Consumer Connection
Consumer Connection is a podcast brought to you by the Montgomery County Office of Consumer Protection (OCP) that brings you up-to-date news and information on a variety of consumer topics. It is your trusted source for connecting with experts on avoiding scams, making informed purchasing decisions, and understanding your consumer rights.
Join our host, OCP Investigator, Michelle Escobar, as she guides listeners to better understand the consumer landscape here in Montgomery County, Maryland, and beyond, while offering valuable advice and practical tips.
Have questions or ideas for future episodes? Email us at consumerconnection@montgomerycountymd.gov
Consumer Connection
Inside Cryptocurrency Scams with the FBI
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Scammers are cashing in on the cryptocurrency craze and targeting everyday people in the process. In this episode, we’re joined by FBI Special Agent David Paniwozik for an insider look at how fraudsters are using cryptocurrency to steal money through fake investments, impersonation scams, and high-pressure tactics. Learn what to watch for, how these schemes work, and how to protect yourself in the ever-evolving world of digital scams.
For additional information and resources, visit OCP’s website at www.montgomerycountymd.gov/ocp. Visit the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov. Have a question or suggestion for a future episode? Send an email to consumerconnection@montgomerycountymd.gov.
Have a question or suggestion for a future episode? Send an email to consumerconnection@montgomerycountymd.gov.
Introduction to Cryptocurrency Scams
Speaker 1Welcome back to another episode of Consumer Connection brought to you by the Montgomery County Office of Consumer Protection. I'm your host, michelle Escobar. You've probably heard the word cryptocurrency, maybe in the news, on social media, or from a friend who says they're investing but what is it really? Or from a friend who says they're investing, but what is it really? Cryptocurrency is a type of digital money that lives entirely online. Unlike dollars or coins, it's not issued or controlled by any bank or government. Instead, it runs on something called blockchain, a special kind of online ledger that records every transaction and keeps everything secure and transparent. People use crypto to buy things, invest or send money across the world. You may have heard of Bitcoin. That's a well-known cryptocurrency, but here's the catch Because it's still new and not well understood by most people. Scammers are taking advantage. According to the FBI's Internet Crime Report, with 3,158 complaints filed in 2024, maryland ranks 15th in the country for cryptocurrency complaints and 16th overall for monetary losses, with $132.7 million in losses. These scammers make big promises, push fake investments or demand crypto payments in order to obtain and move money quickly. In this episode, we'll help you understand how scammers are using crypto to trick people.
Speaker 1Episode. We'll help you understand how scammers are using crypto to trick people, what red flags to look out for and how to protect your money from this fast-changing digital world. Let's get started Today. We're joined by special agent David Panawazic, a cybercrime investigator with the Federal Bureau of Investigations in the Baltimore Field Office. David has been an agent for six years and specializes in ransomware, malware, cryptocurrency-enabled crimes. He plays a role in uncovering financial crimes, dismantling illicit operations and bringing offenders to justice through high-impact cyber investigations. We also have our producer, maurice Valentine.
Speaker 2Good morning Montgomery County.
Speaker 1David, thank you so much for being here. Tell us a little more about yourself and what you do.
Speaker 3Yeah, so my name is David Panawazic. I'm a special agent out of the FBI Baltimore field office, where I've been assigned for six years. Prior to that, I was a forensic accountant out of our Chicago office, so my primary focus is investigating ransomware, malware and other cyber enabled crimes, including those that involve cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1How would you say that cryptocurrency has changed the landscape of scams?
Speaker 3Definitely during the COVID times we saw a huge increase in the use of cryptocurrency when people couldn't leave or go to the bank, and it also. Cryptocurrency allows you to seamlessly move money internationally at you know, in the matter of seconds. So criminals use it quite a bit to help launder their money and get it overseas as quickly as possible to foreign bank accounts or foreign exchanges.
Speaker 1You know, in the office we're used to getting complaints on imposter scams, people knocking on your door, but it's always it's it's always about money. So with this digital currency, how, what, what types of scams are we looking for, are they? They're not knocking on your door anymore, but what are they doing?
