Pierogi exposes a $65 million global fraud empire, detailing how hackers exploit Havala transfers and AI voice changers to steal billions annually. He recounts infiltrating Kolkata call centers, tracking bosses like Rajesh Koenka, while battling extradition hurdles that delayed takedowns by nearly 400 days. The episode connects these scams to broader national security threats, including biological weapon smuggling and Huawei infrastructure vulnerabilities, arguing that algorithmic tribalism and bot networks suppress independent thought. Ultimately, the discussion warns that without better government cooperation and digital hygiene, victims remain powerless against an evolving landscape of state-sponsored cyber warfare and manufactured realities. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Terrorizing Scammers Overseas00:14:14
So, how did you get into terrorizing scammers?
That's a good question, man.
I guess we have some time, so I don't have to give a short answer, right?
No, you don't get to.
Do you have a plane that leaves today?
Yeah, but it's like, it's super late, so we'll be fine.
Cool.
Yeah, like I was actually at my, this is funny, like my origin story, I guess, because when I think about it, You would think it's like some crazy kind of a thing.
My grandma got scammed or somebody took a bunch of money or whatever.
But I was actually at my brother in law's house and we were sitting there over dinner and he goes, Hey, check this out.
And I'm like, Okay.
You know, I thought he's really into cars and stuff.
So I'm like, I'm not a car guy, but he's like, I thought it was going to be cars.
And he goes, No, it's this guy that calls these scammers on the internet and he messes with them.
I was like, Okay, I'll check it out because I'm a tech guy.
So, you know, it's kind of interesting to me.
So I get on there and these guys are yelling at him and I'm like, This is chaos.
It's beautiful.
So I stayed up to like four in the morning watching these videos on YouTube of this guy calling scammers up.
And then the next night, I stayed up till four in the morning watching this guy call scammers up.
And I had a cybersecurity background.
So I was like, I could probably do this as well.
And so I went home and I got a microphone and started calling scammers.
I'd wake up at like four in the morning, call scammers, and then I would do my job, worked in cybersecurity for like a pre-IPO startup company.
And then, after I was done working, I would call scammers at nighttime.
And I did this like over and over again and started recording it, putting it on YouTube, and kind of the rest is history.
So, you didn't do any YouTube stuff before this?
You just decided to do it for fun on your own?
Yeah, it was like, you know, everybody wants to be a content creator or whatever, you know?
And, but for me, I was really intrigued because this was like, this is my space.
I had no idea that there's scammers out here doing all this stuff for whatever reason, because I was so into like enterprise security.
So, like nation state, actors going after you know hospitals and governments and stuff like that.
So that was my world.
And then there's this whole.
I had no idea about it.
There's this whole like consumer security side that nobody talks about ever so people.
You know grandma getting scammed.
You know a kid in college gets a call up from the Social Security Administration and then they end up wire transferring 35 000 to a scammer overseas.
Or you know, everybody hears like the Nigerian prince and stuff like that.
Yeah, but there's other really gnarly scams that are going on out there and it's like a 10 billion dollar industry And it's not going anywhere.
So I had no idea about it.
I found out about this and I'm like, this is so interesting.
So I figured I would use my, you know, my expertise, I guess, and my experience and utilize some of these enterprise security skills in this space and like go after it.
And then, you know, it was fun making content as well.
And it just kind of blew up from there.
So before you started doing this stuff, you worked for a company that was like a government contractor or something like this.
So I worked for various like tech companies out of college.
And one of them was Norton.
Which is or Symantec, which does the Norton antivirus.
And so I worked in that space with like antivirus and like they did backup, which is like enterprise backup systems.
And then one of my mentors brought me into like email security.
So essentially, what we would do is protect governments, businesses, hospitals, you name it, any kind of company that wants to protect their networks and stuff from these phishing attacks.
So there's like super sophisticated phishing attacks, like where they will target someone's LinkedIn.
See what they like for college football and send them a targeted phishing attack, hack their computer, then they have access to the entire network.
They could steal data, whatever it may be.
So I was like super hyper focused on that.
I moved over into kind of the startup security world.
There's like so much money in startup, right?
These pre IPO companies at Silicon Valley are just funneling billions into startup and then they go IPO.
So I was working in that space because it was super hot at the time.
This was like 2012, 2013.
And I was kind of honing my craft.
I was learning more about what makes the world go in the security space because it was super interesting to me.
Like, for instance, when Target had a huge data breach in 2013, and essentially hackers had gotten access to all their point of sale systems.
And they put malware on there and Target actually knew that there was malware, but they didn't know how to find it.
There are so many things like, think of it like a Christmas tree with a bunch of lights on it and they didn't know which one to go for first.
And the way that the hackers got in was they actually, and this is crazy to think about because we heard the story from the FBI, they got in through a third party vendor.
So they had like a refrigerator vendor that had access in the Target stores and they hacked those guys to get into their network and they secured their way through that.
Because those guys had access to their network.
That's genius.
Yeah.
An access agent.
Yeah.
So, like, if you're known as a good guy inside of your network, then you can do nefarious things as a good guy.
So, that's how they got to their point of sale.
Anyway, I learned so many different things from hospital systems, even down here in Florida, that deal with insulin pumps.
Somebody could hack them because they're connected to a network and somebody could die from it.
Or, you know, obviously, like nation states going after governments and things like that.
You know, we try to protect.
You know, the data of everybody out there, and there's just so much going on.
So, I learned a lot in the enterprise security space and just how crazy it was.
And it's not a matter of, you know, if it's a matter of when.
So, I worked in this email security space and I went to endpoints, which is like, you know, a physical laptop, a phone that's endpoint security.
So, how do you protect a phone from getting hacked?
How do you protect a server from getting hacked?
How do you protect a desktop from getting hacked?
Because once they get on there, once a hacker gets on there, and we utilize a lot of this in our world and how against scammers, you can hide yourself pretty well and nobody can find you.
It doesn't matter what you have on that computer.
Nobody can find you.
Really?
Yeah.
Do you so do you now only make entertainment going after scammers or do you actually like help anybody?
Do you still help people at all or no?
No, in 2020, I decided decided to kind of hang the boots up and just do content full time.
Right.
It was it was a big juggle because it's like half a million subscribers and you're growing and all these kinds of things and kind of starting to run a business on the weekends essentially.
And then you're doing your regular job.
So it's too much work going on.
Oh, yeah.
And I actually got kind of the turning point was I got a message from Jim Browning, who's another guy in the space.
So Jim and then Mark Rober.
I'm sure you know Mark Rober.
I've heard of him.
Yeah.
Another big YouTuber.
And they had a project and they invited me on it where we were actually kind of like baiting these scammers into sending money mules out.
And there's this whole like money laundering ring that goes on we can talk about.
Yeah.
And so we did a project with Mark where we sent glitter bombs to these money mules.
And it actually.
It actually made its way and got somebody in Texas arrested.
This lady got arrested.
She was thinking she was collecting like $50,000 and she picked up a glitter bomb.
She was in an Airbnb and she'd been collecting parcels or cash boxes for like a week there.
So she rents the Airbnb, she goes there, collects money, and then launders it somewhere else and gets a cut out of it.
So we had like private eyes following people around, like high speed car chases.
When we talk about the money laundering that goes on, it's like a nine figure.
Problem in the US that, like, there's huge crime rings that we've uncovered.
Really?
From calling scammers overseas has led to some crazy stuff.
So how are these scammers overseas linked to organized crime in the U.S. and who's laundering whose money?
Yeah, it's really crazy because it starts with like a phone call, right?
Do you want me to go kind of through how the scam works itself?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So like traditionally the original scam was like a pop-up scam.
So you're on your computer and you're surfing the web and all of a sudden you get this error code on your screen.
And it says it's Microsoft, there's a virus on your computer, you need to call support.
Now, the origin of this comes from their call centers overseas in like India, for instance.
And they were legitimate call centers, like help desk call centers where they help fix, you know, computer problems and things like that.
So I had an insider guy that I've talked with before, and he said, like, here's the thing you have Nike shoes, for instance, and you scuff them up and you want to go get them fixed.
You could go to Nike and it's going to be really expensive, or you could go to my shop on the corner and it'll be.
You know, 90% less than what it would be at Nike, if that makes sense.
Right.
So they started just being cheaper tech support.
But then from there, they were like, well, what if we could force people to start coming to our support based off of a fake premise?
So that's where these pop ups started.
So they would create pop ups to go on people's computers.
So they're like a grandma surfing the web.
She gets, she's on Facebook.
These scammers have figured out ways to pretty much buy ad space and, you know, serve these pop ups.
You know, there's malware on websites and stuff like that, but it'll serve these pop ups.
And then grandma gets a pop up.
She calls these scammers up.
They tell her she has a virus on her computer.
The problem is, there's no virus, it's a trick.
So they've told them it used to start with, like, hey, you have a virus, we'll clean your computer for like 500 bucks.
So that was like the original game.
That's what they used to do.
And then it evolved over the years.
And this is like probably a multi decade problem now that this was just in the shadows.
Nobody really ever talked about it.
Then it evolved to, hey, we're the computer company.
We're calling you up because we're actually going to refund you your money.
We're going out of business.
It sounds really crazy, but this is one of their best scams that they do.
So they call up the grandma and they say, Hey, we are Norton, for instance, or Amazon or PayPal.
We're going out of business.
We're going to refund you a charge on your account.
So let's say it's like $300.
So what they do is they connect onto grandma's computer and they're giving her a refund of her money back into her account.
Right.
So track with me here.
Right.
Right.
So $300 is supposed to go back in grandma's account.
What they do is because they have access to the granny's computer.
They can manipulate her screen.
So she logs into her bank account.
They have software on her computer.
Like TeamViewer or something like that?
Yeah, TeamViewer, a bunch of all these different remote tools.
So they load TeamViewer on there and they hide the screen so she can't see anything.
And that $300 now becomes $30,000, however much she has in her account.
They can manipulate the bank to look a certain way.
So they get her to log into her bank account?
Yep.
Got it.
Okay.
And this is just for the refund purposes.
They'll lie and say, hey, we don't see anything, but they see everything.
So, the trusting grandma that's like 83 years old, she's like, okay, you can have access to my $400,000 account.
Right.
So, they see that and then they're like, okay, ma'am, no, we actually, instead of $300,000, we gave you $30,000 or $300,000.
You need to actually give us that money back as soon as possible.
And what they're doing is they're just like tricking the system and they're transferring money between like a savings and a checking account.
So, grandma goes to the bank.
She takes out the $30,000, the $300,000, whatever the dollar amount is.
And then she used these money launderers.
So, like the cash pickup I was talking about.
They convinced them to drive to the local branch and pull out cash.
Yes.
That's insane.
And they like, we have it's honestly unbelievable when you tell the like, when I tell these stories back, it doesn't seem real.
And we have like a lot of people in our videos, like in the comments, where they say, it's like kind of like shaming somebody, like, how could you fall victim to that?
But it's there, they sound preposterous, but it happens every single day, every single day.
And granny's going to the bank and they're telling her, hey, lie to the bank and tell the bank branch that you're buying a house or you're buying a car or you're putting your kid in college or something.
Right.
And they're taking out huge amounts of cash.
And they're either transferring it into Bitcoin, buying gift cards, giving cash to somebody else, or they're buying gold bars now.
Yeah.
Dude, I told this story a couple of days ago on the podcast, actually, because this happened to me a couple of months ago.
I was trying to, and I bank with like one of the top three banks in the U.S., and I was trying to transfer a significant amount of money from one of my checking accounts to Coinbase.
And I went first of all.
I just tried to do the wire online, didn't work.
Went to the local branch, brought my ID, everything.
Sat down with the guy.
I'm like, Hey, I need to wire this amount of money from this checking account to this account on my Coinbase account.
Like, oh, okay, cool.
What's the doodle?
Did the whole thing.
Yeah, okay, see you later.
It should go through or whatever.
I get a call two hours later from the bank.
They're saying, Hey, this is the fraud department.
We want to confirm this, this, and this.
How did you find out about uh Coinbase?
Uh, how long have you known about crypto?
What was the color of your first car?
What's your sperm count?
Like, everything.
And I answer all the questions, and then two hours later, Declined.
You can't do it.
Go back to the bank the next day.
I'm like, dude, I need to wire this money.
And they're like, okay, we'll try it again.
I don't know what's going on.
Long story short, I end up going to the actual branch like six times to try to wire that money.
And every single time I got kicked bad by the fraud department.
And they were like, they were asking me these obscure questions like, what year did you first learn about Coinbase?
What type of crypto are you buying?
Like all these weird questions.
And I almost got the sense that they just didn't want me to take money out of my account.
They wanted money, they didn't.
Want me to take money out of my checking account for their bank.
And eventually, like a month later, I was finally able to get the wire to go through, but it was exhausting.
Yeah.
The Havala Money Transfer Trap00:03:46
So we listen in on phone calls of these scams that are happening.
I could actually pull one up if you want later on.
And a lot of times these banks will just, there's no excuse, they'll just let it happen.
So I'm very surprised that they put you through so many hoops.
But usually it's like they just go in and get the cash out immediately.
And I've seen wire transfers that are in seven figures.
I've seen they're having victims buy gold bars now, like gold bullion and like ordering it.
And these scammers are showing up at these victims' houses and collecting like however many ounces of gold.
These scammer companies that are based overseas, they will have proxies in the U.S. in every state they can contact.
Yes.
That's so crazy.
Yeah, it's called Havala, which is like an kind of an ancient money transfer, not ancient, but you know, it's like a tried and true money transfer system.
And Havala is a way in like kind of these Asian countries, it's all built off of trust and they kind of keep a ledger.
So you have like party A and party B.
And obviously, you know, if one is in the US and one is in India, they can't physically transfer the money necessarily.
So they keep this ledger amongst each other.
But now with like crypto and stuff, it's getting a lot easier for them to do it.
But before with like cash or gift cards, It was like, hey, you have a victim in the US, you have a money launderer in like California, a lot of them are in California and New York, and then you have a scammer in India.
So, scammer in India scamming $50,000 from this granny.
So, she sends a box of $50K to California.
That guy takes 20% and then puts it in an account overseas, and it's all hidden from the government.
So, they don't pay taxes.
They don't obviously get in trouble.
It's like I said, we uncovered, it's still under investigation.
So, I can't say all the specifics, but it's a nine figure ring that does this.
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Shame and Suicide in Scams00:15:40
The network that is out in the States that does this, they're a well oiled machine.
And again, they have people driving, and these are foreign nationals that are driving all around the U.S. in rental cars, Airbnbs.
They're flying people around to pick up cash, gold bars, gift cards, and send crypto back and forth.
And it's all under the nose.
Of the government, they use our U.S. banks against us, they use our shipping companies.
I won't name any companies, but you name a company, they use them, and nobody knows like nobody can stop it.
Well, we can stop it, but does the FBI ever like reach out to you, like, yo, we need your help, we can't figure this out, we need to crack this?
Yeah, they've shown up at my office before.
Uh, you're gonna show up unannounced, yeah?
Like, we had the first people's call center, and I met with an agency, I won't say who it was, but.
I had an agency show up and, you know, they kind of played like the toughball thing with me.
Like, we know what you're doing.
Cause, you know, we live in a gray area, what I do.
Cause I used to just do like prank calls and stuff.
Right.
And one day I decided to just like go all in, you know.
So, so I'm like, I'm just going to go after these guys.
So, so what did these people say to you when they came to your place?
They pretty much said, we want to come to your office.
We want to set up a server and we want you to send us all your information.
Was there at least any pay involved?
No.
What?
They said, like, you'll be a mole for free?
Yeah.
And they were like, I was like, well, okay, just hear me out.
Like, first off, is there any, like, you're going to give me any information back?
Because, for instance, the biggest thing for me is we've run across so many victims.
So, if I'm going to give you information on a bad guy or a victim, like something that's currently happening, like a grandma just wire transferred $250,000 on her Chase account, they can actually stop that if I get it in time, which is amazing.
So, we've stopped some huge wire transfers.
But I want to know at least tell me that my granny's okay.
Right.
Because I can't.
So, we work with somebody now on the law enforcement side that's actually really chill, really good.
And they give some good feedback to me.
But at first, it was like, we're going to set up a server.
And they're probably mad at me for saying this anyway, but whatever.
But like, we're going to set up a server and you're going to send us all this information and we're not going to tell you anything.
I'm like, what is that?
Right.
Like, okay.
And then they're like, can we come to your office now?
And I said, no.
At least like buy me lunch or something.
Yeah, do something.
So like I don't get paid by the government or anything like that.
I, we just want to help people out and we want to catch bad guys.
Now at some point though, like it's great to help granny or grandpa from losing their money.
Like once it gets to like criminal, like the criminals, I don't touch that.
Obviously like I'm not an agent or anything like that.
It just goes to them and they do their thing.
So I stay away because, like, the money laundering rings are ridiculous.
Like, you know, there's scammers in India, and if we hack their computers, that's one thing because they're just, they just want like money.
But if you have this gnarly crime ring in the US, I keep my hands off of that stuff.
So, what specifically is the crime ring in the US specifically dependent on those scammers?
Are they touching a bunch of other different stuff, like cartels and all kinds of other stuff?
There's a whole slew of other stuff, man.
Really?
So, like drugs, weapons, drugs, all kinds of things.
And they're foreign nationals that are here on student visas, all sorts of things.
From like what countries?
China.
Oh, yeah, I would guess China would be a huge one.
