New Romantic Scams and the Victims Who Just Want Love

The world is full of all sorts of scammers and devious people. Some of these predators lure their victims romantically, with promises of love and attention. These sick criminals are ripping off people every day across the U.S. and world, conning their lonely victims out of sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Investigator Christopher Salgado built the investigations department at Facebook, and now runs All Points Investigations, LLC. He works with businesses and clients around the world and helps them defend against scammers. In this eye-opening episode, find out how vulnerable you really are to scammers, and get Christopher's tips on how you can protect yourself, along with your friends and family.

• Romance scams are becoming more and more popular in this age of online and mobile app dating. Thousands of people each year are falling victim to the crime that's robbing them of hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars, according to the FBI. Hear how even the smartest people who should know better are getting caught up in these heart-string heists.

• Hear the story of a woman who was duped out of $300,000 by someone seeking to comfort her romantically after her husband of 40 years passed away.

• Phishing... Smishing... Vishing... they're strange words, but dangerous scams. Learn how each can be used to target you. You might think of yourself as a private person, but many of us are unknowingly opening ourselves up to cyber-attacks, scammers, and stalkers.

• What are you "giving away" on social media, online, and in your everyday life that could hurt you? Christopher explains what you need to do to keep yourself and your family safe.

• Hear how Collier nearly became a victim himself of a serious PayPal scam when he was in a serious rush to solve a problem.

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Full Transcript Below:

DISCLAIMER: As a first step in improving the accessibility of our show we have included auto-generated transcripts, so there may be some errors. As you may know, transcription work is a time-consuming and expensive process. We hope to bring you detailed, professional transcripts soon. Thank you.

"Bright Sighted"

Chris Salgado 0:08

we don't know what we're giving away because we are the bad guys and gals, right? We don't have that perspective.

Collier Landry 0:16

And that's the key that you just touched on right there. We do not know what we're giving away. That is so key because I don't think about what I'm giving away

Chris Salgado 0:26

once you're knee-deep into it. It's it's really kind of too little too late.

Intro 0:36

Testimony continued today in the most notorious criminal trial in Richland County history. Dr. John Boyle is accused of killing his wife, Noreen, and burying her body in the basement of his new home in Erie, Pennsylvania. The 12-year-old son finally took the stand. I heard a scream, I heard a thud. It was about this loud. We the jury find the defendant guilty.When I was twelve years old, my testimony sent my father to prison for murdering my mother. This podcast serves as a type of therapy and reconciliation for myself, and it is my hope that it helps anyone who has experienced deception, betrayal, and dark trauma. I’m Collier Landry, and this is Moving Past Murder.

Hey movers what's going on? Welcome back to another episode of moving past murder. I am your host Collier Landry and what's going on? I want to say thank you to all of you for tuning in again this week and your support is so appreciated as I build this program. Thank you very much. You guys are amazing. Those of you watching on YouTube, please don't forget to like and subscribe. Those who support me via Patreon. Thank you very much. Those either joining me from Tik Tok. Welcome. And yeah, let's get into today's episode. So today I have a really special guest. His name is Chris Salgado, I met him at crime con, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about him. But first, of course, as you guys know, we do listener letters, DMS messages, and this one comes from YouTube from my YouTube channel from Cali wind axe, and they are commenting on my last episode where I featured letters from my father in prison. From his first year, there were, as you guys know, on the program, I read letters from my father and they are all basically blind letters, I pull them out of a bin and I just happened to open you have two or three of them that were all strung together that were from when he was first incarcerated early 1991. So he was incarcerated officially, June 26 1990. And then these were from 1991. And they're very interesting because those letters as if you guys listened to the program last week, those letters are sort of the genesis of his Lang of the foundation of manipulation. And again, for those of you that don't know, I testified against my father during his murder trial for murdering my mother because I witnessed it happened I was the one that found the clues with the detectives, and ultimately led them to my father as the chief suspect when they treated as a missing persons case. When I was 11 years old when it went to trial. It was 12. But my father was starting to lay these foundations of manipulation because he was very angry with me for testifying against him. It's very interesting to me because I don't look like I said I don't look at these letters until I read them for you guys. And then I just see this like, oh my God and I start to it's like kind of hits me like right live as I'm reading them because they are you know, he's beginning to plant the seeds of doubt of manipulation and guilting me and gaslighting me. And so in these particular letters he was you know, the setting up the I was a good father type of thing and looking out for you and protecting you. And it was pretty, it was pretty nuts. So Callie when x on YouTube says, I think you are right that even in those initial letters, he is beginning the long term con in an attempt to ultimately convince you in recounting your testimony. I do not think for one minute that he even sat with you watching TV or a film 100 times over. He is inventing a closeness that wasn't ever there. And that is absolutely true Kelly when because my father was not around very much and even in my younger days. I mean, I do remember some nice moments with my father. I'm not gonna lie like he was there in my life. But this insinuation that was he watched Star Wars I'm sorry, it was returned to the Jedi with me, you know, 100 100 times at least on the VHS tape and that just never happened. I don't even think I saw that movie 100 times to be honest with you. So it's interesting because He is He was planting those little seeds to make me feel guilty because this was a time when he was and he writes in one of the letters as I read, he says he is working very hard to overturn this illegal conviction. And that has been my father's whole mo the entire time ever since he was caught. It's blame the victim blame other people. It wasn't his fault. Yada, yada, yada. I digress because it's just the characteristics of sociopath and a narcissist. Oh, boy. And sometimes these letters can be exhausting. I'm not gonna lie. But anyways, speaking of investigations, so my guest today is a gentleman named Chris Salgado, and Christopher and I met at crime Con this year in Las Vegas. He was a keynote speaker actually at the event. So Christopher is a cyber investigations experts. He was a former investigator with Facebook, and he is the current CEO of all points investigations, LLC.

