Don't Fall Victim to Cyber Scams (FBI Expert Reveals All)
00:00:00 hey what’s up everybody you tuned in to another episode of strategic moves I’m your host Ken da this is a place where we bring art culture politics and business all together and we do it every Sunday right here on this channel but when I’m not shooting this podcast I am the owner of strategic resources and the African-American men’s acction Network we call it amen we specialize in political campaigns government and public relations I’ve been doing it all around Ohio for over 25 years met some very interesting people along the way and we want to make your
00:00:30 next move a strategic move so this program gives me an opportunity to do just that I get to Brak off some of the people I met we come on we talk about some of the things that we’ve been through in our life some of our experience and hopefully it’s something that you can get out of it that’ll help you with your business life or person so if you sound like this a program you’ll be interested in all I need you to do is hit that like button hit the Subscribe button and the notification Bell as well so that you would know the next time this program is coming on so today we
00:01:00 getting right at it we going to continue our program on safety it’s getting warm in Cleveland it’s getting Hot in Cleveland and when it gets warm in Cleveland everybody gets a little Restless here and so we got our people we doing a special this month all on safety we got in some of the big wigs on safety that helps shape what happens here in our city and in this region as it relates to safety and we’re going to talk to them about some of the things that’s going on but before we get into that what I want to do is give a sh shout out and recognize the best podcast producer
00:01:34 in Cleveland history none other than DJ true how you doing in there sir I’m good man I’m good all right man we trying to get through this safety thing it’s getting warm man I think we had the last of the coldness we going to get it’s about to get warm now I think I look at the weather we gonna be in the 50s 60s and it seem like the crime didn’t get no better over the winter it seemed like they just kept it moving right along so I I’m scared to see what this summer going to be like did you hear there was a shooting up at at Walmart yes yes in you matter of fact it
00:02:07 was just getting B now no the police officer shot the shoplifter but the shoplifter they said was running tearing up cars and it was just that’s up there in my neighborhood too so I believe soon and I’m gonna give this prediction they’re going to close that Walmart that Walmart is nothing but a lot of trouble and it’s a shame because I believe that Community I know I live in the community need it for people that goes there and there’s not another grocery store or that type of business anywhere in that area so it’ll be a shame but the crying this is like the what is it the second time
00:02:42 they moved it yeah it’s the second time they moved it but big boxes they like to be in those areas but man when you start weighing out the theft and all the other crimes and stuff that goes with it makes it hard for them to stay in those community so I really feel bad for it but I’m predicting that’s happening because it’s getting worse and worse it seem W that’s a shame but today we got a today today today this gentleman here can’t really do nothing about the shoplifters but he can do something about those people who are stealing from you off your credit cards and calling your house
00:03:15 trying to get you to sign up for computer programs and all kinds of fraud so today continuing our efforts to try to make you safer in Cleveland I’m welcome to agent Johnston than how you look TR get that’s good man we really appreciate you coming on how long you’ve been in there FBI a little over 22 years yes really so what made you decide you wanted to be a FBI agent I wanted to be in law enforcement and I appreciated the broad mission that the FBI has everything from counterterrorism to cyber crime to kidnappings bank robberies complex Financial crimes wanted
00:03:56 an opportunity to work those types of violations in my career did you always did you go straight into FBI or where were you before you got into law en as an agent Special Agent it’s very rare that anyone would do that I was an assistant prosecuting attorney in a County in Ohio before joining the FBI as an agent oh so you’re from Ohio I am from Ohio Youngstown Ohio okay then you from Youngstown then okay so you went from Youngstown and then you were a prosecutor in young how long was you a prosecutor there I wasn’t a prosecutor there I was in another County I was almost three
00:04:28 years as an assistant prosecutor okay um just trying to meet the requirements to become an agent oh so now I understand you were assistant prosecutor and you met getting your requirements together because you always wanted to go right into the agency that’s wow okay so what was your first when you got in what did you go right into I was first assigned to field office okay lots of work up there great place to work a great office I worked criminal Enterprises organized crime okay gangs drugs okay and that type of thing and then from there how did you work your way to Cleveland
00:05:01 yeah I went from Detroit to Washington to headquarters and I worked out of headquarters for three years worked International investigations from there into criminal Enterprises operating internationally and then came to the akran office okay for a little over seven years and then I’ve been in Cleveland for the last three really so when did you go into now the department you’re into now is called I’m assistant special agent in charge so the branch that I have is called the white collar Branch okay and now tell us a little bit about that and how long you been in
00:05:31 that the branch yeah so the white color Branch covers crimes like cyber crime complex Financial crime public corruption hate crimes civil rights violations healthc care fraud and I have a a squad of forensic accountants that are embedded into the investigations we’re called the white CER crime branch and I’ve been with I’ve been an asack for over three years so you over that agency over that division wow that’s a whole lot in that covers in there it’s a whole lot and it’s very busy as you can imagine with cyber crime Financial crimes so how many agents in your department us Woulda I
