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Coordinated Action: The Key to a National Strategy Against Scams, A conversation with Ken Westbrook, CEO and Founder of Stop Scams Alliance
495 Plays8 months ago
In this episode of Scam Rangers, we sit down with Ken Westbrook, a former member of the US intelligence community, as he shares the story that sparked his mission to combat online scams. Ken opens up about his mother's unfortunate encounter with online criminals and how it inspired him to take action.
With the founding of Stop Scams Alliance, Ken discusses his efforts to drive change at the national level, drawing inspiration from successful initiatives implemented by the British government. He outlines the strategies employed across the pond and advocates for similar action within the United States, emphasizing the importance of government intervention in combating cybercrime.
Join us as we explore Ken Westbrook's journey from personal tragedy to public advocacy, shedding light on the pressing issue of online scams and the collective effort needed to address it effectively. This episode serves as a call to action for individuals and policymakers alike, urging everyone to unite in the fight against digital deception.
This podcast is hosted by 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. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayelet-biger-levin/
ScamRanger: https://scamranger.ai/
Resources:
Stop Scams Alliance: https://www.stopscamsalliance.org/
Op Ed New York Times:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/25/scams-ruin-american-lives-present/
Stop Scams UK: https://stopscamsuk.org.uk/
UK Strategy to sop scams: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-blueprint-to-protect-public-from-scammers
Australia strategy to stop scams:
Recommended
Transcript
Elderly Scam Tactics Exposed
00:00:00
Speaker
The criminals convince her to start making withdrawals from her accounts and sending cashiers checks to various addresses in New York and Colorado and California. And the bank starts to get suspicious with these large transfers being made by an elderly woman and they start questioning her now.
00:00:18
Speaker
The criminals coach victims to say the banks are going to ask you a question. So here's your story when you go in. Remember, the banks are the bad guys. They're taking your money. So you have to convince them that you're sending it to the good guys, which is us. And you do that by saying, oh, you're sending the money for a home renovation or you're sending the money to buy a pickup truck or something like that.
Introduction to Scam Rangers and Ken Westbrook
00:00:47
Speaker
Scam Rangers, a podcast about the human side of fraud and the people who are on a mission to protect us. I'm your host, Ayere Figur Levine, and I'm passionate about driving awareness and solving this problem.
00:01:08
Speaker
Thanks, Cam Ranger. Online scams are very personal. Ken Westbrook served as an executive in the intelligence community, protecting the U.S. against foreign threats, specializing in analysis information management, and tackling heart problems by promoting cooperation.
00:01:26
Speaker
Ken is the CEO and founder of Stop Scams Alliance, a nonprofit whose mission is to significantly reduce scams in the United States through a comprehensive, systematic approach involving public-private partnership and cross-sector cooperation from technology, telecom, financial institutions, consumer advocacy groups, and government. Hi
Ken's Personal Fraud Experience
00:01:49
Speaker
Ken, how are you? I'm fine, Ayala. It's so good to be with you today.
00:01:54
Speaker
So great to have you on the podcast. So you and I have chatted a while back. I think when you kind of just started to get into things and you recently founded the Stop Scams Alliance, tell me how this all started for you. You have a personal story that is very strong. I do, but let me just start by giving a shout out to people who've been doing this and fighting fraudsters for many, many years. You're people like yourself, of course.
00:02:22
Speaker
People like Erin West, people like Ronnie Tokosowski, Yori Abraham. There's many people I've met recently. In fact, I just had dinner with Ronnie last week and learned that he's been doing this for seven or eight years. My story is a little more recent than that. A year ago this month, actually, my mom was a scam victim. She lives in California and got the dreaded Microsoft pop-up ad on her computer, and one thing led to another.
00:02:53
Speaker
And so I started looking around at how I could help. And what I've become to learn after doing a lot of research on this is that our country is literally under attack by foreign organized crime gangs who are scamming us every day.
00:03:11
Speaker
So what I try to bring to the problem is a long time experience in the intelligence community as an executive. I
Techniques Used by Scammers on the Elderly
00:03:20
Speaker
subsequently worked for some very large US corporations that did do information technology.