He is a he was I guess he was a keynote speaker at crime con. He has been he's a part of the London speaker's bureau. He travels around the world, raising awareness for social engineering, romance scams, and online threat mitigation that he discusses with his clients. And he was just fascinating, because as I was talking about in my Instagram Live last week, which by the way, every Tuesday 11am Pacific 2pm Eastern time, I go live on Instagram, but on my Instagram lives. Last week, I was discussing, I'm always talking about my online sort of dating life. And I'll get more into it. I've kind of maybe taking a little break, but I do talk about them on the lives from time to time. But I was talking about how I had just received a message from a girl or a girl, you know, who knows what it was a person advertising their services via a Google document that was sent to me, not a text message, not an email, not a not a DM on Instagram or Twitter, a Google Doc and I was like, this is sort of weird. I have been getting and I'm sure you guys have to getting these weird text messages. If you guys use WhatsApp, I will get these messages to say, Hey, Peter, just wanted to say hi, I'm congratulations on your new restaurant opening up in Las Vegas. I can't wait to come to the opening gala. And of course, naturally as a human being is somebody who is responsive. You want to go well, hey, man, I'm not Peter. I'm Collier. Like, who is this? Like? How do we know each other? And then they get you to engage? And obviously this is a scam to get your information or get you to send the money or maybe link up or who knows where it could go. So I didn't really realize this and I engage with a couple of these people on WhatsApp. But I shared with them I was like, Hey, I host a podcast called Moving past murder, you should check it out. And then I think they were bored with me and they were like, Okay, I'm not gonna get any money out of this guy. But, um, you know, there are often I get these text messages, I get these emails, I get these DMS and they're they're seemingly, you know, trying to reach out for to a different person to try to draw you in. So when I met Christopher, I was talking to him about this at crime con, because I was very interested in the sort of in these phishing scams or as he as he talks about them smishing scams using SMS, but also just the sort of online privacy and the sort of caution that you have to approach these things like internet dating, app dating. And you never know who is on the other side of the communication with you. And you know, there are many of these romance scams. We've all heard the cautionary tales, people being taken for lots of money, people being taken for, you know, their investments in their their 401 ks and committing to someone who they've never been, I mean, look, there was a tinder swindler documentary. There was the love fraud documentary, there was bad vegan. These are all documentaries that came out within the last six months where people were perpetrating these scams and creating alternate lifestyles online. So one of the things that Christopher talks about, and he spoke about a crime con is social engineering. So anyways, on that note, I am pleased to welcome to the program, Chris Salgado. My guest today is Christopher Salgado. Christopher is a cyber investigations expert. He is a former investigator at Facebook and the current CEO of all points investigations, LLC, Christopher and I bet at crime Con this year in May of like two months ago. And Christopher, welcome to the program and how are you?

Chris Salgado 9:43

Thank you caller I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I'm great. I appreciate being on the forum here.

Collier Landry 9:49

One of the things that would you know we were introduced I believe we are just by Chris Hanson at crime con.

Chris Salgado 9:54

We are introduced by like a little group of us. Yes, it was Chris Hanson that we lead to but I bet Leave Joe, who is critical Garner? Yeah. Joe Gardner, who is or was a producer, a longtime friend of Chris Hansen's introduced you and I.

Collier Landry 10:10

So anyways, thank you for being with us. Man. We touched upon a lot of things in a very brief period of time there at crime con. And you were a speaker there this year, correct.

Chris Salgado 10:17

I was that was one of the keynotes on romance scams. Yeah.

Collier Landry 10:21

So that is something I think that you and I were were talking about, because I had recently watched a documentary called The Love fraud on Showtime, which I'm sure you're familiar with. I don't remember the guy's name. But yeah, one of the things that a lot of my audience knows that I do online dating occasionally, and I'm on again, off again, love hate relationships. But I was mentioning going to Instagram Live the other day about a new thing that came in, where I got a Google document from someone. And it basically was saying, I have a prostitute. This is my rates. And this I'm like, How is somebody sending me a Google Doc? Because I've noticed recently, you know, I'll do business via WhatsApp. And then you'll get text messages. They'll say, hey, hey, Eric, nice meeting you. When is your restaurant opening again? And then you probably respond, hey, I, this is not Eric, my name is Collier. And then the whole thing evolves from there, right? And he's like phishing scams, but I guess they're becoming obviously more and more intricate and complex in their nature. So this is what you specialize in. Right? Social engineering, love, romance, scams, things of that nature. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how you came into this work?

Chris Salgado 11:35

Sure. It was, it was just haphazardly, so to speak. So I'm in Florida. Now I was born and raised in Chicago. And the for my stint in investigations, which is little over 20 years as an investigator. I was in the Customer Service arena. And back in Chicago, I answered, literally a newspaper ad, don't want to date myself, but literally a newspaper ad for a customer service manager at a law firm in Chicago. And I went with it. And during the interview between me and the general manager, she said, Hey, Chris, you've got the job. But, you know, it came out that I had an interest in law, right? So she said, Hey, Chris, you've got the job. But we also have an in house investigator role here, if you want to check it out. I think I said something like, Sure, I'll give it a shot. And then I was an in house investigator at that firm, for a few years. And I just really enjoyed it. And then grew into field investigations. Because that was mostly in house. I visited courthouses and stuff like that, but nothing really extreme outside of the four walls of the law firm, and rolled into field investigations do a lot of different things like that surveillance of various sorts, interviews, accident, Scene Investigation, stuff like that. So it really opened up the aperture of types of investigations that I engaged in, I really enjoyed that as well. And then fast forward to about 2016. Facebook got ahold of me through a contractor. And they reached out to me and said, Hey, Chris, we would like you to help with building the Investigations Division at Facebook. And after my jaw hit the floor, I was like, Yeah, sure, that'd be great. Because in Chicago, I had a reputation for building systems and installing deficiencies in current ones. And somehow this company that Facebook had as a contractor or vendor, got a hold of me. And then I accepted the position, rolled out to Facebook, and helped build the Investigations Division on a global scale there. It was great. And Facebook enjoyed what I did as a contractor. So they bought out my contract and made me an FTE full time employee and gave me a whole other roster of things to do. And I was at a pretty critical I was there at a pretty critical time I was there when Cambridge analytical broke. I was there when Mark Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of Congress in Parliament on the topic. And then when the Russians hacked the platform in the 2016 election, I was there a post election, but I was there in December 2016. Obviously, the election was a month before, but I was there when the fuel really hit the fire to say, Hey, what happened on the platform here, so I helped manage those investigations and conduct those investigations. And it was, it was a pretty interesting time. I thought I knew cyber investigations before Facebook. I had not noticed cyber investigations before Facebook. It was great. It was great. And I left Facebook specifically to open up my own gig here and shot from California here to Florida. And now we do cyber investigations and physical investigations all over the globe. For various reasons, like you said romance scams, social engineering, threat management. We do work for insurance companies we do called CLT investigations as well for individuals. Just really and now I teach you know, lots of people and corporations. on how to maintain a moderate online exposure level, and try to mitigate your your online exposure level if you're too exposed, which most of us if not even all of us are definitely overexposed. Oh, sure,

Collier Landry 15:15

I think about that all the time, not that I'm a paranoid person, but I do feel like I can't I get a lot of information. Without even realizing that I'm giving out a lot of information. Like just taking photos, I mean, it, I don't really want to talk about it, because I don't want to bring it up. But like, when I take photos of like, where I'm at, and I'm like, if somebody really, you know, one of the guests I've had on the program where I'm having other program, your job is literally Claire, and she is known as the Erin Brockovich of stalking. And we got into a very serious conversation of stalkers and their behavior. And her, you know, these people, especially when it seems that, you know, not all of them, of course, but some of them are affluent, and have nothing better to do with their time, literally. And you think about the amount of and I've had a stalker, the amount of energy that they put into it is staggering. And just the what they can draw from your data that you don't even realize you're giving out, you're like, Oh, I'm a fairly private person, but it's like, no, you take photos of where you're walking, or where you're, it's, it's a little jarring when you start to sit with it for a minute. So, back to your role at Facebook. So Cambridge analytical, obviously, that whole thing was, you know, we could go on and on for days about that. But what so what do you see that is most prevalent in these sort of in people giving up information? Like, what are ways that people should be thinking about, you know, maybe perhaps, whether sharing their data online? Is that something they should be concerned about? Or would Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 16:53

I mean, absolutely. I mean, nowadays, our data is literally worth more valuable than gold. Each one of us carries a significant amount of value to whichever company owns your data, or, or has your data I'll say write own in a certain capacity.

