Double Scam: Author Caught in Recovery Scheme After Crypto Dating Fraud

 (MUSIC INTRO)

[00:00:02] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:04] Josh: This one caught me so completely off guard because she put in the work. It was not a simple scam. She introduced herself as a girlfriend and then after several months, she introduced the investment. She was the perfect hook, and then it was the actual scam.

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[00:00:28] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. Scam victims often find themselves in desperate situations, their money stolen, their options limited, and sometimes it feels like there's nowhere to turn for help and into this sea of frustration and desperation, well, criminals charge in re-victimizing people in the darkest kind of kick them while they're down operations. Today's guest is the victim of what's known as a recovery scam. He's a double victim, and the tragedy only deepens when he turns to family for financial help. Meet Josh Kern. His dad was in the military, so he grew up all over, but he lives in Colorado now. He's an author who's written dozens of books. But Josh never expected to live out the life of a character from one of his zombie thrillers.

[00:01:25] Bob: What kind of things do you write?

[00:01:26] Josh: Fantasy, LitRPG, game lit, apocalyptic, zombie thrillers, a little bit of everything. Mainly I try to concentrate on fantasy because that's my first love growing up. But yeah, also sci-fi stuff. But yeah, fantasy is generally my bread and butter with also, thrillers as my backup, just because I really enjoy writing them. I don't really know how to phrase that one, but it, it, it just…

[00:01:56] Bob: That's okay. You sort of…

[00:01:58] Josh: ...does something for me.

[00:01:59] Bob: Yeah. I'm sure it's more fun to write one than to live one, however, isn't it?

[00:02:02] Josh: Yeah, for sure. I'm actually using this entire episode and one of my current books, so.  

[00:02:08] Bob: Are you really? Oh, wow.

[00:02:11] Bob: This entire episode. The story begins when Josh signs up for a dating site.

[00:02:18] Josh: I don't really go anywhere. I work from home. I go to church, I go to the store, so I, I don't really have a whole lot of opportunities to meet someone unless it's at church, at the store, and I don't really wanna meet people at the store. That's just weird, in my opinion. Yeah, so my brother introduced me to this dating app a few years ago, and I've done a few dates from it. And then in January, February of last year, this girl and I started talking. And…

[00:02:53] Bob: What was her name?

[00:02:54] Josh: Her name was Hannah. She was from Azerbaijan, but she lived in Washington. She'd been in the US for a few years.  

[00:03:03] Bob: What did she look like?

[00:03:04] Josh: Asian? She was very pretty, honestly, out of my league, but it's, it's a religious dating app that, that's part of the thing that drew me to the dating app I wanted to date within my religion.

[00:03:19] Bob: Sure.

[00:03:20] Bob: Hannah has a lot going for her. She's an interior designer. She's chatty. They share a lot of interests, and they talk for weeks and weeks, just about mundane things. Two months go by.

[00:03:34] Josh: It was all completely innocent, normal. We were just getting to know each other, just like regular people. How was your day? How are you doing? Just, this is me. This is you. I want to get to know you just like any other person that you would want to date.

[00:03:53] Bob: And at that point she suggests, let's take it off the app to another chat tool, WhatsApp.

[00:04:00] Josh: And so that was completely normal in my opinion. So I went along with it. And when she said, let's do that again, people generally move off of the dating app to get to know each other. And since we weren't close together, she was in Washington, I'm in Colorado, we couldn't exactly meet up right away, so yeah, we moved off the dating app. We went on to WhatsApp and that's when we had our first video call.

[00:04:26] Bob: Their first video call. This is a big deal. It takes the relationship to the next level and things go well.

[00:04:36] Josh: It only lasted like a minute and a half, two minutes. Just enough time to confirm that I was real, she was real, but her accent was fairly thick, so I had a hard time understanding her. But there was a person there, she looked like her pictures. I could talk to her and at the time, that was good enough for me.

[00:05:02] Bob: So a couple more weeks of chatting go by, mostly text chatting. But there are occasional videos.

[00:05:10] Josh: She would send me like little, short clips of herself like at night where she would just be saying goodnight to me and stuff like that.

[00:05:21] Bob: And it's during one of these simple “how was your day” chats that Hannah drops in mention of another way that she supplements her income.

[00:05:29] Josh: It was maybe like week two or three when we mentioned other ways that we earned money outside of our actual jobs, and that's when she wove in the investment thing.

[00:05:47] Bob: The investment thing. Cryptocurrency. She makes money with cryptocurrency, but not well, not by buying and selling it, by betting on it.

[00:05:59] Josh: She mentioned that she had this foolproof plan, that she regularly made money doing it, and that she was an interior designer by day, and that at night she would make these, I don't even how to phrase it, not bets, but they were more or less bets on one of her investment sites, and that was more or less it, the first time. And then a few days go by and she just sends me a picture of like how much money she made that day on her, her bet for cryptocurrency, and it was like $8,000.

[00:06:43] Bob: Wow.