00:03:28
Speaker
I taught a class I created and taught a class at Georgetown University on information management. So I'm a researcher analyst with a long track record of government programs and figuring out how to get really big things done using data principally because one of the answers I've learned is that
00:03:50
Speaker
The bad guys are organized, but we're not. And so one of the ways to organize ourselves is to create better data to fight against them. So yeah, let's go back to that day. What happened exactly? So she saw, as you mentioned, the pop up on our computer. What happened next?
00:04:10
Speaker
Well, so the purpose of the pop-up is to get you to call a 1-800 number, which the victim thinks is Microsoft. And because the phone's spoofing, her phone said Washington State, so she believes she was talking to Microsoft. The scam then continues by the criminals saying very often, oh, we see 39 hackers on your computer right now.
00:04:34
Speaker
And very often, when your computer gets hacked, your bank accounts get hacked too. So let me put you in touch with your bank. All they had to do, by the way, was ask for a phone number. So no identity theft, no nothing. Just with a phone number, criminals using the dark web can look up where a person banks these days. So armed with that information, the criminals say, well, we see you bank at Chase Bank.
00:05:00
Speaker
And very often when your computer's hacked, your bank accounts are hacked too. So let's put you in touch with the fraud department at Chase Bank. Then her phone spoofing says that she's talking to Connecticut.
00:05:13
Speaker
So she believes she's talking to Microsoft and Chase Bank, and then they're able to convince her that the criminals are stealing her money right now, and she has to move money to a protected account. And of course,
Authorities' Response to Major Scams
00:05:27
Speaker
when you do that, you're moving it to the fraudsters. So people, and this, by the way,
00:05:32
Speaker
When you look at the FBI statistics and people over the age of 60, if you count up by number of victims, this is the biggest scam that affects Americans by far, twice the number of victims of any other scam. And people believe that they're speaking to authorized officials at their bank or at Microsoft. And because it is so easy to spoof phone calls these days, they fall victim to very large scale scams.
00:06:01
Speaker
My mother ended up losing most of her life savings. Now, fortunately, she's covered because she has sons to take care of her, but a lot of people are not. So this happens. She talks to them and she shares information or does something to allow them access to her bank account. Then what happens?
00:06:20
Speaker
So the criminals convince her to start making withdrawals from her accounts and sending cashiers checks to various addresses in New York and Colorado and California. And the bank starts to get suspicious with these large transfers being made by an elderly woman and they start questioning her. Now, the criminals coach victims to say the banks are going to ask you a question. So here's your story when you go in.
00:06:49
Speaker
Remember, the banks are the bad guys, and they're taking your money, so you have to convince them that you're sending it to the good guys, which is us, and you do that by saying, oh, you're sending the money for a home renovation, or you're sending the money to buy a pickup truck, or something like that. For a while, she was able to convince the banks to complete the transactions, but ultimately, a bank official said, this is just fishy, you have to talk to your sons, and when she did, we unraveled it and knew about the crime then.
00:07:19
Speaker
So how long was this going on before it stopped? This was going on for about three weeks. And then once we found out about it, my brother called me one day and said, Ken, you and I know what's going on here, but the fraudsters don't know they've been discovered. And they just called mom right now and sent her a text to get the next tranche of money. So I said, let's call the FBI.
00:07:48
Speaker
I called the field office of the FBI in Los Angeles and told them that my mom had been a victim of a scam that involved very large amounts of money. She was on the phone with the perpetrators right now and asked them, do they want the phone to follow up? They said, our advice is to seize communication.
00:08:11
Speaker
And I said, you don't even want to know the phone numbers. And there was a pause. And I heard paper ruffle a little bit. And then I heard them say, our advice is to seize communications.
Challenges of Reporting Scams in the US
00:08:23
Speaker
That is a very, very disturbing moment right there.
00:08:29
Speaker
Right. Since then, I've talked to various telephone fraud investigators and they believe that armed with numbers, we could do a lot to follow up, trace back the call to the crime gangs and disrupt them or arrest them. But we were not set up as a country to absorb this kind of information and to make quick use of it. So what did you do next? You called the FBI. They gave you advice. You're probably very angry at that point in time that that's the advice.
00:08:59
Speaker
Well, so the first step is to take care of mom. I knew she had been the victim of a crime. And so the first step was to support her.
00:09:08
Speaker
And we called, thankfully, the Secret Service was very good. They showed up, gave her advice. Adult protective services showed up. They gave her advice about how to recover from this and what to do next. Then we started the process of reporting the crime to the government and to various organizations.
