Libsyn Directory

Only 10 Seconds to Expose a Scam

Release Date: 07/09/2025

Easy Prey

Ransomware isn’t a lone hacker in a hoodie. It’s an entire criminal industry complete with developers, brokers, and money launderers working together like a dark tech startup. And while these groups constantly evolve, so do the tools and partnerships aimed at stopping them before they strike. My guest today is Cynthia Kaiser, former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Cyber Division and now the Head of the Ransomware Research Center at Halcyon. After two decades investigating global cyber threats and briefing top government leaders, she’s now focused on prevention and building...

Opportunistic Crimes

Easy Prey

Criminals are always adapting. Whether it’s copper wiring stripped from job sites or porch pirates grabbing deliveries in broad daylight, they keep finding new ways to take what isn’t theirs. But maybe prevention isn’t about harsher punishment or more cameras. Maybe it’s about smarter design and understanding what drives people to steal in the first place. My guest today is Dr. Ben Stickle, a professor of criminal justice at Middle Tennessee State University and one of the country’s top researchers on property crime. Before entering academia, he worked in law enforcement, which gives...

Post Scam Guidebook

Easy Prey

Fraud usually gets talked about in numbers like how much money was stolen, how many people were affected, how many cases got filed. But behind every one of those numbers is a person who’s been blindsided, manipulated, or left trying to rebuild trust in others and in themselves. This episode shifts the focus back to those human stories and the fight to protect them. My guest, Freddie Massimi, has spent more than a decade helping scam victims find both financial and emotional recovery, bringing empathy and understanding to a field that too often feels cold and procedural. As a certified...

Can You Trust Anything Online

Easy Prey

You think you’d never fall for a scam until you meet someone like Kitboga. He’s a software engineer who’s turned his curiosity about online fraud into a full-time mission to outsmart scammers and protect the people they target. His YouTube channel, The Kitboga Show, has millions of followers and nearly a billion views, thanks to his mix of humor, empathy, and clever ways of exposing how scams really work. In our conversation, Kit opens up about how this all started, what it’s really like to spend hours pretending to be a scam victim, and how organized crime has turned fraud into a...

Real Time Fraud Detection

Easy Prey

Everywhere you turn, someone’s trying to fake something like an image, a voice, or even an entire identity. With AI tools now in almost anyone’s hands, it takes minutes, not days, to create a convincing fake. That’s changed the game for both sides. The fraudsters have new weapons, and the rest of us are scrambling to keep up. The real question now isn’t just how to stop scams, but how to know who or what to trust online. My guest today, Bala Kumar, spends his days on the front lines of that battle. He’s the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Jumio, a company working to make...

Child Predator Tactics

Easy Prey

Kids spend more time online than ever, and for the most part it feels normal. They’re gaming, watching videos, and chatting with friends. But hidden in those same spaces are adults who know how to pose as kids, build trust, and push conversations into dangerous territory. Parents might think it couldn’t happen to their child, yet detectives see how quickly an “innocent” interaction can turn into grooming or extortion. That’s the world Detective Seth Cockerham works in every day. He’s been in law enforcement in Texas for close to a decade, and the last few years have been dedicated...

Identity Trafficking

Easy Prey

Some people are willing to hand over their identities for cash, while organized fraudsters are lining up to buy them. What used to be a matter of stolen credit cards has turned into a global marketplace where personal details fuel large-scale fraud. Now with AI, automation, and deepfakes making impersonation easier than ever, it’s becoming much more difficult to protect identities. To understand how we got here and what can be done, I spoke with Ofer Friedman, Chief Business Development Officer at AU10TIX. Ofer has spent more than 15 years in the identity verification and compliance...

Technology, Trust & Time

Easy Prey

Technology is moving faster than our ability to process its impact, forcing us to question trust, motivation, and the value of our time. Few people have had a closer view of those shifts than Esther Dyson. With a background in economics from Harvard, Esther built a career as a journalist, author, commentator, investor, and philanthropist, with a unique ability to spot patterns across industries and challenge assumptions before they become mainstream. She is the executive founder of Wellville, a ten-year nonprofit project dedicated to improving equitable well-being in communities across the...

The Global Scam Battle

Easy Prey

Cybercrime continues to evolve in sophistication and scale, with attackers running their operations much like businesses. From ransomware gangs with customer support desks to AI-generated phishing campaigns that erase traditional red flags, scams are becoming harder to detect and stop. In this episode, David Bittner, host of the CyberWire Daily Podcast, shares his perspective on the changing landscape of fraud and cyberattacks. Drawing on his background in media, theater, and podcasting, as well as years of reporting on security issues, he explains how both criminals and defenders are using...

AI Supercharges Scams

Easy Prey

Cybercriminals are accelerating their attacks in ways that weren’t possible a few years ago. Artificial intelligence is giving them the ability to spin up phishing campaigns, voice clones, and deepfakes in minutes instead of days. As a result, the gap between what’s genuine and what’s fake is closing fast, making it harder for both individuals and organizations to defend themselves. I’m thrilled to welcome Brett Winterford, Vice President of Okta Threat Intelligence. Brett has had a front row seat to these changes. His team analyzes identity-based attacks and delivers insights to help...

More Episodes

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.

Show Notes:

Links and Resources:

TOPICS