Behind the Scenes of a Scammer Syndicate with Jack Whittaker

On this podcast, we talk a lot about identifying and avoiding online fraud. But in this episode, our guest is going to share his experiences tracking down the individuals, syndicates, and criminal organizations behind pet scams, how they utilize freelancers, and how they launder their ill gotten gains. Today's guest is Jack Whittaker. Jack is a Criminology PhD candidate with a specialization in published literature on online fraud. In addition, he has a proven track record of doing media interviews for local and national outlets, lectures, conference speaking, and promo consulting for policy think tanks.

Show Notes:

• [0:54] - Welcome back to the show, Jack! Check out episode 103 with Jack on pet scams. Jack shares his background and current roles.
• [1:51] - What are pet scams?
• [3:36] - These types of scams do not actually have any pets that are being sold.
• [5:12] - Jack discovered the economy built behind building websites and laundering money.
• [6:30] - These crime organizations are typically located in Cameroon.
• [7:21] - Some web developers are hired freelancers to create a fraudulent website.
• [9:10] - All the web developers in Cameroon know that they are doing something wrong, but they are looked over.
• [11:05] - The civil war in Cameroon has facilitated people's willingness to participate in crime.
• [13:20] - CashApp and Cryptocurrency have made money laundering a lot easier for scammers.
• [14:31] - Syndicates are better paying clients.
• [15:52] - Why do people knowingly work for syndicates when they know that they are helping them defraud others?
• [17:28] - Scammers are now recruiting people from other countries by flaunting their money.
• [19:05] - Jack shares one of the more intriguing ways scammers launder money.
• [22:37] - Jack tells the story of a scammer who works for a syndicate and an experience he had with the police in Cameroon.
• [25:05] - The FBI needs to put more attention on volume crimes. Lots of people stealing small amounts of money from lots of people.
• [26:14] - Jack explains things to look for in listed apps that could be money laundering.
• [29:05] - Jack would love to see more research and interviews with cyber criminals.
• [30:58] - If you are doing research, there are some ethical questions to answer.
• [32:08] - When interviewing cybercriminals, one of the harder questions for Jack to answer was whether they should be paid for their time.
• [34:10] - If you want to be a good researcher in crime science, you unfortunately have to get your hands dirty.
• [35:51] - There is a hierarchy of different scams and cybercrime.
• [37:46] - In Cameroon, this type of business is accepted.
• [39:40] - Jack describes some of the things that he has seen sold online illegally that people don't think about being available.
• [41:16] - Because of the nature of purchasing things illegally, people won't report being scammed.
• [42:10] - Cybercriminals are 97% guaranteed to get away with their crime and in a war torn country, there's almost no chance of getting caught.
• [44:12] - There's a lot of confusion on who monitors domain name registrars.
• [46:30] - We don't know if private regulators are legally viable.
• [48:30] - There have been some successes that Jack shares examples of.
• [50:51] - Chris and Jack have the idea of paying web developers to report fraudulent sites they create.
• [53:50] - Cybercriminals that Jack interviewed are very desensitized to the work they're doing to hurt people.

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Links and Resources:

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• Scam Directory