00:06:08 have approximately a total of 95 people whoow not all agents um some are friend accountants some are intelligence analysts and then every type of agent position we have a companion administrative function just like any business we have people that are non agents that have to run shop like a business corre yeah I found that out the last time when talking with Nelson that you do have other you can be in the FBI and not be an agent absolutely because everybody thought that’s more opportunities as not agent in the FBI really our agent position the FBI has about 38,000 employees
00:06:44 roughly 11,000 to 12,000 our agents that’s interesting that’s interesting so this the Cyber was that just part of the agency was part of the um group of Agents let me get it together be that division the cyber crime was that part of when you took over the department or was that the reason why you wanted to go you had or what was the thing that drove you to that division well that the branch pretty much consisted uh then as it does now so cyber was already a part of it in Cleveland we have two different cyber squads we have a cyber criminal Squad and we have a cyber
00:07:18 National Security Squad that addresses issue like threats presented from Iran and China and Korea that type of thing where they’re going after our country Secrets Tech transfer with China but um the branch that’s what it was and I always I worked at different types of crimes in my in my investigative but I wanted a chance to lead this Branch they’re doing some incredible work that has real impact for our communities so I I want to stick on and we we talk about cyber crime a little bit because that’s one of the biggest things right now um that’s facing a lot
00:07:50 of us and and even myself I I hav been hacked a few times I didn’t had people call me before I I got a little more sophisticated with things I didn’t fail for hey your computer did you want me to fix it for you that kind of thing and I can remember going through that so tell the audience here what is cyber crime okay it’s it’s a little bit of multiple part so when we say cyber crime we could be talking about true cyber crime like ransomware or an intrusion into your computer okay that’s one type of thing the other thing are cyber enabled crimes which I think we’re going
00:08:26 to spend a lot of time today talking about it’s other Criminal wax they’re just using a computer to make it happen so the thing you mentioned was possibly known as a tech support fraud okay where you get something that pops up on your computer it says your computer’s been compromised or it’s in Jeopardy of being compromised you need to do these steps or allow us to do these steps so that’s that’s more of what cyber crime that we’re going to talk about is the frauds and which they using the internet and they’re using computers to commit the frauds when we talk about the other
00:08:57 type of more strictly defined cyber cber crime like denial of service to a business or ransomware those are worked a different way and some of those do end up being more of a nation state threat like it’s an intrusion by another government a foreign government into our infrastructure that thing so what is you see the most common and that’s facing us up in our area right now that you guys are seeing a a lot of so in each of those types so in the true cyber crime ransomware hitting businesses
00:09:30 is very common and very frequent the other hand those things that impact our community our citizens a regular citizen would be the frauds the various types of frauds and whether that’s things that we can talk about like Elder fraud romance scams tech support frauds investment frauds those types of crimes so let’s go with the seniors what’s the big thing that’s happening in our seniors right now that you’re seeing a lot of yes unfortunately there are a number of Bad actors that spend time looking for our most vulnerable populations whether that’s seniors whether that’s
00:10:00 even children but in terms of seniors Romeo scams are really big tech support fraud the type that we touched on a little bit here tech support fraud is really big targeting seniors could be because maybe they’re not so comfortable working with a computer and with the internet and also maybe because they’re a little more trusting so you said romance SC so seniors are getting played out there people are calling them catfishing them a little bit and but taking their money yeah and it happens to to every age group largely targets our senior population but starts on dating sites
00:10:34 or social media and then somebody takes the time it’s very heavily scripted where they take the time to build trust and make you think that you’re in a true relationship but then ultimately they’re going to ask for money for some reason or another and we can talk about that if you’d like yeah so give us some details on so a lot of times these Bad actors will say they’re in another country because they work construction or they work on oil rig or they’re in the military W but spend the time to based upon your social media posts and different things that you put out there they
00:11:04 learn a little bit about you and they take time to Garner trust they’ll never be able to meet up with you even though they say I’m gonna buy a ticket and come fly to meet you something always happens where they they can’t meet with you there’s never that face-to-face meeting with the person um the victim to believe they’re in a real trusting relation and then the ask will come wow I’m doing a major construction project in South Africa it’s worth 30 million need about $5,000 more dollars to
00:11:31 get the final permits to get through so that we can you send me the money I’ll make sure that we can get yours back plus some money just for your trouble it’s those types of things that are going to come next and they’re going to ask for money and ultimately we hope that person realizes before they send money that it’s not a true relationship it’s really messed up that’s happening out here that way we had a guest on our program Tim and tamama woods yes yes and you know them and what Happ Happ with their son and everything so on the you side they take advantage of them with