[00:06:44] Josh: Yeah. And I was like, oh dang, cool. Good job. I didn't really know what to say that that's a fair chunk of change to make in one day, but at the same time, it didn't have a lot to do with me and that that was really it,

[00:07:02] Bob: But that isn't really it because this side hustle keeps coming up.

[00:07:08] Josh: And then the next week she does it again, and then also tells me more about the process, and she just starts weaving it into our conversation and asks me if I'm interested in doing it with her. All of this is completely normal, and she just starts talking about it completely normal. “This is how I do it. This is why.” Just, “I've been able to make this much money.” So a week goes by and then she finally asked me if I wanna do it, and I'm like, yeah, okay. I'll put a few dollars in it.

[00:07:50] Bob: Josh thinks it's okay to dabble in Hannah's methods because, well, he's already dabbled in crypto, so he opens an account at this specific site Hannah points him to.

[00:08:01] Josh: the way it worked is you put in $5,000 for the first time and at $5,000 you make a bet against whether your chosen cryptocurrency was going to go up or down, and you could make it a bet against Ethereum, Doge, Bitcoin. And her method was against Bitcoin, and for the $5,000, your bet would last for a minute. And it was then 10%. So for 10% of $5,000 or however much you actually were betting above that. So if you won, you got 10% on top of that, if you lost it all, like a normal bet. And so followed her directions and she would tell me when a good time was and we would make the bet and it worked. The money went up.

[00:09:06] Bob: So your first bet was $5,000?

[00:09:08] Josh: Yeah.

[00:09:09] Bob: And how much did you win?

[00:09:11] Josh: 10% of that?

[00:09:13] Bob: About $500. Not bad for a minute's work. So he does it again and again. Her timing is perfect.

[00:09:24] Josh: Every time I follow her directions it goes up. And at this point we'd been talking for, it began in, like I said, January, February. This was probably around April-ish. This was like four months. We were getting fairly serious. She was definitely my girlfriend.

[00:09:49] Bob: And he is definitely making money or so it seems, and she wants him to make even more.

[00:09:56] Josh: Yeah, so everything was going good. She wanted me to keep increasing the amount because, so at 5,000, you could bet for one minute at 10%. At 10 or 15,000, I don't remember, you could bet for two minutes and you would get like 20%. I don't remember. But you would get at two minutes, you would get a higher percentage. At like 25,000, you would get three minutes and a better percentage, or maybe it was 50,000.

[00:10:32] Bob: These bigger bets she proposes. Well, they aren't just about money.

[00:10:36] Josh: Like I said, we were getting fairly serious. We were talking about a possible future together and things are going good, that this was money for our future,

[00:10:48] Bob: but at some point she pushes him too far. She tells him to make a $25,000 bet, and that would force him to raid his rainy day fund. And well, he doesn't think he can do that.

[00:11:01] Josh: It was the amount that she was asking me to take out from my dividends. 'Cause most of my money I had in, wasn't even in my stocks, my active stocks, it was just in a dividend portfolio, passively earning me money. 'Cause my ability to feel safe and offset my anxiety, 'cause I have major anxiety issues ever since I was a young kid, partly is related to money. 'Cause like I said, military brat, they don't earn a lot of money, grew up fairly poor, so yeah. So, a lot of my stocks were in dividends, so I would always be earning money no matter how my books did, no matter what happened. And so I didn't wanna pull any of those out of my portfolio. And so that's where I drew the line and she pushed on it and I straight up stopped talking to her for a week because she kept pushing on it. I just shut down on her.

[00:11:55] Bob: Did you like break up with her or just say, I need space? What happened?

[00:11:58] Josh: No, I didn't break up to her. I just ghosted her. As bad as that sounds, I, I may have said I need space or something like that, but I, I just straight up stopped talking to her.

[00:12:08] Bob: So Josh cuts off. Hannah, at least for now, he can't imagine putting his rainy-day fund, the thing that wards off his anxiety at risk, even for his girlfriend. But a week passes and…

[00:12:23] Josh: I think she just said sorry or something like that, and we started chatting again and she stopped pushing for a while. The money kept growing. We went back to doing what we were.

[00:12:37] Bob: But after things return to normal for a bit. Well, Josh changes his mind. He decides he's going to make a leap of faith. He's going to build his account balance up to a hundred thousand dollars so he can reach another level, make bets with even higher earning potential.

[00:12:55] Josh: And after discussing it with her, we decided I would go with the a hundred thousand because, again, it was determined on the balance at my account at the end of the program, and it was meant to include everything in the account, including what I had made up till that point.  

[00:13:14] Bob: But a hundred thousand dollars, that's a lot of money.

[00:13:16] Josh: Yeah. There were alarm bells going off in my head, but there were. Certain things like that where it was like, okay, it makes sense. Plus I'd been using them for a while, plus I had relationship blinders on. All of these different factors were offsetting all of this other stuff. So we went with the larger amount.

[00:13:42] Bob: But once he starts making these bigger deposits, well, things go sideways. His account isn't credited the way he expects. Then they threaten him with freezing his account if he doesn't follow their instructions. More alarm bells ring.

