Cosmic brownie crimes.
Dave Bittner: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the "Hacking Humans" Podcast, where each week we look behind the social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines and taking a heavy toll on organizations around the world. I'm Dave Bittner and joining me is Joe Carrigan. Hey there, Joe.
Joe Carrigan: Hi, Dave.
Dave Bittner: And our N2K colleague and host of the "T-Minus Space Cyber Briefing," Maria Varmazis. Maria?
Maria Varmazis: Hi, Dave, and hi, Joe.
Dave Bittner: We've got some good stories to share this week, but first, let's get to some follow-up. What do we got here, Joe?
Joe Carrigan: Well, we got two things: First, Jallian [phonetic] writes in, and he says, "Hello, all. This may be silly. There's a few conversations that float around about Joe's backpack, and now I am interested." [laughter]
Maria Varmazis: All right.
Joe Carrigan: "I'm not taking his advice or referral, etc. What backpack does Joe use that he loves so much and U.S. airports fear? Yes, I am looking for a new backpack."
Dave Bittner: Yes.
Joe Carrigan: All right. We're going to put a link in the show notes for this.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, my God, affiliate links, right? You're going to make a little money from this?
Dave Bittner: That's right. Joe's got a little backpack side hustle going on here.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Joe's an influencer, oh, my gosh, a JoFluencer.
Dave Bittner: Oh, that's interest- -- see, Joe, you could have "The Official Carrigan Backpack." I hadn't thought about that.
Joe Carrigan: Right. Yeah, that's a good idea, Dave. You know, over there, sitting on the couch there, I have, you know, probably close to $800 in Oakley products, but anyway, the glasses are prescription, so maybe that's why, but the backpack I use is the Oakley Kitchen Sink Backpack.
Dave Bittner: Really?
Joe Carrigan: Yep, and it's --
Maria Varmazis: It's actually called that?
Dave Bittner: It's a little on the nose.
Joe Carrigan: It is called The Kitchen Sink.
Maria Varmazis: Wow, you weren't kidding.
Dave Bittner: I was just imagining you, Joe, at the backpack store going through and saying, "Oh, let's see. All right. Camper Special. No. Let's see. Here's the Adventurer Plus. No. Oh, Kitchen Sink, hold on.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, that's for me.
Dave Bittner: Right. Right.
Joe Carrigan: You know, I first saw this backpack when I was working in my very first cybersecurity job, which was doing secure development and systems integration for software developers, anyway -- software products. Anyway, my boss at the time, Chris, had one of these backpacks, and I was, like, "How do you like that backpack?" He goes, "I absolutely love it." I have had this one backpack since, like, 2012.
Dave Bittner: The same one?
Joe Carrigan: The same one.
Dave Bittner: Wow.
Joe Carrigan: I mean, the only backpacks I've had that have lasted this long -- the Lands' End backpacks are also very good.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: My sister had one of those that she used through, like, middle school, and then she got sick of it and wanted something cooler because they're not exactly glamorous-looking backpacks --
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- but I used that through college, and my daughter used it through some of high school, and then my son used it. That was good until my son left some food in there, and Kevin, the dog, just tore it up trying to get to the food. [ Laughter ] It does not survive dogs well, especially if you put food in it. This backpack, however, I think would keep a dog out.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: It looks like it's made out of Kevlar or something.
Joe Carrigan: It does, this Kitchen Sink Backpack. This thing is -- I've had this now for, like, 14 years, and when this one fails, I'm just going to buy another one.
Maria Varmazis: Wow.
Joe Carrigan: So far, only one thing has broken on it, and that's one of the clips that's on the front has broken, and when I'm looking at this backpack -- because they don't sell the exact model I have anymore, but they have something similar -- it looks like -- well, it kind of looks like the same clips on the front that I have. It's just that mine are red, and all the hardware on mine is silver. I don't think they make that anymore, but The Kitchen Sink in Stealth Black, that's the color. Then they have other colors as well, like Total Coyote, Tiger Camo, Green Mist, and then Deep Olive, but I would still go with the black one.
Maria Varmazis: What is that hardware in the front? There's some -- I don't even know how to describe this, not hooks or --
Dave Bittner: Yeah, they're like carabiner receivers --
Maria Varmazis: Right, exactly.
Dave Bittner: -- in case Joe needs to, I don't know, winch a Jeep out of a mud hole. He can click it into the back of his backpack and just pull it right on out of there, yeah.
Joe Carrigan: I will say this: Those are not as good as you think they'd be.
Dave Bittner: Oh, you think?
Maria Varmazis: What are they for? I just don't understand.
Joe Carrigan: I imagine at one point in time, they were for hooking a water bottle to it. You get one of those water bottles with a carabiner on it, and then you clip it on there.
Maria Varmazis: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, maybe you're thirsty. I don't know. Maybe for your water bottle, your coffee thermos, and your flask, right? You're all prepped for the day, from morning till happy hour, but I will tell you this. When I had -- I did put a water bottle on there once, and that thing just kept hitting me in the butt with every step I took, so, I mean, I tried it, and I was walking -- this was when I was working up at Hopkins. I deliberately gave myself, like, a half-mile walk every day from the parking garage to my office so I would get the steps in and be a little fit. It didn't really make me less thin, but --
Dave Bittner: It didn't make you less thin?
