WTH – Gary Warner 

Cold Open: 

Beau: It’s a question we get all the time: Who’s doing these digital crimes? Today, we’re focusing on one source in particular: global, organized syndicates. 

Gary Clip: Each of these organizations has their roots in university settings, but they’re referred to by the locals as cultist organizations because there’s a very present, spiritual world in West Africa…”

Beau: These are highly structured criminal groups, founded in college settings, that are now responsible for a huge chunk of online fraud globally.

Gary: Many of them are Western educated with a computer science degree and often working in organizations that give them unique access and understanding. So, for example, we have members of the confraternities working in banks, working for healthcare companies…

Beau: This is a high-level, professionalized criminal network—a system where computer science brainiacs are recruited and placed where they’re needed–including inside banks–to enable a $9-billion money laundering trade.

Gary: The confraternities were being used by political powers…recruiting college students who agree with their views and hiring them to basically be thugs to break up the competition’s political rallies.

Beau: From political origins to the modern architecture of global financial crime. We’re taking a deep dive on the confraternity concept of a “money blessing” AKA persistent sophisticated and extremely organized fraud. 

I’m Beau Friedlander and this is “What the Hack?” the show that asks, “In a world where your data is everywhere, how do you stay safe online?”

Start

Gary: It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve been a big fan of your podcast.

Beau: Wow. Okay. Well, that’s, that’s a awesome thing to hear. 

Beau: So my temptation with you is just to hit the most recent news that’s out there because no matter what happens, it seems to me that you know…what you have to say about it is definitive really.

And the story that popped up most recently for me was the Crown Prosecution Services going after these West African scammers. I think you can probably tell the story better than I can, but I’ve done some work as you know–if you listen to the show–we’ve covered Black Axe and other crime syndicates in Africa that are working outta South Africa mostly. But they’re often connected to Nigeria and other countries that are known for fraud. Online fraud and scams and West African scammers.

So this story was about West African scammers who were living in the UK right?

Gary: That’s right. They were mostly from Ghana rather than Nigeria. Uh, so it’s a little bit different as far as what organizations they’re likely linked to. Many of the crime syndicates, if you will, are [inaudible] out of West Africa, are called confraternities. And the most famous confraternities are behind a large number of these Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams and romance scams. But the methodology has spread throughout West Africa.

Beau: Today, we’re talking about a classic case of organizational entropy. 

West African confraternities started on Nigerian university campuses back in the 1950s. The earliest one, the Pyrates Confraternity, founded by Nobel Laureate for Literature Wole Soyinka, began with the very high-minded, very necessary goal of upholding law and order, fighting corruption, and promoting pan-African ideals. The original intent was to be a positive, intellectual check on a corrupt system. It was as idealistic as you might expect from a Nobel laureate. 

But like many things that scale or gain power without (in this case moral) accountability, those quaint confraternities with their echoes of the colonial powers that introduced them got hacked.

The purpose warped. Over the decades, these groups fragmented, got violent, and became the very thing they promised to fight: self-serving, ultra-violent campus cults. They were banned by the government—a system failure on both side. But that organizational structure didn’t disappear. It moved its operations online and went global.

Today, groups like the Black Axe—formally known as the Neo Black Movement—along with the Supreme Eiye and Supreme Vikings, are no longer student clubs. They are sophisticated transnational organized crime syndicates, something we explored in episode 141 of What the Hack entitled “Secret Service Agent “Mark” Works the Pan-Africa Beat”

 From massive Business Email Compromise to 409 advance fraud to romance and investment scams, these groups have “hustle academies” that create new recruits all the time to realize a unified goal: the corporatization of digital theft. They operate zones across Europe, North America, and other parts of Africa using fake personas to build trust. And they’re also using personal information they find “out there” to develop prospects, right?

And then resorting to coercion and threats like releasing sensitive photos in sextortion scams. They do that and they empty bank accounts. You’ve seen the news.