Speaker 3No, you're going to see a lot of different scams. You're going to see your emails. You may get an email that says, hey, from PayPal it may appear to be from PayPal that saying, hey, we're just confirming your purchase of Bitcoin with the card on file. If this isn't you, please call this number Right. It doesn't say the card on file and you may not even have a PayPal or Venmo account.
Speaker 3Other types of cryptocurrency scans we're seeing is you'll see these types of sextortion scans where they'll say, hey, we found all these photos of you, but we're going to send them to all your loved ones and family members if you don't pay, and then they'll give you a cryptocurrency address within that email.
Speaker 3Then we're also seeing, you know, whether it's on social media apps, dating apps, um, unsolicited text message where people are being, you know, reached out to and then, kind of, they're building, like these relationships with these people, whether it's platonic, business or personal, and then they're switching it to these types of cryptocurrency investment scams. We're also seeing with, you know, everything going on. People want to work from home, so the threat actors are using work from home scams, where you pay a certain amount in cryptocurrency and then you have to rank products, so it's being used in all different types of scams in arenas. You're also seeing your classic like tech support fraud scam. So you may be on your computer and it starts alerting you, saying, hey, there's an issue or a virus on your computer. And then you know the tech support scam is calling you and they're saying hey, you know, we need access to your bank account. It's been compromised, we need to move it into cryptocurrency and then, once they do that, they can seamlessly move it to the accounts that they control overseas.
Speaker 1They are, these scammers. They're so patient, they are definitely. I feel like they are just waiting to see who bites. They'll come out. And you know, I mean, how would they even know that? I don't know that I that there might be something on my computer that I even use my computer like. How are they targeting these people?
Speaker 3so a lot of times when it comes to the computer, like your tech, fraud related scams um, if you get like, let's say, there's a virus on your computer, what they're using is just like outdated um, it'd be like outdated browser extensions that they're using, that they're exploiting so. So the key there is if you ever get anything like that, just power your computer down and it should go away. What they want is they want to create a sense of urgency, right, they want to get you off your balance, they want to distract you from what's going on. And then you know they keep flooding you with information and facts and threats to you to kind of keep you off your toes. But the key is just take a step back, take a breath, and then you know, buy yourself some time to figure out what is really going on.
Speaker 1Any other red flags that we should be looking for when we're approached?
Speaker 3It's always a sense of urgency, but unsolicited, right. So a lot of these times it's you're meeting somebody, you're talking to somebody and they do this light chat where they're mirroring. They're like oh, you're a divorced mom, I'm a divorced dad. Oh, you just recently lost your husband, I just lost my wife. Or they'll say, like you may say like oh, I live in Rockville, maryland. They're like oh, I have a friend that lives in Frederick, where it's close enough but far enough. They're doing all their research to kind of mirror you. You know, once they build up these light chats, then they'll kind of switch to these types of investment scans for you.
Speaker 3But one of the big red flags is unsolicited advice, right. Like if we were sitting at a bar or restaurant and I came up and I said, hey, how's it going? I got a great investment opportunity for you. You'd probably tell me to. You know, go kick rocks, right. But what they do on here is they slowly build up this rapport with you and then they switch the conversation. They always move from whether you're using your iMessage or your Android messaging to a secure messaging platform like Telegram or WhatsApp, and then, right, once they get in there, they start kind of introducing these scams to you and they say, oh, we'll walk you through step by step. You know, I'm with you through the entire step of the way.
Speaker 4They'll say, hey, you know they'll tout success of like an uncle or an aunt and then they'll invite you to like an investment work Sneaky.
Speaker 3Yeah yeah, and they'll invite you to like an investment work group. But in these investment work group are all the other scammers just saying how successful they've been. So this is a whole organized crime enterprise. I mean, they have it from start to finish, scripts written of how this goes. If somebody answers A, you respond with B. If somebody answers with C, you respond with D. It is well thought out and kind of the flip side of this is you have these scammers who are exploiting victims for financial benefit, but a lot of time what we see is these scammers are being victimized as well. They're being worked out of like compounds in Southeast Asia and they're just being human traffic. They went there in hopes of some type of IT support job to help their family and then what we're seeing come out is that they're being, you know, human traffic. They're being beaten, they're being tased. So it's kind of a twofold scam. That's kind of going on. There's victims on both sides.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2What, what so if I fall victim to it? What? What are my option? What? What can I do? Like if I took that bait? What can I do?
