The Security Guy and CIA Spy PodBroadcast

And welcome to the Security Guy and CIA Spy Pod broadcast.

I am Robert Siciliano, the Security Guy, and this is The CIA spy Peter Wormka.

Are you sure about that? Are you sure you're Peter Wormka? You sure you're not like some AI face overlay?

No, I am. I'm consistent for this podcast, at least. This podcast, always Peter Wormka. Other ones, I can't, I can't confirm or deny. How are you doing, Robert? What's up, buddy?

Nice to see you. I am, uh, I'm good. I, I am— I, to be perfectly honest with you, I am a tad overwhelmed. I'm a tad overwhelmed. I, I, I, I'm, I'm, I got too much going on, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. So I've got this pod broadcast, which I love doing. I've got a ton of business. Q1 of 2025 is the best quarter I have had in 5, 6, 7, maybe even 8 years. It's been amazing, and it's awesome but for all the wrong reasons. Because the wrong reasons being that fraud is so high, it's so bad. Company CEOs, CIOs, CSOs, security managers are freaking out because AI has made it so that fraud is scaling at a level where none of them are prepared for. Phishing simulation training isn't doing what it's supposed to do or what they want to do. They're all— the CIO is overwhelmed, the CTO is overwhelmed, and they need us. And that's what's happening for me.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And it is— it's fortunate for us, but unfortunate that things are getting that bad. But I think we— it's, uh, we're seeing only the beginning. It's going to continue to get increasingly messy here, I think, for a while.

So what I wanted to discuss today Um, is really just one topic, Peter. Um, I've got, um, I, I've been, uh, I got a call from my, a, a financial services professional that I, I do business with down, uh, in Florida. And, uh, you know, he's got, uh, this whole book of business. He's got all these clients, you know, moneyed, uh, mostly seniors, you know, 55 plus, but mostly like 65 to 85. Like, you know, they're, they're my dad's age, a little bit older. And he called me because one of his clients, a couple, male and female, they— the husband got an email thinking that, you know, it was, it was, it was a wrong number type of, you know, email type text, like you know, hey, who's this type of deal? And he responded. And when he responded, it led to an engagement that went over the course of 3 months, investments that he began to make in what he thought was crypto, and ultimately thinking that him and his wife investing $600,000 over the course of like 3 months that they made $2.2 million. When he went to cash out, that turned into zero, nothing. He got nothing. The pig was effectively slaughtered. The pig was butchered, him being the pig.

Yeah, we are hearing more and more of these things. This is not a— this is not an isolated case. This sounds like a Very typical, unfortunately.

Peter, this pig butchering thing, right? Uh, pig butchering is a term used to describe a sophisticated and long-term scam that combines elements of romance scams, catfishing, and cryptocurrency investment fraud. The name originates from the analogy of fattening up a pig before slaughter, as scammers carefully build trust with victims over time before stealing their money. This scam is also referred to as sha zhu pan in Chinese, meaning killing pig plate or killing pig game.

So is it safe to say that this originates— I mean, at least there's probably other copycats, but that the original concept originates in China, Chinese criminals?

Well, if you do a quick search on, uh, Where does pig butchering originate from, or where is it happening from? Uh, most of the research points to Thailand, where, um, humans are being trafficked, meaning that humans are essentially being held against their will. Uh, the sex trafficking involved, but in this case, they're doing the scamming under organized crime. Yeah, they don't have much of a choice. The victims who are being trafficked, they're— they're— it's basically forced labor. And they're taught a series of skills. They're taught how to use artificial technology. They're essentially, you know, behind lock and key. They're on compounds that have, you know, 12, 14-foot fences with barbed wire on top of it. You know, they're provided food and a place to live, but they don't have any choice in the matter.

Right.

And so when my client contacted me freaking out because his client became a victim of this scam, and my client has relationships with all of his clients, you know, like there is, there is people They're like his big family. He's been very upset by it. And so he brought me down and, you know, to speak to all of his people and, you know, got a bunch of my books and all that stuff. And, um, you know, the fact that he— did I say that his client is on suicide watch?

Wow. No, he doesn't.

Yeah, yeah.

This is emotionally devastating. Emotionally devastating as well.

