, they're not in the business of that. They want their money.

Like, this is the Russia government. Right. They don't screw around. Eventually, they just kind of go away. But they want to come back. I know they want to come back. Right. No payment was made.

And they kind of just fizzled out slowly. The sad part about this, the story is the sad part about this is that a university is exactly where they are today. with no investment of security, no nothing. And that's one of like one of those stories of nothing good happen, nothing bad happened. And it's just a big nothing sandwich right there. So what do they do? They took the system down.

They put the system back up. They what, reset everything, put it back up. And they're just, they're just subject to be being hacked again. Yeah, exactly. So whenever you take something down, you bring it back up, everything's going to update, right? Everything's going to go back to a newer version, a more secure version. But the problem is every Tuesday or every Wednesday, get something new. is if nobody's monitoring that,

nobody's taking care of that, nobody's taking care of your car outside, right, add an oil, you know, like it's just going to blow up at some point. When these guys are going in and they're, I understand they're shutting it down and we talked about earlier where you said

they were getting the information, right? Yeah. So if I, and I'm obviously, shoot, probably I'm wrong, but initially what I thought was happening was, if I go online and I fill out an application,

right, name, date of birth, address, everything. Then when it gets to the social security number, and I type in my social security number, and then it, you know, whatever, it's all X's and everything. I've, I've, what is that to me I thought, I was thinking, okay, the people, the people on the other end and the administration of end, they understand, they know what my social security number is. But then I, there was other times I've thought, well, wait a minute, maybe it's some kind of an encryption or something. Nobody knows, and only the computer knows, or whatever the reason.

is. So what I'm wondering is when they, if they get into these, let's say a hospital or a doctor's office or something, are they able to, and you're saying they get your information, are they able to get my social security number? Yeah. Damn. Yeah. Okay. So. Of course, it's the only real, that's not the only thing, but without your social security number, blood of the other information is really no good. You have the, not, I'm saying, I got to get what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying you can't do something with it, but you're not necessarily going to be able to take out a loan or get a credit card without your social. You'd have to use that information to then get the information, which I'm sure you could take that information and eventually

find the social security. Insurance isn't a one-size-fits-all. And shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives name-your-price tool for years. With the name-your-price tool for years, with the name- price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy. Or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple for you to see your options.

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On the dark web. Absolutely. So when you were talking about that, right? Yeah. So let's just say the hospital owns, let's say the healthcare firm owns the thing that you're in entering your social security into, right? It is their responsibility to make sure that it gets hexed out. But in that hexing, right, where it kind of does asterisks of your social security,

there is a formula, there's a configuration in there that says, hey, if you reverse this, you'll show all of it. And it's not hard to figure that out. And I don't mean in a layman's terms of like, you know, I hate saying this, but like a plumber, right, he's not going to be able to figure that out. But if somebody who does this for a decent living for like five years, they're going to figure. it out. Right. It's not hard. I heard casinos have issues. You are correct. Well, how does that work? Okay, so. And do casinos have your information?

Oh, man. I don't know. I don't gamble. So I don't. It's like the, the biggest burger flipper knows your VIN number, right? Same premise applies when you walk into casino. They've identified you. More likely picked up your RFID. you know, from your, from your wallets, your credit cards. They've already kind of geotagged you as a person or person of interest. And at that point, with open source technology, they can deduce of kind of who you are or get a really good idea. So I walk in, what do you, I don't understand.

I mean, I walk into, I'm just walking through. I haven't gambled. No matter. I'm just walking through. Yeah, they don't matter. And they're, they've got readers that somewhere that are reading my wallet saying, okay, this person, you know, whatever. They can do a soft pull and say, hey, this guy.

guy's got a 790 credit score. We generally think he's making this money. Let's say you walk into a casino. Nice, nice. Metaphorically on the strip casino and you're just there just walking through, right? The moment you walk through, just like the Chinese have facial identification and retinal identification, same technology is being applied in these casinos, right? So they're like, hey, Rico's here, cool, no problem.

He's a male. He's 510. Blah, blah, blah. He's this way. Got it, no problem. That's all your demographic. Then from that information, they're like, all right, go ahead and do open source. Open source is just like open information, right?

Hey, go ahead and get a query string, like our search screen, query string, and figure out who this guy is. Don't give me a name. Just give me who he might be. This is Matt Cox. We need to get him off the premises as quickly as possible. And there are gentlemen who are tagged as not, you cannot walk into a casino. Right. Yeah, there's a few guys I've seen before.

They're in the black book, right? They are, man. Oh, the car counters? Yeah, I've seen a few of those guys. But yeah, so when it comes to, like, technology and cyber, it's a little bit, a little bit different. Like, they can say, hey, the way hot, not hospitals, but, like, casinos get breached mostly is by,

it's a fundamental thing of, like, poor hygiene. Remember, you have a bunch of these things called POS machines, not a piece of shit machine, but, like, point of sale. Point of cell, right? Imagine the slot machine is a point of cell machine, right? and they have to be managed at some point, but there's this discrepancy of like, are we managing it or is the vendor managing it?

If it's a vendor management, it needs to be on something completely different network, right? Somewhere different, but it has to be in our environment, has to be on the floor, right? So what happens is there's not enough thorough vetting of these devices, because if I'm not managing it,

that means you need to manage it, that means you manage the security event, that means I can't, I have to trust in you. A lot of these casino machines, A lot of these slot machines are non-managed and they're unsecured. They're just kind of run rapid. And nobody's paying attention to that.

And that's the easiest way to get in to a network. Through it, through like a slot machine? Yeah. Well, think about it's a dummy machine. It's a smart dumb machine. But it's connected. That's the problem.

It's connected, right? I mean, yeah, but to me, you would have to plug something in. You'd have to have a laptop. You'd have to have, like, what am I? Like one of the, uh, diet, rotary phones or the old push buttons where you're,

it's like the numbers, right, on the phone numbers. Remember the old push, you know like A is like one is A, B, C, C, C, right. And so you're on the thing,

you pull the thing and you start hitting it. No, no, no. Inner. So remember all these devices emit some sort of like RFID, Wi-Fi broadcast SSID, which is like a frequency, right?

And it says, hey, I'm machine number one. Come talk to me. Right. And you say, okay, cool. What do you want to talk about? The best way to do that

it could possibly be facilitated is a device called pineapple Wi-Fi. You can buy them on Amazon, and you just programmed to say, I want you to talk to this thing here. And then at a point, once you have an established connection and also a communication,

you start going through the whole list of like, okay, well, what do you have in that little smart machine of yours? How do you operate? And you start questioning the machine, and the machine is dumb enough to give it the information. I was like, okay, what do you want to know, Matt? Here's all my address, here's on my windows that are open, and here's all my doors that are open.

And then if you're somebody who has some sort of technology advancement, you say, okay, well, I want to see if I can get in this window. And unfortunately, a lot of casinos don't pay attention to those windows, which are these machines, are completely wide open. And so then they get access to, and they get access to somehow and now they're convinced the system that they're like an administrator and they can make changes. Exactly.

So what happens is once you get a hold of the machine, at that point, you know, threat actors like, okay, so where else can I go? Because remember, this is patient zero. You never want to be a patient zero. You want to go ahead and lateral over as much as you can. So you find an administrator-level device, accounts, or person's account.

Those are the three things you always want to look for. And then you get a hold of it. You change the password or whatnot. And then from there, you kind of expand your landscaping, if you will. And then you own that. But this is always going to be your point of exfiltration. Like you can leave as soon as possible. It's funny because the only reason,

here's what I'm thinking about is like, The guy that's driving a forklift right now, who, you know, the extent of his understanding of technology is he can go on YouTube, he can look at videos, he can email, although he probably doesn't do it much, he texts. You know, the very, very, it's just the very basic consumer of technology, right? Which is not somebody who, where I understand what you're saying, because, you know, we, we have YouTube and. TikTok and we have to go into the administrative, you know, or the studio or the back end. I always think of them all as back. I don't know if they still call them back in, but the back end. And it's funny because like even when I'll build, let's say, a website or something,

like I built our website. We're moving to a new studio. We put together a website and everything just to answer all the questions. Like, when you're like, hey, you know, we end up talking and you're going to come on the show. and I say typically what happens is 50% of the people that are coming here, really, to be honest, probably 90% of the people that are actually going to have to fly in. The first thing they say is, is there a hotel near you? So, you know, is there anything I can do while I'm there? I'm going to fly in for the day. I'm going to fly in for four days. Is there anything wrong? So one of the things

we did on the website is like we have like a page where it's like things to do, you know, places to stay, you know, that sort of thing. Anyway, the point is, and then it allows you to also upload and all this other stuff. Well, because I had to build that website, I understand what you're saying. Like there's different levels. Like, right? Like you can be management, which allows you to do certain things. And you could be like an editor or you can, you know what I'm saying? So when you're saying give them higher levels of permission. Yeah. So I understand because when you go on like Wix or you go on. Yeah, GoDaddy or any of those things, they give you different administrative levels of things that you can do. You could alter the entire system if you want.

it to you could add pages, remove page. You could you could say, hey, I want to see a list of all the people that have bought stuff from you, if you've got a store or whatever. So I could imagine it's much more complicated in a larger system. Very, very complicated. But at least I have a basic understanding of what you're saying. So I was just thinking about like the guy who's driving the forklift, he's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Oh, absolutely. But so I understand, and I understand like if you just give somebody access, right, like there are some people we have low-level access just to do something minor. And I'm trying to think like, how do they, but somehow or another, they're figuring out

how to get somebody else to give them access to a higher, or higher access and higher, are they doing that by themselves? Yeah. Like, is it, like, I think of, do you remember the movie, Swordfish? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, good movie. You never, he doesn't know, he didn't even know. Great movie, man.

Guy got a blowjob while hacking. Yeah, completely, completely not reasonable, by the way. Are you serious? Oh, no. I'm going to say, they make it look cool. You know, he makes it look cool. But it's funny, too, because I did a keynote speak for Galactic Security, which was a company. And it was, and it's funny because when they contacted me, so one of my subscribers were the guys that watches the show all the time, he works for them.

Oh, nice. And he contacted me. He said, listen, we're having an annual event. And he said, I think you'd be great. I'm going to recommend you. And I was like, okay. So he recommended me to his boss. His boss watched one of the show.

show or one of the videos came one or my story came back and got on the phone so we talked and they said we want you to come and I was like listen man I don't know anything about about cybersecurity like I said I don't think I'm a good fit for you guys you know because I want to like I don't mind telling my story but I want you to be happy and I don't think I'm going to bring any value to right to you guys and he got on the phone he said it he's he said I know what you're thinking cybersecurity is and I said what's that he said you're thinking swordfish and I was like Exactly. Exactly. He was so funny, too. And he was like, you think that there's some guy, he goes, he sits at a computer, and he says, I found a portal. And he writes a quick, a quick program that allows him to get in. He has this whole little skit he did. I was like, right, of course. He's like, yeah, that's not what it is. He said, it's exactly what you did. Because he had watched one of the things. He goes, it's what you did with the Social Security Administration. I was like, okay. And I said, you call up. He was, well, some people do. And he said, it's convincing somebody within the system or within the company that has access to give you access.