00:12:04 sex tortion and the pictures and that kind of thing and on the senior side they take advantage of them being lonely and um not having no one that they could possibly do that can that that’s an incredible they’re doing amazing work right now coming out of that tragedy um but you’re right the sex extortion cck targeting heart it’s young males it really is targeting young males you’re saying really heavily targeting young males it’s 14 to to 16 to 17 but we’ve seen younger victims as well that’s a heartbreaking crime because there are unfortunately a young people that feel they have
00:12:38 no one to talk to about it or they feel so ashamed that they end up taking their own lives why do you think it’s males I don’t know it’s just a little bit of a male curiosity you’re a 15year old male and you’re online and you think you’re talking to another 15y old 15-year old female and they s you a picture uh that they P somewhere somewhere from office the internet and they make it seem this is the girl that I’m talking to she sent me a picture I’ll send her a picture I I asked to meia that
00:13:07 same question and she said when I thought about he was answering she said it because men are a little more less they talking to a woman oh she’s talking to me they we go for it where women make you date them a little more they GNA they’re not so quick to just go on camera and do anything so I I think that’s what it is to yet so it makes us vulnerable absolutely and and the the really sad part about that is it’s there those are criminal Enterprises doing these you know they resolve to another country they’re grown adult criminal Enterprises that are competing with a juvenile’s
00:13:41 developing mind and it’s not a fair it’s not a fair fight to have our juveniles have to deal with that it’s terrible so the senior dating apps what else they do to our seniors you’ve been seeing happening as it relates to the seniors so again we mentioned tech tech supports cams you’re going to get an UNS IED the key in any one of these frauds is the unsolicited part of it they reach out first and there going to be a text or a phone call even or email or a popup on your computer that says click this link or call this number because your computer compromised so the tech
00:14:17 support part of this is very large and this leads into some frauds where it’s just tech support and then they want money but we have something called The Phantom hacker scam as well where there’s a few extra steps off of the Tex support now what’s that the next step would be you giving them remote access to your computer because they can help yeah see what the problem is now so you grant them remote access and what they’re actually doing is they’re combing your computer to to find access to your most valuable accounts your bank accounts your Investments whatever it may be a second part
00:14:50 of that Phantom hacker scam they’re gonna say I’m going to connect you with somebody from your bank or from your brokerage and there’s going to be somebody that gets on the line it says I’m I’m fraud investigator or I’m this or that and yeah they’re correct Europe counsil are going to be compromised so we need to move them to a safe account wow and they’ll do that when they’re actually moving your money to their accounts and it’s gone pretty quickly that’s why they can move so quickly on this because they they have remote access to your computer and they already can find
00:15:20 out what they’re looking for to begin with and the third part of that is they may even have somebody portray somebody from the government say they’re with the SEC or the Federal commission and just to let you know you’re doing the right thing you need to move your money until we can get this sorted out so they’re very heavily scripted and these Bad actors take a lot of time to develop these scams so is this where are most of these crimes being committed they overseas or it’s safe to say they’re happening here as much as they’re happening overseas the crimes here unfortunately
00:15:51 the United States is probably the largest victim of these crimes but the main perpetrators are overseas H centers operated in India in Nigeria Ghana other Southeast Asian countries where these call centers work from now they have people in the US sometimes people will come and physically pick up money call those money mules so they do have people here in the US at times they use bank accounts here or cryptocurrency transactions stemming from here but a lot of times the actual groups themselves are overseas so the people the money mules and those guys here you guys that’s
00:16:28 where you guys come in you guys watch those and check those guys out or how does that work we do we have had some success in actually putting handcuffs on money mules it used to be where a money meal would show up one time to get money from you and then be gone and it’s hard to track them back they’re greedy right and they know if they get money once from you they can probably get money twice from you and it’s that when they show up again sometimes we’ve been fortunate to get them we do seek prosecution for them uh we do like to see where the money goes and there’s some
00:16:58 other invest tees that we use to try to do that but ultimately a key part of this to battle this is our Partnerships with other countries let me ask you man this just happened if it happened to me my grandmother or something that happened and I know that’s going on we even know a money mule is on his way do who do you call do you call 911 you call the police do you call the FBI what do you do how do you handle that yes to all of those if it’s happening in real time absolutely call 911 to try
00:17:30 to get that immediate response okay but then would love for them to call the FBI because that’s again where we’ve had success actually being able to put handcuffs on people and then you’re we have a chance to break open a wider network but there’s ways to report it- 800 call FBI so let’s talk on there because I want to talk about that reporting when do you report do I report time I pick up the phone and I know this a scammer and this guy do it how when is it safe to say hey I need to report this yeah so that would be we would never be able to keep up with those that’s there’s