You know, the client The couple, the husband on suicide watch, like, they're looking at going bankrupt now. You know, they, they can't pay their bills, they can't pay their mortgage. Like, they're— they are a mess. Uh, and it's happened, like, you know, on the tail end of their life. You know, they think they have enough money just to live, you know, the rest of their lives. They're both in good physical health, but this is destroyed— this has destroyed them mentally and emotionally. Because it's destroyed them financially.

Yeah, there's no way they're gonna get that money back.

Money's gone.

Yep.

Now, up until a couple of weeks ago, 3 weeks ago, you know, like everybody else, when those wrong number text messages come in, my strategy has been report spam, block, done. You know, I've got time for this. I've been responding to these text messages, Peter, and I don't like what I see. I don't like what I see because I have come to an understanding now that this is it. You and I are going to see this get a heck of a lot worse, and here's why. Here's what I understand. So the, the, the, the, the viewing, listening audience may already be privy to some of this, and you may all maybe as well. And this is the root of it. There's a couple things. Number one, there is a transfer of wealth that is occurring right now between basically the baby boomers and the greatest generation, you know, those basically like 70 to like 95. You know, that age group, that they understood compound interest, they understood investments and so forth, and their money just went up over the course of their lifetime. Okay. And now they have $500,000, they have $1 million, they have $5 million to their name because they did it right. And so they retired and they're living in, you know, either a house that they own that's worth $1 million or $2 million or they're living in a retirement community that they may own, or that they're even paying $5,000 to $10,000 a month in. But at the same time, they still have a tremendous amount of money in the bank.

Yeah, they're comfortable.

They're very comfortable. That transfer of wealth is equated to about $85 trillion. Do you understand that?

Mm-hmm.

$85 trillion going from the baby boomers and the greatest generation to basically my generation, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen— and the grandkids, Gen Z. And that Baby Boomers/Greatest Generation— and no offense to any of them, but the truth is, is that they're cognitively declining, and they are just that much more trusting than really any other generation. And this just because of the way they were raised. On top of it, they have all this money and they're not as technically savvy as any other generation for obvious reasons. Yeah, it is the perfect, perfect situation for AI-driven fraud that scales. The robocalls, the roboemails, the robo text messages to millions and millions of people. So when you receive that text message, I'm sorry, who's this? I lost my phone.

Yeah, all the time, several a day. Mm-hmm.

98% of the population sees that text message and they're like, delete. All they need is that 2% of the population to respond for the next 20 years until that transfer of wealth is done. And that's what we're looking at right now. We're looking at the cognitively declining wealthy population that's not technically savvy being targeted. Everybody's being targeted, but they're the ones that are responding. Yeah. And so my client, whose client lost $600,000, that's becoming the new norm. Now, in, in your life and in my life, like 10 years ago, have you— had you heard of an individual that lost $100,000 in fraud? A single person that lost $100,000 in fraud 10 years ago?

No, not really.

I mean, no, 5 years ago, maybe, maybe.

But now it's just like, now it's just like there's a, what do you call it, like a force multiplier. It's these people can reach out to anybody. I mean, with the technology today, with the phone, with the— I mean, it's just, there's a big target, there's a big target pool, and the way the means of communication are so much more vast.

Yeah, so, so check it out, right? Here's what— look at this right here, okay? So, so, so this is part of the presentation that I'm delivering right now, okay? Wrong number text scams, okay? That, that's what this fundamentally— like, if you were to coin what this is, it's wrong number text scams, okay? What it leads to is various forms of fraud: pig butchering, romance scams, you name it, okay? Uh, gift card scams, like, they're all over the place. But wrong number text scams lead to Whoever responds, engaging that person in a variety of ways. Okay, so for example, this came in March 26th, 5:22 PM to me, to my number, that 617 and at the end 1870. That is one of the phone numbers that I possess. Okay, can we chat for a minute? 100% of the time that gets deleted, marked as spam. The whole thing. No more. I'm responding now. And when I did, my response is about what? As you see in green, okay, you're talking to Isla. Who are you? And that's Isla. Isla is beautiful by all standards. Isla has my attention. Okay, so now I did some basic searches, reverse searches on Isla. And, uh, you know, her photograph at least, uh, with, uh, certain, uh, online tools that, uh, do, uh, biometric facial recognition. And what I, what I've determined is Isla, or at least this photo, is a likeness of a Russian model. To the best of my ability, that's what I've determined. Or at least this is what Russian models look like. But there's one or two Russian models out there that this could be easily like pretty close, or if it's her. I don't know that this is AI because I've done the same search for this particular photo and it's coming out as a like legit person. I'm pretty sure it's a Russian model. So my response to, 'You're talking to Isla, who are you?' is, 'My name is Rick. Uh, wow, you're pretty.' My online persona is now Slick Rick. Okay.