While some groups may cling to a shred of legitimacy, the most active ones are now major criminal enterprises.  They are in essence,  a weaponization of the global organizational failure to govern information and privacy , which is why we do this show

Gary: Well, so, uh, the confraternities back in West Africa are violently opposed to one another. To the point that on an almost weekly basis there will be news in Nigeria where someone who’s in the black Acts has killed someone who’s in the ei, which is the, uh, we, we usually refer to the EI as, the Air Lords. It’s the Supreme EI con fraternity and the Black Acts now calls themselves, the neo black movement of Africa.

Each of these organizations has their roots in university settings, but they’re referred to by the locals as cultist organizations because there’s a very, present, spiritual world in West Africa where there is a great belief among well educated people that, you know, your spirits and ancestors have an impact on what’s going on in the current world. You know, just like I believe as a Christian that there are spiritual powers that have an impact on what’s going on in the world. Well, those aspects with regards to West African crime, many of those have taken the form of bringing a sacrifice of either money, alcohol, or even animals or humans to a shaman who will cause a blessing to be upon your crimes. So they will refer to a money blessing. In many cases that will make them more successful at luring a romance scam victim to give up all their money. So in many of the states within Nigeria, these organizations are illegal. You can be sentenced to 21 years for just being a member of the organization. And yet all across the world, South Africa is one place, but throughout the United States, even we accept them as just another organization.

Beau: What I don’t understand is exactly how these groups are organized because in other places in the world where there is a culture of fraud and scam–crimes being committed–these criminals are sometimes rogue. You know, they’re ronins. They don’t work with a group, they’re not part of, they don’t belong to anyone. And here we’re hearing a different idea, which is that these are almost gangs. And as such, like how does one, do you have a sense of how are organized, and how people, you know, could be–how the government could say you belong to Black Axe and therefore you are going to prison for 21 years.

Gary: Right. So the organization of these, all of them have very unique symbols and signs. So, for example, in the Black Axe movement they have a very visible logo that they’ll frequently use, but they greet one another with coded language. They have their own handshakes where they’ll cross their arms, for example, as a form of greeting. They use phrases, like “Dodorima” is a Black Axe phrase. No one else would ever say that.

Beau: What does it mean? “Dodorima”

Gary: They’re, they’re just some of the greetings that they have for one another.

Gary: Whereas the Airlords used different language. The Buccaneers used different language. And it came out of the culture that they built in their college organizations. But as they’ve grown, they have a very formal structure. So for example, the Black Axe, they’re in their local chapters. They refer to them as a “zone.” Well, there’s a zone head, there’s a chief priest, there’s a za. The ZA is the person in charge of that zone’s money.

And there’s a communications officer that has a certain role in a certain title as well. A crier, in some of the other organizations, for example, the Airlords: all of their officer names refer to birds, and they will always have a blue beret as opposed to a yellow beret or a black beret. So even the clothes that they wear, identifies what group they’re a member of.

Beau: Okay, so now the groups that I know of ethnically in, in this part of the world are Hausa, Yuruba, and Igbo.

Gary: The Black Axe is very Igbo. And many of the Airlords will be Yoruba. And it, that has to do with what part of the country they come from, but also with those spiritual worships that I mentioned; they’re very loyal to their tribe as an entity as opposed to their country as an entity. And where they get–where they come together isn’t really in the day-to-day activities, but in the high-end money laundering. So, for example, a famous money launder is named Mompha and he primarily works with Airlords. But if you need a bank account that can catch $5 million, you might reach out to [inaudible] no matter who you are because at a certain level, they’re operating above the confraternities, but those are for the really high-end money launderers.

Beau: Now is Mompha a member of any of the, any one confraternity?

Gary: He’s been, greeted and honored on the, Instagram pages, for example, of the [inaudible]. Uh, and he’s been seen wearing the blue colors that they wear. However, I don’t know that he’s been officially named as a member, but I’ve never seen him associated with any other organization. Uh, he’s been charged with 9 billion Naira worth of money laundering, and, uh, has been arrested and charged. Uh, he fled the country and he is currently living in Dubai.