00:18:02 a a website ic3.gov letter i c number three okay. goov okay and we wouldn’t want people to report it there because what happens is that information is put together and it’s coated to see hey this hits on another case already or this is something new we haven’t seen this before so it’s important even it’s if it’s an attempt where there’s no loss which is great for the would be victim we want that reported because that information might helpful do other ongoing investigations so I would say report it that way if it’s a fraud that’s ongoing and you have somebody coming to pick
00:18:36 up money which does happen um definitely call 911 but then follow up with a call to your local FBI office so when we talk about these kind of crimes and everything that’s going on and you say your area that you what area does you service because I know you just don’t do Cleveland what’s your for service area so the Cleveland FBI covers the top 40 counties in Ohio okay so everything from border over there all the way to Youngstown in the border to PA okay pretty much everything north of Columbus the Cincinnati field office covers the remainder of the state so when we talk about all
00:19:11 of the because that’s a territory that we got when we talk about crimes itself and we were on the cyber crime and all of these type of deaths and things that are going on in your division does Ohio stack up against the rest of the country it’s an unfortunate question Ohio Stacks up Fifth and certain frauds behind California Florida Texas and New York listen to those States one more time what was those States California Florida Texas and New York all which are bigger than us wow and we’re fifth we’re right behind them in terms of confidence scams or romance scams wow frauds
00:19:46 against the elderly confidence scams yeah what’s a confidence so in any of these frauds it’s lying for money that’s the bottom line they’re goingon to lie for money and what confidence scams are when they build confidence in a relationship they make you think there’s somebody there not they make you think there’s a relationship there it’s building that confidence and then eventually asking for money really yeah what what’s the technical charge for that there can be anything anything from money laundering to Wi fraud and that type of thing identity theft
00:20:21 aggravated identity there’s a number of crimes that we can look at charge Fally if they get you to send money or transmit through through false pretenses of fraud that’s a wire fraud and that type thing so number five yeah unfortunate un you don’t have no reason you don’t know why you got no idea no I don’t know again these Bad actors Target are most vulnerable so they target sometimes the elderly they target people we were saying you said coming out of Co it could have been people was just ready to get back out there number five though we top five yeah Co people
00:20:59 didn’t have a lot of face-to-face interaction so a lot of things took place online and it’s just an outshoot of that more online relationships and that type of thing and Florida would be there’s a lot of retirees in Florida California you said Texas Texas is in there too man oh what’s your question DJ my question is what is the charge if somebody hacks your Instagram page there is none is it it it depends there there can be charges for hacking there’s some unauthorized access type charges but we would look at anything often times there’s other crimes related to one specific
00:21:38 crime and again oftentimes there’s going to be that would maybe be an identity theft at that point if they’re trying to do something with your identity after yeah because what what I see is they hack your page and they act like they’re you so they can hack somebody else’s page and I guess the bottom line is to see what they can get out of anybody through your page or somebody else’s page almost like a network so let’s stay on his question because I think there a question inside the question he said Instagram and Facebook which is that’s funny you say because everybody’s page
00:22:13 seem to get hacked or something to some point on that but I guess a bigger question that he asking somebody hacked my my bank page or any of those pages is that the is if they and Facebook and Instagram is that a means to call the FBI or call that number and say hey this happened or do you you recommend they just go through the regular process that the com company has in place to deal with that there’ be a number of steps you would want to go on that one would be working with the company one whether it’s Facebook or whatever to work with their internal policies number two I
00:22:45 would want you to report it to law enforcement through that ic3.gov page because again that might be something that’s being seen across the country or not it might be something new but I would also personally take the next steps of make sure my credit report is still good okay changing passwords to my bank if they got on to any of social media accounts I would just assume that they have access to my emails and everything at that so I would want to change the passwords that I use when you can look for unsuccessful sign on attempts to see oh somebody’s trying to sign into
00:23:18 my bank account that’s correct so you definitely wouldn’t want to work with your bank they have security departments would want to work with Experian the three credit companies to put you can a block or a hold on your credit so that nobody can open up something without some special extra steps but you definitely would want to take those precautionary steps what kind of support or resources does the FBI provide victims of extortion or cyber crime yeah so we have a program that’s really grown over the last couple decades we have victim Advocates and victim witness um
00:23:52 professionals that work with victims and they’re able to align them with resources if somebody’s having financial difficulty because of the crime they can help get them aligned with resources in the community counseling I’m telling you like a sextortion victim that’s a victim of a egregious crime it really is and getting counseling wouldn’t be a bad idea to help especially a young person work or to help families work through that so let’s talk about that because I didn’t go into the definition everybody don’t follow all our show explain to the audience what’s sextortion okay so