So they ask little questions or they'll come up with a, what do you say? Urgency. Well, one of them, it was sort of as simple as like coming up with an email address that looked almost exactly like their email address. So it looks like you have been given this email address that they don't realize is it wasn't assigned by the company, you know. So it's not like, whatever, you know, it's a Gmail, whatever. Instead, it's, you know, galactic.com, you know, or whatever. The email address is from Galactic, but it's really not got, it's Galactic, but it's spelled slightly different. Yeah, Galactics. Yeah, it's something, but the person who's responding to, it doesn't realize that. And he's like, before you know it,

you're communicating with someone, they think you work for the company. He goes, because everybody, everybody's remote. He goes, and before you know it, you're, then you're on a phone call with them, you speak like them, you do one or two things. You do one or two things. you build a little bit of a trust. The next thing you know, there's an issue. You're locked out. You have to get this, you have to get this whatever to Brad. Can I, would you mind real quick letting me do the?

Oh, sure, of course, Tom. You know, and you give them access. The next thing you know, boom, that's it. You're done. Then they change the code. They do this. And now they have their own access. You don't even realize they have access anymore.

Even if you change your password. It's like, you don't realize, they don't realize what they've done. And now you're in the system. And like you said, you wait. Yeah. They spend some time figuring out how the system works, all the different quirks, and they just wait and wait and wait. And then maybe they get access to something else. They get little information.

They read some emails. They figure out somebody else. That person gives them more access. And he was like, oh, it'll take months. He was, but it's the same thing. He said it's, it's just social networking. Social engineering. Sorry, social engineering.

He said, it's just social engineering. He was, which is exactly. So if you'll just tell your story, he said, it's exactly. And let me tell you something. When I went to this place, I am expecting, and there was like, I'm going to say 150 guys that were there. And I've talked to a lot of these things, right? But not cybersecurity. Right.

So in my mind, cybersecurity, it was going to be a bunch of Urkels. You know who Erkel is. Yes, I do. I don't know if. I know Urquil. Okay. It was going to be 150 guys. It was going to be 150 guys, Urkels, right?

And so that's what it was going to be. And keep mind, I'm usually going to, I'll go to different banks, different credit unions, different lending institutions. They're all in shirts and ties. You know, they're all, it's very stuffy. And so that's what I'm expecting. When I say this was like, it was like going to a rock concert, they had a smoke machine. Yeah. They had multiple smoke machines.

They had lights. The lights were dimmed. They had what the guys are everybody's wearing. They've all got black outfits. They all look like very hip. Everybody was, you go to a credit union, a credit union seminar. Listen, the average age is 50. These guys are 22 years old.

They're all super hip. Everybody involved, they're wearing these, they got the mics and the things and you can't even see them. And they get, they're coming out. of the steam and the smoke and they've got the lights and they're playing music and I'm like the fuck is this. This is insane. These guys are, and when I got there and I did my whole schick, right, I do my, I tell my story for 45 minutes, I answer a bunch of, and then I thought, these guys aren't going to

ask really any questions because this, even still, my story is not that. It's still, they asked great questions. And then when I left the stage, guys had my, guys had my. my book, I'm signing books. I'm signing, it wasn't necessarily autographs. It was, but it wasn't. It was more like books and hey, can you?

And then I must have taken 20, at least 20 selfies. And I, you might, sometimes I never do, but every once in a while I'll take one or two. Like I'll take as many as you asked me. There's 20 guys that are taking photos with me. Yeah, you're the hero. I was a rock stop. Yeah.

It was the coolest. Then I had to go with them later. We had to go to some place and have buffalo wings. And it's not like five guys went. Like they packed the entire thing. They closed it down. It was hilarious. It was,

I really had had no idea. And I didn't think I would be able to do that. I was. Why, dude? Because I just didn't. Because swordfish. I thought it was swordfish. No,

two things on that way. Think about the back to that company you said about Grant Cardone. Like anybody who makes less than $400,000 a year, those guys, right? Oh, they all make tons of money. Tons of money. Your lowest level paying guys at $200,000 a year.

So he's a scumbag, obviously. So, yeah, come on. Like, the intern makes $150,000. Yeah. Yeah, they were, and they were all super cool. And, you know, listen, they'd all watch my stuff. Like, they just thought I was the coolest thing ever. And I thought, there's.

Well, the reason is because you are what they are not willing to do. Right. Physically walk in and shake someone's hand. Well, there's that too. But like, the whole criminality part. Like, you actually took it. You actually took it to the point they wish they could. Right.

Imagine these frail guys, these neckbears, these urcles, all together. And they're like, well, if I did one more step, I could be a criminal, right? But you actually took a step. So in their eyes, you're like, well, fuck, this guy's my hero. Yeah. Think about it that way, man. I think there actually was, there actually was one guy who actually kind of took me aside and told me, listen, this is what happened. He told me, like, I think he had a felony.

And I think, but it was, because you have to think they have people. So this is the company, but the company, they also hire other companies. that do, yeah, subcontractors that do. So like that, the owner of that company passed the security, and then he hired somebody underneath, and those guys are invited. So I had one guy that's like, here's what happened. And he was, he told me his story. It was something like, he was like, he was like 17 or 18.

He ended up with a felony, but he was 17, 18 years old. And it was just some stupid thing and never did anything with it. He couldn't even figure out how to sell the information. It was on his computer. He was like, it was stupid. But he explained the whole thing to me. But yeah, so I think I think that those guys, yeah, a lot of them. It's a difference between black hats and white hats, right?

Black hats and white hat, gray hats. Yep. It's, if you really think about it, if you're willing to take it to the next level, that's what delineates you from them, right? So at the end, at the end of day, like how far and how bad do they want to be known? But in your eyes, they're emulating the matrix, the neos, right? All the nice suits and whatnot. and they want to emulate that,

but they're not willing to take it to the next step. Right. Well, at the amount of money these guys are making it, they don't need to. Yeah, you don't need to. Why would you make $500,000 if I can make $300,000, and I don't have to worry about the rest of my life. I can invest it.

Just do this job. Yeah, because I can promise you, if you're making the half a million dollars and you do it for four years and the government shows up, they're fucking taking all that money. Oh, yeah. And they're going to stick you with a judgment

for any damage you did. You'd be like, but I didn't see $12 million. It doesn't matter. You did $12 million in damage. Yeah. Now you owe that. You'll be like, you wish that three, you stopped with $300,000. That was like, some of the cases that we, I worked in Phoenix was like the Medicare, Medicaid

fraud, right? And I need these guys who took the, the arrestless side. You know what that is? Employment, retire, sponsored insurance, right? And they figured out a scam how to do it, but they actually targeted that specific area for $198 million. And they were able to take all. that money. Did you hear about the recent one in the, in Phoenix from the Rwandan pastor?

No. Priest pastor, whatever the hell he was. Basically, he siphoned off $33 million from the local Medicare Medicaid from running a ghost, a sober living. He just had the houses. He had the beds and he was just pumping the bill to the county. And they were just paying it and paying it blindly. So that money went to there and then that pastor, priest or whatever that he was, sent the money

to Rwanda. and it's like And he was Rwandan. So then he goes to Rwanda And living in a high life man So they finally caught up to him They're like hey dude this isn't right This is past a sniff test

So same premise supplies The same premise apply with this is like You know I'm surprised at like all these Medicare Medicaid frauds Like how easy it is to do them And that's that's pretty wild When nobody's really paying attention It is the I've met a bunch of guys

That doctors that were Or they weren't all doctors. Sometimes it's amazing. You don't have to be a doctor to open up like a clinic. No. Or even a hospital or anything. You don't have to be a doctor. But it's interesting how a lot of these guys, doctors will get in there and they'll start billing Medicare, Medicaid, and really it's just billing. I see somebody and you have Medicare and there's different levels of an examination. And they'll just start saying that they're, oh, I did the, the highest, level, highest level, highest level.

And they just start smashing it out. And then they'll order some tests that they're not actually doing. And then they'll, but for ordering the test, they get so much money. And then so they start doing this. And then the money starts coming in. They get emboldened by it. They do it three years later. They run, yeah.

Well, they run an audit. They'll run an audit. They'll say, okay, you're saying, you've sent 1,400 patients. And you're billing at the top level almost every time. And they'll be like, well, based on our stats, you really should. should be billing, and they have it broken down on what the average person, and you're not meeting that. So now we're going to go ahead and we're going to start calling these patients. Yeah.

You know, and then they do an audit. They come in. They get you in a room and they explain, you're fucked up. The one, yeah, the one, financial fraud, Medicare, Medicaid billing one I saw is these guys were billing per points of paint that they remedied. So they would get these, check the checks out, right? So let's take the ankle, right? The ankle, the foot, has a hundred different pain points you can remedy if you put a tool on it, like a wrap. Okay. So they'll be like, okay, cool, we're going to issue this wrap, right? And then you get the wrap, you put it on your foot, and they're like, all right, cool, you have, you have good for a bottom off. You're good, cool. Well, we're going to bill your insurance per day, per pre point, which is, let's just say $100

per paying point. And they'll bill the insurance like $100,000 for the thing. It's like, the insurance will start paying out. Yeah, pay it. And then after all you're like, well, can you imagine how, how, like, they do, they, they, I hate to say this, but they do have to just issue the payment because do you have any idea how expensive it would be to have a, a secondary doctor go over every single, like it, it's better to just pay. I mean, it's cheaper to just pay. It's, so that's, you know, that's an issue. But most things are like that. It's like the IRS. If I go right now and I file a tax return, I mean, 15, 20 years ago, they were just paying everybody. You could just make up a number, send it in and say, hey, I work for Walmart. I made, you know, $90,000, paid in, you know, $18,000. You owe me $9,000. They just cut you a check, right?

Like, they just automatically do it. And to a degree they do now, but more things have to match. Yeah. But because they don't have the ability to automatically do an audit of whether or not you ever even worked for Walmart. Yeah. So typically they just pay. and they catch up with it, and then they hammer you so hard

that it terrifies people that think to do this. And we just did an interview with a woman. They called her the tax fraud queen. Yeah. Yeah. And she just, you know, she just was just hammering out taxes. I mean, just, you know, make,

just grab it. Anybody gave her a social security number, she could file on them. And for every, what was it? For every five she was filing, She's getting like four of them are going through or three are going through. And she's knocking them out in seven or eight minutes. And she's saying, I'm just putting in the numbers.

I'm just playing with them. I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm just testing. And you can win with like. Is she go to jail? Oh, yeah. God. They gave her a ton of time.

And then she appealed it. And then he gave her the same amount of, came back and was like, hey, you gave me the wrong amount of time. So the appellate court said, yeah, you gave her the wrong amount of time. Send it back to it. And he looked at it and he said, well, they said, I have to. re-sentence you. And that's the time I wanted you to have.

Boom. Oh shit. Send her back again. I mean just. Because they don't never say, they're like, hey, your sentencing is out of whack. Like it doesn't meet the guidelines. Resentance her. They don't really say what you have to.

They never typically say what. I have a buddy who got resentenced three different times. And every time they knocked off two years. Oh, well. So he went from like 40 years. They came back and the judge goes, says, I have to, resentence, you didn't say to what? Here's 38. Went back again. You're right. It says I had to resentence. You didn't say to what. Here's 36. They kept knocking two years off. I think got down to

four years. No, got down to 34, from a 40 to 34. By that point, he'd already done all the time. It took that long. He dragged him that long. He did 26 years. Anyway, so yeah, it's the way most systems are set up once you start once you're in the system and you start billing they just pay yeah and that's corporations too like i had the one where i won't do the whole tell the whole story but we had a i met a guy in prison who was he was moving merchandise product whatever we want to call it for um johnson and johnson he was a truck driver he was billing him and you know and so after a year or so he accidentally put in, he had moved like five pallets and he accidentally put in, five hundred.