Maria Varmazis: Less thin. Less thin.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, I got out of the elevator, and then right after the elevator, there was a bridge. I got off the bridge and took the bottle off and just carried it because it was so annoying. That's -- but otherwise, I have no complaints about this thing. It has been awesome, and it holds everything I carry with me, and it is great airport -- it does go through airport security pretty well. It does kind of fit under a seat. I've never had anybody -- I've taken this on every flight I've gone on since I've gotten it, and I've never had anybody say, "That's too big. It has to go in the overheads."
Dave Bittner: I was just going to say, there is no way that that thing fits in that little box they have before you board the plane.
Joe Carrigan: It's my personal carry-on.
Dave Bittner: [Laughter] Okay.
Maria Varmazis: So Joe, how tall are you? Just remind me.
Joe Carrigan: Six feet.
Maria Varmazis: Okay. I'm 5'1". I would tip over if I wore this thing and weighed in as you do. It looks like it's three-quarters of my height, just looking at it.
Joe Carrigan: It's pretty big.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: I could not wear this.
Joe Carrigan: I have never seen a laptop that wouldn't fit into it.
Dave Bittner: You could fit a Cray 100 in there.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, and it's got a nice, easy access zipper on the side for the laptop, so you don't need to go rummaging around the whole backpack just to get to the laptop.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Maria Varmazis: It looks like you could fit a child in there.
Dave Bittner: It appears that Joe's backpack is like Mary Poppins' bag.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: It has everything in there.
Joe Carrigan: It does.
Maria Varmazis: How are your vertebrae doing?
Joe Carrigan: Fine.
Maria Varmazis: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: I'd be more concerned about my discs between my vertebrae.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, yeah.
Joe Carrigan: I do occasionally get a pain in the very far left side of my chest from where that strap hits me.
Dave Bittner: That's called a heart attack.
Joe Carrigan: No, no, it's not -- [laughter] I often worry about that. You know, like, that's the first thing that comes to my mind at my age. [Laughter] "Am I having a heart attack?"
Maria Varmazis: Or is it my Oakley backpack?
Dave Bittner: It's -- right. This backpack is making me wonder if I have heart attacks --
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: -- but I'll just keep using it.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, it does have a little compartment on the bottom that you can put your shoes in that you can keep -- so it will take up space in your bag, but it will keep your dirty shoes away from everything else in the bag. It separates it. It's got a little bag around it.
Maria Varmazis: See, I use a plastic bag for that.
Dave Bittner: There's probably room in there for a defibrillator --
Joe Carrigan: Right. [ Laughter ]
Dave Bittner: -- one of those little portable kits.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, that would be awesome.
Maria Varmazis: Just hook it up and integrate it into the straps. You don't even need to get it out.
Dave Bittner: Oh, that would've been better, right?
Joe Carrigan: That's a great idea.
Maria Varmazis: If you have an idea --
Dave Bittner: Yeah, all you have to do is rip your shirt open, and it's already prepositioned.
Maria Varmazis: You're good to go.
Joe Carrigan: Then put that gel on, the conductive gel --
Dave Bittner: Yeah, I mean, you just hit a button and, "Clear."
Maria Varmazis: [inaudible 00:08:11]. [ Laughter ]
Dave Bittner: Oh, all right. Joe, if you patent that, I think Maria and I should be co-patenters on it.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: The backpack defibrillator, oh, my gosh. All right. We have a link to Joe's backpack in the show notes. We also have a link to a YouTube video that has a ridiculously oversized backpack. If you're curious what Joe's backpack looks like, it's not far off from this YouTube video. I also put a couple other links in here for backpack shoppers. There's a website called Worse on Purpose.
Joe Carrigan: Really?
Dave Bittner: Yeah, and it's all about -- it's the encrapification of things. How, basically, when venture capital gets a hold of something, they make it worse.
Joe Carrigan: Oh, God, yes.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, this is a rabbit hole. I love it. Oh, my goodness, I -- thank you for this.
Dave Bittner: Yeah, just yesterday I was reading all about how, like, Pyrex isn't Pyrex anymore.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, don't even get me started on that. Don't even get me started on that.
Joe Carrigan: What is it if it's not Pyrex?
Dave Bittner: It's -- the formulation is different. It's not -- so if you want real Pyrex, you've either got to buy it from Europe or you've got to go to the thrift store and buy old stuff.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, and the thrift stores know, so if you see it in all capital letters, that's the old school. If it's in lowercase, it's the new school. I have old school and new school Pyrex cooking utensils, devices, whatever they call it, the glass.
Joe Carrigan: Wait, is the formulation of the glass different?
Dave Bittner: Yes.
Maria Varmazis: Yes. Yeah, and you can even see it. I have some of my grandmother's Pyrex, and it's -- the glass is beautiful and clear and indestructible, and the new Pyrex has, like, a green cast to it.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, and other things, but yeah.
Dave Bittner: Anyway, they did a deep dive on backpacks, as well, so the point being that some of those old tried-and-true, trusted brands that you think of when you think of well-made backpacks may not be anymore, so it's worth reading this to find out what that's about. Then I also put a link in here to a company called Porta-Brace. Porta-Brace is world-famous for making bags that you put your professional broadcast video cameras in.
Joe Carrigan: Okay.
Dave Bittner: I have a bunch of them from my previous career. Porta-Brace bags are the most ridiculously overengineered things you will ever cross paths with in your life.
Maria Varmazis: I love it.
Dave Bittner: They are indestructible. If you do somehow damage it, you can send it back to Porta-Brace. They will repair it. They will clean it. They will send it back to you. You can send it back to them to just clean it, and they'll clean it and send it back to you.