Collier Landry 17:09

Yeah, because they don't own it. They don't they, so they don't own

Chris Salgado 17:13

Chris Salgado, right. But they own your data that you directly or indirectly, indirectly, indirectly gave them because you signed a contract, where's your cell phone provider, and that says, hey, we can give it out to everyone for free ice cream, or whatever it is, you know, and then, you know, further down the relay chain, the eighth company in, they've gotten it now, Chris Salgado did not give them permission, but did give them permission by signing that contract with my cell phone provider says we can give it to anybody we want. And that person just it's a really, it's a domino effect, right? So they do and they don't. But yeah, you should definitely be concerned with how exposed you are. Because to your point, you know, a lot of people are just siphoning as much information from you as possible. And to your credit with, I didn't think I was given that much information, you shouldn't think that way. Because you're not over exposing yourself through your perspective. It's just when you get trolls, when you get people, they're so greedy. And so unfortunately, super skilled at just siphoning the information from your general profile and building a dossier on you to say, I'm going to spearhead this person because I want to get in Colliers life, for whatever reason, financial gain or otherwise, right. We don't know what we're given away, because we aren't the bad guys and bad gals, right? We don't have that perspective. And that's

Collier Landry 18:37

the key, what you just touched on right there, we do not know what we're giving away. That is so key, because I don't think about what I'm giving away. I don't think about all the stuff in it. Because I'm not a paranoid person. It's social media. It's meant to be social. It's meant to be something where, you know, we are engaging with others, and we're all on a platform, and it's a good time. And for me, it's designed to be social. So I don't want to be paranoid, but the key really is is what are you what are you giving up like, and making available to these people? I saw a film called don't fuck with cats. Have you seen this film? Oh, yeah, of course. And I was very terrified by the film subject. The guy, obviously a horrible person. But what I found more terrifying, is how the people caught him and found him using these social media platforms using these, you know, bulletin board systems using, I mean, it was like, Whoa, it was very intense. So it feels like anybody can find anything out about anyone and do even online protection. You know, like you purchase a package from McAfee or whatever company is offering.

Chris Salgado 19:51

I mean, it's all valuable because there's no foolproof engagement or defense against anything. Social engineering. phishing ransomware any kind of virus, there's no foolproof system out there. So what you have to do is you have to install layered security measures. You mentioned McAfee, grab your anti virus, right, grab an anti virus that helps you avoid phishing campaigns, which is the number one channel for social engineers to engage you upon. And you talked about a little bit, I think you're talking about SMS phishing, which is smishing. When you get a text message on Yeah. So yeah, it's literally crushing mission. I know it sounds, it sounds silly. So there's smishing, which is SMS text, message phishing, there's phishing that you know about email. And then there's vishing, as well, which is voice phishing. That's when somebody calls you and tries to engage you over the phone, you know, through a fraud a facade. Yeah. But yeah, you want to you want to install layers of security. So does that help 100%, it helps, you just want to make sure that you don't put all of your eggs in one basket, because unfortunately, these these bad actors are getting more and more sophisticated, you rarely now deal with and me as an investigator rarely deals with the lone attacker, right? You do when you get into more cyber stalking. But when you get into bad actors trying to engage you, cyber Lee, or even social engineering you, you get into more of an operation. So there's literally underground operations, that they're really good at networking, and they stand up all kinds of resources to not only help themselves, but to help each other through a peer network. In one romance scam that we engaged upon, we unfolded a literal, it was it was a pantry list of resources that the bad actors built for one another. So if you can imagine kind of like a Wikipedia for bad guys, right? bad people, bad guys, bad gals. And it was a litany of direct of links saying this is and this was one of them, how to get a Caucasian male to send you $5,000 In one week, click on that. And it'll expose how you can do that through a romance scam. The next one was how to get his Hispanic female to get you $10,000 within 30 days, I mean, it's super granular. And its concern is terribly concerning. When you think that these folks are really, they're really engaging one another and setting up really specific networking platforms for them to mentor each other. And if, as you know, if you get one bad actor, you've got to concern about that one bad actor, right? However, if you put that bad actor in a poor 100 others, now you got prospectively a problem of 101 people not so much as they're going after you. But that one person is using the skill set of the other 100 to go after you. So that multiplies the danger of that one person?

Collier Landry 23:01

The hive mind? Yep. So it's interesting, you brought this up, I have a I have several friends, I work in Hollywood, obviously, as a cinematographer. And by the way, you said aperture open the aperture of the aperture of what you were doing. I like that, as a cinematographer. I like that camera terminology. But I have a friend who is who is an adult actress, right. And she engages with people via only fans. But there was a podcast I was listening to bout a month ago, discussing only fans and, and I know a lot about like how she engages with people. But she hires people that engage to get her members. And then she so they're basically they're impersonating her. And then once they vet the client, then she engages them herself. So she's actually is one on one talking to these people. But initially, it's this it's a fish, right? It's Hey, do you like my photos or whatever they do, right? They use social media things. So that is a genuine, at least her mode is a genuine engagement. But if you reverse engineer that back to where these people are, so this particular podcast was discussing that there are farms, and there are businesses in third world countries where these people can make a few, you know, $20 a day, which is a lot of money for them by doing this, and it's it's a numbers game and like you said, having 100 people behind you and mentoring you mentor you and and handing you the playbook, right. It's become it's become very challenging to sort of navigate these waters. You almost get lost. I mean, the the smishing you said smishing Yep. That's a new thing for me. And you, I realized very quickly, don't engage with these people. Right. And that's the best way to go about it. Because if you have no response, then they don't know if you exist, correct.

Chris Salgado 24:54

Yep. And frankly, they won't even deal with you. You got to remember they're not just signify They're not signaling, Collier, although some might pointedly scope you out. But you're one of, I don't know, dozens or hundreds or 1000s of potential victims, and whoever bites they're going to engage that person. The others that don't they're just going to weed them off.

