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Combatting Scams With Technology and Collaboration: A conversation with Nicola Staub, CEO and Co Founder, Cybera
632 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of Scam Rangers, Nicola shares his journey in fighting scams and talks about how victims are not getting enough help or understanding from law enforcement. He also talked about his vision for Cybera, a company that provides a platform to help victims of financial crimes. The discussion emphasized the importance of collaboration and technology in preventing scams and the need for public-private sector collaborations to build tools that can protect people from financial crimes.
This podcast is hosted by Ayelet Biger-Levin https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayelet-biger-levin/ who spent the last 15 years building technology to help financial institutions authenticate their customers and identify fraud. She believes that when it comes to scams, the story starts well before the transaction. She has created this podcast to talk about the human side of scams, and to learn from people who have decided to dedicate their lives to speaking up on behalf of scam victims and who take action to solve this problem. Be sure to follow her on LinkedIn and reach out to learn about her additional activities in this space.
Also check out https://scamranger.ai if you had received a message that you suspect is a scam
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Transcript
Introduction to Scam Rangers Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Scam Rangers, a podcast about the human side of fraud and the people who are on a mission to protect us. I am your host, Ayelet Bigger Levine, and I'm passionate about driving awareness and solving this problem.
Nikola Stav's Background in Cybercrime
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to episode 14 of Scam Rangers. Today's Scam Ranger got to learn about online scams through his work and realized that to make a difference he needed to change roles. Nikola Stav is the CEO and co-founder of Cybera, which is focused on reducing negative effects of cybercrime and online fraud.
00:00:42
Speaker
Previously, he worked as a public prosecutor in Switzerland in the field of white-collar crime and cybercrime, and led numerous investigations with national and international scope. Nikola built his agency's cybercrime competence center together with the criminal police. Hi, Nikola. Great to have you on the podcast. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much, Ayelet. Great to be here. Great to be on your podcast. Thank you for having me.
Career Beginnings in Law and Crime
00:01:10
Speaker
So before we dive into the topic of conversation, I really wanted to get to know you a little better and would love if you can tell us about your journey to fight scams, because it's really interesting. You actually started as a lawyer with the law enforcement in Switzerland. And I would love for you to tell us a little bit about your interaction with scams and scam victims and your work there. And we'll talk about your journey and where you are today in a bit. Yeah, of course.
00:01:40
Speaker
My pleasure, and just to give you a little bit my story and my background, it really starts back at Dieben University, where I just found a passion for criminal law. I thought that was the most interesting subject to study. I was a bit closest to, you know, what I knew from the movies, maybe. Basically, that led me down the road to an original apprenticeship in Switzerland with the Office of the Attorney General.
00:02:06
Speaker
And I was really fascinated when I first started working in law enforcement with financial crimes, money laundering, big corruption cases. And so that friendship made me decide I want to work in law enforcement. I want to contribute to helping fight crime.
00:02:28
Speaker
And it led me then as the next step to start as an assistant prosecutor in Switzerland with a local law enforcement agency. And that's where I really got in touch with scams or was more the other way around, they got in touch with me.
00:02:45
Speaker
Basically started working with the police and the local law enforcement office. And pretty much every day we had scam victims who came to us, who reported that they've been scammed and that they
Challenges in Law Enforcement Against Scams
00:02:58
Speaker
lost money. That grabbed my attention and it made me realize then that this is indeed one of the absolute biggest, you know, challenges and crimes that are happening today, affecting society, affecting law enforcement and affecting the financial sector.
00:03:14
Speaker
From there on, could talk longer, but I sort of pivoted and saw, hey, this is the future. This is where I want to make an impact. And that's where we need to invest resources to just become better at fighting these kinds of scams. So tell me about the pivot point. And I know you were also part of a task force when you were in the in-line enforcement in Switzerland. Tell us a little bit about that.
00:03:39
Speaker
seven, eight years back at least, nobody really was able to help or do anything for those scam victims. So yeah, to be frank, you know, often these cases just became part of a caseload that it was hard to deal with for the prosecutor and for the police. And especially because also the cases often have an international dimension, just saw that not much happened to help those victims, not much happened to help acid recovery,
00:04:08
Speaker
and often even on the on the police level there was often not much understanding for these kind of victims and I'm not saying people laughed about these victims but you know to some degree it was sometimes not taken very seriously even as a crime and you know when I dived
00:04:27
Speaker
deeper into this and did a lot of interviews with those victims. I realized that this is not something that just here now, but this is where a lot of crime is going because it's very easy to commit these crimes. You can do it completely global and the risk to be arrested is really surprisingly low because of all these reasons.