You're all three.

So Isla now responds, Rick, it is great to meet you. I'm from Coral Gables, Florida. Where are you from? And thank you for the compliment. Now, this is the last communication that I've received from Isla where she's called me Rick. Since this— since 3 weeks ago, since that time, every single communication she refers to me as dear. Now I haven't challenged her on that, meaning like I haven't said, do you know my name? Because my goal is to further the scam. I'm not interested in challenging Isla here. I just want to like get to the bottom line. But every single time she addresses me, she addresses me as dear. D-E-A-R, which is the universal, like, you know, I care about you.

Yeah.

And I think it's also much easier to copy and paste all of the correspondence as dear, not having to remember people's names. Exactly.

Yeah, makes sense.

Yeah, it's just one of, like, you know, the things that I've observed in this. Okay. And to kind of, like, you know, take you down to, you know, where we at and, you know, what has corresponded over the past 3 weeks. I don't want to, like belabor the whole thing, but I want to like, you know, show you some of the highlights. So after that, like within like the first couple of hours, I asked her, you know, again, I want to further the scam. What do you do for work? And my, my question is, are you a model or something? You know, just small talk and stating the obvious. And her response is— so this is within 2 or 3 texts— I run a skincare company and invest in gold block crypto and bonds. What do you do for work? Bang, right off the bat, invest in gold, block crypto and bonds.

That's aggressive.

Yeah, yeah, she's already setting the tone. Okay, and my response is a BS. I run a small construction company, have about 12 to 14 employees and a few subcontractors that I work with. She says, that's interesting, I've been in the industry for 10+ years. How long you've been in your field, you know. And, uh, I said since I was 19. And then my response is, you know, skincare and crypto, those are two pretty different professions. At my age, I need help in both. Yeah. Uh, so, you know, we talk about how old we are, when we were born, and she sends me this picture of her, as you can see down here, sitting in a— looks like some type of a lounge, you know, where, where she is a healthy 40-year-old, very attractive, and, uh, she's got my attention. I mean, that's the whole point of it, right?

Yeah.

And as we progressed over the weeks, we moved to WhatsApp within a couple of hours of communicating. Like, get rid of the text, let's go right to WhatsApp, which from what I can see is because, A, WhatsApp is— well, I think in the end it would make it a lot harder for law enforcement to get access to WhatsApp and who's on the other end of WhatsApp than, um, uh, via SMS or iMessage. I think that like it's much easier to say subpoena Apple and get access to Apple's, you know, iMessage versus, or AT&T's, you know, SMS versus WhatsApp, which is encrypted. It's owned by Facebook, but it's, it's a whole nother animal. That's why they moved to WhatsApp, plus the fact that they're completely overseas and, um, it just allows them to, uh, more freely communicate with us here. Uh, it's also cheaper, or really even free. At least I think it boils down to they can hide better with WhatsApp. Would you agree?

Yeah, and I hear that's typical of a lot of the scammers, whether it's pig butchering or something else, that they typically will meet you on one platform, let's say, like even some of these dating platforms, and they'll get you on— they'll get you onto WhatsApp, uh, real quickly. They want to get all— get off those platforms.

Yeah, so what you're looking at now on the screen here is— this is, this is our communication. This is what we do. She reaches out to me, and I say she because, I mean, Isla is for all intents and purposes a she, but it's likely like a bot that's being managed by probably men that have a number of other men and women, uh, held captive under human trafficking conditions.

Okay.