Maria Varmazis: That's so refreshing.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: That's so nice.
Dave Bittner: They are made in Vermont, handmade in Vermont. Imagine a factory full of ladies with big industrial sewing machines. That's what Porta-Brace is.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, my gosh.
Dave Bittner: They are very expensive. I think they do have a backpack and it's around $500 --
Joe Carrigan: Okay.
Dave Bittner: -- but I can without hesitation recommend their products because they're just indestructible. Again, it's as if somebody said, "Make something that someone cannot destroy," and that's what they do. I have Porta-Brace bags that are 30 years old that look like they're brand new. I've never had a structural failure or any kind of -- I've never had any sort of product disappointment with a Porta-Brace product, and I've used them for decades.
Maria Varmazis: Wow.
Dave Bittner: Yeah, they're kind of a secret. You know, a lot of people don't know about them outside of the broadcast industry because that's the center of their bullseye, but they make a lot of other things that are kind of cross-useful, not cheap, but if money's no object, if you have the means, I highly recommend them.
Maria Varmazis: Wow. Yeah, what a good recommendation. Seriously, you should get affiliate links going for this, this was a -- wow.
Dave Bittner: Yeah, they're really good. All right. Well, thank you for the follow-up there. Joe, anything else before we move on?
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, last week, we were talking about -- during Maria's story, we were talking about poisoning data for AI, and that got me thinking --
Maria Varmazis: Oh, boy.
Joe Carrigan: -- about these scams that go out, and these scammers go out and scrape the internet. They feed everything into an AI that generates profiles about you.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Do you remember, probably about three months ago or four months ago, we were talking about a cybersecurity researcher who poisoned some AI by telling everybody he was a world hot dog eating champion?
Maria Varmazis: Yes, yes, yep. [Laughter]
Joe Carrigan: I thought, why not do that with your own stuff? Like, for example, if I was going to put up a webpage about Joe Carrigan, I could put up a bunch of information that's true, right, that I talk about here all the time, and I could say, "Joe Carrigan has been a lifelong Marylander," and all these other facts about me but put in some facts about me that are not true.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Right? Like, I love crabs, right? Every Marylander loves crabs except Joe. I can't stand them.
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: So, you know, put things in there that would be like a red flag, so if someone was talking to you and they say, "I see you really like crabs," then you know immediately, ah, this is somebody who got the bogus information about me.
Dave Bittner: Right, right.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, well, don't reveal it on the show --
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: -- because eventually the transcript will be published, and they'll know.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, it's something I have definitely been thinking about. Whether or not I've implemented it, I don't want to say, but there are certainly certain tells that I will be listening for if they come up in conversation from, you know, a PR person or whatnot, that will tell me how they got their information.
Dave Bittner: Ah, very clever. All right. I like it, sort of biographical decoys.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, maybe we could call it, like, a honeypot for AI scams or something.
Dave Bittner: Yeah, I like it. I like it. All right. Well, I'll tell you what. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. When we come back, we will dive into our stories, so stick around. [ Music ] We are back. Joe, why don't you kick things off for us this week? What do you got?
Joe Carrigan: I've got two today because I'm really only going to touch on the first one that I have. The first one is about Burma or also known as Myanmar. I think that's right. Burma's government has approved the death penalty as punishment for Internet scammers --
Maria Varmazis: Wow.
Joe Carrigan: -- and this is a story from Fox News. This is after the FBI's $8 billion crypto seizure that they did. I think we reported on this a couple of weeks ago.
Dave Bittner: Another great heavy metal band name, Crypto Seizure.
Joe Carrigan: Crypto Seizure, right. What was the one last week, Blockchain Nightmare?
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Right. Maria, did you ever get a --
Maria Varmazis: I'm working on it. I'm working on it.
Joe Carrigan: All right. So yeah, I don't know. We talked about last week how they were -- how these scam centers do jurisdiction shopping, where they go out and they might try to bribe people. I don't know how effective this will be as a deterrent, but it looks like Burma is not joking around about this anymore. You know, not that I would approve of capital punishment for these people, but -- or necessarily for anybody. I'm not particularly a big fan of it, personally, but maybe this will stop some people from cyber scamming out of out of Burma. The Anti-Online Scam Law mandates 10 years of prison and forced labor --
Dave Bittner: Wow.
Joe Carrigan: -- for cybercrimes and scam compounds.
Maria Varmazis: Can I be really cynical about that for a second? Just, I have a feeling people who will be punished are not the people really perpetrating this stuff.
Joe Carrigan: Right. My concern is that. The people that are going to get punished are the people that are already being abused here, the enslaved people that are being forced to do the work.
Dave Bittner: What if the 10 years of hard labor is working in a scam compound? [ Laughter ]
Maria Varmazis: Oh, it goes all the way down -- yeah, the scam is all the way down --
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: All right. So that's -- we'll put a link to that in the show notes, but the one I wanted to talk about today touches on two of my favorite things: West Virginia and Little Debbie Snacks.
Dave Bittner: Oh, okay.
Joe Carrigan: Are you guys familiar with Little Debbie Snacks?
Dave Bittner: I am.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, heck yes, they raised me, yes.
Dave Bittner: Now, for some reason, I associate Little Debbie Snacks with camping trips.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, you know, I can see why you make that, because every time you're going camping, you just grab the Little Debbie shelf-stable snacks, and then you can just give them to the kids, and say, yeah, here, eat this chocolate-loaded sugar bomb.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, have a Cosmic Brownie.
