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Identity Theft Forever - The Real People Behind Fake Profile Pics, with Bryan Denny, Co-Founder, Advocating Against Romance Scammers
489 Plays1 year ago
After completing his military service of 26 years in the US Military, Bryan Denny was approached one day via LinkedIn, where he opened a profile to start his job search, by a women who thought she was in a relationship with him. She was scammed by a criminal who stole Bryan's photos and created a fake profile to lure women into relationships and then ask for money.
This incident, which happened in 2016, was the first of many that continue to impact Bryan's life and the life of his family, as a victim of identity theft. Bryan founded an organization to help romance scam victims, Advocating Against Romance Scammers, and together with his co-founder, Kathy Waters, advocates for change in the responsibility social media should have to ensure clean and reliable communication.
AARS: https://advocatingforu.com/
International World Romance Scam Prevention Day: https://protectingheartsday.com/
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/
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Transcript
Affair Revelation and Consequences
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, I just want you to know that woman to woman, I've been having a relationship with your husband for the past few months. We are in love and we want to be married. I've talked to your son.
00:00:13
Speaker
and he wants his father to be happy and approves of our relationship. So I know you only were married because you were pregnant and that you should let him go. You don't love him and take care of him anymore. And you should let, release him and stop just using him for his money.
Impact of Romance Scams
00:00:38
Speaker
In the last few episodes, we talked about the impact of romance scams on victims and what different organizations are doing globally to help these victims of romance scams.
00:00:50
Speaker
But there are other victims of these scams, the victims of identity theft. Imagine you posted something on Facebook and then a cyber criminal stole your pictures to create fake profiles and scam other people. And now these people, confused with the stories that they know about you, are reaching out to understand what's going on. And that scenario repeats itself, day in, day out, for the rest of your life.
Introduction to SCAMRANGERS Podcast
00:01:20
Speaker
SCAMRANGERS, a podcast about the human side of fraud and the people who are on a mission to protect us. I'm your host, Ayelet Bigger Levine, and I'm passionate about driving awareness and solving this problem. Welcome to SCAMRANGERS.
Misinformation and Communication Decency Act
00:01:40
Speaker
The last 10 days have been horrific as we observed acts of terror conducted by the Hamas in Israel. We also see the unfolding of layers of response and a war going on in social media.
00:01:54
Speaker
the misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech all reinforce the need to look at the Communication Decency Act and ask ourselves as a society, what level of responsibility are we going to take in order to protect humanity, to protect ourselves, to protect us from evil and from criminals? Today's scam ranger, Brian Denny, is a victim of identity theft, and he took his situation
00:02:24
Speaker
to step up and drive
Brian Denny's Identity Theft Journey
00:02:26
Speaker
change. Together with Kathy Waters, his co-founder, he founded Advocating Against Romance Scammers. Hi, Brian. Welcome to the podcast. Hi. Thank you very much for having me.
00:02:37
Speaker
Great. Well, in a previous episode, we talked to your partner, Kathy Waters in Advocating Against Romance Scammers. And today I wanted to, I'm really looking forward to talk to you about how you joined Advocating Against Romance Scammers and founded it with her and also talk about your plans for the future. So I would love to start and get to know you a little bit and kind of hear about your background actually even before this whole scam.
00:03:07
Speaker
plot un-thickened for you. Tell us a little bit about who you are. Sure, not a problem. Glad to start at the beginning. So back before 2016, I was serving the United States Army and was blissfully unaware of anything called romance scams. I got into this the old-fashioned way. I had my photos taken, some photos that I had posted online, some of which were online, some of which were Department of the Army
00:03:36
Speaker
Images were taken and I was made aware of this by someone reaching out to me I was leaving the army and they said hey, let me I thought somebody was trying to get my information to do a An interview or something like that because I was looking for a job
00:03:51
Speaker
So I gave my phone number to a person. They called me and said, hey, I think I've been in touch with you over the past few weeks. And I said, no, not me. She said, well, let me let me show you something. And she sent me pictures of me that had been sent to her. And I'm like, yeah, that that's me. But we haven't been talking. And she said, well, let me send you something else.
00:04:12
Speaker
They were airline tickets with my name flying into Montreal, Canada to spend a week with her. But I'm like, yeah, that that's not me. And she said, well, you should just go on Facebook and put your name into the search engine and see what comes up. And I did. And there were about there were double digits of profiles with my pictures and my and my name.