Speaker 3Well, the first thing so let's say you get reached out may change a zero to an O or an O to a zero, an L to a one, so it appears legitimate. But what you can do is there's open source tools out there, such as like, what's called like.
Common Types of Crypto Scams
Speaker 3Whois where you can look up a domain. So my recommendation would be, if you get a domain, you go to who is and then type that domain and see when was it registered. Was it registered 10, 15 years ago? Is it age? Have they had a while or likely? What you're going to see is this this domain was registered in the last month or so.
Speaker 1And I get like don't, don't go to a private conversation or to like the DM, like don't, that's very important, be careful If someone's reaching out to to you, when they tell you to hey, can I talk to you personally or you know, one on one, I think that's you know, I'm hearing that that's definitely a red flag.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's just, it's just unsolicited, right, the unfortunate, you know, world we live in is we're under a constant state of compromise, right, like everything you have is, you know, interconnected. You know refrigerators aren't refrigerators anymore, they're just computers that refrigerate. You can be hacked, you can be reached out to through all types of different means, right, so you just have to. If somebody reaches out to you and especially, just like in the old times, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is so if they say that, hey, this success, if you give me twenty thousand dollars, we can turn that into a million dollars, it just, you just can't get those types of returns.
Speaker 3But a lot of people have this fear of missing out. They want to get into this investing and, hey, I don't want to miss this opportunity. Times are tough, hey, if I just give a little bit of money, you know. But once you give a little bit of money, that's when they can taste blood and they're just going to try to get more and more and more. Because when you try to withdraw those funds, whether you need to pay fines or taxes or fees, and they're constantly trying to get more and more money out of you, and a lot of times, what we see is these victims. If you've already invested, you know a hundred thousand, $500,000, it's like, okay, well, if I just, you know, drain part of my retirement account and pay this extra 200, my account is showing that I've made 10 million. Like, that's fine, I'll just do that. You're never going to get that money back.
Speaker 2How do you get help when it's done, like, how do you get it?
Speaker 3The to help.
Speaker 2Who do I reach out to it or if I have a complaint about it.
Speaker 3Yeah, so if you feel like you're being victimized of one of these scams, we definitely recommend you use IC3.gov, which is the Internet Criminal Complaint Center. That's the FBI's website where you can submit your complaint. You can call the local field offices. You can reach out to your state and local law enforcement partners and they can help reach out to us as well. They can help you know, ingest some of the data that you have, but you need to immediately stop sending money to the scammers. As soon as you think it's a scam, stop sending.
Speaker 3And if you're solicited to get into one of these investment type scams, or you meet somebody and you're having what you believe to be a romantic relationship with them, but you've never met them in person, you've never FaceTimed them, nothing. Talk to your friends. I think you know we live in a hyper-connected, you know world right now, but we're so disconnected from each other right it's. We're on our phones all day and a lot of times what we see with these scams too, especially with our elderly people, is these scammers will just talk, we'll just text you all day and it's like kind of nice you have somebody to actually talk to. Hey, how's it going, how's your day, what are you up to.
Speaker 3They're sending you photos of what, what allegedly they're doing. They're asking you to send photos back and it's like oh, it's nice I have somebody on me. So you know, talk to your friends, talk to your family, talk to your loved ones and, on the flip side, if you have a loved one or a family member or a friend who maybe is widowed or divorced and living by themselves or going through a separation, reach out to them. Just see how they're doing. You know, talk to them and be like hey, you talk to anybody, how's life, what's going on? Like, don't be so afraid to pick up the phone and just you know, talk to your family and friends, yeah.
Speaker 1I'm a huge believer in it. Takes a village, you see something, say something. I believe that wholeheartedly because it'll help you think. Talking to someone else will help you think through. Okay, this is what's happening. Does this sound right to you? You know you can help someone think through what they're doing.