No, no, it was like six or eight or something, whatever. He said the way they come and he was explaining how they came and they were double wrapped or something. I didn't realize it and something. And he's like, so I accidentally did it. He said, well, I put it in and they paid me. And at that point, I kind of realized, man, I build for an extra pallet or two extra ones. And he said, but they just paid me.

Yeah. So then he went, huh. and then he decided I put in a couple of regular ones and then I moved eight and I said it was nine they just paid it he's like so then it started becoming he ended up with like three and a half and over the course like two or three years he built over a million a year for the next three years eventually they catch him and goes to jail but the point is

is that once you're kind of in the system and you've passed that you pass that kind of probationary period with most companies sometimes that will give you like we kind of scrutinized for the first few months or something. Once you kind of pass that, they just start, unless it's outrageous, no. They just kind of start paying if it's within the norm. So that's like a semi-truck weight, right? Right. You know, they're just like, hey, you know, the guys will actually add more water weight and then be like, all right, cool. So whenever you see a semi-truck, they start pumping the holes on the side of the water so they can bill per weight class. Oh, okay. Yeah, so we saw,

I saw that quite a bit in like in Oklahoma and they'll go on these wait stations and you'll see all these guys just, why aren't they like increasing water to their semi-truck, right? If it's a refrigerator truck, that's different, but because they get paid per per weight, per weight class, and also per classification. And then you'll start seeing like these guys just pull on the side of the road and just like, let and all this water go. And you're like, what the fuck? The only reason I found that out is because I had a semi-truck business, a very, very short stent.

Right. And two of these guys, it was funny, two of these guys were like, hey, man, we can do this for you. we can do this way. I'm like, no, that's kind of, all right, cool. Kind of looking at the load board. I'm like, yeah, cool. I'll make some money on this deal, whatever. And then I know it's like a habitual thing.

And then state trooper was like, hey, this is a scam. You know this, right? Like, this is how they do it. Right. I was like, oh, really? And he goes, yeah, so you're going to, you're going to pay Sam's Club or Walmart for overnight freights, and they pay very well. But the problem is they'll do it per weight because when you go through California is a wait station

and Washington, especially if you go to Alaska. And then they say, this is when they're, start increasing the weight, off-creasing the weight. So your bill goes up on the death fuel, right? And then at that point, that's when you have the rest of reimbursement. And then they already know they already got you at that point. I'm like, so your $4,000 cargo turns into like $10,000 overnight. Like, this makes no sense whatsoever.

So, yeah, it's interesting. So what happens when they eventually get into like these, the, something like a casino? You know, you're saying they enter through maybe a slot machine and they get in there and then they go and they tell them that, hey, you owe us X amount of dollars. And you're saying that do they, well, I guess you kind of more explain that, that they don't always pay. And if they do pay, they typically come back. Can't you, can't you pay and then patch the holes?

Like you would think they would learn and say, okay, well, we have to, now we have to really start investing in this. So what happens is, let's just take a casino, for example. Threat actors in there, they get booted out, and now a security team goes in and says,

hey, these POS machines need to be on these avenues of street, like a network, right? It cannot be a part of your corporate stuff. The other part is they have to be patched over continuously at all times. The problem is a lot of people forget,

there's a thing called patch management, vulnerability management, like how you fix things right around the house, patched this hole, this end, A lot of organizations don't do it well. It just hands down because it's very tedious. You're always chasing the tail of the dog here.

And threat actors know that, and that's why they always want to come back and be like, hey, how can we do this? The point of a threat actor getting in there is, how can I take your money or how can I take your means to make money? In the casino's environment is like, you're not going to pay them? Perfect.

I'll just go ahead and take it on all your casino, all your slot machines, all everything I can. And I'll just break them, which means make them completely useless. That means the customer's not going and they're putting money into the damn slot machine, right? So they're like out of business.

So every day that you're out of business, I think it was like $65 million a day that they were out of business. A casino was out of business. I swear to paying a few million. Yeah, so like the ransom, I think it was like $28 million. And they're like, we'll pay it.

We'll pay it. Just give us our stuff back. Right. But at that point, you have a very, very highly technical skilled cybersecurity team or instant responders, forensics, and they just show up and like, here's how to fix it. Right. Now, you're going to pay for the bigger, the bigger side of the talent, but it's up to you, man, like if you're at the casino,

you're going to want to pay the ransom or not, right? I still, I see, uh, did you ever see the movie? Oh, is it Ocean 45? Well, no, no, it was, it was, uh, it was called, um, the score. Yeah. God, ding. Robert De Niro and Robert DeMere, De Niro, he's trying to, he's got to, he's got a hacker who hacks into the government website to download the, um, schematics for their, uh, for one of their, their government buildings that he wants to and wants to, uh, rob. And so his hacker is caught while he's hacking by the security company for whatever security company is monitoring this, uh, government website. And so these two have this complete

Argument and they're yelling at each other through the computer Like they're he's saying this and he's saying this and this guy wants this much money He wants this much money he's fuck you and they're going back and forth It's just it's so ridiculous but it sounds like it's reasonable oh very very much You were gonna have some fucking hot tempered Urkels right I was that's exactly what it is god damn it fuck you I'm like hey all right That's exactly what it is.

And then eventually they end up meeting. They physically meet in a park to get the money. Oh, yeah. There has to be a drop-off point, right? Like, how are you going to get the money, right, guys? E-wallets and all this good stuff. It's going to only take you so far. But like cash money, that's what really brings it in.

Right. And that never goes well, especially in the cyber community. Like, if you're going to bring cash to Ukraine. Yeah, yeah. That's not one, you're going to get blown up. Number two, like it's just like. I was going to say that the cops will take it. Like, that's the people who just always say, why didn't you go to Mexico?

I'm like, because the Mexican, the police will take the money from me. Like, what are you talking about? If you're a gringo living in Mexico and you've clearly got money, I'm not even, you know what to be worried about the gangs or the cartel. I mean, the cops might just come in and take your fucking money. They'll do that. They'll chop your head off and chop your hands off. Right.

And then it'll be like, it's just a body at that point. It doesn't matter. Seeing that happen. What other types of issues do you? Yeah, so this one, right? The one thing I ran into this year, it's quite fascinating. So you'll see it's quite a bit. So the sugar baby, sugar daddy stuff is alive and well, I guess, you know?

Like, I don't know what the hell. I mean, well, this is older guys taking care of a younger girl. Sure. Okay. So there are specific websites that did not know this. So I get a phone call from a husband and wife, but not at the same time, just kind of like really weird. And this guy's like, I need this to go away. and I'm like,

I bet you do. And I'm like, okay, what is this and talk me about it? And he's like, I live in Jackson, Tennessee, and I'm like, all right, well, meet me over coffee. Let's talk. And I was like, look, man, I'm not going to judge you. I just need to know these things, okay? So sit down. I'm at downtown Nashville at the Thompson Hotel.

And he comes in, this just dude's frazzled. I'm like, what's going on, dude? And he goes, all right. So I was trying to go get some. I'm like, some what? And he goes, some ass. I'm like, okay, okay. so did you get, you know, caught up in a John Doe thing, like a prostitution thing,

and Jane Rose, what? He's like, no. I was looking at this Sugar Daddy website. I was like, oh, well, there's those? No shit. Okay, keep going. I'm going. And he goes, I'm developing this relationship with this girl.

And I'm like, all right, did you ever call her or anything? He's like, no, I'm just text message. I'm like, well, that would have been red flag number one. Number two is like, what happened? He goes, well, I was texting her. And then all of a sudden they asked me for my phone number. I'm like, well, that's a mistake number one. and said, I gave you, you know, he gave him the phone number and name.

And I'm like, well, that's your problem because information is very easy to find. Right. So over a month or two, this guy is supposedly talking to a female. And it really was a guy in India, right? Kind of sucks. Yeah. And I was looking at some picture, I'm like, man, that's a good looking. Indian, yeah.

Good for you, pal. And so we're going back and forth. And he goes, now the phone came in, the phone call came in. And I'm like, okay, let me guess they want money. They're like, yeah, they want $5,000 or they're going to tell my wife. They're going to tell all the people that are in my household, this with my kids and stuff like that. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. I was like, does your wife know about this?

And he's like, no. And I'm like, well, it's funny because I just have an email from her. And it's the same situation, same name. So, like, you might be on the same page, but you might want to figure this out. What is the, what is the wife saying in the email? So the wife is like, is this true, number one? And number two, it's like, can you help my husband? figure this out. And I was like, okay. So it's like, that's interesting. Yeah. So I go, okay,

so you're, you're not pissed at him. Like, again, I'm not judging. Yeah. You're not mad at him. She's like, we'll figure that out later. It's just, I need this to be finished. And I'm like, you want it to go away. You want it to be finished. Okay, let's take a look. So I said, this guy got some money. Like, if you ever seen the, you ever seen the TikTok where the, the woman walks in, she's walking with a bunch of shopping bags. And she walks. And she walks. And she walks into the bedroom and her, her multi-millionaire, it says when the woman dating a multi-millionaire walks in on him having sex with another woman, she walks in and goes, oh gosh, I'm sorry. And then turned around and walks right back out.

No. She don't want to know. I got a good thing going here. Yeah, I think that might have been the case. Yeah, because the guy was like, whoever the threat actor was, was able to pull their net worth. And I was like, oh, okay. So they know what you got. So it was very interesting because the threat actor was like, I want $5,000 via Venmo.

I'm like, well, that's a problem with Venmo is going to give you cap rates. You know, you're just not going to be able to move that amount of money. You're going to get hit with an, with an OFAC fine or something like that, right? Cool. And so he goes, I paid him. It's like, okay, how much did you pay him? He's like, give him a thousand. I'm going to send him another thousand tonight.

And I'm like, okay, well, you're sending the precedence. And they're going to do it anyways. And he goes, no, they won't. No, they won't. Okay, cool. leave, get on the phone with his wife. And I'm like, hey, I just want to be honest with you. I just met with your husband.

She's like, well, I'm pissed about that. But, okay, let's figure this out. How much do we have to pay to get this to go away? And I'm like, okay. Well, you're the person that they're going to fucking tell. If you already know, why don't they just say, go fuck yourself? I already know. Well, there's that one.

But also, they're like, well, then they're going to tell their kids, the neighbors. Exactly. And I was like, okay. So this is getting kind of weird. So long story short, they pay. and sure shit, the threat actor still did it. And they're like, oh, they didn't give a shit. Again, unscrupulous people, right?

Yeah. They're like, all right, fuck it, whatever. And they just went with it because they didn't pay on time as what they, but here's the thing with the threat actors. They don't understand U.S. banking federal regulations. Right. You can't move $5,000 within 24 hours, right? It has to be below 2,000 something, right?

Okay. Where you start sending some red flags, right? But they were using a compromise Venmo account. And I'm like, well, Venmo's going to pick that up. Like, you guys got to figure something. out here. You got to get better at this. So it was just like really funny to see that because I still get a lot of messages like this till this day on my personal email. I'm like, because I have a form. This is, hey, submit a question, right? And dude, I get, I get stuff like

this all the time. Sexstortion. LinkedIn extortion is another big one. LinkedIn sex distortion is huge, huge. I was working with this lady, a Phoenix base mortgage company. felt kind of bad for this one, you know, but not really. So she got extorted for about 500 grand. And so, yeah, it gets better. So this lady, she was like an older lady, like pretty decent looking lady. You can tell definitely in her use. She was rock star for sure.

So this guy reached out of nowhere. And LinkedIn was like, hey, great content. And that's all started. Really appreciate your executive leadership. I'm like, okay, so you're stroking the ego here, you're paid and cool. And then it progressed into like a romance, LinkedIn type deal, right? Then it progressed into like, send me some naked photos. That was a leap.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it was over like five, six months. And then it progressed into like, hey, I'm in Romanian jail. Can you send me some like 500 bucks so I can bribe the guard? And I was like, that right there is just kind of odd. Yeah. Like you don't question that. So anyways, through the conversation, they moved to text messages.

