The Culture War - Tim Pool - THEY'RE SCAMMING YOU w⧸ Trilogy Media, Art Kulik & Ashton Bingham

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00:01:29.020 It seems nowadays with the advent of AI that everybody's got a story of somehow getting scammed or some kind of bogus text messages.

00:01:38.780 Well, today on The Culture War, we're going to talk about it.

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00:04:33.200 Welcome back.

00:04:35.660 So joining us today to talk about this epidemic of scamming,

00:04:39.180 we've got Art and Ashton from Scammed, the show on Fox News, or Fox Nation, right?

00:04:46.720 Fox Nation.

00:04:47.540 Go ahead and introduce yourselves.

00:04:48.900 What's up?

00:04:49.280 My name is Ashton from Trilogy Media.

00:04:50.980 My name is Art from Trilogy Media as well.

00:04:53.000 Okay.

00:04:53.460 Well, thank you for joining us.

00:04:55.200 Now, we're going to jump right into it.

00:04:57.540 And one of the things that you've got on your one sheet here, you list out the anatomy of a modern heist.

00:05:03.740 Why don't you go ahead and have a look for us?

00:05:06.500 Oh, wow.

00:05:07.720 Yeah.

00:05:08.920 So basically, I mean, is it something that is targeting?

00:05:12.580 A lot of people have this idea that it targets, you know, older people because they're unfamiliar with the internet or unfamiliar with,

00:05:18.960 back in the day, it was unfamiliar with, you know, cold calls and stuff like that.

00:05:22.040 Is that kind of still the method that they use or has it morphed into something different nowadays?

00:05:28.680 It's a lot of that, but it's just on a different level.

00:05:31.040 You know, it's, you used to be able to rely on spotting a spam email by looking at bad grammar, right?

00:05:39.620 Sure.

00:05:40.220 Whereas now a scammer can just go in and use ChatGPT and generate, you know, hey, pretend like you're a representative of the United Nations with a lottery winnings.

00:05:52.100 Give me the script and it looks perfect.

00:05:54.100 And this is more than just like phishing where you're trying to get someone to click on a link or something.

00:05:57.920 Well, that's a key, that's a component of it.

00:05:59.580 I mean, but, you know, and one thing we'd love to talk a lot about is, is the stigma behind this kind of stuff.

00:06:06.320 Because a lot of people assume that you'd have to be really stupid, you know, to fall for this.

00:06:09.780 Or you'd have to, you have to be an idiot to believe that the IRS is asking you to pay your taxes and gift cards.

00:06:14.800 It's like when it's on paper, it sounds ridiculous.

00:06:17.840 But like you said, with phishing, it is a lot like phishing where they're sending out millions, billions of these text messages or these phone calls or these emails or whatever it is over the course of a very short period of time.

00:06:28.340 Even if 0.1% of them are even engaging with it, that's a massive pool of potential victims.

00:06:33.120 I think that's the biggest misconception when people think like, why did they target me?

00:06:37.680 Why me?

00:06:38.660 No, it's not.

00:06:39.600 It's not about the quality.

00:06:40.820 It's all about the quantity.

00:06:42.100 They will blast millions emails.

00:06:43.800 They will blast millions robocalls.

00:06:46.440 Like Ashland said, 0.1% return that believing that you haven't paid taxes, right?

00:06:52.800 You just receive a phone call from local sheriff who said like you owe taxes and they're going to direct you go to Target and buy gift cards and pay your taxes.

00:07:01.680 So when you say you mentioned phone calls and sending text messages, do they just randomly just say, okay, we're going to go this block of random numbers and we're just going to try calling them.

00:07:12.200 We know that the area code is this one and then just have a computer generate the numbers?

00:07:17.700 I don't even think it's that thought through.

00:07:20.960 It's literally just databases of phone numbers.

00:07:23.260 So, you know, you, and that's how David, your data gets harvested.

00:07:27.860 Like I have specific phone numbers that I have created just for calling scammers and I'll create a phone number.

00:07:35.540 I'll talk to one scammer for a while on it.

00:07:37.780 And then two weeks later, I'm getting inundated with scammer emails on that number that only exists for me to talk to scammers on.

00:07:45.900 So it's very much like a black market in the sense that like they're buying and selling data just like they would do here in the States, but they're doing it amongst each other with scammers.

00:07:53.980 And they'll highlight like potential victims or victims that have been scammed before.

00:07:59.600 So it's really just like a marketplace of, you know, your information gets out.

00:08:04.120 I've had the same phone number since I was 12.

00:08:06.360 I'm 35 now.

00:08:07.860 Like, it's not hard to find my phone number.

00:08:09.660 I get so much crap, which helps us now because we can just use it to make content out of.

00:08:13.420 We can talk to scammers.

00:08:14.220 We can do all that.

00:08:15.040 But like, you know, staying, you really have to be proactive to just like know what you're looking for and not just assume because they're calling you or because they know your number that like they have good intentions.

00:08:24.880 And also you have to understand a couple of things.

00:08:28.400 Being in this business, scam baiting for 10 years, we bought scammers, busted scammers here domestically, internationally.

00:08:36.140 We went to India.

00:08:36.900 We went to Nigeria.

00:08:38.940 There, every single scam originates somewhere, right?

00:08:42.260 Overseas.

00:08:42.820 If we talk about tech support, PopUp, Microsoft, you open your computer and you see PopUp blinking that you have virus, virus, call this number immediately.

00:08:50.260 Anything that with PopUp, tech support, it originated from India.

00:08:55.640 We went to India and we shut down a couple of call centers together with Mark Rober and Jim Browning.

00:09:01.220 And we had a great relationship with locals who will work for scam call centers and work for us, double agent.

00:09:10.640 And they told us for 30 years, this business and still so successful, blasting everybody, scamming Americans, Canadians, Europeans, Asians, everybody.

00:09:22.460 Bosses will send hundreds or thousands of people to United States.

00:09:28.240 They will apply for a job at cell phone companies, AT&T or whatever.

00:09:32.120 And that's how we're going to get another way to get our data.

00:09:35.960 Ship it back, send it back, whatever boss wants.

00:09:38.480 He has insiders that actually like double agents.

00:09:42.440 It's a numbers game.

00:09:43.140 They get a billion phone numbers and they send a text message to all of them.

00:09:46.400 You know, 99.99% can ignore it.

00:09:49.200 They don't care about those people.

00:09:50.460 They care about the 1%, the 0.1%.

00:09:52.220 You made a point that you've been doing it for 10 years.

00:09:54.220 How long have you been doing this?

00:09:55.240 Yeah, we opened our channel in 2016.

00:09:56.700 So talk about the difference with the advent of AI, right?

00:10:02.020 Because obviously AI is a fairly new technology in the past four or five years, maybe even less, that ChatGPT and other AIs have been able to successfully emulate human beings.

00:10:15.560 You know, when they first came out, you know, just like the, I like to use the Will Smith eating spaghetti AI video.

00:10:22.580 Most people are familiar with it.

00:10:23.660 The first time it came out, it was, you know, clearly not real.

00:10:27.980 Right, which wasn't that long ago.

00:10:29.520 Which exactly, it was only two years ago.

00:10:31.380 And now there's video out where Will Smith is eating spaghetti and it's indistinguishable from real.

00:10:37.960 There's no reason for someone to look at the new AI videos of Will Smith eating spaghetti.

00:10:42.560 And if they didn't know the context, there's no reason for someone to think that is definitely not Will Smith eating spaghetti.

00:10:48.180 So talk about the difference between pre-AI and post-AI and what that's kind of done to the scammers.

00:10:54.680 AI has created an express lane for brainwashing.

00:10:59.000 So I always say that, like, we spend a lot of time talking to scammers.

00:11:02.800 We spend a lot of time talking to victims.

00:11:04.280 Talking to victims is 10,000 times harder than talking to scammers.

00:11:08.420 Especially when they got the scammer already.

00:11:09.880 Why is that?

00:11:11.240 Because they're apprehensive about talking to anyone?

00:11:13.200 Well, yes.

00:11:13.880 I mean, I imagine it'd be embarrassing to be like, I was, you know.

00:11:16.100 And that's the biggest problem, is the stigma is, like I said earlier, about, like, you know, people say, and I don't have the chat.

00:11:21.920 I'd love to pull it up here.

00:11:23.160 I'm sure a lot of people say, like, that's one thing when we go to new places that maybe don't know a lot about scam baiting, we'll say.

00:11:27.740 It's like, well, you've got to be stupid to think this.

00:11:29.540 It's not like that.

00:11:32.580 The brainwashing and the social engineering and the manipulation that takes place over sometimes months at a time is crazy.

00:11:41.300 It's unprecedented.

00:11:41.900 I think it's a lot harder to talk to victims, A, because it's delicate.

00:11:47.120 They're embarrassed.

00:11:48.100 They're ashamed.

00:11:49.100 They've been told by.

00:11:51.080 Packages by Expedia.

00:11:52.880 You were made to occasionally take the hard route to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

00:11:58.440 We were made to easily bundle your trip.

00:12:01.360 Expedia.

00:12:02.260 Made to travel.

00:12:05.140 Society that they're an idiot for falling for this.

00:12:07.420 Usually the cases that we're paying attention to are not necessarily, I lost $50, I lost $100.

00:12:13.120 I lost tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.

00:12:15.680 We've had, I think, our biggest case recently was $3 to $4 million over the course of a couple of years.

00:12:22.740 These people have had their entire lives taken from them.

00:12:25.280 This isn't just like, oh, they picked up one phone and their bank account was drained.

00:12:29.060 This is months of manipulation of, they'll use anything against you.

00:12:35.620 Like Chappie is one of our victim advocates and one of the best scambators in the world.

00:12:40.740 And she got into this because her close friend took her own life.

00:12:44.140 And when she found the body and when they went through the phone afterwards, they saw the scam that was taking place that caused her to make that decision.

00:12:52.880 And they saw that the scammer found out that this victim had early onset dementia.

00:12:58.360 And the scammer was using that against her.

00:13:00.720 So it was like a refund scam kind of tech support type of thing.

00:13:03.900 But they said, you know, if you tell anyone about this, they're going to lock you away.

00:13:08.060 You know that, right?

00:13:08.900 Like you can't tell anyone about this.

00:13:10.660 Like you're crazy.

00:13:11.220 They're going to say you're crazy.

00:13:12.160 They're going to take your house away from you.

00:13:13.660 So give it to me.

00:13:14.600 I'll protect, you know, that kind of stuff.

00:13:16.060 So they're already broken down.

00:13:17.560 They're already full of shame.

00:13:18.920 A lot of times we find that they're more willing to talk to us than they are to their own families.

00:13:24.060 Yeah, they will rather talk to strangers.

00:13:26.320 It's like you can open up to a stranger on an airplane, right?

00:13:29.920 When you're sitting next person that you're not going to see him again.

00:13:32.420 Exactly the same concept.

00:13:34.760 They will talk to us and they said, listen, I refinanced my house.

00:13:38.720 I cash out my 401k.

00:13:40.160 I absolutely broke.

00:13:41.960 Nobody, a single human around me doesn't know anything.

00:13:46.480 If I will say something, it's just going to be embarrassment for the family.

00:13:50.780 And to loop back to the question, the reason why I think AI is that fast track is because like you'd be shocked at how many times we'll talk to a victim that came to us for help,

00:14:01.120 but won't listen to us.

00:14:02.900 Like they'll, they're still in the scam.

00:14:04.960 And this is very common with romance scams.

00:14:06.720 It's a very emotional element to it.

00:14:08.580 And they, they don't want to believe when we tell them this is not the person you're talking to.

00:14:13.220 You're not talking to Will Smith.

00:14:14.940 You're talking to a man in Nigeria.

00:14:16.960 You're not talking.

00:14:17.720 Eight years, eight or 10 years talking to a scammer, thinking she is in relationship, giving her every single social security paycheck.

00:14:25.600 We meet this person five, 10 minutes ago and we're trying to tell them the common red flags and why we know this is a scam.

00:14:30.380 Or maybe we've tracked the scammer by this point.

00:14:32.140 But they've had eight years sometimes of talking to this one person that has to convince all this convincing and all this brainwashing they've done.

00:14:39.840 So AI just fast tracks all that.

00:14:42.120 Now the victims will say, well, I video chatted with this person.

00:14:45.180 I know he's real.

00:14:46.940 We're just talking to Elon Musk a couple of days ago and we baiting him.

00:14:51.020 I mean, we baited 20 Elon Musk on Facebook.

00:14:53.880 And this is crazy.

00:14:55.320 So we were FaceTiming and you can hear the voice.

00:14:58.600 He was like, hi, yeah, this is me, Elon Musk.

00:15:00.940 How can I help you?

00:15:01.740 Yeah, you should.

00:15:02.920 I will give you a couple of cars.

00:15:04.700 And conversation goes the way we talk, giving, receiving.

00:15:09.000 And I look at Ash and I was like, if we would not be scam better, we will believe that.

00:15:13.480 Yeah, you point that out.

00:15:14.880 That's actually something that's worth kind of drilling down on.

00:15:18.140 There was a time where people would get an email or a message on their Instagram.

00:15:22.960 And I've seen a lot of these, a lot of them on Instagram.

00:15:25.660 Someone will make a remark or they'll say something and they'll try to initiate a conversation.

00:15:30.460 And the person that doesn't believe it will reply with something ridiculous.

00:15:32.980 Right.

00:15:33.420 And then the AI would act like, or the person, whatever, would act like they didn't say that, would, and it's beyond a misunderstanding.

00:15:42.200 It would, it would just, they would continue down the script.

00:15:44.920 Those are easy to spot.

00:15:46.340 Right.

00:15:46.480 But now with AI, they can actually interact and it's a pretty, pretty realistic or pretty understand it, it, it, it represents a human well enough where you can say, look, it makes sense that you would be taken by this.

00:16:02.520 Because this is a, this looks like a perfectly normal conversation.

00:16:06.160 We've had conversations with ourselves.

00:16:08.120 Yeah.

00:16:08.260 We have people that pretend to be us online and they'll go into the comment section and they'll reply.

00:16:13.680 Someone will say, Hey, I need help.

00:16:15.200 I got scammed or whatever.

00:16:16.060 And then there'll be a fake trilogy media account that will respond to it and say, I can help you recover your funds.

00:16:20.560 Now, do you think that those are AI or do you think that's an actual person?

00:16:23.500 I mean, those references, Ash, it was a person in Nigeria.

00:16:28.020 Well, yeah, there's a person behind it every single time.

00:16:31.040 Whether or not it's AI initiating the comments, I don't know.

00:16:33.980 But the point is they're trying to get you off of YouTube and onto a direct WhatsApp or Telegram chat.

00:16:40.060 So they, they, they, they'll make an account and, you know, on YouTube, you know, every handle is unique, but your username, not your username, but your, your channel name is not.

00:16:48.260 Right. So like the handle will say trilogy media, six, seven, nine point X, Y, Z, blah, blah, blah.

00:16:53.180 But then you go to the channel, it just says trilogy media helpline and it's got our picture and it's got our cover photo.

00:16:58.340 It's got our videos. It's all duplicate of us.

00:17:01.060 Message me on WhatsApp for help.

00:17:02.540 And it's a phone number and to Nigeria or whatever.

00:17:04.700 And then we call it and then they're impersonating us.

00:17:06.540 And then we're talking to ourselves about, so yeah, it's, they, they blast this stuff out, just like the emails and everything, just to see who's going to respond, who's going to engage.

00:17:14.300 You know, in 2026, as of right now, we can create AI deep fake.

00:17:20.220 I can be your mom.

00:17:21.300 I will call you and send son.

00:17:23.060 I need some help.

00:17:24.340 Send me money and I will sound like your mom.

00:17:27.060 I will look like your mom, everything.

00:17:29.620 And that's why people asking us when we do interviews, what should we do when we have these AI talking to me?

00:17:36.040 And we always say, set up a password, set up a password among your family.

00:17:40.780 Hey mom, if it's really you or hey son, which school did you go to?

00:17:43.880 What is my favorite food?

00:17:45.340 And you're going to hear like this, boop, boop, boop.

00:17:47.200 Okay.

00:17:47.700 This is it.

00:17:49.480 It's hard to beat the game when it's already, yeah, human.

00:17:53.080 It's not going anywhere.

00:17:54.400 It's just AI is just giving, it's opening the door for anyone to do it.

00:17:59.100 You know, just like with any tool.

00:18:00.300 It can be used for good.

00:18:01.180 It can be used for bad.

00:18:01.840 And it will be.

00:18:02.360 And it'll continue.

00:18:03.000 It's not going anywhere.

00:18:03.660 And it's going to continue to be exploited in this way.

00:18:06.280 We try to use it when we can to fight back against it.

00:18:09.100 You know, you're going to pretend to be a scammer.

00:18:10.660 Well, we're going to pretend to be a victim.

00:18:11.880 Come and get my money and let's, let's get you in some handcuffs.

00:18:14.680 So what's your, so if you get a scammer that reaches out to you, right?

00:18:18.840 Or, or say you bait someone, right?

00:18:20.440 What's the, what's the, what's the first thing that you guys are doing to get them to

00:18:25.220 believe that you're actually, actually vulnerable.

00:18:27.980 That you're actually a real person that they, they can actually take advantage of.