00:04:35
Speaker
Again, all pictures that I had just posted a couple of weeks prior, some army videos that had been taken and it was all very chilling to say the least. And that's how it started for me. That's how I found out I was involved in romance games.
00:04:51
Speaker
Wow, that's really spooky. You post stuff online, you have your real identity, and then you create your digital identity, kind of who you
Online Identity Misrepresentation
00:05:00
Speaker
are. It goes into romance, which we'll talk in a second about in a second, but it also can go to other places, like people pretending to be you saying things that you don't agree with from a value perspective, pretending to be you. And I know we always say the internet remembers everything. And when you look for a job, which was what you were setting to do,
00:05:21
Speaker
they can find all these profiles on you and look up to social media and ask, who's this person? What is going on? So it's scary beyond that elements of romance scams.
Scammers' Tactics
00:05:29
Speaker
It's really disturbing, I bet, to find that.
00:05:34
Speaker
It was unnerving, like I said, and she reached out to me and found me on LinkedIn. She did some due diligence after the fact, after she had been involved emotionally with this person in a very short amount of time. He had promised to come and stay with her on leave from Syria.
00:05:53
Speaker
And he had pretended to be still serving in the army. And yeah, it's unnerving because you don't know what else you've lost at this point. You're right. What if he's giving opinions that I disagree with, but using my images and the like. So you don't know what else has been taken from you at that point, other than initially a dozen photos that were used. What else is missing, right?
00:06:18
Speaker
And that's another point. I know that many times when you talk about romance scams, we say, okay, there are these people who post a ton of images. They have Instagram profiles full of hundreds of photos, but it doesn't take that. It takes four to 10 images to create a story that's good enough for a scammer to lure victims into a relationship.
00:06:40
Speaker
No, that's right. I would say for the longest time, it was 12 photos that were used consistently and the same photos continue to get used consistently. There's pictures of me in uniform, pictures of me and my son when he's in his scout uniform and pictures of me.
00:06:56
Speaker
and him and with our horses on a farm in North Carolina. And so and from those three pictures you can paint a pretty good image of a USGI stationed overseas and you know pick an area. My son's back in the States going to boarding school and we both have horses and we ride and all of a sudden he's been injured in a horse riding accident.
00:07:18
Speaker
at boarding school and I can't financially support him because I am deployed to a place where I can't get access to my money. And so that creates a scenario where if you could only help me just a couple of hundred bucks to make sure he's taken care of in the States, that would be great.
Struggles with Social Media Platforms
00:07:35
Speaker
And from there, it kind of expands and you know, and based on your knowledge of the military and you know, you may be able to see through that or may, you know, know what's real and what's not real.
00:07:45
Speaker
Kathy and I have both seen, you know, people asking for money for medicines while they're a soldier and they're overseas and they've been wounded or sick. And, you know, people that that know the military know it's easy to see through that know that the army takes care of you. The Department of Defense takes care of you. It wouldn't matter what service you're in. But if you don't know, it's it all sounds pretty believable, particularly if you want to believe. Right. If you if you want to believe this is true. And why would this man uniform lie to me? I mean, the uniform
00:08:23
Speaker
And from what I understand, it's not that they need to be that creative. It's one story of someone who's deployed overseas. It's the same plot, right? Someone who's deployed overseas that justifies all the reasons why they can't always communicate, why they can't come, why they can't. And then there's always a child that they have that needs support. And so the specifics around a horse,
00:08:40
Speaker
brings with it a level of just a couple of three p
00:08:49
Speaker
writing injury or something that relates to what isn't. That's just a little twist that they need to create, but it's always the same stories. No, I tell. Yeah, exactly. I tell that story for a reason because I've seen that I heard that I've had people that have been involved in this tell me this, you know, this is what they thought. And it's time and time and time again, it's a story that works. And so if you've got a story that works, why change it? And so it may
00:09:13
Speaker
vary from country to country. It may vary from what you know the profiles may have, what different schools that I've been to and they'll often misuse the ranks because people that are doing this don't always understand some of the very basic things like the rank structure and how it's supposed to work and the people, the intended victim, the people that they're talking to don't necessarily understand the rank structure as well. I mean my favorite is I'm a sergeant major and I went to West Point.