Bad idea. Cell phone, right? Then they were to find out who she was, who her husband was. Remember, she joined this. She was a CFO of a mortgage company, and he was the CEO of the mortgage company. I mean, dude, you had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding, right? So at some point, she started paying, and then the threat thing started coming out. They're like, okay, now we know who you are.

We want you to pay this money, or we're going to tell your husband. She calls me up and she's like, hey, can you meet me a Phoenix in my office? I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem. She goes, they have all of my directory, all my emails, all my clients, all my everything, and they're going to send my naked pictures to them if I don't pay. So my question was, how much did you already pay? She's like 250. I'm like, oh, Jesus.

I was like, so you took $250,000 of your own money or corporate money? She's like, corporate. I'm like, this is going to be a problem. I was like the problem is I can't get your money back so what do you want me to do for you here? I want you to make a stop. So I reached out the threat actor. I'm like, hey, look, this is who I am, this is what I do. And he tells me to fuck off.

And he's like, I'm getting my money. And then he kind of was like a facetious dude and he's like, I'm still going to do this no matter if I get paid or not. And I'm like, why pay? Why pay? She felt compelled to pay. She's like, I'm going to pay. I'm going to pay. Because the pain, fear, and pleasure, right?

He had administrative enough pain and enough fear and the pleasure was the money to go away. right? And I'm like, don't pay. I'm going to show you the messages that I got from this guy, don't pay, ma'am. And she's like, I'm paying. So she paid. Four months later, everything stops, just stops. Four months later, all these emails just show up. And it's of her naked. And to all our clients, I'm like, Jesus, man. And I felt so bad for that. But the same aspect, I didn't, because, you know, you kind of did this to your husband. And I kind of did this to your company. Like, what would you do that? Right.

And I told you not to pay. You could have got the, you would have got the same result, but it would probably quicker, but it would, but it would have been to, $250,000 at least would have still been in your bank account. Yeah.

Or the corporate account. Yeah. Which may end up being fraud. So yeah. Yeah, that's another thing. Like that, that whole,

we want to engage in the FBI and, you know, me and with the guys over there in the office, they were like, all right, so just talk to us what happened. And I'm like, here's what ensued,

blah, TPs, right? All the stuff that you need. And they're like, man, we can't do anything for you. Like, next time, be careful. Yeah. And that's kind of when I realize, like, if there's a certain dollar amount, the FBI's after, they'll let you know. Right.

If it's a million dollars, they're not going to bother with you. So I have a, I have a bottom of the barrel, a street version of that. Okay. When I was married to another woman, I'm going to say her name. I mean, anyway, but Puerto Rican chick, which, you know, I always like to say is that, you know, kind of prepared me for prison. So I was married and we had about over 50 rental units, right? And I remember one day this she had met this this girl.

And I remember so I was at the office and she comes in, I pulled the chick's credit. She was, hey, pull this girl's credit. She was, I just met her, whatever. And she felt it in an application. She said she's like a stripper or something. But she wants to move into, forget what I was. I want to say it was leisure wood. She wants to move in the leisure wood that was the apartment complex we owned.

And so I'm like, okay, so I pull it up. up and, you know, eviction, eviction. And I'm like, yeah, she's horrible. And he can't rent to her. And she's like, okay, she comes back and she called me. She says, listen, I'm going to rent to that chick. I was like, why? And she said, well, because she's going to give, she says, well, I told her I wouldn't rent to her. She said her boyfriend would sign. And he's a lawyer. So I talked to him. She said, I talked to him. Yeah. And he said, okay, well, she still gets evicted. She has a ton of evictions, she's going to be living there. So she said he has to put down double the secure deposit.

He said, no problem. Put down double the security deposit. She moved in. He paid for like two months. We don't really hear anything about it. And then one day, there's no check. And he was mailing the check. So, and keep in mind, she's got all of his information.

So, you know, she goes to the front door and puts the three-day notice on. and then maybe nothing happens. Then it becomes like the 10-day notice or something. She has to go, you have to file that with like the downtown. So she files it and puts the notice on. And then she starts the, she calls him, calls his phone number and says, listen, I don't know if you got this or not, but here's, I put this on the front door, which is what I'm required, but I'm going to go ahead.

As courtesy to you, I'm going to tell you too. You know what? she hadn't done the 10 day yet. She didn't do the 10 day yet because that's how she got him. Because he said, okay, he said, yeah, I'm not going to, I'm not going to pay anymore. He said, I was dating that, that girl. I'm not dating her anymore. And by this point, my wife had spoken with the stripper.

Sure. And she had told, she was like, look, you know, you have to pay. She's like, he was paying it. It's up to him to pay. And she said, okay, well, he's not paying. and he's not returning my calls and I whatever she's like well you gotta call him

and this and that and so basically during the course of that conversation she realizes that this the girlfriend the stripper is this guy's kind of mistress and he's married with kids and so

she then calls him and says listen you have to pay and he's not paying I'm not seeing her anymore blah blah and she says okay well I'm gonna serve the 10 day notice

and evict you and put it on your credit he goes listen I'm a lawyer he said I tell you right now He said, you put anything on my credit. He said, I'll sue the shit out of you. He said, I'll make you fucking miserable.

He goes, so here's what you're going to do. You got double the security deposit. He goes, you go ahead and you, he goes, you go ahead and you evict her. He said, keep the double the security, but it's like $2,000. Sure. You know, keep the couple of grand. He said, call it a day. And she went, and you didn't know this, you didn't know my ex-wife, bro.

Yeah, Latinos are spicy. Oh, she was. She was like, she loved the challenge. You know what I'm saying? Like he thought he was deterring her. He didn't, right then she thought, oh, that's it. You think this, you think this chick's making your life miserable. Let me help you out.

Yeah, let me show you what miserable is. So she goes, oh, okay. And he basically hangs up on her. So she goes in, finds out, you know, gets his name, finds out. And she already has like his office address. So she goes online, goes to Hillsborough County, finds out where his house is his house is. Perfect. Looks it up.

Says, oh, yeah, definitely this house here. it's a eight back then it was like probably one and a half million now and in florida that's like a five million dollar house and you know in in new york or california right so but back then i think it was whatever six seven hundred thousand whatever so but it's clearly like this is your his house so she looks it up looks at gets the phone number everything calls him up eventually gets him on the phone again and says okay listen he's like oh god i already told you and she said no i just want to let you know when do you think you'll be home and he goes what do you mean she said you're home, your address.

At 13, 16, blah, blah, blah, such and such. She said, because I'm assuming you're going to be at work tomorrow. So did you want me to – she says, I just want to know when you're going to be home. And he goes, well, what are you talking about? And she says, well, I'm going to have a sheriff serve you. She says, but I just want to make sure that you're at work when I serve your wife at your house for the eviction. She said, so are you going to be at work tomorrow in what time so I can make sure that

I can serve her? and he goes, what he's doing? You can't serve my. He threatens her a little bit. You do that and I'll do this. She's like, I don't give a fuck. She's like, you're fucking crazy. She's like, I'm gonna, this.

He breaks down immediately. You don't understand. This woman's ruining my life. The stripper, she did this. She came by my office twice. My partner's this. My partner's this. She's this, she that.

Like, she's gone, had gone by the office a bunch of times. Like she's, she's threatening to figure out, try and find out where he works and go to see the wife and this and that. Now he's got, now he's got somebody competent, threatening. So, and legally she can do that. I can serve, I can go serve you at this house. This is, I can serve you wherever I think you are. So he, what can we do? Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'll pay the rent. She says, no, no, I want her out. No, no, that wasn't it. She said, he said, what can I do? And she goes, pay the rent. And he's like, no, you don't understand. I got to get rid of this girl. She said, okay, he was, what can we do? She's like, well,

as of right now, and I forget what the rent was. It's like $700 a month. And she was like, as of right now, you paid two months. You still owe $10 months. Like, you owe me $7,000. Just pay that. And he was like, no, no, no, we got to work with me. I can't send you $7,000.

Like, my wife will figure out. Like, I can't. And she goes, okay, here's what we can do. She said, I'll continue the eviction. And then when I get her out, you will pay the, I'm going to renovate the property. Oh. So I'm going to clean. I said, I'll clean it up.

And I'm going to rent it back out. And as soon as we rent it out, I'll stop you paying. But you'll pay me up to that point. And he said, okay, okay, okay. So she continues the eviction. And just as she is having her, like they're literally, she's going to be out within a few days. Like the sheriff comes and puts it on there and it's like you have like three days to get out of two days. I forget what it was.

I'm standing at my office. And I had a bunch of mortgage brokers that worked for me. And a lot of them had real estate. state, right? And so there was a guy named Johnny Moon. One day I look up and I see the stripper. I'd seen her once. I'd seen her like one time. And I look up and I'm like, and she's in the receptionist room. Oh, shit. And I see, look up and I see the receptionist like, hey, Johnny. And he's like, so he gets up and walks over there and I'm like, and so Johnny walks into the conference room with her comes back over. I know he's going to pull her credit, right? Like he shouldn't, but he's going to.

Not on my dime. I'm gonna get charged that like back then it was only $15. It was like $15. Now it's more. But it was like $15 or 12. Actually, I think we had it. I think it was 12. Anyway, so he walks back,

go, whoa, what are you doing, bro? And he goes, I'm gonna pull her credit real quick. He said, I'm renting her. I go, I already know who that is. Is what do you mean? I said, you know the fucking stripper? And he goes, no. I go, that's the stripper.

And he goes, bro, she's, she's gonna rent my, I was just gonna pull her credit. And I go, I'll tell you what it looks like. I'll, fuck, I got one of the firm. months ago. And I said, it's horrible. It's fucking horrible. And he goes, I said, yeah, you got to just tell her no. And he goes, fuck, bro. He goes, she's got fucking, like, she's got cash. I go, okay, well, tell her she got to have the boyfriend fucking sign. And he goes, fuck. And he gets up, he walks in there, talks to her for a little bit, comes back. And he's like, um, he goes,

she, she's going to put down like, like double the security or three times a divorce. I go, that's a mistake. He was no, first month. What are you doing? She's getting, she's being thrown out. So he ends up saying he calls the lawyer. And the lawyer's like, I will give you three times. Like, like I will give you whatever, you know, whatever it was. It was 700 bucks times three.

I forget what it was. That was 21, 2,000, 2100 bucks. I'll give you that plus the first month as long as you can get her on a lease that doesn't include me. Oh, perfect. And of course, he's looking at it as 700 because he's, he's charging double the... Yep.

So he's like 20... At this point, it's $2,800 in his hand. Perfect. And he's... But it's not perfect. You're still gonna have to have to a victor. Yeah, huge liability. But the lawyer knows I'm not on the lease this time.

Got to pay for your freedom. And I told him, don't do it, bro. Don't do it. Don't do it. Same thing. Don't do it. Don't do it. She will trash your place. She will...

And he's like, I don't know. She seems okay. I'm like, no. Oh, I didn't tell you this. During the course of this, what we figured out was that she was hooked on like oxies. Oh, perfect. Anyway, she lets him, he lets her sign. Aye, aye, aye.

She goes in, gets into the apartment. The first time the month's rent is due, she doesn't pay it. Of course. So he did get $2,800. By the time he gets her out of there, which takes a month and a half, even though, you know, you could have gotten her out within, like, say, three weeks if you start immediately, she kept giving him one. You know, she gave him like, and he did all the stupid things you're not. He took like $100 or $200. And she'd like, here's $200 towards the $700.