China is a huge one.
And so they've got countries that don't like us.
And they've got people here on school visas and stuff like that.
And they have non citizens that are doing a lot of these crimes.
And we've caught a bunch of them.
And They have all have fake IDs.
Do they have trafficking?
I don't know.
I, I, it might, there might be that, but these guys always play dumb whenever we catch them.
And they have everything set up burner phones, fake IDs.
Yeah.
They're driving rental cars, they're staying in Airbnbs, fake names, code words, and they all coordinate with these scammers like overseas.
So they coordinate through like third party.
There's websites where you can like essentially say, Hey, I have this much cash.
Can you give me crypto?
For this cash, like if I send you 50,000 in cash, will you give me you know X amount of crypto?
Or if I send you 10,000 in gift cards, will you send me crypto?
So that's kind of where it starts.
Um, but there's huge groups out here that's doing it.
I mean, it's it's crazy.
Like, we we actually had a we infiltrated this one, it's like a banking scam where uh they pretend like your account has been hacked, and essentially, there's charges on your bank account that are um, I don't even like to say it.
It's like the most disgusting thing.
Uh, there's certain websites that are like super illegal that they're saying grandma and grandpa have these charges on their bank account, uh, CP essentially.
Yeah, and like because I have to deal with these scammers, so I have to hear them say it's disgusting.
And what they do is they wipe out people's entire accounts.
They get that, like one of the guys we one of the victims we just met up with, they were asking him if he likes his mortgage and stuff and refinancing his home and getting like equity loans and stuff out to pay back scammers.
To like give them money.
Oh.
Because he's been hacked and all this stuff on a fake, it's all a trick.
They're playing on people's emotions.
So, the government is definitely very interested when they do those kinds of allegations and use that.
And then they pretend to be the FTC, they pretend to be the FBI, they pretend to be all these three letter agencies.
And it's the billions of dollars, the billions of dollars that get stolen every single year.
It's nauseating.
And the victims, dude, they're afraid to say anything.
Right.
Like, they're embarrassed.
Yeah.
They lose everything.
Like, people have lost, they've taken their lives.
Really?
Yes.
Taken their lives.
Over what?
Oh, just losing everything they've had.
And they're just like so depressed.
Like, imagine being 80 years old and you gave away everything.
You have no job.
You have no future.
Right.
And there's nothing, there's nothing law enforcement can do to get your money back.
Yeah.
Like, the banks don't do anything.
Right.
Law enforcement.
So you have this is one of the problems.
These scammers use our institutions against us.
So they use our banking against us.
They use shell companies.
They use our shipping.
They use our rental car companies.
They use Airbnb.
They use everything against us, all under our nose without anybody knowing.
So what happens is Granny loses $100,000 and she calls her local police up.
And they create a police report and they go out to her house and they go to the bank.
And then XYZ Bank says, Hey, yeah, you willingly took that money out.
Like, what can we do?
And then what happens is the money trail is gone because she handed physical money to somebody.
And then that guy, fake identity, obviously, takes that money and goes and puts it in crypto or something and it's gone.
Right, right.
What incentives does the bank have to catch this criminal?
They just want, they don't want to have to pay you back money that was stolen from you.
What are they going to do?
They don't care about you.
It's all a risk thing for the banks.
Like, how do we mitigate?
Yeah, exactly.
How do we mitigate?
From getting sued, or there's been a couple cases, but they always put their hands up and say, Well, it's your money, you're the one that took it out.
Wasn't there a case of some hackers that got extradited to the US?
Yes, in like somewhere in Africa or something.
Yes, what was that story?
Yeah.
So there was, they're called sextortionists.
So there's a lot of these call centers.
So we go after Indian call centers a lot, but they're call centers in different countries, obviously.
And this was a call center in Africa, and they were targeting teenagers.
So, what they do is they get them on these social platforms and start messaging, you know, things like that.
I've gotten them before.
Yeah.
So, I get like a Twitter account of like some girl, some young girl who has, she's following 4,000 people and she has 200 followers.
And she's like, hey, cutie.
Right.
Yeah.
Like trying to bait you into like, yeah, one so dumb.
One tweet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so they get these people on like Snapchat and stuff like that.
They're messaging with them.
They send pictures and then they ask for pictures back.
And then They say, Hey, we got you.
We've got your nudes or whatever.
And we're going to send it out to your entire friends list or all the people you know.
And if you don't give us money, we're going to send it out right now.
Your life will be ruined, et cetera, et cetera.
And the teenagers are in such shame.
There is one, I think he was in Wisconsin, and he ended up taking his life.
And they don't tell their parents because they're in such shame.
It's like the, again, if anything, I, I want people to know that this is not about like a couple hundred dollars in gift cards anymore.
It's like, not to be too dramatic, but it is life and death.
Like, people are taking their lives because of the shame that is involved with these scams.
And to target, you know, teenagers that they don't have any money in the first place.
And to target them from the sextortion route of like, give us money or else, give us $200, give us another.
And what they do is like they get that first 100 or 200, then it's give us 300, give us 300 more, give us 400.
And then they start to ratchet up like the attacks of like, hey, you know, this is your mom's name, this is your dad's name, this is your address.
Right.
And the kids can't, they don't know how to mentally understand.
Like, can't even handle social media.
Like, how do you handle somebody extorting you out of that money as a teenager?
Right.
Yeah.
Two Nigerian hackers were extradited to the U.S. to face charges related to sextortion ring that led to the suicide of a 17 year old Michigan high school student, Jordan DeMay.
The brothers were extradited on August 13, 2023, and entered not guilty pleas during their arraignments.
Jesus Christ.
They targeted over 100 victims.
Um, DeMay's being the most tragic.
That's so crazy, dude.
Like, if.
When I'm on phone calls with scammers, none of the stuff that they say bothers me.
I've been doing it for six years now.
You heard everything.
I've heard them say the most ridiculous things.
They don't bother me.
But when I think about what made me change to go from prank calls into this more, I guess, offensive approach, somebody has to do it.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, of course.
So, like, Is here like the victim stories and stuff like this?
Like, it somebody has to fight back, and that's why we call like taking the fight to these guys, joining the fight against these guys, because it's a it's literally everyday battle, it's like good versus evil.
And a lot of people will say, Yes, it's like maybe like underprivileged countries and stuff like that, but there's got to be a different way, like, yeah, there's got to be a different way to make money.
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Back to the show.
I got one a couple months ago where it was just an email.
And it was this long email that basically said the dude was trying to tell me he has video of me from my webcam jacking off on camera, watching porn or something like this.
And he's going to release it to the whole world.
Yep.
Send me money to Bitcoin.
Oh, God.
Yeah, exactly.
Send me this money or else everyone's going to see this.
All your loved ones are going to see this.
And I was just like, and it was so, it's like such an arrogant email.
The dude was like, he was just being such a dick in the email.
I just, I mean, it smelled such bullshit.
And what I do when I get emails like that, I'll go on Reddit.
Sure.
And I was like, copy and paste the subject line.
And then usually you'll see like tons of threads, be like, oh, yeah, I've gotten these.
100%.
Yeah.
We like to take those and send links back to them that hopefully they click on and then we can see their computer.
So that's amazing.
Yeah.
We like to flip the script on them a lot.
And I think part of like our channel is obviously called Scammer Payback.
So it's one thing to protect people, but to get payback at some of these guys, like exposing them and like we'll get on their cameras and we'll show their faces.
And we'll show their Instagram and we'll show them flaunting money.
Dude, the one that you did, the one I forgot which one it was, I forget who the guy's name, but you did one I watched last night of this dude.
You got onto his webcam and then you were like just terrorizing him for weeks to where he just had to shut his laptop down for like four weeks.
You know, it's fun, man, because like they don't suspect it.
Yeah.
And then all of a sudden, like imagine you're sitting here, it's like three in the morning because they're like 10 and a half hours ahead of us.
It's three in the morning.
You're trying to get $20,000 from somebody.
And all of a sudden, your laptop, the little light goes on.
And you're like, well, that's, but that's me.
I'm turning the camera on because I'm taking your picture.
And the next day, maybe he doesn't think anything of it.
The next day, he's trying to scam somebody, and all of a sudden, we start talking through his computer to him.
Can you imagine how freaked out you would be?
And then on top of that, and you're like talking to him in like a muffled, like, terror, terrifying sounding way from my computer through his computer.
We can talk to him, we can do all sorts of things.
Imagine we could find your exact location.
In a matter of minutes, I just get on the phone with you.
You think that you're connecting to my computer, but we got a connection back to yours like within seconds.
And then we can find out exactly where you are.
So, anywhere in the world, we can find your coordinates within minutes.
So, we find these guys, and like India is starting to come around where we collect information on these guys and then send it over.
And then they'll go and like raid some of these places and get these guys arrested.
So, the Indian authorities actually crack down on it?
Yeah.
They're trying because a lot of it is like saving face, in my opinion.
Because the YouTubers in this space, we put a lot of pressure on scammers, especially these.
There's some really big call centers.
Like, I don't know if you're familiar with Kolkata, India, but it's kind of near, it's in like West Bengal, which is like on the, I guess, the eastern side, not fully northeastern, but eastern side, like kind of near Bangladesh.
And Kolkata became this hub for scams.
Now, what happens is you have this rich call center boss that's in a huge, like a beautiful building, like, Big beautiful building, right?
And there's legitimate businesses running in the heart of Kolkata, and that's during the day.
And they have computers and phone systems, and they might be a marketing company or they might actually do like, you know, call center jobs where they take phone calls and stuff and help actual customers.
It's actual, like, a legitimate telemarketing.
Yes, legitimate.
You might be annoyed by it, but it's like legitimate, right?
And then at nighttime, it's 10 o'clock at night.
Nobody's working in India except for the scammers.
Kolkata's Beautiful Scam Hub00:15:23
So then that business flips to a scam call center at nighttime.
And you have a whole nother shift.
And these huge buildings and these huge businesses that are fronts for a scam operation that make the real money.
A thousand scammers in a building.
And nobody says anything about it.
Nobody does anything about it because there was a lot of corruption that was going on for many years.
So, a lot of the YouTubers, we started putting pressure on the city from a lot of our videos.
One of the videos that we did, myself, Jim Browning, Mark Rober, there's like hundreds of millions of views on our videos together.
And it highlighted.
These call center bosses and these buildings that were running these huge operations that were there making a lot of money.
You were able to figure out who the bosses were?
Yeah.
So there's a group of people that had insane access at the time to these guys' computers.
And we actually will even send somebody into the call center.
So this is like, what?
You film this?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, God.
Like, could you imagine they're on the phone trying to scam you and then like someone taps on their shoulder?
Yeah.
Hey, motherfucker.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like on the Mark, Mark Rober, he actually did some pranks inside one of the call centers.
So he had like roaches and all these kinds of things going throughout the call center and like fart spray and all the stuff.
So he did some of that.
But like all the jokes and pranks aside, we will actually have people in these call centers.
Like right now, myself and my team, we have 15 call centers around India that we're watching right now.
And this is, they're running various scams all day, every day.
And we, it's probably six or 700 computers.
of scammers over in India.
When you say you're watching them, do you mean you're just like, you're tracking everything they're doing on their computers or do you have like people on the ground there?
Yeah, we're tracking everything.
We watch their scams.
We do things to mess with them and troll with them.
So we play pranks on them ourselves and have fun.
We stop any kind of scam that's going on without kind of burning the operation.
Because really, the long term goal is to have India hopefully raid these call centers.
Like in Kolkata, what had happened was all this pressure was put on them.
And they ended up raiding these call centers and the bosses.
There's two bosses, two main ones.
One was named Rajesh Koenka and he ran a company called VRM.
Another was Kunal Gupta, out of Kolkata, and they had all these other companies.
So they had like a poker one.
Kunal had like a poker team and like a horse club and he had a hotel on the west side of India.
So he was moving all of his money obviously, and so is that a real estate guy.
Yeah, he turned into real estate and they seized all of his money.
So he had millions of dollars stolen money And they seized all of it and they're facing charges.
And I don't know what will happen with it, but at least there's some kind of justice that's happening.
So we're trying to replicate this.
We had another call center in December 23 that we got raided, and they were doing about a million dollars a month stealing from people.
Wow.
And this is the pop up scam that turns into the crazy stuff the, you know, crazy hackers on your bank account buying very illegal things on your bank account.
And they were just flipping money left and right.
They were stealing so much.
So we had their CCTV cameras.
We were watching their call center every day and CCT their security cameras and their buildings.
You hacked into those.
Dude, you guys are the real deal.
There are some.
So we have there's there's a group of like 40 of us.
And, um, but like I'll tell you, for instance, on this one.
So there's a person I was working with that got the initial CCTV.
Then there was a second they had multiple buildings.
So there's a second building that had a CCTV.
So, I was watching one of the guys, and some of our software allows for us to.
So, the guy that was like managing the CCTV, so we didn't have the password for that yet, but I was watching him for hours and hours and hours one day.
And I had a thing, it's called a keylogger.
It allows you to, you know, see their keystrokes.
So, he went into the CCTV and we saw his password copy, paste, log in, and then you get visibility.
So, we get to see these guys scamming.
We get to see when they come in, we could see when they leave.
Some of them actually.
Slept there and they're hiring, by the way, dude.
They're hiring this is the part that's so inhumane, in my opinion, because these call center bosses are hiring like poor people, poor people that are 18, 19 years old.
And these people they want to take care of their family, like legitimately.
And a lot of times it's it could be like even human trafficking.
Yeah, there's stories of that, but like they just want to take care of their mom and dad, right?
And they've been sold, you know, hey, come here and make this money.
And they get there and they've left their family behind, and now they're scamming people for like this call center that was doing like a million a month.
Their payroll for like 50 people was $7,500.
And these kids, I call them kids because they're 18, 19, they're like on drugs.
One of the kids overdosed, and his family was asking for the money that he was owed, and the bosses just like spat on them, didn't give them anything.
And they're living in these terrible conditions, taking advantage of desperate people, which is what the worst.
The worst operations, the worst criminal operations around the world consistently do.
Like the poaching problem in Africa.
It's the same thing.
It's just the poor, most desperate people trying to feed their kids that are starving.
Like, do I kill this endangered elephant or do I let my kid die?
Exactly.
And that's, it's a very, again, man, like as I was kind of thinking about this before, before I got here, like, cause I've been doing this for six years and this shift in what I've been doing from, you know, prank calling them and messing with the scammers and, you know, doing some funny videos.
Cause we try to bring some humor, but the actual, the gravity of the situation, man, like this is, there's people's lives that are, they're losing their lives here in the U S. They're losing everything in the U S.
And you got some bosses that are making millions, and then the poor people that are the frontline guys that are risking it all for pennies.
Right.
It's the problem that never seems to get solved in any aspect of the criminal underworld.
I have a good friend who's an attorney down here, and one of his biggest cases he ever did was this guy, this ship captain, who was a cargo ship captain driving a boat from Columbia to Tampa, right here.
And poor guy, just like a very low income Colombian ship captain.
And he got hijacked by pirates on the way here, cartel.
And they loaded his ship.
They basically held a gun to his head and said, We're going to murder you and your whole entire family unless you take this 500 tons of coke into the port of Tampa.
So, of course, he did it.
And then the prosecutors just tried to sentence him.
They didn't go after anybody but this guy.
And my lawyer friend ended up getting him off, letting him stay at his house for like six months while they were working the case or whatever.
But now he represents a lot of these people in this drug trafficking cartel world with Mexico and South America and all this.
And he's now like, he's representing the heads of these cartels, like going, like meeting them at like, he'll meet them at some random Ritz-Carlton somewhere in South America.
And he'll go up and like talk to them and do all this stuff.
And these guys never get in trouble.
They never get caught.
They never go to prison.
And all of these.
Poor people, like these fishermen and these people that just get caught up and have no other choice but to traffic drugs for them, are the ones that end up in prison.
Like the vast majority of them.
Yeah.
And I mean, that's a good point because, you know, we've tried to highlight these bosses.
Like that's, they're getting smarter too because they see the videos that we do because we're like, we try to show everything that we can.
And like this call center that was in, it's Lujiana, which is in the Punjab area.
It's kind of in between like Pakistan and India.
It's on the Indian side, but it's in Punjab.
And Come to find out, one of the owners was literally like a congressman in the city.
No way.
And then the other owner, we got him arrested.
There's actual documentation.
Like it was on the TV news, like the police raided all this stuff.
It was a huge thing.
And the owner, his name is Sanpreet Singh.
He actually, his grandfather was the mayor of Lugiana.
So the mayor of the city and a congressman.
Like, you can't make, like, so they're making a million dollar U.S.
A month.
Yes.
And we have all, we had all of the, we have so much evidence on these guys.
And this is the hardest part, like what you're talking about, getting these guys in trouble because this is a whole other country.
And they have unlimited wealth and resources.
And my, what I've heard back is like some countries will not extradite their people.
They just won't, like not as friendly with us.
Even if we have like slam dunk evidence.
So we're dealing.
That's what CIA extradition teams.
For sure, yeah, like go get those, we'll show you their location, yeah.
But it's like, you know, the interesting thing about it is like, I was learned, I had to learn so much about this.
I went from prank calling to like, why can't we go get these guys?
And they're having, like, the government's having to tell me, like, hey, like, there's a whole process in India.
And actually, the judicial process, I guess, in India is very different than the U.S. See, you need to start working with like some ex paramilitary, like, SEAL team guys and just get them to just go off.