[00:13:58] Josh: I probably should have just called it at that point because I had only deposited, including the amount I had lost, I had deposited $12,000 or so. Maybe a little bit more, I don't remember. In my mind, I had made 30 something thousand dollars plus the reward from them. So I'm looking at $50,000 of my money.

[00:14:26] Bob: Yeah.

[00:14:26] Josh: So I panicked.

[00:14:29] Bob: He panics and adds more money to the account to satisfy the requirements they've given him.

[00:14:35] Josh: I don't want them to freeze it, so, I wanted that money, that, that's my money in my mind, it's already mine. So I, I talk it over with her and she agrees to lend me some of her money. And I would deposit all of my money, so liquidate all of my dividend stocks and transfer it over into the account and borrow it from her. And then we proceed to make some bets and the amount I need to. And we get the account over a hundred thousand dollars and I decide, okay, we can finally make some big bets. I'll let it ride for a little bit. And we do, and the account grows rapidly because you have to remember at that point, at a hundred thousand, you can make bets for five minutes, and the interest on each bet is then 40 or 50%, I don't remember. And it grows over the next week or two from a hundred something thousand to 300,000. I don't know. It's a stupid number.

[00:15:42] Bob: But you think you have a lot of money.

[00:15:44] Josh: Yeah, I think frankly, I am set for life.

[00:15:49] Bob: Set for life. So at this point he tells them. It's time to withdraw his money. He wants to start taking all that cash off the table, but he can't, not right away. They need to do an audit first, and that has a price tag.

[00:16:06] Josh: If I wanted them to do a security audit so I could withdraw my funds, I needed to deposit like 11% of the amount into the account so they could do it, or something like that. I don't remember. I needed to deposit a certain amount into the account to prove that I had, I don't know, I had the ability to do something and then they would do the security audit and I would then be able to withdraw by funds.

[00:16:37] Bob: He doesn't have the money to pay for this audit, so he turns to Hannah for help and well…

[00:16:45] Josh: This was on like a Friday, and I freaked out. I messaged her and apparently the same thing had happened to her and she had completely forgotten to tell me about it. And then she went on a golf trip that weekend, didn't tell me about it. Just completely ghosted me. Supposedly broke her phone was gone all weekend when she came back on Monday. Yeah. Anyways, not what I was expecting from someone who, we'd been talking every single day for the last few months though, and I, I was having the worst time of my life and she's just goes incommunicado.  

[00:17:31] Bob: And that's enough for Josh. He realizes that something very wrong is happening. Forget the $300,000 balance in his account. He's starting to worry he'll never see the $100,000 of his own money, that he transferred to that site, again.

[00:17:48] Bob: At this point, you think the money's gone.

[00:17:50] Josh: Yeah, I think it's gone. I don't have the money to do that security audit, even if I wanted to, and I'm positive that they're a scam. I was talking to their customer support and they were just ringing alarm bells left and right.

[00:18:10] Bob: So you, you go online, you find the what? The Federal Trade Commission that you start filing complaints. What do you do?

[00:18:15] Josh: Yeah. Did the IC3 three, which is the FBI. I did the FTC and I believe I did the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the C-F-P-B. And those were really the only three I could think of at the time. Cause yeah, like I said, there isn't really any information online on what to do in these circumstances.

[00:18:36] Bob: And he frantically searches for help for some kind of direct response.

[00:18:41] Josh: I came across this company that said they would help me recover my funds. They supposedly would buy a node related to the wallet of the company in question and recover the funds, and then they would send the coins to a third party wallet that I would create on a live ledger. And they walked me through how to do that and I did it on a website they recommended. Again, they owned the website probably. And…

[00:19:18] Bob: how much did they charge you?

[00:19:20] Josh: Oh, they didn't charge me anything. That's part of why I went with 'em. I was like, okay, I have no money to do it anyways. They just want a little bit off the top after they've recovered anything. That sounds legit. And again, I wasn't thinking at the time. I was just in pure panic mode.

[00:19:37] Bob: Soon after this recovery company tells Josh, “Good news.” They've managed to get back his money, the cryptocurrency that belongs to him, but. To get at the cash, he'll have to go through a complex procedure and well, that's how his parents get involved.

[00:19:55] Bob: You were gonna have to put money, in order to get your money back.

[00:19:58] Josh: Yeah.

[00:19:59] Bob: How much did they, did you need to put in?

[00:20:01] Josh: $35,000.

[00:20:04] Bob: Wow. And you have nothing at this point, right?

[00:20:06] Josh: Yeah, no, I had nothing. I was tapped out, so I had to beg my parents who are retired.

[00:20:12] Bob: What was that like?

[00:20:13] Josh: Humiliating, humbling and everything in between.

[00:20:16] Bob: Did you tell them the whole story?

[00:20:18] Josh: Oh, they already knew the whole story. I told them that they would have their money back fairly soon. And I like, I, like I said, they already knew the whole story. They knew what I was going through. I told 'em about this website, the company, and that I believed they were legit and that they would have their money back soon. And they let me borrow the money.