00:18:32.100 I guess it depends on the context.

00:18:33.580 If we're, if we're looking to entertain, like in a live stream, or if we're looking to

00:18:37.400 actually, like if we're, if we have a collaboration, like this year was huge with our, with our

00:18:41.500 show.

00:18:41.740 Law enforcement kind of stuff?

00:18:42.720 Okay.

00:18:42.880 Like that.

00:18:43.380 And you work with law enforcement, right?

00:18:44.580 Yes.

00:18:44.620 Now we do.

00:18:45.560 Like before it was impossible because these scams, it's not like a cut and dry crime where

00:18:50.220 one guy robbed a bank, let's arrest them.

00:18:51.760 This is a multiple layers of bureaucracy, borders, fake identities, bank accounts overseas, like

00:18:58.540 a victim comes to us that lost money.

00:19:01.280 There's, there's dozens of people involved and trying to call the police on a cash mule

00:19:06.680 in the United States was procuring absolutely nothing for years.

00:19:10.580 So we stopped doing it, you know?

00:19:12.660 Um, but when they call us or now we're in a, in a fortunate place where our viewers will

00:19:19.040 actually send us their tips, you know, if they get like fake invoices or whatever.

00:19:22.020 Okay.

00:19:22.400 Um, so we can actually proactively reach back out because usually this stuff is like the

00:19:26.520 scammer will send you a hook and they're looking for whoever's going to bite on it.

00:19:29.340 So we just bite on it and we just let them take us through their steps.

00:19:32.300 So if it's a fake invoice or it's a spam email, we'll reply to it or we'll call the phone number

00:19:36.740 and we'll be like, Hey, I got this.

00:19:38.300 What does this mean?

00:19:38.840 Is this real?

00:19:39.740 And then just let them go, let them tell us what they're going to tell us.

00:19:42.720 We already know the playbook.

00:19:44.020 Sometimes they surprise us.

00:19:45.200 It's rare, but they tell us what they want us to do, where they want us to go.

00:19:48.620 If we need to social engineer them in a certain direction, like if we're working with law

00:19:52.060 enforcement and we want them to send a cash mule, then we need to avert their primary resources,

00:19:57.600 which would be a wire transfer, a Bitcoin deposit.

00:20:00.020 We make up excuses why we can't do that.

00:20:02.420 No, I, I, you have to come get the cash from me, you know?

00:20:06.120 So even though it's an Indian overseas call center, a lot of people don't realize there's

00:20:10.540 a lot of people here in the States that are helping to facilitate those scams.

00:20:13.480 So they'll send one of their trusted dudes to my house as an old man to come pick up my

00:20:17.520 cash.

00:20:18.720 And then when we have the cops there, they can take them down.

00:20:19.440 We, in 2020, sorry, no, no, go ahead.

00:20:23.120 In 2020, we started doing confrontations, right?

00:20:26.420 Knocking on doors, following, follow the money.

00:20:29.500 You're going to find the bad guy.

00:20:30.520 And when you knock on doors, either a victim going to open the door or it's going to be

00:20:34.960 cash mule or it's going to be scammer itself.

00:20:37.780 So different scenarios.

00:20:39.020 Whatever we film, we always give this footage to law enforcement, FBI, Homeland Security.

00:20:46.200 Guys, this is it, right?

00:20:47.880 We got approached by FBI.

00:20:49.440 We got approached by Homeland Security.

00:20:51.520 And for so many years, it's always a special with FBI.

00:20:54.880 It's always been their way or highway.

00:20:57.300 That's it.

00:20:58.060 You guys don't work for us.

00:20:59.300 We don't work for you.

00:21:00.180 But we need raw footage of what you guys did five years ago, right?

00:21:04.180 Everything was like, kind of like, we already get used to it.

00:21:07.300 Last year was absolutely monumental.

00:21:10.580 First time in the history of scam-baiting community where law enforcement, FBI, Homeland Security,

00:21:19.300 everybody got along together.

00:21:21.340 Everybody has a big egos.

00:21:22.540 My agency is better than your agency.

00:21:23.900 And we're like, guys, why are we trying to bring these freaking bureaucracy?

00:21:28.760 We have scammers that scamming Democrats, that scamming Republicans.

00:21:32.820 Anybody, there is no discrimination.

00:21:35.380 We have a mutual enemy.

00:21:37.400 Cyber security pandemic.

00:21:39.920 Everybody got together.

00:21:41.300 Shout out to John Montgomery, Sheriff.

00:21:43.020 He was the guys.

00:21:43.680 Our community, it's 70 over 70.

00:21:46.060 Mountain home.

00:21:46.980 A lot of elderly people.

00:21:49.120 Chinese mafia thugs pretending to be federal agents coming on doors, robbing elderly people.

00:21:55.920 Enough is enough.

00:21:56.720 In person.

00:21:57.500 In person.

00:21:58.820 And this is kind of like how fascinating and smart this scam is.

00:22:06.500 If we're talking about tech support, all these bright, amazing brains in India doing bad stuff,

00:22:13.740 bad apples in the family, scamming people, right?

00:22:16.340 So if I scam you, I need to move your money.

00:22:20.260 So India mafia works for Chinese mafia.

00:22:22.740 Chinese mafia will send thugs to your door, to your grandmother, to your mother, to collect that cash,

00:22:27.660 and then take that cash and either deposit to Bitcoin.

00:22:30.740 And that's where our game starts getting in, right?

00:22:33.660 We're going to either sitting in the bushes or we're going to rent a house, right?

00:22:38.180 Ashton's going to get this guy and he's going to be old man.

00:22:41.400 How do you talk?

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00:23:09.560 That's ironcladapp.com slash podcast.

00:23:13.180 So we have like literally every single agency working together.

00:23:20.120 Cash mule showing up to rob an elderly person, which is Ashton.

00:23:24.340 We have sheriff in the garage.

00:23:27.240 We have helicopters, dogs.

00:23:30.380 We have federal agents with undercover cars watching highway, gas station.

00:23:36.540 And we have eyes on every single vehicle that doesn't have Arkansas, if we're doing in Arkansas, who doesn't have Arkansas plates number, right?

00:23:45.120 So it's just, it's like a freaking James Bond movie.

00:23:48.200 Yeah.

00:23:48.380 Or it's like mission.

00:23:49.800 It sounds ridiculous on paper.

00:23:51.760 Like if you told us a few years ago, we'd be doing that.

00:23:53.280 We'd be like, what are you talking about?

00:23:54.280 It's very weird, but it's cool.

00:23:55.680 So one of the things that you mentioned, you were talking about, you know, the mules, right?

00:24:01.740 If the feds are like, okay, we'll pick up the mule.

00:24:04.340 Is there any capacity to reach outside of the U.S. borders and to start to disassemble these organizations?

00:24:14.420 Because you guys are talking about the mafia, right?

00:24:16.320 So, I mean, obviously organized crime likes this type of play because, you know, for them, it's a lot safer.

00:24:25.480 You know, you're not engaging in strong arming so much as you are engaging in persuasion.

00:24:31.780 So there's less risk for the people involved that are the criminals as well as, you know, if you don't have, aside from the mule maybe.

00:24:41.120 But like if you pick up a mule, that's like picking up, you know, just a street thug.

00:24:46.480 Do you guys have any capacity to actually start, or does the federal government work with you guys to actually start disassembling the organizations?

00:24:54.440 Well, how much time do you have?

00:24:56.520 Because that is such a deep topic.

00:24:58.520 Well, if they take their phone and throw it in a Faraday bag so that the chats can't be wiped, you have a treasure trove of information of who sent them.

00:25:07.760 You know, and also too, not to ignore, like we're the ones, we go boots on the ground.

00:25:13.300 We have the fun of making the content like right there in person.

00:25:16.120 But when we're baiting behind the scenes, when we have Chappie or we have Bull or we have any one of our team that is doing the off-site scam baiting.

00:25:24.060 And along the way, they're getting tons of information before we even get to an arrest.

00:25:29.560 So the scammers will say, hey, I want you to, you know, you have to pay for this or whatever the scam is.

00:25:34.600 You know, you have to put it in this Bitcoin wallet.

00:25:36.300 Well, there we go.

00:25:36.860 We just got a Bitcoin address.

00:25:37.840 Yeah, I was going to say, because anything that goes on the blockchain, you can trace.

00:25:41.120 And not even just crypto.

00:25:42.500 I mean, that's just one example.

00:25:43.480 But like, then there's a reason why there's like, hey, okay, we can't do crypto.

00:25:46.540 They're like, okay, well, can you do a wire transfer?

00:25:48.200 Sure.

00:25:48.580 Even though we're not going to, but we tell them yes.

00:25:50.260 They're like, okay, you're going to wire it to this overseas bank in India.

00:25:54.520 Well, there you go.

00:25:55.040 Now we have an identifying bank account.

00:25:56.820 And then we're like, well, we can't send it international.

00:25:58.400 So there's a reason why we can't do each thing.

00:26:00.140 They're like, well, now you have to wire it to this LLC in New York.

00:26:03.960 It's like some random.

00:26:05.140 So there we go.

00:26:05.760 We have another identifying LLC we can look up.

00:26:07.940 Then we work through every step of their thing.

00:26:09.880 Usually they want to send someone as a last resort.

00:26:12.140 But by the time we get someone to show up and actually get arrested, we've already identified

00:26:15.100 three, four, five, sometimes in the dozens of mules remotely that are receiving this money.

00:26:22.180 And then we get them on scene and you have their phone.

00:26:24.400 They're not our first pickup.

00:26:26.640 We're not their first pickup, right?

00:26:28.460 So just like the one, the video we put a few weeks ago in Arkansas, the guy showed up

00:26:32.820 to pick up what he thought was 60 grand from my old man character.

00:26:35.980 But they went through his phone and like he had picked up how much money in the previous

00:26:41.020 few days?

00:26:41.760 1.1 or something?

00:26:43.040 Like in the millions.

00:26:43.940 In three days?

00:26:44.660 He was just airport hopping, rental car hopping and picking up money from real money from victims.

00:26:49.340 So you get the victim identifying.

00:26:50.740 So it's like a spider web.

00:26:52.040 You know, you identify this one thing, but then you can then reach out to every single

00:26:55.880 hook spoke on the wheel.

00:26:57.500 And, you know, eventually if they, if they pull up the telegram chats and they can subpoena

00:27:01.320 stuff, you know, all of that stuff's over our head, but they can start identifying the

00:27:04.460 people overseas that are actually sending them.

00:27:06.220 And now you said, you said if they grab their phone, if they grab their phone and put it

00:27:09.420 in a Faraday bag, is there a significant risk of them, of the person wiping it?

00:27:15.020 Or do you think that it would be something that was done remotely?

00:27:18.240 Well, you can wipe telegram and WhatsApp and some of those apps remotely, which is why you

00:27:23.440 want to put it in that bag.

00:27:24.560 Because if it's doesn't have a connection, it won't be able to refresh itself to show

00:27:28.620 a wiped chat so they can go through the telegram.

00:27:30.980 That's, that's, that's something that was maybe one of the biggest hurdles we had from

00:27:34.160 the beginning is initially naively going into this and we would confront a mule.

00:27:38.860 We call the police.

00:27:39.800 He's committing a crime, right?

00:27:41.720 Cops show up.

00:27:44.100 They don't understand what's happening.

00:27:45.900 They're like, where's the victim?

00:27:46.880 That's the first question is who's the victim?

00:27:49.620 I'm like, well, it's me, but I'm not real victim.

00:27:52.420 So there really isn't one.

00:27:53.560 They're like, well, what's the crime?

00:27:54.560 I'm like, well, it's theft, but it's not real.

00:27:56.360 This is fake cash though.

00:27:57.580 And so we spend 20 minutes explaining the scam and it's not an easy scam to explain in 30 seconds.

00:28:02.160 The refund scams specifically is very complicated.

00:28:04.840 If law enforcement is not educated on these, especially if they, they have no, they get

00:28:10.260 reports every single day, right?

00:28:12.340 File reports by elderly people every single day.

00:28:15.340 There is no resources.

00:28:17.160 There is no money.

00:28:17.760 There is no time.

00:28:18.380 There is, there is a, I keep bringing this.

00:28:22.020 We were in Houston doing our Stinghouse operation.

00:28:24.560 We got a call from local Houston PD and they're like, hey guys, big fan of your channel.

00:28:29.160 Can our cybersecurity division come?

00:28:32.540 Can like group of people come to you and maybe you guys teach us a couple of things?

00:28:36.840 We're like, yeah, absolutely.

00:28:38.520 Three people showed up to Houston PD and one, another person.

00:28:42.080 And we're like, what is the, what is the cybersecurity division?

00:28:46.940 The three guys in the division, right?

00:28:48.600 And he said, oh, you're staring at him.

00:28:49.900 This is him.

00:28:50.740 And I was like, one person?

00:28:52.540 He was like, yeah.

00:28:54.060 So can you guys teach us how to track Bitcoin and to see where all this money goes?

00:28:59.000 And I look at Ashton, I was like, no wonder scammers so successful in this.

00:29:05.420 Yeah.

00:29:05.600 The reports just get thrown in a cabinet and nothing's ever done about it.

00:29:08.460 Well, you, you, you were talking about the past year, right?

00:29:13.460 How you, you've seen a significant increase from the, the feds.

00:29:17.460 Can you talk a little bit about that?

00:29:19.480 Expand?

00:29:19.980 What is, what does it mean as a significant increase?

00:29:22.680 Like, obviously you said there's a little more cooperation between, between agencies,

00:29:28.080 but do you feel like they kind of just realize that this is a big problem or do you think that

00:29:33.880 they, that they now have the resources because of the administration or, or what's your, what's

00:29:39.700 your guess about it?

00:29:40.580 The, I mean, you can, you can tell about this, but I think like we, so many doors got shut

00:29:48.780 down on our faces over a decade.

00:29:51.640 LAPD, New York PD, Miami PD, big, big agencies.

00:29:55.120 We have done time.

00:29:55.920 We didn't have resources hung off.

00:29:58.960 We sold the show to national network, to Fox and Fox is very pro law enforcement.

00:30:04.620 Yeah.

00:30:04.900 Right.

00:30:05.400 So they start treating more serious, more like, all right, if you're doing it, let, let

00:30:12.160 us help.

00:30:12.700 Let, let us bring like a sheriff.

00:30:14.280 Let, let's, let's put connections together.

00:30:16.760 And after this, the movement has been created.

00:30:19.860 I think we were kind of cursed with that YouTuber label that we can't avoid.

00:30:23.260 You know, um, it's, it's a risky thing for, for an agency that doesn't want to be shown

00:30:30.300 in a bad light, uh, wrongly.

00:30:32.760 Um, I, I get it.

00:30:34.620 I think, um, you know, we, we worked with them a long time before it was publicly known.

00:30:40.300 Right.

00:30:40.660 It's just, we're not really working with them.

00:30:42.140 As you said, it's, they make it clear that we don't work for you.

00:30:46.020 You don't work for us.

00:30:46.680 This is not a, this is not a, we want all the evidence.

00:30:49.280 Like we want, you give us whatever you want to give us and we'll do our job and you'll

00:30:54.640 never hear from us again is usually kind of how it goes.

00:30:56.860 Until last year, DOJ.

00:30:58.000 Well, that's an example though.

00:30:58.940 Like the DOJ put out this press release that we were, of the $65 million scammering that

00:31:03.700 was taken down.

00:31:04.280 There was like 25 different, um, Asian mafia mules and bosses that were all indicted that

00:31:09.200 we were a huge part of.

00:31:10.420 We didn't even realize it.

00:31:11.300 So we did, it was the very first scam busts we were doing back in 2020, 2020, as soon

00:31:17.080 as we started in the payroll, that's why they don't, and they don't want the liability.

00:31:20.120 They don't want, I mean, I get it, but our, our power is not in law enforcement.

00:31:24.280 Our power is in awareness and, and, and eyeballs.

00:31:26.860 So we make content.

00:31:27.940 We have to make content to do this or we can't do it anymore.

00:31:30.180 We have nothing else to do.

00:31:31.680 We don't have badges, you know?

00:31:33.000 So when they were coming to us back in 2020 and 2021, they're like, Hey, I saw your video

00:31:36.740 confronting this guy, but his face is blurred.

00:31:38.600 I worked for the DOJ.

00:31:39.420 Hey, I'd like to do something about it.

00:31:41.180 I'm like, here, here, take all, we give all the raw footage.

00:31:43.060 We always do.

00:31:43.940 But then the phone goes silent.

00:31:45.800 We never hear back from them again.

00:31:47.420 Testifying.

00:31:47.900 They said like, Hey guys, come.

00:31:49.220 But even then that was one time.

00:31:50.940 And like, we didn't know the context or like, come testify.

00:31:53.800 There's something happening.

00:31:54.900 We'll tell you when we'll tell, we'll tell you more when we can.

00:31:57.280 And then three years later, there's a massive indictment.

00:32:00.680 It's like, and the whole indictment credit to them gave us credit for starting all this.

00:32:05.360 But it's like, I didn't even realize this was happening until it was done, you know?

00:32:08.560 So it was a lot of that, but without the end result where we'd give all the information

00:32:12.980 and we'd never hear back until last year.

00:32:15.440 From your perspective, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

00:32:18.640 I mean, obviously it's kind of like, well, it'd be cool if we were, you know, if they

00:32:21.920 let us know.