Initiatives and Empathy for Victims
00:04:53
Speaker
All of this together made me pivot quite fast when I was confronted with so many of these scam cases to devote all my energy and efforts into that. And in the first part of my career, I did that really with a prosecutor hat on. So in law enforcement, and I started several initiatives and became active in law enforcement, became part of one of the national groups that tried to improve things.
00:05:23
Speaker
And so yeah, I was very active and passionate already back then trying to basically to improve investigations and catch those criminals behind it. And do you feel like you talked about empathy to victims, right? Not people laughing, but also kind of asking how is that happening to them and how do they fall for it? Do you see a change in that level of empathy? Do you feel like law enforcement recognizes now more that it's
00:05:50
Speaker
a global crime scale that needs to be taken seriously? So I think on the grander scheme of things, I absolutely think so. And that's also thanks to this amazing initiative. If you were doing a podcast, I think in the news, the scam topic has been much more written about. And I do think this all helps, right? But that's not to say that we live in a perfect world.
00:06:18
Speaker
We deal today, every day, trying to help scan victims. And we still sometimes hear that they're not being taken also seriously. But that's not just law enforcement, right? It's sometimes just the perception of, oh, how could you have been so stupid to fall for that, right? And for me, it's an important point that I want to mention that, because when I had the cases coming to me as a prosecutor,
00:06:49
Speaker
That was closely with the police. I read what happened and then I interviewed the victim. Then I have to say, out of the many cases I dealt with, not in one single case, it was that simple or it was really the victim to blame.
00:07:05
Speaker
So I'm gonna say, I think it's really wrong to blame the victim here and I think there's a lot behind it, right? And it's really in the most cases organized crime, it's orchestrated, right? And it's very smart how criminals target those victims, the victims and what kind of psychological tricks they use. And so I think that's a key part to it, you know,
00:07:32
Speaker
drive awareness and let's say, you know, help victims come forward, help them report, take victims seriously. I think that's all very, very important pieces to keep mentioning how important that is. It's probably hard to work all day long with scam victims and hear their stories and
00:07:52
Speaker
feel their hurt, their pain. How did it feel for you? How was it for you to be in that place where, on one hand, you know that the resources are limited and you know that there's not much that can be done. It's hard to seize the money, but on the other hand, you have this in-pour of cases and victims and stories. How did it make you feel? It is crazy to see the scale, right? Before, let's say, in my prosecutor role, I was already
00:08:22
Speaker
amazed by, you know, even with the local law enforcement in Switzerland, how often this kind of stuff happens. So for me, it was crazy, right, to learn that we cannot do much more about it. And again, first with the prosecutor hat, for me, it was somewhat frustrating to see how difficult it is to actually
00:08:42
Speaker
In simple terms, catch the criminals behind it, right? And I don't think that has gotten much easier. There is some larger scale success stories, but when you look at the masses of scams happening, I would say it's still at least 95% where no real law enforcement action happens. And what do I mean by that? When we cannot investigate and find the criminals actually behind it.
00:09:07
Speaker
Um, um, but the second piece that I really learned, you know, is that it's almost always about money for the criminals. Um, and for the victims, it's also to a big part about money that they lose. And it's also about the emotional part, of course, but it is also, you know, they're most often tricked into sending money and they, they lose money and often they lose a lot of money. Um,
00:09:36
Speaker
And so that's an angle, you know, where I saw where I was also frustrated a bit to see that we cannot do more than also together with the financial sector. And of course, you know, banks are also crypto exchanges who are involved, unfortunately, who are abused in a way, right by criminals to also make these payments happening.
Prevention and Recovery Strategies
00:10:00
Speaker
and to then cash out that there's not more we can do to help at least stop them from cashing out. That was kind of, you know, got me motivated to say, hey, I can probably never really catch all of the criminals, but maybe we can do more to help at least stop these transactions or in some cases, you know, try our best to get some money back before it's really in the hands of organized crime, basically.
00:10:26
Speaker
I think that's a really, really strong distinction, a strong point, and leads to an approach that I think we talked to Erin West on episode two. I think that she's also taking that approach. We should try to catch the criminals, but we might not be able to because of what you said. It's international in many cases.