00:09:30
Speaker
And then that's when we found out that there's not a central place to report this kind of information. The main places to report it are the FTC, which has two different websites, by the way, and then the FBI. But there's also the police reports. There's also the banks.
00:09:47
Speaker
There's also, we ended up filing reports with Secret Service and we ended up filing reports with seven or eight U.S. government organizations and I think 17 companies worldwide. The queen occurred because of a Microsoft impersonation, so we let Microsoft know.
00:10:06
Speaker
Along the way, they installed remote access software, so we let the remote access software companies know so that they could take action. Now, the experience that I had, we also contacted two attorney general's offices, one in New York, where the Money Mule accounts were, and also California.
00:10:28
Speaker
and got letters back saying there's nothing we can do. In fact, that was the common theme of all the reports that we received. I heard over and over again, there's nothing we can do, there's nothing we can do, there's nothing we can do. And what did you learn
Lack of Centralized Support for Fraud Victims
00:10:42
Speaker
from the perspective of recovering the money? What did the bank say about giving her the money back?
00:10:51
Speaker
Well, at first they said there may be an opportunity, because you reported it so quickly, there may be an opportunity to stop some of these transactions before they are sent. But what ended up happening was that did not turn out to be the case and we got none of them any better.
00:11:12
Speaker
And obviously, to our listeners, this is authorized fraud to distinguish from unauthorized, right? So what was that learning journey for you? Well, I've since learned. In fact, my first step, I was in the car going to the train station to come back to DC on a vacation. And we had a couple of hours on our hands. And I asked my wife, let's find a good podcast to listen to, to learn more about this situation. And we found your podcast.
00:11:40
Speaker
And that's where I learned about authorized push payment fraud and the difference between authorized payments and unauthorized payments. And the more I've learned about this, I've learned that authorized push payments is the new scam. I've looked at British data and authorized scam has used to be relatively minor, is now the predominant scam in the UK, and it certainly is here too.
00:12:08
Speaker
and the predominant crime in the UK as well. So you learned all this. You had the situation with your mother. And what happened since? What happened after that? Well, you'll remember I was told, I can't tell you how many times. There's nothing we can do. There's nothing we can do. There's nothing we can do. That was in March of 2023.
00:12:36
Speaker
In May of 2023, the British government announced their fraud strategy on May 3rd. And I read that it's 70 pages long. There's 50 different initiatives in there. And as I read through that, I began to realize there's a heck of a lot we can do. Look at this plan. It's very well thought out. It's got all the right steps to start making a difference. And so that's when
00:13:04
Speaker
I started to really do a deep dive into what are the best practices going on, not only in the UK, but also in Australia and Singapore and Sweden and Germany and Taiwan. There's a lot
Learning from International Anti-Scam Strategies
00:13:16
Speaker
of countries now that have decided that they're going to fight back strenuously against these criminals, and they have mounted efforts, some of which are now paying off.
00:13:29
Speaker
I remember at the same time that the UK announced their program and one of the points that caught my attention in this program was the fact that they're saying we're not going to only prevent scams here, we're actually going to go after
00:13:46
Speaker
the scammers, even if they're overseas. And that brought some hope, in my view, to not just being preventative, but actually taking action to potentially stop this in a wider scale and not have them go after others. And then Australia announced
00:14:05
Speaker
a similar program at roughly the same time. It was also spring of 2023. So they had pretty audacious goals. What are some findings a year later? Well, to start off with, let's just talk about what the British government has done. You mentioned the global aspect of this and being more proactive to root out the organized crime gangs that are behind this.
00:14:31
Speaker
I think it's very important that the British government has declared this a national security issue. They're adding over 400 fraud investigators to their government, which is a very large number. We're keeping in mind that the UK is one-fifth the size of the United States. That would be like having 2,000 fraud investigators here.
00:14:51
Speaker
They've told their intelligence community that they need to start gathering the information to take down these guys. That's one pillar of what they're doing. Another pillar is national education. They have an education program that they intend to reach 95% of people in the UK. And then the third pillar, which I think we need to pay much more attention to here in the United States,
00:15:15
Speaker
is stopping scams at the source. And I'll give you a little bit more detail about that in a minute. But those are the three pillars that the UK government has announced. And since the creation of their anti-fraud strategy in May of 2023, they are announcing double digit declines in fraud rates
00:15:35
Speaker
13%, they say, sustained over the last year, whereas according to the US, latest US statistics from the FBI were showing a 22% increase compared to last year. So in the US, the skyrocketing growth is continuing year over year, whereas in the UK and also in Australia, they seem to be bending the curve. Yeah.