00:32:22.620 But do you think that the reason they keep it so quiet is because of the lab, because

00:32:27.200 of a fear of security, a fear of, of the targets being, you know, getting wind of it

00:32:32.200 or, or probably, I think, um, that's standard, that's standard government procedures to not

00:32:37.240 tell anyone anything.

00:32:38.500 Of course.

00:32:39.260 Probably why the, and I'm probably, I'm probably biased because our living comes from making

00:32:43.560 content.

00:32:43.940 So I probably can't have like a fair assessment of this, but to me, the awareness is the

00:32:49.380 biggest problem.

00:32:50.060 And for us working in silence, does nobody any good?

00:32:53.140 Yep.

00:32:53.360 Like we can fight these scams by making people aware of what to look for.

00:32:56.400 If they don't have anyone to scam, they don't have anyone to scam.

00:32:58.860 So us making the content and making it entertaining to a degree, which we try to do, more people

00:33:04.620 will watch it.

00:33:05.380 More people will learn.

00:33:06.120 Oh yeah, that's how that scam works.

00:33:07.860 Oh yeah, that's, look at what they did this time.

00:33:10.140 Oh, that's a new development.

00:33:10.980 So they learn all these things to look out for and then they stop falling for it.

00:33:14.420 So, but that's, and it's because of the content that law enforcement came to us in the

00:33:17.720 beginning.

00:33:17.980 So if we didn't make the videos, they wouldn't even know what was happening.

00:33:20.660 But that's the thing is all it takes one sheriff, one police department who will do something

00:33:27.980 that never been done before.

00:33:29.180 Nobody want to be a guinea pig.

00:33:31.160 We pitch our show about scams since 2020.

00:33:35.220 Kiss so many networks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:33:38.060 Got very close with a couple of them.

00:33:39.960 Never been done before.

00:33:41.160 We don't want to do it.

00:33:42.420 Fox came, wrote a check.

00:33:45.000 Go do it.

00:33:45.860 It's a big problem.

00:33:46.780 Everybody getting scammed, regardless of your whatever, political beliefs, your culture,

00:33:51.920 religion, whatever.

00:33:52.900 Go do it.

00:33:54.200 We did it.

00:33:55.000 Sheriff John Montgomery took a risk on us in Arizona, Arizona, in Arkansas.

00:34:01.260 And after show went live, all of a sudden we're getting this sheriff from different

00:34:05.720 states.

00:34:06.220 We start going nationwide.

00:34:08.100 Our scare, like right now from your show, we're flying straight to two houses.

00:34:12.500 I'm not telling where.

00:34:13.880 It doesn't, I wouldn't even.

00:34:14.780 So anyways, shut your mouth.

00:34:15.740 You're flying somewhere.

00:34:16.700 Somewhere.

00:34:17.280 Yeah, keep your mouth shut.

00:34:18.560 So we booked.

00:34:19.740 And that's because of the scammers, not because of the audience.

00:34:21.420 Because of the scammers, exactly.

00:34:22.460 So we booked like months in advance.

00:34:28.060 And all it started because like one successful operation, we, like it has been arrested like

00:34:35.680 over a dozen scammers, prosecuted, and it's just like snowball, you know.

00:34:40.180 So what kind of, what kind of time do the, the perpetrators look at, right?

00:34:46.080 So you pick a guy up, goes through the court system, gets found guilty.

00:34:51.100 And again, like I said earlier, it's like, if it's just a mule, you know, they're going

00:34:54.660 to have a hundred more of those guys.

00:34:56.580 Yeah.

00:34:56.740 And, and if you toss one of these guys in jail, you know, if he goes and does a, you

00:35:01.560 know, a dime or a nickel, like he's going to get out and he's going to go, he's, it's

00:35:07.520 likely he's going to go right back to it.

00:35:09.420 So do you feel like, do you feel like the, the punishments, the time that these dudes

00:35:15.120 do, is it, is it long enough?

00:35:16.580 Is it a situation where, you know, these people are actually U S citizens or they hear on green

00:35:21.480 cards, can they get deported?

00:35:22.560 Can we, they, can they get sent out and flagged at like, what's the, what's the actual result

00:35:27.380 for the, the, the scammers that you pick up?

00:35:29.540 It varies drastically.

00:35:30.700 Of course, uh, jurisdiction, the right prosecutor, uh, it, you know, um, having DAs that don't

00:35:36.480 have their heads up their asses and actually want to charge them.

00:35:38.620 Good luck with that.

00:35:39.380 Well, yeah.

00:35:40.500 Um, at least they, they, they have their shit together in Arkansas and it's refreshing

00:35:43.480 because they're actually charging.

00:35:44.540 Like the one I referenced with the guy that was airport hopping was charged with five felonies

00:35:49.040 just from that one pickup.

00:35:50.380 Good.

00:35:50.740 Um, so they're, they're, they're hitting it hard.

00:35:52.800 Most other places.

00:35:53.860 Yeah.

00:35:53.980 They get a slap on the wrist and it's not really going to do anything, but that's the

00:35:56.940 point.

00:35:57.240 We had to kind of work up to this.

00:35:58.480 Right.

00:35:58.900 And so now we were in this place now where they're actually charging them with hefty

00:36:01.780 crimes.

00:36:02.560 And in Arkansas specifically where we were at, the prosecutor even like was working with

00:36:07.120 us.

00:36:07.260 They're like, okay, so here's what we can do.

00:36:08.840 I know your cash is fake.

00:36:10.280 You're, he's doing a $60,000 pickup attempted theft or whatever the charge was, but put, put $500

00:36:15.800 of real cash in the box too.

00:36:17.320 Cause then I can get them on actual theft.

00:36:19.040 There you go.

00:36:19.520 So they can stack it, they can do it.

00:36:21.100 And so, and because he rented a car, there's another charge there because he's using another

00:36:24.180 person's flying.

00:36:25.120 I mean, that's the thing is he's flying.

00:36:27.240 It's, it's interstate.

00:36:28.280 So if you have someone that's motivated to actually do something, they can stack the charges.

00:36:31.600 And is it long enough?

00:36:32.540 No, of course not.

00:36:33.260 And is it just barely chipping away at the whole organization?

00:36:35.960 Yeah.

00:36:36.480 But it's all, we do what we can.

00:36:38.380 Like, you know, we can't just send a, uh, you know, a cyber virus bomb to the entire

00:36:43.020 call center all the time.

00:36:44.040 You know, we can, we can do what we can, and we can fight back and we can show people what

00:36:47.440 not to do.

00:36:47.940 That's honestly the most effective thing.

00:36:49.360 Yeah.

00:36:49.500 I was, I was actually thinking that like the, the, the big benefit, obviously you want

00:36:53.300 to take criminals off the streets if you can.

00:36:55.280 But I imagine the, the real big benefit is, is Fox picking up the show and people watching

00:37:01.240 it because it educates people on not just their, their, the way that they do it, but

00:37:08.420 it shows them that they're not alone.

00:37:10.820 You can go and find people to talk to.

00:37:13.200 I imagine people reach out to you guys regularly nowadays.

00:37:16.140 Constantly.

00:37:16.680 Yeah.

00:37:16.820 Our inbox, unfortunately, you can't find the bottom and it's depressing to read through.

00:37:20.400 Uh, but yeah, I mean, Fox has an older demographic, so it's a totally different and, and shout

00:37:25.460 out to Fox.

00:37:26.100 Like, look, like he said, like we're, we're, we're nonpartisan on our channel, on our content.

00:37:30.260 It's like, I don't care.

00:37:31.340 We, we pitched it to Fox, pitched it to CNN, pitched it everywhere.

00:37:33.320 It doesn't matter.

00:37:33.860 Whoever's going to put time and money and resources into scam awareness is good in my

00:37:36.980 book.

00:37:37.460 Fox picked it up.

00:37:38.240 Fox took a chance.

00:37:38.840 It's a hard show to make because of this very reason with the, you know, the law enforcement

00:37:42.700 involvement and setting this up and then counting on the mules to actually show up

00:37:45.940 is a whole nother struggle.

00:37:46.960 Yeah.

00:37:47.320 I mean, it's one thing to make shorts, you know, in and after a couple of shorts.

00:37:50.400 In an afternoon, it's totally different to put the resources into like what amounts

00:37:54.500 to a legitimate investigation.

00:37:56.340 You have five months.

00:37:57.220 We want six episodes and they all need to have law enforcement collaboration.

00:38:00.300 Go.

00:38:00.800 Yeah.

00:38:01.080 I think we did like, I don't know, 15, 20 States, seven, eight international countries

00:38:07.240 in five months.

00:38:08.960 We were gone.

00:38:10.060 So you guys do, do international travel yourselves?

00:38:11.900 Oh yeah, absolutely.

00:38:12.920 I was actually want to, you keep asking questions about, all right, we have cashmills, but if

00:38:19.360 you remove them, nothing happened.

00:38:20.640 But the big boss is overseas.

00:38:22.620 We actually changed kind of the strategy in the beginning of everything that we've been

00:38:27.520 doing.

00:38:28.360 We went to India.

00:38:29.380 We tried to work with Indian government, with Indian cybersecurity police.

00:38:34.480 The more those things been happening in India, we went to India, we put 10 scammers on apparel

00:38:45.460 for one year.

00:38:46.940 We had a meeting every single Sunday.

00:38:48.920 We did sting operation, preparing operation with Mark Rober, who created all the glitter

00:38:54.240 bombs.

00:38:55.380 Jim Browning, who can get access to every single camera in scam call centers and us being boots

00:39:00.980 on the ground.

00:39:01.420 So we work on one year, didn't miss any single Sunday.

00:39:05.520 We created this operation.

00:39:06.860 We went to India.

00:39:07.940 We brought all these glitter bombs and all these pranks and all these awesome stuff.

00:39:13.620 Don't ask us how we got those through customs.

00:39:14.740 Oh my God.

00:39:15.500 Yeah, that's a different one.

00:39:17.400 When everything happened and we executed, we did our pranks, we shut down three call centers.

00:39:22.900 When Indian mafia found out that we in India, that Americans, these West freaking enemies

00:39:31.060 came to our house to fuck with us.

00:39:34.460 When it's been something successful for so many decades, they start hunting us.

00:39:39.020 They start looking, going through hotels to hotels and they're all rats on either telegram

00:39:45.700 group, 50, 60,000 scammers talking to each other.

00:39:48.400 So they start blasting our description.

00:39:50.700 Fucking trilogy media in town.

00:39:52.280 You see them, kill them.

00:39:53.860 And make a story short, we spent so much time, effort, money, and we found out one amazing

00:40:01.660 thing.

00:40:02.240 I mean, it's not amazing.

00:40:03.960 The government is involved.

00:40:07.080 Local sheriff, we got Jim Browning, went to the computer and he gave us a breakdown sheet

00:40:12.680 who getting paid.

00:40:13.960 They not even hiding.

00:40:15.600 It says they have a line item for cops.

00:40:17.340 For cops.

00:40:17.900 Yeah.

00:40:18.200 Cops will show up once a month.

00:40:19.600 They're going to collect your mother, your father, my mother, my father money.

00:40:23.500 They're going to get paid.

00:40:24.840 And every single time when there is a raid, right, cops show up in the morning and there

00:40:28.800 is empty.

00:40:30.220 It's all for show.

00:40:31.340 They will do a rest for show and they're going to let them go.

00:40:34.280 So we kind of lost faith that we can do anything with international government.

00:40:40.200 So we redirected back what we can do.

00:40:42.820 We can work with local police.

00:40:44.440 We can get cashmule.

00:40:46.100 We can cut all these tentacles.

00:40:47.980 Make them scared to ever show up again in these jurisdictions.

00:40:50.740 And that's the point, too, is we did it in Arkansas.

00:40:52.980 Our first operation, we were there for three days.

00:40:55.140 By day two, we were getting hung up on repeatedly by scammers as soon as we gave them our zip

00:41:00.340 code.

00:41:00.920 Oh, really?

00:41:01.420 Yeah.

00:41:01.640 Because they're like, the word spreads.

00:41:02.980 They're like, oh, this is not a safe place for us as scammers, right?

00:41:05.740 It's actually very safe for the rest of the world.

00:41:08.740 So getting them to come to Arkansas after all this was happening was very difficult.

00:41:11.820 And that's the point.

00:41:13.520 That's why we do pred catches, too, because they're going to be afraid to come.

00:41:17.200 And these repeat offenders who watch content know what to look for and where not to go.

00:41:21.800 And so now, you know, Oklahoma calls us.

00:41:23.980 They're like, oh, we don't want scammers here either.

00:41:25.800 So let's do it.

00:41:26.520 And so now it's like a snowball.

00:41:27.880 And now we're like, the whole year is almost booked.

00:41:29.660 When you start opening the franchise.

00:41:31.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:41:31.720 Exactly.

00:41:32.020 It's really what it is.

00:41:32.840 We have undercover agents, right?

00:41:36.080 Scammers.

00:41:36.820 We have good scammers and bad ones.

00:41:38.620 The good ones who work for us, actually, and give us information.

00:41:41.580 They will be sitting inside of the groups.

00:41:43.540 And they will send a screenshot from Arkansas.

00:41:45.760 And everybody's talking.

00:41:47.860 Do not send anybody.

00:41:49.220 We lost already, like, such important right hands.

00:41:52.160 It's trilogy media with cops taking our cashmills, taking our resources.

00:41:57.020 Fuck them.

00:41:57.740 Not going to Arkansas anymore.

00:41:58.980 Send cashmills anywhere in the United States.

00:42:01.640 Do not go to Arkansas.

00:42:02.780 Code red.

00:42:03.600 And they'll be like, hell yeah.

00:42:05.200 And now we're going to different states.

00:42:07.520 Now, if you're watching this, if one of you is scammer and you want to do something about it,

00:42:11.920 and you want to rob somebody, we're going to open that door.

00:42:15.160 I imagine, you know, you guys in India probably stick out, you know.

00:42:18.900 Oh, no, not at all.

00:42:20.120 We got six foot two.

00:42:22.620 We made a mistake.

00:42:24.180 And this, again, this is in 2022.

00:42:26.160 So, you know, we learn as we go.

00:42:28.160 But, yeah, we made the mistake of doing touristy shit on day one.

00:42:32.220 Oh, we got spotted on day two.

00:42:35.260 We got a little comfortable because we had locals, right?

00:42:37.440 We were there, and we wouldn't have gone without that.

00:42:40.200 So, we maybe got a little comfortable.

00:42:42.380 And, like, it's a long trip.

00:42:43.500 And we're like, okay, the mission is later this week.

00:42:45.480 Let's just take a day and chill.

00:42:46.920 We went, what did we go, a zoo?

00:42:48.020 I forget where we went.

00:42:49.120 Seven Wonders.

00:42:49.880 It's the Seven Wonders Park in Kolkata.

00:42:51.820 Yeah.

00:42:52.000 And then it was, like, the next morning that, because our locals were insiders in these telegram groups.

00:42:58.920 And, like, just to give you a scale, like, this one particular group had 55,000 members in it.

00:43:04.760 And one person starts posting in it that Trilogy's in town.

00:43:08.220 So, that's all of a sudden 55,000 people involved in scamming in some way that now know about our presence and are posting our hotel address in it and stuff.

00:43:14.440 So, anyway, that's a whole other story.

00:43:17.140 But, we do stand out, to answer your question.

00:43:19.600 That's why, when we went to Nigeria a couple of months ago for scam getting even, we had two cases.

00:43:25.420 Again, all this romance scam.

00:43:28.080 Like, I've been maybe four or five African countries.

00:43:31.580 African people are so warm.

00:43:34.560 They love you.

00:43:35.180 They adore you.

00:43:36.160 They're genuinely happy when you come and you bring business.

00:43:39.580 They're just hospitality on a different level.

00:43:41.600 Imagine you take this set of skills as a humanity, human set of skills, and turn on romance, sexy, and baby.

00:43:50.500 Good morning.

00:43:51.240 Did you have your breakfast?

00:43:52.160 How are you doing, my lady?

00:43:53.480 And you say those things that men or women want to hear it, right?

00:43:58.040 Especially with the way that nowadays there are so many people that are isolated because of the Internet.

00:44:03.820 They're isolated from actual people.

00:44:05.680 They don't go out and interact with the world.

00:44:07.520 Oh, COVID for a couple of years.

00:44:09.080 Yep.

00:44:09.640 Yep.

00:44:09.980 Yep.

00:44:10.260 Absolutely.

00:44:10.620 So, yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense.

00:44:13.820 The point that you were making about the corruption and stuff, so there's this guy, Michael Schellenberger.

00:44:21.600 He's a writer and an activist and stuff, and I heard him on a podcast called Dad Saves America, and he was talking about how the corruption in other countries, people in the United States don't understand how corruption actually is, right?

00:44:35.260 In the U.S., there's, of course, there's corruption, but it's always behind closed doors.

00:44:39.000 But they're quiet about it.

00:44:39.760 Yeah, it's behind closed.

00:44:40.720 They try to keep quiet.

00:44:43.220 You'd never see, like you said, you'd never see police on an Excel spreadsheet.

00:44:48.100 He was saying, he's like, look, in India, there will be a person that wants to get electricity for their house.