Beau: And he’s, is he still, he presumably still doing what he does.

Gary: Yeah. These guys are moving the kind of wealth where, uh, you have a birthday party and you all go buy Lamborghinis. Or you might give someone a $300,000 watch as a appreciation, or a Rolls Royce. These are extremely wealthy people and it’s all based on crime.

Beau: The five money launderers who were jailed in the uk, the Ghanaian people that were just caught, that was 2 million pounds.

Beau: You, can’t really buy very many Lamborghinis with that.

Gary: No, I mean, there, there are people, some of these guys are running telegram channels, for example, that specialize in doing, they call it O365. So BEC is an American term for business email compromise. The West African criminals now call those 0365 jobs

Beau: And why do they call them O365 jobs?

Gary: Because they’re breaking into Microsoft Office 365 or Outlook 365 accounts. It’s the current favorite, low hanging fruit.

Beau: For our listeners who just got freaked out by that statement, who aren’t using iOS, who are using Microsoft, why is that low hanging fruit?

Gary: Well, because, you’ve outsourced your email management to the cloud, it makes it accessible more easily from anywhere in the world. Yeah,

Beau: So it’s a simple, it’s just a simple structural problem that they have or a structural situation that’s being exploited.

Gary: Yeah. And the thing about an O365 account is it’s very often the case then that the email and password that are used to get into the email account are also used for other things within the organization. So if you’ve, if you’ve implemented single sign on and part of that sign on gets you into an email account out in the cloud, now there’s credentials that can pass through.

Beau: Let’s go back to these small money, money launderers who were just caught in the uk. If that’s small money, who are they connected to and what is the ecosystem they’re involved with?

Gary: So with, with those type of individuals, we don’t know which confraternity they may have been linked to, but the methodologies are being shared widely these days, often in telegram channels. So, for example, the channel I mentioned that was doing the O365 jobs, he’ll give instructions and tutorials and they will refer to the people that they’re scamming in a romance scam as their client. And more recently, they’ve stopped using the word client and they just say “C-L” and they means your client is the person that you’re having the fake romance with.

And they’ll, they’ll provide what are called formats. A format is a cut and paste, romantic conversation that you can have, where if your English isn’t advanced enough to, to woo a woman over the internet, just cut and paste these messages and they’ll provide sometimes 20 and 30 page long formats. How do I have conversations pretending to be a sailor? How do I have conversations pretending to work on an oil rig? And they’ll, it’ll be called something like. Soldier format or oil rig format. And they’ll make recommendations on what are some of the conversation points you might have. But then these formats will also then have, “What type of emergency might you have as an oil worker who,” or oil rig worker that would cause the need for money to be sent. And it’s all just cut and paste through the format. We’ve often had situations where a romance scam victim will start to tell us something and we’ll say, did it look like this? And we can send them the exact paragraph, that, word-for-word, is what they’ve just received. So they’ll set up a dating profile using a stolen photograph. And as they begin, as soon as they engage with the person, they’ll try to move them off platform usually to WhatsApp. And then they’ll start romancing them. And eventually though there will be some crisis. And there’s so many scripts that we’ve seen repeated over and over and over. One is of a gemologist who’s working in Turkey, and he’s found this rich source of some rare gem, and his equipment has broken, and now he’s not going to be able to finish the job, and someone will come in and take over the mine. He just needs $40,000 to get his piece of equipment repaired. And we’ve seen that same exact format used on multiple victims. So we don’t know the particular format that was being used by these guys or which formats they were, but there are rich collections that are freely shared between them.  

C Break

Beau: my understanding is some of these scripts actually get as as granular to say something like, “If the client says this, turn to page six.” I mean, not page six, but you know what I mean, turn to, “Here’s the answer.” And there’s a list of things that they can say. So it’s, now when I hear about this and I, and, and, and we know that, you know, obviously the language issue has been fixed. Now, um, I assume that the, a lot of the pretexting and the, and the scripts are being created by AI. Is that correct? Or has AI become a piece of the puzzle

Gary: Well. Strangely we are seeing that very much so with Asian scammers.

