Elder Exploitation
Easy Prey
Aging parents often rely on the people closest to them for help, but what happens when that help becomes a way to take control? For Charles Wallace, the warning signs started small. His mother’s fridge was suddenly overfilled. A caregiver refused to provide receipts. Spending patterns began to shift in ways that did not make sense. At the time, each concern could be explained away. Looking back, they were part of something much larger. Charles spent 15 years in banking and finance, and after his mother’s death, he used that experience to reconstruct more than 3,000 transactions. What he...
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Art Heists
Easy Prey
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 treasures, art crime is a global industry hiding in plain sight. This conversation digs into how these crimes actually play out and why the people who pull them off often end up stuck with the very pieces they thought would make them rich. My guest today is Robert Wittman, a former FBI special agent and the founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team. Over a 20-year career, he worked undercover in more...
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The Power of Prediction
Easy Prey
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 about us, whether we'll repay a loan, reoffend after prison, or respond to a medical treatment, something fundamental shifts. The forecast stops being a guess and starts becoming a verdict. My guest today is Carissa Veliz, a philosopher and associate professor at the University of Oxford, where she also researches at the Oxford Internet Institute. Her work focuses on the ethics of technology, privacy,...
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Privacy vs Reality
Easy Prey
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 job. That gap between what sounds easy and what’s actually realistic is where a lot of people get stuck. My guest today is Yael Grauer, a freelance investigative technology reporter who covers privacy, security, digital freedom, hacking, and mass surveillance. She also works as a program manager of cybersecurity research at Consumer Reports, where she manages Security Planner, a free resource that...
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Wired to Trust
Easy Prey
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 notice, but not enough to stop. That small gap is where people tend to move forward instead of stepping back. My guest today is Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist who studies how we form beliefs and make decisions. She’s known for her research on the neural basis of human optimism, and her work has been published in leading journals. In her books, The Optimism Bias and The Science of...
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Intimate Partner Fraud
Easy Prey
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 trail at all, because it isn't happening on a screen? What happens when the con is standing right in front of you, making you laugh, meeting your friends, and planning a future with you? My guest today is Tracy Hall. She's an author, keynote speaker, and senior marketing executive with over 25 years at some of the world's most recognizable tech companies including eBay, Virgin, GoDaddy, and...
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Identity without Passwords
Easy Prey
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. It's also what makes hospitality one of the most targeted industries in cybersecurity. When your entire workforce is trained to say yes, teaching them to be suspicious is an uphill battle. The smarter solution might be to take the target off their backs entirely. Jasson Casey is the co-founder and CEO of Beyond Identity, a company built around one idea: making identity-based attacks impossible....
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When Cybercrime Gets Personal
Easy Prey
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. The human layer is often the weakest link, and the criminals who understand that are the ones causing the most damage. My guest today is May Chen-Contino. She's the CEO of Unit 221B, a threat disruption company that delivers actionable intelligence to enterprises, law enforcement, and government agencies. Her background spans cybersecurity, fintech, and SaaS leadership at companies like PayPal and...
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Stopping Phone Scams
Easy Prey
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, automation, and staggering profitability. My guest today is Alex Quilici. He’s an engineer, entrepreneur, and the CEO of YouMail, a company focused on protecting consumers and businesses from unwanted and fraudulent calls. Alex has spent years analyzing how robocalls and scam campaigns are designed, how they evolve, and why they continue to work despite better technology and increased awareness. What...
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Stolen Identity - Stolen Peace
Easy Prey
Identity theft gets talked about a lot, but usually in the abstract: freeze your credit, watch your statements, don't click suspicious links. What doesn't get talked about nearly enough is what it actually feels like when someone isn't just using your card number, but is actively living as you. My guest today is Brooklyn Lyons. She's 25, recently married, and by her own admission, had no particular expertise in fraud or cybersecurity before October of 2024. That changed when her car window was smashed in a parking lot, and her work bag, laptop, wallet, driver's license, and everything...
info_outlineMost 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. The human layer is often the weakest link, and the criminals who understand that are the ones causing the most damage.