00:44:54.440 And instead of paying the electric company, they pay the landlord, and the landlord will take that money and go and bribe.

00:45:04.040 He'll take a piece and he'll go and bribe the guy at the electric company to turn it on.

00:45:08.620 Or if you're in South America and you get a job, the guy that gives you the job will expect that he's going to take 10%, 20% of your pay every week or every whatever, like a VIG, right?

00:45:23.580 And that's normal in a vast swath of the world.

00:45:29.480 You don't have to go far.

00:45:30.720 I'm an Eastern European guy, right?

00:45:32.620 Well, now this is my country.

00:45:33.940 I always want to, like, I was, I was, you know, like when your body born in the wrong country and your soul in a different, that was me.

00:45:44.980 Always want to be in America, but my body was in Soviet Union, right?

00:45:48.340 So always want to live that place.

00:45:50.400 And you're talking about everything, right?

00:45:52.500 Bribes.

00:45:53.920 In our countries, in my ex-countries, nobody hide.

00:45:58.520 Yeah.

00:45:58.740 If you want to corrupt it, right?

00:46:00.240 If you're drunk driving and you have enough money and cops stop you and you absolutely, what, obliterated?

00:46:07.620 That works.

00:46:08.920 That works.

00:46:10.180 You put your window a little bit down, you put the cash to the cop and you're drunk as heck, they're going to escort you back home.

00:46:16.860 Yeah.

00:46:17.440 Money talks.

00:46:18.460 And that's why, like, governors, mayors, politicians, they, like, when they get busted, raided, they're like, yeah, my, my, my toilet is gold.

00:46:27.980 Yeah, I'm not here.

00:46:28.680 I have, like, five million dollar cash or euros right here under the table.

00:46:33.360 They're like, okay, that's cool.

00:46:34.660 What's, what's the problem?

00:46:35.860 Yeah.

00:46:36.400 Yeah.

00:46:36.700 You know, I mean, so I'm, I'm in a band and, and, like, we've toured throughout Europe and stuff.

00:46:40.860 And it's, it is like, even in, in places where people would think that it's like, it's not like that.

00:46:46.800 Like you go to, we'd play in like Italy and Milan and in the U S if you, if you're out front selling a band's merch of a venue or whatever, the cops are going to come along and they're going to shoo you away.

00:46:58.220 You go to Italy and the bands inside selling merch, you're given 40% to the venue for selling, which is a huge amount anyways.

00:47:05.920 And then out front, there's people selling your bootlegs and you can't even go and get them to leave.

00:47:11.500 And if you call the cops, the cops are going to be like, no, it's fine.

00:47:14.000 You know, so, so we have that too.

00:47:16.140 It's called squatter's rights in California.

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00:47:49.840 That's a good one.

00:47:51.080 Yeah, that's a good one.

00:47:51.900 You know, but it is, it does speak to the difference of cultures that you see in different countries.

00:47:57.600 And it does matter, right?

00:47:58.800 Like the type of, that type of brazen, you know, whether you call it corruption or just, you know, favoritism or whatever you want to call it.

00:48:07.760 That's something that, that you have to deal with internationally.

00:48:10.360 Dude, at the Nigeria airport.

00:48:12.600 Oh my God.

00:48:13.360 How many times did a government official blatantly ask us for a tip?

00:48:17.520 We have a, we have like six or seven times before we left the building.

00:48:22.140 I'm not exaggerating.

00:48:23.180 That's not five bucks.

00:48:23.800 They're looking for, you know.

00:48:24.780 They want like a tip.

00:48:25.360 Like the guy putting my bag through the thing because you have to scan it every six feet was like, like literally he's wearing a badge.

00:48:31.380 And he's like, some tip.

00:48:33.120 Like, you didn't do anything.

00:48:34.540 Like, I'm just here.

00:48:35.220 I want to go.

00:48:36.120 Like our friend went to Nigeria first.

00:48:38.440 And she said, all right, guys, do me a favor.

00:48:40.440 Do yourself a favor.

00:48:41.540 Go to the bank.

00:48:42.720 Take $1,000 cash in fives.

00:48:46.000 You will need it.

00:48:47.960 Really?

00:48:48.580 We landed in Nigeria, right?

00:48:50.440 Lagos International Airport.

00:48:52.160 And you have to show them vaccination card, which is another bullshit.

00:48:55.520 Speaking of vaccination card.

00:48:57.140 So we, we over, we, we maybe got ripped off.

00:48:59.560 We went through one of these private companies.

00:49:01.180 $3,000 to get vaccinations and malaria.

00:49:03.420 They lay it all out for you because you need all these things to go into the country.

00:49:07.020 And when we get there, we, we met, or we were there with a collaborator of ours.

00:49:10.840 And he, like, I guess his was not within the time frame it was supposed to be.

00:49:14.100 And the guy was like, oh, you know, we need to send you back.

00:49:18.000 This is going to be a big tip.

00:49:19.420 It's going to be a big tip.

00:49:20.380 It's like, hmm, we've got a problem.

00:49:21.480 I think we have a problem.

00:49:22.300 He tipped him, like, what, $40?

00:49:24.540 Like, we could have saved so much money by just bribing our way into the country.

00:49:28.360 From landing in Lagos International Airport to get to our hotel, which is on the territory of, um.

00:49:35.740 Literally, like, on the airport property.

00:49:36.940 On the airport property.

00:49:39.080 You spend so much money because every single person see, okay, you're international.

00:49:42.840 You know, like, oh, you're Caucasian, white, coming short.

00:49:45.740 Come on.

00:49:46.360 And you're just getting ripped off.

00:49:47.740 The vaccine requirement was a complete and utter horseshit.

00:49:50.840 Like, we could have just, we could have honestly just bought our way through it.

00:49:53.020 I got to the point.

00:49:53.840 I was so over it.

00:49:55.100 And I'm using European.

00:49:55.920 I was like, dude, enough.

00:49:57.520 And when he's trying to grab my guy with his luggage, I just pushed him away.

00:50:01.560 I grabbed my guy, my camera guy.

00:50:03.120 I was like, we're not giving you money.

00:50:04.520 Fuck off.

00:50:05.060 And we just, like, start walking to the exit.

00:50:07.180 And you go and people touch you.

00:50:09.120 Government officials.

00:50:10.740 And what was the sign over there in the airport?

00:50:14.420 Which one?

00:50:14.940 I don't know.

00:50:15.680 No, um, no government.

00:50:17.580 Don't pay.

00:50:18.200 What was it?

00:50:18.900 And you were laughing about it.

00:50:20.080 That you're not allowed to give money to government officials.

00:50:22.800 Nah.

00:50:23.880 Probably.

00:50:24.420 I don't know.

00:50:25.340 I'm a little distracted.

00:50:26.480 Like, you, yeah, that government officials not allowed to take money or bribery, right?

00:50:31.360 And there is a big sign in the airport.

00:50:32.540 According to who?

00:50:32.560 The government officials?

00:50:33.440 Yeah.

00:50:34.020 And it's, yeah, it's great.

00:50:36.120 So getting back, getting back to the topic at hand, you guys were talking about holiday

00:50:40.640 scam season.

00:50:41.860 Oh, yeah.

00:50:42.180 Like, go ahead and give us a little insight on, like, the difference between your run

00:50:48.400 of the mill, normal summertime or whatever scams, as opposed to what kind of increase there

00:50:54.120 is during the holiday season.

00:50:55.380 Like, what does that look like?

00:50:57.060 I always say that scammers will prey on two, one of two things, either your hopes or your

00:51:02.120 fears.

00:51:03.240 And fears usually is the more common one.

00:51:05.880 And that meaning, you know, you get a call from the IRS, you're going to be put in jail

00:51:08.900 if you don't pay your back taxes.

00:51:10.020 Like, that's a fear.

00:51:11.020 A hope is like, oh, I'm a Nigerian prince.

00:51:13.200 He just wants $10 million.

00:51:14.380 But before you get your winnings, you just got to pay a million dollars in taxes, right?

00:51:17.920 So that's a hope.

00:51:20.240 So holiday scam, I mean, any kind of topical world event will initiate a lot more of these

00:51:26.820 things.

00:51:27.240 Holidays, obviously, that's a yearly thing.

00:51:29.300 You know, you want to get good gifts for your kids for Christmas.

00:51:32.820 They're not saying, like, we need you to send a couple bucks to help poor kids and blah,

00:51:38.740 blah, blah for Christmas.

00:51:39.900 No, no.

00:51:40.320 They're far more in depth, right?

00:51:41.240 Well, and what they'll do is they'll, like, I mean, again, it all depends on the type of

00:51:44.640 scam.

00:51:44.860 They all have their own, like, kind of ways that they go.

00:51:46.600 But these, like, tech support scams, specifically the ones over the holidays, when you get those

00:51:49.640 fake invoices or you get, you know, whatever phishing links or websites of imposter Amazon

00:51:53.680 sites.

00:51:54.040 Did you buy iPhone 17?

00:51:55.020 You know, the domains will look exactly the same and they're not, you know, that kind

00:51:58.720 of stuff.

00:51:59.100 What they'll do is they always push for remote connection to your computer first.

00:52:02.420 So, and they explain to the old person, like, you know, they don't use the term remote

00:52:06.560 connection.

00:52:06.960 They just say, we're connecting you to our secure server so we can refund you that money,

00:52:10.340 right?

00:52:10.560 And as soon as they do that, they have all the control in the world to block out your screen and

00:52:14.300 take control, they have you log into your bank and they see how much money you have.

00:52:17.840 That's where they start.

00:52:18.760 That's their starting block.

00:52:19.720 How much can I take?

00:52:20.660 Okay, here's what I'm going to do.

00:52:22.000 They have this money in savings, this money in checking.

00:52:24.120 I'm not going to show them, but I'm going to transfer $50,000 from their savings to their

00:52:27.780 checking.

00:52:28.460 I'm going to have them check their checking account or call their bank.

00:52:30.940 Oh yeah, you have a deposit of $50,000 in your checking account.

00:52:33.440 That was an accident.

00:52:34.180 You have to send it back to us.

00:52:35.020 So you have to go and wire it or you have to go pull the money out.

00:52:37.360 And so it's not really an overpayment.

00:52:40.100 They just moved it from one account to the other, right?

00:52:41.420 It's that kind of stuff.

00:52:42.320 So they will see how much you have and work from there.

00:52:44.940 And I think another one, couple of those, it's definitely they will increase massive blast

00:52:52.640 of emails, anything that Best Buy, Amazon, Target, anything that you shop for a family,

00:52:57.240 every single person doing things online, you booking your hotels, tickets, Airbnb, whatever

00:53:02.340 you do, you do it online.

00:53:03.520 So they will overblast those emails that you over shopped.

00:53:07.540 There is you, you, you bought something, right?

00:53:09.660 You bought the couch, you bought this call the number on the bottom.

00:53:12.860 That's number one.

00:53:14.020 Another one.

00:53:15.040 Have you been, um, have you heard about parking where there is a QR code and instead of real

00:53:21.640 one, it's a fake one.

00:53:22.720 Okay.

00:53:23.440 Same stuff.

00:53:24.620 They will print local scammers.

00:53:27.000 They will print exactly identical, the same format.

00:53:31.260 And we all struggling parking at Macy's, right?

00:53:34.900 So you park somewhere, but you need to pay for your parking and it's going to be fake

00:53:39.420 one.

00:53:39.740 So you do the QR code and I'm going to lead you to a link that you clicked, pull the information

00:53:45.380 and they're already inside of your bank account.

00:53:47.160 So it's a lot of things that you have to be like, we always say, if I did not request,

00:53:53.980 if I didn't call IRS, if I didn't call my bank of America, if I didn't call Amazon, do

00:53:58.760 not take these robocalls.

00:54:01.020 Do not reply to those emails because it's fake.

00:54:03.340 Do not trust anybody.

00:54:04.240 So everyone knows that, uh, you know, anyone that gets your email address can send you emails.

00:54:10.500 Right.

00:54:10.820 And, and I think if you're, if you're a savvy person, not, and this isn't to disparage

00:54:15.520 in, but if you're a savvy person, you know, you don't really click links in random emails.

00:54:20.580 You can check the email address.

00:54:22.500 And just because it says Best Buy, if you look at the, if you hover over it, it'll have

00:54:27.160 some big, long.

00:54:28.240 Oh, Costco one.

00:54:29.080 It's a lot.

00:54:29.440 Yeah.

00:54:29.720 Those text messages.

00:54:30.920 So, but do you, do you think, or is it that if you're actually working inside of apps,

00:54:37.400 is that safer for people?

00:54:39.520 Right.

00:54:39.780 If you have an app on your phone, like a Hilton app for you, you mentioned booking hotels or

00:54:44.220 whatever.

00:54:44.620 If you're working inside of an app, is that safer for people?

00:54:47.480 Or do you think that the apps are compromised as well?

00:54:50.420 I mean, I think there's, there's risk anywhere.

00:54:52.740 It just seems to me that most of the time when we talk to somebody who fell for something like

00:54:57.640 this, they were caught at a bad moment in life, you know, or even just a bad moment in the

00:55:02.000 day.

00:55:02.320 Like I was just distracted at this one moment.

00:55:04.060 I got this text.

00:55:04.700 I thought I didn't think about it and I clicked on it and then all hell broke loose.

00:55:08.100 Um, it seems that apps are more trustworthy.

00:55:10.200 I think as long as apps are, I think in general apps and banks and companies like Amazon, they

00:55:15.580 just need to be better at making their customers understand how they will and how they will not

00:55:19.640 reach out to you.

00:55:20.620 Yeah.

00:55:20.700 Everyone does it differently, you know, uh, whatever, but like, you know, you're, you get

00:55:25.220 an invoice from Amazon saying that you purchased, you know, whatever, a big, an iPhone that you

00:55:29.540 didn't buy.

00:55:30.040 And then you want to call the number on the bottom to dispute it.

00:55:32.480 Well, Amazon needs to make it clear that you're never going to get a PDF invoice from them.

00:55:35.520 And to some, it's obvious to some, it's not sure.

00:55:37.380 You know, to an old person that's just scrolling through their email with, you know, big texts

00:55:40.520 and they see Amazon order, they didn't buy, and it's going to drain their account.

00:55:43.300 They freaked out and they freak out.

00:55:44.620 You panic, you call the number and then they, they, they hijack your entire life.

00:55:47.860 I just, I think, you know, like if Amazon made it clear that we will only contact you

00:55:52.520 or you could only get support through our app, go to the app and click on this button.

00:55:56.240 If more people knew that, then it would obviously be way safer.

00:55:59.080 I mean, I'm not, not immune to this at all, but like, I generally will err on the side of

00:56:04.040 let them be mad at me because I didn't reply and didn't click.

00:56:07.480 You should never be pressured.

00:56:08.620 If anyone's ever pressuring you, no matter what it is, there's, you don't need to act now.

00:56:12.640 It's okay to take a set, to take a breath, ask questions, talk to a loved one.

00:56:16.860 If the IRS is really after you, they're going to send you a certified letter to your house

00:56:21.240 and someone's going to hand deliver it.

00:56:23.040 So that way they can say, we definitely let you know.

00:56:25.380 And you'll hear about it repeatedly.

00:56:26.200 You're not going to get one phone call one day that says you have an arrest warrant.

00:56:29.200 Like, it's just not going to happen that way.

00:56:30.440 But to someone that doesn't know that it can, you know, it can hijack your, your, your sensibility

00:56:36.160 to make rational decisions.

00:56:37.300 Especially if you're the kind of person that's like, I have to take care of this now.

00:56:40.500 And there are people that, people that have good credit, a lot of times they have good

00:56:44.680 credit because they see any kind of bill or whatever.

00:56:47.400 And they're like, I have to take care of this right now.

00:56:49.780 But again, it's a timing thing too, that like they're, that they're counting on happening

00:56:53.320 when they send a billion of these things out, they send out a billion Amazon invoices.

00:56:57.060 You know, we'll, we'll often see that the victim will say something like, and it's just,

00:57:01.800 it, the timing was bad because I had just looked at an iPhone on Amazon the other day

00:57:06.740 to buy from my grandson.

00:57:08.560 And then they sent me this invoice that it was purchased.

00:57:10.680 And I thought it was related, even though it was a total coincidence.

00:57:13.400 Speaking of awareness, do you know how many times where we live in Los Angeles, California,

00:57:18.300 we physically in person, we went to Best Buy, Walgreens, Walmart, ask, speak to the manager

00:57:24.200 and like, guys, for the love of God, put a freaking big sign in your gift card section.

00:57:30.780 Do not pay your taxes with Apple gift cards, play cards.

00:57:35.020 But I talked to cashiers and they said, Art, I see zombies every single day on a phone

00:57:40.920 with a scammer who's saying, who are you sending money to?

00:57:44.180 My family.

00:57:45.100 Getting instructed, they go to gift cards and buying, buying, buying, buying.

00:57:48.880 I think we're slowly moving away from gift cards.

00:57:51.160 I say slowly, emphasis on that word.

00:57:52.980 It's now going into crypto ATMs, which need to be, in my opinion, obliterated entirely.

00:57:57.560 It's a disaster of an invention.

00:57:59.240 But they're sending, you know, grandmas to crypto ATMs because there's no limit.

00:58:02.760 You just pile your whole freaking savings into it in cash over the course of however many weeks.