00:24:27 there’s two terms you’ll hear sexor and financial SE okay they’re the same type of crime it’s what the ultimate goal at the end is so sextortion is again it is a type of confidence scam these often start on gaming sites or through social media through a contact where they’re chatting on a gaming site and then they say let’s move and chat on WhatsApp or text now or some other means of Instagram whatever it may be communicating direct and again they’re building up a false sense of relationship the victim thinks they’re talking to a 15-year-old girl for instance in reality it’s a
00:25:03 45y old Nigerian man who about to say could be a man right it was part of of a criminal Enterprise that is in a CLA Center doing these wow so they build up that confidence and they make you think you’re in a relationship and they may send a picture of explicit or graphic of a young girl where they’ve pulled that from the internet at some point and send it to you and you think she’s sending you a direct picture and she asked you to send a picture back so they do and then what’s that there it’s immediate they’ll ask for money and they never ask just once even if you pay
00:25:34 we’ve had young people that have paid the initial pay us $500 or we’re going to send this to your contact list and to your church to your friends and to your school and we’ve had people that pay it and then they come back and ask for more so it it’s never just once but the two types of crime sextortion Financial sextortion is that what we just talked about they want money sex Distortion maybe them just wanting more explicit photos M to use like child sex abuse materials so their end goal is not money it’s they want more of that content and they really getting sophisticated with
00:26:11 with it now because Tim and Tamia told me that they didn’t even use a picture they did two-way where it was even a video where they they really thought they were talking to it he thought he was talking to a young woman and he could have been a woman could have been like you say 45 just looking like she’s a young girl you never know or they had a young girl you never know how it Go these days because of circumstance so that whole thing is just really bad and and so victim real quick if you are a victim or if you feel your teen is being a victim of that or or you know that what
00:26:45 are some of the recommendations you guys give out yeah absolutely so there’s a couple things you do after a couple things that we’ll talk about that we do for but the main thing is to make sure you have that relationship where your team can come to you and talk to you about it and if not you talk to a teacher a coach a pastor some responsible adult that they can talk to they need to know they can talk about it’s not the end of the world they have to be able to talk about it definitely report it to law enforcement you can block that person they’re very rarely ever going to show
00:27:19 up for money it’s not that type of crime um you can block that person you can talk with whatever platform you’re on and and bring it to their attention that there’s you know illegal content on there sometimes they’ll take it down but that type of thing but prior to happening we just really want people to make sure they have that culture or that environment where they can talk to their kids about this it’s a serious thing and I know the schools have been doing a better job at educating our young people on it um another thing that parents can do though is know what your kids
00:27:52 are looking at online get on the apps that they’re using get on the social media that they’re using m see who they’re talking to and and educate them a couple things one don’t accept friend requests from people that you don’t know secondly don’t put photos out there once they’re out there whether you delete it on one phone and delete it on another phone they’re out there and so it’s very hard to recover that stuff so just be careful of what they’re posting the type of information they put on social media as well yeah and most importantly as as bad as parents are much as we
00:28:26 fuss hollering screaming everything it’s better to just come and say what it is and get it over with versus going through everything you’re going to lead up to get because in Tim’s case he was a good kid they had great relationship everything was open he could have came to them and told but he just felt he couldn’t that little bit of embarrassment to him was just too much for him to bear and it could be that the next kid or anybody else we hope that learned from that to know exactly what you say man it’s just not that bad that you can come both ways parents should
00:28:58 that relationship with their kids and kids you need to know I’m G to hear it but I need to be able to let us all deal with this versus trying to handle it on your own you’re absolutely correct on that and it’s sad there’s over 20 suicides from young people wow radly to sextortion and financial sex Distortion crimes no we we just definitely want people to be able to talk about it and I again I encourage if it’s not a parent give me somebody I’ve had cases brought To Us by coaches correct High School coaches that said this person talk to me Y and I think you should
00:29:30 know about this and that’s the right thing to do excellent let me ask you this uh are there any educational program Outreach incentives um aimed for seniors and youth that the FBI is doing on cyber crime or anything that that people can know about in particular we do a a large number of presentations um if people reach out to our community outreach in the Cleveland FBI and have groups that they want um agents to come talk to about cyber crimes we definitely do that we get a lot of requests for that there are some programs designed for kids on safe surfing basically safe
00:30:04 use of the web a lot of these things can be found at fbi.gov and through the various links that you can navigate through there but again basically educating being on programs like yours getting the word out to the community and again we talk to groups all the time we talk to local Civic groups mom’s groups parents groups we recently did entire evening on sextortion and cyber bullying to a group in Strongville I believe was A League of Women Voters so we’re willing to get the word out and work with our partners in that as well how about the are there any unique challenges that you