I'll have the rest next week. And of course she doesn't. But it gave her another week or two. And it goes up. She goes and she, I know this because my ex-wife was still dealing with him because we were now renovating that property. When I were just cleaning it out. She didn't do any damage to our property. She's taught my ex-wife is still talking to the lawyer and she's showing up at his place at his work.

he's having to give her cash. Like here's $200. Get out of here. And she'd take off and go give Johnny $200. He's like, I don't know what I'm going to do. And my ex-wife, no sympathy for this guy. Cheating, lying, piece of garbage, mom. You fucking man.

I'm like, what am I getting shit for? I mean, he's a horrible person. I agree. I'm with you. Why do you generalize me? Why in this group? I would never. I'm terrified of you.

So, but anyway, by the time Johnny Moon got her out, It was whatever, a month and a half later. He did get her out. She had, first of all, it was insane how much she had trashed that place. And she'd broken two or three windows. She had just, she really just destroyed. I mean, we're talking about ripping cabinet doors off. Like really malicious stuff that has honestly never happened to one of our rental units.

We'd had like one bad experience with a tenant. And even then, it wasn't that big of a deal. but she was just for for 115 pound chick with fake tits a lot of damage yeah uh and anyway she he ends up does end up kicking her out uh our place got fixed i don't know whatever happened to that poor fucking lawyer but i i feel like it's the same kind of thing where it's like don't do it it was a much more personal yeah but this guy never and i don't know what are you thinking like what are you thinking you're married with two kids you're a lawyer and you're put some chicken.

What do you think you're going to have this little side piece and she's going to keep stripping and be fateful and it's going to be just your side? That's whatever they have fabricated in their mind. Like they have this fantasy of like they want to live up. I'm like they would like what are you thinking? Yeah. The CFO person like what? Play at the end result to me here.

Like are you going to go to Romania and be with this guy? You don't think your husband's going to notice? Right. Like you don't think 250 of the guy is going to go unnoticed. So like I don't understand. And I think the the insecurity of the ego, that's where people get. get played on. They're just like, oh, it'll be okay, no problem. And they just milk that. It also seemed like you had said, this was an older woman. Older woman, yeah. To me,

cheating is something that a younger guy does. You know what I'm saying? You're in your 20s. You think you're the shit. You think you could pull it off. You think that we're all just having fun. And that when you get older, well, I mean, I guess older guys do it too. But to me, it's like, I, older guys will pay for the opportunity, if that makes sense. Right. Right. So they want to control someone with their money. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, because I see that, especially with a lot of older men, especially in the South. Like, they'll go to like Scottsdale or whatever.

And they'll be like, oh, you know, if I just pay for the opportunity, I'm just like, okay, so you want to be able to control the outcome. Right. That's what you want, you know. So that's kind of what I think they're trying to do as they get older. As they're younger, they're more risky. They're like, hey, they're willing to do things. And so I think the risk reverses versus reward and also risk tolerance. So like, how much are you willing to risk it?

But also the other thing I've learned is like, how much money is your, how much does your money take you? Right. Right. So a lot of these guys that I know, like, have a lot of money. And they're just like, just make it go away. Make a go away. So everything comes with the price, man. Like to me as an older guy, like the, I so much want just peace in my life.

You know what I mean? Like I don't, you have no idea. Well, you do. I guess. Well, you're not, you're not my age. I'm 50, I'm 56. I'm 40. You're in your, yeah, I was going to say, you're in your 40.

Dude, I enjoy my life right now. And here's why. Like, I have a really good wife who just, there's, it's not, we don't fight. It's just like, hey, it's peaceful. And I see my guy's my age and they're like, oh, dude, I'm like, do you want that 1 a.m. Phone call? Do you really want that one? And then they show up with a bag of Taco Bell at 4 a.m.

And you wonder why they're trash. I'm like, why would you do that to yourself? Like, your sleep is more valuable, bro. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all of the above. That's where Ghost Bed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world,

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Ain't nothing going to happen. Like just take care of yourself, just make it happen, go away. Because you imagine every time your phone rings or you get a text, you're with your wife, you get that ding, that text. It's, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I can't. I can't.

Listen, I get that already with Jess, where I get a ding, and she's like, who's that? And I'm like, I'm like, my girlfriend.

And she's like, quit fucking around. Quiff, I'm telling you, that's her. You want to see? No, I said,

I can, or I'll grab it. I'll be like, I'll look at it. Like, I go, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.

And she gets fucking great. You think you're playing. You think you're playing. You think you're playing. And I laugh and laugh. But that's the great thing is you had the, joy of laughing and joking about it because you know I'm good but if you're not good it ain't funny I remember one time my wife asked me she's like have you ever thought about like sweet you sleep

next to me you know my bowel functions in the morning yeah ain't nothing pretty about that number two like my ass is in bed by what do you think I'm gonna go out and rage that's what I say what do you think I'm doing yeah do you because I'm I always joke around I'm like I'm like do you understand that like Jess thinks that when I walk she thinks that women think I think I'm Brad Pitt, that when I walk out the front door, there are like the TikTok where the guys, they're throwing underwear and screaming. And I'm like, ladies, lady. I'm like, who do you think I am?

Nobody's interested in this. I just want to go to the gas station. Just give me a minute. And you're tracking my phone. You know exactly where I am. Although, I never leave the house. What are you thinking? She's like, yeah.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. All right. So what's for dinner? Let's start there. Yeah. What?

Do you want to go to dinner or shit? That's one, well, like, you know, working with these cases, I can think of them, like, so, well, like, what drove you to this point to, like, go seek this crazy shit? And it's usually older men are just like, hey, man, I just want that thrill of fantasy. I'm like, dude, like, at your age, you don't want to do that, pal. You don't want that. You don't want any of that. That's a potential heart attack.

That woman's going to give you a heart attack. Easy, killer, easy. Then there's another one for email extortion, sex extortion, where a buddy mind, got hit and they had pictures of him, like a video of him jerking off. What is wrong with people? Well, no, so check us out. This is weird. We'll call him D because he would be fucking pissed if I told him. Okay.

Because you know what this is recording. Oh, absolutely. So D hits me up and he's like... Is it David? No, I'm joking. David. Yeah, so he hits me up and he's like, hey, I was like, what's going on, man? And he's very monotone. He's like, I need your help.

And I'm like... And so, and I was... And so me and him, we talk all the time. Like when a friend calls you and is like, I need your help. I'm like, what the fuck did you do, dude? And he's like, I didn't want to send you an email. I just need to know if it's real. I'm like, all right. So first the email is like X, X, E, Z, Z, F.

And I'm just like, well, this is a Romanian, Chechen one. Okay, what do you? What site were you on, dude? And he's like, well, they email me and said, um, they have access to my computer. And I'm like, okay. And that they have a, they have a recording of me jerking off. And they're going to send it to everybody,

including my wife and mother. Do they have one? Why would they have one? So my question was like, I was like, okay, so like there's barn size and there's deliberate barn size people go to like, you know, some wild shit.

I was like, Dee, I need your laptop. And I said, all right, I'm going to ask you this and you can say no, but is there anything that'll be construed as contraband? Because if that's the case, then that's a whole other conversation. He's like, no. And he goes, I was like, all right, so you're just into some weird shit.

He goes, cool. These are all adults. These are all adults. That's a question I got to ask. And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, all right, cool. I just want to make sure because that's a whole, I can't help you out there. No, I can't.

Not only that. I can't even be in a position where it's like. Yeah. So because I worked those cases before. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, I don't want no part of that, bro. No. So I look at his laptop and I'm like, well, there's this little icons called Team Viewer, right?

Team Viewer is like you can go to anybody's workstation. You just got it into the code. Yeah. You can control there. You get, you get remote access. or control of their computer. Exactly. So there's team viewer and I'm like, do you use team viewer?

He's like, oh, yeah, when I was doing this in chat and I'm like, with who? And he's like, oh, I was trying to chat with this girl. And I like, okay, Dee. Did they ask you for a code? How do you not? Do you maintain complete professionalism and you don't? When it's game on, it's game on. Yeah.

I'm just like, cool. I'm not going to judge you. I understand. I have a hard time. I feel like, what are you doing? Oh, afterwards. And now that we go to dinners, I'm just like, remember that time you did this? So I was like, walk me through.

So they gave you a code and then something flashed and then a naked person showed up. He's like, yeah. I was like, okay. So in Ukraine and Chechnya and Romania, they'll have these like studios, right? Little walking studios and the sex worker will be live. But in the back end on the side, there's some dude on the computer. like kind of doing all the stuff for her and he's getting his back and hooks

to your computer, okay? So now that you have a session token this code that says, hey, can I go to your computer? Right. So now the threat actor is in the computer. Now while he's doing his thing, jerking off watching this hot chick, he's getting all his information taken.

Like emails, you know, different points of contact and stuff like that. So this email that came from a threat actor is like, if you don't pay me, It was a small amount. It was like, I don't know, like $2,000. And this guy, like, he does pretty well for himself. Is that just typically just the first request?

That's the first request, because they're going to keep hitting you, right? Yeah. And when you look at this dude, like, you don't think he has a lot of money, but he does. Right. And so he's like, ah, just pay him. I'm just like, don't do that. And I'm like, this is why you're here because this is email number two, right? And he goes, well, how do you know that?

I'm like, because, dude, like, come on, I do this for a living. So he goes, all right. So he pays up. Then he goes back again, and then they're like, pay up more. Now it's a $5,000 request. And he's like, well, fuck him, whatever. And I said, Dee, these guys are unscrued. They will do this.

And he's like, fucking let him. And I go, okay. Good for you, buddy. Let's kick back and watch this fucking, somehow burned out. Oh, dude, it was beautiful. Because I love him so much. Like, I love him as a good friend. But when the opportunity to give him shit comes to rise, oh, yeah, it's great.

So I'm like, go ahead, Dee. Let's hear you, buddy. So he's like, fuck him, whatever. I'm not doing this. So we go about our business. A week later, I get an email. Sure shit, it's D right there jerking off. And I'm like, and I say, hey, man.

Like, I love you, bro, but I don't love you like that. Yeah. And so, unfortunately, like, you'll see that quite a bit where... How many people did they send it to? Oh, it was like a couple thousand. What did the wife say? Oh, the wife, she was pissed. I can imagine.

She was like, what the, fuck, Baba. And then she called me. I'm like, what do you want me to do? I told him to do these things. And she's like, you need to fix your friend. I'm like, that's your husband. Like, I can't do anything.

I have less control than you do. So a lot of the times you'll see like that was kind of like a heart extortion, sex extortion, right? The other things that we would kind of see is there was one that went around for a while. So using Google Analytics, it's free. Okay. A threat actor went to a specific porn side. It was like, hey, this is interesting part, right?

And basically, this happened to a dear friend of mine. He was like, hey, I got this letter in the mail. I'm like, you got a letter in the mail. And he's like, yeah, yeah, it was addressed to me. And he said, basically his letter said, interesting choice of point. We have your IP address. We have your address.

and it's very questionable of the ages of these people. And I was like, oh. And they cite the point, they cited, whatever. The problem is they just massed, this threat actor massed it to a section of houses, right? Right. And so now you have like the hysteria. And so.

And it's not like one neighbor is going to go to the next number. Did you get a letter? Excuse me. Did you get this mail reader by here? This is crazy. Readers digest. And so he goes, dude, and he does a knee jerk reaction.