Collier Landry 25:18

You know, it used to be the what the Nigerian Gold Scandal. The Nigerian printed way. That Nigeria prints. Yeah, exactly. That was what feels like a over a decade ago. You know, you still see the emails, I you know, your junk mail, I'm like, does this still work? And obviously, it does. I know that I recently read some statistics on what fraud was. And it was really crazy during the pandemic, because people had, you know, income that was coming into them from the government, right. And they were spending it and just like they were investing in things like crypto or stocks. We also saw them being scammed out of this money, right?

Chris Salgado 25:57

Yeah, since COVID. I mean, depending on what report you reads, internet scams have picked up over 600% than pre COVID. Right, because we're all at home. We're all more online these days primarily for work, but also we've stepped stepped it up personally, we, we go to Amazon, we shop more often it's online, we use, you know, shopping companies, that that's online as well. So it's picked up significantly. And again, depending on the reports that you really it's you read, it's significantly more than was pre COVID. And that's an opportunity for these bad actors to sharpen their skill set and change their, their modus operandi to engage us in different ways applications that are literally on the App Store, the Google Store, they're being people are being duped when supposedly it's a verified application, and it's not. So you got to be careful with everything that you do. You always have to have to have a defense wall up not to install a sense of paranoia. Not at all, it's just to install a healthy regimen of security awareness as you go about your day through your online engagements.

Collier Landry 27:06

Hmm. So they can actually hack into and make it look like a verified app.

Chris Salgado 27:12

Yeah. It's happened before it's not been. It's it's not been popular. It hasn't happened a whole lot of times, but it has happened.

Collier Landry 27:22

So, for example, just for our listeners, so as I was saying, I I've been most recently getting these messages on WhatsApp to say like, Hey, kid was great meeting you you at yoga this morning, looking forward to our chat in New York next week, for example, or, you know, Hey, Jeff, good luck with the restaurant, when can I come see it in Vegas? And I responded once this was in April of this year, and I wrote back I was like, this is not Jeff. This is Monday was Collier. Oh, who are you? And I said, Oh, it was call you later. And then of course, I use it as a promotion. I was like, I host a podcast called Moving past murder. Here's all the links. So yeah, I think that they got really annoyed with me. And they're like, What, no, we're not here to promote you. We're here. We're here to scam you out of money. So they stopped talking to me, which was great. But I started thinking to myself, Oh, I engaged with them. And I get a bunch of junk mail in your inbox, right? And you know, Apple will automatically unsubscribe, you you just click a button says unsubscribe. But I realized that what do you do that you're actually saying this is a valid email address that you have contacted and said before?

Chris Salgado 28:27

Yeah, there's Correct. Yeah, well, it depends on how far it goes. Right? If Apple if Apple just so I'm not an Apple guy. But if Apple just secludes it and then just shuts it down on there. And I don't know how that works. Because again, I'm not an Apple guy. But yes, there's always some kind of give and take when you do an engagement, right? I can't fault you for saying, Well, I'm not Jeff. But I'm Collier. And here's my awesome stuff. Your you need to promote yourself, you have a business, I have a business, I need to promote myself, everybody else that has a business wants to do the same. So but when you give that information to your point, it's, it's indicative of being dangerous, right? Because you're feeding this person, hey, I'm here, and I'm going to engage with you at an absolute minimum. They know that you're there. They know it's a valid contact, and they're willing to listen, right? And then they'll turn you into hey, let's talk about this. Oh, what do you like, Okay, now they can socially engineer you, right? So you got to be careful with your engagements I say don't engage them at all. If you get something that says and I get them to I literally get this mission engagements, you know, I'll say or excuse me, they'll say, hey, I'll use the same one. Hey, Jeff, thanks for your payment. Here's a link to your receipt or something like that. Just delete it and block the number and it's really critical for you how to use that preview. capability on your phone on your smartwatch. You know when it comes in when the text comes in when the email comes in, you know when it comes in? And you just preview it right there, because you don't even want to click on it if you don't need to right? And just delete it, delete it and block that number. And they're not even going to think twice about Chris Salgado when I do that, because it's a numbers game, right? Again, carving out the exception that there's no one specifically targeting me as a cyberstalker, which can certainly happen. But we're looking about the odds of things. And if you just dismiss those things, it's going to be beneficial for you. And nowadays, you know, and I see nowadays as in last two years, we're all expecting packages on a regular basis from Amazon, from FedEx, and all that stuff. And it's heightened so much during the holiday season, will get and me too, I'll get those smishing campaign saying, Hey, your Amazon package can't be delivered as promised, click on this link to for the new schedule, update schedule, stuff like that. Don't do that. If you are expecting an Amazon package, which I'm expecting many, even right now. You know, just don't do that. Don't click on that. Go to your Amazon account. If you're curious and go to the trusted source. Right. Don't click on the email that you get don't click on the smishing campaign.

Collier Landry 31:09

Yeah. And I know that some listeners are probably going well, yeah, this sounds very obvious. But it really isn't right. You know, for some people it is. But for me, I'll give you a great example. I do business with a company in India, a legitimate company that I make short films for, for their product, which is which is audio books. I was expecting money from them, and the money was frozen. In PayPal, I got into a panic. I was like, because it was you know, it was it was a lot of money. And I had to pay people. And I'm thinking about oh my god. So I literally typed in Paypal customer service number in a frenzy. And I'm and I'm, I call that number. And it's got the whole Pay Pal information. I start talking to the person. They're like, Oh, yes, we see your account, we this and that. And that he started asking for. He said, he said something he gave himself up because I was full on just in a panic mode. I was like, I need to pay my crew. I need to pay my talent. And he, he said, Well, yeah, we can get this up. But what you need to do is buy the paid house gift card at the store. And I was like, Oh, but I was all in for like, for like, two or three minutes because I had a problem that I need to solve. And I realized that that was clouding my judgment. Much like I think the people who fall for these phishing scams with the Nigerian gold or whatever it is the prince, their their judgment is clouded by greed, right? My judgment was clouded by urgent like a sense of urgency like I need to take care of this because I have people that need to pay. And I obviously didn't do it, I contacted the real Pay Pal and I sorted everything out. But I didn't. But literally the dumper was online, it says Pay Pal, and it came up and and I'm going to tell the guy just duped. But it's it's very insidious. And again, with the engagement on the text messages and things. So I think this is great Intel for us. So I do want to sort of switch gears a little bit and I want to talk about I want to go from the social engineering aspect to more of these romance scams. I'd love to hear some insight on that, you know, with the dating apps things of that nature but your experience working with us and maybe some cool stories Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 33:20