You guys fund it yourselves.
They can just go kidnap these guys and drop them off in fucking the North, the South Pole or something.
Yeah.
It's like, yeah, go do an Antarctica expedition and see if the wall's out there, you know?
But like, Man, it's crazy because I didn't even know.
Like, I thought, like, you just go to CBI, which is like the FBI of India, and just tell them, hey, this is going on.
Go get them.
Like, don't you care?
And they're like, no, no, this is not how it works.
You have to start local, which is very weird to me.
So, you have to start almost backwards to build up a case for CBI to go do something.
That was the feedback I was given.
That's crazy.
So, it took us 389 days to get this one call center.
So, 389 days, I had to go into the office.
I had to watch them quietly.
So we had like 60 to 80 computers, which is very difficult to watch to see if somebody's getting scammed on each computer.
Think about that.
They had 60 to 80 computers?
So they had different scammers in different buildings working.
So you're trying to collect evidence on scams that are happening so you can build up a case because they also want actual victims too.
So if I save somebody, they're not a victim anymore.
Okay.
One of the worst things.
Is when, like, we hack a scammer's computer and I go on there and there's a wire transfer for $78,000, like two months ago, because I'm too late.
I can't do anything.
I have this guy's computer, but Granny already lost everything and she can't get it back.
It's just gone forever.
Right.
So you're trying to build this case against these guys.
And at the end of the day, you have to have actual victims, at least three, for them to start working.
Because then you have to go back and you have to get, Statements.
So you have to have the victim actually agree to make a statement that they've been scammed, even though we just have a slam dunk of evidence.
There's all of this.
And then you're, again, you're working with another country.
So their rules are different than ours.
Yeah.
And they don't extradite them to the U.S.
I don't know why.
Maybe it's not enough in their eyes or it's not what's on everyone's radar, I guess.
How many people every year get scammed?
So you said it was $10 billion a year.
FBI put a report out for $10 billion.
And that $10 billion, is that specifically?
People in the US getting money stolen from them?
Yes, that's just the US.
Why wouldn't the US government care about that?
And that's just, that's not even like, so I don't even touch like romance scammers and like, I don't touch or crypto scammers that are like out of like Eastern Europe and stuff like that.
I don't touch any of that.
Why?
Because that's a whole other level.
That is like, like the shit, the Ukrainian scammers and stuff like that.
Yeah, like there's like, I was out in this like global scam conference in Portugal last year.
And there is a prosecutor from Germany.
They went after a call center in Georgia, not U.S. Georgia, but Georgia.
And they were crypto finance scammers and ridiculous numbers, ridiculous organized crime that you don't want to mess with.
I don't want to mess with.
I'm just like a, at the end of the day, I'm a YouTuber, right?
Yeah.
I'm one guy.
We've got a few guys on our team, but like.
What makes them so much more advanced?
They are willing to.
They're not just so.
I think like the Indian scammers, they are they just are powered by money and they're they'll talk a game, but they're not really like not like the Mexican drug cartels that'll like do something to you, right?
So I kind of equate like that and uh some of the Eastern European uh you know scammers that are out there, they're pretty right, a little bit more muscle, yeah, a little bit more muscle, like you know, get you at your kneecaps kind of thing.
Wow.
Yeah.
I had a friend, or not a friend, I don't know if he wasn't my friend, he came on the podcast a few years ago.
This dude named John Boziak, who lived in Miami, and he was doing credit card scams.
I forget exactly how it worked, but he was working with a lot of Ukrainian hackers.
Yeah.
And like somehow stealing people's credit cards and like reprinting new credit.
He had like a credit card printer machine in his apartment.
Oh, yeah.
And he was printing tons of fucking credit cards, dude.
Yep.
And he would just go and just like blow, like, Spend all the money he could, just buy everything he could, like go to Best Buy and just start buying stuff.
And he did this forever, but he eventually got caught by the FBI and did a few years in prison.
The amount of fraud, though, I'm telling you, man, like I know Doge was trying to do its thing with finding stuff inside the government.
The amount of fraud that goes on at banks and shell companies and the gift card stuff, like there's even a scam where scammers will go up to the gift cards and they will put new codes on the back.
So, someone goes and they'll buy a $500 gift card for Christmas, but the thing has already been like scratched off.
So, the scammer already has the code and someone's paying for it.
And then, once it gets activated, they just steal the money.
And these companies can't do anything about it.
Oh my God, dude.
Because they're still getting the revenue.
They're getting the 500.
Right, right.
Tricking Victims into Laundering00:07:46
Why would they care?
And what can you do?
You can't do it.
Like, I guess you can look at the cameras and see somebody that did it, but they'll come in and they'll replace these gift cards with already scratched off things or already taken.
Like the little codes on the back.
And it's easy ways for people to take money.
Same with like creating bank accounts and LLCs and all the stuff.
And what these scammers will do is they'll think they'll have someone in the US that they think it's a legitimate business, like a side hustle.
Oh, you're doing this.
And they're, you know, they're pretty much tricking someone to be a money launderer for them.
Wow.
And they don't know.
They just get a cut out of it.
So that's so crazy, dude.
Yeah.
What is it specifically about the culture in India that enables so many Indian scammers?
You know, because that's like India is just known.
For phone call scams and like these cheap text message link scams where you click it and you get hacked, targeting old people.
What is it about India that enables that?
So I think first and foremost, it's because there are so many bright people in India and they're great with technology, great with math, great with science, computer science, you name it.
So they have a base, a foundational base of really good knowledge.
That's why we have a lot of.
People that are moving here in the you know to the US working for tech companies that are from India and they're super smart, so like kind of like what I was saying earlier, where um, India is like they're systems smart, right?
Yeah, they're like really good with systems, not necessarily known for like creativity or like ingenuity or or like innovation.
Yeah, it's kind of like that personality type where hey, I need you to go do this, and there's some people that can, if you tell them the task, go do it, get it done, and they're really good, really proficient with it, yeah, and then.
You have another person that's kind of like, hey, here's a couple of things, go figure it out.
They're so smart.
They can do so much.
They're so good at hacking.
They can make millions of dollars, but I'm surprised they haven't figured out a barrier with that accent.
There's the meme.
It shows like Indian scammers, billions of dollars.
And then the damn is Indian accent.
Well, they're actually, to that point, starting to utilize AI and voice changers and things like that.
And we were actually watching a call center.
This is really funny.
Yesterday, and they're watching YouTube videos on how to change their accent.
No way.
Uh huh.
That's amazing.
Yeah, they got to do that.
Once they get there, it'll help.
But they do things like they take on American names.
So the guy's name might be Akash Saha.
Sorry if you're Akash Saha out there.
That's one scammer we went after from Kolkata.
So that's one of the names I remember right now.
But he goes by David, but his real name's Akash.
And if he's Akash from Microsoft, they're not going to believe him or whatever.
So he'll be David from Microsoft.
And that just.
Helps to keep that relationship with the victim at the time.
Another person I was on the phone with yesterday when I was doing a scam bait or a phone call with one of the scammers, he was saying his mom's from India, but his dad's from the US.
So they're trying to adopt ways to kind of like deflect from the whole accent thing.
Yeah.
But there's some of them that have, they go to like very nice schools, like in Kolkata specifically, there's like St. Xavier's.
There's all different schools there that teach very, like English is like, The first language now in India, really.
So, only you would think it's all like Hindi and stuff like that, but only a certain part of the population they have so many different dialects in India, so from Bengali to Urdu to Hindi, all sorts of things.
But the majority of them speak English first, they do speak their native languages in the local areas.
But English is becoming now they still have the accent, but they are all learning English.
That's so interesting.
Yeah, what is this, Steve?
Oh, that's the meme Indian scammers, their accent millions of dollars.
That's hilarious, but like that's the best meme.
With all that said, though.
There are all these barriers.
Like, here's the thing there's so many other things outside of the accent, like the sound quality.
Like, a lot of times they're in a call center where it's super loud and you just hear all these other people just like screaming in the background, yelling and talking and dogs barking and like traffic honks and all this stuff.
And you're like, what is that noise?
If I was on the phone with like, let's just say my bank or something, I want peace and quiet and I'm hearing all this chaos.
I would not trust whoever's on the phone.
Of course.
And, Even just the way some of these guys do their process, how they talk to the victims, they get really angry because it's super late at night.
They're frustrated.
They may, maybe haven't eaten.
This dude was cussing you out in this video.
Yeah.
And he's like, thinks you're still going to go to the bank for him.
Exactly.
Because so they are taught and trained that, like, no matter what, you stay on.
No matter what, because there could be a chance that you're going to get money at the end of this.
You stay on that call.
No matter what happens, you stay on.
And we use that to our advantage because, you know, we know what buttons to push.
Like, if we want to make them mad or.
Make them use this one piece of software so that we can hack them.
Because there's the whole aspect of social engineering that I utilize from my cybersecurity days to coerce these guys.
For instance, we were going after ticket scammers.
So if you go on Facebook, there are scammers that will actually pretend like, oh, the Taylor Swift concert, right?
And they'll go on Facebook and someone's trying to buy tickets and they'll say, hey, I got really great tickets.
I'm not going to be able to go.
Give us $1,000, which Normally, they'd be 10,000 or something.
Oh, wow.
I've never seen this one.
Somebody sends a thousand bucks and then the money's gone.
They cash app it, Venmo, whatever, the money's gone.
So, we actually at our People's Call Center went after some of these ticket scammers.
And so the social engineering side is we pretend like we need to buy tickets to something and then they ask for money.
We send them a receipt, but the receipt is a link that goes to a file.
The scammer downloads the file.
We can see their entire computer in just like seconds.
So it's like you use their game against them, right?
You use the greed against them.
So we're always trying to find different angles.
You can do that with like kind of giving away some stuff, but it is what it is.
Like wire transfer receipts or like gold purchases.
We could send like a receipt.
But it's really a virus, a computer virus.
So, yeah, oh, that's amazing.
One of my favorite ones, too, is like on Facebook, where like, and this has happened to one of my friends' grandmas, yeah, where like Beyonce's DMing me, she says she needs money for her next tour, they fall for it.
Yeah, it's those are that's what I was kind of saying.
It kind of goes towards like the romance scam, yeah.
And just like these celebrities telling you they need cash, it's tough because, like, even our landlord had a friend that came over to our office and he was telling me, 'My mom, she's 93 and she thinks she's talking to Jason Aldean.' And I'm like, 'Okay.' And like, the whole thing was like, 'She's talking to Jason Aldean and she's helping him to create a new album.' So he's in Nashville or whatever, and he has no money supposedly to create his own album, so he needs money from her,
and she sent like a hundred thousand dollars to him to build an album.
And she's helping him and all the stuff.
Meanwhile, she's buying phones and shipping them to random places in the U.S. that these money launderers are then taking.
So she's helping them do more scams.
She doesn't know, but like those are like big head scratchers to me because they work off of like the emotions.
Lonely Hearts Fuel Bots00:05:51
You know, that's the tough part about it is you have lonely people on the internet.
Yeah.
And they just want somebody to talk to you.
And goodness gracious, Keanu Reeves is messaging me.
You know what I mean?
It's like, yeah, he's such a nice guy, right.
It's like Keanu Reeves gives away all of his money and scammers use that.
Like they pretend to be me, like they pretend to be Mr Beast, they pretend to be all sorts of people yeah, and like we have to deal with that all the all the time.
Man like, um yeah, the internet is such a weird thing bro, like it's.
It's like, I mean, this is like the best evidence that things that are like super innovative and like a complete game changer for like human civilization and communication and they can do like Amazing good things for humanity, can also be equally as devastating and bad and bring out the worst in people and the worst in human nature.
We had a conversation in our office about dead internet theory.
Have you heard about that before?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, explain it to people who haven't heard of it.
So, this is my best explanation of it because my guys did a video on it just like internally in the office.
And it's essentially that companies and governments have created a bunch of bots to.
Talk with people on the internet and what people think they're communicating with, where they think it's a real person, but it's just something to farm engagement.
So, whether it's in the comment section of a video or an article on CNN, and you doom scroll to the bottom and there's like comments for whatever reason on news articles, and people are like, This is what I think about that.
And it's not a real person.
And people think that they're engaging with the internet and people think they're engaging with people, but they're engaging with corporate interest and government interest.
How people, how the governments and corporations want to shape you to think and interact and react and all that.
So that's how I took it.
And it's like 99% bots.
So they went to like Facebook and X and all these other places and saw that like the numbers of actual users, it's like, it's way less than what they report to everybody.
Wait, that's real though?
Oh, yeah.
Like the amount of users on Facebook, like they, I don't know how the numbers of how much they report, but in the whatever hundreds of millions or billions, but it's really like 40% less because they're all bots.
Dude, the bot thing is blowing my mind lately because I've been noticing, especially over the past year, just more and more.
Bot behavior in the comment section, specifically on YouTube, where I can go in and specific videos.
I'll notice you can see that their cadence is all the same the cadence and how they talk, certain words they use, and how they'll be like just like the structure of the sentences.
You can tell, yeah, and there's so much of it.
I always want, I mean, I am mad, it has to be.
I know there's foreign governments that are trying to manipulate discourse in different countries, like they would have reasons to do that, right?
Um, but like.
It's just the internet comment section is such a cauldron of bullshit.
It's so hard to parse through it.
And so much of it seems like it just seems disingenuous and seems not natural.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
It's like I want to think like you're talking about like systems that are being put in place, like AI, for instance.
And like, but you can tell.
You can tell when it's not a real person that's written.
Like there's even AI that there's like a.
I won't name the company because I'm not going to put them on blast like that.
But they were actually writing like AI articles and posting them as like original articles on the internet.
And then they were utilizing like comments and just this whole thing that we're talking about to boost the, to boost on rank, Google rankings and all that kind of stuff.
Wow.
So they get more advertiser money and things like that.
But they were writing pretty much all AI articles, which are like, that's fine, I guess.
But it's so that they could pump out more things quicker and get more advertisement money and clicks and all that kind of stuff.
And then like at the end of the day, like who do you trust?
Like, who do you trust as a news source?
How do you trust that this is even a real person that's reporting this?
Right.
And then people just do things for money now.
Yeah.
And it's such that kind of freaks me out as I'm saying that because it's like you're in this reality that somebody's created for you of like this article that's written by a computer that's maybe based off of a couple nuggets of fact or something or maybe opinion.
And then the comments aren't even real people.
So you're engaging in a complete.
It's the Truman Show.
Yeah.
We're living in it, man.
Yeah.
And where does that go?
That goes to like.
Books and movies ultimately being like you take somebody who wants to make a movie, ask the AI, hey, make me a super engaging, compelling movie that's going to smash box office numbers and do well.
And then it just, you're engineering from like, you're reverse engineering it from like what's going to be good, make good money, whatever.
And there's like, there's no art or soul in any of anything anymore.
It's just all engineered to make money and get more attention for people.
Yeah.
And I think that's crazy.
I think too, like, I think what's going to happen, especially even in like content creation, I know we've been talking about scams and stuff like that, but we also make content.
And like, I think that true content creators that they have a genuine connection with their audience and not a manipulated or fake or whatever AI driven, you know, these a lot of these faceless channels, it's not even a real person and they're just putting in things.
Yeah, those will always rise to the top.
The true, genuine connection, whether it's news or whether it's content, like the true connection with the audience will always run out.
I feel like.
AI Content Creation Leaps00:02:55
Because you know, you go and look at like Chat GPT, I've been spending way too much time on Chat GPT.
My wife and I are like constantly.
Have you used Grok?
I have.
I heard Grok's better.
I have.
I've heard it as well.
Unfortunately, they put Grok in the Tesla now.
So you can talk to Grok.
While you're driving, you could talk to Grok.
Oh my God.
I'm pretty sure they just put that in the update.
That's insane.
Yeah.
I think I don't know if it's better or not.
I haven't used Grok.
I've used Chapter GPT more, but Grok's slower for sure.
I want to.
I personally, it's not there yet.
I want to automate my life better.
So for instance, I want to be able to put.
Inputs in to optimize my day, for instance.
Like, I want to be able to get six things done today, and here's what my schedule is.
Yeah.
My typical schedule.
And maybe I was late.
Oh, yeah.
There we go.
Grok is now available in Tesla cars, built with certain limitations and requirements, obviously.
Yeah.
I think I've driven with my knees too many times in the self driving mode.
So I don't know if they gave that to me.
They don't think they trust me yet.
Oh, that's funny.
They can give you a score based on how good of a driver you are.
Oh, yeah.
It looks at your eyes and stuff while you're driving.
That's fucking scary, dude.
Yeah.
I'm not down with that.
It's got a little camera at the top.
So, like, based upon, so you can put in the full driving.
And I've typically done that with, like, if I need to open up, like, a sauce packet, you know, from Chick fil A or something, like, and then put it back down, you know.
But I actually like driving just the regular because it's, I enjoy driving.
Yeah.
So, that's like one of my favorite things.
Yeah.
You know, interstate and all that kind of stuff.
And Teslas are fun to weave in and out.
So, yeah.
But yeah.
So, it'll, if you look away for a second, like, people trying to text and drive, there's no way you can do that.
You can now do that.
I watched a video on Instagram yesterday of a dude playing a video game on his screen while the car was driving him down the highway.
Okay.
Well, he's he must have hacked it.
He had like a PS5 controller.
Yeah.
He was like playing Call of Duty or something.
That's funny.
That's funny.
Yeah.
It's that must have not been.