[00:20:44] Bob: So Josh kicks in his parents $35,000, and…

 [00:20:50] Bob: So you borrow money from your parents, you put the money in, and then how quickly did you realize that was stolen too?

[00:20:56] Josh: Oh, I realized it right away when they tried to sync it again. The money vanished from the, the wallet. So I reached out to the company and I was like, okay, what's going on? The money's gone. And they were just like, oh, it's an error, but it partially worked. The coins are now good. We just need to now send it to your wallet. Now you have to just pay a gas fee to transfer everything. And I'm just like, you guys screwed everything up and you want me to pay gas fee. Oh man, I was beyond pissed and I wanted to cry and just, I wanted it to be over so bad.

[00:21:34] Bob: So what did you do?

[00:21:35] Josh: Oh, obviously I couldn't borrow money from my parents at that point, so I actually asked my brother and he let me borrow the money. He straight up told me that it was a scam.

[00:21:45] Bob: How much was it?

[00:21:46] Josh: I think it was like $3,000.

[00:21:48] Bob: So you go to your brother and he says that, I think it's a scam, but he gives you the money anyway.

[00:21:52] Josh: Yeah, they eat the funds. The website says that something went wrong, that they put in the wrong amount or something like that for the gas fee and that it was some kind of error code. I don't remember, but that they miscalculated the gas fee and I would have to try it again. And I looked it all up, this actually does happen. It's not super common, but it does happen. I was super pissed at them though, so I asked my brother again. And he did it again. He is very nice like that. Then I put the money into the account on the live ledger site and still couldn't make the transfer. So I had the money in the account ready for the gas fee. Everything was good to go and it still wouldn't work. And I'd been sending them emails back and forth. They were just not communicating with me. At this point. I was getting more than a little inkling that they were a scam as well, and that I'd walked from one into another and screwed myself and my parents, my brother over. Feeling just like a complete dumb A.

[00:23:19] Bob: Josh's feelings of panic of desperation only get deeper and deeper, but then he starts opening up to other people about what has happened and well, a friend points him in a better direction.

[00:23:32] Josh: Up till that point, I had been trying to hide it because it, it's really embarrassing to be scammed out of this much money. It was not by any means a small amount, 'cause I'd been trusting her. It was. An investment thing. Investments are a large amount of money, not help me pay for my rent or anything like that, it's an investment. Anyways, so one of my friends who used to be a teacher, my teacher, actually led me to a, a site. Let me pull it up real quick so I get the name right. It's called operation shamrock.org. Apparently one of his friends operates it and it's for scam victims, and I went to the website and found pretty much all the information I need.

[00:24:31] Bob: Josh finds his way to Operation Shamrock and well, we'll have much more about Operation Shamrock in a moment, but he finally gets a professional interested in his case,

[00:24:42] Josh: An officer from Minnesota, I believe, got in touch with me and he had experience dealing with cryptocurrency scams and he got in touch with the officer here who had taken my report, got the actual report from him, he got my information. I was able to give him all the, like the transaction hashes, the the wallet codes, and he was able to track everything down. All of this took a while, but he was able to track down all of the funds pretty much right away, but he couldn't really do anything because warrants going through the proper channels, all of this other stuff. But in December, he sent me an email saying that he had discovered where all the funds went, and it was China.

[00:25:39] Bob: Oh man.

[00:25:40] Josh: So that, that was more or less the end of the road. He couldn't do anything but…

[00:25:44] Bob: But up until that point, you still had some faint hope that maybe you could get some money back, right?

[00:25:49] Josh: Yeah, I wasn't really hoping for all of it back. I was hoping that I would be able to get enough back to pay my parents and my brother if I could get my money back then great. I just wanted enough back to pay my parents. But yeah, no, I was holding out a little bit of hope on everything else, but no, when he told me that, I was just like, oh yeah, no, it's gone.

[00:26:14] Bob: At least Josh knows the whole truth now, but it's a bitter truth.

[00:26:20] Bob: So what was it like when you had to go to your parents and go to your brother and say, I'm sorry, but I, it was a scam and I don't have the money. What was that like?

[00:26:29] Josh: With my brother. It was a small enough amount that I was able to pay him back fairly quickly. With my parents, that one was different. That one, like I said, they're retired. They're in their late seventies. That one was, I regret ever asking them for money to begin with, yeah.

[00:26:53] Bob: That's probably one of the most difficult conversations you've ever had with them.

[00:26:57] Josh: Yeah. You have no idea on that one. That one just, oh, man. Yeah. No, I, I, oh yeah. Sorry. Yeah, no, I…

[00:27:11] Bob: No, it's, it's, take your time. It's fine. It's, it's an awful situation. I'm so sorry. Where do things stand today with them?