00:09:38
Speaker
those two things don't really exist. I mean, you can be a sergeant major and you can go and you can go to West Point, but, you know, it doesn't happen that sergeant majors don't go to West Point. Commissioning the army go to West Point and they are not sergeant majors. So, you know, it's just little things like that, or I'm a squad leader and I'm in charge of leading this humanitarian mission with 200 people. And again, it's just knowing the rank structure and things like that.
00:10:04
Speaker
that can kind of help you pick it apart. We try to provide information about this kind of thing on our website, but you're
Formation of Anti-Scam Non-Profit
00:10:11
Speaker
right. It just takes a little bit of a story and it's a story that gets played over and over. And it works, so there's no reason to deviate too much from that.
00:10:24
Speaker
So you come across this profile and you talk to this lady who reached out to you via LinkedIn and you realize that your identity has been used for things that you're not happy about at all. So what happens next? So I thought, you know, I'm going to go on this crusade and I'm going to police herself. I'm like, there's, yeah, I can't remember. There was 20 to 30
00:10:45
Speaker
easily identifiable fake profiles with same pictures, same spelling of my name, and they were all on Facebook. And I don't have a crusade against Facebook. That's the social media platform, the only one that I had really used. And so I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to engage them and I'm going to help them police this up. And they'll be very happy that I communicate and report profiles.
00:11:09
Speaker
back in the day used to report and you could leave notes and i would go into this hey i'm brian denny i've got a facebook page and you know i have found that my pictures i've been used to.
00:11:20
Speaker
create other Facebook pages. I know this violates community standards, and I want to help out here. And I started going and reporting all these things. And this was back in in July of 2016. And I labored under this delusion that something positive was being done. I mean, it was delusional that the things would write themselves and I could fix this for several months by myself. And I would get
00:11:50
Speaker
Uh, any kind of grew and then, uh, I would get notes from, uh, and messenger from, you know, you can get messages from people you don't know or not friends with. I started going there and looking, I found this, uh, and, uh, and I would be, Hey, I think this is you. And it would be, you know, my pictures again with a different name and something that I hadn't searched for, you know, and, uh, so I, you know, which was interesting and enlightening to me.
00:12:18
Speaker
And I would kind of give everybody, Hey, I'm sorry, this has happened. Yep. My picture's being used like this. It's a scammer. And then I would go in and report those as well. But at the end of the day, not much was ever being done that I could see with Facebook. And I caveat that because I know that they claim that they're actively attacking this issue with, uh, you know, bigger and better algorithms and more people. I just don't see how it's made a difference, particularly when, you know, I have had, uh, at any time I've reported a big profile.
00:12:47
Speaker
I was never able to achieve better than a 33
Global Awareness Efforts
00:12:51
Speaker
% success ratio of getting pictures, my own pictures that I report as being me taken down. How did they ask you to prove you are who you claim to be? No, rarely. I mean, it is now, despite the fact that they know me and at one point
00:13:12
Speaker
in our meeting that we met with Kathy and I met with Facebook several times. And the first time we met they never even heard of romance scams. It was a shock that this was going on. And you're not serious. Yeah, it was laughable. I mean, you know, if it wasn't such a significant thing that affects so many people, it'd be almost funny. But
00:13:35
Speaker
But, you know, I met with, they, they pushed us in front of people, different people, uh, so no real consistency there, which I was, uh, to me indicated a lack of seriousness there. Um, but they, they did provide eventually a, you could, when you have an account, you can't get rid of shooting, uh, email them to this lady and you know, they would go away. And that was very useful, but this requires a human being to actually do the work.
00:14:00
Speaker
The algorithms, you know, they said when you crop or shade the picture, you know, it doesn't, their algorithms don't pick it up as me anymore, which we, Kathy and I made several
Toll of Romance Scams
00:14:10
Speaker
fake profiles ourselves or duplicate profiles of me and we shaded and cropped the images and it always identified me.
00:14:17
Speaker
And it always identified a new set of friends, mostly out of Lagos, Nigeria, where most of the scammers that were using my images were coming from. So not only did the algorithms identify me, but they also identified another, a completely different.