00:15:58
Speaker
So the FBI numbers this year were $12.5 billion, whereas last year it was $10.2 billion. So definitely we see steady growth of the impact of scams in the US, and that's definitely something we need to change. Right. And a footnote to what you just said about the $12.5 billion, that's what's reported to the FBI. Right.
00:16:19
Speaker
And of course, everyone knows that this crime is highly underreported because of a variety of reasons, either because of embarrassment or because people have a hard time reporting. Remember my experience of reporting to so many different agencies.
Founding Stop Scams Alliance
00:16:35
Speaker
Well, you know where to go. I think most people don't think about going to the FBI, right? And even if they go to their bank and talk about it, and let's say they got over the shame, the bank will highly, probably recommend to go to the FBI. It doesn't mean that they will. I think the commonly accepted numbers is probably 10, the problem is tenfold in the reporting right now. So less than 10% of people report these scams.
00:17:03
Speaker
I think you're absolutely right about the tenfold number. A number of studies have shown that. And then there's two recent studies, one from the FTC, which shows that fraud losses could be as high as $137 billion, and then another poll and report that was done by a group called the Global Anti-Scam Alliance.
00:17:23
Speaker
That study showed in the US last year, $159 billion losses that were estimated. So there's no doubt that we're talking losses in excess of $100 billion, which is like the annual revenues of a company like Bank of America or AT&T. I mean, this is huge. And we're not even so far.
00:17:46
Speaker
We haven't even counted up the other losses to society. We're just talking so far about dollar losses out of the victim's pocket, but there's other losses to society like all the education we have to do and the defenses we have to raise and the losses to banks and the emotional distress and adult protective services and law enforcement costs. There's all kinds of additional costs in addition to just the victim's costs.
00:18:10
Speaker
So tell me, speaking of that, what happened to your mom after the fact? We talked about the financial losses, but what happened to her from those other perspectives? A week ago, she had a couple of traumatic events take place. She's, first of all, over the last year, she's been having a health downturn, principally from high blood pressure that's been very difficult to control.
00:18:37
Speaker
Last week, she had to speak to her tax accountant and recount again the story of her theft locks for tax purposes. And then two FBI agents showed up at her door to ask about a case that they're developing, which is good news. I'm glad that they did that. But that evening, she had a heart attack.
00:18:59
Speaker
and has been in the hospital for the last week recovering from that. Things seem to be going well, but still there's a lot of medical tests to be done to make sure she can recover okay. I'm so sorry, and I hope she feels awesome. Given the time coincidence, while one can't say for sure, it is quite possible that the added stress over this last year of her life that resulted from the scam has caused this medical condition.
00:19:30
Speaker
So definitely a lot into that. And then you looked around and learned about what some organizations and nonprofit organizations are doing around the world. You mentioned to me both Stop Scams UK and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance. How have those organizations influenced you in creating what has now become Stop Scams Alliance in the US?
00:19:57
Speaker
Well, I became aware of StopScams UK and also the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and I admired a lot what they were trying to do to create a systematic approach to this issue. Fraud is a process that starts with often with technology and then it moves to the telecom sector and then it moves to the banking industry.
00:20:21
Speaker
And then various law enforcement groups get involved. But in my observation, so far in the United States, we are approaching this problem in sort of silos, in individual industry buckets. And there's not a sufficient effort, in my humble opinion.
00:20:39
Speaker
on working together across industry and with the government to solve it on a systematic basis. I saw both of those things going on in the UK with Stop Scams UK and also with the Global Anti-Scam Alliance. Both organizations are seeking to create a cross-industry, cross-government effort. And I thought that was sorely needed here in the United States. And after having looked around for a while, I couldn't really find a parallel. So that's why I created Stop Scams Alliance.
00:21:08
Speaker
So tell me about what you guys are doing and how is this organization structured and what your plans are? One thing you could do to learn about Stop Scams Alliance is to look in today's Washington Post, where a op-ed piece that we played an instrumental role in creating. A former boss of mine happens to be the former FBI and CIA director.