Speaker 3Yeah, because a lot of these times these scammers will say, hey, just, I'm going to, you know, keep me on the phone all day, just put me in your pocket wherever you go and let me know where you get, where you're going and when you're leaving. And after a while you know we have, you know, victims who may talk to these people for 16, 20 weeks straight, Right, and it all day just on mute, just letting them know where you're going all day, somebody you've never met before.
Speaker 1Yeah that's right. Who's behind these scams?
Speaker 3It all kind of depends on where, where, the the, the type of scam that we're talking about and where it originates, but it's no different than you know, organized crime. You have your people, everybody has their different role. You have your person who may send the email or the text message, then they push it off to somebody else, Then they push it up to somebody higher up to help close the deal and then the money ultimately filters up to, like the main individual. So there's all different roles within these organizations, no different than you may think back in the day with. You know, your organized crimes. Everybody has a certain role that they play within these scams and once they meet their certain objective, they push it off to the next boss.
Speaker 1And why is crypto the currency of choice by criminals?
Speaker 3So a lot of criminals are using cryptocurrency because you can seamlessly move it out of the financial industry in a matter of seconds, right, as soon as it's switched, you can move that money, no cap, a large amount, to wallets controlled overseas internationally, not having to go through like the thresholds. Back in the day, if it's like you wanted to wire, you had what's called like corresponding banks, right? So a small bank would have to use a larger bank who had a relationship with a foreign bank, who then had to work its way down to a smaller bank. For, let's say, in whatever country they wanted to go to, now I can just send money from here across the world, bypass any regulations, and it can sit in a what we call an unattributed wallet. So you can use like a, a software or hardware type wallet that's not, you know, tied to any individual, and it can just sit in that wallet and it's just kind of out there.
Speaker 1What impact does it have on the victims, these scams?
Speaker 3So there's huge impacts as it relates to victims, you know, I think the big one that comes to mind right is, like you know, you have your financial anxiety, right, how short term. How am I going to meet my bills? How am I going to pay rent? How am I going to do this? What we see a lot of times, too, is people are draining their retirement accounts or, you know, they're taking out loans on their home, they're taking out personal loans. So now you have this long-term financial impact as well, and it doesn't go away, right, because if you withdraw your retirement this year come tax season next year, it's going to be like, hey, you did an early withdrawal on your taxes, but you were the victim of a scam, so now you're going to be hit with another tax bill. So all that is kind of like looming over you and you're just trying to figure out. Okay, how am I going to lead the life that I used to? Because what this these scams do is they tend to have people withdraw, right, so you're going to like socially isolate. So you, the two of us, may meet for coffee every Wednesday, right, I can't do that anymore, right, but I need still to like keep it up, right, I need to figure out a way to like not tip off that I've been the victim of a scam, so it's emotionally just draining. I mean it's just, it just wears people down and it just waits on you.
Speaker 3I think they have, like that, that cup of water analogy. You know, if, like you, have a cup of water, you hold it for a minute doesn't hurt, you hold it for an hour, it starts to hurt. If you hold it for, you know, 24 hours, your arm starts to go paralyzed. And that's, you know, the water, the weight of the water hasn't changed, it's just how much longer you've been holding onto it.
Speaker 3And that's what we see with a lot of these. These people just hold it on and it just wears them down. Um, they lack confidence in their decision-making. Um, they self isolate the distress, the financial distress. They don't want to tell their family. And the unfortunate circumstance of a lot of this stuff is we have people committing suicide because of these scans, because they're so embarrassed and they don't know how to go on with their life and they don't want to tell their family members. There's been multiple times where, as we work these investigations or reach out to these individuals, it comes to our attention later on that this individual has taken their own life because of these scams.
Speaker 1I can't tell you how many times consumers have said to me I know it's my fault, I know I should have done better, I know I should have done my research. It's no, you're the victim, it's okay, it's all right. But cause, yeah, I that that isolation or that, that guilt to bring you to that dark place. That definitely happens because people blame themselves for not doing more research or not being smarter or what have you. So no, they're the victim.
Speaker 3So that is a great point, yeah, and there's a reason they do these scams because they work. We're talking three, four hundred billion dollars in financial losses a year If you look at the IC3 reports. These scams like these victims are not alone. Right, these are happening to people all over the United States, all over the world. You know, we were very close with our foreign law enforcement partners too.