But just— and it certainly could be women that are responsible for the human trafficking as well. But let's just say I just keep referring to as a woman. Um, here she sends me pictures of her grocery shopping. Like, that's the dialogue. Good morning, dear. How are you today? I hope you slept well. Uh, today I'm having yogurt and granola for breakfast. What are you having for breakfast, dear? And then she says, I'm going food shopping later on this afternoon. I'm probably going to have dinner with my girlfriends tonight. What are you doing this evening? And, and like sending me pictures of her groceries, uh, letting me know what she's had for dinner. And by the way, like she has steak and vegetables 7 nights a week. Because I, I think that like in Thailand they think that like us rich Americans eat steak 7 nights a week. I think there's like this cultural misunderstanding of what we are over here, uh, and that like we just eat steak 7 nights a week. Like that's just like what she has said, like, is just— which is funny to me. Yeah, but like the dialogue is— and I don't know if this is a word It's all mundaneness, you know. It's just, it's just mundane. It's just like 6 to 8 to 10 times a day, how are you, what are you up to, this is what I'm up to, what do you got going on, this is what my week looks like, you know. Like pictures of her grocery shopping. She's actually sent me video of vacuuming the apartment, you know. Like, like basic. So you tell me, Peter, what is the point and purpose of all this mundane dialogue? You tell everybody.

Well, it's engaging basically your, your trust. I mean, you're seeing this, hey, this is a normal person and she's sharing, uh, all the, you know, information about her day, you know. And I feel now that maybe I should also share more information about myself. It's kind of like building up that, that relationship. You know, they do it over— usually they do it over a longer period of time. Uh, they put a big investment. I mean, some of these things, I— my understanding is that it can go for not just days, this could go off for weeks or months or even maybe into a year or so if, if the pig is big enough. It's going to be big enough, right? Make it worthwhile to them.

That's it. It's all about rapport, and like you said, it's all about trust. And, and I, and I, and I, I think, and I believe, and I'm sure that that 2% that responds that isn't as technically savvy, that those same people, or at least some of them, or a good portion of them, might also be experiencing loneliness.

Absolutely, I agree with you.

So loneliness, I think, is a big part of the victim profile. Because if you are feeling lonely, if anybody's feeling lonely for that matter, that loneliness only can be fixed by displacing it with companionship of some kind. As a social creature who is, you know, on an island of one who is feeling lonely, who now is social It becomes an island of two, and that loneliness begins to dissipate because of the Islas of the world. That relationship that is now fostered due to that rapport and that building of trust. Now my focus becomes Isla and what she's doing today and the dialogue that we're having. And as my loneliness dissipates, I begin to now trust Isla in ways that I, I, I wouldn't normally trust anyone for that matter.

Yeah, he said that person would never hurt me, that person would never scam me. I mean, right, my person is my friend. We're, we're, you know, where we share intimate information, details about our days.

Exactly. And she's harmless and she cares about me. And, and this is really important. So, so do you see the, the emoji where she's like doing this thing. I, I had to actually ask my daughter like, what is that? And she's like, oh, she's wondering, you know. And, and she's wondering because she had sent me this, this text message with the photo at 8:03 PM and I hadn't responded for a couple of hours. And so she's wondering like, why haven't I responded, right? And so I respond with OMG, I'm so tired. Last few days my team has worked their butts off, you know, my contractors, my construction guys. And I ask, you know, do you have time for a video chat tomorrow? Which we had a video chat, I'm going to talk about that. And she said, sure, we'll talk tomorrow on a video call. And then she says, while you're at work working those long hours, make sure to take care of yourself too. I know you've been working hard enough and skipping meals and not eating on time. Just don't forget to keep an eye on your health as well.

She's concerned about you. Don't die before she gets the money.

Peter, that concern, that's exactly what somebody who's feeling lonely needs. Oh yeah, in order to not feel lonely, there is no better way to build trust than to show care and concern.

Mm-hmm.

Now I think it's important for everybody to understand here is like, in this dialogue, there has been little to no flirtation. Meaning like, Isla has not really made much or any effort whatsoever to like make it romantic. Like, there's been no real like innuendo or any sexuality. Like, there's been no flirting, nothing, none of that. Like, it's all care and concern. That's it.