Extent of Scam Victimization in the US
00:21:34
Speaker
And I approached him and his wife last summer about the idea of doing an op-ed piece that would get the word out more and would have meaty recommendations about what the US can do to respond to this growing threat. And one thing led to another, and yesterday, or this morning actually, three hours ago, the Washington Post published an op-ed piece. It's called Scams are on the Rise and They're Ruining Lives and We Can Stop It.
00:22:01
Speaker
We'll put a link in the show notes, definitely, to this up end. So tell us about it. I read it, of course, and I thought it was spot on now, especially with the call to action at the end. So tell me a little bit about how it came to be and what it talks about, what the call to action is as well.
00:22:19
Speaker
Well, so another thing you should know about William Webster and his wife are they are scam victims themselves. In 2014, a Jamaican criminal contacted them and this was a sweepstakes scam where, congratulations, you've won a lot of money, just send us $50,000 to cover the taxes and the fees and we'll send you your, I think it was $12 million sweepstakes winnings.
00:22:46
Speaker
Unfortunately, or unfortunately for the criminal, they had tried to scan the former FBI and CIA director. So they were able to get authorities involved and they were able to arrest the guy who is now in jail. But the Webster's ever since then have been very proactive giving interviews on TV and trying to get the word out about scams and how to protect yourself.
00:23:14
Speaker
active in saying that we should have more education about it. They often tell kids to watch out for their parents. They've been very, very active in this field, even to the point of William Webster did a wonderful public service announcement that's out on YouTube. You can search for it.
00:23:35
Speaker
William Webster, scam victim FBI. And there's a great PSA that former director William Webster did that the bottom line is if it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody. You know, because I very often hear when I do public speaking now, people will say, well, isn't it the scam victim's fault or I wouldn't fall for that or something. So now every time I give a talk, I start with the picture of William H. Webster
00:24:06
Speaker
And the tagline is if it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody because that's true. This happens to doctors, it happens to lawyers, it happens to very senior government officials. And I'm here to tell you that there is a scam for everybody at a certain point in your life. So don't blame the victim.
00:24:26
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's a psychological explanation to that and how the amygdala hide, you know, that that it's processing emotions, hijacks are prefrontal cortex and the rational thinking. There's an episode that explains that but but that definitely can happen to anyone if they just hear the right story that will drive that emotion 100%. So, so what's the call to action in the in the op-ed?
00:24:56
Speaker
So the op-ed starts off with an explanation of just how big the problem is, which is way bigger than most people think. One of the first things that Stop Scams Alliance did was to contact the Gallup organization last fall to do the first ever Gallup poll that asked about scams. Polls typically ask about theft, but scams are different than theft, and so you don't get the right answer. If you ask a victim of a scam, are they a victim of a theft, they might say no because they don't think of it that way.
00:25:26
Speaker
But when Gallup did the poll last fall, they found that 8% of US adults, which equates to about 21 million Americans, were scammed in the last year.
00:25:36
Speaker
Now think about that number, 21 million Americans. New York state has about 20 million residents and Florida is 22 million. So each year in the United States about the size of Florida or New York are being scammed. It amounts to some 57,000 people a day are being scammed.
00:26:00
Speaker
The first thing that I discussed with the Webster's was the need for a national strategy and a whole of government approach. Right now, our government is focusing on fraud mainly in individual agencies and I will call them stovepipes of excellence. You have the FTC doing their thing, you have the FCC doing their thing, you have the FBI doing their thing.
00:26:26
Speaker
then there's banking regulators, but there's no place where this comes together. So in our view, what needs to happen is a White House level directive that orders the government to start cooperating on this and start budgeting for the upcoming fight against the foreign organized crime gangs.
00:26:43
Speaker
Congress itself could get involved. Very often in this country when we have a difficult problem that requires experts to come together to figure out a way forward, we create a federal advisory commission. And it seems to me that the issue of scams is well qualified to create a federal advisory commission, the purpose of which would be to issue a report within the next year or so that would
00:27:09
Speaker
do the equivalent of what the British government has done with their anti-fraud strategy back in May of 2023. Another part of
Centralized Fraud Reporting Advocacy
00:27:17
Speaker
this problem is to
00:27:18
Speaker
measure the size of the problem properly. In the UK, they take all the reports from victims that come in through the various silos. They have silos too. But what happens is the data are all combined in the home office. So they have a much better picture of the overall number of victims and their dollar losses and how it happened that are coming from reports from victims. On top of that, since very few people report,
00:27:46
Speaker
The government has been doing public opinion polls since 2016 that tries to measure the unreported numbers. They will do polls to find out are you the victim of a scam and how did it happen and to whom did you report it and why didn't you report it. In other words, try to find out the total size of the problem beyond what's just reported.