Speaker 3When stuff overlaps and this isn't just an isolated, you're not the only person this has happened to these are well thought out, they're well written, they're well orchestrated. I mean, they make you feel when I talk to people who have been the victims of either romance scams, cryptocurrency investment scams or these scams like it's real, like you're in it, like everything feels real. You're looking at an investment platform where you're executing trades and your trades are going through. It looks no different than you would if you were a day trader. Like the legitimacy and just being in it. You can see easily how people get caught up in these types of scams, and these scammers are very good at what they do.
Speaker 3They are and that's why they continue to do it. How?
Speaker 2can you get your money back? Is there?
Red Flags to Watch For
Speaker 3So, when it comes to investigations, you know, if we're able to get the information soon enough and we're able to, you know, use sophisticated cyber techniques, there is a chance while very low depending on the timing that you know we may be able to work to freeze the money and cease it and get it back to victims. But a lot of the time this cryptocurrency is sent to wallets of what we call unattributed, there's no name, there's no. What we call KYC is Know your Customer associated to these. So what we have to do is you have to wait to it to move to an exchange, but a lot of the exchanges they use are overseas, so we don't really have any authority. So we have to work closely with the exchanges and our foreign law enforcement counterparts to say, hey, can you help us get this money back here, you know, here's the scam, here, here's the victim, here's the information.
Speaker 3The unfortunate thing is it's very difficult to get that money back once it's said, and you can't reverse those transactions once they occur, unlike if somebody were to send a wire. You can't reverse those transactions once they occur, unlike if somebody were to send a wire with. You know, if you send a fraudulent wire and you report it to IC3, there's a certain timeline. That hey, because it has to go through very many steps of verification that it can be halted in the process. But with cryptocurrency it can just move seamlessly internationally and it's very difficult. So if you're the victim of a scam or you believe the victim of a scam like time is well, while the scammers want you to do urgency too. Once you realize that you've been victimized, it's important to report it as soon as possible, even if you think you're not so sure, still report it, because the sooner we can look at it and get involved, the better the possibility of us being able to assist.
Speaker 2Take the time for our audience to explain what is Operation Level Up.
Speaker 3Yeah, so Level Up is kind of the proactive approach the FBI is taking to combat kind of your cryptocurrency investment fraud scam. So, through the use of sophisticated cyber techniques, we're identifying victims who we have identified as being currently victimized by these types of scams and then we're reaching out to them directly to say, hey, you've been the victim of a scam. How were you initially contacted? How much have you invested and just have you recruited more people and we're just trying to get them to stop investing in these types of scams. How are you informing people of the level up proactively identify victims who are being scammed by these scammers and just call them directly and say, hey, based on our investigative process, based through our techniques, we identified you of being a potential victim of a cryptocurrency investment type scam or a work from home type scam or some type of scam.
Speaker 1Yeah, and what are their reactions?
Speaker 3How does?
Speaker 2that call go Like how does it go, how is it received?
Speaker 3A lot of times it's hang up, you leave a message and you keep calling, you keep calling and then, as soon as you can get them on the phone, you'll leave. You know, we'll leave a voicemail too to say hey, call us. We're also sending an email. So if you get an email from a gov remember the government sends from a gov website. So if you get an email from, you know, fbiagentgov at gmailcom, that's not us, it has to come from an atgov, okay, um, or gov.
Speaker 3But so when we call them, a lot of times people hang up so we'll call again, right? Because if you think about you know, when you get scammed, you get a lot of scammers. So we're working with scam calls, scam texts, scam emails, so we're trying to fight that, right? So it's like we have to keep calling, keep calling, leave voicemails and then, once we're able to get them on the phone and we identify ourselves and we'll say listen, I don't want you to talk, just listen to me and tell me if this sounds familiar to you at all. And you know, nine times out of 10, you know they listen to us and it's like you can kind of hear the quiet and they're like that's exactly what I'm going through.
Speaker 3Yeah, and then they start explaining.