and that's you know, that's why crime con picks me up to talk about romance scams over there because you to your point it's it's it's a hot and unfortunately effective topic. To your point. It still works these scams work and it has nothing to do with intellect that goes out the window because you're dealing with emotions, you with your fear of like, Hey, where's my money? I gotta feed I gotta you know pay my my crew and stuff like that. For romance scams. It's wholeheartedly jumping in emotionally right? And at that point, intellect is out the window doesn't matter what how many degrees you have doesn't matter what role you have. Keep in mind in 2017 I think it was the nation's cybersecurity expert from the White House got duped through social engineering. Yeah, this and that. You can you can Google it. You can you can read about this in 2017. So I mean, somebody of that caliber, right, engaging, having been engaged in arguably the most powerful office in the entire world was duped through social engineering or so if that, that type of person with that type of caliber of intellect and skill set can we do? Why Can't We? Right? So I just want to make sure that nobody you and everybody else doesn't feel bad about it because they're pulling on the heartstrings. And you know, we're all human. It doesn't matter what role you have, what company you're with what your intellect is, at the end of the day, we're still human. We have a heart we have heartstrings that can be pulled upon and that's where these people really flourish. They go ahead and they pull on that until you're really emotionally invest in situations. And then you have your trusted circle of friends and family just trying to talk to you and say, No, this is a scam because it's easy to see that it's a scam on the perimeter, right? People looking at the situation judging those two people, the scammer and the victim. And they're saying what do you do? And it's just so black and white? Yes, it is because you have no emotional draw and can't see the forest for the tree. Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. But once you're knee deep into it, it's it's really kind of too little too late. And unfortunately, it happens so many times to present day, the FBI again, depending on what report you read, has put out that romance scams has affected the US from the tune of $300 million in 2021. To again, different source seven $7 billion, huge variance. But nonetheless, numbers that really reflect that this is a critical and ongoing issue.

Collier Landry 35:56

I'm going to err on the side of the 7.2 billion or whatever it was and less than the 300 billion that sounds like chump change. Yeah, 300 billion with this because, you know, like I said, I've watched these different, you know, even like the tinder swindler, right there, you and the things that I feel very naive in a lot of ways because I'm a filmmaker. So I you would think that I would realize that like, oh, this person is taking a photo on a private jet. They're not on a private jet. They're on a set, taking these photos, and there are companies that offer this, you know, and it's are working, did it or at Adelphi you know, people like that this Tinder swindler guy so, oh, I'm always traveling. Oh, I'm doing this I'm jet setting and it's fake. Sometimes it's real, but a lot of times it's fake. To create this persona renting a car you know, a Maybach be like, Oh, this is my drivers, not your driver. It's, it's nobody. It it's one of those things that you you want to just turn and fault the company and be like, well, they shouldn't be offering these services, right? You know, it sort of teeters into and I don't want to get into this conversation but it teeters into like you know, gun control and things of that nature like oh, well they shouldn't have firearms well, okay, but people also shouldn't have you know, shouldn't be doing things with firearms it's the same thing I mean, you could go on and any sort of thing that we purchase in life that we can use for nefarious purposes, right. But the perpetrating these frauds has become Sealy so because our, our desire for to create an alternate lifestyle online or to show that like, hey, living my best life, look at the feeds into that, and then people pray a prayer.

Christ Salgado 37:40

Exactly. And that's, that goes back to your thought on like, you want to use social media for what it was intended for. Connect the world, right? Share your information on a positive level, whether it's to congratulate yourself for your successes, or mentor others or just say, Hey, folks, I think this is pretty cool. Check it out. That's what it was built for. Right? But with that, you have the bad actors engaging upon it with their bad motives. And you have to be careful with that. I mean, very watered down example here is somebody buys a their first home, super proud of that moment there buy their first home, they take a shot of the front side of the building. And they say Hey, guys, look at my awesome home, right, and you have the numerical portion of the address populate inside that photo, you don't know the street, but guess what, you go to 401 dot com, they give you the street, they block out the number, you put two and two together, now you have the address to the person that you want to engage upon, right? So it's stuff like that, you just got to be careful, hey, I got a brand new car, look at this Maybach or whatever the hell it is, right? Take a photo of it. Now there's a license plate. Now most people can't run license plates, I can as an investigator, but words, let's just stick with the regular person trying to cyberstalk somebody, they're not going to be able to run a license plate. However, in the background, there's your neighbor's address, right? It's on the mailbox, or it's on the home there. And again, you go to 401 dot com, you get the street, and you put the address together, you see that the person lives across the street from it from the angle of the photo being taken, you now have the address. Again, it's not about paranoia. It's just installing a healthy sense of awareness. Because we've been thrusted into this environment. Like this, it's not a matter of like, oh, I don't trust this person to Wait, who are you? You know, put those groceries down even though I just ordered them 30 minutes ago, who are you? You know, show me some ID I mean, it's not about that. It's about just installing a healthy sense of awareness. So you can combat these these bad actors, I mean, negate them as much as possible. Again, there's nothing that's foolproof out there. But if you can not answer that SMS text and say, Hey, I'm not Jeff on this and whatever like that, just ignore them. If you can do that, if you can negate perspective, I don't know phishing scam Hammer, whatever it may be your one off better than you were, you know, if you were to engage in those aspects.

Collier Landry 40:09

Okay, so I don't know if I'm more terrified or less, I'm equally I think it's still equal equally as terrified after that. Okay, so let's take it back. And you know, I'm somebody who doesn't like to live in paranoia. But these are great safety tips. These are great things to think about. But obviously, with dealing with these romance scams, you've got to have some good stories that you could share. Can you share at least a couple with our audience because I show that I know I'm interested in the shot and Freud of it all, I'm sure they are as well. So please engage us if you wouldn't mind. We had

Chris Salgado 40:47

this case, we engage in romance scams very frequently. We had this one case where this lady the client of ours was the daughter of the victim. So the victim was an elderly person is an elderly person. And that elderly person fell in love with somebody online. Now, the setup is this. The elderly person lost her husband after being married for 40 plus years. And because of COVID, it was inside the times of COVID. So because of COVID, the funeral was broadcast live on Facebook Live. And shortly after that, well under a month after the funeral happened, this halfway have sprouted up on this victim's Facebook account said hey, I'm sorry for your loss. You know, I'm here if you need anything, something like that. They always start really, really lightheartedly, just to be like, Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. And then you bring them into your circle, right? They don't want to be overly aggressive because that's an easy shut down, get out of here, right. So they start really, really lightheartedly, fast forward into the relate the the length of the relationship, inside six months of them going back and forth. Now they're a thing right there, they have a relationship, supposedly, she gave him willingly gave him over $300,000 of her money. And much of that was her inheritance from her deceased husband. And what's more disappointing is that when her husband was alive, he told her, Hey, never put yourself in debt. Always pay cash don't have any debt. Well, inside that $300,000 that she gave him this scammer about 60 plus $1,000 was credit card debt. So she went backwards. It was a very, very concerning experience. And she got duped out of over $300,000. So what it was, was this individual, this scammer had come up and said, Hey, I'm you know, I'm Mark, Mark, and here's who I am. And here's a whole bunch of photos of me. And I love you. He mentioned to her that he was going to come and supposedly he was overseas, they're always Oh, they're always overseas in some aspect. So so he started in the Middle East or India, I can't remember where you start. But then he ended up in Scotland, right. And he had all these episodes going on. He said that he was an oil rig worker, which is a huge red flag not not dissing any oil rig workers out there. But the scams really hinged on roles like that. So he was an oil rig worker, he was in charge of whatever number of team of individuals,