Think, and think about it. I mean, let's go back to your client's, uh, client, that they're a married couple. If Isla would all of a sudden start to turn on, you know, the charm and flirting, it might be like, for this guy, maybe he would say, oh, you know, I, I, I I better cut this off because I don't like where this is going, right? This is safe. This is safe.

Yeah, yeah. And y'all's moms and dads and aunts and uncles and those like 65, 75, 85, 95 that are like holed up by themselves or with their spouse and have a boatload of money in the bank and investments and aren't technically savvy. This is what is happening right now. And that $85 trillion that they have in the bank, these bad guys look at that and go, that's our money, we're getting that money. And that's what's happening right now. And let me show you a couple more things. So here we did a video call, Peter, after 6 days Isla suggested a video call. I was astounded. I was like, she wants to do a video call with me? Like, I, I'm thinking to myself, they'll never do a video call. Like, they're just going to keep this thing like virtual, like on, you know, WhatsApp for the rest of eternity. It's just going to be chat. I was like, video call? Like, that's gonna like blow their cover, right?

Right, right, right. Yeah.

No, man. No, no, they, they suggested video call within 6 days. 6 days, Peter.

So what, because they know that people, they know that people are starting to question that because a lot of times people say, well, you know what, why doesn't that person want to do video? That's a sure sign that there's a scammer. But now they're putting this out here to kind of like defeat that argument that people might have in their mind. Yeah, I like it. I mean, I like this. They're, they're really, they're really a step ahead of us. They really—

let me show you something. So a couple things. On the left side of the screen, that is the Isla that I communicated with. In the middle of the screen, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit play in a moment. That is a video that I recorded on my phone between me and Isla while I was driving. And to the right of the screen is the actual Isla, or the Russian model who, from what I can tell, they took a— basically, like, they superimposed Eastless' face on what's likely a Southeast Asian female who is a victim of human trafficking.

Yeah.

Okay, so when I hit play, right, you'll see the interaction. You'll see me in my car and you see Isla in the middle of the screen, her lips do move, her face moves, her eyes blink. That is not a completely AI-generated human. It is a human that has a superimposed overlay, a face overlay. And she talked to me and we had dialogue. I mean, we went on for like 8, 9 minutes while I was driving. And she showed care and concern. And as she spoke, from the very beginning of the conversation, you know, she— she— Isla has always posed as a, a person who— a woman who was born, or a child who was born in Australia. Yeah. And that she moved to the US, you know, late in her teens, uh, to go to college, uh, to move and live with her Auntie Smith, who's an IBM executive in San Francisco. And, uh, when Isla started talking to me, she was like southern, southeastern, uh, Taiwanese, Chinese. Like, her voice was heavy. Like, this is no Australian woman at all. So they didn't even bother using AI to convert her voice to any accent that was anything other than her real voice, which was something that capability now is readily available.

They could easily do it, but they didn't. They didn't.

So, so when I asked her, like, oh, your voice, you sound like you're Southeast Asian, and she's like, well, actually, and she BS'd me on the spot. Well, actually, my parents are Um, Irish, both Irish from Ireland, and they moved to Australia when I was young. As if she has an Irish accent. It was like I didn't even challenge it. You know, my brother-in-law is, is, is Australian. My brother-in-law is Australian. I know the Australian accent. I mean, Crocodile Dundee, we know the Australian accent. It didn't matter to the scammers. That she had a Southeast Asian accent. All that mattered was, up to this point, the dialogue was mundane. I was building— she was building trust. I was compelled to have a video call with her. They felt that video would solidify the deal. And here we are. And since that time, they've asked me— or she's asked me to, you know, she's shown me the money that she's making in crypto. Uh, which is like 19%, and ha— and has walked me through the process of downloading the Coinbase app and the Crypto.com app, and through screenshots back and forth has walked me through the process of setting up the app and connecting my bank account to it. Now I've already done all these things on my own because I have a crypto account and I have investments, But I did it on a different device with— and sent screenshots and walked through the process and showed her everything because I want to go down the rabbit hole with these sociopaths. And over time, we haven't quite got there, is that, um, you know, uh, we are going to be making some investments because here, Maryland woman loses millions in crypto pig butchering scam as FBI warns of more targets. Targets. The scammers, frequently based in Southeast Asia, slowly gain the trust of their targets and then convince them to give money to buy cryptocurrency. Peter, like, companies don't necessarily have this problem right now, but our senior populations do. But you know who also has this problem is municipalities. And the municipalities have this problem because it's their constituents, it's their residents, it's their people, it's the town's people that have this problem. And as the— as this problem grows, those towns are going to be faced with more and more liability because their people aren't going to be able to pay their water bill, their electric bill, their gas bill, their taxes. The municipalities are the next ones to bear the burden besides the actual public.

