Three tech tricks romance scammers use

we're here in orlando florida the love scammers who stole elizabeth's life savings used a number of tactics among them three key tech tricks crucial steps that helped convince elizabeth the scammer's story was real he would call me almost every night except when he said he was on an airplane it was a very very sophisticated scheme long after the scam is over elizabeth not her real name is still shaken and i go back to thinking about this so many times over and over and over how naive could i have been to fall for this a ring of criminals posed as this man going by the name michael lawrence head of an oil and gas company from italy living in the u.s but not just anywhere in the u.s in georgia not far from elizabeth herself how did she know on bumble's side it showed him in the same state it showed him close by they met on bumble a dating app that requires you to use your location determined by your wi-fi and gps the app she says showed him not only nearby in georgia but also in washington dc at the very moment he said he was speaking at a conference there and it he actually sent me photographs of a conference that he was at with you know he was on a board and he told me all about it but the pictures of michael lawrence were stolen from someone else a man named alex a sitnikov in russia and the story of conferences in dc and an international oil and gas business were false the scammers have gotten smarter by the minute tech trick number one the app location how did they do it no need to hack the app bumble has a special feature travel mode where you can set your location to a city you're about to visit for seven days the app will say it's in travel mode but the illusion of location can feel real it's so clever how the scammers can use these platforms and make it so believable we also found that the alleged criminal ring had two suspected helpers living in georgia who could have assisted by logging into the app from close to home another tech trick a skype call between elizabeth and michael what appears to be a growing trend among scammers using fakes to make victims think they're on a real video call one of the things that i've heard from the victims is in cases where they've used my photographs canadian professor alec kuros says in this youtube video that romance scammers have used his images many times and also his videos in what the victims believe are real video calls the one convincing moment that they've had is when they saw me on video via skype and that confused me for a while because obviously i'm not talking to these victims via skype he says scammers can use tools like manycam or others to play videos in a live skype call and pretend the connection isn't good enough for a conversation you can see how that might convince some of the victims even further it looked real elizabeth however says her video conversation with michael appeared to be normal without audio issues perhaps a little fuzzier than she might have expected that's why this is just so unbelievable still today to me that the person in the skype actually looked like the picture that was on his profile i'm going to show you some magic but we are in the era of deep fakes like this faux tom cruise video and even live fakes like the chinese vlogger who used a filter to make her face look younger and more conventionally attractive but she accidentally and dramatically dropped the filter in a live stream losing thousands of dollars and subscribers the final key trick an elaborate fake bank website when michael eventually claimed he needed to buy a multi-million dollar rig for his oil business he said he could not do it from the drilling platform where he was working and needed her help his lawyers showed her first a screenshot of what looked like a real bank site and a real bank account then they had her sign in complete with a special login code the long list of transactions in his account matched all the things he had said to her about his activities for four months it was so powerful because i thought well how could anybody make this up i i didn't think about that during the time obviously it just drew me in even more that i he was believable it was so believable when she transferred the money for him a message popped up on screen saying taxes were due the man she believed she loved begged her to help him pay the taxes and finally she gave in these tech tricks combined with deep social engineering convinced elizabeth that her love was real leading to devastating loss and not just of money and we do get caught up in the fantasy of love and um i did and it's it was really painful and i've lost all of my money so i'm trying through family and friends to get my life back together in the past common advice was to ask your online romance to do a video call to prove that they're real that's may no longer be the case however people have said that they have caught online scammers by doing a video call and then asking them to wave or stand up or blow a kiss if they can't do it they're fake now the tech tactics in elizabeth's case were very effective but the brutal psychological tactics were even worse you can learn about those in our other ampere news video anatomy of a romance scam for ampere news i'm carrie tomlinson in orlando

Channel: Ampere News

Views: 38,581

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Id: 4NEYMXcwwKM

Length: 6min 33sec (393 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021