Collier Landry 43:41

what do you say they hinge they hinge on things like that, is that because they're often placed in different locations like like, if you're active military, you're stationed in Germany, you're stationed in Japan, so you're always moving? So he could be like, Oh, they move it to another oil rig outside of Scotland or outside of, you know, the Gulf of Mexico and Florida or wherever that is that why they do that? So they have an excuse or a reason while they're always moving? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 44:03

100% Because they weave this carpet of a facade really well, it's very, very sophisticated. It's no longer that Nigerian prince scam from literally I remember reading about them the 90s to current day, right. It's just evolved. So well. Unfortunately, that they've they offer situations like that, like you said, so they can go ahead and pivot when necessary. So this guy started sending a whole bunch of photos of himself and it's different locations. It's different positions. I mean, it's basically what you want as a scammer. You want a treasure trove of photos of one person. Because if you have hundreds of photos of one person in different areas, different setups, different clothing, stuff like that. That's great, because at any time your lover or whoever the victim can say, hey, I miss you where you can send me a new phone photo. Here you go, right. It's a treasure trove of a scam setup for them. So anyway, This guy, he was saying that, you know, I'm an oil rig worker, I'm based in wherever was India or Middle East, I can't remember. But he nonetheless gravitated towards Scotland. And he said, I need $80,000 for open,

Collier Landry 45:11

because he likes to golf. Of course he's, you know, he's he's, you go.

Chris Salgado 45:14

So he said, I need $80,000 for heart surgery. And she said, How come you don't have that we don't have insurance and stuff. And he said, this is I'm in a private hospital. And you have to pay for everything out of pocket, including food and internet and the lighting. I mean, this is the story that he gave her. And the the daughter hired me to say, hey, we know this guy's a fraud, but Mom's not listening, can you help us out? And we did our investigation and unraveled in a very large operation. It was a global operation, including here in the United States, we uncovered I don't even know several several money mules and you LDS. And that's when individuals are seated inside a larger scam collecting money on the behalf of the scammer, but they don't know it. Or they do know. And they're part of the scheme. So for instance, inside that $300,000 How did she get that to him? Some of it was gift cards. Like he said, some of it was cash in the mail, this guy would literally get on the phone with her mark the scammer and say, Hey, I need money. How can I get you money? Here's the here's what you do. You told her this, you buy a book, you find a book, but in a FedEx envelope you well, you buy a book, carve out the pages, put the cash in there, glue the book together and mail that book. I mean, if that doesn't say red flag, I don't know what else really can be. But again, it's out, it's out the window, your intellect is out the window, your logic is out the window because you're just emotionally charged in this situation. So she would send this money of various sorts, including the book right inside the cache inside the book. And she'd send it to people all over the globe, including here in the States. And we uncut, we also we follow the address, and we uncovered specific individuals here in the United States scattered across the country that were receiving this money. And are they part of the scam? Are they scam? Well, they're part of the scam but are they scammers themselves or are they money mules to say you know this mark guy is like hey Mr. Smith in whatever California or in Indiana, you're going to get $2,500 in cash keep 250 and then send it to me this way right? So they're injected into the scam as kind of nonchalant parties

Collier Landry 47:36

Oh, I'm so sorry to interrupt because i This sounds very familiar where people will pay you to put money in your that which feels like a scam. But it might not actually be to scam you out of money it might be to help them with their exactly if you're someone else. So they involve other innocent parties. Yes, they could be party. They could

Unknown Speaker 47:57

be parts intentional parts of this operation. But they could very well like you said be innocent parties to the engagement as well. And they're just looking to make a buck like everybody else. Yeah, exactly. Webb

Collier Landry 48:08

just just the spires go out everyone.

Unknown Speaker 48:11

Collier It was exactly that. i There's no exaggeration to this. This was a I was gonna say fantastic case. But it's sad to say that we're because of the situation business fantastic to uncover the mystery, and really promote to you and your listeners and the crime con audience to say, Hey, this is what to look out for. Right? I mean, it was a large operation. And we stopped counting. The this guy would say, Hey, my name is Mark. And then we uncovered we stopped counting at 60, a little over 60 different profiles of his across different platforms. So he was mark on this platform. He was chose a on this platform. He was taught on this platform. And the guy that they were pushing out these photos from he was this olive skinned complexion. So it was fantastic. He was kind of universal almost to say hey, yes, I'm Caucasian, I'm Hispanic. I'm Middle Eastern. I mean, he could fit the bill on a lot of different ethnicities, right?

Collier Landry 49:14

He was ambiguous sort of way, or drowsiness.

Unknown Speaker 49:17

And he really, really took advantage of that situation. Again, Collier, no exaggeration, we stopped counting profiles are a little over 60 we shut it down and said, Well, here's your report. Right. And we did a huge consultation with the situation. But yeah, the guy was an absolute fraud and we actually even contacted the Scotland police. We also contacted the Scotland hospital that he said he was out right and and I spoke with he wasn't even there was he now he wasn't there. And not only that, that was the easy one. He's not there right now only that was they didn't do their homework. And the hospital that he said he was at it was a private hospital, very upscale hospital and remember Collier he's Waiting for heart surgery open heart surgery, right. I called the hospital and spoke with a director and I won't say who it was. But someone that very much knows the intricacies of that hospital. They said, Not only is this person not here, but we don't do heart surgery here. Well, she's he or she, I will say, the person that I spoke with, said, This hospital is reserved for like in for outpatient surgery. And the most you're going to have with people staying over she said, she said, she said that most of our patients over 95% of our patients are for outpatient surgery, you in you do your thing you get out, right, and the few that stay, you're looking at a one or two day stay. And that's it. Now this guy back to Mark was supposedly in this hospital for well over a month. And she said there's no way that that's the situation here. So not only were we able to uncover the fact that he wasn't there, but the whole premise of him being there was false. They just, that's not their business model. So here's the very, very sad part Collier on top of all that sadness of this entire situation. So we engaged our client and the victim, again, our clients, the daughter, the victims, the mother, we engage them and spent a whole lot of time overview in the report overview in our investigation. Here you go. The client was ecstatic with our findings, it was so much more than what I'm getting into here, just for a matter of time. And after that, we're told that the mother the victim, shut down for like two weeks Mark, I'm not talking to you everything like that sad stuff. But good, good path. About two weeks later, she engaged him again. And she told him, she told him Hey, I found out who you are. You're a scam. What's going on here? And Collier. You can never win this battle. This is what he said. Oh, that's that's me. That's my twin brother. Yeah, she bought it. And she bought it. And to this day, this very second that we're talking in July. We don't know if she's still engaged in him or not. The idea is that she is. That is so but this is what I mean. This is the result of no intellect buried. Right? This is the result of emotional charge. And that's what they hinge on. And Collier, I can't say this enough. And I hate saying this. It's incredibly successful. Because they pull on our heartstrings you got to remember, you know, here we are in 2022. But this person engaged her when her husband

Collier Landry 52:45

of 40 years die.