[00:27:21] Josh: I've been able to pay back my brother. I've tried to make headway on my parents, but it's 35 plus thousand dollars is a large amount of money, and obviously I haven't made any headway on regaining my former money. I'm trying to make headway on stocks, but the, just to earn money. But the stock market's crazy at the moment and I, I'm writing, I'm trying to do what I can to earn money and stay focused, but…

[00:28:00] Bob: how much money that was stolen from you in the end.

[00:28:03] Josh: All told, from me personally, it was around a hundred thousand dollars from my parents, 35,000, and then the 6,000 from my brother. So it was one site for me, then the second site for my brother and my parents.

[00:28:26] Bob: And you've already explained this and I think you've explained it very well. I think it's true for a lot of people, that little nest egg that you had, that's your security blanket in case anything goes wrong. And now that's gone now, right?

[00:28:38] Josh: Yeah. That was my entire life savings. That was years of effort. That was my security blanket that kept my anxiety at bay. That kept me from freaking out over every little expense, from every little thing. And yeah, this one caught me so completely off guard because she put in the work. It was not a simple scam, it was completely innocent. She introduced herself as a girlfriend and then after several months it was, “Hey, I do this to earn money.” Then she introduced the investment scam. She was the perfect hook, and then it was the actual scam. I don't know about you, but I didn't see it coming.

[00:29:25] Bob: Yeah, of course. Then I'm just so sorry because you know this nest egg, which kept you from freaking out over like emergency auto repair bill or something. Right now that's the life you're living, right?

[00:29:37] Josh: Yeah. Now every little thing, I'm freaking out over again and yeah. Can I afford this bag of apples? Can I, how much can I do this month? Do I have the money for it? Can I pay my credit card bill this month? Just back to doing that again.

[00:29:56] Bob: No margin for error anymore.

[00:29:59] Josh: Nope.

[00:30:01] Bob: It's never just about the money. Josh had his mental health stolen from him, and now he's got no margin for error, nothing to ease his fears about the future, and he is racked with guilt about borrowing from his family.

[00:30:18] Bob: What do you want people to remember about your story? What do you want them from to learn from hearing you?

[00:30:25] Josh: I honestly don't know. There are so many different lessons I've taken from it, and some of them are probably the wrong ones. I never really considered myself overly trusting of people in the first place, and now that's even more so. One lesson is don't trust people, but again, that's probably the wrong one. But the main lesson is just do your homework. I thought I was doing my homework and apparently I wasn't. Double check everything. Make sure you're really sure of everything, and just stick to the known sites.

[00:31:01] Bob: One element of this crime that made it even more believable is that the criminals directed him to a website that looked like a legitimate site, but the domain name was just one letter off.

[00:31:13] Josh: This website was based on a website that actually exists, but it wasn't one I was familiar with. So if I had just stuck to Coinbase, I would've been fine.

[00:31:23] Bob: But do your research, of course, is a perfectly fine piece of advice, but you did a lot of research and so many of these things checked out.

[00:31:30] Josh: Yeah.

[00:31:31] Bob: The cover story is incredibly elaborate. And again, just the fact that she talked to you for two months without bringing any of this up, that is an awful long time.

[00:31:40] Josh: Yeah, and she did the video calls. She sent pictures again, like none of that tripped my alarm bells, because you don't expect any of that from a scammer. You don't expect the video call. You don't expect calls, you don't expect photos, but all of that's becoming possible these days because of AI or whatever, just because it's possible now. I don't know if that's what they were using or if they were using an actual model or whatever, but they're getting more sophisticated.  

[00:32:16] Bob: and the pain they inflict is getting deeper. You can hear the fear in Josh's voice. He's having a lot of trouble working through his feelings about this, but he has his writing to serve as a bit of therapy for him.

[00:32:31] Bob: So when we started this conversation, you mentioned that at least some part of this life experience is gonna find its way into a book that you're writing, right?

[00:32:40] Josh: Yeah.

[00:32:41] Bob: Can you give me just a little bit of a sketch of how that gonna work?

[00:32:45] Josh: Yeah. And the book, the main character's cousin, gets scammed more or less, the exact same way I did, and the main character then goes to get revenge for him, finds out that in this case, the girl who scammed the cousin was being held against her will in a camp in Cambodia, I think is where I was setting it up as more or less a slave camp kind of a thing. And yeah, instead of using AI, they were using actual models for all of these things, so…

[00:33:20] Bob: So in the end, the reader will have. A broad or maybe even a slightly sympathetic view of the criminal as well.

[00:33:27] Josh: For her at least.

[00:33:30] Bob: Yeah, yeah.

[00:33:30] Josh: Um, there, there will be an actual criminal holding the leash behind her, but yeah.

[00:33:36] Bob: There will be a bad guy of course. Yeah, I'm sure it's very therapeutic for you to get that out on, on paper.

[00:33:40] Josh: Yeah. It's helping.

[00:33:42] Bob: I'm glad, I'm very glad to hear that.

[00:33:45] Bob: And it's helping Josh to talk about what's happening to him too.

