Scam Compounds
Easy Prey
When most people think about online scams, they picture criminals sitting behind a screen and stealing from victims around the world. But in Southeast Asia, many of the people sending those messages are victims too. Some were promised legitimate jobs, flown across borders, trapped inside guarded compounds, and forced to scam others while trying to survive. In this episode, I talk with Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies Asia Institute. After years of studying labor rights, civil society, and Chinese investment in Cambodia,...
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Sports Betting
Easy Prey
Sports betting is everywhere now. It is in the commercials, on the apps, wrapped into game broadcasts, and sold as a fun way to make sports more exciting. But behind the easy sign-ups and “risk-free” offers is an industry built on odds most people do not fully understand, fine print that can cost real money, and a business model that depends on customers losing. In this episode, I talk with Danny Funt, an investigative reporter and the author of Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. His reporting on sports betting, politics, news, and sports media has appeared...
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Google Maps Scams
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Most people are not thinking clearly when they need a locksmith or a plumber. They are locked out, water is leaking, something broke, and they just want somebody nearby who can fix it. So they open Google, tap one of the first businesses that comes up, and assume the listing is real. Unfortunately, that is exactly the kind of situation scammers count on. In this episode, Mike Blumenthal, co-founder and analyst at Near Media, talks about fake local business listings and the ways bad actors have learned to game Google Maps. Mike has been following this problem for years, going back to the...
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Job Recruiter Scams
Easy Prey
Job hunting is hard enough without having to stop and ask whether the recruiter in your inbox is even real. My guest today, Jay Jones, ran into that problem firsthand after being laid off in December 2023. With his daughter due to be born just weeks later, Jay began receiving messages from recruiters that looked promising at first, but quickly turned out to be fake. Jay, also known as The Profiler, decided not to ignore what was happening. He started investigating the patterns behind these scams and has since identified and helped remove thousands of fake profiles, fraudulent companies, and...
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Bail Bonds Scams
Easy Prey
Getting a call that someone you love has been arrested is scary enough. Getting that call from someone who sounds official, knows just enough to seem credible, and says you have to send money right away is exactly the kind of moment scammers are counting on. Julie Henderson is the president of the North Carolina Bail Agents Association and has spent 24 years working in the bail bond industry. She started in the field almost by accident after applying for what she thought was a legislative assistant job, and she has stayed because she cares about helping people get through one of the most...
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Confessions of a Fraudster
Easy Prey
Technology keeps changing, but many of the most effective scams still come down to something very human: trust. My guest today is Tony Sales, co-founder of We Fight Fincrime and Underworld TV. Tony has a perspective most people in fraud prevention will never have. Earlier in his life, he was involved in organized financial crime and was once described in the UK press as Britain’s greatest fraudster. After years in that world, and after serving time in prison, Tony made the decision to use what he knew to help stop the very crimes he had once been part of. Today, Tony works with...
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Personal Safety
Easy Prey
Scams and safety threats don’t always announce themselves. Sometimes they start quietly, with a moment of distraction, a strange feeling you ignore, or a situation that shifts just enough to test whether you’re paying attention. My guest today is S. Gale Bleth, a personal safety educator, certified RAD self-defense instructor, speaker, and author of Aware: A Personal Safety Playbook for Leaving the Nest. Gale brings a deep background in crime prevention and safety education, including 16 years at Cal State East Bay and 16 years as a crime prevention specialist with the Hayward Police...
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Data For Sale
Easy Prey
Everyday conveniences ask for tiny pieces of information all the time like a phone number at checkout, a zip code at the register, an email address for a receipt, or a loyalty account for a small discount. At the moment, it can feel harmless. But those small details can add up quickly, creating a personal profile that businesses, data brokers, scammers, and even people with bad intentions can use in ways most of us never agreed to or fully understood. My guest today is Ron Zayas, CEO of Ironwall by Incogni. Ron is an online privacy expert, speaker, and author who has helped the judiciary, law...
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Exploiting Psychology
Easy Prey
Scams are often explained as a failure of judgment, but the truth is far more human. People are not fooled because they are foolish. They are manipulated at the exact moment emotion overrides logic, whether that emotion is fear, loneliness, hope, urgency, financial stress, or the desire to believe something better is finally possible. My guest today is Dr. John Demartini, one of the world’s leading authorities on human behavior, perception, resilience, and personal development. For more than five decades, he has researched, written, and taught in the fields of human awareness and potential....
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Investment Traps
Easy Prey
Investment losses can be confusing because they do not always tell the whole story. Sometimes money is lost because the market has changed. Other times, an investor was sold something they did not understand, pushed into a product that was never appropriate, or denied the information they needed to make a real decision. Courtney Werning has built her career in that space, helping investors sort through what happened and whether someone can be held responsible. Courtney is a named partner at Meyer, Wilson, and Werning, a national investor protection firm that has recovered more than $350...
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.