Glitterbomb Trap Catches Phone Scammer (who gets arrested)

you've probably received a lot of spam calls that sounds something like this this is amazon.com you have been charged 379 now behind this harmless sounding call is a 20 billion scam industry and today we're gonna roll over that log and see what crawls out because for the past five months with the help of my trusty glitter bomb which i typically just reserved for porch pirates i've worked my way up every rung of the slimy chain of command involved in this scam this journey is going to take us around the world and through five states it involves homeland security stakeouts with pis and of course glitter bombs and the scammers trying to hopelessly rid themselves of sparkly evidence before getting arrested i'm going to show you exactly how they make so much money off these calls so buckle up cause it gets wild now all this started for me when i was working on glitter bomb 3.0 this past november and i kept getting those annoying calls so i thought maybe to return the favor i could send them my harmless box that shoots out glitter and fart spray when you remove the lid now my buddy jim browning has a youtube channel where he's able to reverse the connection to the scammer's computer and then thwart them in real time as they try and scan someone else my idea was to have a legitimate victim agree to send the money but then we'd work with them to actually send a glitter bomb instead so jim checked all the scammer computers he was currently monitoring and it just so happened a woman named tracy was being scammed for twelve thousand five hundred dollars at that very moment so he immediately tried reaching out to her and eventually got through hello hello tracy uh this is jim browning here again i'm calling you hopefully you've got my voicemail here's what happened now listen carefully to what tracy's about to say here and hold your judgment about how can anyone ever send 12 000 in the mail until i explain how the scam works in a minute because i hate to give these guys credit but it's pretty clever they were supposed to give me a refund of 300 and when i put in the computer i i mistyped it as as thirteen thousand dollars so i had to send money back to them twelve thousand five hundred dollars and that's where i am right i'm hoping you haven't sent that money i have said it oh no i hate to break this to you but this whole thing is a scam what do i do now because i'll tell you what to do tracy you leave this to me and jim the first thing we did was look up the address they told her to ship the money to and given there were six cameras outside this clearly was some kind of safe house for the scammers we then had tracy call fedex to cancel the package but just in case we hired two pis to be on the scene that day to intercept it and we knew we shouldn't do that right in front of the house because they'd probably be watching but since we weren't sure which direction the fedex truck would come from we overnight shipped a package to a bunch of their neighbors that explained they were randomly selected to win one of these super cool glitter bomb t-shirts and if you wanted to buy one of these from markrover.com to help support making more videos like this i'm certainly not going to stop you this would allow us to speak to the delivery driver somewhere up the street to get the package stopped in time and the plan worked flawlessly because despite tracy's efforts to get it stopped her package was in fact out on the truck for delivery tracy something yeah that's the one don't live with this one please okay this is the fraudulent one if that one's gone that's also going to 7-31 okay but in a wild twist there was a second package going to the same location addressed to the same fake name her name was phyllis and we later found out her package contained even more cash than tracy's okay so that one's going back right and then fedex was cool enough to eventually return the packages so both tracy and phyllis got all their money back and when the scammers angrily called tracy back asking why the package didn't arrive she explained she accidentally selected two-day shipping instead of next day air so they would get the package tomorrow and that's where he switched from defense to a very light offense and so the next day we deliver the package in an official looking vest have a good holiday thank you and waited for the sweet retribution hello you guys give up oh yeah thirsty for more [Music] but for the first time in three years of glitter bombing criminals someone didn't immediately throw the box outside and he just sat there with the wretched smell leaving the box untouched and then as we waited wondering what his game plan was gonna be suddenly a bunch of nypd officers started showing up and it didn't take them long to figure things out it's a glitter bomb it has a camera built into it there's a camera built into this we had a phone number on the box and they called us up and i explained the whole situation and i'll just say there was some mutual admiration for each other's work i mean there might be cameras on there officer and as it happens the reason the scammer would call the cops on himself is cause he isn't a scammer this is gary and it turns out he's a super nice guy but gary runs an airbnb and once you go in that door there are two rooms upstairs that he rents out to people so this wasn't a safe house at all these scammers would use airbnb to get a temporary address they would only use once but if that's true that meant the scammers must have been there yesterday so gary showed us his security footage and we saw this woman in an orange jacket who appeared right as the pi was talking with the fedex driver up the street she also looks directly at the camera and then decides it's probably cold enough outside to zip her jacket all the way up once the fedex truck passes and she realizes he's skipped by her she hurries over to talk to him and when he told her he had nothing for her for that day she walks right back to her car never stepping foot inside the airbnb the pi's got all the license plates on the street that day and it turns out her name is crystal you should remember