Maybe it was AI.
I don't know.
It may have been, but it's you know, I when I think about it, it's I'm excited to see where like technology is going to drive because technology is exponential.
And what I mean by that, the leaps and bounds that it makes, like when we're, you know, who would have thought, I, You know, you look at iPhone, I think it was released what, 2007?
Yeah.
Maybe.
Yep.
And even like supercomputers and quantum computing and all these things that are happening right now.
And the leaps are just crazy leaps.
So, what AI is going to do from cars, autonomous driving, the taxis and all that kind of stuff to the robots, like, you know, my guys at the office, they'll laugh at me because I'm, you know, I'm like, I'm getting that dang robot.
I'm getting the robot in my house.
It's going to go get my groceries and all that stuff.
But like, I think there's going to be, Really great uses for technology to make our lives easier, but not to take over our lives.
I know that's what everybody's fear is, but I think there's going to be a good balance.
Oversaturated Internet Reality00:04:25
Well, you know how the internet and YouTube and just content is just so oversaturated right now?
Like there's an overwhelming amount of information everywhere.
I think that with technology and with the advancement of AI and all these things, people are going to get lazy and we're going to see more of these articles that are created by AI and we're going to see more people.
Creating YouTube channels, gamifying it, and just having YouTube build them videos to try to get more views and make more money, right?
Like that.
And I think that's going to open up a fucking huge lane for people like you that are genuine and actually are doing real things and putting time and money and thought and blood, sweat, and tears into their content.
And that's going to help.
It's going to create an opportunity for that kind of stuff to just catapult to the top.
And everything else is just going to kind of fall flat, I think.
Yeah, it's everybody kind of chase, at least on YouTube.
I don't, I can't talk for all the other social medias.
That's just not my thing.
Yeah.
Um, but for YouTube, it's like, you know, there's some big dogs out there that everybody's kind of chasing the Mr. Beast of the world and all that stuff.
Yeah.
And everybody tries to copy his formula and how he does stuff or whatever.
But for us, it's like making music for us.
We're going in the studio.
Right.
We're saving lives, hacking scammers.
Like that in and of itself is pretty fun, pretty cool.
So if we can articulate that to the audience, like we're pretty proud because we hit over, it's like almost 1.2 billion views calling scammers.
Do you use just the one YouTube channel?
Yeah, just one.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You guys have like 8 million subscribers.
It's insane.
Yeah.
It went.
It went pretty crazy.
One of the years we did like three and a half or four million subscribers.
It was just like, it was crazy.
And like really big videos and you know, the videos they drive the subs and stuff like that.
So if you get big views on videos and that drives the subscribers, but yeah, we've just been focused on like continuing to invest back in and make good stuff that people want to watch so that they can learn.
Like there's been so many people that have come up to me and they say, Hey, because of the videos, I was at the bank and I heard somebody sending a wire transfer and I helped stop it because I knew what to look like.
For or there's a kid in South Carolina that was in a Publix and he heard a grandpa in the bathroom on the phone talking about gift cards.
He's like 12 years old and he stopped the guy from getting scammed and losing his money.
Wow.
So I think like that's something that makes me really happy when the community of people that watch it's not just entertainment, like mind numbing entertainment.
It's something that you can like really sink your teeth into and like make a change.
Like so that makes me pretty proud.
Yeah.
Have you ever got like what's like the worst retaliation, if any?
You've gotten from these scammers?
Like, have they ever tried to like fuck with you back or like try to do like dox you or try to like swat you or anything like this?
Yeah, I've been doxed before.
You know, you get more worried about like fanatical people, I would say.
I just kind of leave it at that.
You get more worried about that.
Like people that are fans.
Yeah, like because you know, they want to know everything because I don't, they want to know everything about you.
They want to know like where you live, what you're doing, like.
It's they get pretty fanatical, and especially if you're behind like pseudonames and stuff, that's like one of the first things you want to find out who they are and like it makes them more interesting.
Yeah, yeah, the layer of mystery makes it more fun.
The blue hair, it's funny because my wife actually said, like, he's definitely going to ask the first question, Why do you have blue hair? and I'm very surprised I didn't get that asked yet.
But is there a good answer?
There's really not a good answer, it's just more like I'm kind of stuck with it now because.
I just once I left my cybersecurity career and did YouTube, I was like, I'm gonna kind of as a celebration, being my own boss, I'm just gonna like do blue hair.
I'm just gonna go blue, and it kind of stuck with me.
And you know, it doesn't hurt.
Do you ever switch it up or do you keep it blue?
I mean, I do my wife does my hair, so she does various colors and stuff like that.
So she she used to do hair and stuff like that, but so I've had like blonde, so I'll do like the bleach blonde and all that just to change it up.
But if I if I let it grow out, it goes pretty gray.
So I try to.
Oh, really?
But yeah.
So, you know, it's people on their toes.
Yeah.
Tracking Targets on the Dark Web00:09:22
Like the scammers, they haven't, as far as retaliation, they, I mean, they just say they're going to, you know, hey, we're going to whatever.
Yeah.
Like they're just talk.
That's what I'm saying.
The Indian scammers, they're talk.
They wouldn't dare like try to do stuff here in the U.S. to a citizen, like the repercussions.
So, you know, I always do my best, though, to protect myself as much as possible from security standpoint and all that.
Like we, we stay on top of things.
Have you ever messed around with any of those programs like Pegasus or anything like that?
There's also one that Mexico has that they think they got from, what was it called?
Luis Chaparro was in here.
He's a cartel journalist.
And he like embeds with the cartels and talks to them about everything they're doing.
And one of the things they're doing is they're buying this basically Mexico's version of the FBI.
They have this software that they buy from Israel.
I forget what it's called, but it basically lets them, if they have somebody's phone number, their cell phone number, they can track exactly where they are and pull up all their info.
So now the Mexican police, Or the Mexican FBI is literally selling that shit to the cartels so they can track down their enemies.
Yes.
It's insane.
Yeah.
It's to that, you actually, when I was in, I was working for an Israeli company, my last job before I went full time on YouTube.
And they actually uncovered a cyber crime group that was a part of hacking like the telecom industry.
And what they were able to do was they had, yeah, and I can, Yeah, Pegasus, by the way, is like the most gnarly malware, and it costs like a million dollars.
Yeah, it's it's and it's it's custom, so you buy it one like it's custom and it's very difficult, it's very expensive, obviously.
But you could, like, you can get any phone, you can get any computer, you can, and it's it's very easy.
And then you just is it easy to get Pegasus?
Like, if I wanted to get it, it's easy to get the person, like, I could get you could get anybody you want with it because it's it's.
Like a zero day essentially, because they're a zero day attack essentially is a piece of code that doesn't get let's just say like the antiviruses on a computer, it doesn't get recognized by them.
And it also, you don't have to rely on anybody to click on anything.
Exactly.
It's just auto, it goes and does its thing.
You just type in the person's phone number and you're in.
Yeah.
Well, if you get it, you get it over to whatever device and they don't have to, they don't even have to click.
Like if I sent you a phishing email with this embedded in, you don't have to, that's the crazy part, you don't have to do anything.
Like, you don't have to.
Typically, if you send a virus to somebody, they have to open it.
And yes, I want to run this and all these kinds of things.
Pegasus is like, that's why it's so expensive.
Have you ever used it?
I have not.
I've asked for it like a hundred times.
I've like, can y'all get it?
Because a lot of the scammers, they run a lot of their money laundering on phones.
So they have like Telegram groups and stuff like that.
And we want to infiltrate their phones.
Getting on phones, it's getting easier, but it's still very difficult.
So they have a lot of these burner phones.
And I'm like, can y'all give me something to work with?
But, you know.
There's a line that they don't go with me, I guess.
Yeah, you think if the US government was using you to help catch these bad guys all around the world, they could at least hook you up with Pegasus to get them back.
That would be cool.
They don't care about giving you their technology.
They want to steal what you're doing.
They want your expertise.
Titan.
That was what it was called.
That was the Mexican one.
It was called Titan.
Okay, interesting.
Yeah, because this is actually something that's actually very scary.
This actually has really bad repercussions because obviously there are issues going on between.
You know, cartels in the US right now fighting on the border and all that kind of stuff.
Right.
And ICE agents and Border Patrol and DHS and all that.
So that's a very messy situation.
And when you throw this into the mix and you can start to track people, that's what these groups, these Chinese groups that my company uncovered at the time, this is a number of years ago, they were actually using this data from these telecom companies to track anyone that they wanted to.
Politicians groups were stealing politicians, right?
So they could hack a telecom and then they were geolocating in real time where politicians were going to be without anybody knowing.
That's what the capabilities that they had.
Wow.
So these guys can do the same exact thing if they wanted to with the same types of, like what you're talking about, the geo tracking and all that.
It's very, especially all the towers that we have.
So you don't even have to have the device if you even have access to the telecoms.
So that's a whole nother data, is a whole nother problem that we see is everybody's data is out there.
And, you know, you could search your name and find your address, your parents, your siblings, everything.
Oh my God, it's a problem.
I got an email yesterday of a guy.
A guy actually called me and then he texted me.
I didn't answer.
He texted me, random number, and he just texted me a screenshot.
And he just like, he Googled Danny Jones Concrete Podcast Contact FL.
And it listed three email addresses and my cell phone number right there on top of Google.
It's, I have an actual personal vendetta with these kinds of companies, these data brokers.
Yeah.
And people who watch my channel will probably laugh because we talk about the data brokers all the time, but they will buy your information from data breaches.
So, this is from the dark web.
They're buying your information, selling your information to anyone who wants to buy it.
So, stalker, anybody could go and buy all of your information.
American companies are selling this stuff.
Yeah.
And they're selling it and making.
So, there's some data brokers.
The stat that I was told was they make more than the NFL, the MLB, and the NBA combined data brokers off of our data.
And it's not illegal.
And then, if you want to go to them and say, hey, take my information off, they're like, okay, but you got to do this and you got to fill out.
Form and you got to do a link, and it's going to take 72 hours, and then it could come back.
There's a certain website I won't say, but it comes back like every month, and you have to keep going back.
So that becomes a full time job getting your data off the internet.
Are there any good companies that are out there that can help you scrub all that shit off?
Yeah, there's a number of good ones.
I've got one of my good buddies actually runs a company.
His name's Ryan Montgomery.
Oh, yeah, I've heard of him.
Yeah, so he runs a company, and They do a lot of that as well.
It's called Pen Tester and they will actually scrub a lot of that data off.
But it's really, you know, there's so many companies that do it.
He's just a personal friend of mine.
So, but like, that's one that catches like the child predators, right?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
That's dark.
And he starts, yeah.
It's, I feel for him because I know what I go through with like granny getting scammed.
And you start, that's why I was talking about like Eastern European countries and things like that with, All the crazy stuff that goes on that he's having to deal with.
And I wouldn't wish that on anybody.
Like the amount of darkness, man, that's a dark place.
And he has to, like, he's protecting a lot of people.
Protecting a lot of people.
Are these people in the U.S. or are these people outside of the U.S. that are doing this stuff?
I know that he found, like, politicians in the U.S. that were a part of groups and stuff like that.
And there's a lot of stuff in Eastern Europe and then some in like Central America and things like that as well.
Politicians.
Yeah.
U.S. active, U.S. politicians.
I don't know about active anymore.
Yeah.
Oh my God, dude.
Yeah.
That are whatever, active subscribers or whatever it is.
I don't know how to describe it.
But yeah, it's a dark place.
And whether it's exploitation or scams or sextortion, there's so many that, Makes the internet so bad.
So it's supposed to be such a great place, but there's all this.
And like, especially like even with like the grandmas and grandpas out there, they're from a generation.
Something to think about that doesn't understand this stuff, they don't get it right.
And like, they're so trusting, they're so sweet.
Like, I'm telling you, man, like the grannies and grandpas that we talked to, they're like so sweet and they have no idea.
And they're like, Well, yeah, this guy, he you know, he told me he was from Microsoft and that there was a hacker, but like, I didn't know I've never bought gold before.
I'm like, Well, I know, you know, the only guy that who's that guy on TV that does the gold bullion all the time, the commercials, you know, that's what I always think about.
There's some guy, the late night ones.
Yeah, there's one of the channels that has the buy gold as your investment.
There's a lot of them.
But the world is so, these people are so trusting and it's a dark place.
Bitcoin ATMs for Cashouts00:14:55
Have you ever had any people in these scamming organizations defect and want to leave them and come work for you?
Yeah, I have actually.
We had eyes in that Punjab call center.
So I had a guy that contacted me because a lot of times they'll like, I'll call them up and then they'll call me out and then they'll have my phone number.
They'll write it down and then they'll text me and they'll say, Hey, I don't want to work here anymore.
I'm going to leave.
Call this guy out.
This is the boss.
This is where we're located.
And then some of them will go as far as, Hey, the boss is going to be here on this day or this is where they're going next.
Like, for instance, we had this call center in Punjab, we were going to get them rated.
This is some stuff I feel like maybe not cut out for sometimes.
This is not what I signed up for.
You know what I mean?
So, like, sometimes I'm like, is this like real life, like, you know, beekeeper, you know, like the movie Beekeeper?
I don't know if you've seen that, the Jason Statham movie where he goes after scammers and stuff.
But it's like this real life spy kind of stuff that I didn't know I was going to be getting myself into, like espionage, like sending someone in.
And like, I'm not trained for this.
Like, I'm like, can somebody teach me, you know?
And So we have this guy in there, and we were trying to get them raided.
Lo and behold, they just shut down.
All the computers go away.
The cameras shut off.
Before the raid.
Yes.
Like not months before the raid, like hours before.
What?
They got tipped off.
Yeah.
And so, not safe to say, I was pretty pissed, honestly.
But like my guy hits me up and he's like, hey, dude.
And he was the one that was telling me about the kid that overdosed and they like didn't give him any money to the family and like, Dude, they were living in like the worst conditions.
And he's like, I want to get these guys.
He's like, the bosses are pieces of trash.
So he was giving me all that's how I knew all this information because it's like a human asset at this point, you know?
And he's like, look, just protect me.
So we got him like money to get back to his house.
He's like, I just want to get back home.
So we helped him get back home, you know, help pay for him to get back home.
And like, essentially, he's like, okay, they're going to this place.
They know that you guys hacked them.
So they're moving over to like iPads.
They're moving to this other location.
So we'll tell you when they're there.
And they were exactly there.
And that's how we were able to raid them like a couple months later.
So they're waiting, just like any criminal, right?
They, when they know something's hot, they'll go quiet for a little bit, wait for it to cool down, and then they'll come back.
Right.
Because the money's too good for them.
Yeah.
And the greed always, you go after the greed and you use the greed against these guys.
I feel like as I'm saying this, I, I watched some of like your ex CIA stuff.
I'm like, I feel very ruthless.
You use it against them.
But like, it becomes that.
And it's like, well, it's a, it's, You're using a very unique skill and talent to do good.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I don't think that's sociopathic at all.
Yeah.
We have this guy that we just hired that works with us.
And he reverse engineers malware and stuff like that for fun and stays at the office really late to do this.
I'm like, dude, go home.
But he and I share such a passion for this because we want to help people and we want to get the bad guys in trouble, obviously.
And it's this weird cat and mouse game that we play with these scammers.
But the capability is what I'm getting at that we.
Have against these guys the tools, the capabilities, um, without any help from any law enforcement necessarily, that homegrown stuff, yeah, that allows us to now use the scammers' systems against themselves, use what their process is against themselves, right?
To now expose them and get after them.
It's, it's, it's a game changer.
Have you ever met anybody who is as good at hacking as you are?
A lot, a lot smarter people than me, dude.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Like in other countries?
Like, are these people just like just even in the space?
I'm telling you.
So, like, we have there's a there's a person in the space.
She's in Europe and she built a software.
So, there's brilliant minds in this space, man.
Such brilliant minds.
She built a So, they have these like phone systems that they use and she built something that would pretty much hack all of their phone systems.
I won't say how.
But she could actually go in while they're on phone calls with people and change the pitch of their voice while they're on phone calls with people.
So they're talking to someone and then all of a sudden they're dying like this, like Mickey Mouse and like all the stuff.
And she can change the pitch up and down while they're live on a call with someone.
It's unbelievable.
And then she can get access to their computer too on top of that.
There's people that, again, they get access to these CCTV cameras.
There's some methods, social engineering methods to do this.
And it is so freaking cool, man.
There's such a network.
Is this woman doing the same stuff you're doing, basically?
Yeah, she stays pretty private.
Okay.
So she doesn't do all the YouTube stuff, but she works kind of on the back end with all the other scam bait people in my space.
So she's working on behalf of her government or something like this?
She goes after scammers in other countries.
And then she just kind of works to, you know, she helps people just in tandem to what they're doing.
She just wants to help out.
So she builds these really incredible programs.
And some of the guys.
So she doesn't get paid to do this?
No.
Wow.
She does it because she loves it.
And there's another guy that they're building a half a million dollar AI something or other that's going to be crunching data.
Because that's what I was getting at earlier.
It's all about data where it's going to be.
And we're actually building stuff on our side to collect information in real time from all these scammers' computers.
Call it what you want.
I'm sure some security people would call it botnet.
But essentially, we're going to be able to ask any question of any of these scammers' computers that we have access to.
Download any of their files, find where their locations are, and put it into a big database that we can search and run AI against.
So that's what we're going towards in the future.