Gary: Um, but we haven’t seen it as much with the West African scammers.

Beau: We’re not seeing it out of the West African cameras. And why do you think that is? Because it’s English is, is they’re learning English at a university level where they have good enough people there to write scripts or how is that the case?

Gary: Really, really, that is a, a key part of it. All of these con for fraternities will only accept someone as a member after they’ve matriculated. They’re, they’re graduates of a college program. And many of them have western college degrees from computer science programs. Cybersecurity is a, is a primary degree that they will encourage their members to seek or their prospective members to seek. So many of them are Western educated with a computer science degree and often working in organizations that give them unique access and understanding. So, for example, we have members of the CON for fraternities working in banks, working for healthcare companies, working in government agencies, working in law enforcement agencies, and as they’re learning the system from within as an employee who is, has proper background and credentialing to deserve to have that job. But they’re learning the financial system and then taking what they’ve learned and helping their colleagues

Beau: And learning how to not get caught learning how to not raise red flags, learning how to move money, learning how to do all of it.

Gary: Of course. Yeah.

Beau: And we’re talking about a, a culture. It’s so interesting ’cause I would’ve thought that they were doing pretexting on AI now and I bet there there’s some of that. But, but, and probably just to facilitate workflow and create more stuff. At the end of the day, west African communities over the last a hundred years have created an enormous amount of really important literature. As in like novels and poems and all, and plays and everything. So there’s no shortage of writers there. There’s no shortage of people who can make this happen.

Gary: Right. Uh, as an example, one of the con fraternities and one that has done a very good job of turning away from crime was the PY Rates Con fraternity, which is one of the very earliest ones. Their founder, woe Seko, won a Nobel Prize for literature and is currently a professor at Emory University in Atlanta. You have to remember the history of Nigeria, which I’ve loved the fact, Bo, that you seem to be knowledgeable about this part of the world. Uh, so many people I speak to, uh, are, are not world scholars. In, in the con fraternity context, go back through recent history in Nigeria and until the last two elections, there were more presidents of Nigeria who came to power through a military overthrow than were elected through a democratic process.

Beau: Yes. And every time it happened, people had to leave or, 

Gary: and this is where the con fraternities came from. The con fraternities were being used by political powers to interact on behalf of their constituents to make sure they got elected. They were recruiting college students who agreed with their views and hired them to basically be thugs to break up the competition’s political rallies. And by doing that, they inherited the blessing of the elected party that they assisted. And so the relationships between the governing party that assist was assisted by the con fraternity members. Later then after they graduated, turned into government jobs, contracts, and ability to move up to the next tier of society. And that relationship has continued throughout the history of the con fraternities and the uh, and the troubles, if you will.

Beau: So this is like a culturally rich, culturally very interesting spiritual version of biker gangs. I mean, kind of, you know what I mean? Like, it’s not fair, but it’s, but it’s fair. I mean, and, and by the way, if you’re from a confraternity listening to this, please know that I probably love something someone from your comfort fraternity wrote.

Gary: Well, and let me also say though, that there definitely is a fraternity in in the US. If you’ve been a member of a fraternity, I’ve not been, but the people who have graduated and moved into leadership positions in companies turn around and assist their brothers who are just now getting

Beau: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And there’s nothing spiritual about it unless you want to count liquor.

Gary: And that is the model that’s being followed here. It’s the people who have moved on to success. Assisting the people coming out of the colleges. But part of the success has been through money laundering and corruption, and there’s a great aspect of it that is similar to the reparations movement here in the US. One of my favorite books is called The Looting Machine. I’m not sure if you’re familiar

Beau: I don’t know it. Tell me about it.