00:10:48
Speaker
It's hard to catch them. You need those collaborations and you need the agreements to get the catch the criminals and deliver them to the country that's prosecuting, but you can
00:10:59
Speaker
seize the money and you can't stop in many cases, not all cases, but in many cases you can stop the money from changing hands. So it's going to be interesting to see how this evolves on one hand. You can stop the money, but the criminals will find other ways, but maybe we can prevent the criminals from finding new ways, which is going to be interesting. So you understand it. You need to focus on the money. What do you do next?
00:11:26
Speaker
Yeah, no, exactly right. And to take this back to a story, because for me, Saipera, the company I lead today, really originated from what I saw and learned and tried to do first on a very local level as a prosecutor with the police. And so one thing we started doing is we had some victims, for example, of a Roman scam,
00:11:53
Speaker
who came to us and this is especially a case when the transaction happened maybe three or four days ago or a week or two ago. But we regularly had that and then these transactions often went abroad
00:12:07
Speaker
you know, from a Swiss perspective, or that was then maybe they went to the US or they went to Germany or they went to Spain. And usually, you know, we didn't do anything, to be honest, like we didn't think or help the person, you know, with trying at least to recover assets. Because the function of law enforcement is mostly or primarily still to catch the criminal, right? It's not to help
00:12:35
Speaker
And so what you mentioned is this shift, however, is somewhat happening and I think very important. But we were somewhat innovative and we started doing that and said, and actually helped that victim or we did it then for that victim to inform that beneficiary bank where the money was sent immediately about what happened. We confirmed, hey, this is a complaint that was filed. This is a legit crime.
00:13:02
Speaker
You know, it's a fraud under our, you know, panel code. And we kind of urged the beneficiary bank. I think we sent a letter and when it was abroad, we urged them, you know, please take action. Please try to freeze funds if they're still on your bank. And we also informed them, right, that this beneficiary bank
00:13:22
Speaker
seems to have a bank account that is used for money laundering, that is used in simple terms to cash out these victim funds. And so yeah, so we started doing that really in a few cases and had some success, meaning that we got the feedback from the bank and in some cases they were actually able to at least freeze a portion of these funds. And that's for me the origin. So we did that and I just started thinking, okay, I started
00:13:52
Speaker
Speaking before researching what is happening abroad, what is the status quo? And I realized that 99% of victims don't get that support when they turn to their bank, by the way, also, or to law enforcement. And that's what initiated my original thought, you know, now three years back, thought, okay, well, could we do something that helps every victim with this response?
Founding of Cybera and Support for Victims
00:14:16
Speaker
So to clarify that, you could help every victim eventually reach out to the beneficiary bank and say, could you stop the funds? In simple terms, yes. So that's what we really saw. Speed matters really the faster you can react and if you can react and inform that beneficiary bank or encrypt, that might be a crypto exchange, right?
00:14:38
Speaker
But in the bank world, when a fishery bank, in a legal, correct, credible way about what happened and tell them, hey, you have an issue you want to look at as a bank, then they do take action and they're also obliged to based on anti-money laundering laws. And so that's my original process where I thought thinking, can we somehow try, together with police, together with banks,
00:15:07
Speaker
to automate and just improve that way of response of information sharing. So you started Sibera to support that really. Did you immediately start a company or how did you go about that?
00:15:24
Speaker
So originally I thought, you know, because it was so collaborative, I actually thought originally about doing that as a nonprofit because it can be easier from my experience as a nonprofit to get all relevant stakeholders on board. And the platform I had in mind and still have is very much about collaboration and sharing information, right?
00:15:49
Speaker
Um, but actually, so, you know, I have to bring in my, my twin brother, Claudio, uh, we're really a business background more. And he was a bit more active in the whole startup world. Then, you know, when we started discussing this, um, he kind of, we thought, you know, we have to go have to build technology. If we would ever want to be successful, uh, to do this at scale and globally. And so, um,
00:16:16
Speaker
I still love nonprofits, but that kind of, you know, became much more difficult with nonprofit because it's a huge task, right? We're trying to accomplish here. We started the first steps of putting together a deck and what that could look like.