Speaker 1So our listeners need to know, if the FBI reaches out like how, how can they confirm, okay, well, I don't, I don't believe this. So how do they confirm that?
Speaker 3So you will get an email from the FBI response team and that it'll give you information.
Speaker 3I'll tell you an agent's going to contact you. Okay, an agent will call and contact you. They'll give you their name and they'll tell you what field office they work to. And then we always identify ourselves and we say if you'd like to verify who I am, I'm going to call you back again, call your local FBI field office. So just know, like you may not get a phone call from an agent in Baltimore, you may get a phone call from an agent in, you know, phoenix. Or you may get a call from an agent in New York, because we're we're all trying to tackle it, tackle through, level up, tackle these scans, as it go.
Speaker 3We will give you our name, we'll tell you our field office to call your local field office, or we'll tell you call your local field office. If you know somebody at your state or local law department or law enforcement agency, call them, have them, call me. And I've had a few times where it's just, you know, I call the victim who may have been located in Florida. They knew somebody that worked at the local police department who then contacted me. I said, yep, this is what we're calling, this is what we're doing you can confirm, and then they let them know like yep, we've identified this as a legitimate agent because we've worked very closely with our state and local police departments as well. So a lot of times you know your local or state partners know somebody at their local FBI who's like, hey, is this you know agent legitimate? And they say yeah, and then they pass along.
Speaker 2So confirmation of agent, of agents, is one way that local agencies can help.
Speaker 3Are there any other ways? Yeah, so the local agencies, you know, if they, if they feel, if the victim feels more comfortable wanting to talk to you, know, if the local police department calls me and they say, hey, they feel more comfortable talking to me, I was like I'm fine with you taking that report if you want to send it to me. So we're kind of all in this together because you know they have limited resources, we have limited resources. So whatever we can all do to work together to kind of tackle this is kind of the best approach we've been taking. More importantly, one thing I will never ask for or any law enforcement, whether that's your state, local was to be able to assist you. I need five thousand,000 in Bitcoin, right, I'm never going to ask you to assist me with that. Nobody's ever going to ask you. There's no money.
Speaker 3So there are a lot of these what we call law enforcement impersonation scams where you say, hey, my name's Mike Smith from the Secret Service. If I heard about your incident, I can assist you in recovery for $5,000. Because what that is, that's just the scammers who realize they can't get any more money out to you. So now let's kind of do another shot just to see if we can get just a little bit, squeeze a little bit more out of you. And you also will be approached by cryptocurrency recovery companies.
Speaker 3That's another scam. So you'll be reached out because these scammers, they've worked every single angle they can think of possible. So then you may get reached out to. You know, hey, I'm cryptocurrency recovery 101. And we heard that you lost some money. It's like, well, how did they hear that Right? So they heard it because their buddy next to them told them that, hey, let's see if we can get some more money out of these individuals. These people, whether they're legitimate or not, have no legal authority to get money back from you in a cryptocurrency recovery scam. Cryptocurrency recovery it's just another scam to get more money from you.
Speaker 1So you have the initial scam. Can you actually repeat that, that they have no authority to?
Speaker 3Yeah, so like a cryptocurrency recovery company that they may tout themselves as that, it has no legal authority to get the money back for you to recover that money.
Impact on Victims and Recovery Options
Speaker 3That's super important when the FBI works with ourselves and our foreign law enforcement partners or any law enforcement agency to get that money back, you need to go through the legal process to get a seizure warrant signed by a judge and then provide it to the company or the exchange that has that money these third-party companies. They have no legal authority to do that. They may say they do, but they simply do not, and the FBI works very well with our foreign law enforcement partners and we're able to work through that and work through them to assist in potentially seizing that money. So be careful of not only the initial scam but these other scams that will come to follow Again, whether that's a law enforcement impersonation where they are asking you for money or a cryptocurrency investment scam impersonation where they are asking you for money or a cryptocurrency investment scam. A lot of the times you, once you've been done with the one scam in the next week you'll be contacted by the other two.
Speaker 1Wow, Hopefully you're getting these victims in at a time where they're they're caught up in the scam, but not so caught up that you know they become in it. They are in a desperate situation. So that is thank you for doing that, because that is so important.