00:30:43 see investigating what are some of the unique challenges investigating some of the seniors in sextortion cases is with technology being changing now and everything else is making it more difficult Ai and all those things that are coming out how difficult is it for you guys to do your job these days yeah and it can’t be so the AI for instance makes it easier for them to commit the crime that’s correct not sure that it makes it more difficult for us on the investigate them but it certainly makes it easier for them to fool a victim correct using AI um the the hardest part
00:31:17 of these are most of the time it’s International and scope and so there’s usually not an instant result that we can get that takes work through our partners overseas and frankly we’ve had some success including subjects extradited from Nigeria really wants extortion cases when we get extradition from our partner countries and bring them to justice here that’s a major step so the international scope makes it difficult we have some of the best cyber agents and cyber professional support employees in the FBI right here in Cleveland really work in these matters we
00:31:52 have a handful of the best cryptocurrency experts that the that the FBI has right here in Cleveland so how how often and I I know you you work well with all the other agencies here Cleveland Police and all of those guys right so we we have a number of great Partnerships and I think at the federal level and the law the local law enforcement level we learn the hard way that we’re better together we have to do this together so we have a task force actually it’s called the gc3 task force it’s the Greater Cleveland crime complex crime task force gc3 task force and that’s comprised
00:32:27 of a number of agencies that work specifically these white collar types of crimes and we do partner with Cleveland division of police and partner with the other federal agencies um to do this that’s to L and and so is there anything that you really want us to know that you think that’s important for us here coming out that you want I know one of the things that I hear quite often and tell people all the time the IRS and some of the government agency don’t call you to ask you for your information or anything like that what are some of the common things you want
00:33:00 to leave with people either sextortion or the seniors in general touching on what you said IRS the government is not going to ask you to send cryptocurrency they’re not going to ask you to do that they’re not going to ask you to send gift cards to pay or debt they’re not going to ask for cash app payments and that type of thing I think the main message is just to make sure we’re looking out for each other taking care of each other if you have an an elderly person that you love and take care of make known that they can talk to you when they see something suspicious pop
00:33:32 up on their computer have that relationship where they can bring it to you and then you can bring it to somebody you trust keep your devices updated with the software Patches from the manufacturers Mac the Apple they keep pushing out software uh updates and that type of thing keep them updated for the security and just be leer don’t send money to someone you have never met that’s correct don’t respond to those popups that say here click this link don’t give anybody remote access to your computer okay I I just thought a question for you and there’s just a number
00:34:05 of things that we can do to help each other out I’m I’m gonna go out we G close you out on these because this is the one that I just hit me when you were saying that the new thing that people are saying they people can call you with the AI saying that they done kidnapped the family member what does That’s Falling in your realm as well it does and we for that called the grandparents scem or grandparents matter fact is all coming to me now I got two more questions for you I’m old man sometimes it take me a minute to get warmed up the other one we’re g to talk about that one and
00:34:34 the other one I want to talk to you about before I let you get out of here what do they call it when they call your place and say Shantel Brown just happened to her she got SW all right so we gonna talk about swatting and let’s talk about those two okay yeah let’s start with the grandparents because that’s something that I did have my off so we do see that we have seen a number of those scams and again it’s buying for money so there may be somebody that calls using AI that says Grandma I I was in a car accident correct and I have to post a $5,000 Bond but it could also be
00:35:07 somebody claiming to be an attorney or somebody from a court system or a bail bondsman calling and saying that same thing hey your grandson was in a car accident and they need $5,000 to postp on and so again it’ll be strange ways to pay that cash app or through gift cards when if you ever had to pay a court fee through gift cards that’s correct you don’t have to it could be through cryptocurrency we have seen in some cases where they will send a money mual to your house to pick the money up and we’ve had success in those second pickups because in that particular case
00:35:40 here in this District they got the first round of money and they called the grandparent back and said the person that your grandson hit died and so now they use the term super felony which there’s not a thing but wow they use the term super felony and it scared the grandmother oh he’s involved than a fatality now we need $5,000 more dos and we’ll send somebody back thankfully that grandmother reached out to the police reached out to us and we were able to actually be there and meet them when they came to additional money from this wow wow so the grandparents gum does
00:36:13 happen the best thing to do is to reach out to other family members to find out is he’s claiming to be my grandson call somebody else hey are they okay are they in another country are they stuck somewhere or whatever try to get more facts don’t ever send money there there other ways to run that down th just think man somebody just sit there all day and just figure I’m gonna just keep calling till I get somebody to answer the phone and I’m gonna run this scam thinking like you say that D can easily just call another relative to say hey is oh and so is okay or anything and