00:16:30
Speaker
And then eventually had a really great supporter who backed us from the banking world, who is Marcel Rølner, the former CEO of UBS Bank and now president of the Swiss Banking Association. And so he was really one of the key people who also believed in us early on and gave us the conviction that if we build this as a startup, as a platform, there can be a big benefit not
00:16:57
Speaker
only for victims, for law enforcement, but also for really the financial sector. And so yeah, from there, it kind of got started. And then eventually, with that backing, I decided, okay, I want to take the chance to basically help more victims than I could potentially as a prosecutor.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's another really, really important, interesting point that we always hear about how law enforcement is limited with funds. It's isolated in, especially in large countries in different states and like in the United States, the different states and around the world, every country has their own system.
00:17:38
Speaker
This type of crime requires collaboration and building a tool like that and enabling the scale of a tool like that definitely requires funding. I don't see this as something, an initiative today with the current forces in action that a public sector organization can build. A tool like this is a really interesting point of how public private sector collaborations can facilitate a growth of protections in this space.
00:18:07
Speaker
in all I think cybersecurity spaces, but in particular when it comes to these types of crimes that are financial crimes impacting such a large portion of the population.
00:18:19
Speaker
in and really all over the world. So I wanted to ask you and maybe I'll go back to something I described in an earlier earlier episode called the scam lifecycle. So what I call the scam lifecycle is kind of the flow of what happens when someone is scammed. So the first step is receiving a text message or an email or a phone call saying
00:18:41
Speaker
Something happened a manipulation it's i'm talking about this quick scam which is a bank impersonation and delivery scam something that. Entices the user to take action if it's a romance scam then this process is a little. Earlier so now they're manipulated second step is transferring the money at the point of transaction either financial institutions or crypto or some other form of money transferring and some other form of technology.
00:19:08
Speaker
to support that it could also be checks and ATM and things like that. And then the next step is when the victim realizes that there was a scam, that their money is gone and they need help. So they reach out to their bank or law enforcement and they try to get help and then there's that whole process. And I wanted to ask you, where do you sit in this scam life cycle that I just described? I know there's definitely the part of, I realize I'm scammed, now I want to get help, but
00:19:38
Speaker
You talked about collaboration, data sharing. So I wanted maybe if you can clarify a little more, what are the points that you help with across the SCAN lifecycle? Yes, with pleasure. So you mentioned, right, and just to follow on what I said earlier, one of the key areas where we built a solution and where we help is in the online, in the reporting.
00:20:04
Speaker
of a scam and in the response or in the reaction. So basically helping law enforcement, helping banks and victims, first of all, to take in the information about the scam in the best possible way and as fast as possible.
00:20:23
Speaker
To make that a bit more specific, we built a one-stop shop like online reporting platform for scam victims. And so we have collaborations with several local law enforcement agencies as an example, but also with banks, also with crypto businesses. And what they do is basically they refer the victim to our online reporting site.
00:20:53
Speaker
And so sometimes we do that, you know, with a referral, sometimes we do that really together for the victim, but it's like one, the best possible place for a scam victim to report. I mean, that's my vision, right? I think we're uniquely progressing on the way to get there and to be that one best placed person for a victim to report. But that's one key gap identified that does not exist.
00:21:22
Speaker
And it's still, you know, of course we're growing, right? But it's very confusing still for many scam victims who had reported. And so that's a key to just at the beginning, right? That's already very often we lose so much time. Yeah, I think that's a big problem, by the way. Centralized reporting is definitely in the US, not something that we have. I think other countries do have that and do have, like the UK has maybe two or three places where scam victims can report and some other countries, but
00:21:52
Speaker
Getting to clear centralized reports so victims know very well where to go, that's an optimal state. Exactly. Yeah, exactly, right? So it's the reporting. And then as a victim, of course, and for all of us, it's also very important to see or to know what happens after the reporting.
00:22:13
Speaker
And so you mentioned the UK, right, that for example, they do have a centralized reporting, but which agent takes on your case and if and how you're getting some support with potentially recovering assets. That's very unclear and very difficult for the government to handle. And one reason is that we mentioned, right, it's not really their core mission. Their core mission is to catch criminals.
00:22:43
Speaker
But so basically that's where I agree so much with you that, you know, working together with private and technology companies and public sector, I think it's the only way
Importance of Data Sharing and Impact of Scams
00:22:55
Speaker
forward. I'm seeing at least right now because technology and private companies can fill some of these gaps. And so which gap are we filling? We're filling that gap of, you know,
00:23:08
Speaker
First of all, how we address the victim, they report with us. We make that a nice possible experience. And we also give them access to victim dashboard, where they have resources, where they have some awareness materials. And that's all stuff that's very important, which often the victim doesn't get.