that name for later so then gary showed us who booked the room it was this guy from utah with a brand new account and zero reviews in fact when the reservation was booked he sent this message in awkward english at 306 am which happens to be just after lunch in india so i did some more research and learned that after the scammer in india found a willing victim they would use a money mule and have the victim send the cash there so crystal in this case was the mule but instead of sending the package to the money mule's house they use an airbnb then the mule gives the package to a supervisor who deposits the cash and wire transfers the remaining money back to the scammer and they must have got spooked because crystal was long gone the next day which meant we caught poor gary in the crossfire but he wanted them caught just as much as us so we compensated him handsomely just for being cool about everything so we'll call that round a tie we stopped the scammers from receiving two packages containing thirty thousand dollars but they were still glitter free but before i show you exactly how we tipped the scales in our favor let me explain exactly how this scam works so well at tricking so many people there's an email that goes along with the scam that basically says the same thing as the robocall which is amazon just charged you 200 but if you don't recognize this charge please call right away to have it refunded so when you call they say i'd be happy to walk you through the refund process on your computer so just type this here and simply install this and then i'll be able to fully help you out and most victims don't really comprehend they've just installed a remote software program that gives the scammers full access to their computer now they're ready for the scam they tell her that some accounts have actually already had their refunds automatically processed so she needs to check her bank account to make sure the 200 refund isn't already there and when bessie here asks if he can see her banking info he explains in technical terms it's a 3d page so i cannot see anything oh okay and so sure enough she hasn't got the refund yet so he needs just about five minutes to work with his billing department in order to process it but first he makes a really big deal about this i'm signing out from your account in front of your own eyes and this is true he actually does sign out at which point he triggers her screen to go black so she can't see anything that he's doing and then he immediately logs back in using the browser pre-stored username and password he's going to do a simple browser html edit on this page to temporarily make this lowe's purchase look like a refund for twenty thousand dollars and you'll see why in a minute and as he's editing away he chats her up to try and build trust you're like my granny miss bessie do you know this yes she was like one of my closest for i used to share each and everything with her you mean like what you do for a living and you might be wondering why doesn't he just wire transfer himself money while he has unrestricted access to her account but the problem there is that it's traceable and it would likely get flagged by the bank's fraud detection system anyways but if you can get an old lady to mail you cash it's so untraceable the authorities don't even begin to try and track it down now that he's finished he unblinks her screen and he informs her that unfortunately the billing department couldn't process the refund so they have one last option to try this is the chase online different server it's actually just a text window that does absolutely nothing it's pure theater it is an irreversible form whatever you are typing it over there put it in a correct manner nothing would be changed over you basically he makes a big deal for three minutes that she's the one that has to enter all the information and anything that gets typed there is immediately permanent maybe you can see where this is headed so her name last four of social zip code and finally refund amount please enter your refund amount if you go back you can actually hear him type the two extra zeros on his keyboard and hit enter check everything is it correct oh no this is a mistake oh i screwed up jesus i'm it was supposed to be a 200 in there oh god almighty i'm exhausted i can't do this my mind is absolutely fried please check your account did you really receive that money in your account oh my god plus 20 000. yeah please save my job ma'am if i'll not earn for my family my family will die due to hunger due to starvation oh yes of course i mean what should i do i mean i can be bad for you you are also like my grandmother you know i'm an honest person right now you're making me cry now you're i'm getting attached to you how do i fix this he tells her that unfortunately mailing a check or wiring money would just take too long so he needs to think for a minute and then he comes back with this hello miss bessie yes i got an option and you can see now how he's got her to the point where she's totally willing to send twenty thousand dollars in the mail and to lie to the folks at the bank or fedex or even her family who might try and stop it in her mind she messed up and because she's a good empathetic person she'll go through great lengths to make it right for someone she doesn't realize is a heartless scammer and on top of weaponizing their empathy maintaining pressure on their victim is a key tactic they keep them on the phone the whole time even as they drive to the bank or they yell at them go to the ups why don't you go to the ups or call this many times in a row and if you've ever seen this clip name a woman name a woman yeah um you already know when you're under extreme stress it's an actual biological response for the part of our brain that does critical thinking to just shut down name a woman once they're back from the bank with the cash they coach them through packing it in tracy's case they had her put 100 bills in the pages of a book so it couldn't be detected in the mail in other cases they have the victims wrap the cash in saran wrap so the dogs can't sniff it and then foil so it can't be x-rayed but unfortunately