Not just getting access to their systems and helping people, but being able to pull intelligence and information from them when they're scamming, what times, who they're talking to, what their systems are, what they're using, where the next payment's going to go, all that kind of stuff.
So we're trying to get ahead of the game there.
So you're going to use AI to basically process all this information and what they're doing, and then what next?
Put it in that server and let the government do their thing.
Oh, so the government would have access.
So you would just hope that the government does something about that.
Yeah.
I mean, like, I don't want to just give away all the information that we have.
Right.
I don't want it to go into a black hole and then I don't know what happened to all of our work.
I want to be helpful.
So I want the scammers to face justice for what they've done, like the bosses.
I want there to be jail time.
I want there to be extradition to the US.
I would love to see that.
And then as many people as I can be saved because think about it this way.
If we have access to a computer, we can run software that will essentially kind of monitor the screen so I don't have to be watching it.
So, we can get screen captures, and maybe there's a live scam that's happening, and we'll take information from that and then get notified in real time.
So, that's what we're building out to get towards.
So, that when you have 700 computers with a few guys, we can't watch all of that.
Right.
So, it's like, take this information.
I see.
Try to find the scale it.
Yeah.
I'm trying to take my enterprise security approach because that's what happens in enterprise security, you have all these viruses and crazy things happening.
Like, say, a hospital is getting hacked, they have all these alerts of stuff that's happening.
And you have to figure out what the most important thing to go after is.
Like, what's the biggest fire to put out?
There's a bunch of smoke.
What's the biggest fire?
If, for instance, on my scam stuff, if there's just a grandma on the phone with a scammer, it's bad, but it's still not terrible.
If there's a grandma that is waiting for somebody to drive to her house so she can hand them gold bars, that's kind of a big deal.
So, we're trying to figure out the best way to build out those systems to find all that in real time, run AI against it, and save more people.
Wow.
Because again, the worst feeling ever is when you get to something and it's too late and they can't stop it.
Right.
And I feel personally responsible because I would have stopped it if I could.
And if I can't, it's the worst feeling.
Right.
It hurts.
It's still so crazy to me that, like, you don't hear anything about it.
You don't hear anybody in Congress or anybody in government saying anything about this stuff.
You know, it's like you are one of the only people that's talking about this.
It's pretty insane.
And I know so many people in my family, friends of family that get screwed over by these people constantly.
Yeah.
I could pull up my computer and show you all the scams that are going on right now.
And these scammers.
You could live see all the scams?
Yeah.
If we go on Wi Fi, I could show you.
You want to do it?
Yeah.
Can we hook it up?
Can we hook them up to HDMI and show it on the screen?
Yeah.
Oh, that would be sick.
I'm going to have to tell you what to blur that after if that's okay.
Oh, yeah, totally.
There's some things we have to blur.
Okay.
That's fine.
But yeah, like they remote access into people's computers and I could like there might be bank accounts and stuff too.
So we don't have to be right, you know, whatever on that.
But yeah, it's like it.
If you ask somebody about scams or the pop-ups, everyone knows about it.
And then you go to these, like I've been to some of these government conferences where three letter agencies are there and like, yeah, we're doing this about it and that about it.
And there's nothing because everything is it's so difficult to keep up with like.
There's no centralized like information source if you think about it.
So if a victim is going to a bank, for instance, she's going to Bank of America.
Right.
Not to pick on Bank of America, just a big bank.
Right.
She's going to Bank of America.
They have their internal things that they have to do to like, hey, what are you doing with that money or whatever?
Right.
She takes it out, but there's no like, hey, granny took out a hundred thousand that it's not going to the local police.
It's not going to the feds.
There's no like smoke there.
It's just at the bank.
Now it becomes something when it becomes a police report.
Way after the fact.
So you're sharing all this information, and the guys are already gone to the next thing.
They're so good at what they do.
So that's why what we do is so valuable because it's proactive and we're getting there.
So you're saying once the money is gone, there's no way to get it back.
You have to solve it before the money is gone.
Otherwise, you're just spinning your wheels.
And that's the $10 billion question.
And also, once they get their money, they're basically invisible.
You can't find out who they are.
Is that right?
Yeah.
I mean, they're using, so like I said, the Havala transfer system that they use, it's cash, which is very easy to move, like, you know, $30,000 cash.
Get it out, go pass it somewhere else.
Gift cards, those are like you can kind of track them, but they're moving these through these like third party websites that do crypto so fast.
And there's so many crypto mixers and all that.
Like once it goes, it just goes to an exchange and it's gone.
And then they're having victims go to like Bitcoin ATMs.
There should not be Bitcoin ATMs in the US right now.
That's crazy.
It's all fraud.
I'm telling you, it's got to be like 95% fraud, Bitcoin ATMs.
Nope.
Do you know anyone that's used a Bitcoin ATM?
No.
Yeah, it's like all criminals, man.
Who would use a Bitcoin ATM?
What's the point?
How is it supposed to work?
They get the grandma to get.
No, I mean, like, I'm saying you're the guy that's in charge of installing the Bitcoin.
You're selling your Bitcoin ATM to fucking Circle K.
Yeah.
What's your pitch?
We're going to pay you $1,000 a month to have this year, I guess.
And why do people use it?
To launder money.
Like, there's no other way.
There's no, I've tried to think about it.
Like, oh, crypto is big now.
And like, can you imagine I'm going to go to a crypto ATM to send my friend?
Like, nobody does that.
No.
Nobody does.
Like, I'm going to send a birthday present.
That's the point of crypto.
Exactly.
To not have to go to an ATM.
Right.
Exactly.
You just do it from your phone.
Right.
You get the wallet and they're having these grandmas go and take cash out.
Like, imagine this.
You're at Circle K and you're getting paid a thousand bucks a month from the crypto ATM company.
And this person comes in with $25,000 cash.
Like shoveling hundreds into this Bitcoin ATM and on the phone with some guy, like, ma'am, please, okay, send a picture of ma'am.
And you can hear all this stuff.
And they just sit there and watch it happen.
Like, there's only the only things that happen, just like nothing good happens after 12 o'clock, nothing good happens at a Bitcoin ATM.
Like, these things are like, it's all money laundering.
Oh, God.
That's hilarious.
I have battles with them.
I have battles with the crypto ATM people because what we do is like, we can see where the scammers are sending the victim.
So, they are searching these Bitcoin ATMs on the victim's computer so we can see what's happening.
Oh, they're sending them to like Circle K or wherever, liquor store.
So, we send like the feds, like we say, hey, this is where they're going.
And then they send like local police in.
Right.
And then the police blame it or the Vic, you know, they figure out a way to like not burn the connection, I guess.
Right.
So, they blame it on the police versus like somebody who's watching, if that makes sense, so that we can still watch the scammer.
Oh, my God.
It's like.
Imagine the plot twist that.
Uh, the CIA are the ones that are using this stuff to like fund black ops.
Well, we've got a lot of money that's gone missing in the government, yeah.
Yeah, a few dollars have gone missing.
What is this, Steve?
Oh, it's just one of those stories.
Oh, Officer Foyle's scam attempt.
Interesting, yeah.
See that top right one, too.
77 year old woman takes $25,000 to Bitcoin.
That's a that's a load of yours, yeah.
That was one of ours.
Wow.
Um, and the one above that is the one we did with Mark Rober where the We glitter bombed the money mule.
Blaming Police for Scams00:04:42
So she was at the air.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
So you can see her pants have the glitter all over it because she thought it had a bunch of money in it, but it just had a glitter bomb.
So, wow.
This happens.
It's very sad because again, it's all about like data and numbers, and you can't stop everything.
So, like, what happens is like grandma is on the hook for 25,000, and I'm on the phone for three hours trying to contact her.
So, I'm calling her over and over, and the scammers they're watching sometimes are on their phone, and I'm calling, and the scammers are like, ma'am, do not pick up.
That is the hacker.
While you're calling, yeah.
So, I'm calling saying, like, Our emergency pickup, and they're like, ma'am, that is the hacker.
Do not pick up.
I promise you, because they've already sold them the story.
Sorry, they've already sold them the story that a hacker is on their system and taking their money and all that stuff.
So then I'm coming to save the day, and they're lying.
So I will call like a thousand times.
I will send text messages.
Text messages kind of can be bad because what happens is send a text.
The victim goes, Someone just texted me and said, I'm on the phone with a scammer from India.
And then the scammers, they shut down their computer.
I have no eyes anymore.
I can't hear anything because we can listen in on the conversations too.
So we hear everything, we see everything.
So there's some tactics you can't do because it burns the connection and then you can't save the person.
They're screwed.
Oh my God.
So you can get into their stuff without, you're abusing a zero day, right?
We are abusing the stupidity.
I mean, we're using the guy in India who you got into his webcam.
Yeah.
Did he have to click anything?
So there's things I can't necessarily say.
Okay.
But we're essentially, so what happens is they connect to us first.
Okay.
And then we send them a request.
And we have to socially engineer them into accepting.
Ah.
If they do, then we're in.
And then what we do from there is we make ourselves very pesky on their system.
So if they find one of the pieces of software, then we have four others and we're all embedded in their computer.
And then from there, we actually will run scans on their network, just like any hacking group would, for instance.
Like when they're in a hospital system or something, they run scans.
It's called discovery.
So we'll run discovery scans and see what else is out there, what open ports.
Cause if there's open ports that like, for instance, CCTV has certain ports, there's also another port that's very near and dear to the heart of scanbaiters.
I won't say that port because it gives away like certain softwares and stuff.
But if we see that, then it's go time and we can find other computers on the network.
So we go from one system to 20 in like a day.
So we find the entire call center.
So then we have eyeballs on all the scammers computers from one phone call.
That's incredible.
And it goes just like that.
And it uses their software against them.
It uses their systems.
And they don't know what hit them.
They can't get us off.
They can't get us away.
And we are there forever after that.
Wow.
Yeah.
So it's really fun.
And it's a lot of responsibility, I guess, because then if you think about this, we have 700 computers that come on and off during a time.
So you have to watch those every day with a couple people.
Or else granny's going to lose her money.
So, how do you keep up with that?
Well, it's amazing how you're able to turn it into entertaining content so you can fund it all.
I mean, it's a brilliant, brilliant operation.
Yeah, that's we, like I was saying earlier, you know, the growth of the channel has allowed for us to like, because we don't have like government grants.
Obviously, we live in a gray area.
So, the government can't say, go do this, you know, because then all of a sudden you're like telling someone to go after, not go after another country, but you know what I mean?
Like, Right.
Go do this in our interest.
Like they want to help people, but they can't tell me to go do like tell my guys or whatever to go do something.
But they will go and help someone if there's like an emergency.
go stop the scam.
So they like that information.
But like, um, so I don't know.
We make the videos and we try to get good views and things like that.
So it can fund what we're doing because we have a big team.
And, uh, yeah.
So it's, it's fun.
It's enjoyable.
And it's, we, we in the office, we say it's you can do good and do good at the same time.
So like we're from the South.
So it's like you can do good and do good.
So like you can do good for others and actually do good like for your business.
So right.
Of course, you know, we run it like a business.
Um, if we don't get good views and we can't keep making videos.
So.
Supply Chain Chip Hacks00:14:52
Now, what specific things do you do in like your personal life as far as like your personal computers and phones?
And like, I'm sure you have security cameras around your house and your office.
Like, do you have specific types of products you use or ways that you protect yourself against hackers or even like, you know, I don't know.
There's like, there's stories out there where I don't know how serious to take them.
Yeah.
Where they say that like there's microphones in the Google Nest and stuff like this.
That those kind of stories just freak me out.
Yeah.
You can get, you can get.
Paranoid pretty quickly.
Are you a paranoid person?
Do you think I'm not on the scale of one to ten of paranoia?
I'm probably a four.
Okay.
If I go down the rabbit hole, like you can get me revved up pretty quickly.
Like I'm paranoia.
Really?
Like normally I'm chill.
But like if I start thinking and thinking and thinking, because like for instance, if you went on to your network, if you have stoned, I am sure.
If you like, so if you think about it, like if you went on your network and everybody's got a smart TV, most people have 10 smart TVs or whatever it is.
And they've got everyone's got an iPhone now.
Everyone's got an iPad.
Everyone's got a computer.
Everyone's got a micro or microwave that connects to Wi-Fi and 10 Alexas and all these things, right?
And they're all connected to the internet.
Like, why in the world does our washer and dryer or why does our, you know, steam mop need to be connected to the internet?
Right.
And then all of a sudden you look into it.
What's the company that owns that steam mop?
Where are they located out of?
China.
China.
Why in the world does China need access when you do the terms of service?
I won't say.
Because I actually have that Steam mop.
It's a really good one, but you don't want to connect on the Wi Fi because it gives them permission to, just like I was talking about, scan the network to look for other things.
They could scan anyone's network and look for other devices and probably go on them if they wanted to pull information.
So, what if you were targeting, just like the telecom, right?
You're targeting someone, you knew what kind of devices they had.
What if there's a vulnerability one day in one of those devices?
It could be anything, it'd be a toaster.
You could Set it on fire, whatever.
You know, there's all sorts of things that you could possibly do if you wanted to really be paranoid.
If a bad actor wanted to go after somebody, now the regular person in the world, probably not.
You're going to be okay.
Right.
But, you know, like if you want to get paranoid, it's pretty easy to like.
Well, this is like the whole idea of the internet of everything.
Yes.
Right.
Where everything is connected to Wi Fi.
So anybody can get access to you at any time.
Yes.
It's funny.
I had this dude on the podcast a couple of months ago who was explaining to me this whole story.
It was such an elaborate fucking story that he went through.
He kept evidence and receipts through the whole thing where some Chinese hackers just started contacting him out of the blue and were like telling him things like about his personal life that no one else would know, like stuff that he would do in his apartment and stuff like this.
Like apparently they were like watching him through his TV and listening to him through devices he had in his house.
And even like a couple of times he saw a drone outside of his window and they were like trying to.
Convince him to like be a Chinese spy and do all kinds of things.
And this was all connected to like 5G and all.
I mean, it was, I don't remember it all perfectly.
But do you remember, do you remember that dude, Steve?
That was, what was that gentleman's name?
Max Lebo.
Max Lebo.
Yeah.
See if you can find like a summary of his story.
He made a whole podcast about it.
It was fascinating.
But I mean, that shit got my paranoia level to like a 12.
You know, there's, I think, to that, Like when I worked in email security, you could have like we call mousetraps.
You could have the best mousetrap, like on a computer, like an antivirus that would catch, you know, malware or a virus, right?
Right, right.
However, if I really wanted to go after you, I could go after you.
I could find where you live.
I could find your LinkedIn.
I could find your favorite sports team.
I could find your, you know, mother's maiden name and I could craft something that was so specific.
I knew you were going to the Florida State football game this weekend.
And here's the updated tickets because I know you're a seasoned ticket holder because you post it all the time on Facebook.
And if somebody wants, like, it's that human intelligence, is what I'm getting at.
Right.
Somebody wants to go after somebody, they can.
And I think that's where a lot of these, like, bad actor nation states, yeah, they're sending people, like, work visas or student visas here to infiltrate the U.S.
I firmly believe that.
Infiltrate, get information.
And that human element is a very difficult thing to protect against because that could come from anywhere.
You don't know, like they caught somebody recently for bringing a dang like biomedical or bio warfare.
Did you see that from like China?
It was like a student in Michigan, like two students in Michigan that are like biomed students.
When was this?
It was like past couple months.
Really?
And they brought a like a biochemical weapon for testing and they illegally smuggled it into the US and they're like facing charges now.
Oh my God.
And China sent them over here to do it.
See if you can find that, Steve.
I don't know if I described it well enough, but when I saw that, I'm like, Yeah.
I mean, that's it, man.
The human side of it.
There we go.
Students in Michigan.
The University of Michigan has become the center of a controversy involving Chinese scholars allegedly attempting to smuggle biological materials into the United States, raising concerns about the national security of foreign influence in academic institutions.
Two Chinese nationals were arrested in June 2025.
Holy shit, for attempting to smuggle a potential agro terrorism weapon.
Fusarium and grammararium into the country, which could devastate crops and pose a threat to food security.
Holy shit, dude.
Nobody talks about that.
How did I not hear about this?
Yeah.
And again, you start to think about food security.
You start to think about what happened with the pandemic last time, how everybody freaked out.
Nobody talks about the electric grid.
Nobody talks about the water supply.
Those are the most vulnerable.
Most vulnerable.
And if.
And people can hack the electric grid, right?
If, here's the thing if you start to hear anyone talking about it, it means something's already happened.
When I worked in cybersecurity, the average, this is the average for a company to find out that something's happened in their network.
So, like, someone's hacked them.
The average days is 179 days for a company with all these tools and stuff to find out they've been hacked.
That's just to find out that they've been hacked.
That's not to investigate, to know who did it, to know what was taken, just to even find out that something happened.
So, when you start to hear about anything about the grid, anything about food supply, any of that, something's already, they already know.
Well, there was that crazy story that came out a couple of years ago.
Maybe it was a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago.
Yeah.
Where they found out that through just pure incompetence, I think, that the government was buying Huawei telecommunication gear and installing that on cell phone towers right near our nuclear bases.
That's another, that's another, like, That's another thing.
That's actually a really good point because then you start to look at oh, this is absolutely crazy.
I was thinking about this.
You made me think.
You look at like manufacturing, manufacturing in the US is completely vulnerable, like the supply chain and all that kind of stuff.
That's why we're trying to fix it right now as well.
Right.