He changes his phone number. He changes the email address. I'm like, what do? Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. I'm like, hey, man, look, I get you watch. That's fine. I don't care, but like, if this causes this type of visceral reaction, like, what do you not telling me?

And he's like, my wife cannot find out. And I'm like, okay. About watching some. Dude, so I guess that's a big issue for some people. I'm like, whatever, right? But dude, he's like, if my wife finds out she's going to cut up my balls, I'm like, okay, cool. And he goes, so I started doing like, you know, some digital forensics on the, on the, what's it called? Like, did OCR object character recognition.

Like, I took the letter and I said, okay, let me see if I can find commonalities of this thing. And come to find out, this letter had been different change in name, different change to address. And it went across the United States to various men. And I was like, oh, this is a sprain attack. first of all, to have the mail done like that. Like, that's expensive. Oh, yeah. These guys have invested a considerable amount.

It's like 98 cents a letter. What's the return on this? It's got to be nice. That's a good question. So I was like, this is not real, right? So I call my boys at OPDS and the sheriff's office. I'm like, hey, you've seen this? Like, oh, yeah, yeah, we see that quite a bit.

I was like, how much money was man? Like, right about north of a million dollars was extorted from men. I was like, holy shit. And so that kind of prelude to the next thing that came, the next evolution. What they were doing, these threat actors, is on WhatsApp specifically because of WhatsApp or WhatsApp, it's kind of an unregulated app, if you go. They were taking pictures of questionable age people and putting their face on naked people. And then they'll send them to you, right?

I'm like, well, you wanted this and you have no clue this person is. And I'm like, now pay me my money or whatever. and they're trying to leverage that as a point of extortion, and they're going to report it to the FBI or the Secret Service or whatever. But the problem with that premise is that they're trying to get you on CP charges, right, child porn or whatever. The problem with that is that there has to be like this whole other dynamic to go with it, right? There has to be a process. Yeah, you can't just send somebody a picture and say, hey, you asked for this and here's the hook off.

Yeah, exactly. So doing some digital forensics on the picture it's. We're able to find out where it came from who published it. What was their name? What specific hard driver they use and which computer they used? Then we sent it to their government and then they shut them down real fucking quick. It was pretty fascinating. But that right there was another one coming about.

And that was like a lot of money. That was up upward north around $9 million of money being transferred. Like, hey, don't do this. I'm like, wow. It reminds you've heard the Angola scam? No, what was that one? So it's funny because I had, you've heard this. Maybe I had.

It's like, you don't want for me. Yeah, maybe I recognize that once you start telling it, just the name. It's, so it's funny because I had actually watched a documentary about the Angola scam. And then when I was locked up in prison, John Grisham wrote a book called The Brethren, about three judges that were locked up in a camp who start running an identical scam. So the original scam, because obviously John Grisham book is fiction, but this is nonfiction, which would be the Angola scam was there were several people that were locked up in Angola State Prison. And obviously, this is before the internet. They were putting ads in, it was called out and about.

I want to say it was out and about. I think it was out. It was basically a gay magazine. So let's say out and about, out and about gay magazine. And they put an ad in saying that they were a young 20 or 21-year-old gay male, yeah, gay male that was locked up in a 90-day drug rehab looking for a pen pal. An older, an older, mature man. So, older gay men were writing letters.

And it was going to a P-O-box, which they thought was like the... Well, they thought the P.O. box was for the P.O. box for the drug rehab. Gotcha. But in reality, it was a P.O. box that had been opened up by, I believe, well, I don't know, by another co-defendant, let's say. So somebody on the street is getting the letters and then moving those letters to the inmates to read. Matter of fact, I'm almost positive it was a lawyer. Because I remember the lawyer was able to bring the letters in for them. because of a because there was you know obviously it was the lawyer so his stuff wasn't

scrutinized so he was able to bring in these drug rehab you know whatever let's say you know Tampa Bay drug rehab to and then the guys the fictitious person's name they're able he's able to give them the the letters these guys would read the letters and then they would craft response letters and they would include a photograph of a young man with like his shirt off like good looking blonde hair blue eye guy you know whatever um So that was, you know, the enticement, right? So now they mail it back to these older men. And within three or four, within three or four letters, these guys are talking about, you know, this 60-year-old guy, you know, oh, I got married when I was young.

And that was, you know, it's, you know, I really never loved her. I have two kids. I now have a grandchild. And they were just really butcher their wives and their lives and their kids. And so they would get them writing. And once they had said enough derogatory things and they realized that these guys had money, like if there was some guy who's like, hey, I'm living in a single wide, I'm a gay man living in a single wide trailer, I'm living off of a pendulum. He doesn't get another one.

But there's some guy who says, hey, I own two retail diamond stores. You know, I like to vacation in Europe, you know, at least a month out of the year or whatever. they're like, okay, that's our guy. And so what happens is they then start writing the letters. Hey, I know who you are. So the person on the street typically would figure out who these, make sure they were real names. Some of these guys are skittish.

Back then, you were pretty open, right? Like, you're not expecting, this is some kid. They really believe this is some guy, some 22-year-old or 21-year-old kid who's in a drug rehab. And he's going to be there for 90 days. So I can write him a little. I didn't even have to see this kid. He's trapped there for 90 days.

So eventually after a few letters, they figure out who the guy is. He's got money and he's got something to lose. Then they hit him with the letter, hey, send me this much money. Here's who you are. Here's what I know. I have copies of all your letters. I'm going to not only am I going to mail these to your house, but I'm going to mail these to all of your neighbor's houses on this street.

Like really blasts. I'm going to mail them to your stores, to your office. to your like just really these people realize right away wow I really fucked up so here was the amazing thing about it was that within about a year or so they actually made like almost a million dollars and this was back in like the 1980s like this is I want to say this scam was done in the early 80s maybe late 70s early 80s yeah and they made like almost a million dollars it was fucking amazing and what was really amazing was once so here's here's how they get caught by the way one of the guys gets released.

He gets released. He ends up after a few months, just a few months, he ends up getting arrested for a murder, like a conspiracy to murder. He actually had, there was some murder that he's involved in. Oh, wow. And he tells the police, yeah, I know that I was involved in this murder, but guess what? Surprise. I know these guys in jail.

I was doing it with them. You know, it's kind of like they're robbing banks. How do you know? I'm driving the getaway car. So he sets them out the whole thing, and we're working through a lawyer, the whole thing. So he ends up getting them all bust, and that's how it all kind of falls apart. Super interesting scam, but very much the same type of scam, only an electronic version of the same type of scam. Faster.

And if you read the book, The Brethren by John Grisham, which I recommend everybody read, because it's one of the few books I've ever read. where there is not one person in the book that you could say is like the hero. Not one person in the book has one redeeming quality. There's nobody in the book that you're like, I kind of like Jimmy. Nobody. You don't like any of the judges. You don't like the lawyer. You don't like like, like what ends up happening is in the book real quick is that one of the guys that they end up in

snaring in their scam, ends up being a senator that is running for president. And the CIA is backing him. So they back him to become president. And in the course of this whole thing, as they're also watching him, they're like, there's no skeletons in his closet. No, his wife died a couple years ago. He's a widower. He lives alone.

Okay. But as they're watching him, they stumble upon the fact that he's been roped into this whole thing. And they end up sending somebody like, into. the prison. It's a whole thing. It's great, but nobody is nice. You don't like any of these fuckers. You're waiting. You're over there all like you don't, no redeeming qualities across the word. And yet it's a book that I've read three times. Because it was, it was so well put together and so amazing and just, and maybe it's just because I'm a criminal. But everybody that I

know that's ever read it has been like, fucking amazing, great book, right? Because I'm reading it from the perspective of a writer. I'm like, did you notice that there's really no hero? There's no one person that you're following, and they're like, well, you're kind of following the judges. I'm like, yeah, but the judges, is there anything that you like about them?

They're like, oh, no, they're horrible. And you're like, is there anybody you like? What about the president? No, he was a scumbag. What about the guy running for president? Scumbag. It's kind of a weasel. What about the CIA director?

Oh, he was the worst, bro. Like, everybody's the scumbag. But it's the same thing. It was based on the end goal with it. And they talk about the Angola scam in the book. But it's very much just like we had talked, you know, prior to this is that all of these scams are, like there's no new scams. There's different. It's like, it's like you're adding in some tech.

I think the speed, the speeds and do the carry out the scam is a different factor here. Like, you're right. There's no, there's blackmail, right? There's leverage. Right. There's extortion, right? But like when you really, you said it the best, there is nothing new.

It's just like how fast can we get in and out, right? Even the Nigerian print scam. Listen to the evolution of this. This is funny. Remember Zach? So when the Nigerian print scam first started, it was, and can you look that up? What do they call it?

They call it like a 3, 308 scam or 419 something. There's a name of it. You can put Nigerian print scam. They have another. It's the Nigerian print scam, but it's also known as... Nigerian 419 scammers. 419. Yeah, so that's the statute in Nigeria.

I had heard that that was the... I've heard two things. One was that that's the area code or that... Sorry, the country code, but it's not. It ends up that I think it... I'm pretty sure it's the name of the statute that they prosecute anybody under for running this scam. I was under fraud.

That could be wrong, too, though. This whole thing is... You know, it's very convoluted. So point is, is that initially the Nigerian print scam was that they initially were getting, it was strictly letters. They were massively mailing letters to people in the United States saying that from a law, it's always from a law firm. They represent the family of a Nigerian prince that has been, that is in line to receive money.

So I'm a Nigerian prince I'm in line or sorry I'm a lawyer that represents a Nigerian prince that's in line to receive a bunch of money his father recently died in a car bombing and sometimes they'll include like the article or of the car bombing whatever just a photocopy of an article

and the king was killed his barrister was killed and you happen to have the same name as the barrister. Well, the barrister had access to the Nigerian king's wealth. I'm the print. I represent the prince. He needs that money. The only person that has access to it is the barrister, which has your exact name. So if you would, we would be willing to have you come and accept the money and keep 10% of it as long as you promise to send it to the prince because it's really his money. But we'll give you 10% for helping us out because

We don't know how else to do this. So it's kind of, it's kind of convoluted, but basically it's just, it's coincidental. You happen to have the same name as the person that has accents. However, he's dead. And we want to do the right thing. And we'll pay you. And then what happens is if you're a sucker enough to believe in it, you write back, write a letter back. Maybe there's a phone call eventually to the, to this person who has a British accent.

He's a lawyer. He promises everything's correct. And then just before the transfer is going to go through and they're going to send you $80 million, they need you to pay the Nigerian tax or fee, transfer fee. And that consists of $2,200. Something. There it is. Right. There's a rub.

Yeah. So you pay the fee, of course, we give it to the bank. The bank then wires the $80 million or however much money it is. and people are so excited about the likelihood of spending this money that they actually wire the whatever that amount, that fee is. Okay. That started with letters, sent to just random people in the United States. People responded. Some of those, so let's say 10% or 5% respond after, you know, after that, let's say 2% believe it.

then let's say or I'm sorry so out of the 5% that respond you know half of that believe it then the other half of that actually when they're asked for the money send the money so it's very little right it's very little but they end up sending yeah and then sometimes they'll go back and hit them again oh my gosh you also have to pay the late fee for the remit whatever boom this or you have to pay our fee of and they start now that one because if you get somebody once you can typically get them again and again and again and because because now they're all in and they want to believe it. So the point is it started with letters.