Speaker 3And a lot of times the victims we reach out to they're being re-victimized. So sometimes, unfortunately, when we call somebody you know, they may say, oh, I was part of this scam back in November and I said, well, I'm calling you about a different one, and they're like, oh well, that's this one one. So a lot of times our victims we see being re-victimized. So we're reaching out to them, trying to gather as much information we can and try to stop them from sending more money to the victims.
Speaker 3Um, because unfortunately, 77, I think, is the estimated amount of individuals that we've contacted who had no idea that they were being uh victimized and that what they were involved in was a scam um, we've say that number one more time 77% of the victims we've contacted just for level up have no idea that they were being part of a scam right now.
Speaker 3So we've identified approximately 5,800 individuals across the country and we've estimated, based on talking with them, the savings of approximately $360 million. And we've referred about 60 individuals to our victim services for suicide prevention, and a lot of times we talked to these individuals too. They were either right on the cusp of sending more money, had taken a loan or remortgaged their house, or were currently on the way to go get that money to send. So this is kind of the FBI's approach to say, hey, this is a huge issue going on right now and we need to figure out a way to prevent it from happening, because by the time it's reported to us if it's reported to us it's too late.
Speaker 2And how long is the operation Level Up?
Speaker 3So we're currently in our second year of it.
Speaker 2So how many people have you helped with this operation?
Speaker 3So Level Up currently is. We've contacted approximately 5,800 individuals we've identified as being scammed through the Level Up Is it making a difference in.
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean. So, estimated savings or not saving? Estimated preventative losses is approximately $360 million. So the hope is that by coming on here and talking to you and talking to others, that we can get the word out, whether it's another individual goes and talks to a friend who starts talking about investing and say, hey, this sounds a lot like what the FBI is talking about. You may want to look into this. So this is just what we've identified from individuals we talked to. So the hope is that the number is even higher, because somebody has heard or read the articles about Level Up and talked to a family, a friend or a loved one or a coworker and said, hey, you might want to look at this. This sounds a lot like what they're talking about here.
Speaker 2What demographics would you consider to be like the perfect victim for these types of scams?
Speaker 3Yeah, I think no two victims are the same. You're going to see victims of all different walks of life, right? So you're going to see your elderly victims and even your younger victims. You know, like when, as it relates to these investment, cryptocurrency, investment scans, we see a lot of like younger individuals who have this fear of missing out, so they want to get involved and get into crypto. Uh, you know, you hear the talk about crypto bros and like try to get in and invest and make as much money as possible. Then you have your elderly generation who these tax support scams or these romance scams, where it's like they're not familiar with it but they've got more money, and so the scammers know that. So you see people from the ages of 20, you know, up to their late 80s all being victimized. There's no one set group. The scammers have realized let's just target everybody, let's just spray and pray and whoever falls for this. And that's why when we said these scams, once that initial contact the key is the initial contact. Once I have initial contact, I have my foothold right.
Operation Level Up: FBI's Proactive Approach
Speaker 3So now the scammers are like I need to establish is this going to be a business type of relationship? Is this going to be a personal relationship or is this just going to be a platonic right? Are we just going to be friends and we talk and we say here's where we're going to invest? They're like, once they've segregated you into those types of categories, that's when this game starts taking off. So they will approach anybody and everybody. They will reach out to you on, whether it's a dating app, an unsolicited text message, your Instagram but again, they're always going to move you to WhatsApp or Telegram and then start talking and identify what lane they're going to follow. And, depending on what lane you fall into, now it's time to go grab that script and say this is a romantic relationship. This person is strictly business and wants to, you know, invest and make a ton of money. And this one, hey, he just, he just wants to mess around, or she just wants to mess around and try different money. So we'll try to get as much money from them as we can's all all about.
Speaker 1If you bite, yep, yep, it's all about.
Speaker 3If you bite, yeah, yep, just establishing that foothold and what's it's in it's to get you off balance and then go from there yeah, and that's with all every scam.
Speaker 1Yep, that's everything I mean. They're always there. Was that fishing they're fishing to?