My guest today is May Chen-Contino. She's the CEO of Unit 221B, a threat disruption company that delivers actionable intelligence to enterprises, law enforcement, and government agencies. Her background spans cybersecurity, fintech, and SaaS leadership at companies like PayPal and eBay, and she brings a distinctly mission-driven lens to the work, shaped equally by a career in business and a background as a Krav Maga instructor.
Unit 221B operates less like a typical security vendor and more like a specialized investigative unit, with a team that includes tenured ransomware experts, incident responders, and former law enforcement, all focused on one outcome: criminal arrest. May has seen firsthand how ransomware gangs operate with their own codes of conduct, how a younger generation of cybercriminals is throwing those rules out entirely, and why paying a ransom is increasingly a bet that doesn't pay off.
We talk about why social engineering has overtaken technical hacking as the dominant attack vector, what organizations and individuals should never do in the aftermath of a breach, and how crimes against children online often go unreported for the worst possible reasons. May also shares a story from her own experience being scammed on eBay, and what she did about it, which tells you everything you need to know about how she approaches this work.
Show Notes:
- [1:28] May shares her background and how she came to lead Unit 221B, a threat disruption company serving enterprises, law enforcement, and government.
- [1:41] May traces her path into cybersecurity, explaining how a lifelong sense of justice and a friendship built through Krav Maga training led her to a team of investigators doing real criminal work.
- [5:55] May recounts being scammed while selling luxury shoes on eBay, describing how a fraudulent PayPal email convinced her the sale had failed after she had already shipped the item.
- [8:22] Rather than accepting the loss, May engaged the scammer directly, intercepted her own shipment through FedEx, and used a photoshopped payment screenshot to flip the situation on him.
- [11:36] The story ends with May recovering her shoes, followed by a candid note that this approach carries real risk and is not something she would recommend to others.
- [12:57] May outlines Unit 221B's core work, including criminal investigations, threat intelligence, pen testing, and incident response, all oriented toward federal prosecution and criminal arrest.
- [16:52] The evolving threat landscape, contrasting professional ransomware organizations that tend to honor agreements with a younger generation of cybercriminals who operate without limits.
- [18:44] May describes this younger criminal group in detail, noting members are predominantly 14 to 26 years old, English-speaking, and motivated as much by social status as financial gain.
- [21:49] May explains why wiping systems and restoring backups after a breach is one of the most damaging mistakes an organization can make, eliminating evidence and removing any path to prosecution.
- [23:04] She walks through Unit 221B's incident response process, covering digital forensics, insider threat identification, and determining who is behind an attack before advising on next steps.
- [26:32] May addresses the ransom payment question directly, recommending against paying as a default while acknowledging that knowing your adversary is essential to making the right call.
- [28:04] The discussion covers the legal and PR dimensions of a breach, including notification obligations and why some organizations choose to go public about what happened.
- [31:08] May pushes back on the perception that law enforcement doesn't help, explaining that federal agencies are understaffed and must prioritize cases, but are genuinely committed to the work.
- [34:08] The issue of victims deleting evidence before reporting, and how frequently this forecloses any possibility of investigation or prosecution.
- [34:55] The conversation turns to crimes targeting children, including sextortion, and why open dialogue between parents and kids is critical to getting victims to come forward before lasting harm is done.
- [37:18] May reflects on a keynote she gave at Harvard's Bold Conference for young women, describing the tension between advice to build an online presence and the real safety risks that come with it.
- [38:51] May shares practical security guidance for young people online, including being mindful of what appears in video backgrounds, using strong passwords, and enabling two-factor authentication.
- [40:35] May identifies AI-assisted attacks and social engineering as the two most significant forces reshaping the threat landscape, with technology now available to both attackers and defenders equally.
- [43:45] May describes Unit 221B's invite-only intelligence platform, which brings together top investigators, law enforcement, and private sector experts to collaborate and move cases forward.
- [45:10]Listeners can find Unit 221B at unit221b.com and on LinkedIn, and anyone facing a threat or needing guidance can reach out.
Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.