there's a small portion of the population that are just too trusting for their own good and sadly it's nearly always older folks so for the scammers it's just a game of percentages to find them according to data jim is gathered from the scammer's own computers in one shift a call center like this with about 25 employees will send out a half a million robo calls they'll get about 500 calls back and land maybe five to ten victims like bessie or tracy or phyllis and speaking of phyllis after we got fedex to send back her package i was able to get in touch with her son and i found out her husband of 40 years had passed away the very week she was being scammed of her life savings the scammers knew she was mourning this loss but once you're scammed your phone number's really valuable because it means you're an easy mark so they sold her info to other scammers and she was scammed twice more the same week her husband died and as hard as it was for me to even hear a backstory like that it just made me that much more motivated to seek some glitter bomb retribution for all the phyllis's out there and perhaps in the process we might stumble upon some good information that we could pass on to the authorities so now we needed another scammer to send a glitter bomb to but we decided when jim spots a scam in progress it's better for him just to stop it cold and not stress out the victim any more than the rdr so we reached out to our friend pierogi from the youtube channel scammer payback because whenever pierogi gets a scam call to his actual phone he turns on his cameras makes his voice sound like an old lady and has some fun if they will ask you in your bank like why you are withdrawing that this much of cash what you gonna tell them um i'm getting it for derek wilson from microsoft no no mom no you need to tell them that you are withdrawing the cash for your personal reason for your personal reasons and it didn't take long for fake victim old woman pierogi to get us an address in new jersey this is where i'm sending it to you right grab box right so you can put the cash yeah i've already got a box i already got a box that's big enough this one was actually to a hotel and not an airbnb but as soon as we pulled up once again a money mule is out there waiting for us so they took the package and drove around for a couple of hours and when it was clear they weren't going to open it we made the call just to get the box back before the batteries died and then maybe the box audio recording might help us piece together more info on the scam you guys picked up a box from fedex today part of this cam i didn't have no scam going on today oh really no let's see the box i just was told i understand buy somebody to pick this up for them i understand yeah i don't know what's going on i'm being honestly and truthfully and i don't want no trouble and when i first heard that i was like oh well now i feel bad sometimes these mules don't even realize they're participating in scams and they might even be victims themselves then i was like look not that i don't believe her but maybe just in case we just have a little peek at the audio i'm waiting on so many packages i don't even know which one is which anymore then she got on the phone with her boss james yeah i know i got one with me right now i took the picture i said to you i'm gonna bring it to y'all that's what i'm saying said that i was done for the game but i gotta be at tomorrow you said that we was working out here in new jersey i don't know whatever they give me address that they don't even have a bmv address no nothing for tomorrow this is the first time they split me and crystal up like this in new jersey that's right crystal apparently they're a team which means jacqueline was probably in the car the other day in new york and the other side she in the car watching by the way crystal hate to say it but jacqueline was talking a lot of trash about you in fact i'd watch your back because her cousin in the car that day might be gunning for your job wanna be a driver how much did they get how much did you get for that one barcelona 500 everybody get paid so we get seven marshals and it's 75 or 100 dollars for each parcel everybody's getting 700 [Music] we learned two key things here the first is that a supervisor will have multiple mules reporting to them who apparently get flown all over the country and just one mule could receive as many as seven packages in a day and the second is that this address was from a totally different call center in india so that same supervisor can work with multiple unrelated scammers as well and so in the spirit of avenging phyllis if we were going to glitter bomb and fart spray anyone here in the states we really wanted it to be a supervisor and thanks to pierogi not long after we would get another chance uh get the dollars in cash with you get in your car once you're in your car let me know make sure you don't involve any third person nobody so i don't need to tell my husband your husband your father anyone this one would be in illinois and the delivery address this time was to a walgreens it was interesting to see them experimenting with different package drop-off methods and right away we heard some good news okay yeah i'll see you i see come park in front of me the walgreens was here and the handoff occurred here at this gas station [Music] and with that we had our supervisor they tell the supervisor for a few minutes and got a good look at his 2019 white honda passport and then 20 minutes later he stopped here in a seemingly random parking lot and opened it hello and even though he kept it by his feet the camera's got a perfect shot of his face here and the pis assessed the situation and felt safe enough to approach him right after he opened it but then he took off and they let him go and we just used the gps and the glitter bombs to once again locate it in the ditch snow and right after that proge got this message from the scammer in india which shows two things the supervisor and scammer are in close contact with each other and neither one likes glitter and that seemed like the end of the story until we ran the plates and realized his name was