Then it moved to telephone calls, you know, over the years. Then it moved to emails. It's back to letters. No way. Yeah. My buddy, Zach, comes in here and he says, and he had a buddy that owned a roofing company. The guy who owned the roofing company got a letter and several people

have gotten letters. Other roofers are getting letters. Rufers. Yeah, from a lawyer or a barrister or a lawyer in the UK who represents someone in the whatever. It's never, so that wasn't Nigeria. I don't know, whatever. Some country in Africa or whatever. Somebody had died. They had money that was coming to them. And that person had the name of the roofer. just by and so all we we can send that to you you'll get 10% it's 15 million dollars you're going to make 10% of the 15 million whatever 1.5 million dollars we can do the whole thing and you would you could but it had a letter was a horrible letter but it's supposedly from a law firm but you could call the phone number the guy would answer the phone he had a British accent Indian British accent okay okay yeah and so you're talking to him and he's not super professional but you know you talk to the guy and he's you're talking and so we actually had Zach come and sit down and talk to us

a whole thing and while he's talking I'm like you don't understand this is an idea and Prince scammy is what are you talking about? And I'm like, dude this is the old pony. He's like what is that? And so I, by the way, he's a long time scammer. Yeah. In and out of prison. I'm like, what are you talking? How do you fucking not know this? I go to the whole thing and he's like, oh dude, fuck man, I really thought that

are you? I was like, yeah, he's like yeah, you know, I realized once he asked for the money or I forget how it went down what he was like yeah I thought that was I was wondering because the whole time I was like no he's giving me money he's giving us money because I'm telling the roof or no how is it a scam he's going to give you the money I'm telling him it's not a scam I'm like he's like but then he asked for money and I was like and that's when I realized right how do you fucking not know that so we actually called the guy on the phone we got him right we the whole thing it's funny guys starts hanging up at eventually once he realizes he realizes he's going back and forth back and forth then

eventually hangs up when he realizes he realizes that it's a scam but it's funny too he's like, hello, my friend, are you excited about being the millionaire? You will have the money soon. You will be millions. You'll be money. Got to play a claim on the encouragement, right? Yeah, it was, but it's funny how it's, I, it did a full circle. It was letters, then it was phone calls, then it was emails, and I was back to letters.

Like, it's the same thing going for fucking 60 years. It's like every 20 years, it changes. And then it cycles back. Same thing, the credit card stuff, right? Yeah. Same thing. Started on a little card. Now it's going to go here.

Digital credit card. Now people are like, I can't trust a digital. I need a credit card. Yeah, and we're back everybody. What are you doing? It's the exact same shit, guys, you know?

Yeah, it's, what you know what's funny too is that it's like TV. It was television with commercials. Yep. Then it was subscriptions. Yep. Then it was subscriptions like HBO. So then it turned to,

So it was like HBO. And then it was, then it was streaming subscriptions. Now it's, you pay a streaming. Then it was streaming because prescription or subscription and they hit you with a commercial. And now we're back to like to be. It's just commercials. What the fuck? Like in the past 60 years instead of full loop.

You have to pay for no commercials. And you're like, how does this work? Yeah. Yeah. Or you have to pay for no. So it's a subscription. It's like, well, what just happened? Yeah.

What happened? Full circle everybody. It's constantly, these things are constantly happening. I think you're in the wrong business. You just try it that way. What? Try it. You'd be like, just in a day of your viewers of commercials.

We do. Yeah, we do. They complain all the time. And then I come back and I go, have you considered joining YouTube premiere? Like, you don't have to have any commercials. And they get angry. And then the, bro, it's ridiculous these, the commercials or it's ridiculous. First of all, most of them, not most of them, most of them don't care.

Yeah. But every once in a while you get somebody who's pissed that Why am I having to watch any commercial? It's like, well, you, do you go to work? Like, that's like your boss saying, I can't believe I have to keep stroking to you these fucking checks every two weeks. Like, you're not working for free, bro. Like, what do you think I'm doing this for?

We don't do this for free. Right. Nothing worth doing is doing for free. I mean, not that I don't love doing it, but I would have to do something else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, people are, it's getting crazy. I got a question.

So what would you suggest for somebody who is in the middle of like one of these extortion scams? Like they've sent compromising pictures and they're asking for money. Like what is a plan of action like a solo individual? You know what's funny? Is helping the victim never even occurred to me? So that's why he's here, see, because I don't, my mind is just. I'm not going to be thinking about those. I didn't even think about those.

You're right. What's going on with them? So I would always tell, I'm always about pause, right? This thing of pause, like, hey, stop, stop. Like, it's called tactical pause, especially in combat warfare. Like, everyone's shooting at each other and you're like, hey, stop for a second. Cool, watch for the gunfire. That's the same premise applies here, right?

What I always say is if you have somebody who's in the middle of it, you know, getting extorted, stop for a second, okay, where is the sector of fire come from, where these emails come from text messages, identify that and say, okay, now reach out for help, right? whether it's the teammate, whether it's you, whether it's me, whether it's police or whatever. But you have to look at the end goal. The end goal is money, right? And so at that point, you stop the hemorrhaging pleading. The other part is going to be is pick up the phone.

Pick up the phone and be like, okay, you know, Matt wants to see a picture of me. Perfect, no problem. I'm going to call you. Like, hey, are you sure you want this man? Cool, no problem. That's what I will tell any woman or man who's in the middle of this. Pick up the phone. And if you can't get a direct line or somebody on the phone or Facebook,

time or whatever, you're probably getting scams. That's what I'll have to tell them. With extortion type of scams, have you seen the rise with AI voice capabilities, deep fake, things like that? Like, how real are those threats? Are they happening now, or is that still something that's kind of five, ten years into the future? Do you see that at all? I saw recently an uptick again of the kidnapping.

The kidnapping is like they will dub my voiceover or my son's voiceover or whatever. And they'll be like, dad, dad, I've been kidnapped. I need you to send $20,000 right now at this address, blah, blah, blah. Look, I've been in some hostage negotiations before. I understand that's not a message you want to hear, but stop. Stop for the moment and be like, where are you? Let me call you back. You can't move a million dollars within five minutes.

This is not going to happen. If somebody's asking for a million dollars, be like, okay, no problem. Let me call you right back. Let me get to the bank, right? Kind of set the stage, take control of the situation, take control of the narrative, and kind of like, hold on, hang on a second. I'm going to get you your money. But let me call you back.

And then chance of when you're going back, they're going to be gone, right? So the other one is a CEO fraud. That's what I've been hearing quite a bit of too. Hey, Jan, I need you to wire me. I need you to wire Matt $5,000 right now. I don't give a shit what you're doing, but do it right now.

I'm like, all right, no problem, Mr. CEO, and you're just doing it right. And it just doesn't, it's not a good idea. I saw TikTok or Instagram real just the other day. This guy's like, he's a parody, but he's like, man, I didn't even know the CEO knew who I was, but he just emailed me asking me and sent him $2,000 in Apple Paying gift cards. Yeah.

He's like, I can't believe it. That's true. That's true. And if you're really thinking about it, if you're a CEO or Matt calls me up and is not asking for like a formal wire transfer, like, hey, I need your bank account information, whatever. And it wants you to go immediately right now to Walgreens and to get vanilla visa cards prepaid, you might have a fucking problem.

Yeah. The IRS says that you owe them $5,000 and they tell you, stay on the phone while you drive to Walmart and get like, what? Just go to the microwave. Just go to the microwave. Have you seen that one? No. Oh, dude, it's great. The guy's like, okay, I'm at the ATM. And he's like, beep, beep, and punch the microwave. And the guy's like, okay, how much?

He's like, a two minutes. And the guy's like, what are you talking about? Like, yeah, two minutes until the mill is done, right? All right. I was fucking hilarious. Let's not roll it. Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, I'm always shocked by the people that fall for it, but people do fall for it over and over and over again.

That's a new twist. Remember, the threat actors, much like Tony Robbins, love them to death, right? Three things, right? Pain, fear, and pleasure. I inflict enough pain. I inflict enough fear and the pleasure is this, right? Just like sales. Right. Sales like, if you don't do these things now, fire cell, right? Yeah, I can only imagine once you have these people where you can act, where it gets better and better, where you can do a Zoom call and you look just like, because there was a, so I work, I'm supposed to say with, I work with a company called Home Title Lock. Okay. And they protect people from title theft. and so I some so people will send me stuff well in general and I would send it to them like people will send me say hey have you seen this and somebody sent me the other day where there was a woman because

you can do you can do closings remote closings right where you send them a copy of your driver's license and then they see it and then as long as they look at the driver's license and then they see you on zoom and they go hi are you know you Matthew Cox yes I'm Matthew Cox well they have a copy of my driver's license so and they look and they go okay. And then they start, they'll notarize the documents for me. Like if I say I sign the documents, they'd go ahead and notarize them. And so there was one recently where it was an older woman and they were doing a closing. It was a remote.

And it just so happened that the, nobody else noticed this except for the closing agent, that the woman was kind of. Oh, floating. You know, just kind of doing the little floating bouncy kind of thing. And then she would ask her a question, you know, Miss Johnson, you know, is it, or you are Mrs. you know, you know, Thomas Johnson or whatever. And she'd go, yes, I'm Mrs. Johnson. Oh.

You know, she's like, but the, you know, but she was, but she was just that when she wasn't talking, she was doing this kind of bumping. Yeah, bouncing. And so she was like, um, miss. And she said, and there was just. such a delay on anything I asked her. And the responses were not the response of an older woman. So you have to think this is an Indian man trying to be, you know, and keep in mind too, they're doing many of these a day, trying to get one to go through. So they're not,

first of all, the tech's not great yet. And so their confidence is a great. There's a language barrier. And they're trying to get this to go as fast as possible. Why? Because I need this money. I need this money. I need this money. I need one of these. And if they, this one of these. And if they, this one doesn't work. I've got another one I'm supposed to try and do. So I got to get that one. And these things are taking too long. And none of them are going through and they're frustrated. And they say stupid shit. And they respond badly. And anyway, eventually this woman was like, okay, Ms. Johnson, something's wrong here. And she started asking her more and more questions. And every realized the delay, delay, delay. And then of course, the real estate agent's like,

what's the problem? There's a problem. There's a problem. And then she's like, look at her. She's this. She's that. And then they're like, Ms. Johnson. Have you ever met her in person? Well, no, it was a I, I, I, you see him's on, no, I haven't, but I got access to the house. And I, no, no, this isn't, turns out there was a real Miss Johnson or whatever her name was, but this was not her. And the house was a rental. And, you know, whatever that, it broke down once they looked into it. But nobody really looked into it that much because the tech seemed good enough.

And nobody's looking. Typically, I noticed that during normal transactions, people are not looking for fraud. I've always noticed that when I would go into a bank or, or, you know, I would go into a bank or I would provide documents to somebody. They don't want to find fraud. They want the transaction to go through. Of course, they're going to make a check for $3,000 or $5,500, especially if you're a broker or you're somebody who's going to make money.

I want it to make sense. Yeah. You know, and so you don't ask that many questions, especially if the documents look great. And then even if they're questionable, I ask like, well, I don't understand this and this. And then if you give me the right response, it's like, okay, perfect.

Yeah, well, they had a good explanation. Was it? was it you know in retrospect shouldn't you have in retrospect shouldn't you have called maybe yeah yeah verify some documents there right so i can only imagine as things get better the one thing i'm noticing with like this is all i saw this from a human resources person um because artificial intelligence is huge especially in the interview space and so when i interview somebody i'll send somebody go do it she'd be like okay cool can you give a piece of paper for me and just web in front of your face and that point the the the

AI engine doesn't know what to do. They're like, oh, and so you'll see a huge delay. And they're like, I thank you for your time by. You know, so, I mean, there's things away. There's a human factor that can still work a little bit. But I think as artificial intelligence increases more and more, we're going to see this run rampant. Did I tell you what happened?