00:14:34
Speaker
demographic group of friends that, you know, were the people that were creating these scam pages. So Facebook, no, never really delivered on its promise to, hey, we'll help fix this and, you know, we'll get this right for you. And we want to run a clean page. I found that largely untrue. And again, I've heard your podcasts, but with folks that say they're working very hard to
00:14:57
Speaker
People don't understand the magnitude of the issue and a lot of excuses why it has happened, but I would say speaking from someone who's talked to
00:15:08
Speaker
Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of people that have been victimized through this and having policed up over 3,000 fake profiles off of social media, mostly on Facebook, and know that there are still hundreds out there. I find that the work that they've done somewhat lacks credibility in terms of policing up, making a good, honest effort to do this. I mean, because it doesn't make money, and that's just the plain truth, but actually it costs them money to do this. It's not like, you know,
00:15:37
Speaker
in the time that we talked about police stuff, the net, they built several other things, including Facebook Marketplace, which makes money. Another heaven for scams, by the way. Oh, yeah. Right. Yes. Well, it all can be. It all can be.
00:15:51
Speaker
Kathy told us her part of the story which her mom's friend had gone through a scam and it was again one of those profiles with your pictures and you guys met and then she suggested to try and formalize some work around this and that's how you guys formed advocating against romance scammers. Trying to connect what you told us about your attempts to take down profiles and what your goals are from an advocacy perspective with advocating against romance scammers.
00:16:21
Speaker
I know it's not just Facebook, but how did you take that? Okay, we're trying to get down the profiles. It's not getting down to your mission.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, so actually, Kathy coming on board was a godsend. It was around Thanksgiving time, 2016. As I said, I had labored under the delusion that I could make a difference. And it just wasn't happening. I wanted to throw in the towel, but after 26 years in the army, I'm not really trained to give up. And every time I saw my son's image being used, or there was an image of me with one of my soldiers at Arlington who was killed in Afghanistan.
00:16:59
Speaker
I would just get fired up and reinvigorated to, you know, get rid of that stuff. And so Kathy, yep, found me and several other
Goals for Legal and Social Advocacy
00:17:10
Speaker
people had offered to, hey, I want to help, what can I do? And I was really at a loss to kind of to help shape that. And then sometimes there were people that had been scammed that just kind of wanted to continue
00:17:22
Speaker
a relationship that they thought they had and this wasn't really productive for me or the victim. Kathy offered to help and I'm like, okay, let's see what happens here. Kathy has been great and it was the driving force behind starting our not-for-profit.
00:17:41
Speaker
And what we hope to do is really quite simple. It's the one thing that we can do is educate people about the dangers of romance scams, talk about romance scams. And you may go, well, it's never going to happen to me. OK.
00:17:55
Speaker
But how about talking to your mom, your sister, your grandmother, your aunt, right? And it is, I understand my demographic, there's a lot of women, there's men that get taken advantage of in this way too, but it's a lot of women, particularly in romance scams. And so I want to have that dialogue. I want you to, if you go, well, you know,
00:18:16
Speaker
This could never happen to me. I've seen it happen to people all walks of life, all levels of education. People get taken advantage of when they're vulnerable and we're all vulnerable at some point in our life. So we talk about it through things like this podcast. Two, we are not lobbyists, but we do spend a lot of time talking to elected leaders about how this affects the constituents in the states in which I come from.
00:18:43
Speaker
When we first started this, it was we would go in and give our spiel and then go, okay, so how does this problem really affect people in the great state? I'll pick one. And it was typically, well, I've never heard of romance scams and it doesn't really affect my constituents. So we started arming ourselves with some very good data provided by the FBI that says this is by state, how much money is lost to romance scams. And then when you look at it and think about so few of these,
00:19:11
Speaker
crimes are reported because it is sensitive. It is embarrassing. People would just like to forget it and move on. And so not a lot of this gets reported. So that armed us with some metrics to go in and talk to people about it. And people started kind of taking it a little more seriously and that when they know that it reaches people from their home state. And so and all that is in an effort to
00:19:34
Speaker
kind
International Collaboration Against Scams
00:19:35
Speaker
of shape, modify, or do something to the Decency and Communication Act, which basically allows all the people on social media to act with impunity in terms of what gets put up on their site. You're not able to hold them liable or responsible for anything that gets posted because they run the bulletin board, not really the messages. That said,
00:19:59
Speaker
All of these entities have the ability to control what's placed on their sites to a degree. We all know that over the last few years that's been made a much a topic of conversation. And so should they be held responsible, particularly if they know this is happening, if they know so that the scammers
00:20:17
Speaker
that go by names like Yahoo Boys because that's kind of the generation in which they kind of came up there and started. You know, when they openly post on different social media sites that this is what they do. They sell ID cards, they sell stories, they sell the information on how to get you started and it's all in plain sight.