Gary: The Looting Machine contrasts African culture with Western culture primarily in that Western cultures have natural resources that they develop and refine and turn into things of value, where the African cultures have Westerners who bribe and pay and steal their natural resources and refine them elsewhere so that certain powerful government corrupt individuals receive the benefit from the Western powers, but the average guy on the street doesn’t get anything from that. But the second part of it, then, as I started reading books like this, I realized I needed the Nigerian perspective. One book along those lines was a short history of conquest and rule what Britain did to Nigeria. And there’s a very strong sense among the con fraternities and really beyond that, that the colonial powers came in and through bribery and corruption, stole their natural resources and forced the creation of Nigeria. You may be familiar with the Biafra movement. So Nigeria was not one country until Britain basically forced them to become one country.

Beau: Yeah. And then it broke apart, and then later it broke apart later again. Anyway.

Gary: Yeah. So the Biafra movement says we aren’t supposed to be one country and pushes for the, in inner part of the country to be its own unique nation. Saying that the only reason we’re part of Nigeria is some people in Britain decided we had to be. And so part of that movement has involved armed conflict, where the supporters of the biafa movement and NBM, the neo black movement of Africa, has strong support for the Biafra movement, says we’re in this mess because of the colonial powers that put us in this mess. And we, they owe it to us to restore our, our dignity and our original nation state. And so that, that, concept that doing crime against the west is not really crime. It’s taking back what has been stolen from us.

Beau: Okay. And then, and so there’s a, there’s a certain level of, um, justification in the work that these comp fraternities are doing because you we’re now talking about a group of people who view the non-West African world as an invading, uh, exploitative force. And that deserves anything. It gets.

Gary: I met a young man from Nigeria who was perpetrating a scam.

Beau: Mm-hmm.

Gary: Uh, I was introduced to him and it was his very first time. He wasn’t very good at it, and I realized I had an opportunity to intervene and. This young man has now worked for me for three years. Um, I pay him every month and he gathers intelligence for me. But the things he and his family go through, um, are unimaginable. Having his mother almost die and being told by the doctor, you have to pay this much to get a hospital bed. If you can’t pay it, then go home.

Beau: Mm-hmm.

Gary: And then having the doctor say, well, go to the pharmacist and just buy the best medicine you can without even having a diagnosis. He’s, his father was recently stabbed in the head by a guy who stole all of their possessions and was laying in a coma and there

Beau: Is all this happening to them? Is this because of the unrest there or…

Gary: Yeah, it, it’s just, there is a, a…once you leave the, the main city of Lagos, which is quite an advanced city, once you get it out into the villages, the poverty rate is extreme. Some more rural parts of Africa, of Nigeria, are still living on $2 a day as a, as a wage. Um, and now you have someone come in and say, I can teach you with your computer how to make $4,000 a day. And that’s a life-changing amount of money, not just for that individual, but for his entire extended family.

Beau: Right. And 

Gary: And what I, what I’ve often said was, you know, Friedman says the world is flat. It’s not. It could be, but right now there’s still Western countries and there are African countries on the economic scale. And part of this crime that we’re experiencing is because of that great imbalance. The key to stopping West African organized crime is economic development.

C Break 2

Beau: So cybersecurity broadly speaking is a story of people who have, and people who have not, and the people who have not trying to get what the people-who-have have to exploit it, to do, to get money, to get knowledge, to get technology, to get, props for having gotten in it. There can be a million reasons why a cybercriminal is looking to do what they’re looking to do. But at the end of the day, it is because of the, you know, I guess power structure, the way things are built and people wanting to, there’s always, whenever there’s a castle on the hill, there’s gonna be people trying to storm it.

Gary: There. The way I describe that concept is I often have said there are three indicators for a cybercrime bloom. You have to have high speed internet, you have to have an educated populace, and you have to have non-existent opportunities for employment for the youth. If you have high youth unemployment, high education, and and high speed internet, you’re going to have a cyber crime bloom. When that first happened, Eastern Europe was where all cybercrime came from. And then it started moving to Romania. Then later it moved to Morocco, then it moved to Indonesia, and then it moved to Nigeria last, not because they weren’t lacking in education, not because they didn’t have unemployment, but they didn’t have high speed internet. And as you’ve watched where cybercrime concentration occurs, it’s when those three components come together.

