1346: David Maimon | Going Undercover in the Fraud Underworld

Romance scams, deepfakes, Medicare fraud: Professor David Maimon explains how organized the crooks have gotten, and how to stop being low-hanging fruit.

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1346

What We Discuss with Dr. David Maimon:

• Why fraud stopped being a guy in a hoodie. It's a full industry with a supply chain, where identity thieves, forgers, account openers, and launderers each run a specialty. David explains how consumers reported $12.5 billion in losses last year, and that's just the part people admitted to.
• How the dark web turned crime into a self-serve buffet. Stolen identities run $7 to $10, a license, ID, and passport bundle goes for $150, and compromised bank accounts ship with money-back guarantees. Getting there is as easy as pasting a URL from Google into the Tor browser.
• What AI quietly changed about the whole game. Fake faces, cloned voices, deepfake documents, and synthetic identities built from scratch have collapsed the cost of looking legit. David warns that agentic AI can now open accounts and build a paper trail around a person who never existed.
• Why you're not getting hacked so much as played. The con shifted from cracking passwords to working people. Romance scammers hunt for high credit scores and home equity, coaxing victims into opening accounts and draining their own loans, while kids get blackmailed into laundering stolen checks.
• How slowing down quietly beats the scammers. David's best defense costs nothing. Pause before clicking, verify through a separate channel, and treat urgency as the red flag it is. Freeze your credit and your kids', add identity protection, and check your statements as often as the crooks do.
• And much more...

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