Dave Bittner: What is the top of your list of favorite Little Debbie Snacks? What's number one, Maria?
Maria Varmazis: Oh, man.
Joe Carrigan: I've got to think about this. Oh, I know what it is.
Dave Bittner: I have an answer.
Joe Carrigan: I have an answer, too.
Maria Varmazis: I -- it has been a really long time since I've had one because I can't stand them anymore. As a kid, I loved them, though.
Dave Bittner: Oh.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, I just -- they're too sweet for me. I just can't do it.
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Maria Varmazis: Honestly, though --
Dave Bittner: I feel sad. I feel sad for you.
Maria Varmazis: No, don't feel sad. It's a good -- I -- It's fine. It's all good. My favorite as a kid -- and this is going to make me sound really ancient -- is I really love those oatmeal --
Dave Bittner: Oatmeal Creme Pies.
Maria Varmazis: Oatmeal -- I loved those. I really did.
Dave Bittner: That was my pick. Those were good.
Maria Varmazis: I was going to say I also really like oatmeal raisin cookies.
Joe Carrigan: Oh.
Maria Varmazis: I know. I know. I know. Oh, my God. Everybody's -- I also really like licorice, which makes me sound like a million years old.
Dave Bittner: Licorice?
Maria Varmazis: I know. I know.
Joe Carrigan: Oh, I love licorice, but, man, I hate raisins. In fact, I hate raisins so much, Dave, I'd rather have ants on a log with actual ants than with raisins.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, no.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, no raisins.
Maria Varmazis: All right. Now you have to answer. What are your favorites then?
Dave Bittner: I said mine. The Oatmeal Creme Pie is my favorite.
Joe Carrigan: My favorite is the Nutty Buddy I think it's called --
Maria Varmazis: Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one.
Joe Carrigan: -- the chocolate-covered peanut butter wafer snack.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Oh, I love those.
Dave Bittner: All right.
Joe Carrigan: Those are great. Anyway, I'm going through puberty again. Anyway, this story is actually not about Internet or cybercrime, but it illustrates something I want to talk about with this story. This story is about a guy named James Powell who had a gig as an independent distributor with a company called Stewart Snacks, who I think is a distributor of Little Debbie Snacks. Either that or the company owns Little Debbie Snacks, I don't know which one. Anyway, Mr. Powell -- this is all alleged. It has not been proven in court yet, so he is innocent until proven guilty, was investigated -- and has since been arrested -- for this scam where he would falsify delivery invoices showing that these Little Debbie products had been delivered to retailers like Giant Eagle, Walmart, and others. These deliveries had never been made.
Maria Varmazis: Ruh-roh.
Joe Carrigan: Right. It's not like he said, here's 100 boxes of Little Debbie Snacks and only gives him, like, 90, right? He just didn't even deliver the snacks. He just forged people's signatures on the files and -- or on the invoices and then sent them to the company, the Stewart Snacks Company, to get -- to collect his commission and to bill the retailers for them.
Maria Varmazis: That's so reckless. I mean, you don't even have plausible deniability with that one going, "Oh, oops, my mistake." I -- you know, I was a little short. He just straight up didn't do it?
Joe Carrigan: Right. He just straight up didn't do it.
Maria Varmazis: Who would check? Everybody's going to check. Wow.
Joe Carrigan: So everybody, of course, checks. [ Laughter ]
Maria Varmazis: We want our Cosmic Brownies. We want our Nutty Buddies.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Joe Carrigan: We want our Oatmeal Creme Pies, so the authorities are now seeking, like, $17,000 in restitution, so what he would do when he had these snacks, because now what do you do with three shipments of snacks that you took from the distributor and did not deliver to the retailer? You take them to a flea market, and you sell them as well.
Maria Varmazis: Oh --
Dave Bittner: Oh, wow.
Maria Varmazis: -- that's not what I thought you were going to say. I was imagining the I Love Lucy where they're stuffing the chocolates in their mouth real fast.
Joe Carrigan: Just in the back of a truck --
Maria Varmazis: It's, like, "Quick, get rid of it." Okay. Flea markets probably -- yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Right, so he's, like, you know, if I go in here and sell these things at a low, low price, I can make all this money. Not only do I get my commission for selling these things, but I also get to take the money for the snacks.
Maria Varmazis: Double dip.
Joe Carrigan: Yep, they have caught him, and here's the list of things they've charged him with: This is according to the Washington County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney. Police have charged Powell with three felony counts of forgery, two felony counts of theft by deception, two felony counts of theft by unlawful taking, one felony count of deceptive or fraudulent business practices, three misdemeanor counts of tampering with records or identification, one misdemeanor count of theft by deception, one misdemeanor count of theft by unlawful taking, and two misdemeanor counts of deceptive or fraudulent business practices.
Maria Varmazis: Listen, you don't mess with Little Debbie. We take that real serious. Come on. We don't do it.
Dave Bittner: Don't mess with "Big Snack."
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, we throw the book at you.
Dave Bittner: Wow.
Joe Carrigan: Here's the part I want to focus on, why this is relevant to this show. We talk often about what is going to save you from getting scammed out here, getting scammed out of money --
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- particularly in a business environment. What these companies like Walmart and Shop 'n Save and Giant Eagle all did was they had an inventory process where they take inventory in. That process demonstrated that they had never received these snacks, so they didn't have record of receiving them. When they got the bill, they called Stewart Snacks and said, hey, we never got these things. They said, well, you signed for them. They were like, oh, yeah? Let me see the signatures, and they said, those are forged signatures.