[00:33:49] Josh: Yeah, I did a couple interviews on TV stations and stuff like that, and I, the reason I wanted to do it in the first place, even though it's hard to talk about, is because there's this stigma about people who get scammed when in reality I'm just a normal guy caught unawares because they're getting more sophisticated and people need to know that they're not like that anymore. They need to know that they're getting a lot more complicated and you're gonna get caught unaware if you don't know it.

[00:34:19] Bob: And we say it all the time on this podcast, if you think it can't happen to you, that makes you even more vulnerable 'cause they're out there. Alright, my Josh, my best of luck to you. I hope one of these books you write becomes a huge bestseller and you can take care of all the rest of this stuff.

[00:34:33] Josh: I appreciate it.

[00:34:36] Bob: Josh mentioned that when he finally got help, it came from Operation Shamrock. Careful listeners to the perfect scam. Might remember that Operation Shamrock was started by friend of The Perfect Scam. Erin West, a former prosecutor from Silicon Valley. Well, we have Erin here today to talk about how to deal with crimes like these. She told me Josh's story broke her heart

[00:35:01] Erin West: First of all, here's a man venturing into the world of online dating and thinks that he's found someone wonderful. And she turns out to be a scammer. And the quote from him that I read in the story where he's nervous about venturing back out there, it'll be difficult for him to trust someone again, really shows the damage that these scammers do, but is frequently overlooked. We're so often just looking at the financial cost to victims, but really it's, there's a very human cost. When you've put all of your trust and your love and your hope into this relationship, only to have it stolen from you.

[00:35:51] Bob: Yeah. It's much more than money, right?

[00:35:52] Erin West: Yes. Yes.

[00:35:54] Bob: So one thing that struck me right away is how prevalent this sort of combined romance crypto scam is. Are you seeing a lot of that?

[00:36:04] Erin West: That is why I left my job, why I retired because I saw so much of this. I saw so many people that were drawn in by a relationship that appeared to be the one, the relationship of their life. And along with that relationship, the new love was showing them an elevated lifestyle, was showing them that they travel well and they drive a nice car, and then when the relationship gets to the level where they're going to start talking about finances, explains that she made her money in cryptocurrency and she didn't know how, but her uncle taught her and her uncle could teach you. And then our victims are lured into believing that they've made a lot of money in crypto trading. But that was all fictitious as well. And at the end of this whole scam, they come to find out that they've lost every penny they have and the love of their life, and that the love of their life had plotted this from their initial meeting.

[00:37:12] Bob: It's just all so devastating. One thing that makes it persuasive, it seems to me is this is not a simple get rich quick thing. This is more about, Hey, don't you wanna save for our future? So there's higher stakes.

[00:37:22] Erin West: There's absolutely higher stakes, and. What's interesting about this scam is it's not what is often portrayed in the media as people sending money to people they don't know or trying to get rich quick. By the time the investments are made, our victims have been in these relationships for weeks, even months, and this isn't something that happened quickly, they've been groomed over a long period of time.

[00:37:56] Bob: Remember, Josh tried to pull away at one point, but the criminal lured him back with a fake apology and finally got him to invest his life savings using a form of the well-worn line “Don't you love me?”

[00:38:10] Erin West: The people that are on the other side of the phone are likely human trafficked and are likely being forced to do this work under threat of torture, and so as a result, they are, they have a lot of incentive to get money out of victims. And so even when a situation happens, as it commonly does, where a victim might say, oh, I am not comfortable with putting this much money in. One of the tactics that these scammers will use is to wait a little bit and then come back with even more reason why this investments should be made. And frequently their reasoning is such that it tugs at the heartstrings. It is, “Don't you want to help us build that nest egg so that we can build that home together that we want?” “Aren't you looking forward to a future with me and don't you trust me?” There's a million different really effective psychological techniques that these scammers will use to get our victims.

[00:39:16] Bob: Yeah. Another thing about this story, at least as he explained it, is these video calls, and I'm seeing certainly more of this for a long time, we would tell people, say if they're adopting a puppy or whatnot, except nothing less than a video call because those can't be faked. Whereas individual pictures or even ten second video clips can be faked. But he seems to believe that he was having video call, video calls with this person. Is that something that you're seeing more of?

[00:39:40] Erin West: Oh, Bob, it is such a tragedy to watch as tech outpaces our ability to give good advice to victims. And what we're seeing is that scamming is a service now. You can buy a kit to do this to someone, and one of the pieces of the kit is a pretty well-done software package that allows you to have a conversation appearing to be someone else. I had a victim tell me that he knew who his scammer was and his scammer was Ms. Malaysia 2016. And I said, tell me more about that. And he said, well, I've done video calls with her, and the woman that I saw on the screen has the same mole as Ms. Malaysia 2016. And I said, oh, I'm so sorry to have to be the one to explain deep fakes to you. That's how good they are. That's how good the software is. The calls can sound like any person. The faces can appear to be any person, even any celebrity, and it's now available in a relatively inexpensive software package. And so I used to give the same advice you did. If they won't, if they won't do a video call, then we know it's a scam, not anymore. Now they can do a video call that looks exactly like the photograph you've been looking at.