Beau: Well, the funny thing is, is the convergence on the criminal victim continuum is weirdly similar because they’re both based on scarcity. There’s the, the, on the criminal side, there’s the obvious scarcity of resources. Actual money, actual food, actual housing, actual opportunity. And on the target side, on the, the victim side of things, you have often lack of community, lack of connection, lack of social circle, and lack of, sometimes it’s, it’s like lack of support, like real support that social media could be providing. I was just thinking about a recent episode, Gary, that you’ll appreciate where the, um, a a, an older gentleman had his Facebook stolen and because there was no help support line at Meta. He just went with a, a, a sponsored ad that was obviously a sponsored by a criminal. And, um, he lost $4,800,

Gary: Yep. 

Beau: By the end of it through ver through quote unquote verification.So, so there’s a lack on both sides of this equation and people are meeting in the commonality of scarcity.

Gary: I love the way you described that and really the, going back to the original case with romance scams, that’s what it’s all about, and it’s whether it’s West African or whether it’s Chinese. Or the Chinese slaves working in Cambodia and Myanmar. It’s all about that connection. Many of the romance scam victims that I’ve spoken to, whether it’s pig butchering or whether it’s West African, what they tell me is this is the person who cared more about me than anyone I have known in my life. And that’s what the scammer is providing is a deep connection. We have people that will share with me after their crime is realized. They’ll send me their entire WhatsApp history, which has been extremely helpful in understanding these things. And what you’ll see is someone who sends 15 or 20 messages a day just showing compassion and connection. When you, once you’ve established that role of being the most important person in this person’s life, as well as the person who cares for them more than anyone in their life now when you ask them for a favor, it really does feel like the most important person in my life has a need that I can meet. And so I’m going to give them the money. And when you see people confess that they’ve been a victim, and really you almost have to say it that way, confess that they’ve been a victim, the shame from the community and the public is just piled upon them. You’ve even seen this probably in some of your show notes when you’ve done a, a, a story where, um, I know you, you featured a, a friend Carina on one of the previous podcasts. And if you go through the comments, when someone like that is strong enough to share what happened to them. As a way of educating others. If you read through the comments, it’s a hundred to one, how could you be so stupid? How could you be so blind? Why would you give your money to a total stranger? And what they’re missing is that wasn’t a total stranger. That was the most significant person in their life at that time.

Beau: Now here’s why I think people tell me their stories. I don’t read the comments ever. So if you’re trying to hurt my feelings in the comments, good luck. I’ve never once looked at them. And I, it’s not that I don’t care what my listeners think, because I do, I love the community that we’ve created with “What the Hack?” What I don’t care about are all the people who are out there trying to hurt people’s feelings. You know what? Hurt people hurt people. And I have no time for that nonsense. When somebody has been, uh, become the victim of a crime, you have to assume they’ve been hurt in a place of hurt. Therefore it requires a great amount of, um, uh, gentleness to unwrap what’s happened. And I like the way you put it. Um, you know, that someone confesses to having been, um, targeted successfully because it is very hard to admit. And, um, and yet it’s the most important thing you can do because pulling back the curtain on what’s going on is the only way to stop what’s going on now.

You know, the problem is, it is lonely at the top of the hill in that castle in a turret. And, and, and that is what a lot of older adults, you know, they may not be living in a, in a castle on top of a hill, but to a, to a person living in a village somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Nigeria, they are, they have, uh, one or two bathrooms with running water and lights that never go out and internet.

Beau: And that is a castle that is unimaginable in a lot of these situations. And, and you know, so I do think that perspective is a lot, has a lot to do with it. But now let’s, but remember that a lot of these scams focus on not just romance scams, but sextortion and people are not just getting hurt: People are dying.