Dave Bittner: Oh.
Joe Carrigan: That's how this worked and went down, so these companies, these individual -- these retailers are not out any money. They have saved themselves because of their process, which I think is most germane to what we do here.
Dave Bittner: Oh, okay.
Joe Carrigan: You know, we say over and over again, "Your processes, your processes, your processes, that's what's going to save you. Know the processes. Do the processes." Here we are seeing the processes working. Now, Stewart Snacks has still lost out, right? They've paid this guy a commission. They have lost $17,000 worth of inventory, and this guy has profited, and they're trying to get that back from him. I don't know that they will. If you look at the guy's mugshot, the guy doesn't look like the kind of guy to stash money away, so they may just take the hit on this. The point is -- but that's a risk with every employee that you hire or every, actually, I think the guy was an independent contractor. Every independent contractor you work with, you run the risk of them doing something like this to you.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: You have insurance for this and other things to mitigate that risk. You can offload it, but that's really my point here is that the retailers had processes, followed the processes, and did not lose their money.
Dave Bittner: Yeah, we talk about with, like, nonprofits, there's a common scam where someone will call and call the financial officer and say, "I need you to write a check right away." They'll pretend to be the executive director and say, "I need you to write a check right away." I've heard of -- I have multiple friends that this has happened to, who serve on nonprofit boards. The process is no one person can write a check, you know, for more than a certain amount of money.
Maria Varmazis: Right, yep.
Dave Bittner: It has to be seen by at least two sets of eyes.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: No single point of failure, yes, that makes a lot of sense.
Joe Carrigan: Right. Yeah, that's interesting. All right. Well, we will have a link to Joe's stories in the show notes. Maria, you're up. What do you got for us?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, so there's a story that was published through ABC News, the U.S. ABC News, as well as an Indiana-based ABC News affiliate, WRTV, and it's about a scam -- not necessarily new -- but it's on the rise right now. Those are foreclosure scams and equity-stripping scams. I was familiar with the first one, of foreclosure scams, but not equity stripping. That one was a bit new to me, so a little context: Part of the reason why foreclosure scams and related scams are on the rise is, apparently, foreclosures are up 21% in the United States in 2026 alone, which is -- yeah, that on its own, just -- that that is a lot, so a lot of people are really hurting right now. That statistic comes from ABC News, some analysis that they did. Scammers are following that trend. They're seeing the same thing. They're noticing that foreclosures are up. Something that is worth mentioning, something we've talked about a lot on this show is foreclosures. Like many other things, they are public records. When someone's home is in foreclosure, that filing is on public record. It can be found, often on the Internet, quite quickly and easily. Just, like, if you get a mortgage or refinance or something, you get a spate of mailings. This is what happened to me recently, you know, scammy stuff about your mortgage or whatever. Foreclosures are getting a similar treatment. As soon as someone enters foreclosure proceedings, scammers can easily identify them very quickly and then start targeting them with phone calls, letters in the mail, emails, and sometimes, even in-person visits. This tends to happen, especially in locations where there's a cluster of foreclosures. Unfortunately, they tend to be in lower-income areas. That's actually part of the story that WRTV in Indiana covered, that there are some locations where there are just a lot of foreclosures happening, and these scammers are quite literally going door to door and hitting people up. Unfortunately, they're having some success, so backing up a second, let's first talk about the foreclosure rescue scams, just for people who aren't familiar with what these are or how they work, because it's been a little while since I've thought about them. The idea with these is that you basically get a pitch saying that, hey, we can help you save your home because you're in foreclosure, and that's a very uncomfortable place to be. You fall behind in your mortgage payments, and you're desperate. A company or individual then says they can negotiate with the lender on your behalf or secure a loan modification, stop foreclosure proceedings, or even lower your monthly payments. To do this -- here's the ask -- is we just need a fee up front. That's the -- "That's how they get you," as I can hear Joe saying. The homeowner in this case thinks someone's here to help me. Someone's here trying to do a good thing. I've heard of things like foreclosure relief services and the like. This must be one of those things. This must be legitimate assistance, and of course, unfortunately, the scammer is going to take your money and run. The ABC News Indiana affiliate actually talked to someone. Her name is Allison Dorris, who went through this exact situation. She lost her job during the COVID pandemic. Her home entered foreclosure, and she was directed to a company. I'm not quite sure how -- I think they just -- they called her. The scam company called her and said that, hey, we can help you save your home, and she thought that that money that she was going to pay would help her out and help her keep her home. Instead, she lost $9,000 to scammers, and she never got that money back, and her home was still foreclosed. Just kicking people when they're down, just the scum -- the scummiest of the scum of the earth, that's truly just awful.