00:58:07.720 And it's completely, like, not untraceable, but it seems to be.

00:58:10.820 It feels like it is.

00:58:11.180 Well, you've got to approach.

00:58:11.980 It's harder.

00:58:12.560 Yeah.

00:58:12.860 Like, I'm familiar with crypto in that I know that it's not, like, people were used to say

00:58:18.160 that Bitcoin was anonymous.

00:58:19.500 It's not anonymous.

00:58:20.100 It's not anonymous.

00:58:20.580 But you need someone that knows how to follow it.

00:58:23.740 And then you need a law enforcement connection to run a KYC request, which may or may not yield you the information you're looking for.

00:58:29.860 And it never just goes to one wallet and stays there.

00:58:31.560 It branches out to a million other wallets.

00:58:33.180 And people will say, oh, well, you know, you can download the blockchain and look.

00:58:37.460 And it's like, no.

00:58:38.000 It doesn't.

00:58:38.440 No, it's not that simple.

00:58:39.280 You can't do that.

00:58:40.020 Like, it's not like, oh, let me just look in there.

00:58:42.760 It's like, it's specialized knowledge.

00:58:44.740 You have to understand how, you know, you have to understand a lot about blockchain and technology

00:58:50.060 and the blockchain that you're dealing with in particular.

00:58:54.060 You can't just be like, oh, let me look it up like it's a file, like Googling it, you know?

00:58:57.920 One of the episodes on our shows came getting even, there is a case in Canada.

00:59:04.120 We went to Canada and the guy is 65, 67 and he was, he had concrete business, right?

00:59:09.940 He was like, it's time to retire.

00:59:11.660 And he goes on Facebook and scammers can buy Google ads officially on Facebook and blast

00:59:19.960 their crypto investment accounts.

00:59:21.940 That's the other thing.

00:59:22.320 Don't ever Google support numbers for companies.

00:59:24.340 Like, don't say Amazon support customer number.

00:59:26.240 Don't Google that anymore because your first three or four results are all paid ads and they're

00:59:29.560 oftentimes not real.

00:59:30.400 Yeah, and a lot of times when they're paid ads, you know, if you're not, again, if you're

00:59:34.600 not constantly looking at Google, you don't know that.

00:59:37.720 Or even if you know it's an ad, you just, it looks like Amazon.

00:59:39.920 So it's like, oh, Amazon ad advertises like it's the number.

00:59:42.000 Let me just call it.

00:59:42.440 Like you don't, you know, sometimes, anyway, sorry.

00:59:45.040 We're not going to go this deep because this hasn't happened yet, but we got approached

00:59:49.000 by, we took a couple of congressmen, you know, and they said, guys, what can we change?

00:59:55.340 What kind of laws do we need?

00:59:56.580 And me and Ashlyn was like, these Bitcoin ATMs that is in every single gas station,

01:00:03.420 7-Eleven, when your people, my people, anybody goes and deposit the whole houses, right?

01:00:10.480 So much money.

01:00:11.480 It should be regulated.

01:00:12.880 Okay, let's not shut down Bitcoin ATM, but let's put it in a bank.

01:00:16.900 It has to be regulated.

01:00:18.560 Have you ever seen anyone that legitimately trades crypto use an ATM to do it?

01:00:23.420 Like, I only hear about scam victims going to them.

01:00:26.040 I've never seen a person actually use it for legitimate trading.

01:00:28.220 Back in the day, in the early days of Bitcoin, it was fairly normal when you heard that there

01:00:33.420 was a Bitcoin ATM, people would go and be like, oh, I can just go ahead and put my cash

01:00:36.980 in and it'll keep me, you know, it'll keep it away from the feds.

01:00:40.280 I guess, yeah.

01:00:41.260 Now we have Coinbase anymore.

01:00:42.500 Now you go online and you're like, I buy, you know, cryptocurrency, I love cryptocurrency.

01:00:45.880 But you go on official, you know, federal approved websites, blah, blah, blah, and you buy it.

01:00:52.080 I talked to a gas station close to my house and he's the owner.

01:00:55.540 And I just noticed that he just put Bitcoin ATM.

01:00:59.180 So I was like, yo, do you know what I do for a living?

01:01:01.680 So I give my brochure, Trilogy brochure, explain to him.

01:01:04.360 And he said, Art, the person who just put this Bitcoin ATM, the amount of money done

01:01:10.160 getting paid, I'm covering the whole rent of my gas station.

01:01:12.680 Wow.

01:01:13.380 And I kind of don't give a shit.

01:01:15.840 Yeah.

01:01:16.640 And I look at him and like that humanity level.

01:01:19.900 And we went in Canada, we went to so many countries where victims were like, where did

01:01:25.680 you deposit money?

01:01:26.980 These, these gas station, we'll go to gas station.

01:01:29.360 We talk to the clerk, manager, and everybody's like, nobody cares.

01:01:32.860 Just pay rent.

01:01:34.260 You know, it's, it's frustrating because you'd think that if they're giving you enough money

01:01:40.020 to pay your mortgage, just to have an ATM in there, that can't be above board.

01:01:46.340 You can't be above board.

01:01:47.840 You know, you said it.

01:01:49.320 You said it.

01:01:49.920 They're incentivized to turn a blind eye and not care.

01:01:52.060 You're, you're, you're, you're an active participant in scamming people and taking advantage.

01:01:56.760 You're, you, you, again, for me, it's frustrating to hear that because it's like, you, you have

01:02:01.540 to understand that the reason you're getting that kind of money is because they're taking

01:02:05.500 advantage of it.

01:02:06.120 Or they're just, they're just being complicit because they want the rent for the machine

01:02:08.960 and they just, they don't, they don't care if a bunch of old people.

01:02:10.840 I literally, after all these conversations that happened and I used to go to gas station

01:02:15.000 a lot, I'm not going anymore just because he's a greedy bastard.

01:02:18.220 I was like, dude, if you, and I give my number, I was like, call me.

01:02:21.240 If you see any person at this Bitcoin ATM putting money, please call me.

01:02:25.900 I'm going to come, I'm going to stop.

01:02:27.240 And we stopped so many scam victims in the process because we have amazing team.

01:02:32.540 We have people working behind the, like in, in the shadows.

01:02:36.020 And he just kind of like, I don't have time for this.

01:02:38.740 I was like, well, I'm not bringing my business to gas station.

01:02:41.120 I was like, yeah, that that's, that's shameful.

01:02:44.280 That's, it's frustrating to hear because like, I personally, um, am fairly positive about

01:02:49.660 cryptocurrencies and, and fintech in general, and, and to hear that there's a guy that,

01:02:55.780 you know, or they're not, not just a guy, I'm sure that there are, you know, thousands

01:03:00.120 and thousands of people that this has had, that have said, you know what, I'm not worried

01:03:04.160 about it because this guy's giving me whatever, 10 grand a month just to have it here.

01:03:10.900 But it's like that amount of money, you should be like, this is, this is clearly not above

01:03:15.340 board.

01:03:15.500 There's a line between it's none of my business to like, where's your humanity?

01:03:19.100 Like, it's obvious in your face.

01:03:21.500 Yeah.

01:03:21.680 Like I said, you're facilitating.

01:03:23.700 Yeah.

01:03:23.880 There's a 90 year old woman of the scam in your, in your property until her whole life.

01:03:29.520 Until something happened to your family.

01:03:31.480 Yeah.

01:03:31.820 And all of a sudden, like, Hey Art, Hey Ashton.

01:03:34.660 Um, yeah, can you help?

01:03:36.600 And I was like, but did you just, how many, how many people just, you put your blind eye?

01:03:41.620 We, a lot of things in the process that we're not allowed to talk yet.

01:03:44.580 And again, talking to congressmen and, and we're trying to figure out new laws.

01:03:48.080 It's all laws is from 1969.

01:03:51.680 We already the generation.

01:03:53.500 It's the AI right now talking to you.

01:03:55.700 Yeah.

01:03:55.940 And we still applying laws from, from different centuries on, on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

01:04:02.320 It was like, guys, come on, government, come on.

01:04:04.420 We, we have to do something about it.

01:04:05.980 And, you know, movement started movement has, has been started.

01:04:09.520 That's good to hear.

01:04:09.940 So one of the things that was listed in the, the stuff we're going to talk about was the,

01:04:14.720 the Louvre robbery and the NBA scandal and, and how AI scams have been involved in that.

01:04:23.300 Why don't you go ahead and, and kind of flesh out for the viewer what the Louvre robbery was

01:04:28.040 and, and, and what, how that effect, how the, the scam was, was done, I guess.

01:04:34.680 I mean, the Louvre was interesting because it, it was kind of symbolic for a lot of the

01:04:40.500 things that we've been doing.

01:04:42.000 And you could say the same thing for the, the, the daycare shit that's happening in Minnesota.

01:04:46.920 It's meaning it's in plain sight.

01:04:49.720 Like it's right.

01:04:50.400 It's not done at nighttime.

01:04:51.780 It's not done behind a curtain.

01:04:53.220 It's like literally done right in broad daylight in your face, literally and figuratively.

01:04:57.680 Um, and so just to jump in here, they just found the crown that was taken, right?

01:05:04.220 I think they, they, cause they took a bunch of jewels, right?

01:05:06.700 And they took a crown intact or they had to have dismantled.

01:05:09.340 It wasn't, it wasn't intact or dismantled.

01:05:11.300 It was actually like really beat to crap.

01:05:13.440 It was damaged.

01:05:14.380 So I, I, and I could be thinking of a different, a different, uh, what was that?

01:05:18.540 Was it the same thing?

01:05:19.200 Yeah.

01:05:19.540 And so I, it was, I was, I, I was, I would have been shocked when I first heard about it.

01:05:24.480 If they would even find the pictures, we can show them.

01:05:26.580 We went live with Pierce Morgan, Pierce Morgan and all the heist, all the people, he brought

01:05:32.320 everybody together and we had our point.

01:05:35.880 There is a dark web.

01:05:37.340 You can buy anything, anyone.

01:05:39.380 You can, you can hire people to, to kill and stuff like that.

01:05:44.360 There is no way in the world you go in doing these highs and you're taking these jewels

01:05:49.760 without buyer already being existing.

01:05:52.020 Yeah.

01:05:52.200 Yeah.

01:05:52.360 Yeah.

01:05:52.520 Yeah.

01:05:52.660 Yeah.

01:05:52.720 Or someone on the inside helping you, you know, is that the, is that the, I haven't seen

01:05:58.060 this.

01:05:58.480 Um, yeah.

01:06:01.720 Anyways.

01:06:02.300 Broad daylight.

01:06:02.920 But so the, that was, so there was an insider at the Louvre, right?

01:06:07.200 I think so.

01:06:07.920 I don't know.

01:06:08.260 Yeah.

01:06:08.440 I don't know if that, was that confirmed?

01:06:09.700 I don't know if that was confirmed, but it feels like there would have been unless the,

01:06:12.940 the, if not, it's really embarrassing for the security.

01:06:15.620 What we heard that security during the day and security during the night is two different

01:06:20.040 levels.

01:06:20.460 Really?

01:06:21.120 Because you have a lot of, you know, nobody going to, in a daily life, who's brazen

01:06:25.180 They also discover that the password for something was like, like Louvre, one, two, three, or

01:06:30.260 something.

01:06:30.760 I could be misquoting that, but I thought I read something where one of the passwords

01:06:34.800 to something in a security something was really stupidly unsophisticated.

01:06:39.160 You know, look, you can download an app that will give you random passwords.

01:06:44.120 I strongly recommend.

01:06:46.120 Yeah.

01:06:46.460 Don't use your pet's name on your birthday.

01:06:48.120 Like those days are behind us.

01:06:49.400 You gotta download an app.

01:06:50.280 And it usually in the app, it has like, you can put the, the, the password as well

01:06:55.120 as the, uh, the login and it's, it's usually encrypted, needs some kind of face ID or, or,

01:07:01.400 or something to get into the, the password manager, get a password manager.

01:07:06.360 You will thank yourself later.

01:07:08.440 We did social experiment a couple of years ago in Santa Monica by the pier.

01:07:12.560 We asked people and ask them like, uh, about their passwords and 99.9% passwords was,

01:07:18.740 you know, whatever your first name and one, two, three, four, five, or your dog name or

01:07:22.520 your cat name.

01:07:23.080 One, two, three, four, five.

01:07:24.080 And it's just, they're like, yeah, you, you know, my password.

01:07:26.660 I was like, unbelievable.

01:07:28.520 It's, it's really bad.

01:07:30.320 The people, the people that are just like, oh, you know, what's, what's the password?

01:07:33.320 Password.

01:07:34.000 No one will ever think of that.

01:07:35.120 Or that one.

01:07:35.920 Or that one.

01:07:36.620 I don't remember exactly what government official it was, but there was a leak of information

01:07:41.340 and it was some high up in the government that had the password and the password was

01:07:46.100 literally password.

01:07:47.460 It's just like, you know, the government official.

01:07:50.020 Yeah.

01:07:50.320 Government official.

01:07:51.560 And you just can't do that.

01:07:53.500 I mean, it's like, you cannot make this shit up.

01:07:55.260 No, no, you can't.

01:07:56.440 You know, you, you'd think that, you know, if the more sensitive, the information, right.

01:08:01.480 The, the stronger your password is going to be, but apparently people just are like,

01:08:06.060 oh, no one will ever try.

01:08:07.480 And I, I do think that there's a lot of, you know, it won't happen to me.

01:08:11.400 You know, people assume, assume, well, you know, it, it happens to a lot of people, but

01:08:16.100 it just won't happen to me.

01:08:17.140 I don't click links.

01:08:17.920 I'm, I, I'm immune, you know, that's not true.

01:08:21.040 So, um, but yeah, the, the, the Louvre heist, like, what do you know about it?

01:08:26.200 Not a lot to be quite honest.

01:08:27.760 I, it was, uh, I know that it was done in broad daylight.

01:08:30.240 I know they used the, what was it that like, not a scaffolding, but like a, like a lift,

01:08:35.060 like a construction lift.

01:08:36.220 They wore a construction vest.

01:08:38.140 They just blended in.

01:08:39.420 That was the, that was my takeaway is this, they're, they're, they're blending in with

01:08:42.860 day-to-day life, which was really symbolic to the kind of shit that we're uncovering where

01:08:47.920 on paper, it looks like that these scams, oh, it's just a call center in India.

01:08:52.960 And, oh, I, I'll never fall for this.

01:08:55.180 Cause if he, if he has an accent, I hang up the phone, you know, stupid shit like that,

01:08:58.200 that people say, but like, they don't realize that there are mules, there are plants, there

01:09:02.860 are people here, your neighbors, we can go to some random tiny town in Arkansas and get

01:09:08.820 them to show up and take money from us, you know, broad daylight surveillance videos.

01:09:14.100 Just go to, just go to the news and just pull up.

01:09:16.260 Cause I'm just, I just want to get a picture of the, uh, of the crown because I'm sure the

01:09:21.080 reason one, where did they find it?

01:09:23.040 I, I heard they found it outside.

01:09:25.600 Um, just like in the, and it was just, you know, the, the crown itself is beat up and

01:09:30.420 someone had said, um, they were like, you know, just leave it beat the way that it is

01:09:36.080 and put it back.

01:09:36.660 Don't try and restore it.

01:09:37.740 Just put it back in as, as a reminder to what can happen.

01:09:41.180 As a reminder of to change your passwords.

01:09:42.580 Yeah.

01:09:42.880 You know, security people.

01:09:45.020 Yeah.

01:09:45.300 So, um, this is, uh, did they catch one guy too?

01:09:49.200 I heard that they caught somebody, right?

01:09:51.320 I think so.

01:09:52.480 Yeah.

01:09:52.820 Let's see here.

01:09:53.460 What does this say?

01:09:54.340 Wow.

01:09:56.040 Um, hold on one second.

01:09:57.800 Let me try this.

01:10:02.300 I just don't get it.

01:10:03.400 When you have like number one museum in the world, right?

01:10:05.960 With the most historical, expensive jewels.

01:10:12.040 And it's just so easy to do things.

01:10:15.300 It was that one that there was on the top left.

01:10:20.300 What was that?

01:10:21.200 You see like top left right there?

01:10:22.840 I mean, it just shows Dewey.

01:10:24.220 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:10:24.880 There we go.

01:10:25.540 Broken.

01:10:25.840 The broken, the broken, the, the, I mean, they had to have.

01:10:30.220 Yeah.

01:10:30.480 I want, I just want to bring it up so people could see like the, the crown.

01:10:34.080 I mean, they had to have taken jewels off of it and sold and stuff, right?

01:10:36.860 Is that it?

01:10:37.560 A robbery crown.

01:10:38.440 I mean, it still looks good.

01:10:39.940 No, that's not the one.

01:10:41.040 It was, it's like, it's all caved in and stuff.

01:10:43.840 Oh, okay.

01:10:44.300 Yeah, well, yeah, I can try and find that, I guess.

01:10:46.480 Let me keep looking.

01:10:47.320 That's crazy.

01:10:49.020 But, so yeah, like the, the, the heist was during the day.

01:10:54.200 And so was there scammers that were involved in, in getting in or was it just?

01:10:59.320 I, I think so.

01:11:00.520 I think that was the, that was the theory at least.