And I mean, just think about the families though, that, you know, if it is, is it one, you know, is it the husband or is it husband and wife? But they know it about their, their kids and their grandkids that maybe, you know, if they would have lost this money, they had all money predestined to help their, their kids or grandkids going through college or maybe buying their starter home, whatever, and that's all gone. All gone. Family's impacted, the whole family.

Yeah, Peter, this is going to be— it's going to get bigger and bigger. Uh, they're going to make more and more money. They want, they want that $85 trillion, and they know they've got 10, 15 years to get it all. One thing that I, I was very surprised to find out is that, do you know that the FBI is calling and emailing potential victims of this crime?

Really?

Yeah, I didn't know that either. It was brought to my attention in a news report, and the FBI, since January of 2024, is actually picking up the phone and actually calling people who they suspect as being victims of pig butchering And they're actually emailing people who they suspect as being victims of pig butchering.

And I guess because of family members that are like, like, like contacting the FBI and say, listen, I'm really concerned about what my father is doing or whatever.

I mean, no, no, because in the interviews that I've watched of FBI officials talking about it, they've said, we being the FBI have access to sophisticated technologies that give us that information. I think, and I don't know, but I think that the FBI is tapped into WhatsApp. I think the FBI has backdoor access to WhatsApp, and I'm guessing on purpose, meaning that they're allowed to do so or they were given unfettered access. Yeah, I mean, it's Mark flipping Zuckerberg that, that, that controls the reins of that. It's his company. So I would imagine that the FBI has backdoor access to WhatsApp, and, uh, I wouldn't be surprised if they have backdoor access to Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail as well for specific— for this specific purpose. Like, I, I would not be surprised at all.

Well, it's quite an effort, and I, I mean, I hope that— I hope that they're at least getting— being successful and being able to reach out to people that are going to listen. Yeah, once people are kind of like caught up in this though, they don't really listen to anybody.

Well, that's it. Even with the interviews that I've watched with the FBI, they've even said when we interacted with potential victims, the victims were like, no, no, no, this is, this is real, like this is actually happening, like this person I'm talking to is not lying to me. Like they were in denial, like they didn't, they did not believe the FBI agents at all. Like they, they they were, they were reciting all of the verbiage that the scammer was, you know, filling their heads with. And, you know, they were completely bamboozled. And the FBI was like, no, no, no, trust us. Like, we're the good guys here. Like, you are losing money. Like, trust us. And in a million years, I would never believe that the FBI would be making phone calls or emails to the public because Government doesn't do that, right?

That, that really impresses me.

And they are— you know, it's out of control. And the FBI has got backdoor access, or I think backdoor access to WhatsApp on purpose to mitigate this fraud. Like, that's how desperate they are.

What I think that we needed to see more of, and I think maybe would be more wake people up who are potential victims is actually more testimonials, video testimonials showing, like, for example, the couple, this couple, this is how, this is how it happened, this is, this, and this is the impact, this is how I feel, this is, you know, this has changed my, I mean, my life is over, you know, in their minds, right? It is, it is even to the point of wanting to take their own lives. I mean, if they showed that type of testimonials, that maybe would help resonate a little bit more. I don't know, but a lot of people want to talk about it, of course.

Yeah, so they, they actually do have, uh, victims of that, and one of them is this woman from Maryland that I spoke to, who I, I can tell has been doing the rounds at the behest of the FBI because she's been, um, featured as the victim of the $3 million pig butchering scam and how she talks about how You know, yeah, losing the money is losing the money, but the humiliation, the shame, the disappointment of my family, like, all of that is like— is more hurtful than losing the money. Yeah, I don't know that I'd feel that way. I, I think that I'd be more hard about the money than the actual shame of it. I mean, that's just me.