As a result of being scammed because they can’t confess to what happened because it’s too shameful. And the only answer they feel is, “I must disappear.” And, and that to me is, where I don’t know what to say. Like, yes, I understand why these confraternities exist and where it comes from. And I have an immense amount of compassion for people who’ve, um, spent hundreds of years up, people who’ve spent hundreds of years in contested land that is, has never been theirs, even though it is theirs. 

Gary: And yet what happens? The culture makes that acceptable behavior, but then the greed drives it to another level.

Beau: Well, and that’s the thing 

Gary: There’s, there’s no one needs a Lamborghini.

Beau: No. Well, that’s the thing is like you have like, um, that you have this, this situation where you’re like, oh my gosh, they’re so poor. This is such a horrible situation. And then like the ones who get out, like they’re not so poor. They have Lamborghinis.

Beau: These are people who have gone in the other direction. And you know, you can say this about West African confraternities, but let’s not just point to that because, you know, actually one of the most vile instances of, a hacker causing people to commit the, the, the gravest kind of self harm is, um, Julius Kivimäki from Finland, who, released now this was through a grave error on the part of a company in Finland, but released the, uh, psychological profiles of 30,000 psych patients at a, at a company that provided, you know, psychological counseling to people. And some of them couldn’t handle the idea that their patient files would be released in public.

Ending

 Beau: What are some best practices for, people who are concerned about being targeted by this threat scape that we’ve just been talking about? What are the best things that you can do? I mean, multi-factor authentication takes care of certain aspects of our cybersecurity. What’s your advice for people.

Gary: So one of the things that has is an emerging security threat is AI note takers. When I join a meeting and someone turns on an AI note taker, there are certain ones that I say, turn that off, or I’m leaving the meeting and. One of them, if you read the terms and services of it first, they’re taking a full audio visual recording of the meeting and storing it on their servers.

Gary: They’re producing a transcript of that meeting that’s searchable

 Well, I meet with intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies and. No, it’s nobody’s business who I have meetings with. And just by saying yes, I’d like to read the notes from the meeting you’ve granted full access to that meeting, to your past and present and future meetings and who they’re with and what their email addresses are.

Beau: And by the way, if it’s re, if it’s capturing your image, remember that even if it’s anonymized, your image. Your features, the distance between your eyes, your mouth, and your nose and your ears is going to give many, many, many kinds of software online, the ability to re-identify you in a hot minute. And so you, you, you are not, no matter where you go, unless you’re, you’re dressed like Sasquatch, you’re not going with a full mask, you’re not going to be anonymous online.

Beau: Gary Warner, thank you so much for joining us. Um, I, I can’t say, we’re gonna have to have you back and talk about something in in particular because we did need to go big today ’cause I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time.

Beau: But thank you so much for joining me.

Gary: It’s been a true pleasure, Bo. I really, I knew I liked your show now. I know I like you. So it was

Beau: That’s awesome.

TFS

 

 And now it’s time for the Tinfoil Swan. Your paranoid takeaway to keep you safe on and offline. Organized identity crime runs on trust. Their business model simple, make you drop your guard. Then drain your account.

What can we do? Defense, start by shrinking your digital footprint. Services like delete me, help wipe your info from people search sites, so criminals can’t use it to build convincing scams. If you’re not there, you’re not gonna be the first one on their list. Then interrupt the crime. If someone sends you an urgent link or money request, don’t click. Don’t reply. Sit there, make ’em wait. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy them not getting what they want because it’s kind of funny.

Go straight to the source. Visit the official website. Call the real number. Drive the communication yourself. Nine times out of 10, it’s fake. And here’s the thing, don’t tease the person calling you, because a lot of the times they’re working for somebody who’s not paying for them to work there they are, in fact, human trafficked. They’re not in a good situation. So just get off the phone, hang up.

And if you think you’ve heard all this before, I guess that’s the point. Scammers keep pushing the same playbook because it still works. Don’t let it work on you. The goal. Break the chain before the money moves. Make yourself a hard target and come back next week.

We’ll have another story for you. Thanks for listening.