01:11:03.080 At least, you know, and when we were on the, we did the Piers Morgan thing and they had

01:11:08.460 a bunch of like ex-mafia guys, like on a panel and they were all kind of concurring

01:11:12.940 that this isn't, you don't just wake up one day and decide.

01:11:16.580 On Sunday.

01:11:17.180 You know what?

01:11:17.840 I'm going to rob, I'm feeling it today.

01:11:19.360 I'm going to rob a museum.

01:11:20.420 Let's start with the Louvre.

01:11:21.560 You know, like you don't, that's not your, that's not your first go-to crime.

01:11:24.820 Hey buddy, do you have a construction vest?

01:11:26.980 Do you have one extra?

01:11:27.900 Let's go.

01:11:28.520 That's the thing.

01:11:29.000 You like, you know, people assume that security is really high and, and, you know, no one could

01:11:34.000 or maybe no one's this brazen.

01:11:35.880 But it had to be either just crazily planned or, you know, experienced or someone on the

01:11:43.440 inside.

01:11:43.920 Like, again, that, that's not like a, that's not a whim crime.

01:11:46.800 When there is a buyer, when there is a private collector.

01:11:50.100 There you go.

01:11:50.680 Oh, is that it?

01:11:51.400 Oh my.

01:11:52.820 Yeah.

01:11:54.820 So they didn't sell it, they put it into a, into a hydraulic press.

01:11:58.380 Right.

01:11:59.480 But that, I mean, that, like.

01:12:00.700 That's a disaster.

01:12:01.660 That is a disaster.

01:12:02.360 But I, I do think that it actually makes sense to put it back in as it is.

01:12:06.520 I guess.

01:12:07.060 Not only as a reminder to, to put it on the head of security's desk.

01:12:11.480 Yeah.

01:12:11.840 Not only for that, but to, to, you know, show people like.

01:12:14.840 So do they make any money on it or do they just decide to take a hammer to it and call

01:12:17.280 it good?

01:12:17.780 I'm not sure.

01:12:18.900 Uh, I mean, I, I don't know.

01:12:20.540 I mean, it looks like it just fell out of the bag and the guy stepped on it as he was running

01:12:24.400 away.

01:12:24.840 1826.

01:12:25.560 Yeah.

01:12:25.720 Look at this.

01:12:26.280 Yeah.

01:12:26.660 Before and after.

01:12:27.580 Good Lord.

01:12:28.500 It's crazy.

01:12:29.200 Well, that's the thing.

01:12:29.760 That's what we've been talking, uh, with Pierce Morgan.

01:12:32.120 He was like, guys, do you think it's just somebody need money right now?

01:12:36.160 Like how are you going to go and you're going to sell those jewels, right?

01:12:40.100 You must have a buyer.

01:12:43.060 Yeah.

01:12:43.660 Private collector.

01:12:45.080 Some oligarch, Russian oligarch who has every single, you know, collection in the world.

01:12:50.660 How are you going to sell this crown to otherwise?

01:12:52.400 Yeah.

01:12:52.620 Like go to Palm Shop in the corner.

01:12:55.740 When every single person looking for this item.

01:12:58.820 Just sitting there trying to yank out diamonds.

01:13:00.360 Unless you're just a real serious, like, uh, novelty, uh, or you just want to like display

01:13:04.780 it in your own house, I guess.

01:13:05.780 But again, it has to be someone that, you know, isn't in circles in the West or doesn't,

01:13:12.800 you know, wouldn't, wouldn't expose, show this.

01:13:15.020 Cause you know, you know, just having that isn't enough.

01:13:17.980 He's going to, whoever has it is going to want to show his buddies.

01:13:21.100 Yeah.

01:13:21.520 Right.

01:13:21.740 Cause the, the, the ego is really the motivational factor because it's not the money.

01:13:26.580 It's not the actual cash.

01:13:27.860 Cause if you can actually facilitate that crime, you know, you're probably have billions of

01:13:32.640 dollars and, and, and whatever.

01:13:33.980 So it's really don't live anywhere near the Louvre.

01:13:35.780 Yeah.

01:13:36.100 You know, so, so it's probably someone that wants to be able to show his buddies and you're

01:13:40.180 not going to, you know, if you told Bill Clinton, you know, hanging out or, or Bill Gates or

01:13:45.400 whatever, they'd be like, oh, well, I'm going to tell the authorities.

01:13:48.060 And, and so you'd have to have insulation from, from the government of whatever state you're

01:13:53.280 living in and stuff.

01:13:54.300 Like a call center boss, maybe.

01:13:55.900 It was a funny comment from, um, George Clooney and, you know, Ocean 11 and stuff.

01:14:01.020 And they're like, Hey, shout out to them.

01:14:02.920 If they did this, like we make movie about this in Hollywood and somebody did this exactly

01:14:07.840 like this, but in real day and succeed.

01:14:10.240 He was like, but I mean, even in Ocean 11, they, even in Ocean 11, they just stole cash.

01:14:14.180 Yeah.

01:14:14.460 And that's, you know, cash spends that's, that's, that's fungible.

01:14:16.800 Um, it's such an old, you know, like when you see stuff like robbery in person nowadays

01:14:22.360 becoming less and less.

01:14:24.580 Yeah.

01:14:25.340 Everything online, all your money online, all your crypto online, all your savings online,

01:14:29.520 you don't need and put a gun and get something.

01:14:32.220 It's just like, just be a cybersecurity wizard, you know?

01:14:35.840 Yeah.

01:14:36.060 Like if, if you're, if you're knocking over gas stations for 200 bucks, you're not like,

01:14:41.780 most likely that guy's just looking to get a fix.

01:14:43.840 You know, you got, you got a gun point, uh, gun point, right?

01:14:46.740 Yeah.

01:14:46.840 Back in my customer service days.

01:14:48.380 Yeah.

01:14:48.580 Long before we worked YouTube.

01:14:50.380 In customer service and someone.

01:14:52.320 Blockbuster.

01:14:53.080 Really?

01:14:53.540 Yeah.

01:14:53.880 I don't know why you'd rob a blockbuster of all stores.

01:14:56.680 He was not the brightest bulb.

01:14:58.480 How much did he get from you?

01:14:59.740 Oh, God, I probably had maybe 150 bucks in the register.

01:15:03.160 Like nothing consequential, but it was enough to pull a gun on me.

01:15:06.360 And, you know, he went, he went to the, I was, I was actually managing at that point.

01:15:11.020 What a shit show.

01:15:12.080 If you can believe that, oh, I was the worst.

01:15:15.980 I don't know.

01:15:16.120 Whoever promoted me should be fired.

01:15:17.420 I was a terrible.

01:15:17.780 Let me speak to the manager.

01:15:19.180 I want to take $50.

01:15:20.300 But no, he went to the, he went to the, he grabbed a soda out of the fridge, brought it

01:15:23.240 up.

01:15:23.500 It was like $1.80.

01:15:24.500 And then he gave me two singles.

01:15:25.660 And as soon as I went to get, as soon as it popped open to get changed, he didn't make

01:15:28.980 a big scene.

01:15:29.580 He just had it right here and he just leaned forward.

01:15:32.060 So only I would see it.

01:15:33.040 And he's like, give me the money.

01:15:33.740 So I just removed the tray and handed it to him and backed up.

01:15:36.120 Yeah.

01:15:36.320 You know, I'm like, I don't give a shit.

01:15:37.760 Smart.

01:15:37.900 Yeah.

01:15:38.180 Smart.

01:15:38.440 You don't want to die over it.

01:15:39.460 It's not my house.

01:15:40.220 I hated it there.

01:15:41.160 I was like, do it sooner so I can go home.

01:15:43.940 Well, I guess I can close.

01:15:45.180 Shout out to them.

01:15:45.840 They gave me the weekend off unpaid.

01:15:47.320 So it's all good.

01:15:48.140 Good for them.

01:15:48.840 Good for them.

01:15:49.360 That's funny.

01:15:49.900 Um, but yeah, so, um, one of the things that you guys were talking about or mentioned

01:15:54.460 is like how to fight back.

01:15:56.240 What can the average person do if they think that, you know, they've been scammed or they

01:16:01.720 think there's someone trying to scam them?

01:16:03.400 How do you like, how do you kind of retaliate against this stuff?

01:16:07.160 Or at the, at the very least, how do you make sure that you don't get scammed?

01:16:12.260 Obviously don't click links.

01:16:13.900 That's obvious.

01:16:14.680 But, but when it comes to, you know, like the, like you were talking about the romance

01:16:18.460 one or the, you know, people that really know how to manipulate people and, and get

01:16:23.700 you to, to trust them.

01:16:25.640 Like, what can people do to be aware of that?

01:16:28.220 First of all, like, look, what are the signs?

01:16:30.620 And second of all, like, what can you do if you're actually the victim?

01:16:35.320 I, maybe I will, I will put my two cents and you can cover the rest if you want.

01:16:40.600 Gee, thanks.

01:16:41.060 Yeah, you're welcome.

01:16:42.300 I think if we're talking about romance scam, if you're talking to somebody online and this

01:16:48.000 is, we can talk about in other type of scam, um, blackmailing, extortion with teenagers

01:16:53.760 that happening in other pandemic, we should talk about this.

01:16:56.580 It's important.

01:16:58.020 If you're talking online to somebody and you never FaceTime, all you did a text message

01:17:03.740 or phone call, don't go deeper in the relationship until you see person in person.

01:17:09.860 Don't even FaceTimes right now will not get you anywhere.

01:17:12.820 It could be deep fake.

01:17:14.020 It could be AI meet person.

01:17:16.580 Let's meet tomorrow at Starbucks at five o'clock and let's go further down.

01:17:20.640 Right?

01:17:21.000 So if somebody talking to you without showing identity, you, you haven't met that person

01:17:27.120 move on.

01:17:28.080 Yeah.

01:17:28.440 I mean, nowadays I, you know, a lot of people talk about, you know, there's, there's a funny

01:17:33.680 meme online, right?

01:17:34.640 So there's the, the, if you're talking to an AI girl or if you're talking to a girl,

01:17:38.760 it's actually some dude in India and the AI nowadays, like the, the motion capture that

01:17:43.980 they can do.

01:17:44.500 You don't have to be wearing a special suit or whatever.

01:17:46.540 Just the video camera will capture your motion.

01:17:48.740 Live deep faking.

01:17:49.480 Yeah.

01:17:49.640 Yeah.

01:17:49.860 And it's, it's incredibly realistic now.

01:17:52.440 It's fascinating.

01:17:53.140 Um, so the idea that you can trust video or just be like, Oh, well, show me your ID.

01:17:57.840 Those days are gone.

01:17:58.840 And I don't think that the, the average person understands how, how compelling and convincing

01:18:06.100 this stuff is because all that a scammer has to do is get a couple pictures of someone that

01:18:12.400 you trust and then, you know, or a video, a couple of videos, which most people have

01:18:17.320 some kind of video on their Instagram page.

01:18:20.240 Maybe it's not all usable, but you could probably get enough information from an, from the average

01:18:26.100 person's Instagram page to do a deep fake up.

01:18:28.420 And then Debra, another episode from our, um, TV show, it was exactly like this person

01:18:34.120 was, she was 80 and there is actually Brazilian guy, he always shortlist, sexy dancing.

01:18:40.400 So scammer in Nigeria, got all these videos, all these sexy pictures and was talking to,

01:18:46.440 um, to person, to, and she's where, uh, Tennessee, Tennessee, talking to person in Tennessee.

01:18:54.140 And she absolutely like, yeah, that this, this is it.

01:18:58.160 I said, good night.

01:18:59.280 I sent pictures of me.

01:19:00.680 He sent pictures of him, but scammer in Nigeria using pictures from somebody else.

01:19:05.080 Exactly what you said.

01:19:06.160 You cannot trust anymore.

01:19:07.400 But again, we're going back to the core awareness.

01:19:10.560 What is awareness?

01:19:11.380 Why nobody's talking about it?

01:19:12.480 Why media is not talking about it?

01:19:13.840 Why government not applying more and more rules and laws to prevent elderly people from

01:19:20.140 filing for those scams, you know, we, as a society, you, as a grandson, you must educate

01:19:25.900 your parents.

01:19:26.560 I cannot do anything outside of this circle.

01:19:28.960 If I have my knowledge, I will share with you, you share with others.

01:19:32.960 That's all we can do.

01:19:33.740 We talk about the older people a lot, you know, scams can affect anybody, but we talk

01:19:38.280 about the older people because they are the most vulnerable and, you know, they're coming

01:19:40.700 from a time where, you know, getting a, your doorbell rang randomly during the day was not

01:19:44.460 a terrifying thing.

01:19:45.240 It was an exciting moment.

01:19:46.040 You know, you believe if I, if my phone rings, I'm like, yeah, just a sour face.

01:19:52.760 I'm like, why is my phone?

01:19:54.040 I heard from me.

01:19:55.020 Like I've got like, cause I've had my number for so long.

01:19:57.040 I literally do not pick up any calls.

01:19:58.860 If I don't have the number in my contacts, unless it's obviously if it's a scam call

01:20:01.900 and I'm using it for a video or something, but you know, you, you gotta, you have to

01:20:04.960 train now, especially older people to, you can't just assume anything anymore.

01:20:09.360 I saw a back and forth on experts between some people.

01:20:13.340 It's like, I remember a time and, and I'm old enough to remember this time where, where

01:20:18.280 like, when you're young, you would run, if the phone rings, you'd run to answer the phone.

01:20:22.680 Who is it?

01:20:23.400 This is, this is exciting.

01:20:25.220 Exactly.

01:20:25.800 Younger people can't believe that there was a time where you'd pick up the phone and not

01:20:28.680 know who was calling.

01:20:29.620 Like that's crazy.

01:20:30.640 Younger?

01:20:31.180 Same who?

01:20:31.860 You're young.

01:20:32.660 That's what?

01:20:33.160 No, no.

01:20:33.860 I don't feel it.

01:20:34.680 Um, but yeah, like there, the idea that, that you're excited about a phone call that

01:20:40.660 is long gone.

01:20:41.840 Now it used to be excited about getting mail.

01:20:44.020 Now you don't want mail.

01:20:44.900 I'm not even excited about email.

01:20:46.220 I know.

01:20:47.880 Hey, unless it's sponsorship.

01:20:49.540 Yeah.

01:20:49.760 Right.

01:20:50.100 There you go.

01:20:51.120 Um, but, uh, but yeah, the, the, the complexity and the, the, the, just the realism that AI can,

01:21:00.020 can offer to people, it makes this a whole new dimension of scamming.

01:21:04.460 You know, you can't, again, you can't trust even people that you think, you know, and it's

01:21:10.040 not the people it's just, if it's, unless it's in person.

01:21:12.720 Yeah.

01:21:13.400 That's why we said that the password thing is a good, is a good trick that will last through

01:21:17.660 a lot of layers of this, you know, having a verbal password that only your family knows

01:21:21.820 that you never write down, you never text it.

01:21:23.660 You just, it's, it's spoken.

01:21:25.660 Uh, it's only texted if you're verifying or whatever, but you know, that, that way, if

01:21:29.060 you're, cause they, I mean, they did the same thing with my grandma.

01:21:31.180 They, they called my grandma as, as me saying I was arrested for DUI in Mexico and I need

01:21:36.100 to bail money now.

01:21:37.680 And it freaked her out, you know, that she had the wherewithal, at least in the moment

01:21:40.920 to like call an aunt who verified and reached out to me.

01:21:43.280 I was like, no, I'm fine.

01:21:43.840 I'm in LA.

01:21:44.820 We, but you know, it's that, it's that quick.

01:21:47.300 Yeah.

01:21:47.600 We have some, go ahead.

01:21:48.660 No, we have somebody, sorry.

01:21:49.580 We have somebody close and you know, he don't want to, he want to stay on, um, he don't

01:21:53.680 want to say his name, but he was doing taxes.

01:21:57.280 He received from his accountant, official email, email and saying, Hey, so-and-so just

01:22:04.240 want to let you know, crypto has a new law.

01:22:06.220 Uh, if you have any money on cryptocurrency, uh, websites, please send it to us so we can

01:22:12.700 make, like we can apply taxes properly.

01:22:14.660 Send it to, send all of it to us.

01:22:16.500 I don't know if it was that cut and dry.

01:22:17.800 It was something like that though.

01:22:18.660 Yeah.

01:22:18.780 He was not even like, he was like, yeah, it's come from my accountant that I've been doing,

01:22:21.880 doing my taxes for 20 years.

01:22:23.440 Yeah.

01:22:23.740 So he sent the name of the, uh, apps and passwords, username, passwords.

01:22:29.260 And he was like, okay, so let me know.

01:22:31.520 One week passed by, two weeks passed by.

01:22:33.820 And he said, this is strange.

01:22:36.080 Like, so he's shoot email back.

01:22:38.360 And he was like, so what happened with my taxes?

01:22:39.740 Like, are we like, how much are we like with all these new laws and blah, blah, blah.

01:22:44.440 And they said, what are you talking about?

01:22:46.740 We don't need, we would never ask for passports.

01:22:49.180 And, and he was like, he immediately went online and he was like, everything was gone.

01:22:54.920 Was it, was it a lot of money?

01:22:57.080 Everything.

01:22:57.660 Poor guy.

01:22:58.140 Yeah.