00:20:37
Speaker
And should folks be held accountable for that? I think so. It's illegal. You couldn't put up on a bulletin board and say, hey, we're selling fake ID cards, fake Department of Defense ID cards. Give us a call. We can hook you up. You couldn't post that without being held liable. So why should you get away with it on social media? So that's kind of the second thing is to help shape in the 230 and inform people.
00:21:07
Speaker
that are looking at the Decency and Communication Act. And the third thing, of course, would be to bring justice to some of the scammers. That's really hard to do considering many of them are overseas and you're dealing with international law and it all requires the assistance of the nation that this is coming out of.
00:21:27
Speaker
So those are three really, really important goals that you guys have. And I know that you also, maybe this aligns with the goal number one, driving awareness. You have managed to get a day, which is considered, it recognizes international romance scam awareness day.
00:21:46
Speaker
October 3rd, and the first time was this year and you guys had a lot going on around October 3rd so I wanted to ask you to summarize from your perspective. First of all again congratulations for driving that and creating that day.
00:22:02
Speaker
I know that many organizations joined you and collaborated with you to help drive awareness on that day. So tell us a little bit about the activities and the results and how you feel about it.
Victims' Personal Challenges
00:22:15
Speaker
Do you feel like you guys reached your goals for that day?
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah, no, it was thanks for bringing it up. It was great. So there are different days of the year that always associated to, uh, you know, different causes and things. And some of those often stand out to you and, uh, you know, get a lot of attention. And so we thought, Hey, you know, why wouldn't we have one for a romance scam? So, uh, we kind of focused on October 3rd, uh, and, uh, and, and did the, uh, required paperwork and, um,
00:22:47
Speaker
jump through the appropriate hoops and justification to have October 3rd declared the world romance scam prevention day. And we thought it would be kind of a neat thing. And we would get some local attention and get
00:22:59
Speaker
you know, do maybe a one hour webinar and kind of talk about some of the things that are associated with romance scams. And yeah, we were wrong. It wasn't a very small thing. It was actually really a big thing. And we were wrong in a very good way. But we had well over 200 people registered to attend the seminar. We thought, okay, well, this will be just mostly
00:23:23
Speaker
a U.S. thing. We are aware that romance scams take place. It's a global epidemic, but we had folks sign up for the webinar from Finland, Indonesia, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, UK,
00:23:39
Speaker
Germany, Italy, and a host of other folks. In fact, in UK, they expanded what we were doing and said, hey, we're going to do this for 48 hours. They used our logos, they used some of our talking points, our data, and it was really pretty cool. In a country where we are working, and Kathy and I have been up to
00:24:00
Speaker
and talk to congressional leaders a number of times to try to kind of shape this fight and bring attention to it. And in other countries like UK, they're really doing a great job, a better job at bringing attention to this problem. I mean, they took 48 hours
00:24:16
Speaker
and really did a deep dive on some issues and blasted out a lot of facts. It was neat to see that they wanted to use some of our stuff and do this in partnership. It really was a good thing. We had some great sponsors that helped out in support of this because it wasn't free. But folks like at Match Group, you would think, Match Group, they're a dating site, they own half a dozen plus.
00:24:44
Speaker
dating sites and dating sites are often flooded with this kind of thing. Well, unlike some of the social media platforms, some like Match Group actually see big profiles and scammers as a blight. That's the word I would use. When you see me, I'm not on any dating site, happily married. When you see me on a dating site, I'm a blight on that site. It's going to result in a contact if you reach out to somebody you think is me.
00:25:11
Speaker
It's going to result in a, you know, at best a negative contact where nothing's exchanged. It's temporary, no feelings, no money. But on the worst case, I'm a bad experience for somebody who gets romantically involved and loses money.