00:28:08
Speaker
In the United States, we've never done a government poll on scams. The Census Bureau does every six month polls, but they ask about theft and not scams. So the US government, to my knowledge, has never asked a single question in a public opinion poll about scams, and we should start doing that. So tell me a little bit about your plans with Stop Scams Alliance. How are you going to drive or what is your plan to drive
00:28:36
Speaker
some change and taking more responsibility by the government. And how are you trying to impact that? Well, the first step is to measure the problem and to raise public awareness. When I talk to people in Congress, this is not an issue for them right now, in part because we just haven't measured the problem and don't know how big it is. So the first step is to get a handle on just how many victims there are there and what the dollar losses are and how it happened.
00:29:06
Speaker
So measurement is key. The other thing that we're doing is to raise public awareness through podcasts like this, through the Washington Post Op-Ed. We need to start having a national conversation about scams and we need to start talking about how we're going to respond to this growing threat.
00:29:26
Speaker
So part of your work is really, and you shared this with me in the past, leveraging your skills from your intelligence research days and really thinking about a way and constructing that. But another part is actually lobbying that with people who are connected to the government and can make those changes and can put this on the agenda for different agencies to then take it to the next level.
00:29:53
Speaker
Well, I found when I was in the government, I was in a group that was very mission oriented and there's a number of mission oriented people out there, some of whom have retired and have time on their hands and they're just willing to help in any way that they can. I can't tell you how many doors I've knocked on and the door just opens because people want to help in the worst way.
00:30:20
Speaker
One thing that you mentioned to me in terms of the approach to solve this problem is a concept called left of boom. Can you explain that to me and how this connects to the mission here? Sure. The military has a great phrase, and they talk about left of boom and right of boom, with boom being, let's say, an explosion, a terrorist incident.
00:30:42
Speaker
And there's right of boom people, the people who go in and collect the bomb fragments and piece it together and try to find the bad guy that way. And they're very important people.
00:30:52
Speaker
But in the intelligence community where I come from, we tend to think more left of boom, which is trying to find out how things happen and to disrupt it at the source. So one of our themes at Stop Scams Alliance is to stop scams at the source. Like what would happen if the phone call that pretended to be a bank that really wasn't, what happened would happen if the phone call never was received?
00:31:22
Speaker
In Australia, for example, foreign phone calls that attempt to spoof domestic numbers in Australia are blocked. So the foreign organized crime gangs trying to call into Australia, their calls don't even get through. And in other countries, they let their citizens know when they're getting a foreign phone call so that they can make a decision. But we don't have that ability in the US because spoofing is so common. We do have the technical ability to do it.
00:31:53
Speaker
gathered the will to actually make it happen.
00:31:56
Speaker
And I think one of the things that you mentioned kind of a few actions that you would like to promote about reporting, information sharing, verified communications was one of them, and also remote access. So tell me a little bit about kind of specific initiatives that you're promoting with the organization. Let's start with the importance of centralized fraud reporting.
00:32:27
Speaker
Before 9-11 in the United States, we did not have centralized reporting on terrorism events. But after 9-11, the US government created centralized reporting to pool all the relevant information. And the result is through a lot of hard work, but also because of that centralized data reporting, the US hasn't had a serious terrorism incident since 9-11.
00:32:53
Speaker
We can do the same thing for fraud if we just put the pieces together that now exist in various silos at the FBI and the FTC and the telecom sector and the banks.
Proactive Anti-Scam Strategies
00:33:04
Speaker
If we were able to pool all this information, we would have a much better picture of not only the size of the problem, but also the real-time threats, things that are happening today.
00:33:14
Speaker
law enforcement would be able to follow up more quickly. We would also, by the way, if we were a centralized data collection like that, we would be able to have better ability to educate people because there would be centralized education capabilities in the center. In the 1980s, the US came to believe that there was a very important issue that deserved centralization of effort. The issue of the day back in the 80s was
00:33:42
Speaker
children who were being kidnapped, and then we didn't have the ability to work across the various police departments and law enforcement agencies to find these kids. That resulted in a law in the 1980s that created the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And that group, it's a nonprofit group that pools information from the FBI and from law enforcement and other sources, and it's been wildly successful.