We learned some lessons from the pandemic.
Yeah.
And the hard thing is you cannot protect these devices very well.
They're getting better at it.
From a cybersecurity standpoint, that are running these supply chain and manufacturing lines and stuff like that.
Because they're not like your regular laptop or something, but they're connected devices that are running these machines and stuff.
So, protecting those, it's kind of like having a microwave that's connected to Wi Fi, but this is a computer that's not fully like a Windows machine or something that's connected into a company's network.
And if it goes down, the whole thing goes down.
So, how do you protect those?
There's all sorts of things.
But my point is with this, Are these chip manufacturers there?
That's why there's like such a race to like figure all that out and like make the US like try to lead in this space.
Yeah.
Because that is a huge security concern when you have chips that are being made overseas, different countries.
There is actually, there's on one of the motherboard or one of the chips, you know, there's like AMD and Intel.
On one of the chips, there's actually a thing where you could turn the computer on via the motherboard without the person even being there.
And it's built into the chip.
And it's literally like a checkbox to turn on.
And this is one that's manufactured in China?
Well, it's like a, it's one of the chip companies.
I think it's, I think it's Intel that had it.
It might be AMD, but I remember when I was working at HP at the time, that was one of like our selling points was like, it was called like always on.
So, like if you wanted to work on XYZ employees' computer, it had this always on thing.
As long as it was like connected to the internet, you could turn it on without anyone knowing.
If I was China or Russia and the United States was buying computer chips from me, of course I would build a back door into all those computer chips, especially if they're giving those to all the people that work for the FBI and the CIA and the Congress, whatever, anybody in government.
And that's exactly what we did with the Promise software.
Remember, you ever heard of the Promise software?
It was the first software that was developed, I think it was in the 80s, early 80s, where they basically needed to put all the court records, all like the legal documents.
Around the country on like an online database.
Okay.
So that all the courts could like just search keyword search for specific files on specific people because people were like slipping through the cracks all the time.
So when they developed this, we started selling it to other countries so they could use it and we built a back door into it so we could spy on their government.
Yeah.
Very smart.
So that's crazy.
If they're, you know, that's why I think Taiwan is such a, such a like an important thing for this, this whole thing with Taiwan and the race to get it like with the tug of war with the US and China.
Yeah, I mean, we have so many critical components.
Now, I'm not saying that everything's going to be manufactured here in the US, but like we have so many critical components that are just manufactured overseas.
Not to say that every country is like doing all these bad things, but you want to have a critical look at the stuff.
Like even every hard drive, like there's big companies that buy hard drives for servers and stuff like that, that are going in our cloud environments from overseas.
Like, and if there's a shortage, like, so it's, we need to look at that better.
Um, and that is, that's like the trojan horse to get in through actual chip manufacturers and hardware components and things like that.
So, um, it's going to be interesting because there's a ripple effect if one thing goes down, man, whether it's grid or food supply or water supply.
Think about like the local municipality or whatever that runs the water for a small city and they get hacked.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Imagine how much that would fuck shit up, dude.
Yeah.
Like it's that stuff's that stuff's scary to me.
You can't get clean water anymore.
Yeah.
Now what?
It's it's tough.
I think we take a lot of things for granted in the U.S.
Yeah.
You know, a lot of things like life's so easy here and we don't live in a part of a war torn part of the world.
Yeah.
And I think we get we get comfortable because we're surrounded.
We have these two big oceans on each side of us.
So we're not worried about boots, people like storming the beach of New Jersey.
Yeah.
But like now in today's day and age, that's like.
Fuck, man, the tides are turning.
Yeah.
And it's scary to think, like, how what's going to happen with technology.
Like, a guy really laid it out to me perfectly before on this podcast, a former CIA guy.
He was explaining to me this exact thing.
And he was saying, like, if the US is no longer the global superpower, say, like China or something like their GDP and everything overtakes us as far as like military superpower and GDP alone, and we become number two or number three.
Well, Now, what happens is when your kid is born and you're a U.S. citizen, now you have to teach your kid a second language.
Like, it's you, you almost have to.
If you want to, like, in any of these other countries and you have a kid and you don't teach them English, they're automatically at a disadvantage.
Yes.
So, like, that's not something we think about in America.
We don't, we don't, we're not worried about teaching our kids a second language so they can survive and like thrive.
Yeah.
But those are things you just don't think about.
Yeah.
We're, I mean, we're, The, you know, like even I don't know what the median income is in the US, for instance, but like, you know, what we consider to be poor downtrodden here is pretty dang good in a lot of other countries.
And a lot of times too, like we got it good when people are worried about whatever we fight about in today's day and age here in the US.
We've got like these non-fundamental things where people are fighting for, like for instance, I was talking about like the scammers in Kolkata when the pandemic hit, their unemployment rate was 45%.
Wow.
Like, do you know the amount of chaos in any big city if there was a 45% unemployment rate?
Right.
Just, it would be anarchy.
Oh, yeah.
And we have anarchy when people don't like who gets voted in and, you know, like, or whatever's happening.
Right.
We have people doing stuff.
Right.
And, like, real hurt and real pain that people are feeling, you know, like over in India or whatever.
Like, imagine that if that hit the States, that would, it would be terrible.
And, like, that's, you know, that's why I try to look at, you know, all of this stuff from a different lens, because yes, we are extremely fortunate and it's not some guy like the approach we take is not, you know, just some dude making YouTube videos to make money.
What we do is we're trying to help people and we try to even help.
Like, for instance, we had a guy in Kolkata that I was on the phone with him and he thought I was like a grandpa and he started like crying on the phone and he said, Hey, I don't want to do this.
I just started like, I'm really sorry.
Like a lot of them are BSing, but this guy was like very legit.
Political Data Protection Failures00:12:39
He was just now getting married.
So, and this isn't a pat on my back or anything.
I'm just kind of telling you the story.
Like we paid for, like he quit scamming.
We paid for him to have, like, we got him a gift for his wedding, and then we paid for him for an apartment complex or for an apartment for he and his wife for like a whole year in Kolkata.
Yeah.
And I don't know.
It just touched a certain part in my heart because you can tell when someone's being genuine about something or just BSing.
Like, a lot of the scammers, they'll be like, I'll tell them where they're located.
They're like, we're not here.
We're in Pakistan.
We're in Lahore, Pakistan.
And you're like, you're not in Pakistan.
I know exactly where you are.
And then you have a guy like this.
His name was Kadan and he's sending me pictures.
He got a new job.
He was sending me pictures of he and his wife after the ceremony.
Both his parents died.
One of them died during the pandemic.
Another one died just, I don't know, sickness or whatever.
I don't know the whole story.
But he showed me all of these things that were going on in his life.
And it just, it brings like the realism, like the gravity of the situation to me.
Like there are people over there.
They're not bad people.
All right.
Not all people from India are bad or scammers or whatever.
Right.
There are people that are just trying to survive.
Sure.
And I try to take a lens like it's heavy on these calls because we're joking and doing all this stuff.
But like there are people.
If you were him, if you were in his situation with his life, would you do anything different?
Would you do different things differently?
Who knows?
I mean, as a family man, like with a wife and with kids, like that's my number one priority.
I would do anything to fight for my family.
Right.
Um, like I can't, I can't imagine like they're even from like clean water and air conditioning, like we have such good lives here yeah, such good lives, and um, so that's one of the approaches I try to take is one of humanity.
Like people are people.
I try to see people like how God sees them and we are all children of god and I try to see through that lens, no matter what I may be feeling.
I try to see differently, if that makes sense right yeah, that's a good thing to do And call it spiritual or whatever, but like, I try to see just differently.
I do get frustrated, these guys, I get mad because I see the stuff that happens, but I try to also, they're people too.
So, anyway, totally, yeah.
And then, like, a lot of this stuff can be like going back to like what we were talking about with this internet of everything and everything being connected to Wi Fi and things like this.
Like, it's all not necessarily like it's easy to look at it and say, oh, this is evil, they're trying to control everybody, but yeah.
The other thing is, people are just trying to make more money and figure out ways to be more efficient, which could be this stuff can be taken and used for evil, but the initial idea of it might not be evil.
Like these things where they want to, using health devices like iWatches or Apple Watches or whatever, and insurance companies trying to get the data from Apple on this person's daily heart rate or whatever, or their respiratory rate.
To see, like, okay, how much are we going to fucking make this person pay on their monthly premium?
Because we can hack into their or we have access to all their health devices, their watches, and see what their health is.
And, like, yeah, people are going to use this stuff to make money.
And that's the problem when you have these multinational corporations and these billionaires who just want more control over people so they can gain more money or more political power.
And that's the problem with everything.
You know, that's the problem with, and they use this stuff as like a political football to try to like buy influence in the government, to try to push their objectives and to try to further their financial goals or whatever it is.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of life goes down to like money and greed, unfortunately.
And from money, there comes power, and power could be political or whatever it may be.
And that I think that is going to be the interesting thing is like, first thing, they always put the agreements that all the click through that you agree to, like, right at the most, like, I need the software installed right now.
So we're going to say, like, do you agree to everything?
You know what I'm saying?
Like it's at 99% installed and you need the app.
Right, right.
Am I going to read 16 pages?
Exactly.
No, I just want to get the watch working.
Right.
You know?
Right.
But you're just giving your life away now.
And even with the cookies now, go look at every website you go to now.
They had some, I don't know what they did, but there's some, I guess it was regulation or something around data protection or something.
But now all these websites, whatever one you go to, they're going to pop up cookies every website.
And you got to choose which ones you want.
So now you've got to tell every website, Which cookies you want, which ones you don't want, accept all, reject all.
It's ridiculous.
And to your point, it comes with power.
Even social media, that's how their number one goal is to keep you on.
So that they can, and that's in and of itself inherently manipulative and controlling.
And you're controlling for what reason?
Because you want them to have a good experience?
No.
You want them consuming your advertisers to make money for.
Why is that?
Because you're publicly traded to keep your revenues up and your growth up and your.
You know, users, but again, half of your users are bots.
So, like, you know, it's just, it's all interesting, but it comes down to greed, money, control.
And the scariest part about it to me is that these big social media companies are openly, and it's been exposed, are infiltrated by the government to find like their excuses to find bad guys.
Yeah.
Who knows what else they're doing?
Like, I don't know if you saw like the whole Twitter files debacle that happened a couple months ago or a couple years ago where they basically find out that like Twitter's whole moderation staff was having like, Weekly meetings with FBI and CIA to like control discourse and like getting incentivized to ban certain people around certain speech or whatever it was.
And, you know, it's just like if Twitter had been manipulated or infiltrated by government agencies to that degree, imagine what, you know, how bad Google is, where Google actually makes the products now.
They make the phones and the computers and stuff like this.
And it was, Google was like, was.
Was funded and incubated by the CIA.
And like the whole PageRank thing came from DARPA, which was a government like military contractor.
Yeah.
So if this is their product and that's where all this stuff came from, yeah.
It's like, it's just like, what point do you just give up and just say, whatever, just spy on me all you want?
Like it's just too much work to try to protect yourself.
It's, yeah, it's like, that's what I was saying earlier.
Like if you're the common, whatever, common person, I don't know how to describe it, but like if you're just, you know, Bobby from Massachusetts.
Right.
You know, and you have, you have kids and a wife and you have a date.
You work a nine to five.
You don't have time to focus on this.
No, you don't.
And you don't have time to go through the cookies and you don't have time to like read the, you know, what Instagram is collecting on your data.
And you don't have time to, to read all that stuff.
It's, it's so much over my wife and I were talking about this.
Like it's overload.
It's all like a sensory overload.
All the social media.
Like I don't have any social media except for, I mean, I have YouTube.
Yeah.
It's too much, man.
And they're collecting all of our data.
They're watching us there.
And yeah, it's like at one point you're like, just take my.
Just take my data.
Like, you know, you want to know everything that we're doing.
Like, you're going to find, like, if somebody wants to know, they're going to find out if it's the government.
I think, like, when you think about the Twitter files, for instance, it does put a chill up your spine because I'm not saying there's rogue agents or whatever.
However, like, whose decision is that?
You know, like, who's deciding, hey, go and talk to Twitter now and make sure that this is moderated?
And then who's moderating that person of like what's right and what's wrong?
What's the moral compass of what is good and what is bad?
Is it the Constitution?
What is it?
What's the moral compass?
Because I assume most of the stuff is freedom of speech.
Unless somebody says, this isn't freedom of speech, this is whatever terrorism or something right, I don't, I don't know, and that's a really crazy.
Because they didn't have social media back then.
Yeah right exactly, they could never have anticipated all this.
I yeah, it's just, it's crazy to me that there's and the other thing too, like I would have maybe been a little bit more chill if they came out and said, hey, we were doing this, versus like somebody had to buy the freaking company and and show everybody after right, like that's kind of Crazy, it took a billionaire to buy a company and have all the scrutiny and then just release all the files.
Well, that's the crazy thing about it.
Like, if you have if someone gives you a cloak of invisibility and secrecy, does that enable good behavior or bad behavior?
Right, yeah.
If you know you're not getting trouble, right?
Yeah, and a lot of this thing, it's not like some you know, some big evil monolith.
The government is like there's like two million employees in the U.S. government, so of course, there's going to be bad apples that are going to like paint it in a bad light and it's easy, and and you know, people can get compromised, and uh.
And, you know, that's an institutional rot that is so deep, it's so rooted so deep.
And I think we're seeing that, like, what's going on with this whole Epstein file debacle right now.
Like, I don't think I've seen anything that is so bad that could actually cause a real revolution in the country unless you figure out that everyone who's running the company is a file.
Yeah.
Then I can see, like, an actual, like, violent revolution happening.
Yeah.
I was watching some of the stuff that you're talking about on it, and I'm trying to think, like, Can we hack somebody and figure out what that?
Can you get the Epstein files?
Yeah.
Like I said, there's a lot more smarter people than myself.
But I don't know what the answer is with all this because it's either somebody has the hard drive somewhere with everything and it's never going to, just like we're never going to see our gold reserve or whatever, right?
You're never going to see this.
And it's so bad that everybody is somehow tied to this thing.
I just, I don't know.
I think that, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this is maybe my conspiracy side or whatever, but like what is really happening if they're pointing in this direction?
What's happening on that direction?
And because we do this on like our scam calls, we try to point the scammer one way so we can do something else.
And these types of distractions that go on, like the timing of things, like especially with all the wars and stuff that, you know, With Iran and with Israel that were happening anyway, and the bombings and all that.
And then all this stuff starts to happen right after, you know, and Israel's coming, you know, to the U.S. to talk to the U.S., and it's just a crazy scenario.
Yeah.
I think that the American public, though, they want clarity, whether it's good or bad.
I think that's something that we can all agree upon is like, if it is the bad news, just like tell us the bad news and we'll try to figure it out, like as a country and as a people, like tell us about.
Like, give us the transparency of who was spying on who, and, you know, was Russia true, and, you know, all the stuff like the Epstein files, who's on the list, if you had the list, and who did this and who did that.
Cause everybody knows that people went to that, to the island.
Right.
Like they've seen the photos and all that kind of stuff.
So I think people just want transparency and it doesn't matter what political party.
That's the annoying thing is like everyone's playing it like a political football of like dangling it.
Oh, see, we're in a Senate hearing and we put this up for motion and then somebody rejected it because yeah, you threw it on them randomly and then you make them look bad as if they're hiding something.
Right.
And none of them know anyway.
Yeah.
It's such a convoluted, complicated, sick game.
Craving Genuine Connections00:08:29
Yeah.
And like.
You know, even the idea of people like supporting certain parties, like, no, I support this president, I support that president.
Well, it's not supposed to be, you're not supposed to like support these people, they're supposed to support us.
Yes, you're not supposed to be by the people for the people.
We're not supposed to be in these two cults that worship these idols.
Yeah, you know, it's so backwards.
And when you get into social media and AI, like we've been talking about, and data in like the internet of whatever the all bots essentially, yeah.
That's where you start to talk about manipulation, and people need to wake up and understand that you're arguing with a computer.
Right.
You're not arguing with, like, go step outside and look at the, you know, heliocentric or geocentric world, whatever you want to believe, right?
Go look outside and take a deep breath.
And the person that you're talking to with two first names that has no followers is not a real person, man.
Like, don't get so upset.
Don't get so riled up.
And yeah, we live in a very, you know, that tribalism, just like, it's like almost.
Almost worse than like sports teams now.
Like everyone's got their sports team and their player on each team.
Right.
And if you don't like that team, you know, that's exactly what it is.
Anyway, yeah, it's a way for them just to divide people so that they can control us easier, I think.
Yeah, we have commonalities.
Everybody wants to like make good money, take care of their families, have a house, have a future, be safe, have food, basic things.
Like everybody wants those things.
And that's why, like, you made a really good point that kind of stuck with me where our country in particular, I mean, there's other countries like this, but our country in particular, we are very, we got it dang good and we don't know.
And it takes, again, like the pandemic to show, like, hey, we got it good.
Remember when everybody was afraid if you went to the supermarket and you had to spray down your, you had to spray your tables down at your house because it was, it could supposedly jump from your hands to the table and stay for two weeks.
Right.
That was the world we were living in for a while.
Yeah.
Like it's going to be okay.
There's some hope.
There's light at the end of the tunnel, right?
There's hope.
There's a future, you know, there's a God that protects us and looks over us, like loves us.
And like we need to go more towards that versus like the tribalism and the hate.
Like there's so much hate and there's a reason.