We're talking about $3 million especially, right?

$3 million, like I suppose it's all relative. Like, if you've got $30 million, $3 million isn't that big of a deal. But $3 million to me, I mean, I think I'd be on suicide watch. Yeah, yeah, you know, because like that's everything. Like, that's crazy to me. So Peter, like, to be continued, brother.

Yeah, thanks for sharing. This is very— I mean, this level of detail is, uh It's really, really interesting, and it helps us better understand, uh, how, you know, their approach, why they're approaching the individuals that they are, and how this is actually working. Unfortunately, how it's working in their, you know, to their benefit, to the scammers' benefit.

Yeah, yeah. So I, I, I, I'm gonna continue to go down that rabbit hole for y'all, for everybody watching or listening, and I'll let you know. And I actually plan on— I intend on losing, investing in losing some money, uh, to essentially further the scam, uh, to accomplish my research, to get the word out. Not a lot of money, but enough that, uh, I, I'm gonna— I'm continually gaining Isla's trust.

So ask Isla if she has a sister.

Oh, she does.

Yeah, you gotta, you got a trip coming up. You're gonna be traveling to Thailand, trying to get together.

Oh man, actually, Coral Gables, Florida. She's not too far from you. That is true.

That's close to where I am. Yeah, yeah. Tell them you have a friend that wants to go down there and visit her and see what the response is.

That's the thing, like, I'm not even trying to trip her up. That's not the goal here. Like, I could trip her up instantly. Yeah, but that's not the goal here. The goal here is to act as if I am like that 2% that is lonely and is just looking for companionship and just wants to further the relationship. And that's really the entire goal here.

Mm-hmm. But especially to me, I mean, the interesting part, because I've been following these type of things, but the fact that they were, you know, wanted to do a video call and how they're kind of accomplishing that, uh That's, that's amazing.

Within 6 days.

I know, I know.

Within a week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's AI for you, bro. We're, we're, we're, we're for all intents and purposes screwed.

You know what they're going to be doing also? You know, you know the, uh, the virtual assistants that you see online all the time? Uh, they're also the virtual assistants that can be voice, voice virtual assistants, and they can, they can deploy these now to have actual con— phone conversations with you and, and pretty much play the part of that, you know, whether it's a romantic interest or, or one of these friends. I mean, AI, this is the tip of the iceberg of what AI is going to empower them to do. Yeah.

All right, Matt, so we've gone like— this is probably one of the longest, uh, uh, pod broadcasts we've ever had, but I mean, it's all worth it. Well, it's a word— words of warning. For forewarned is forearmed. And it may not be you, ladies and gents. You may not be that potential victim of that potential fraud. But your moms and your pops and your aunts and your uncles and your 65 to 95-year-old cognitively somewhat declining over time, moneyed members of your community are the targets of this crime who are lonely. And they are spending big bucks when that loneliness dissipates and they feel better about their new friend.

Yep, yep. We can all do our part in trying to help protect our, our loved ones from falling into something like this.

Our most vulnerable populations. So Peter, what are you up to? Where you at? How can they find you?

Oh, I just came back. Nice trip to Seattle, uh, back in Orlando. And, uh, you can find me in counterintelligence-institute.com or my LinkedIn page. Always available, uh, if you want to contact me for giving a presentation at your organization or workshop for specialized workshop for your employees. Books available on Amazon: Confessions of a CIA Spy and Why Are You Messing with Me?

Excellent, Peter, good stuff. And I am obviously at protectnowllc.com. And, uh, like I said at the beginning of this, uh pod broadcast. 2025 has been an amazing year so far, again, for all the wrong reasons. But hey, you know, like, I'll find another vocation if we can fix this whole thing. But meanwhile, you know, we've got value to provide the general public. And, you know, I think that, Peter, our messages are becoming loud and clear that, that people just trust way too much, and that fishing simulation is good, but it doesn't solve the problem that they need. Live interaction in order to fix this thing. And that's where you and I come in.

Absolutely. Keep up the good fight.

Last words?

Stay safe. Take care of each other. And let's, let's be fraud busters. Okay.

Let's be fraud busters. Talk to you later, brother.

Yep. Bye-bye.