Joe Carrigan: Absolutely.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, and, I mean, these are the roofs over people's heads. I mean, I just -- my God. Anyway, so there's an evolution of this terrible scam, and the phrase that is being used for this one is called "equity stripping," and I had never heard of this, so kudos to ABC News for covering this, because this is how I learned about it. These equity-stripping scammers, they don't just call you or mail you. They may -- as I mentioned earlier -- actually show up at your front door, so these scammers are not interested in collecting a fee, like in the previous example of Ms. Dorris, who lost $9,000. They actually want your house's equity, so this is the stuff that you've already paid into your house. This is, you know, the -- this is the portion of your home's value that you own outright, so, you know, all those years of mortgage payments that you legitimately were able to do, that's your home's equity, right? For most of us who are not extremely wealthy, this is this is our biggest, you know, nest egg. That is the nest egg is your home's equity, right? The hope is that when you pass on, you can pass that equity on to your kids if you have any, and that's how generational wealth happens. I mean, that's -- for a lot of us, that's how it works.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Right now, we have this sort of perfect storm of house values are going way, way up, especially for homes that have been owned for a long time. Of course, we have a lot of people who are also struggling to make those payments because the economy is terrible in the United States right now, so we have rising home values, plus people struggling and foreclosures on the rise, so scammers are going, well, there's a lot of houses with a lot of equity that we could go after. Those homeowners are in trouble and they can't pay the mortgage. Let's go after that equity. Just as before with the foreclosure scams, the scammers are very easily able to identify a homeowner in foreclosure because, again, it's public record. In many cases, these scammers will actually show up at the front door of a home that is in trouble and they'll say, "I'm a housing advocate." "I'm an investor." "I'm a foreclosure specialist," or I'm, like, a housing rescue organizer or something like that. One of the stories that ABC News covered said as soon as 20 minutes after the filings have been made, they show up at people's doors in some communities. I mean, that is just unreal.
Joe Carrigan: So they're local?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, it's so predatory. Twenty minutes within a filing? It's like they're waiting at City Hall and just kind of running out the door. I mean, I just -- some of the statistics in this are just really blowing my mind in the worst possible way. So yeah, the scammer claims they can help save the home, and then, using a lot of high-pressure tactics and language that's very hard to understand because let's be real, when it comes to anything involving housing, sales, mortgages, anything like that, the language is not easy to understand, even in the best of circumstances.
Dave Bittner: It's not something we do very often.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: No, it's really not. It's, like, so -- they use a lot of that kind of abuse. I'm trying to use a fancy word that I can't pronounce.
Dave Bittner: Obfuscation?
Joe Carrigan: I was just going to say it.
Maria Varmazis: Obfuscatory language.
Dave Bittner: Yeah, we'll go with that.
Maria Varmazis: It's true, language that's hard to understand.
Joe Carrigan: Hard words.
Maria Varmazis: Hard words, big, hard words, hard to understand to pressure the homeowner into signing complex documents. Again, do they understand what they're signing? A lot of the times, no, but again, did I understand what I was signing when my lawyer was there sitting next to me at closing?
Dave Bittner: No.
Joe Carrigan: No.
Maria Varmazis: I just trusted the guy I was paying was leading me in the right direction.
Joe Carrigan: Same here, okay.
Maria Varmazis: Sign here for three hours. I hope I don't get scammed. What ends up happening in this situation is the scammer, through that barrage of paperwork, actually gets the homeowner, often unbeknownst to them, to sell their home below market value, below fair-market value, and in many cases, even fully transfer ownership of the property to the scammer, so the scammer then owns the title to the home. Essentially, the homeowner becomes a renter in their own home. That's essentially how it kind of works, so the homeowner thinks that they're getting help and the scammer walks away with the equity in the home. They've made a whole bundle of cash, and in many cases, the actual title to the house. This one just again, just awful, and ABC News has a really heartbreaking example of this, of a real-world example that this happened to is this poor man. A woman named Vanessa Lewry says her father, who was suffering from dementia, was approached at his home, his front door, after his Arizona house entered foreclosure. According to his daughter, the scammer convinced him to sign over ownership of the property, and when the family found out, they tried to fight this in court. Apparently, they spent years trying to fight it in court. Just -- this is just heartbreaking. I'm sorry. The financial loss, including the legal costs for the family, was between $100,000 and $150,000.
Joe Carrigan: Wow.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, and Arizona's Attorney General says that the company -- and these are the scammers again, and its associates -- are running a large-scale equity-stripping scheme, and this has affected hundreds of homeowners that they know of. Again, this gentleman had dementia. I mean, it's another one of, really, just unbelievably scummy, predatory practices taking people's homes from them. I just -- I can't believe it. Anyhoo, so what makes this all work is, of course, people are feeling embarrassed about foreclosure. They're feeling the pressure about, you know, possibly losing ownership of their home. All those fears and that time pressure, which is real, can often work wonders in the amygdala to override the normal skepticism that a lot of us would have about, hey, this person might be trying to scam us. A lot of times people feel like they really don't have any options left. You know, I don't want to lose my home. What can I possibly do? I feel like my back's up against the wall. As we mentioned earlier, in the best of circumstances, this kind of paperwork, even the legitimate stuff, is very complex and hard to understand. Adding to it, the scammers often pressure people. "Don't get your own advocate." "Don't hire a lawyer." You know, "We're an expert. We can help you. You don't need to go through that trouble. I'm telling you that I'm here to help you, so why would you need to contact a lawyer about this stuff?"
Dave Bittner: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Like, why would you want the expense of a lawyer? Like, you can circumvent all that and just let me handle it for you. Like, why would -- you know, why would you do all that? Then, often, not until it's too late do the victims realize that they've not only lost money, they've actually lost their homes. Red flags to watch out for are any kind of guarantees that someone can stop a foreclosure, any kind of request for an upfront fee, any pressure to act immediately. Admittedly, foreclosure is a very time-sensitive situation, but, like, nobody needs to be acting immediately. Any kind of instructions not to talk to a lawyer or your lender, like you should definitely be talking to those people for sure. Any request for payment via wire transfer, cashier's check, or payment apps, those are not legitimate ways of paying someone for something as big as a mortgage. Especially don't listen to anyone saying that you've got to transfer your title or ownership of your property, like slam the brakes right there or anyone asking you to sell your home to them below market value, and always, you should always with anything relating to property -- I know it's expensive -- but you should definitely contact an attorney or a trusted advisor. Your home is too important to mess with. So, yeah, if anything seems suspicious, get legal advice, not anyone's favorite thing to do, but get legal advice if you are not sure about signing a document. Your state attorney general's office can also be a good place to check with if you're genuinely unsure.