[00:41:00] Bob: So on the other end of the keyboard might be someone else, maybe even a guy, but it comes through looking like not just the face of Miss Singapore 2016, but with the exact same mole, all those sorts of features?

[00:41:11] Erin West: Yeah. It's amazing what they can do and, and it frequently is a man, but certainly they have women that are available to participate in this as well and put the female face over an actual female body.

[00:41:31] Bob: Wow. Oh gosh. And so if you're someone who's who thinks you're in love, that's gonna be pretty persuasive.

[00:41:37] Erin West: Of course it is. And I think one of the things that we also overlook here is that victims overlook the red flags when they are in love. They don't want to look at the idea that maybe that didn't add up right. Or maybe that didn't sound quite right or. Are victims want to believe that this is the relationship of their lives and that this person who they've spent hours and hours texting is actually the kind, gentle love that they think they are.

[00:42:11] Bob: I believe overlooking red flags is part of the human condition.

[00:42:15] Erin West: I think anybody overlooks red flags when they so want something to be true, and that's where we are. We've, unfortunately, we find ourselves in a loneliness crisis and that there are a lot of people who would really welcome a new companion in their lives, and when they find someone that is as kind as they could have imagined and thoughtful and interested in their life, and wanting to talk about a future that's so appealing that you overlook red flags and it's very human.

[00:42:58] Bob: The recovery scam element of this story is very important. When a victim discovers a scam, they are incredibly vulnerable and panicky as Josh was. That makes them ripe for a second bite of the apple by these cruel criminals. It doesn't help that Josh didn't seem to get an active response from the agencies he complained to after his crime.

[00:43:20] Erin West: I'd like to say that the inability of law enforcement to effectively take a statement from a victim and set expectations for a victim, it is what is driving victims straight into the arms of these scam recovery services. So if you can imagine a situation where you've reached out to local government, you've reached out to the federal government, and nobody's provided you any information or any help, the next thing you're gonna do is Google it. That's what we would all do. And so that's what our victims do. They Google this and the things that come up are sponsored ads. When we think of what and what comes up are sponsored ads and what we see in these sponsored ads are scammers masquerading as recovery services. What they will do is they will charge you thousands and thousands of dollars telling you that they can recover your money for you. And the fact of the matter is that it's really only law enforcement that has the ability to make these recoveries, and it's getting harder and harder to actually make that recovery. But our victims don't know that. How could they know that? And so they're talking to someone who, again, seems trustworthy, believable, is talking all the right, talk about what they can do. And that's when our victims are relying again on someone that is misleading them. And that's the tragedy. It's not at all uncommon for us to hear from victims that have paid 2000, 5,000, 10,000. The highest I've heard is $20,000, for someone to do a report that is actually quite useless to law enforcement frequently, it's not accurate, it's not helpful, and. In law enforcement, they're going to need to recreate this on their own anyways, so it's actually not at all helpful.  

[00:45:26] Bob: But they get back something that looks like they've tracked down crypto wallets or whatnot, right?

[00:45:31] Erin West: That's exactly what they get. They get a beautifully packaged report that looks official and looks well written, but in fact it is something that is of no use to law enforcement.

[00:45:46] Bob: Yeah. I think it's really important to underscore that recovery scam part of things because that, that, that element here seems so rampant and so sophisticated to me.

[00:45:54] Erin West: it's really important to let victims know that this is a threat that exists. That there are bad people out there who will steal your money, telling you that they can help you when they cannot. It's the, to me, that's even worse than the scam itself.

[00:46:12] Bob: It's the ultimate kick you when you're down, right?

[00:46:14] Erin West: Yes.

[00:46:17] Bob: And there's the other painful part of the story that he went to his parents and his brother to borrow money, which was eventually stolen by this criminal. That's pretty common too, Erin says.

[00:46:28] Erin West: It's one of the worst things that can happen to a victim in this situation is when they are faced with needing more money for fictitious taxes and having to come up with those funds, and they are frequently encouraged by the scammer to lie to their friends and family to get that money. And our victims feel like they have no alternative. And now with literally no money left, they are forced to resort to begging and borrowing and telling friends and family non-truths, half truths to get that money. And so when our victims come to realize that all of that money is gone and in the hands of the scammer, it makes it 10 times worse because it's not just their money. It's money that somebody else worked hard to earn and that you may not have even been honest with the person you borrowed it from about why you needed it. So I talked to my Aunt Terry about this over Thanksgiving and not long after she called me and said I was at Pickleball and one of my friends at pickleball told me that her 50-year-old son desperately needs money to pay taxes on an investment he made, and that sounds like what you were talking about. And yes, we are seeing more and more that. Our senior population, our aging adult population, often does have resources, and that is another source of information that these scammers will look to exploit.

[00:48:07] Bob: Yeah, of course. Once they've drained your money, your retirement accounts, they start looking for any other pot of cash they can grab. But I can't imagine the guilt that would be associated the day that the curtain lifts and you realize you've hurt not just yourself, but your parents. That must be so painful.