tied to a business really close to where he opened the box so we went back a week later to get footage to show just how close here's where he opened it you can see that dumpster and house for reference and then you pan over and that's the business his name is tied to and wait a second that's a 2019 honda passport and wait another second that's the same guy whose face is on camera opening the glitter mod so this was a nice little package of intel we were able to hand off to the authorities because the supervisor is sort of the hub and a direct connection between a bunch of mules in the states and a bunch of scammers in india perugi came through with one final address in texas and this one was back to the mo of being delivered to an airbnb and like all the others the mule's right there waiting for us and then she took it inside to open it [Applause] notice how she films herself opening the package apparently this is pretty common because i suppose there's no honor among thieves and the scammers will demand the video to confirm she hasn't taken more than she's allowed as we learned before the money mules make a flat amount per package like 100 bucks but i ended up reading somewhere that the supervisor gets a 10 percent cut and sends the rest back to the scammers this lady later admitted she herself was exchanging the cash for bitcoin to send back to the scammers which meant she was actually a supervisor and for the sake of phyllis that was a lovely surprise as well she took off and parked about a mile away but the police were alerted and were on her tail pretty quickly i cannot talk here i love that attempt at just getting away with the parking warning so she gets out of the car and i have to applaud the effort here but as every parent knows the only way she's getting rid of the evidence from her pants and car is by burning them both to the ground yeah so i just lawyer because i i'm uh in the probation home information officer i don't know what's happened okay so i want to contact with someone and so after she was taken into custody the police returned to the airbnb to gather evidence the dude on the left there is a detective and they already had her under investigation for another package scam so now they're bringing charges against her and the actual glitter bomb and footage is being held as evidence in the case we did one more in illinois and two more in california but i've decided against showing those because those scammers are being monitored as part of ongoing investigations in fact over the past four months jim perogia and i have been in contact with investigators from the respective local police departments the department of justice homeland security and the fbi and we've turned over to them every last bit of evidence we've stumbled upon so hopefully like me you now have a better understanding of how these scam calls operate and here's why that matters the authorities are cracking down more on these guys both here in the states and in india but it's sort of a game of whack-a-mole and another one will just pop up because the financial incentives are so great the only way to truly defeat this is by spreading awareness thereby making it ineffective so if you have someone in your life who's older that means a lot to you please educate them or even share this video with them i put some resources in the video description if you've been exposed to fraud but all the experts agree it's much better to not be reactive here but proactive by spreading awareness and understanding what this looks like and speaking of being proactive i will close with some good news which is that thanks to jim who explains how he did it in a video he just released on his channel we have the identifying information of the folks over in india who scammed our girl phyllis and by the way everyone in india hates these guys too and so over the next year of course working with the proper authorities we'll be executing a multi-phased operation that will be as always relatively harmless i don't want to give too much away but we already have some performance working for us in some of these call centers and the first phase might include a door handle and actual poop from phyllis's actual dog so make sure you're subscribed cause it's gonna be a banger you can set your plant on this box and it has some electronics inside to measure the soil moisture level and then talk to you when you walk by i need a little water over here that's delicious thank you and this machine measures how long it's been since you've stood up and employs the kids sitting behind you on a long flight method to encourage a stretch break this is a game to motivate exercise during a lockdown and this is a secret safe for your most valuable possessions and finally this is a g-dang lunchables assembly line are you kidding me and what do all of those have in common they were created by people who took my month-long creative engineering course i just launched this class for the first time a few months ago and it was so freaking rewarding to see what everybody learned and created as a result for the most part and because we got so much overwhelmingly positive feedback on the course we're doing it again you could sign up for it now this class covers my full engineering design process all the way from how i come up with an idea to prototyping to finalizing the build and giving it character i show you everything that i'm thinking everything that i'm doing and i do it three times over the course of a month you're gonna watch me design and create three totally original builds and i'm gonna guide you through finishing three creative builds of your own and this is an online class so you can take it from anywhere and work it around your schedule but it's fully immersive and intensive so whether you're a working professional or you're taking the class as a family whether you're a complete beginner or an experienced engineer this class has been designed to meet you where you're at and then level up your skills so go to monthly.com mark grover or use the link in the video description to see what other people had to say about their experience and then enroll and i'll see you in class [Music]