Dave Bittner: Right.
Maria Varmazis: So, yeah.
Dave Bittner: I would imagine, also, this is something for a lot of folks at the county level. There are probably people who can provide you with at least initial guidance or, you know, to help set you on the right path.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, or your lender. Yeah, I keep forgetting about counties because I live in, like, the one state that doesn't do that. [Laughter] We technically have counties, but it's not -- we don't do county-level stuff. It's weird, but yeah, yes. This is not one of those things where you want to be answering somebody at the door. Just slam the door in their face. Just, honestly, just don't take that at all, but, you know, reach out to your mortgage lender. I mean, I know mortgage lenders really don't like foreclosing on people. At least that's what they say. So, you know, if you've got -- at least that's what they tell you is they want to avoid that situation. You know, if someone says they're trying to help you with it, say, "Thanks. I'm going to talk to my mortgage lender," and then talk to them first.
Dave Bittner: Yeah, it reminds me of back when I was -- when I had my own company, my previous career, and I was talking with a friend of mine who was a commercial banker. We were just -- I was asking him, you know, do you have any advice for a small business, you know, who's still up in a startup stage? He said, "Yeah," he said, "communicate with your banker." He said, "Your impulse is going to be" -- he said, "There are going to be times when things are bad. They're going to be times in your small business where most small businesses, when you feel like you don't know what to do. You know, things aren't adding up and you're in trouble." He said, "Your impulse is going to be to clam up and hunker down." He said, "That's the opposite of what you should do." He said, "Call your banker and talk to them." He said -- and to your point, Maria -- your banker does not want you to go out of business, right?
Maria Varmazis: Right. I mean, it's better for them. They make more money from you if you stay in business or if you can keep paying your mortgage. I like to think of it in just those concrete terms. They make more money from you if you don't sink.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: They don't want to see you go out of business or foreclose.
Dave Bittner: And chances are they have more flexibility on their end than you think.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: So it's --
Maria Varmazis: It's always worth chatting with them, but my assumption often is if someone's in foreclosure, they've done all that. I don't know. I don't want to assume that at all. Yeah, it's a heartbreaking situation, foreclosure, and usually mortgage lenders say they try to work with you again. It can -- your mileage may vary on that one, but yeah.
Dave Bittner: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we will have a link to that story in the show notes. I'll tell you what. Let's take a quick break here. We will be right back after these messages. [ Music ] All right. We are back, and my story this week comes from the folks over at Infosecurity Magazine. Let's go through this together here, so imagine that you are ready to set off on your new career as a scammer.
Joe Carrigan: Oh, I'm in. [ Laughter ]
Maria Varmazis: Joe's been waiting for this day for so long.
Joe Carrigan: Here I am.
Dave Bittner: Are there backpacks?
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: [Laughter] He brought his own.
Joe Carrigan: I'm going to be able to buy so many of them.
Dave Bittner: You don't know how to code. You don't have a warehouse full of burner phones. You don't have a team of engineers. Twenty years ago, that would have been a problem, but these days --
Joe Carrigan: It's just me and my world of enemies.
Dave Bittner: [Laughter] There's a report from researchers at a company called HUMAN Security. They went online into one of the dark web forums, and they bought a phone farm kit to see what was inside. This is a sort of a prepackaged kit where you can set up your own phone scamming. They said it's less of a criminal mastermind operation and more like assembling IKEA furniture.
Joe Carrigan: Right?
Dave Bittner: You buy some hardware.
Maria Varmazis: Have fun.
Dave Bittner: You buy some hardware, or you can skip the hardware altogether and just rent virtual phones.
Joe Carrigan: You can do that? Who knew?
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: I didn't know that.
Dave Bittner: Right? You subscribe to software that lets one person manage hundreds of devices, and then you add the special -- the secret sauce.
Joe Carrigan: AI.
Maria Varmazis: Sriracha? Oh, no, okay.
Dave Bittner: That's the part that really changes the game, so instead of writing automated code, you just tell the AI what you want in plain English. You need hundreds of fake accounts. You need bots to keep your romance scam conversations going. The AI can write the scripts. It can create the personas and can keep those conversations flowing. The researchers call this "FunFoneFarm" because it's become a recipe. They're saying that every layer removes another barrier.
Joe Carrigan: Okay. I'm going to complain about the name here.
Maria Varmazis: "FunFoneFarm?"
Joe Carrigan: Right, because they spelled it fun with an F, phone with an F, farm with an F. It is far more in line with hacker culture to call it "Phun Fone Pharm," spelling "fun" and "farm" with PHs.
Maria Varmazis: You can't argue with you on that one. That's true.
Joe Carrigan: Like phone phreaking.
Maria Varmazis: Like phone phreaking, yeah.
Dave Bittner: Okay. You're just saying they should have gone the other way --
Joe Carrigan: They should have gone the other way with it, right.
Maria Varmazis: "Phs."
Dave Bittner: -- and kept the "ph" in phone and it flipped to the -- yeah, okay.
Maria Varmazis: You can't argue with him now.
Joe Carrigan: I just derailed what you were saying.