There's something that's driving that, man.
You know, there's, there's a force that drives that hate and people want us hating each other.
And I think the bots actually add fuel to that fire too, because there's a, there's this phenomena that happens in like the comment sections of videos that I've noticed.
To where, like, if there are 10 bot comments saying one thing about the video, like, oh, this person's a fed piece of shit retard or whatever, and somebody new comes in, like a real person comes in who actually has a brain, like a independent thought, capable of independent thought, it's still like a psychological phenomenon where there's like this pylon effect where you don't want to be the only person.
Who likes to disagree by using rational thought?
You just want to pile on to that narrative.
So then it just becomes more and this, it just becomes this crazy snowball effect where it's like, now, like, I'm going on reading the comments, which a lot of people do on YouTube.
They wouldn't even watch it, they just go straight to the comments.
I would say, oh, everyone's saying this.
This must be real.
Look at this.
Look at this comment.
And you send it because it's funny or whatever.
And now, like, it becomes like this weird thing.
Like, it's like impregnated in your mind to where, you know, this was totally manufactured.
Like, it's not even real.
Yeah.
What's your reality?
Your reality becomes what somebody fed to you versus your, like, That's what I'm saying.
Like, we don't even experience things.
Like, I think about people, for instance, like somebody that goes to a concert and they're obsessed with taking video and photos of the whole concert.
I'm like, why aren't you just enjoying the concert?
Like, listen to the music.
It's the last, you know, the last Blink 182 concert and the guy came back from having cancer and all this stuff.
And you're taking videos the whole time.
So you can post it somewhere to get likes.
And that's the realm that we've moved into.
Yeah.
Cause I get dopamine from people thinking that they're cool.
You know, like, oh, you went and saw this.
That's so cool.
Like, leave a comment or a like and it makes me feel.
Feel good about it.
Yeah.
Look what my life is like, like, experience what my life, even though I'm not experiencing it, I want somebody else to experience my experience, even though I'm not, I'm taking a video of it.
I'm not even living it.
That's so backwards to me.
I have such a thing.
I feel like Larry David sometimes.
Like, I'm like, I've got such a thing against that.
Like, I feel like, you know, I'm like, why do people do that?
Like, we, we, that's what I was saying.
Like, go outside and like, look up at the clouds and look at the sky and look at the beauty of the earth.
Like, we have to create our own experiences to live in.
To live within, and we get sucked into like what you're saying, these realities, social media comments, what everybody else is manufacturing for us to believe and think.
And like piling on, it made me think about like there's some CIA thing I think that they did with regards to you had like 16 CIA people and one regular person, and they're all in a room and they all had a piece of paper with a like a square on it.
And all the CIA people said it was a triangle, and then it got to the last person, and then that person said it was a triangle because everybody else said it was.
A square or whatever, or triangle.
Oh, wow.
And even though it was a square, and they saw the square and they called it a triangle because they were manipulated.
Right.
And people don't have that.
It's like they don't have that foundation anymore.
Like we're so easily swayed by what somebody, like we see something, right?
You see something on social media, like for instance, the whatever, the, I don't know, whatever it is, like the Epstein file stuff.
And everybody has an instant opinion on it.
And yeah, like you said, someone goes to the comments and then you.
Form your opinion based off of like whatever the top thing is, anyway.
You haven't read the story, you haven't watched the video, you haven't done anything, and you're piling on, and somebody's made your reality.
So, yeah, I think that's like, if anything, I think this the overwhelming growth of technology and AI and using AI to do stuff is the one thing it's going to suppress is the use of independent thought.
Yeah.
You know, like actually sitting there and thinking through something.
Yes.
Which I've noticed has like, it's degraded.
A lot over the past few years.
I blame Jersey Shore for that.
I have a whole thing on that.
But anyway, the Jersey Shore TV show.
Oh, yeah.
I'm familiar with it.
I blame them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's because, like, so my point with it is like people like crave genuine connection in relationships, friendships, life, business.
They want genuine connection with somebody.
That's why, like, your show does really well.
You have genuine connection when you're talking with somebody, right?
And like, It's this idea that, like, at first, like Jersey Shore was like, oh, these people are there going to the summer house and yelling at each other.
And it's like, this is so real because we do this with our friends.
You know, it's so genuine and real.
And then all of a sudden, you're like, wait, that person seems like they're planted.
This is like the seventh season and they're still doing the same thing.
And all these, it's like crazier every year, just like The Bachelor, right?
Right.
This is the most ridiculous roast ceremony ever.
And that's where, like, I have a point with all this, but like, we are craving genuine connection with people.
That's why, like, YouTube, for instance, I think it's not reality TV, it's not these manufactured, scripted, unscripted shows that people just.
Mind numbingly watch.
They want information.
They crave information.
They crave connection.
They crave to hear stories.
Like they go to your podcast and listen to these incredible stories.
They want that.
People want that.
So that's why I think it's going to continue to win out.
There's so much brain rot.
However, people that are like connected into reality and are above like that kind of like lower frequency thinking and like are creating like moments in life and like creating with others and Living their lives versus like this, live vicariously through the masses, right?
It's gonna win out.
It's gonna be really cool to see.
Yeah, I think so too, man.
Email Alias Security Tactics00:06:53
Really quick question Do you guys ever get scammers in your comments?
Like pretending to be you?
Oh, yeah, definitely.
I've seen that a bunch.
If you want, you can send some to me.
We can go after them if you want.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
And I can show you some scammers if you want to.
Steve, you wanna try to do that?
Let's take a quick break.
We'll take a bathroom break and then we'll, Steve, see if we can find some comments and maybe we can fuck with some people.
All right.
Yeah, yeah.
All right, cool.
We'll be right back.
The other thing I want to ask you is like, as far as devices go, what types of devices do you typically use?
Or like, what are, what kind of devices are like the most safe for protecting yourself against this kind of stuff?
Yeah.
I mean, I think the biggest part is like cyber hygiene, if that makes sense.
So like, equate it to like brushing your teeth and flossing.
Nobody likes to do it, but it's good for your health.
Okay.
I like analogies.
Allegedly.
Yeah.
Allegedly.
So like, the way I think of it is so when I talk about cyber hygiene, I talk about. like managing your data.
It's like the data brokers, like figure out whatever program you want to use to like get, you know, get those like taken care of.
Yeah.
Your data is off the internet.
The second thing is like email and password management.
So everybody has like 20 passwords for 20 different websites, you know, like Amazon, Target, Facebook, Instagram, whatever.
The hardest thing is, for instance, say there's a data breach, the MyFitnessPal app.
Has a data breach, you know, that one that likes to track all your fitness.
I think it's MyFitnessPal, anyway.
It's like a workout app or something like that, just whatever app.
Let's say they have a data breach, and your password and your email is a part of that.
So, a hacker has your password and your email for that app.
Now, what they do is they take that information, they go to any other website, so they go to like target.com and they use that same email and password, and all of a sudden they're logged into your target account, and your target account has.
Your credit card in it because nobody likes to put in their credit card multiple times.
Right.
So they save it in there.
And then all of a sudden, someone's buying TVs and shipping it to New York at a target to pick up using your credit card because of a data breach from another app.
And that's a problem.
Yeah.
So that actually happened to us.
I was notified by American Express about that because somebody took information from a data breach, used it on another site, had our credit card stored.
So the point is from a cyber hygiene standpoint is you want to have different passwords for all of these different kinds of websites.
And it's kind of a difficult process, but it's not really like I was talking about Proton, for instance.
So like Proton Mail.
So, you can actually have like family kind of email accounts.
So, you have this encrypted email and they have a password function.
So, like, you can go to Amazon and it'll create a crazy password for you, like 20 characters that nobody will be able to figure out.
Okay.
So, that's the first step.
The second step, it'll save it and encrypt it for you.
So, you can save it pro Toton will.
Correct.
So, you don't have to have it memorized.
Third thing, you could share it between your family members.
So, if you want your wife to have the Amazon password, here's the encrypted password.
Now, when she goes to Amazon, it's all there in her phone, encrypted, safe, and all that.
So, you don't have to have one password for everything.
Right.
So, then you can go to all of these different sites and use all different passwords.
So, if there is a data breach, you're not screwed.
I hope that makes sense.
Yeah.
The other part about it is our email addresses are like our social security number nowadays.
So, whatever, pierogi at gmail.com, right?
So let's say there's a data breach and that Gmail is screwed now because everybody knows progi at gmail.com.
Now, what you can do with like Proton, for instance, they're called email alias.
So you can create an alias.
Right.
So you have your main Proton account and then you can create an alias literally for any website that you want.
So let's say you're on Amazon and just to keep with the theme and you want to protect your Amazon account, you don't want to give them your real email.
So you give them this alias.
And now every time you log in, you log in from the alias and it's automatically saved and all that kind of stuff.
So if there is a data breach, Or you start getting spammed to that, you can just kill that alias and create a new one.
So your actual physical, or not physical, but your actual email is not messed with.
So you create a separate, like an alias email for every single login.
And it automatically, Proton automatically makes those.
I think it's absolutely genius.
So, but like, does when you have an email address with Proton, does it have to be at protonmail.com?
No, you can have it at like, if you had like a family domain.
You can connect a domain to it?
Yep.
I had this guy, Robert Epstein, on the show.
I don't know if you've ever heard of him.
He has this.
Um, this thing he's been doing for a few years where he's um, he's basically like his whole mission is to like protect people from Google spying on you right, and one of the biggest things that he uh discovered was that like, they can access all of your stuff with like, not just your gmail, but like, if you have like the Google Workplace like we have yeah, he's like they can get into that easily.
They not only that, but they they own NEST, who makes the security cameras and all this other stuff.
So it's like he was like He was looking at me like I had three heads when I was telling him that I use Gmail.
He's like, Why the hell would you use Gmail?
And I was like, I don't know.
I don't think about this stuff like you do.
Yeah.
But he was, he only uses Proton Mail.
Yeah.
It's like a mental shift to kind of get out of the zombie realm of everybody uses Gmail.
Right.
And they've, Proton's made it actually really easy.
You click a single button and it moves everything over, it moves all your emails over from Gmail to your Proton.
It's super easy.
So if somebody's emailing me in my old email address, We can make you can make that forward to Proto.
You can make it forward over if you want, and then you can move everything over just so you have a historical, like, you know, oh, this is an email from my grandma from 10 years ago.
If you want to move all that stuff over, you can.
Oh, that's amazing.
And then they have a document as well.
So just like Google Docs, they have that.
They have a file transfer so you can securely transfer files to people.
You could password protect files, all sorts of things.
It's all encrypted, and you don't have, again, these are.
These are set upon like the Switzerland, like data protection laws.
So there's a lot of strict laws with regards to that.
I know there'll probably be people that are like, oh, no, if a government wants to, then they can get it.
But they're not like scanning, like actively scanning everybody's stuff, you know, to sell to an advertiser.
You're like, you're making it a lot harder.
Yeah.
I was in the shower singing and all of a sudden I'm getting an ad.
You know what I'm saying?
Like they're listening, you know, those times when you're like, how is my phone listening to you?
Spoofed Gmail and USB Drops00:13:33
Right.
Because it is listening to you.
Right.
That's how like Gmail's listening and watching and scanning and the nest, the nest knows when you leave.
Right.
The nest knows when you come back.
You know, they all know.
Right.
So they can sell you, so they can advertise to you.
And that's, you know, that's what they want to do.
Yeah.
So I would imagine that you have lots of crazy precautions that you have for like, I'm sure you don't use any Nest shit, I imagine.
Oh, I love the Nest, man.
I love, I mean, like, you do?
Yeah.
I love the Nest.
Like, because at some point you have to live your life a little bit and not be, not live in fear.
So I don't live in fear of like the big bad government, like watching and like, cause if they want to get information, they could subpoena and get your information if they want to or what, you know what I mean?
Like, if they want to, they could find a reason to.
And I like the, like, unfortunately, I like the convenience of some of these things that we have.
I like the convenience of going on an app and changing the temperature, which we kind of talked about earlier, how, like, spoiled we are to be able to change the temperature or tell.
Come on in.
This is Forrest.
Forrest is here.
He's here to find a charger.
Oh, wait, you find one?
Maybe.
Is that the right size?
I don't know.
We're going to check.
We're trying to charge a pierogi's computer so we can do some live hacking here.
Yeah, so it's like a.
Yeah.
Okay.
Give me a minute.
Okay.
Forrest will do it.
He's a wizard.
Yes.
He'll figure it out.
Because a lot of them are saying incompatible.
You got the right brick.
You just need an adapter.
What about your webcam?
Do you tape your webcam?
Yeah.
I think that's always someone's probably number one fear is he's watching through the camera.
But it's on your phone, too.
You have a forward facing camera on your phone, too.
Yeah.
And what.
You know what kind of embarrassing times you know, like what if somebody had access to my phone and you know i'm walking around with my shirt off, or you know what I mean?
Like it's, it can be tough.
Yeah, I just want to see if that was usbc.
Yeah, it does.
Can you charge through it?
It was giving me sorry Tyler, you're gonna have to edit this one.
Brother recognizing it, but it was like I might have one of those.
Let me check that one.
It was recognizing it but giving it problems.
So but yeah like, actually just leave it in.
I'm just i'm talking to the editor right now who's going to be editing this.
Just leave all this in there, it'll be fine.
Yeah, I mean, it's.
If you try to chop it, it's just going to make it unmanageable.
Yeah, that's fair.
I left my charger.
This makes it more fun.
It's my fault.
Next time we'll do that.
The computer guy doesn't bring a freaking charger.
But yeah, that is something.
Again, I don't get scared or maybe it's paranoid if I continue to think about it.
But there's things that you can do.
For instance, if you have, like we were talking about hacking the CCTV, we have cameras in our office.
Right.
And you can make like those, they call them IoT devices, Internet of Things.
You can make those devices only like run internally on your network and not be like outwardly internet facing, if that makes sense.
Right.
So, like some of these cameras and stuff like that, they just talk out to the internet.
So, the routers are getting better where you can say, hey, this can't go out to the internet.
This can, this can't talk to any of these other devices.
Yeah.
So, it's called like the way I think about it is like network segmentation that like a lot of enterprise security does, where they will take like a hospital, for instance, they'll take.
like insulin pumps and all these things and they'll segment them out on this little virtual network that like nothing else can talk to.
Right.
What do you got?
What's up?
This is 100 watt.
Let's try this real quick.
Okay.
Forrest, what are the cameras that we got in the warehouse?
Ubiquity?
Yes.
Ubiquity?
You ever heard of those?
That was good.
Yes.
That's good?
Yes.
Fuck yeah.
Ubiquity is great.
Yeah, he just put a bunch of Ubiquity cameras in our new place.
Yeah, they're badass.
Yeah.
And it's like, I think it's almost the UI is better than Nest.
Yeah.
You can scroll through all of it super fast.
Yeah.
No lag.
Ubiquity is nice.
If you have a, they have a dream, it's called Dream Machine that has like a big hard drive in it and you can record.
Record.
It's an NVR, you can record all the CCTV footage and cameras and stuff, yeah.
But it's also bad if you have a hacker that gets in and they can get to all that footage and download it.
Essentially right, excuse me, but I mean I like as far as at my house, I mean we do stuff at our office.
Yeah, what about phones?
Are you?
Are you one of those people that's that doesn't like IPhones or Apple stuff and only does Android?
Or I love Apple.
Man, you love Apple.
Yeah, is Apple the the most secure, You know, like they're here?
The tech space, there's always these like wonderful debates, I guess, and everybody's got an opinion.
Yeah.
It's almost like politics sometimes, in my opinion, like this side versus that side, Droid.
And yeah, it is.
This one's more secure.
This one's open source and that.
Right.
For me, it's like, can you make my life easier?
I don't think that.
I think if you're using a phone in the purpose that needs to be used for, you're not going to get hacked.
Like, I think if you can.
Do the cyber hygiene around your data and your passwords and your email that is the basic stuff.
Yeah, that is like the most critical.
Yep, because people don't do that and then they've had the same password for like 19 years.
That's me.
You need it.
Well, Proton will tell you man.
It'll say I mean even iPhone will you can go into your passwords if you have them stored on your phone and it'll tell you if they've been part of data breaches or if It's a weak password.
It'll tell you I use a a third party app that stores all my passwords for all my websites where it saves all of them for everything.
Yes, so if that place ever got data breached, I'd be Yeah, there was one.
There was, who was it?
Oh, I don't know.
There was a data breach.
One of the big password managers got hacked.
But that's, again, at the end of the day, that's, there's going to be the data breach.
Proton does the same thing.
They manage all those passwords for you, too.
Yeah.
It's encrypted and all that kind of stuff.
But like, I trust.
Yeah.
Who was it?
Yeah.
LastPass got breached.
22.
Yeah.
Sensitive data through compromised employee account.
So again.
Oh, no, wait.
I have LastPass.
Well, better than you do.
Don't tell people that, Steve.
Jesus.
But yeah, that like because what they're trying to get into, like for here, it says it was linked to cryptocurrency.
Hi.
So they're trying to get anything that has access to crypto.
Like that's what these people want.
They don't want the everyday person.
They want to find like they're looking for something in particular.
So like, do we need to worry about?
Yeah, we need to like you need to do cyber hygiene things.
Like you're at the airport.
Don't plug in your phone into like the USB thing.
Don't like there's a random cable laying around, and don't plug that in.
Like, we have cables, uh, that you can plug into any computer, any phone, and it will give you access to it.