00:25:28
Speaker
And so they want to police up their sights and keep them, you know, to keep them legit for people that are actually looking for relationships. So I think that's really remarkable, really admirable. And they were huge in helping do this. They got Jonathan Bennett, if you've ever seen Mean Girls in that movie to do a shout out.
00:25:48
Speaker
I guess I did not know, but October 3rd may have been Mean Girls Day prior to this as well. And so now we all share this in common, Mean Girls and World Romance Camp Prevention Day all in the same boat. But yeah, it was it was really neat. We had a lot of great folks, AARP,
00:26:07
Speaker
electronic caregiver, all, some really good organizations that made this possible. And some great speakers as well. Someone had a bit of victim of this. And then there was some other groups that kind of talked to the FBI, talking stats and reporting process, what you can do, and then some information on surviving the scam. And this was really kind of how to recover, how to stay out of the trap. And then if you do get in it,
00:26:34
Speaker
you know how to take care of yourself you know coming out of the backside of the same because there is a recovery process you have to go through and it's hard to recover when you don't want to talk about it from my perspective i see people that don't want to report don't want to talk to authorities or folks because they're so embarrassed by this but
00:26:52
Speaker
this is not something that you need to be embarrassed about. You've been taken advantage of by professional scam artists, and I think talking about it is part of recovering and healing from it and moving on. And so there was a lot of great advice on how to report,
Family Impact of Identity Theft
00:27:06
Speaker
who to talk to, how to share your story, and so the next person doesn't get taken advantage of. So yeah, it was really a good day. It would be easy to kind of look at this and go, okay, yeah, there's just some money and some people got taken advantage of in a romance scam.
00:27:21
Speaker
So what so what is it has such a devastating effect on people's lives who get who have
00:27:29
Speaker
in some cases given absolutely their last dime and mortgage their house have lost it all. And so there's a huge financial loss. And there's an emotional loss to know that at this point in your life, you know, again, emotionally vulnerable, often because the loss of a spouse or loved one. And now you're rebuilding and you've given everything away because you think this is real. And it's not real. And
00:27:58
Speaker
you will not ever recover your losses. And you should be in the golden years of your life and it's just not going to happen for you. And so to see so many people working together to fight this and to bring awareness about it and hopefully get those that perpetuate this kind of crime brought to justice, it was really good and really, really rewarding.
00:28:18
Speaker
That's amazing. And it's important for you guys to stop and celebrate because you are making a difference and you are driving change and awareness and glad to see organizations like the Match Group join in on this. At the end of the day, as my husband always says, it's all about the money. So for social media, unfortunately, it doesn't align with their goals, right?
00:28:39
Speaker
the dating platforms want the profiles to be legitimate because their subscription payers are the users of the platform. But as we know for social media, the users of the platform are not the customers of the social media platform. The customers are the advertisers. And that's really tricky. So when I talk about the scam lifecycle and all the unwitting accomplices, and I'm not blaming anyone for wanting anyone to be scammed,
00:29:05
Speaker
But if we, you know, we have the telcos and with text messages and social media and then the dating sites and then the banks that allow the flow of money, et cetera, et cetera, those that will suffer pain will be the one stepping up and helping. And I'm really happy to see this help starting, but I want to definitely want to see more from more parties. And you mentioned UK.
00:29:31
Speaker
One of the things about you kids that now financial institutions are going to start reimbursing customers or continue, but start by law to reimburse customers for scams in 2024 so that they have been on this journey with organizations for a while and we see banks.
00:29:47
Speaker
launching campaigns and supporting their customers, helping them with romance scams, like the Stop the Scale with Sentin there and others that are getting behind this. So I hope to see more of that also here in the US and other places globally. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
00:30:05
Speaker
I wanted to touch a point which is rarely touched when we talk about romance scams and romance scam victims. We talk about the victims that are lured into relationships and being scammed, which is heartbreaking. But there's also a victim side to identity theft. And we talked about a few points of having your profile used and using those fake photos to scam people and kind of feeling personal.