Channel: Mark Rober

Views: 30,576,193

Rating: 4.9658494 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: VrKW58MS12g

Length: 23min 14sec (1394 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/derekantrican]

The Jim Browning "parallel" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvjjpzyiig4

[u/jsting]

I'm really glad the FBI and federal agencies are on this. I'm wondering what kind of charges they can bring up, but with the increased evidence, hopefully they can treat it as organized crime.

[u/420xyolo]

at like 10:17, the manipulation is soo devastating. These scammers are psychopaths.

[u/HasselHox]

Poor gary! He got glittered for nothing :(

[u/Firebrat]

The number of layers in this scam is impressive - I had no idea such wide conspiracies were going on (what with the airbnb's and what not). I'm also surprised the supervisors and mules take such a small cut when they're taking the majority of the risk.

The thing that really gets to me here is why aren't police/fbi making more of an effort to stop this? I was glad to hear some of the supervisors were already under surveillance, but come on, what Mark and Jim are doing should be easy to replicate by law enforcement. I feel like congress should wake up and take note.

[u/DreamArcher]

In my dad's last months (in 2020) I lived with him full time and he would get scam calls almost every day. At first he knew they were scams and would argue with them or try to lecture them and they would hang up. I kept telling him to just hang up. Closer to the end the more his mind started slipping. I caught him with his credit card trying to make a payment on the phone. Lucky I questioned him and caught it. After that he agreed to let me hold his credit cards and screen his calls.

As if dealing with my dying father wasn't enough I had to deal with people trying to rob him.

[u/thaxor]

This is why I trained my mom to call me if anyone asks her technical questions, financial, sales, or personal information over the phone.

She's hung up on innumerable scammers telling them, "I need to call my son first"

They typically don't call back.

It took a while to get her to understand why she needs to do this but it's worked well to keep her safe. Even from dish network service technicians trying to sell her superfluous stuff like fancy power strips and gold plated hdmi cables.

[u/_Trump_Lost_LOL_]

I’ve been waiting for this video. The last one left us hanging.

Edit here’s a post of Jim Browning’s video https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/m81gbd/also_how_jim_browning_tried_to_help_rober_explore/

Edit This one was very hard to watch. Such intense disgust.

[u/MuuaadDib]

The big take away for me on this is the need for law enforcement to ramp up big time on understanding the new world we live in. I had my mom's comp stolen in a B&E home robbery. Gave the cops the IP address of the home they took it to....no one got captured. This was back in 2006, and it's only getting more complicated.