01:22:58.620 And he said, when he talked to his accountant company, they hijacked that email and they

01:23:03.980 blasted to every single client.

01:23:05.620 Oh, wow.

01:23:06.200 So it was really from like, and he's, he's not, he's a very smart tech guy.

01:23:10.820 Like he, he's not an idiot.

01:23:12.080 Like not that scam victims are idiots.

01:23:13.780 They're not, but you know, he's not somebody you would think would fall for something like

01:23:18.000 that.

01:23:18.440 Maybe there, maybe there's a real use for the, or a current use for the real male, you know,

01:23:24.700 send a, an actual letter.

01:23:26.560 People are going to have to learn how to write again.

01:23:28.220 Oh yeah.

01:23:29.160 Do it in cursive and then you know it's real.

01:23:30.800 Yeah, exactly.

01:23:32.120 AI just doesn't get that.

01:23:33.500 Um, so the, the, the idea that you use a password with people, that's a great thing.

01:23:41.560 Is there any other stuff that you guys can recommend to, to help people to avoid this

01:23:47.380 kind of stuff or at the very least to, to prevent them from, you know, ending your bank

01:23:52.800 habits changing every six months, your passwords, basic housekeeping is kind of cliche, but I

01:23:57.980 mean, it does go a long way.

01:23:58.780 Making sure that you're not using the same password on multiple accounts.

01:24:01.560 Um, even derivatives of it, you know, like don't use a similar password with your bank

01:24:06.200 that you use for Netflix, that you use for Coinbase or use for whatever.

01:24:08.600 Like, cause if they get one, they're going to have it all, you know, um, use different

01:24:11.960 passwords, a password manager, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a good tool.

01:24:15.700 It's a good place to start.

01:24:16.760 At least it's something.

01:24:18.280 Um, it really, I want to drill down on that.

01:24:21.440 You, you, you were, you, you don't seem convinced.

01:24:24.700 Well, I only, what came to my mind in that moment was the, was it last pass that got hacked

01:24:29.480 a couple of years ago?

01:24:30.600 Okay.

01:24:31.440 There was one of those password managers that got hacked and I personally am not thrilled

01:24:34.740 about the idea of having all of my passwords in one place.

01:24:37.560 Fair enough.

01:24:38.040 That's also scary.

01:24:39.840 So you got to do what's going to work best for you.

01:24:42.600 I, I, it's certainly, it's a better decision than not having anything.

01:24:46.260 It's better than not.

01:24:47.380 It's better than you trying to remember it and having it be a derivative of the same

01:24:50.440 password for every account.

01:24:51.900 Um, it's also, I think anything comes with its own risks, but you know, something is better

01:24:56.260 than nothing, but changing them often is a great way to bypass that, especially because

01:24:59.900 your data is getting, you know, leaked and shared all over everything.

01:25:02.600 So, um, a password that I used to use is now every, it's very easy to find if you just

01:25:07.920 had any kind of, uh, you know, public data search on me.

01:25:10.700 So any old account that still has that password would probably be pretty easy to get into.

01:25:15.380 I think I've changed them all.

01:25:16.540 I hope so.

01:25:17.460 Um, but stuff like that, just changing them frequently, not using derivatives, um, making

01:25:21.780 sure you have two-factor authentication on everything.

01:25:24.120 Uh, nowadays a password literally isn't even enough now, fingerprints, um, or at least

01:25:28.560 a text or just something authenticator apps.

01:25:30.400 And I know those are slow to catch on, but you know, it's better than, it's better than

01:25:33.900 just having, you know, a password that you're pulling from your memory, you know, at the

01:25:37.280 end of the day, it really just is about adjusting your behavior and training, you know, older

01:25:41.980 people in your family or just anyone that would be susceptible to this to understand that

01:25:46.420 you never need to be pressured by anybody for anything to do it urgently.

01:25:51.220 The biggest, the, the, one of the, the most, uh, one of the biggest inhibitions, I guess,

01:25:55.900 for, for people dealing with, with passwords and stuff like that is like everything needs

01:26:02.580 a password now.

01:26:03.420 And it become, it gets to the point where like, look, all I'm doing is logging onto Netflix,

01:26:07.900 you know, and people are just like, who's going to go after my Netflix account?

01:26:11.760 What, what do I care if they're watching movies, you know?

01:26:15.160 And, and the, the point isn't the Netflix account, the point is the email address attached to the

01:26:20.160 It's the data with the Netflix account.

01:26:21.800 It's the wifi network that's connected to the network, the Netflix account that you're

01:26:26.560 using.

01:26:26.900 I am by no means a technical sleuth.

01:26:28.700 You know, we, we consult people like Ryan Montgomery or Jim Browning for that kind of

01:26:32.060 stuff.

01:26:32.300 But even, even Jim Browning said the same thing.

01:26:34.340 It's like a password manager.

01:26:35.720 It's, it's way better than having nothing.

01:26:37.620 Like, you know.

01:26:38.220 Another great example, Jim Browning, the godfather of scam baiting community.

01:26:42.000 Even he got scammed himself and lost, almost lost his channel.

01:26:46.500 He did lose his channel.

01:26:47.500 It was, it was, it was restored.

01:26:49.040 It was deleted.

01:26:49.760 He got scammed into deleting his entire YouTube channel.

01:26:52.100 Wow.

01:26:52.600 And he's, he's one of the best, you know, hackers in the world.

01:26:56.400 Yeah.

01:26:56.900 You know, that, I mean, that was social engineering.

01:26:59.100 It wasn't even hacking.

01:26:59.900 They just social engineered him.

01:27:01.240 That's the, that's to delete his channel.

01:27:03.240 YouTube customer support.

01:27:04.540 Yeah.

01:27:05.040 Reaching out to you.

01:27:05.960 That's one thing that people that don't really understand, like, hacking is social engineering.

01:27:11.760 Yeah.

01:27:12.260 Like when you talk about hacking, like people think that it's like getting into the back

01:27:17.360 end of something and changing what it does.

01:27:19.420 I'm in.

01:27:19.920 Yeah, exactly.

01:27:20.760 Well, exactly.

01:27:21.260 That's what the nineties kind of taught everybody.

01:27:23.260 That's what you show in a movie show, we'll show you.

01:27:25.260 Yeah.

01:27:25.760 And it's like, I'm in, you know, it's like, no, it's not.

01:27:28.460 It's, it's really more about social engineering.

01:27:31.060 That's why you, Jim, like we asked you, like, what does it, we, I forget how we asked him,

01:27:34.220 how does it feel to be a hacker or whatever?

01:27:35.460 But he's like, I'm not a hacker.

01:27:36.760 I'm not a hacker.

01:27:37.760 Like for me to get access to a scammer call center at the end of the day, they have to

01:27:42.760 let me in.

01:27:43.760 Yeah.

01:27:44.760 And I have to social engineer them to do a couple of things that allow me in.

01:27:47.760 Yeah.

01:27:48.760 I can't just type keys on a keyboard and suddenly I'm in.

01:27:50.760 It doesn't work like that.

01:27:51.760 Yeah.

01:27:52.760 It's, it's really more about getting people, convincing people to do something for you.

01:27:57.760 Yeah.

01:27:58.760 You know, I mean, it makes me think that probably one of the earliest hacker texts is Dale Carnegie's

01:28:04.760 how to win friends and influence people, which was a book that came out in, you know, probably

01:28:08.760 in the twenties or something like that.

01:28:09.760 And he was, he was basically talking about sales, you know, how to, how to, how to convince

01:28:13.760 people to buy something for you.

01:28:14.760 And if you done sales, or at least if you did sales in the, the, the aughts, that was the

01:28:20.260 book to go to.

01:28:21.760 And again, this is an old book, but really.

01:28:23.760 I, and when you read it, I've recommended it to a ton of people.

01:28:27.760 When you read it, you don't realize that it's the most simple things like, you know,

01:28:32.760 make eye contact, make sure that, that you're being friendly, make sure that you're being

01:28:37.760 amicable just because you disagree.

01:28:38.760 Doesn't mean you have to tell them that you disagree.

01:28:40.760 And it's like all of these, these simple things that, that I guess, uh, personable people

01:28:46.760 do automatically, but people that have, if you have a, a, an abrasive personality or if

01:28:51.760 you're, you're kind of an introvert or whatever, they, they actually are a bit foreign to you,

01:28:56.760 but that's the way to get people to do the things that you want, which is just be nice.

01:29:01.760 And exactly what you're describing is what scammers do on the phone.

01:29:03.760 Exactly.

01:29:04.760 A hundred percent.

01:29:05.760 They're social engineering an older person to allow them remote access to their computer.

01:29:08.760 You could call that hacking, even though it's not, but it's the same thing.

01:29:11.760 They're convincing that old person to allow them access to everything.

01:29:14.760 Yeah.

01:29:15.760 I mean, and that's, that's, I think that that's the, the, that's why I said the real core of

01:29:19.760 hacking isn't about, you know, typing away on a computer.

01:29:22.760 It's about figuring out ways to get either someone or something in a piece of hardware

01:29:29.760 to do what you want it to do, whether that be, you know, whether that actually be going

01:29:33.760 into inside of it and changing the code or getting someone that knows that wrote programs

01:29:39.760 or rights programs to, to write a program for you and be like, oh, thanks.

01:29:43.760 You know, the, the, one of the, the largest vulnerabilities that I, I, I hope that people

01:29:49.760 realize, but they probably don't is, you know, if you want to get something onto a computer

01:29:54.760 or get something off of a computer, just leave a thumb drive around.

01:29:56.760 Someone is eventually going to pick that thumb drive up and be like, oh, what's this?

01:30:00.760 Just to see what's on there.

01:30:01.760 Well, if you plug it in, you know, you, you throw enough of those out.

01:30:04.760 I hear, and this is just rumor, but I, that was, if I understand correctly, that was how

01:30:09.760 they got the Stuxnet virus onto the, onto the, the, the computers in, in Iran.

01:30:15.760 They just had people drop thumb, enough thumb drives around the right place.

01:30:19.760 And eventually someone put it in and you know, wasn't savvy enough, plugged it in.

01:30:24.760 And as soon as you plug it in, it's over.

01:30:26.760 You know, the QR code is just another version of that now.

01:30:29.760 You know, you don't need to plug it in.

01:30:31.760 You just need to scan it.

01:30:32.760 Yeah.

01:30:33.760 You just have to wait until somebody.

01:30:34.760 Yeah.

01:30:35.760 Well, and that's the thing is when people saying scam, scam, scam, it's only for elderly people.

01:30:38.760 And that's something that we want to talk about.

01:30:41.760 A sextortion scam, right?

01:30:43.760 We were talking about elderly people.

01:30:45.760 Why we're not, we're not talking about teenagers.

01:30:47.760 Yeah.

01:30:48.760 Teenagers kill themselves.

01:30:50.760 Yeah.

01:30:51.760 After they will send nudes to scammers and get blackmailed that if you're not,

01:30:56.760 if you're not going to pay me this money, I'm going to send these pictures to your school,

01:31:00.760 to your friends, to your father, to your mother, everybody on your, on your phone contacts.

01:31:05.760 Mm-hmm.

01:31:06.760 And it's a huge problem in America, in the world that nobody talked about.

01:31:10.760 Mm-hmm.

01:31:11.760 And when, when you're talking about sextortion scams, like the, I, I feel like, and this

01:31:19.760 is just from a, a, an ignorant person's perspective, the, that doesn't seem like, maybe that doesn't

01:31:25.760 seem like much of a problem to people because what the teenagers have, right?

01:31:29.760 Obviously old people, you go after old people, they've got their savings, their 401k, they've

01:31:34.760 had a whole lifetime to save up money.

01:31:36.760 Mm-hmm.

01:31:37.760 And to go after teenagers, it's like, well, they're going to have to go out and find the

01:31:40.760 money because, you know, teenagers, especially young people today, like young people are struggling

01:31:44.760 to find jobs.

01:31:45.760 Nevermind be able to, to have any kind of nest egg or any, any kind of savings and stuff.

01:31:50.760 So do, when they, when people are doing, you know, when, when they're victims of sextortion,

01:31:55.760 stuff like that, like what kind of, what kind of payoff do they, are they looking for?

01:32:00.760 Are they basically saying, Hey, look, you got to get your parents to give you this money,

01:32:03.760 you know, get, get me the access to your parents' accounts or, you know, what, what,

01:32:07.760 what is the, the, the frequent, the, the honeypot that they're looking for?

01:32:12.760 I don't think it's any massive financial reward necessarily.

01:32:16.760 I guess maybe you could even call it low hanging fruit.

01:32:18.760 Um, but from what we've seen, they'll ask, they'll ask a first payment that is small,

01:32:26.760 quote unquote, you know, Hey, you can find 500 bucks, you know, but it's not, I mean,

01:32:30.760 it's going to be what comes after that, you know, you pay at the one time and they're like,

01:32:33.760 Oh, well now you gotta, now they know you'll pay.

01:32:36.760 Now they know that you're able to be convinced and now you're way more valuable to them.

01:32:40.760 So it's, it's really the psychology behind the long game.

01:32:43.760 And a lot of these, even with romance scams, they always start with, I just need a hundred

01:32:47.760 dollar Apple gift card to pay for my internet, you know, whatever bullshit they're going to say.

01:32:52.760 But it's, it's over time.

01:32:53.760 And the romance scams, I think are the longest ones, you know, years and years and years,

01:32:58.760 which will start with a, a menial gift card, but end up being hundreds of thousands of dollars.

01:33:03.760 Selling houses, cashing out.

01:33:05.760 They don't ask for that upfront.

01:33:06.760 I haven't seen a sextortion scam necessarily go that far, but also the sextortion scams are extremely difficult debate.

01:33:12.760 And they're extremely difficult to expose because the topic in and of itself is not something you can really make content on.

01:33:17.760 And also it, they're, they're, they're always targeted.

01:33:21.760 They're not, they're not like Amazon invoices with phone numbers on them.

01:33:25.760 You could just call.

01:33:26.760 They always come personally, you know, on dating apps, on Instagram, on Facebooks, you know, like I will come to you as a pretty girl, but I'm a dude in Nigeria.

01:33:35.760 Yeah.

01:33:36.760 And I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you my nudes, right?

01:33:38.760 You think it's, it's, it's my part of my body, but it's not, it's been stolen from somebody else.

01:33:42.760 Or AI generated.

01:33:43.760 Or AI generated.

01:33:44.760 But you sell, you sending me your part of body.

01:33:47.760 So to that point, like if you're a parent that's got, you know, teenage kids, what kind of things should you be looking for?

01:33:54.760 Obviously, I mean, in a perfect world, it's like, all right, well, kids don't get the internet until they're 25.

01:33:59.760 Right.

01:34:00.760 I mean, that's like, I, I have a very young kid and, and I am, I am fully committed to not letting him have screens right now because, you know, he's three months old and, and, you know, so it's, it's super easy to say, I'm not going to do this, but like, obviously kids are going to be, you know, if they're around other, their peers, they're going to want this.

01:34:21.760 They're going to want access to Facebook.

01:34:24.760 They're going to want access to social media.

01:34:25.760 Maybe not Facebook, but I think now Snapchat's the hot one, which is terrible because everything disappears.

01:34:31.760 Um, that's why skimmers love that app so much telegram.

01:34:34.760 Yeah.

01:34:35.760 I think again, I'm not a parent.

01:34:37.760 So I can't give parenting advice at all.

01:34:38.760 But for me, it seems like anytime I see someone falling for this, it, it should be some kind of in more involvement from the parents.

01:34:45.760 And like, obviously you're not going to be involved into every single message they're sending to people that they know, but in general, knowing like what apps they are actually using.

01:34:54.760 Cause there are always some telltale signs.

01:34:56.760 Like when we do, we do a lot of predator stings and you know, the apps that are decoys will use.

01:35:01.760 They'll tell me, Hey, I, yeah, I got a predator on this app that I've never heard of.

01:35:06.760 I'm like, what the hell is this?

01:35:07.760 What is this app?

01:35:08.760 Meet me, meet me, meet 23, all these apps I never heard of.

01:35:12.760 Like there are tons of these apps that are in these, you know, younger communities that they're using, whether it's for not necessarily social media, but more for talking more for DMing chat rooms, maybe an older term for it, but that kind of thing.

01:35:25.760 It's like, you should be aware of what apps your kids are using because the scammers, even if it's initiated on Facebook, they'll want to get you off of that and onto something that they have more control over.

01:35:35.760 You know, so if, if your teenagers using an app like that to talk to strangers or, you know, they're talking to, I don't even know how Roblox works, but it sounds like it's a disaster because there's so much going on with them.

01:35:47.760 That's another one.

01:35:48.760 So it's like understanding the platforms that the kids are on and what they're using it for is, is a big part of it.

01:35:54.760 And I will, I will bring you another example.

01:35:56.760 We have another friend and that friend said, Hey, I got knock on my bedroom at midnight and I opened the door and I see my son, teenager.

01:36:04.760 Pasty white face, fear in the eyes, being on a phone.

01:36:09.760 And he said, as a dad, I already knew exactly what happened.

01:36:13.760 I grabbed the phone and I said, listen to me.

01:36:15.760 You want to release those pictures?

01:36:16.760 Release it.

01:36:17.760 He has a, and I'm okay with that.