00:23:31
Speaker
But then most important, the victim does want the chance to get their funds back. And that is still the number one when they turn to the police or the bank. You're in a situation where you realized, oh, I've been scammed and I lost maybe a few hundred thousand, maybe five thousand. But you really want support at least to try and help get some help to get those funds back.
00:23:56
Speaker
And so that's where we at least enable that by sharing the information, filing this report or complaint as fast as possible with these beneficiary institutions so they can take action. And so yeah, this is really on the response side, right? That we do that very much with the bank partners and with the law enforcement partners together to improve that for the victim.
00:24:25
Speaker
I don't want to speak too much, but I want to say the second part is the data sharing piece, right? So when victims report with us, we make it clear that as a victim, if you give the permission that we can use and share the information about the scammer, that that can really have a positive effect for prevention. And again, it's very important that this is not the victim information.
00:24:53
Speaker
But as a victim, you have valuable information. You know, for example, where you sent money. So you know, oh, there is a bank account that's, you know, criminally used. You also have email addresses that the scammers used. Maybe a crypto wallet, a phone number. And so we, through our reporting, we can get that permission from the victim.
00:25:18
Speaker
that we can use and share this information with banks, with law enforcement, with social media companies potentially. We're not doing that yet, but there is a value and they can use that data and that information for prevention. Hopefully, you know, circling back to where you started at the beginning helped prevent some future victims. And so, yeah, so this is basically
00:25:46
Speaker
We're trying to cover these two parts of that life cycle, right? Response and then using the response to share and by sharing really helping to prevent future victims, which is the best we can do in general, right? Yeah. And I'm sure, you know, if financial institutions or those e-commerce or any institution that allows the money to move,
00:26:11
Speaker
has this type of data in advance, then they can definitely block transactions that go out or that information definitely can be valuable part of the chain or stopping at different points across the scan lifecycle. Yeah, exactly right. And I want to say, I think it's a very much like,
00:26:31
Speaker
multi-layered approach. We're not going to save the world alone, but we have one gap that is at the moment not happening enough from what I see. It is around this data sharing element for prevention. Scammers, criminals, I think they share data way better than we do in the crime fighting space. That's one gap where we can improve.
00:26:57
Speaker
And then, of course, there's other technologies that also help. But any new technology, I think, is so much needed here because, you know, look at the FBI reports and the same globally, every year it still keeps growing. And as you know, it's in the billions, right? Every year that goes straight to organized crime. So I do think it's key to keep thinking, what more can we do? What additional technologies can help?
00:27:26
Speaker
Right. I personally think there's going to be an explosion of technologies for scam detection, which is great because it's so much, it's really needed. And as you mentioned, we, we talked about it in a last episode as well. The, the FBI reports just came out and we're talking about the billions in the US, but globally it's, it's probably in the hundreds of billions. Absolutely. Right. I think there are a trillion. Yeah.
00:27:55
Speaker
I think I read 5% is only reported to the FBI, so if you already multiply that, right?
00:28:03
Speaker
kind of multiplied for the globe. Right, because a lot of people don't report, right? And we don't know if it's 5% report or 10% report, because we don't know what we don't know. But I think you're right, the estimates are that at least less than 10% of people report. So if you just multiply the 10 billion that the FBI published by 10, we have 100 billion in the US, maybe 70% of that is US, and then take that across the globe.
00:28:33
Speaker
I think my point is always that we don't understand the size of the problem yet from an impact on our social
00:28:40
Speaker
economic perspective. I think these people will need help with closing the gap of the money that they lost in many cases, especially with the very large crypto scams that are happening. Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, that's a huge topic, right? We also, it's one of the largest types that are being reported through our platform as well with the partners.
00:29:05
Speaker
our crypto investment scams or investment scams in general. So that's that I think it's not even a new thing but just exploded I think even more. Yeah I agree with you fully right the amount of money that goes into the wrong hands and the effect on the victims. Yeah we should try to measure it as best as we can. I hope we can contribute also to some degree to that but
00:29:31
Speaker
If we measure that impact, it's really quite shocking what negative effect it has on all of society. I want to ask you two last questions. The first one is, what do you think needs to happen to drive real change? I think we spoke about many of the items that I think are needed. Unfortunately, there's not the one thing that will make the real change happen.