00:30:32
Speaker
But I know there are other stories that are a little, you know, even more harsh with regards to identity theft victims. And I'm sure you meet a lot of those as well. What do you think is the impact beyond
Ongoing Fight Against Scams
00:30:45
Speaker
what we've discussed earlier, what beyond what happened to you for identity theft victims? It's it's really tough. I mean, it is I guess it depends on the person and how they kind of deal with
00:30:58
Speaker
this. I know some people are able to go, well, they've got a few pictures of me. So, you know, what's the big deal? I can't do anything about it. And that's one way to look at it. And then another way to look at it and how I look at it is, you're taking my images and particularly the ones in uniform and using them for purposes that
00:31:20
Speaker
are unkind. And so it is, you know, I joined the army because I detest bullies and those who take advantage of others. And now my pictures are used to do just that. And so I've seen a lot more folks like me whose images are being used that are that don't like it don't
00:31:39
Speaker
don't approve of it that are willing to stand up now and say, hey, this has happened to me. At first, I was mortified of it. I was embarrassed that this has happened. I'm like, I did something wrong. I shouldn't have posted any pictures online. Then I looked at it like, hey, a number of these, or I posted them on the social media website so my friends and family could see, and it's exactly why I got on.
00:32:00
Speaker
because I'd spent so much time in Europe, I don't have a good way to contact and stay in touch with my friends in Europe. And in the 26 years I've spent in the army, I'm like, this would be kind of cool. And so, begrudgingly, I finally got on social media and threw some photos out there and the next thing you know, this is happening. But, you know, I wanted to be there, you know, probably the toughest part about this is when I meet people that know that I'm fighting this fight and doing this, they go, oh, is that still going on? And I go, yeah, this will always go on.
00:32:30
Speaker
This will always be a thing. This will be a thing in my life forever. Unless, unless people stop giving money to folks that they only know online, because as long as it's profitable,
00:32:45
Speaker
As long as having two or three photos of me or people like me that I've had their images used in this, unless people stop giving money to people, those photos, that's what you're doing, people pretending to be others, you know, it's going to be a thing in my life. Early on, very few people actually react in a hostile way to me. I'm pretty lucky in that respect. My wife gets the hostile ones, but very few people react in a hostile way to me. But early on, one lady said,
00:33:14
Speaker
you should do more to stop this. I said, well, I've got a website. I posted tons of information. I do podcasts and this kind of thing. And we're working on not-for-profit status back in the day we first started for our cause. And she said, well, you really ought to do more. And at some point, your pictures will be old, and your pictures will be ugly, and they won't use them anymore.
00:33:40
Speaker
One, it's not really about the pictures and the pictures, you know, good looking. I don't think that has a lot to do with it. I think it's more along the lines of what story you can create out of the pictures. So I think there's a median in there. But I did tell her that the pictures are the pictures, right? The pictures don't grow old. The pictures are the same pictures they've used. My
00:34:04
Speaker
My kids are forever frozen in time back in 2016 when this started. And so they never age. It's always the same kind of thing. The pictures don't go old, and they'll always have these pictures. And so unless it just becomes non-profitable for people to use these kind of images in scams, this will continue to happen for the rest of my life. So that's nothing.
00:34:31
Speaker
And that woman is kind of blaming a victim, right? She's blaming you, but it's not, it's definitely not your fault. And I wanted to ask you something you kind of mentioned by the way in passing, my wife gets the vicious ones. Can you elaborate on that? Because that's another impact, right? It's not just you getting angry phone calls from women who think they're in a relationship with you, but it impacts her family as well.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah, no, I it absolutely touches in one way or another. It touches every member of my family to include my mom and dad who still have a landline getting phone calls from people that are looking to link up with me. And this still this still happens. My kids, two of which are two of which are active on social media, two of which are not.
00:35:22
Speaker
but we scrub their messages and block people that are moving through them to get in touch with me or my wife, but they'll have people that are following them or sending their friend requests. I'm like, yeah, that's a scammer. But my wife, as I mentioned, really gets the tough ones. For me, most people reach out and go, well, I want to confirm that
00:35:48
Speaker
that you're the guy using the scams and I think I've been talking to someone who's pretending to be you and I just want you to know that and I go, yep, they're trying to validate kind of their experience. My wife gets the ones that, and they always come as I'm away on business travel or something like that, where it's, hey, I just want you to know that woman to woman, I've been having a relationship with your husband for the past few months. We are in love and we want to be married.
00:36:18
Speaker
I've talked to your son and he wants his father to be happy and and approves of our relationship. So I know you were you only were married because you were pregnant and that you should let him go. You don't love him and take care of him anymore. And you should let release him and stop just using him for his money.