I'm sorry, this is just funny. I had a, uh, I didn't actually have an accident. Bosiac had an accident. And I, when I called to talk to the adjuster and we were going to the process, when I finally got a phone call from this, the final adjuster and he was asking me questions. Shit you not. He was so monotone.

I thought it was AI. And I said, I go, as he's, he's going through the prompts and this and this. And I went, I said, is this? Is this a bot? And he goes, what? I'm sorry. Oh, shit. And it was like, I'm sorry.

Can you say that again? It was that kind of a response. I'm sorry. Can you say that again? I go, is this a bot? Is this like an AI bot? I'm sorry? He said, I don't understand the question.

Yeah, it's a... And I went... I said, bro, are you an AI bot? You sound like a bot. You're very monotone. And he goes, oh, my God. He said, no, I'm not a bot. And then he starts talking to me.

And I said, bro, you sound so fucking monotone. He's like, man, I've been doing this job for fucking 20 years. And he's like, I'm sorry. He said, that is hilarious, though. And he starts talking to me. And I realized then, like, he's not. But I should... Even when he, after that interaction was done, back to the bot mode.

All right. Well, if you, you know, such a say. He just went through the motions. I was like, bro, this is fucking terrifying. Like, it's a real person. He's not like a bot. That's the best, man, I think. If you can't delineate him, I would hire that guy for sure.

He was awesome. Just run my screening calls, man. I appreciate you. So what else have we got? What else is going on? So this L.A. base law firm, right? hit me up and was like hey we got taken for four million dollars i'm like oh okay and and one thing is like working in the legal field i have no love for any lawyer yeah i was like i mean so a lawyer

got fucked for a change instead of a lawyer fucking somebody so i was like all right well let's walk it through here let's let's talk about it and they're like well we just noted we log in our account and four million dollars is gone i'm like okay we got that part but like what led up to it. And they go, okay, well, the only person who has access to it is the front desk person and the CFO. I'm like, okay. A front death person. You mean the reception? Yeah, yeah. And this, and he's fucking her. Surprise. Surprise. This poor old lady, she was just like, I just processed the invoices. And I'm like, okay, okay, all right. So I come to find out that they got fished. That means, you know, email went out, somebody got their credentials, and this older lady,

unfortunately just got all the credentials taken, right? This is where the cyber hygiene comes into place, right? She was part of an administrative group. Like, she was an admin for the whole entire environment. They got in there and they're like, hey, we're going to go ahead and create this forward, redirect email. That means when you get an email, it goes to another folder. And they just did it very subtly, like a rule.

Nobody paid attention to that, right? If you get an email, if you miss my email, I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, I missed that right. But you might want to look in the forwarding area, right? So starts going there. Now the threat actor starts getting these emails, like, hey, this invoice, right? They were able to get the account information invoice. Now they're able to change the wiring instructions.

The wiring instructions. Right. So at that point, they're like, hey, let's go ahead and do this. And they did this over eight months. And I'm like, how do you not notice? How does someone not, how do the people that are supposed to be getting the wires not say, hey, I didn't get my wire? Yeah, exactly. You owe me $4,200 and I didn't get last month that I didn't get it. Exactly. So, unfortunately, the older lady up front got hung out the dry, you know, and they're like, you're fired. I'm like, that's the wrong answer, man. Come on. Could have happened to anybody. Exactly. And just that didn't settle too well with me. And they call us and they're like, you need to get our money back. I'm like, buddy, that money is long gone. Listen, listen, you give me a million dollars. I'll give you that money. I'll get you that money back.

Reverence. I mean, they're prone to be screwed. We know. We know. it. We know it's soccer. Let me do you a favor. As my father would say, you're a fool for not letting people part with their money. Yeah. So we got on there and then it was really, it was a good timing though, because we were able to see that the wire transfer and also the space in the wire, the swift account, right? I was like, all right, so let's take a look here. We call the bank and we're like, hey, we just haul a $2 million wire leave in the last two days. Can you put her, or, you know, a couple million dollars. Can you put a freeze on that? So they put it. We filed this thing called a Sassar, right?

Suspicious Activity Report. I'm pretty sure you already know that. I've had one file, though. A few, right? I've only had one. One? One. All right.

And the whole time, well, it was because I removed, um, uh, 29, I asked for 29,000 in cash one time. And they gave it to me in cash. And I knew they were going to fill out the form. And they told me they were. And I, that's fine. They asked you what it was for? I'm like, what are you doing here for? Oh, yeah.

But, but the big thing was that, you know, they were like, like, like, when I'm filling out the forum like, you know, keep in mind, it's not in mine. Like, I don't care. Yeah. That's what always kills me about that forum. Like, I don't care. Audit me. I'm gone. Like, yeah. That's part of that KYC process, right? Know your customer. Yeah. They filled out that and they filled out a, uh, uh, is a, uh, is it CTR cash transaction. A C.T, yeah, cash transaction. They filled out both of it. It's only, I know because when, when I talked to the FBI, they were like, we got this. You remove this much money. You only had these two things filed on you one time.

I was like, I'm good. Bad for a hundred year guys. Come on. And I knew when I walked in the bank, they're filled, they're going to ask me. Oh,

what excuse did you give them? Oh, I was cashing checks for, I worked for a labor company. And I, the guys that we give them checks, they're basically, they don't have bank accounts.

These are guys that are, you know, they're Mexicans or their, whatever. This was, this was 20 years ago. I know exactly we were talking about. And I was like,

so I cash their checks for them because otherwise they go to the cash check. cashing places. Okay, 14%. Yeah, I said, it's ridiculous.

And I know the checks are good. I said, you know, I'm just trying to take care of my employees. Yeah. And they're like, so noble.

They were like, all right. The guy knew, now he wasn't like, all right. He was like, he's just, everything I told him,

he was like, fucking knows something wrong. No something wrong. And he knew the whole time. You've never heard you. Oh, I know, I saw that one.

That story. Yeah. He leaves. And finally when he comes out and he has to give me the money. And he gives me the money. and I'm leaving. He's like, I feel very apprehensive about this.

I was like, really, what is it? Tell me about it. It's like shoving. I remember what an idiot. I was like shoving money. I must have just looked like a savage.

He looked like the role. And he just, he knew. He knew. He can do shit about it. No. Got a love banking, man.

I don't feel bad for him. Oh, that guy? No, I was going to say. Bankers and lawyers. So what happened? So that one,

we were actually able to recover about two million dollars. Nice. Because it had an ed and cleared. It hadn't cleared. That's the only saving grace. The other two million dollars was tumbled. It was tumbled. And what I mean by that is...

Went here and then went here and here and here and just gone. So I don't know if you saw the baby recently like Bitcoin or a Coinbase, all the e-wallets that got compromised. Right. Okay. So threat actors now are like, oh, there's a bunch of wallets that are just open. So these are good staging points. Great for money laundering. Right.

So it's a hey, I'll put a million dollars here. I'll filter it. And then you have all these Lexuses, nexes of webs of different. e-wallets and they're like here's money money money and then it starts getting fundled right and then that's when the cell phone's come in place like all right cool venmo me this corner problem shut it down re-engage the sim and they start money money laundering that way so it goes really really quick really really fast too so by the time that you guys were onto it it was gone yeah that was that was that was two million dollars was gone four million dollars total two million dollars was

recovered but that was only from banking administration safeguards that's it um The, this was an interesting one when it came to the Phoenix base therapist. I felt kind of bad about this. So this lady had a solo practice. Let's just say $200,000 a year in billable. Nothing big, right? She was so nice. And it was interesting.

So they, they were able to kind of scrape her environment via a web portal. Web portal is like a patient portal, right? Like going on that, kind of what we're talking about. She had her own custom one done. And the problem, the good thing is you have your own one, but the bad thing is you have to continue security around it. Right. She didn't do that.

So it was just this database just in her room with the web application. And so they got in and they were able to gain access and they're like, hey, we want money and we want naked photos. And I don't know, something was really off about this one. Like the lady was so nice. I'm like, why would you send naked photo? She's like, they told me I had to. I'm like, oh.

And she was a nice. whole little lady and she's like, I did that. I'm like, you send naked photos and money. So unfortunately, like the FBI showed up. Um, and the weird part is they, the FBI could give two sheds less. They're like, all right, whatever. We, what do you want us to do? Right. And it's kind of a shitty answer. Uh, we were able to find it out that there are Indian, uh, Indian farmers, right? Indian, uh, hacking farm. Um, but like, they got the money. They got the thing and they just went away and never came back. Good pay, good pace, bad case. right.

All right. But you don't want him to come back, right? Like you wanted him to go away. We do. But at the same aspect, like, I felt really bad. I was like, I was talking to my partner. I was like, hey, dude, like, what do we got to do for her? He's like, dude, identity theft.

That's the best thing you can do at this point. She actually won up closing up her for shop. She was like, it was a lot of money. For her, it was $10,000. And I'm like, yes, ma'am, we understand. But she's like, I don't want to be in this anymore. I'm out. She retired.

And I was like, all right. Well, I guess that's it. Yeah. It was a sad one, but it's true, and that happens a lot. And I'm noticing a lot of behavioral health and mental health providers are being targeted. If you pay ransomware, do you get to claim that on your taxes of the loss? Pay the ransom? Probably.

Well, I mean, she paid $10,000. Probably. And damages, yeah. Does she have to, can she say, hey, I lost $10,000? Oh, absolutely. So I don't want to pay. I don't want to hit me again. I've got to pay an extra $3 or $4,000.

I would imagine. I would imagine this like tornado damage, right? Like when tornado goes through Tennessee and it hits a house. Like, hey. That's okay. I mean, I'm willing to try, you know, but I mean, I wonder if the IRS is going to come back in three years. Be in the zones. Sorry, pal.

What you were thinking. I think if it's a damage, then yeah, absolutely. I think so. These are a lot of Indian guys. Indian, a lot of South American, I'm starting to see now come up. Okay. Yeah, like in Venezuela, Colombia. Mexico, Mexico, because it's cartel fed.

Like they have, the, the cartel needs to spread their money. So they have now, now that you have the, I don't know, have you seen the Chinese town in in Mexico, have you seen that one? So in the southern part of Tijuana over there and also certain parts of Mexico, there are full-blown Chinese towns. And they're bringing in threat actors. They're bringing in their scamming and whatnot. And so they're doing on behalf of the cartel.

So they'll send up these farms, these call centers. where their job is to go scam the elderly. And that's the god awful heart. That kind of like pisses me off a lot. Like that really pisses me off. Because like you're specifically targeting people who just want to live their life out. They just don't want to be fucked with. And then these narcos, these guerrillas, these cartels are like, okay, cool, RICO's

98 years old. Let's go into assume his identity, steal his identity, steal his home, blah, blah, blah. And then the old man's out, right? And why are they doing this? because drug is not as drug dealing is not as profitable. There's too much issue. Like they're branching out into different, because I know that they're doing more and more human trafficking.

Yeah, so they're branching out in different areas, right? So drone warfare is one. Intelligence, cell phone providing their own cell phone, cell phone towers is another big one they have. And then also capitalizing on, what's that damn thing? Not stuff next, but there's a, I forget, it slips my mind, but basically it's a phone that you can listen to them at any given time.

So they have their own cell phones and then it's compromised cell phones. They hand it to politicians and whatnot in local police officers. So they're expanding different areas. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do be a favor. Hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified videos just like this. Also, we're going to leave all of Rico's social media contacts and his website in the description box. Once again, thank you very much for watching.

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