00:36:45 they’ll do that all day until they get somebody and we’ve had where they do that secondary check and they’ll say yeah I’m sitting with them right now they’re fine why and that is something we would want them to at least report anyway even though it was an attempt it didn’t work we them to report because the phone number’s used the name’s used whether they spoke with an accent those typ those types of things would be important what was that you was having l no I’m saying that grandparents scam happened to my parents and they tried to do it with my son saying that you told me
00:37:16 that he was in an accident and he was out of town and first they said Massachusetts and then they changed it to Indiana and that what that’s what kind of made me suspicious and I was able to stop them before they was trying to send them money that’s crazy they wanted cash and my dad only thing that saved him is he said I’ll pay it but I got to do it on the credit card it it’s going to take time to get cash so between that time I was able to check on where my son was and tell them don’t send the money wow okay we’ve seen egregious cases where they’re playing on stress like don’t
00:37:58 play a recording where there’s sirens in the background or someone purporting to be the grandson or granddaughter sounding like they’re hurt like and they play on that stress and they want to like the stress in that situation to make the victim make a brass decision and go for it and I think they did use AI before we even knew they were had that AI capability because my stepmother just is I know that was him I know his voice cuz my son has a very distinct voice like me softspoken kind of voice so there was no way she didn’t think that wasn’t him wow
00:38:36 know they say that one of the things you can do is have a what they say a safe word or some kind of word you have that you can give and ask them to ask them what that is which you I guess that’s what you’re gonna have to do it seemed like the only thing that matter because this looks really wild let’s talk about swatting a friend of ours Shantel Brown Congresswoman she’s a friend of ours and a friend of the show and everything she had got swatted I think about three weeks ago or so she was at home and they sent out the police and everybody so for the audience who don’t know what
00:39:08 swatting is won’t you tell everybody not swatting like we used to get in school there’s another term of swatting now you want tell us what swatting is yeah so swatting is something that’s alarmingly on the uptick that is when somebody calls local authorities and says there’s either a kidnapping or some ongoing violent crime or something body’s in distress at an address where there’s that’s not the case but they send a slat team basically wow to rapid response and get there um to make sure the people are safe but oftentimes it is not the case at all we’ve had FBI Executives swatted at
00:39:45 their homes where their families have been really pulled out into the front yard and you have to comply at that point until things get sorted out we’ve had agency heads get swatted at their homes it’s definitely technique that has grown had some success with the investigations often times these also result to overseas internet voiceover internet provider phones or that type of thing so just for the people how serious committing that crime is for the people committing it it’s very serious we had a federal case a few years back worked out of the Aon office in conjunction with
00:40:24 our Memphis office where the person’s house that they responded to he had a heart attack and died wow because a SWAT team broke his door down and in they thought they were rescuing somebody but it resulted in a death and the federal charges brought included an enhancement for causing the death so it’s very serious crime I think we’re going to see more and more prosecutions brought at the local level the state level on this because we need to start Prosecuting sometimes it is a juvenile doing it and sometimes it’s just an overseas Network that is using calls
00:40:58 an artificial intelligence to do it they very seldom come through the actual 911 call center or the police department’s phone number because they they are risk being traced so the speaking of juveniles and that when you mentioned that the juvenal that call school and and do the bomb threats because they don’t want to go to school is that us is that considered a f FBI type crime is that a federal crime so most of the time that is not going to be a federal crime but there’s appropriate State charges and we’ll often times work those together hand in hand with our local
00:41:33 Partners some of whom are Task Force officers assigned to us um but there there’s specific charges for inciting a panic or terroristic threats type of things so there’s appropriate State charges on that it’s very difficult to get juveniles charged at the federal level just uh through doj policy really cryptocurrency what the hell is it je I wish I could find it simply um there are some people that say it’s not a thing yeah I have no idea what the heck a cryptocurrency a Bitcoin or any of that is it’s just a way of transferring value and worth another way it’s
00:42:12 very quickly it’s faster than a wire transfer um faster than a check that type of thing um but it has to be value and worth for both ends the receiver and the sender or it’s not something physical that you can grab and hold in your hand that’s why I can’t understand it it’s pretty wild it’s a hard concept yeah but with the growth of cryptocurrency and has made some of these crimes that we talked about happen quicker and and able to access larger sums of value give give me some example of a cryptocurrency crime that you got get often well cryptocurrency can
00:42:47 be used a number of ways it can be used in a valid business sense to move money but it can also be used for ways that people launder money from another crime say it’s drug dealing and you $1,000 they buy $100,000 worth of bitcoin and then move it from W wallet to wallet and take it out on a different end and now it’s quote laundered money okay so to say but also in some of these crimes these frauds that we talked about that’s the way they’re requiring payment they’ll want you to buy Bitcoin which you can do at ATM machines um where you can then they want you to