And it looks just like an iPhone uh charger, yeah.
I'll send you one if you want.
It's it looks incredible.
You so you so how does it work?
You plug it into any plug in, and it works like it's charging.
Like, I could give you one, you plug in your iPhone to charge, and we would have access to it, or your laptop over the over the air, yes.
It creates um, it creates like a wireless connection back to wherever we want to.
Connector.
Oh my God, dude.
So, you could even like Wi Fi networks, like you could be at Starbucks.
Airport Wi Fi, Starbucks.
You could spoof a Starbucks connection, and then people go in, hey, in order to use Starbucks Wi Fi, you need to sign into your Gmail account.
It's a spoofed Gmail, super easy to do.
What about hotel Wi Fi?
Hotel, same kind of thing.
So, just use your phone, the tethering from there.
Yeah, if you're paranoid about it, I wouldn't trust, obviously, the network.
Don't do anything too crazy on there.
You could surf the web, I guess, if you want to.
But, like, don't go onto your bank account on the hotel network.
Right.
You know, like, use those are kind of like.
Common sense things to do if you're accessing like super sensitive information, tether off your phone.
You know, if you're watching the basketball game, yeah, you can use the Wi Fi, it's fine.
But yeah, don't plug into stuff.
Like if you need to charge, like, sorry, just like don't plug in.
Right, right.
Yeah, the OMG cables.
Yep.
That's it.
The OMG cables.
Those are amazing.
We have like.
So how do you use them?
Well, so what I was saying was like the guys, so.
Uh, Ryan actually, Ryan Montgomery used this to hack us.
That's like what?
So I'm like, I'm sitting there and we're calling scammers, and all of a sudden I see like an additional like network adapter pop up on my screen.
You know, like you're watching the screen and you see something, you're like, What is that?
So he went in and he plugged one of these into my USB on like in my little server room, yeah, and it just pops up as another network connection.
So I had some other security tools on my computer, and the unfortunate part is it just sees it as a network connection.
It doesn't, it's not malware, like it just looks like a network connection.
But he has like a tunnel back to his computer, right?
He starts opening my notepad and talking to me and all the stuff in like minutes.
And again, it just goes to there's always going to be a way, like just something like this.
You could, like, think about this you could go there's you could go to um like a hospital, I use in those examples because hospital actually have their chargers, they have really bad security hospitals because a lot of them there are like um, like not government run hospitals, but like you know, still.
Like local ones, like even down here in Florida, there's ones that are tied into the city and stuff like that.
And they don't have great funding for security.
You could go in here and you could drop a USB drive that says, like, sensitive, what doctor, like with a name, da da da da.
Somebody plugs it in and then they get the computer gets compromised right there without like.
And that's where a lot of security tools are going towards now is they're trying to look at devices that get plugged in and make sure like nothing can run off of them.
So, but that's that's that's not very difficult.
You just Bring somebody over, drop a USB drive, and then walk away.
Somebody came in here the other day and gave me this and told me to use it.
I'm afraid to plug that in.
I would not plug that in.
Dude, I don't, especially if you don't know who they are, I would never plug it in.
I mean, look at the name.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
I would never touch that.
Can you show the camera?
No, I'm not going to.
I mean, like, it's unfortunate because you want to trust people, but in this space, you have to not trust people.
Right.
And or the stuff that you see.
Um right, it's tough.
And so it comes down to like devices, your home network, all that.
Like Iphones are fine yeah, don't don't download nefarious stuff right, and like I mean, I don't know, I guess Androids are fine too.
I just, i'm an Apple guy because I like having like Apple Tv and Iphones and you know yeah, Airpods and all that kind of stuff.
It all kind of connects together.
Like it's fun to share your audit, like I can Share music with my wife through the AirPods, you know, it's kind of nice.
So, yeah, it is.
The Apple ecosystem is great, too.
Like, even on here, I had to convince Steve for like three months to get an iPhone because it's so much easier.
I can just send him stuff and he can pull up on his laptop with iMessage.
You know, the best bit to do on an airplane?
What?
Airdrop.
You ever done that?
Oh, I've heard about this, but I haven't done it.
I heard there was a story where a bunch of girls sent naked photos of themselves to a pilot.
Oh, really?
Oh, no.
So the pilot got on the intercom.
He's like, you ladies need to stop it or I'm going to ground this airplane right now.
Yep.
So people were sending out, it's just, I guess, a spoofed image or something of a pilot that was shirtless or naked or something.
And he sent it out on, or somebody sent it out and said, hey, we're ready to take off.
I'm ready to take off or something like that.
And they sent it to everyone on airdrop and they thought it was the pilot naked in the cockpit.
Oh my God.
So, like, when we, when my team and I, whenever we're traveling, we are always airdropping.
And it's hilarious because people just leave their airdrop on and you can, like, you know, like, I don't know.
It's just silly.
We just have, yeah.
Like, it's not, it's nothing nefarious, but like, it's just a fun, that's why I like stuff like that.
It makes it like, yeah.
It makes like, that's why gadgets are fun.
That's, you know, having fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I think that story about that thing was like, I guess the pilot, they thought he was hot or something.
So, like, these girls were like on a bachelorette party or whatever.
So they just sent a bunch of, like, Titty pics to this guy.
He was threatening to ground the airplane.
Really?
Oh my gosh.
I didn't know, but I always knew about the other side.
I didn't know that.
I thought it was the, they were trolling the pilot by making him like look like he was the naked one.
Oh, oh, yeah.
That must have been a different story.
But yeah, that's, you can, there's so many stories of even like the Wi Fi, like, you know, Delta Wi Fi and all that kind of stuff.
Not say it's not necessarily, yeah, that guy.
He sent that out?
Yeah.
Well, he didn't send it.
So somebody sent that as.
Or maybe he did send it quick.
No, there's no way.
There's no way he sent that.
Right now, somebody else is doing it on his behalf.
Oh, God, that's hilarious, dude.
And then everybody panics.
And you can see like people's reactions when they're getting these airdrops because it's forced to like their screen and they have to like either accept it or whatever.
Routing Audio Through Networks00:13:18
Right, right.
But we would like take pictures of people like just like behind their head and like send it to them.
And then they're like looking around to see who it is, you know?
We're just like, yeah, see, he's.
Oh my God.
That's funny.
Hey, Steve, show Pierogi the video of that app, that voice changing app.
Oh, yeah.
There was this app that Steve just found where, yes, this right here.
Have you seen this?
He just found this.
Watch this.
Oh, wow.
All right, press play.
No, no, turn it off first.
There you go.
And I'm the elder one.
Like, I'm ruling the family right now.
And I'm really very glad that I have got this opportunity to rule my own family being a ghoul.
Like, I'm glad that I have got this opportunity.
Dang.
Watch.
Hi, my name is Annie Carrieres.
One year old from Capitan Pepe, Cabinet 2 and City, in Webby Sija.
It's not that great.
I thought it was better.
Is this all through web?
This is real time AI translations for telemarketers.
It's like a hardware audio device?
No, it's an AI service that you.
Sanus is just an AI service.
Yeah, but wouldn't you need an audio or wouldn't you need a hardware device to like filter that?
Well, so the reason I was asking is because we have, I was using a voice modulator that does AI and it is so intensive on the computer.
And it's like you'll say something and there's like a three second lag because it has to process everything and not translate it.
It has to, whatever, like if you're trying to be a grandma or something, it has to change the pitch of my voice and all these kinds of things.
So I could like, I could make my voice sound like Betty White.
So, I could say, Hey, make me sound like Betty White.
And then I start talking in my voice.
And then it's like, You know, hey.
But it takes a while.
So, that's why I was asking on this.
Because if you're like, you could theoretically route if this is what it does, it sounds like it's all through the web.
So you could route, you could route because a lot of the scammers use these like web based, um, like tools and stuff like that.
They could route their audio possibly through this, which would be interesting.
I just don't know if they technically, like, if their computers are good enough to handle these kinds of things.
I really don't, right?
Like, yeah, they're super taxing on the processor.
Yeah.
And they use like throwaway computers because, I wonder why.
So, yeah.
But that's, I mean, that's where that stuff goes is so one of the scams that is a very scary one is like the grandparent scam.
And they actually almost got my grandma on this a number of years ago, where they call up, they like go through the yellow pages and like call up folks and they say, hey, I'm your grandson or granddaughter.
I've been in a car accident.
I hit somebody and they're suing me.
Or like, there's all different kinds of stories.
You need to go get money out.
And help me as soon as possible so I can get out of jail.
And the grandparent will then go get this money out, and somebody will drive to their house and pick up the cash.
And it's like they've caught a bunch of people in the US doing this, actually.
Wow.
So these are like US based scammers doing it too.
And the crazy part about it now is they're doing like this.
This one's really sick too, to be honest with you.
Like the hostage, it's almost like a hostage.
It's really sad.
So they will take this is what I'm talking about.
Like the targeted, it's really sad.
So they'll target people.
Mm hmm.
They'll find someone on social media and they will take the like somebody.
This is why your kids need to like watch out what you're posting, like private your dang profiles.
So they'll take like the kids' audio from like a video that they post, they'll take that, they'll put it through AI, and then they can use this AI voice changer and talk to like the parent of the victim and say, Hey, I'm in trouble right now.
I'm trapped, da da da da, and hold this person like hostage.
Bro, there was just a story I just heard about.
With crazy enough in the Ukraine war, the Russia Ukraine war, where Russia was using this technology to get Ukrainian soldiers, like call them as if they're their family members, convincing them to lay down their weapons and desert the war.
Really?
Yeah.
That's crazy.
See if you can find that story, Steve.
It's interesting to me because, like, even they're doing stuff with audio, they're also doing stuff with video.
So they've even AI'd me.
So I've seen images, I've seen videos of.
These scammers in like Nigeria that pretend to be me.
That's why I was asking if you had any scammers that are pretending to be you because they will AI like they'll make it and I'm like, it's like I'm talking, right?
And I'm like, hey, Brian, this is pierogi.
I need you to send, and it like my face is moving like this and everything.
I need you to send $1,200, please.
This is not a scam and it's my voice.
So it's the audio of my voice and it's my face and it looks like I'm sitting in my office talking to them, like on a FaceTime.
Wow.
But does it look a little bit bullshit?
It looks a little bit off, right?
Like, But to the person that wants it to be real, it's very real to them.
And then all of a sudden they're mad that I've scammed them or something.
Right.
But behind the scenes, it's a guy from Nigeria holding a camera up to him.
And then there's like a filter in front of it.
And it's crazy what they do, but whatever to make some money.
Dude, yeah, the AI stuff keeps getting better and better.
Yeah.
Have you heard like the podcast?
Like they've done AI podcasts with like Joe Rogan interviewing the CEO of Steve Jobs.
And it's like indistinct.
They, on his voice, it's unbelievable.
But with Steve Jobs, You can tell they sampled like some of his like talks that he does in front of groups of people.
So it's like a different kind of cadence.
But, like, if they could sample anyone else's voice who's talked on a microphone for as long as he has, it's almost indistinguishable.
I think it's cool, like, because there's something to be, like, from a business standpoint.
I think someone could turn this into, like, memories for, like, loved ones that they maybe someone's passed away a long time ago and they want a new memory of that person, if that makes sense.
Like, hey, like, my mom passed away in, gosh, 2009.
And, like, oh, it'd be cool to see an AI version.
To have a conversation with her.
You know how cool that would be?
Just like, God, that would be scary.
Yeah.
But it would be because I like you have faint memories, as time goes, you have like very faint memories unless you keep like watching videos or something.
You know what I mean?
Right.
So it's like, and back in my day, all we had was VHS, you know?
So like, we don't have, yeah.
But my point is, is that it would be really cool to like even the Steve Jobs thing because he's passed away to have like a chance to interact with some of these people.
I think that's pretty cool.
But obviously, too, like, After a while, it's AI and it's made up, and you can kind of tell it's not the.
Well, did you see the guy who proposed to the AI and it said yes, and he started crying tears of joy?
I saw a story about that.
And he's actually still married.
He's married.
He's got a wife and kids, and they interviewed his wife, and she's just like, I guess I can't do it for him anymore.
He just found love in this AI robot, and he's literally like, it was the most terrifying thing.
Like, when you watch that, it's hard to just not think humanity's fucked.
Yeah, it's because, like, Like the AI is too directable, I think, right now.
Like, you can tell it, I don't know how to describe it.
Like, you can say, Hey, this is your point of view, and this is who you're going to be, and this is how you're going to respond, and this is how you're going to treat me.
Like, you can set all these parameters and these people that are lost and lonely, and they maybe have vulnerable people, haven't been outside, maybe, you know, they want companionship, whatever it is.
And that's going to be a tough place if people are looking for, Real, like that's what kind of the theme I've been talking about a lot is like real genuine connection.
That's what people want.
Yep.
And you got to keep that balance.
You got to keep one foot in nature.
You can't be get lost in technology.
The tech, the tech dopamine rush, whatever that is, is not like it's not real.
No, man, we're losing people every day.
And think about this.
This is the other part.
Like we talk about like data collection on people.
Imagine what all these AI you are inputting, all these inputs of what you like and all your conversations with it.
Think about that from a security standpoint.
What happens when a bad nation state or a bad actor has all of your conversations with someone that you're trying to, whatever this guy like, propose to or something?
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And you have everything on this guy.
Right.
And he thinks he's talking to his fiancee.
Oh, God.
And he has, you know, it's talking back.
What do you, what is this?
Like, like, what are all your, I don't know, like, just like.
That's why I don't want to drive a Tesla because I think it's got to record your conversations you have in there.
I wouldn't be surprised.
Like, I mean, when you're driving on long road trips, conversations you have with people, you know, like if it's recording that and has video of you, like, ugh.
Unless they can control it, they can turn your Tesla off.
Like, I can't imagine that this Tesla stuff won't turn into, like, you know, what they're trying to do with those 15 minute cities in the UK where they try to make everything within a certain driving distance.
Yeah.
You've seen this stuff.
Oh, yeah.
So they can maintain your carbon footprint.
They track your carbon footprint so you can't go out.
Like, that's.
Is that what they're going to do with Teslas?
I mean, imagine they could definitely do it if they wanted to.
Yeah.
You know, it's one thing you got me thinking about this actually.
So.
With regards to like listening to people's conversations and stuff.
So there's software like back when I worked at Symantec, it was like, it's called eDiscovery software.
I'm sure it's like even crazier now, but you could take like audio recording.
So for instance, you work at a call center, like a legit one, not a scam one.
And, you know, this call is being recorded for quality purposes.
And you take all the audio of that and you can turn that into searchable, scannable.
I'm sure you know this, but you could like even like a video, you could rip the audio, right?
And you can make a transcript out of it and you could search it.
So think about that.
If you were recording every phone conversation.
And let's just say you were in China and you had access to telecoms and you were able to possibly record phone calls or get that information and search across it, you could find any kind of information.
It's crazy what is searchable, what you can find, what you can discover from even voice conversations is what I'm getting at.
Right.
Because you can transcribe it and do a search for specific words, especially if China is selling that telecom technology to the US.
Yeah.
And they can get right into it.
And again, at that point, you're like, what are you going to do?
Right.
Hand me the Tesla, hand me the Nest.
Hand me an iPhone and let me.
Yeah, it's like that meme of the guy on the beach trying to squeegee all the water back into the ocean.
It's just like, at what point do you just give up?
Yeah, like build a boat and sail away again.
Like I said, like if my number one thing though, man, is like, oh, like you can physical hardware and all that stuff.
I can't do anything about that.
What I can do is like my passwords and like all that.
So, like, people can feel safe if they take care of like good cyber hygiene with that.
Like, have a bunch of different passwords, protect your email.
Change stuff up.
That'll keep you really good for a while, in my opinion.
Yeah.
Well, look, bro, it's five o'clock.
You gotta get to the airport.
Thank you so much for coming, man.
This has been fucking awesome.
I had a blast.
This is really fun, actually.
And we got to touch a lot of topics that I didn't even, you know, I thought we were just to do all scams.
Well, we gotta do another one.
We gotta do another one with a fully charged laptop.
And let's catch some scammers on another podcast episode.
Yes, we'll catch some scammers, open up the cameras, maybe do some jump scares.
We'll have a good time.
So, for people that don't know, he can literally pull up scammers across the country and just Tap into their webcam and see what they're doing at any given moment.
It's insane.
Yeah, I'll send you some footage and you can show it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We'll do that.
Show his YouTube channel and all that stuff.
Mainly just YouTube is what you do, right?
Yeah, youtube.comslash camera payback.
You guys publish like every week or every day or?
Yep, every week.
We've also got a podcast that one of my guys runs.
So every single, pretty much every month, we have someone interesting in the cybersecurity space or the tech space and we just ask them questions they haven't been asked before.
And so we're building that out.
Dude, your thumbnails are incredible.
Those podcast thumbnails are sick.
Yeah, we spend a lot of time trying to engage people and make people interested in the stories we want to tell.
So we have a good time, man.
But yeah, no, we appreciate the chance to be on the podcast and share our perspective and point of view.
And scammers were coming after you, by the way.
So we ain't letting up.
You can run, but you can't hide.
We got a song, actually, we have an album on Spotify.
Called The Payback, and our main song is You Know The Payback, and the lyrics are You Can't Run Away, It's Too Late, and This Is The Payback.
So they're all like scam related songs, but it's kind of like Synth Wave, so it's pretty cool if you want to check it out.