00:36:46
Speaker
And my wife and I, my wife takes all this in and goes, okay. So, uh, you know, and, and she'll go into the, well, thank you for letting me know this. Uh, when was the last time you actually met with my husband? And the answer is always the same. I've never actually met your husband. We've been having this relationship online and my, and my wife will be, well,
00:37:09
Speaker
Thank you again. I think you've been talking with a scammer who all these are several links to different articles that he's done podcasts that he's done. This is a LinkedIn is not for profit that he's established to talk about this. Please take a look here and see if this doesn't fit your situation. And it is yes, he said you would say that, but he's the real when you want to believe
00:37:38
Speaker
something, right? You're going to believe it no matter how much evidence is put in front of you. And she'll say, Well, my wife will go back to Well, you are talking with scammers. You are being scammed. I want you to know that my husband and I are ever a great marriage. We're very happy. And, and you have not been talking to him. And it never gets better from there. It is no you are
00:38:03
Speaker
you know, I've been talking to the real guy, and this is what's going on. And, and my wife, you know, God bless her, she tries to do the right thing, and she'll go on for, you know, with it for a while. But, you know, these are these can be protracted engagements, conversations, and there's one or two hardliners every month, every month that nope, I'm in a I'm in a serious relationship with your husband, we had have been
00:38:31
Speaker
but I've never met him and you are the problem. And my wife just goes, okay, let's start from the beginning. And it's tough. And I've told her, you can't, when somebody has believed this and wants to believe this and is committed to this fantasy, there's really little you can do. I applaud her trying to point them in the right direction with the webpage and stuff, but it typically just doesn't get any better.
Future Plans for Awareness and Advocacy
00:38:58
Speaker
It won't get better.
00:38:59
Speaker
That's a very hard, first of all, definitely you had the job with your wife and God bless her but I'm just thinking about all the identity theft victims who do not have a website and they're not advocates because they have, you know, you chose to step up and do this but I'm sure there are thousands out there that
00:39:18
Speaker
cannot send to links and do not know what to do. So this is also maybe a point for them to use the links from advocating against romance scammers to educate. I'm sure they are getting calls and I also heard about
00:39:34
Speaker
threats from husbands of romance scam victims. So someone who was in a relationship inside of a marriage where she or he reached out and had this relationship online and then the spouse of the victim finds out and threatens the true person, not the scammer, who was not at all involved in this. There's a couple of things that haven't happened yet.
00:40:00
Speaker
but we'll have it. That's one. The second is I used to post like I'm a member of several boards of things that we have associations and meetings and I used to post hey looking forward to seeing everybody at this event. I don't do that anymore because someone is going to show up and it is going to happen and it's going to either be someone who was scammed right and it's looking for the
00:40:26
Speaker
you know me because they think they've been in a relationship or it's going to be the spouse of someone that i think that you know that's going to happen i again i don't share much about you know i still i'm i travel for personal and you know personal enjoyment with my family and for business but i don't you know most everything we post is after the fact because at some point it's going to catch up
00:40:48
Speaker
And there's a fictional world that someone's been, you know, living in, and they've got something to prove or settle. And then there's reality and those will link, those are going to collide at some point. Well, before we wrap up, now that October 3rd is passed, I wanted to ask you, what are the immediate next steps for advocating against romance scammers? What are your goals now moving forward?
00:41:14
Speaker
Sure. And so I think really to capitalize on the success of the day, I think we'll use the next just short of 365 days to continue to do good work that to all the folks that
00:41:30
Speaker
came forward during the day to say, hey, I'd like to be involved. And would you be interested in presenting here or being on this podcast to do more good work and to ramp up for the next October 3rd? Great. Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining the podcast, for sharing your side of the story, and for everything that you do to drive awareness and advocate against romance scammers.
00:41:58
Speaker
Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. And you're again, you know, you're helping us achieve our number one goal by talking about the issue. And you're a colleague in the fight and supported our day, mine and yours and together. You've done great work along this line and it's important to recognize what you're doing.
00:42:21
Speaker
Hey, thank you for your support of the day and anytime Kat and I or any of our other folks get a chance to be on, we'd love to have an opportunity to tell that story. Sounds great. Looking forward to having another conversation soon. Have a great day. Thank you, ma'am. You too. Bye-bye.