Speaker 3see who will bite. That's exactly what it is. Who can I get a hold of? Who will answer? And let's exactly what it is. Who can I get a hold of? Who will answer? And then let's go.
Speaker 1Do you see a year over year increase.
Speaker 3Yeah, there's definitely been year over year increases. More people. These scams get more sophisticated. They switch you had your investment scams, your cryptocurrency investment scams. Then they're also working in these work from home scams and they pivot and they see what works and what doesn't works and kind of exploit people's behavior. So if they're seeing, hey, people want an extra job where they can work a few hours a week, hey, here's a work from home type opportunity for you.
Speaker 3And you have to be careful with these work from home ones as well. If anybody is involved. If a company ever asked you to pay five to ten thousand dollars to come work for them and the tasks that you're doing are very, very not meaningful, like you're just you know what they'll tell you. They'll use buzzwords like search engine optimization. You're just clicking a product and moving the rating up and it's very, you know, menial types tasks. That's a huge red flag that if that sounds like something you're doing right now, that it's likely a scam. And what they try to do with these work from home as well is to get you to give them more money to unlock the next level of products, to be able and all it is is just a scam to continually steal more money at lower amounts than they would with like an investment scam.
Speaker 2So I wanted to ask you. So I asked you about IC3, the Internet Crime Complaint Center. So once I file a complaint through the IC3, what can I expect is the next steps or what can be done with that complaint?
Speaker 3Yep. So those, those reports are all reported to us and they, like somebody will depending. So it's important to fill it out correctly too when it asks estimated losses and stuff like that Ensure that you're putting the dollar amount and putting in as much information. There's a lot that come in all year. I can't remember the exact number off the top of my head, but we're doing our best to get through and get review through all those and then you know, depending on where they are. Where they are, they get routed to the local field office where the individual is located and then an agent or somebody will be in contact.
Speaker 2And is it only FBI that's working IC3, or is there other agencies?
Speaker 3So FBI is kind of managing IC3 and kind of handling the reports.
Speaker 2OK.
Speaker 3IC3, that annual report that the FBI creates. Where can people get access to that report? So the IC3 annual report for the different types of scams that we're seeing and the amounts of reports and dollar amounts is all available on ic3.gov. You can go out there and download the report. Recently, the 2024 report was posted.
Speaker 2So if someone calls in and provides their information to a complaint with IC3, what are other things that you can do with that information?
Speaker 3So a lot of the times it's you know everybody. I mean, at the end of the day, we're a law enforcement and intelligence agency, right? So when that stuff comes in, while there may not be anything actual we can do, or by the time it's reported, like if you were victimized in November of 2024 and tell me today and not really much I can do with that like I mean, that money's long gone, right, but now I have an address that I know that's been victimized and goes into our system. So if somebody else searches this address, it says, hey, this came up in another thing. So, okay, now we're starting to build out like, hey, you know, um, kind of like your web, your financial web, of what addresses are being used and how they're tied into these different networks. So it still is helpful from an intelligence standpoint for us to build our cases If all these are reporting these same addresses in the same domains.
Speaker 3Yeah, everybody's small. But then it's like you run the report and it's like, okay, this just went from 10,000 to 10 million. Okay, now we've got something very different. And those you know, those all vary by scams. Like I said, you have your investment scams, where they're trying to get huge amounts of money, right, like hundreds of thousands of dollars from victims, but then they're like okay, well, not everybody can do that, so let's do these work from home, where it's a thousand, 2000, 5,000. So you have.
Speaker 3So you know, they've kind of bridged their gap of how do we squeeze the most money out of individuals.
Speaker 1Well, David, thank you, I mean that is great work. Thank you for joining us today. Do you have any final words or any final tips that you'd like to share with us?
Speaker 3No, I think just kind of the last thing as it relates to all these scams. Like if something feels off, just take a break, take a breath, step away. Just like no matter if you're working on something or you know trying to build something and you get frustrated and like you're just kind of overwhelmed, just step away. So if you are in part of one of these and everything just kind of feels urgent and overwhelming, just take a breath, step away and come back to it.
Speaker 1I agree with you 100%.
Speaker 2Awesome, awesome.
Closing Advice and Resources
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