01:36:20.760 And hung up and he said, do not ever send nudes to anybody.

01:36:26.760 If you're in a relationship and you met that person and do whatever you want, but do not send your nudes to your, to, to, to random people.

01:36:34.760 Yeah.

01:36:35.760 And that goes back to elderly people and young people and teenagers.

01:36:38.760 We, as a society, we, as a community, we, as a freaking family should, we should have this ability to trust.

01:36:49.760 I should have ability to come to you as a grandparent to, to your mother and said like, Hey, I have a problem.

01:36:56.760 Hey mom.

01:36:57.760 Yeah.

01:36:58.760 We, it's a parenting thing.

01:36:59.760 You know, it's okay.

01:37:01.760 Your kids should trust you to come to, Hey dad, something is off.

01:37:04.760 Hey dad, what should I do?

01:37:05.760 Like there is a, like you teenager, you, you exploring your body.

01:37:10.760 You need to talk to somebody.

01:37:11.760 You should be comfortable.

01:37:12.760 Talk to your parents about sex life.

01:37:14.760 Yeah.

01:37:15.760 Why it's such a taboo.

01:37:16.760 Why we like growing up?

01:37:17.760 Like you, you, you learn from watching, you know, hopefully not from the internet.

01:37:22.760 Exactly.

01:37:23.760 Yeah.

01:37:24.760 Well, that's why it has to be education.

01:37:25.760 Why public education?

01:37:26.760 Why schools?

01:37:27.760 Why we don't have these conversation in school about scams, about sextortion, about dating?

01:37:32.760 Everybody dates online nowadays.

01:37:34.760 Yeah.

01:37:35.760 Yeah.

01:37:36.760 It's, it is something where, you know, there's so many things.

01:37:39.760 There's so many things that there's so many ills in society.

01:37:43.760 So many dangers in society that if parents are really active in their kids' lives and

01:37:51.760 they have, if you have good, you know, you have, you could, you have good parents.

01:37:55.760 They, they really are not, um, not a significant threat if you're active and stuff.

01:38:01.760 And not that, not that anyone's totally insulated and that's not what I'm trying to say.

01:38:04.760 But, you know, if a kid's, if a kid trusts his parents or their parents, you know, they're

01:38:09.760 going to go to their parents for, for, for anything, you know?

01:38:13.760 Um, and I think that, you know, look, this isn't, uh, this isn't about single motherhood

01:38:19.760 or, or single parenting and stuff, but those kinds of things make people vulnerable.

01:38:23.760 Like having a good family.

01:38:25.760 Well, there's a lot of parallels there with older victims.

01:38:28.760 Like, you know, and I know, you know, you're talking to a grandmother that doesn't have

01:38:32.760 any parents around, but how many times have we seen an older grandmother who didn't tell

01:38:37.760 her own family that she got scammed because they were afraid that they were going to take

01:38:40.760 her house off the will or something, or they were going to remove her ability to make her

01:38:44.760 own decisions.

01:38:45.760 If she's afraid, she's more comfortable to tell us as a couple of clowns on YouTube versus

01:38:50.760 telling her own children that something bad happened.

01:38:53.760 And there's a lot of parallels there with kids trusting their parents, parents trusting

01:38:57.760 their own surroundings.

01:38:58.760 And how many times you have grandmother and she has nobody.

01:39:01.760 She's a widow.

01:39:02.760 Yeah.

01:39:03.760 And that's a target for those scammers or those leeches immediately.

01:39:07.760 That's exactly what you want to hear.

01:39:08.760 Good morning.

01:39:09.760 How you doing?

01:39:10.760 Did you eat?

01:39:11.760 Did you this?

01:39:12.760 Good evening and blah, blah, blah.

01:39:13.760 Yeah.

01:39:14.760 Yeah.

01:39:15.760 Yeah.

01:39:16.760 Yeah.

01:39:17.760 Yeah.

01:39:18.760 Yeah.

01:39:19.760 Yeah.

01:39:20.760 Yeah.

01:39:21.760 Yeah.

01:39:22.760 Yeah.

01:39:23.760 Yeah.

01:39:24.760 Yeah.

01:39:25.760 Yeah.

01:39:26.760 Yeah.

01:39:27.760 Yeah.

01:39:28.760 Yeah.

01:39:29.760 Yeah.

01:39:30.760 Yeah.

01:39:31.760 Yeah.

01:39:32.760 It's, it's, it's, you know, it is, it is, it's very dangerous.

01:39:35.760 And I do think that the, you know, family is one of the best interdictors in this, you

01:39:41.760 know?

01:39:42.760 It doesn't mean blood necessarily.

01:39:43.760 No, no, no, no, no, no.

01:39:44.760 It just, just people you trust in the community.

01:39:46.760 And this speaks to, to the problem.

01:39:48.760 What's likely going to be one of the biggest problems in our society in the coming decades

01:39:53.760 is, is people being isolated from other people, you know, going and meeting people.

01:39:59.760 You hear stories about, you know, people love to go ahead and make jokes about the old guys

01:40:04.760 that sit at McDonald's every morning.

01:40:05.760 Well, the reason they get up and they go and sit at McDonald's and have a coffee is because

01:40:09.760 it's them.

01:40:10.760 It's that guy and three other people that show up there every single morning and they

01:40:14.760 go and they hang out for, you know, couple hours, whatever.

01:40:17.760 They have their coffee and they gripe about the weather.

01:40:20.760 They gripe about their, you know, whatever it is.

01:40:22.760 COVID did nothing good for that.

01:40:23.760 No.

01:40:24.760 Dynamic.

01:40:25.760 No, absolutely not.

01:40:26.760 And, and, you know, that's something that human beings need.

01:40:29.760 You know, it, it goes beyond just, you know, I want to go hang out.

01:40:33.760 Like we're social creatures.

01:40:34.760 We've evolved in small societies where we knew basically, you know, mostly everybody

01:40:40.760 we saw, you know, the, your, your tribe or whatever is a hundred people or whatever.

01:40:45.760 And the, this is your extended family.

01:40:48.760 And I, I'm not one of those guys that doesn't, you know, that that's black pilled on technology.

01:40:54.760 Like I, I think AI is, is going to be an amazing tool.

01:40:58.760 I think that I do think that in the future, we're going to be walking around with, with, you know,

01:41:03.760 a billion humanoid robots walking around on earth.

01:41:06.760 And I think that's, honestly, I think that's coming in the next handful of years.

01:41:09.760 You're going to see a lot more robots walking around, doing a lot of the menial tasks.

01:41:14.760 I think by 2030, to be honest with you, it's going to be, they're going to be.

01:41:17.760 I mean, they already have them, right?

01:41:18.760 In some cities they're already doing.

01:41:20.760 They exist.

01:41:21.760 Yeah.

01:41:22.760 People think that.

01:41:23.760 You have Amazon delivery, freaking drones coming straight to your door.

01:41:25.760 Yeah.

01:41:26.760 Absolutely.

01:41:27.760 And traveling food for you in a backyard.

01:41:28.760 And, and because they don't see them all the time, or because people don't realize that they see them all the time.

01:41:32.760 They don't think it is.

01:41:33.760 But every time you see a Tesla driving around that thing, the, the audit, the, the full self-driving.

01:41:38.760 Oh, we've got the Waymo's in SoCal.

01:41:39.760 That's a robot.

01:41:40.760 Yeah.

01:41:41.760 Yeah.

01:41:42.760 I mean, it's now it's not uncommon to see self-driving cars.

01:41:43.760 And I love them.

01:41:44.760 You get in the car.

01:41:45.760 You don't, you don't have to talk to anybody.

01:41:47.760 You control your own.

01:41:48.760 If you want to call, you want to call.

01:41:49.760 You don't have to talk to anybody.

01:41:51.760 You did it right there.

01:41:52.760 Yeah.

01:41:53.760 I saw that.

01:41:54.760 Yes.

01:41:55.760 And that's actually, I was about to make a point, but now I kind of like shooting my own.

01:41:58.760 Shooting yourself in the foot.

01:41:59.760 Yeah.

01:42:00.760 But you see, the thing is, especially what we do for a living, we have live streams.

01:42:04.760 We talk to people like, I love, I am social body fly.

01:42:08.760 Give me a couple of shots of vodka and put me in the stadium.

01:42:11.760 I'm going to talk to everybody.

01:42:12.760 I will know everybody.

01:42:13.760 Right.

01:42:14.760 But when your battery is over and you need to recharge, you want to get in a taxi cab,

01:42:19.760 you want to get in Uber.

01:42:21.760 And then there is Uber driver who going to tell you all his, that he's an actor, that

01:42:26.760 he has so many businesses idea.

01:42:28.760 And all you want is just decompress.

01:42:30.760 Yeah.

01:42:31.760 So that's, that's the only reason why I love those way more.

01:42:34.760 You get inside.

01:42:35.760 I play more music.

01:42:36.760 Yeah.

01:42:37.760 I stream from my phone.

01:42:38.760 I put my AC, I put on 61 and I'm just chill, chilling.

01:42:42.760 Yeah.

01:42:43.760 But what I was trying to tell you that our society, at least here in America, we stop caring for

01:42:52.760 others.

01:42:53.760 This selfishness is killing me.

01:42:56.760 Where I came from, your Godfather, that's why you watch movies of Godfather, your Godfather,

01:43:01.760 you can be the biggest Yakuza mafia in the world or Russian mafia in the world.

01:43:05.760 If your grandpa said so, said something, you cannot even look at his eyes.

01:43:10.760 That's what happens.

01:43:11.760 It's what happens.

01:43:12.760 How we are bending our grandparents and putting them in a, in a, in a daycares and stuff.

01:43:18.760 If you, somebody is crossing a street and you see that person is struggling or somebody

01:43:22.760 is cannot, um, heavy back, you cannot load in the back of the car.

01:43:26.760 Why we stop caring for other people?

01:43:29.760 You know what kind of like, it's pieces me off.

01:43:31.760 If you see like somebody, cars break down on the freeway, get your ass out.

01:43:34.760 See if somebody needed help.

01:43:35.760 Because you can't trust anymore.

01:43:37.760 You can't trust that that person's not doing it to, to try to kill you or something.

01:43:42.760 You know, I've been in America for 15 years and I'm going to freaking kill and die for

01:43:46.760 this country.

01:43:47.760 Same reason you don't pick up hitchhikers.

01:43:49.760 And you know, the funny thing is you mentioned like hitchhikers and stuff.

01:43:52.760 Obviously that was, you know, something that, that was far more common in the like sixties,

01:43:57.760 seventies, even into the eighties.

01:43:59.760 And in the sixties, seventies and into the eighties, it was a far more dangerous society.

01:44:05.760 You know, it was, it was, you, the eighties were the kind of the pinnacle of when serial

01:44:11.760 killers were around nowadays.

01:44:13.760 Nowadays they're there.

01:44:14.760 Well, that stuff isn't blown out of proportion on social media like it is now, you know?

01:44:18.760 So it now maybe it feels more dangerous.

01:44:20.760 Yeah.

01:44:21.760 Cause it's everywhere in your face.

01:44:22.760 That's the thing.

01:44:23.760 I think that it feels more dangerous nowadays, but it's actually like the U S is, is, you know,

01:44:27.760 it's, it's a very, very safe country, especially when you compare it to other places in the world.

01:44:31.760 Yeah.

01:44:32.760 The Western societies are very safe.

01:44:34.760 Um, and it's funny because, you know, nowadays compared to, you know, the, you know, New York

01:44:41.760 city in the seventies was a war zone.

01:44:43.760 If you look at, if you look at a lot of pictures from the seventies, there were, you know, there

01:44:46.760 were buildings that were literally burnt out in the city.

01:44:49.760 And now you, they don't stay very long.

01:44:52.760 If, if there's a fire or something that, you know, that building gets knocked down and,

01:44:56.760 and, and something is put in its place.

01:45:00.760 You know, the, the society we live in is very safe, but to your point, um, we're far more

01:45:06.760 insulated and we're far less likely to stop, to help someone.

01:45:09.760 Maybe because now we see so much of the bad in people online in viral videos and news.

01:45:16.760 So you just assume more people are becoming more used to assuming people are bad.

01:45:21.760 And so there's less trust less.

01:45:23.760 And then because of that, less desire to help a stranger out of the fear that something's

01:45:28.760 going to happen to you.

01:45:29.760 But also it's good.

01:45:30.760 Like when I go to Europe and I visit other countries, I travel a lot.

01:45:33.760 I used to be pro athlete.

01:45:34.760 So I was all over the world.

01:45:36.760 I'm shocked.

01:45:37.760 Shocking.

01:45:38.760 Shocking.

01:45:39.760 Even such a simple thing that makes my soul fulfill.

01:45:43.760 You can go anywhere, you know, in Europe, and you drive this direction and see a cop

01:45:49.760 is sitting in the bushes, right?

01:45:51.760 Watching for that speed ticket, right?

01:45:52.760 Yeah.

01:45:53.760 To give you a speed ticket with his radar.

01:45:55.760 So when you drive and you see upcoming car, you know what you do?

01:45:58.760 You blink.

01:45:59.760 Flash the lights.

01:46:00.760 Yeah.

01:46:01.760 You give him a sign like, yo, slow down.

01:46:02.760 There is a cop.

01:46:03.760 Those little things.

01:46:04.760 It doesn't cost you a lot of time.

01:46:06.760 It's just an effort.

01:46:07.760 If I see somebody crossing a street, if you see like things that somebody needed to help,

01:46:11.760 we start caring for each other in society.

01:46:14.760 And that's how scammer is going to get you.

01:46:16.760 That's how bad guy is going to get you.

01:46:17.760 Because now I'm going to likely going to take a cell phone and put it in your face instead

01:46:24.760 of stop the fight and help you to stop the fight.

01:46:27.760 They just like, no, I'm going to escalate the fight.

01:46:29.760 How many likes is this video going to get?

01:46:31.760 You know, if I get this fight and this guy actually blood is the other guy.

01:46:35.760 Let's do it.

01:46:36.760 Which is real rich coming from two people that thrive on confronting guys.

01:46:40.760 Yeah, but we're not confronting guys, we're confronting criminals.

01:46:43.760 I know.

01:46:44.760 I'm not challenging you.

01:46:46.760 I'm just recognizing the irony in what we're saying here.

01:46:49.760 Yeah, the irony is, yeah, it's crazy.

01:46:50.760 All right.

01:46:51.760 So we're going to wrap it up.

01:46:52.760 So why don't you guys tell people where they can find your individual X accounts if you have them

01:46:56.760 and tell people where they can find the show.

01:46:59.760 Thank you.

01:47:00.760 Yeah.

01:47:01.760 Well, Trilogy Media is the home base of all of our content.

01:47:03.760 So TrilogyMedia.com.

01:47:04.760 TrilogyMedia.com is our website.

01:47:05.760 We have our own streaming platform called Trilogy Plus.

01:47:07.760 Are you not wearing the shirt anymore?

01:47:08.760 Not today I'm not representing.

01:47:10.760 Because YouTube loves to pretend like crimes aren't crimes.

01:47:13.760 So a lot of times we can't really put full things on YouTube in the way that we'd like.

01:47:17.760 But yeah, Trilogy Media Inc. on X as well as all the other socials.

01:47:22.760 But yeah, Trilogy Media on YouTube.

01:47:23.760 Watch our show, Fox Nation.

01:47:25.760 Yes.

01:47:26.760 Scam getting even six episodes.

01:47:27.760 It just got dropped in October, November, right?

01:47:30.760 Now we-

01:47:31.760 Yeah, they're all there.

01:47:32.760 Go stream it.

01:47:33.760 We're in talks.

01:47:34.760 We're doing something, something for this year.

01:47:35.760 Cool, awesome.

01:47:36.760 So, and don't get-

01:47:37.760 Brand new video dropping tomorrow with our latest Arkansas Sheriff collaboration.

01:47:41.760 So another scammer takedown.

01:47:42.760 Yeah.

01:47:43.760 All this one got.

01:47:44.760 We definitely, as a society, as a scam baiters, we change the game.

01:47:49.760 We upgrading the game.

01:47:50.760 Scammers upgrading the game.

01:47:51.760 Sure.

01:47:52.760 It's always that cat and mouse game, you know?

01:47:54.760 And you just have to stay in a game and technology is getting better.

01:47:57.760 We're getting better.

01:47:58.760 We're getting better.

01:47:59.760 But the most important stuff that justice finally start like the light in the end of

01:48:05.760 the tunnel, you know?

01:48:06.760 Awesome.

01:48:07.760 And that's the biggest thing.

01:48:08.760 That's the point.

01:48:09.760 Yeah.

01:48:10.760 That's the point of a lot of stuff.

01:48:11.760 All right.

01:48:12.760 Check out the Culture War clips all throughout the weekend.

01:48:17.760 And tonight we'll be on IRL.

01:48:18.760 We're actually going to be filming it live.

01:48:20.760 So if you're in the Discord, make sure you're there watching and you can jump in at the

01:48:24.760 end to ask questions from the Discord and we will see you guys later.

01:48:42.760 Bye.

01:48:43.760 Bye.

01:48:44.760 Bye.

The Culture War - Tim Pool - January 23, 2026

THEY'RE SCAMMING YOU w⧸ Trilogy Media, Art Kulik & Ashton Bingham

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