00:43:20 buy crypto and pay them that way which again if they’re saying they’re from the government and you owe back taxes and they want crypto so it’s an absolute no it’s crazy so let me ask you there on the Bitcoin thing and I know you’re not a a person all but I had $100 I go there and I buy $100 worth of bitcoin basically and I can use that to some type of currency in that Bitcoin type of world is what you’re saying you can hold it as a as like a stock for instance and just I hold Bitcoin and Bitcoin just like the market goes up and down and when it’s up you can sell
00:43:54 it and when it’s down you can so if I put myund in this ATM it spit me out a Bitcoin it spits you out pass code and different information that you need you’d have to have a crypto wallet set up wow they’ll give me a code that I need to put into a wallet you have to have a wallet you would have a code and you would have certain ways that only you could access that really yeah until you and Bitcoin is just one there’s tether there’s daero there’s other method out there as well you think that’s the way of the future huh don’t but I will say in these types of crimes um when people
00:44:31 move money through crypto it moves quickly and it moves to different wallets now if we’re notified in the right amount of time we have had success getting some of it back think of the colonial pipeline that was a ransomware attack from another country that hit the colonial Pipeline and they did pay a ransom through cryptocurrency we were able to get almost all of it back because it was a timely notification and there steps that are C crypto currency experts in our office know what to do so any um advice you got for people in that crypto thing that’s looking at somebody
00:45:05 ask them if you don’t know about it I guess you should really be cautious about cautious is right and if somebody says there’s investment frauds involving crypto and you may have had heard the term pick butchering yeah that’s a crypt based investment fraud where somebody says we have a chance now to make a lot of money and high yield Returns on the volatility of crypto so if you invest this money with me now we’re going to make a lot of money in a short time just leery of that type of thing make sure you’re researching who you’re investing with um investment brokerages
00:45:36 have histories you can look the SEC the Federal Trade Commission the Better Business Bureau just even online documents that show a history of being in business so anytime anybody approaches you with crypto number one i’ be Leery and want to do more research and want interat up more about it what’s the big crime that’s going on now in that ARA it used to be they always had something that was going in those type of crimes where people were always doing these type of Fast Money schemes and that kind of stuff so what’s going on now what’s big happening now yeah the pig butchering that we
00:46:09 mentioned where it starts as a relationship again it’s that trust building up trust and then again saying I have an opportunity for you to make a lot of money okay really quickly so as you and I know it’s it’s too good to be true it’s probably too good to be true and makes the the hair on the back of your neck stand up take a PM okay do your research before doing it but any of the types of crimes that we see involving crypto they move quickly and if you’re a victim of that what number they reach out to reach out to call 1800 call FBI or you can use that website i.gov
00:46:43 gotcha yeah absolutely excellent what are some of the things you said you think or other tips that you think we ought to give out to folks as it relates to tips that they can do as it relates to trying to help preserve themselves from being a victim of some of this absolutely aside from the things we talked about one of the things we would like them to do is to save any of the phone numbers the emails the text they got recordings anything like that to preserve that type of evidence uh so that it can be provided to law enforcement for investigation any bank records
00:47:14 any receipts of they were required to go to the bank we have victims that are required to go to the bank and withdraw several thousand dollars at a time keep those receipts um anything that shows transactions we want to be able to get our hands on excellent aent Johnston I appreciate you you here very well on the show what we do on our show though when we close it out man we give you opportunity to look right here at this camera and you get to say whatever you want to say now I’m gonna tell you what I love for you to do is make sure you give out all that information how
00:47:41 they can reach you guys again that last bit that you just talked about any other tips or trades you think that you want people to understand and do because we put that in a little separate little video and I’m G shoot you that almost like a little promo if you go there you go thanks Ken it was a pleasure to be with your audience and we appreciate you helping us get these important words out number one we would encourage people to talk to people they trust and be able to bring suspicious activities or problems to them at any time number two we do want people to contact the
00:48:10 FBI at 1 1800 call FBI or ic3.gov and to preserve any evidence they might have any phone calls text messages emails Bank transaction that type of thing and number three just take pause if you’re getting unsolicited requests online for contact emails popups text messages take pause in that don’t click any links and if something’s too good to be true it probably is so take your time do your research and just never send money to people you don’t know hey everybody we’re going to have all the links in the descriptions on where you can get more information about how you can
00:48:48 protect yourself from cyber crime sextortion white coll crime or any of those other things that agent Johnston has in his Division and he’s there to serve us here in Greater Cleveland look in the descriptions for any of that information and we’ll see you on the next show peace