00:30:00
Speaker
I wish it was like that and I could say tomorrow it's going to be Fibera or it's going to be your podcast or whatever else. But it's really all these elements together. I think it's really the awareness that people write about it that I guess even, yeah, I really like it that, you know, newspapers, popular stories about it.
00:30:21
Speaker
awareness, I think is a big piece. But it's still somewhat limited. And I also believe there is studies about that. You're very aware when it happened to you, right? But when it never happened to you, most people I don't think really paid too much attention. So the effect of only awareness, I think it is unfortunately limited. And so the other piece is, you know, is for me really technology. I mean,
00:30:48
Speaker
Makes sense, it's the route I went. But I think it's key that we keep, that it keeps being investments into technology that's being built to really reduce that scam problem. And then it has all the angles we talked about, right? The reporting, for me, the data sharing, but also other technologies or in combination technologies like, you know, AI, now everybody talking about
00:31:18
Speaker
Of course, this kind of technology can help criminals, but it should as much, if not more, help us fight back. And then, yeah, it's really a joint effort, right? A joint effort to get better at that. And yeah. Right.
Hope and Collaboration in Combating Scams
00:31:41
Speaker
So one last question and I think your journey is really interesting. As we talk, I think about it more and more. So you started as an attorney, you were with law enforcement and saw these cases and you wanted to solve the problem at scale and then you turned it into an entrepreneur. And I'm sure you saw a lot of things along the way, a lot of
00:32:02
Speaker
people and approaches and processes. And I wanted to ask you, given where we are and what needs to happen, what are you hopeful about so far? Many things because I see many initiatives, right? Of course, the numbers, again, unfortunately, just keep going up, which kind of is at least trying to destroy our hope. But if I look back, let's say,
00:32:32
Speaker
maybe eight years where I somewhat started as a prosecutor. As far as I remember, at least the topic was not out there, let's put it that way. Now, and I hope that's not just because I got even more involved in it, but now I do realize, you know, big newspapers are writing about it. There is initiatives at the highest level. I think in the UK, it was announced that scams is, you know, a national emergency or fraud.
00:33:01
Speaker
uh legislation is kind of taking uh at least you know taking note um one of them is you know discussion of i guess reimbursements of scams do banks have to reimburse uh scam victims so so so there is all this stuff happening um and law enforcement right i think um
00:33:23
Speaker
law enforcement, there's never another willingness to help victim or to do more. I really think that whoever is in law enforcement won't cease the huge problem and want to do more. But it takes some time to get the budget, talk about it.
00:33:40
Speaker
make it big enough problem for law enforcement to also empower them to work together with knowledge companies to start using that to start trusting new players to come into the space. But yeah, so this is in grand scheme of things. It's this right in let's say maybe somewhat small the world of Siberia.
00:33:59
Speaker
What I've seen is today, when you're a scam victim, you turn to your police or to your bank, it's really near zero. I think some studies say 0.05 chance to get any money back. We've so far achieved more or less 5% positive responses when we work with partners to help with the response. And we're trying to really, I'm positive to get that to 10, 15%.
00:34:25
Speaker
And I know it's never going to be 100 percent, but if we can get it from zero to 10 percent, that it means, you know, in the global scale, billions of dollars are being saved some water. Don't go into the wrong hands of organized crime. So there's, yeah, there's plenty of stuff to be hopeful about. And and especially also a lot of individuals who
00:34:52
Speaker
who are very active, including you, I think Erin West, you mentioned, and many others. And I do think it boils down often to individuals who just, in a way, don't give up and keep doing work and spreading the message and trying their best to solve this big, big problem.
00:35:11
Speaker
Well, that's great. And thank you for that. And all I have to say is keep up the good fight. I really like how you took initiative and decided to take action, built a company and you're just charging ahead. So good luck. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It's been a great pleasure talking to you. Great. And thank you so much for coming to the podcast and sharing your story. Thank you.
00:35:35
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you got a message and you're not sure if it's a scam or not, you can validate it on a new website called scamranger.ai, and also get advice on how to check the validity of the message. If you want to hear more about the recent evolution in online scams, follow me on LinkedIn, Ayerette Bigger Levine, or follow Scam Rangers, scam-rangers. Until the next time,