Unknown Speaker 52:46

She's very emotionally rare. Yeah, predator, yes. 100%. But for her, she's emotionally raw, she's going to, she's going to accept somebody to be there for her right? When she got into, I don't even know how many calls per day, she'd wake up in the morning, he'd call just want to say good morning, you know, we'll talk later and stuff like that a multitude of calls on a daily basis like that, who that's who replaced her husband of 40 years, right? So she's going to naturally just clutch on to that. And so much that it was our investigation became devoid. Our results became devoid, and she bought into the fact Well, the idea that this is his twin brother, what do you do with that? These idiots are one step ahead of us, these scammers. And what do you do with that? At some point, you got to be like, Okay, I get it. But you have to help us. Right. And it's it's really, really sad. And I can't tell you enough color. It's terribly successful. And that's, that's what we're dealing with.

Collier Landry 53:53

Do these people like for this example, this this guy, Mark or whoever it was the scammer who had the twin brother? Do the any of these people ever? Like, once they're caught? Are they ever brought to justice?

Unknown Speaker 54:06

So that's the very frustrating topic. The short answer is yet, even if they're in the United States,

Collier Landry 54:12

oh, if they're in the United States, if they're a foreign if they're a foreign entity versus a US so

Unknown Speaker 54:17

it's night or day, it's night or day, if you're in the if the scammers in the unit United States, it's much easier for law enforcement to get engaged upon them. And they have and we work with the FBI. We work with HSI we work with local law enforcement pretty frequently. So if they're state bound, that if they're in the United States, then that's easy for them to be engaged upon. Right. If they're international outside the United States, it's a lot more difficult, right? And they know that that's why they see themselves in those areas. However, having said that, the Department of Justice has numerously engaged in international bad actors on Roma specific equally on romance scams and then scams in general. Right? They have brought them to justice, they've have been able to do that. I have to say, and I would like to think that they would agree with me, but I'm not at all speaking on behalf of law enforcement. It's not to the tune of what we would like it to be. So you know, is this mark? Because he did use the name Mark, is this mark going to get captured by law enforcement? I did personally send are very heavy, because it was a very robust investigation that I sent are very heavy report to the FBI, personal contact, and, you know, said hey, can you help us out with this? And they're looking into it, but it is. It is disappointing the number of engagements that are brought to justice on the bad actor side, when they're international, and I, I can't fault law enforcement, you know, they're working within the confines of the allowances per the laws, right, and the relationships that we have with different countries and their, you know, their intent to work with us and stuff like that. And that is specifically why these bad actors are seated in these different countries, you have a large amount of romance scams coming out of West Africa, they literally call them Cafe boys. Because they stand to your point of $20, you know, a day, they sit in front of a cafe or at a cafe all day long, and their job is scam Chris. So Gato. Yeah, that's why it's very critical. It's if I can say anything about social engineering about romance scams, because remember, romance scams is in effect, to social engineering, right? Social engineering runs the gamut for romance scams is an effect of someone's social engineering year, right? If I can say anything, the most critical thing to do to protect yourself is to be on the guard at the onset. Because once you engage in somebody and you open up your heart, it's hard to get out of that even when you have your family member standing across from you, a unbiased, professional cyber investigative expert in the country, just, hey, this is the deal, you lock everybody out, you'll probably listen to the unbiased person a little bit more than mom, dad or sister, brother, cousin, whatever like that. But it's still going to have to pass the muster of your, the thickness, your emotional fortitude that has been touched upon. So the biggest thing to do, folks Collier is to just make sure that you're on guard at the onset. Because once you engage, it can be too late.

Collier Landry 57:37

So is that what happens when I'm dating a girl? And then all of a sudden, she just goes to me? Did she really figure out like that very well could give me is that what happens? I just, I'm looking, I'm looking for

Unknown Speaker 57:50

now I want to help. Beading applications, dating platforms are the number one resource for these people, these scammers to come out of? So yeah, definitely, you can engage in somebody and they can be testing the waters and you're not giving them what they want to. And it's an ROI on their side.

Collier Landry 58:10

Don't go deep. And I've met them in person we've actually engaged and we've been intimate, but then they just disappear. I but it was It wasn't always a finding. Well, just like he's not gonna buy yourself silver. So I'm just, I'm out of here. I mean, that's what I think. That's what I'm thinking.

Unknown Speaker 58:23

Yeah. And there's also you know, besides scammers, there's also people that are super selfish and if this guy can't afford, you know, a Bentley for me on my birthday, then you know, that might be somebody that you're engaging with, but not to not to make light of the situation but social engineering dips into all different kinds of avenues of engagement, including in person engagements. So depending on your level of it depends on your role in Japan, your your salary and your kind of exposure in you know, in the online world, if you're the CEO of a large company, if you're, you know, a hot topic director of a company, you're going to be engaged more than somebody else right. And they will do their homework they the scammers will do their homework, they'll literally send you physical mail to get you on a website and they can get your information that way. So these scams still exist in regular physical mail these scams to your your example there these scams still exist in the physical world, so serendipitous and I say that with air quotes by hate doing air quotes because you look ridiculous. But using air quotes serendipitous meetups are actually well yeah, there you go. Thank you are actually well calculated engagements. You know, you think that you're just serendipitously meeting somebody interesting at a coffee shop or something like that right? And they have calculus, they've social engineered themselves into your life. They've identified your pattern. You go to Starbucks before you head out to work or whatever it is. You go for you walk your dog every every day at 3pm you stop and you grab some water During something like that, and they engage you, again, depends on your level

