Only 10 Seconds to Expose a Scam
Easy Prey9 Jul 2025

Only 10 Seconds to Expose a Scam

What if you could stop a scam in real-time before the damage is done? In this episode, I'm joined by Nick Stapleton, an investigative journalist and the face behind Scam Interceptors, the BAFTA award-winning BBC series that exposes online fraud and steps in to protect victims as scams unfold.

Nick brings a decade of undercover documentary experience to his current mission: fighting digital deception and empowering everyday people to stay safe. He shares jaw-dropping stories from the front lines, including the near miss that almost caught him off guard, and breaks down the complex operations behind everything from romance scams to global scam compounds.

As the author of How to Beat Scammers, Nick also gives practical advice on how to recognize red flags and build your own defense against a rising tide of fraud.

Show Notes:
  • [01:06] Nick presents a show called scam interceptors for the BBC. He also does scam advice on a chat show called Morning Live. He also wrote a self-help book about How To Beat Scammers.
  • [01:59] We learn how Nick got into the space. He began in investigative journalism and hidden camera work and now 5 years later Scam Interceptors is his full-time job.
  • [06:17] He came very close to becoming a victim of a scam, because a lot of scammers try to get him.
  • [14:30] About 300,000 accounts a day get hacked on Meta.
  • [15:10] There are things you can enable on Meta to help protect your account.
  • [16:43] In the UK scammers rarely go to prison.
  • [17:18] When he first started the series the scale of some of the scam operations out there really shocked him.
  • [18:43] There can be 200 people working in a scam call center.
  • [20:52] A lot of the people who run pig butchering scams are indentured slaves.
  • [24:12] They would even hire models to have video conversations with potential scam victims.
  • [25:22] Why local governments don't break up these scam centers.
  • [26:38] It's difficult to motivate the authorities when the victims aren't from that country.
  • [29:21] APP refunds in the UK. In most cases we need to be aware and protect ourselves.
  • [30:52] Assume everything out of the blue is fake. Come from a position of skepticism.
  • [35:04] When investigations go wrong filming the show and they lose people to scams.
  • [39:10] When the show first began, sometimes the people they were trying to stop from being scammed thought they were the scammer.

Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.

Links and Resources:

Episoder(321)

Art Heists

Art Heists

The world of art theft looks glamorous in the movies, but the reality is far more complicated. From multi-million dollar forgery schemes to undercover FBI operations recovering stolen national treasur...

29 Apr 37min

The Power of Prediction

The Power of Prediction

We make predictions all the time including about the weather, about traffic, about what someone is going to say next. It feels natural, even rational. But when algorithms start making predictions abou...

22 Apr 39min

Privacy vs Reality

Privacy vs Reality

Online security advice often sounds simple until you actually try to follow it. Between password managers, privacy settings, and data brokers, protecting yourself can start to feel like a full-time jo...

15 Apr 58min

Wired to Trust

Wired to Trust

It's easy to think scams only work when someone misses something obvious. In reality, most of them don't look obvious at the start. They show up as normal situations with just enough friction to notic...

8 Apr 41min

Intimate Partner Fraud

Intimate Partner Fraud

Most scams leave a digital trail. A fake email, a spoofed number, a fraudulent website. You can trace them, report them, sometimes even reverse them. But what happens when the scam has no digital trai...

1 Apr 45min

Identity without Passwords

Identity without Passwords

Every day, employees at hotels, restaurants, and resorts across the country are doing exactly what they were hired to do: being warm, responsive, and eager to help. It's what makes hospitality work. I...

25 Mar 38min

When Cybercrime Gets Personal

When Cybercrime Gets Personal

Most security breaches don't begin with sophisticated code or elaborate technical exploits. They begin with a phone call, a convincing email, or someone at a help desk who just wanted to be helpful. T...

18 Mar 45min

Stopping Phone Scams

Stopping Phone Scams

Phone scams get dismissed as background noise or just annoying interruptions and unknown numbers with robotic voices we learn to ignore. But behind that noise is an industry built on psychology, autom...

11 Mar 45min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
aftenpodden-usa
forklart
popradet
stopp-verden
fotballpodden-2
rss-gukild-johaug
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
det-store-bildet
nokon-ma-ga
hanna-de-heldige
dine-penger-pengeradet
rss-ness
aftenbla-bla
rss-espen-lee-usensurert
e24-podden
rss-dannet-uten-piano
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
frokostshowet-pa-p5