00:34:10
Speaker
So it seems to me that a center of that kind would be very beneficial. The Australian government had an interview last week with its assistant treasurer. They talked the first thing that they mentioned when they mentioned what they were doing to turn back the tide of fraud
00:34:25
Speaker
was to create a national anti-scam center in Australia because of the power of not only collecting the information from victims, but also then the liberal sharing of that information between the various parts of the fraud ecosystem, including tech sector, telecom sector, banking sector, and law enforcement.
00:34:47
Speaker
I wanted to ask if there's anything else you wanted to share, and also if there's anything that our listeners can do. Are you looking for help or anything like that?
00:35:02
Speaker
So yes, the Stop Scams Alliance is a relatively new nonprofit and so our needs are like any new organization. There's donations, of course, and funding over time, but also organizational assistance. I could use additional researchers and grant writers and proposal writers.
00:35:25
Speaker
I think it would also be beneficial for people to start speaking out more about this issue. Contact your congressman. Tell them what you think. I don't know about you, but I get scam calls and text messages multiple times a week. Keep in mind these are coming mainly from foreign organized crime gangs and their attempt to take the money out of your pocket and send it overseas.
00:35:46
Speaker
So it seems to me that as Americans, we should start to complain about that to Congress because we're literally under attack by foreign organized crime gangs and we've got to stop it.
00:35:57
Speaker
So that leads me to a question. Senator Murky and Warren both were very vocal about Zell fraud a year and a half ago in the Senate hearing about the financial state with the large banks. And I feel like things have kind of slowed down there.
00:36:18
Speaker
I'm wondering, are you aware of anyone else who's active on this topic or if they're still looking at this? How do we get them, how do we get members of the Senate and the House to be more involved?
00:36:31
Speaker
Well, I watched with great interest the Senate Banking Committee hearing that took place about a month ago. And I got the impression that all of the senators there were very engaged on this issue. They wanted to do more. They know it's a problem. And they're looking for good solutions. So my hat's off to the Senate for looking into this. But I do think that it's time to take it to the next level.
00:36:58
Speaker
And what I would suggest is to look at the best practices that are going on in Australia and UK because the statistics there show that they're starting to bend the curve. They've got something there. It has to do mainly with centralization of information, information sharing.
00:37:17
Speaker
and also more aggressive blocking and labeling of phone calls coming in from overseas, and also more identification and blocking and taking down fraudulent websites. Those are the kind of things, plus national education and enhanced law enforcement that can make a difference.
00:37:39
Speaker
That's great. So what are you hopeful about in everything that you see over the last year of activity from your perspective? You've really been through a lot and you're knocking on doors and trying to advocate for this and make change. What are you hopeful about?
00:37:57
Speaker
Well, a year ago, I was pretty down in the dumps because I heard so many times there's nothing we can do. And at first I accepted that. Well, OK, there's nothing we can do. But the more I looked into the problem, I have learned that various governments around the world, especially the UK and Australia,
00:38:14
Speaker
But also Singapore and Taiwan and others are making significant progress to combat the fraudsters. So it's become apparent that there are things we can do and we can fight back.
Hope and Continued Advocacy
00:38:26
Speaker
We can bend the curve. It's just a matter of getting organized. It turns out that the criminals are organized.
00:38:34
Speaker
They collaborate all the time. In fact, there was a recent UN report that says that government hackers from North Korea are assisting the hackers and the criminals in Southeast Asia. So that's the kind of collaboration that they're doing. Meanwhile, in the US, we're not yet organized. And if we do organize ourselves, looking at the example from around the world, we can beat these guys.
00:38:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to thank you so much for joining us today and keep doing what you're doing. And I am hopeful as well that we will be able to turn the tide on scams as Yuri always says. And good luck with your mission. I will put all the notes, all the links to everything that you mentioned in the show notes. And have a great day. Thank you for being here.
00:39:28
Speaker
Ayla, thank you so much for what you do, by the way. And just so you know, you have the best theme music on the whole internet. Thank you so much. That's probably playing right now. Thanks. Bye bye. Bye bye.