Former NASA Engineer Shares How He Gets Even With Scammers

How sophisticated are the criminal organizations you encountered?

If Microsoft was remotely running their call center in India, it wouldn’t look a lot different from these scam call centers. These [scam] companies optimize the best way to make outbound calls and basically are salespeople. But instead of, say, trying to sell you auto insurance, they’re convincing you that something is wrong and that you need to take action for some fictitious scenario.

Was the Kolkata mission risky to your local agents?

If I knew what I know now, I don’t know if I would have done it. The call center owners are criminals. They make about $20 million a year — and to some people, human life is worth less than $20 million. They could, at the very least, rough someone up to try to protect their assets. On the other side, for a lot of those agents, who are ex-scammers, it was personal. They had seen firsthand the devastation that this industry causes to a lot of people.

What led you from pursuing porch pirates to going after international phone fraud?

I was in the middle of putting together a glitter bomb and kept getting [interrupted by] a bunch of spam calls. I like using engineering anywhere there is justice to be pursued. Any time you can find someone like that to mess with, it’s perfect, because everyone’s going to be rooting for you. And it feels really cathartic.

Why do you think criminal call centers target older Americans?

One of their tactics is to overwhelm and pressure people, especially when it comes to technology. On average, older Americans are less technologically savvy because they didn’t grow up with it. Also, they have worked most of their lives, so some older people have a lot of money — or at least more than a 20-year-old. It’s a combination of those two things.

A rat escapes into a scam call center in India

Courtesy Mark Rober

You avoid victim blaming.

The people who think they’re too smart to get scammed tend to be the people who feel so foolish when it does happen, that they don’t report it. There is something to be said about destigmatizing getting scammed. Scammers simply get people on the wrong day, at the wrong time.

Do you feel you have ways to fight fraud that law enforcement cannot?

I have been told that by multiple law enforcement agencies. If you name all the major law enforcement agencies, at least one person from each has reached out to us to ask questions, or for evidence or techniques. It’s an arm’s race, though, because scammers change their tactics. Hopefully, we can tip the balance back, at least temporarily, in favor of the victims.

Is your fight against call centers still going on?

There is one that is still operational, that we have agents in right now, that will be shut down soon, I hope.

Any surprises for porch pirates?

Yes. It will have something to do with drones. That’s all I’m saying.

What other criminals are you targeting?

The smash-and-grab thieves who are breaking car windows and stealing from the vehicles. Here in the San Francisco Bay area, it’s really bad. I’ll be working potentially with some law enforcement. There will be a very uncharitable amount of fart spray involved.

Is the feedback that you get on YouTube different for scam-busting videos than it is for your more usual posts?

Yeah. I get a lot of people who personally message me or comment how they have a grandparent or a loved one who, sadly, got scammed out of a bunch of money. And how heartbreaking it is — and frustrating and embarrassing and devastating, in some cases. In other cases, they barely stopped it in the nick of time. But in all the cases, they’re grateful that this content’s being pushed out.

What could end this wave of phone fraud?

The Indian government needs to get serious and actually make it easier to prosecute these crimes. Because right now, someone says, “Hey, my grandmother just got called. She just lost $20,000!” The folks in law enforcement [in the U.S.] are, like: “It is so not worth our time to try and track this down. It is just going to be a dead end.” The other way to handle it is to educate people. And​that is what I am doing with my videos. I am trying to educate people by making entertaining content. So at least people know how the scam works.