Dave Bittner: I concur. I concur.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Yeah.
Dave Bittner: They say the management software comes with documentation. It even comes with customer support, and again, AI removes a lot of the technical expertise and the language skills that the scammers would need. They've dug into some of the economics here, and according to their report, for a few thousand dollars a month, you can buy into an underground fraud ecosystem worth tens of billions of dollars. They said romance scams cost victims nearly $930 million last year, and those are FBI figures, so the takeaway here is that cybercrime is starting to look less like hacking and more like subscribing to software. You can basically buy into something like this, and it operates as a service. The infrastructure has become productized, and AI is filling in the gaps. You really don't need the specialists that you used to need, you know, to get these things done. It's practically -- if you're a money person and you have no ethics --
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: -- and you're willing to spend a good bit of your life looking over your shoulder to see if law enforcement's coming at you, that barrier to entry is quite low.
Joe Carrigan: Or you live in a place where you know law enforcement is not coming after you.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Dave Bittner: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Right?
Maria Varmazis: So it's SCaaS, it's "Scamming as a Service."
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: Yeah, SCaaS, nice.
Maria Varmazis: SCaaS.
Joe Carrigan: What's the acronym for that? Is that SCa- --
Maria Varmazis: SCaaS.
Dave Bittner: Oh, there's got to be a "ph" in there somewhere.
Joe Carrigan: Right. We've got to have that "ph" in there.
Maria Varmazis: I'll workshop it a bit. I'll workshop it.
Dave Bittner: Okay. Maybe get your friend to make a T-shirt.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, a T-shirt, he's going to be busy. [ Laughter ]
Dave Bittner: All right. We will have a link to that story in the show notes. Again, that's from the folks at Infosecurity Magazine. Joe, Maria, it is time for our "Catch of the Day." [ Soundbite of Reeling in Fishing Line ]
Joe Carrigan: Dave, our "Catch of the Day" comes from r/scambait, and the title of this post is, "That Two-Timing [beep], Barb Johnson." [ Laughter ]
Maria Varmazis: I know her well, yeah.
Dave Bittner: Well, I'll start it off here. It says, "Congratulations. I'm Julie, the Michigan Powerball Power Play Winner, so you have been fortuitously picked among our electoral machine on Facebook Lucky Winners, those getting $100,000 this month, 2025, from my giveaway program going on. Are you ready to claim your winning?"
Maria Varmazis: "Wow. That's crazy. I don't remember buying a ticket for the Michigan Lottery, but maybe I'm just lucky."
Dave Bittner: "Oh, really? Okay. What do you do for a living, and what will you be using the $200,000 for?"
Joe Carrigan: Wait, I thought you said it was $100,000.
Maria Varmazis: "I own a call center in India. We run the Nigerian prince scam."
Joe Carrigan: "Okay. To claim your winnings, you will have to contact Agent Barb Johnson, the Claiming Agent, who will help you to claim your winnings prize. Click on this link and message the agent in charge of your winnings package."
Maria Varmazis: "Oh, I love clicking on links. Wait, hang on, Barb Johnson? She works for us, that two-timing [beep]. I knew she wasn't visiting her uncle. You tell that [beep] not to come into work on Monday. She's fired."
Joe Carrigan: And scene.
Maria Varmazis: I'm going to get a complaint email from -- about swearing again.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, you've got -- in this picture, the scambaiter's phone is at 48%. It has a yellow battery.
Dave Bittner: Forty-eight is in the yellow?
Joe Carrigan: I don't know what -- is this an iPhone? This looks like an iPhone.
Dave Bittner: It's an iPhone, yeah.
Maria Varmazis: That's when you go on Battery Saver Mode.
Joe Carrigan: Oh, okay, maybe he's on Battery -- okay. Then if he's in Battery Saver Mode, then 48% is plenty.
Maria Varmazis: Okay, yeah.
Dave Bittner: This -- does this give you any anxiety if you're at 48? You can live with that?
Joe Carrigan: I can live with that. I can live with 48%. In fact --
Maria Varmazis: When does the anxiety start kicking in for you?
Joe Carrigan: Anywhere below 30, yeah. Once it's below 30, I start to get a little anxious.
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: My chest tightens. My heart accelerates.
Dave Bittner: Again, that's called a heart attack, Joe.
Maria Varmazis: We're learning a lot about your health today, Joe.
Joe Carrigan: Hey, I went to the doctor. I got tested. Everything's fine.
Dave Bittner: Okay.
Maria Varmazis: What did they -- you know what? I'm not going to ask that question.
Joe Carrigan: Because you know I'll just tell you.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, yes, I do. That's true.
Dave Bittner: Trust me on this one.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Dave Bittner: I've been at this a lot longer.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, I'm kind of an oversharer.
Maria Varmazis: No filter, that's why we love you, Joe.
Dave Bittner: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, that is our "Catch of the Day," and of course, we'd love to hear from you. If there's something you'd like us to consider for the show, please email us. It's hackinghumans@n2k.com. [ Music ] That is our show, brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights to keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing world of cybersecurity. If you like our show, please share a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to hackinghumans@n2k.com. This episode is produced by Liz Stokes. Our Executive Producer is Jennifer Eiben. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Tré Hester. Peter Kilpe is our Publisher. I'm Dave Bittner.
Joe Carrigan: I'm Joe "Nutter Butter Lover" Carrigan.
Maria Varmazis: And I'm Maria Varmazis.
Dave Bittner: Thanks for listening. [ Music ]