[00:48:21] Erin West: It's, it's horrible when, when a person realizes that they've lost not only their money, but their parents' money. And I have heard of a situation where the victim was not, we couldn't find that victim for three days, four days, and people thought the worst. And eventually that person resurfaced and had just taken some time out to think about it, but it. What we do know is that people kill themselves over this, that the level, the psychological effect of losing all of your money and then losing part of your parents' wealth is much more than most people are able to handle. We don't even think about what it would be like to feel, we think about what does it feel like when you lose your partner after years? Or what does it feel like when you lose a pet? Or what does it feel like when all kinds of other scenarios, but we never really think about, gosh, what would it feel like to lose my entire financial footing and that is a level of chaos and fear that drives people to take their lives. And when you pile on top of that, the idea that they've, they're now responsible for the theft of their parents' assets, I can only imagine how dramatic that overwhelm would be.

[00:49:54] Bob: Now is a good time to remind listeners that if you or someone you love is in crisis, you can get immediate help from caring professionals by calling or texting 988.

[00:50:04] Bob: Just what advice is there for someone who's online looking for love or maybe they're not looking for love, they're playing Words With Friends, but love arrives. What, what kind of advice do you give them?

[00:50:14] Erin West: The best thing we can do for anyone in our immediate circle is to make them aware of what is happening and what is happening at scale and that we are in a scamdemic, where everybody in the world is being targeted and that there are literally hundreds of thousands of people who have been tasked with the job of meeting you and stealing all of your money. So anytime you get any type of electronic reach out that you did not ask for, you need to be your own detective, and you need to assume that person is a scammer until proven otherwise. That's unfortunately the reality of 2026.

[00:50:59] Bob: And so if someone says to you, Hey, I've got this great way that I've made money. My dad taught me it involves crypto, what? How should you respond to something like that?

[00:51:08] Erin West: We need to be wary. When anyone suggests any type of investment to you, you need to do your due diligence. You need to be really wary of any situation where somebody is asking you to invest in something that you don't totally understand. It's too dangerous out there and there are too many criminals looking to steal your money by asking you to make investments in things that you just haven't prepared yourself about how to understand. I think everybody needs to be aware that this is happening in their community. Whether it's happening to your adult children or whether it's happening to your aging mom. You need to be aware that this is a threat that exists and is running rampant. Be extra curious about who your people are talking to, what kind of investments they're making, and how they're spending their time. Because being in a romance scam takes a lot of time.

[00:52:10] Bob: That's interesting. If someone disappears online for three, four hours a day or whatnot and ask them what, they're up to you.

[00:52:16] Erin West: Yep.

[00:52:17] Bob: Okay. And if you're a victim and you go to law enforcement and you don't get a great response, what should you do?

[00:52:22] Erin West: If you are a victim, here's my advice for you. Number one, report to local law enforcement. You need to do that so that your local jurisdiction begins to understand that they have this problem in their midst and they need to learn how to effectively handle it. Number two, you need to report to the federal government through IC3.gov. That is how we will be able to track how massive this problem is. With only one in 10 people reporting, our federal government doesn't really understand the crisis that we find ourselves in right now. Number three, go to AARP and you will be able to find a group of similarly situated people that you will be able to communicate with and, and learn from and create allies with. You're not alone in this and you need a community to help you understand that. And lastly, I would report to operationshamrock.org. If you go to my website, there is a place to say, click on report a scam. And when you do that, that, we've closed a loophole. If you do that, it notifies trained law enforcement from all over the United States that we have a real time report and you will hear back from them and you will get an answer to whether or not your funds are recoverable. It may not be the answer that you want, but it is an answer and gives you some closure.

[00:54:01] Bob: And it's another place for you to go and look for help and it keeps you from. Signing up for some recovery scam, right?

[00:54:07] Erin West: Absolutely. We do something on Fridays called Survivor Stories, and if you're interested in that, you can sign up on the website as well. And on those days, we meet one-on-one with victims for the purposes of understanding where their scam went bad, where the gaps are in law enforcement and banking and social media that allowed this to happen. But also, most importantly, we provide these victims with expectations about what will really happen in the criminal justice system, and we provide them with information about the fact that there are recovery scams, and most importantly, that once you've been scammed, you are on a list that's being sold and you now have a higher likelihood of being scammed a second time. And so you need to be ultra wary of anybody reaching out to you.

[00:55:03] Bob: Be ultra wary of anyone reaching out to you and tell all your friends and family to be wary too. That's always good advice, but especially after you or someone you love has been the victim of a crime, you're at your most vulnerable then for The Perfect Scam I'm Bob Sullivan.

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[00:55:30] Bob: If you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, you're not alone. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next. Our email address at The Perfect Scam is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, and we want to hear from you. If you've been the victim of a scam or you know someone who has, and you'd like us to tell their story, write to us. That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org. Thank you to our team of scambusters; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; Researcher, Becky Dodson; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; and our Audio Engineer and Sound Designer, Julio Gonzalez. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For AARP's The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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