Collier Landry 1:00:03

of professional acumen or whatever. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I will have this is, this is what I personally engage in, or I find that happens to me a lot, which is, you know, I'll meet somebody, let's say, even just meeting him at a coffee shop, which I prefer to do. I don't, I think using a dating app is like the worst thing ever. Because dating in Los Angeles, already is the worst place in the world. It's a date. Second of all, Dagang you got to use a fucking app, and you gotta like, and then you gotta pay money, if you want to get your extra roses or whatever stupid shit they're trying to sell you. So it's ridiculous. But the thing that I find is, I'll engage with them. And I want these apps. I personally just put everything out there because I don't want in my entire life. If somebody finds out about my, my history, or whatever, they're like, why don't you tell me that? Well, yeah, I'm not going to tell you on the first date, like, hey, how my father murdered my mother. And it was the lawyer with the largest cases in Ohio History. I testified against him put him in prison, I was the one that worked with investigators to find clues to find my mother, all this stuff. It's a lot because first of all, I don't really wanna scare someone off. And second of all, I don't want to scare them off. But now because after I've made the film, and I have such a public persona with the podcast with doing a TED talk, the filming of Dr. Phil, wherever newspaper articles, online articles, interviews galore. I'm just like, Screw it. So I put every I put it, you know, here's a picture of me in front of my movie poster on the TED stage. Here's, here's this, here's that I host a podcast, because I don't want the questions. What I find happens is people will pretend to like, not know who I am. And then if I'm on a date, and I don't drink, but sometimes the girl is drinking, and she has a couple of glasses of wine in her and it always comes to this moment of, you know, honestly, you know, I know I said it to you, but I saw your film, and then it just, I'm just like, oh my god, like, Are you here to ask me a bunch of questions, or, and sometimes it feels like an interview, which is fine. And I get people are curious. And that's the sort of that is one of the ancillary effects of being having a public persona is that people are going to know you. And when you put it out there, that's just your the game, right? Like, like, don't be, you know, hate, Don't hate the player hate the game. But a lot of ways, but I feel like it's just, you know, they'll just come with this whole. It's almost like a fantasy in a way or like, Oh, I saw you and then I saw you in tech talk. And other than, and it's it, it can be really daunting. And that's a very genuine connection. Right? So again, people who are being what he is socially engineered by the scammers, IV, oh, my god, what is the answer, Chris? Because that's what I want. That's what my audience wants. What is the answer? Do we just all go inside the cave? Do we move to Kandahar, Afghanistan, get a goat living? Like, what do we do? You

Unknown Speaker 1:02:58

know, so the answer to that is no. I mean, you still want to live your life. Like I can't say enough. I've said it a couple of times, I want to say it again, like I'm not here. I'm not there. I'm not at crime con, I'm not anywhere to promote, hey, just seal up your doors shut down, you're gonna throw your computer out the window, although I can't stand computers, you know, do that, right? And just shut down. You can't do that one. You just can't live that way. Because the the world has gravitated and quickly, so much with COVID towards a digital world, right? We're all working from home, right? It's impossible to not use the computer. In some regard. I mean, like I said, even personal stuff, ordering stuff on Amazon, ordering groceries, all that stuff. Everything's online these days. So you just can't do that. It's not a realistic option. However, what's, you know, what's that striking point, that middle ground that protects you, but also allows you to live your life, like you said, be out there socially engaged in these social media platforms for the right cause? I think we've lost if we do throw up our hands in the air and we say, I'm not going to use Facebook, I'm not going to use LinkedIn, I'm not going to use Twitter, Instagram, whatever like that. I think we've lost because we've given up what could be a fun lifestyle of engaging with people and staying in touch with family that lives across the country or across the globe, stuff like that. So the it's absolutely critical to make sure that you deploy these efforts to be on the up and up with your security measures. Right. Your antivirus. You got to make sure that you question people don't be afraid to question people folks, and we live in this fantastically, like polished, they say fantastically kind of sarcastically polished PC World, and you can't do that. You got to make sure that you you got to make sure that you put you first Hey, don't be afraid to ask a question that comes up. Okay. I don't want to I don't want to put them in bad spot or embarrass them. You know, Don't be an ass about it, but put yourself first may Make sure that you shoot down people that you have to that don't engage in your debt don't need to engage in your world, right? Don't talk to somebody that calls you, Jeff, when you're Collier, right? Don't talk to for me. Don't talk. Don't respond like, Oh, thanks for your AT and T payment. Todd. Here's your receipt. Oh, sorry. I'm not Todd. I'm Chris Delgado. And by the way, here's my awesome stuff or whatever like that. Just ignore them. You know, because your world is completely different. The moment you shut those people that

Collier Landry 1:05:29

maybe you don't, but maybe you should, you should be like, great. Yeah. My name is Chris Salgado. I'm a social engineering investigator at Facebook, and I do investigations into cyber fraud. Yes, to beat you. Do you think you'll get a response? I think so. I think they're gonna tell all their friends take

Unknown Speaker 1:05:46

that would be wonderful if we could if we could all just pose as cyber investigative experts. Yeah, this is me, we'll just all find ourselves on the do not engage list in the underground community, you know, me with my former Facebook and stuff like that you pick up whatever. But you know, it's, it's, it's just something that you got to, you got to think about, right. And some of us have multiple generations that we're caring for, we've got parents that we're trying to help out with Apple phones, we've got parents that we're trying to help out with, with the phone life, write apps and stuff like that. And then some of us have kids too, you want to pass down really healthy habits to those kids. Because nowadays, Jesus, if anything happens on the corner, someone's quick to record it on the camera, right? You got to be careful with stuff like that, you just have to be careful with your online exposure level. And a simple thing to do. That's been, you know, said time and time, again, is Google yourself, Google yourself to see how exposed you are. So one thing that we do for people and corporations, is we do online threat management engagements. So for instance, that person that was engaged in the romance scams, we do investigations for Fortune 50, fortune 20, fortune 100 companies across the globe on various levels. So you know, somebody will come up and say, Hey, Mr. or Mrs. Seo, I know who you are, I hate you, I hate your company. I'm going to your house today, and I'm going to kill you. If you don't believe me, boom, here's your personal address right there. And after everyone kind of freaks out, they engage us to one, find out who that half wit is that sprouted up to say that right? Because it's never the real persona online. So we engage them and do what we need to do to, to deal with the situation. Then on the flip side, a, it's kind of proactive on a reactive measure, we go back to the client or the victim on romance scams, or whatever it is. And we say, Hey, how did this happen? Let's look at how exposed you are right? And it goes more than just Googling yourself. So you want to Google yourself, but you want to have some if you want to put together kind of an online threat profile of yourself and see how exposed you are. So we'll act as cyber stalkers of somebody. So Collier, you could say, Hey, Chris, I want to know how exposed I am. I want to know how somebody in Maine dock me. So how somebody in Maine or Texas can land on your literal doorstep? Collier, how can they do that using the open source information out there right now using our proprietary databases. And as investigators, somebody that is, for whatever reason fixated on you, Collier, how can they end up on your literal doorstep, right, and we'll go ahead and be your cyber stalkers. And we'll find out how exposed you are. Unfortunately, on a regular basis, the average person's person is exposed in over 70 different databases. And the database that we don't know about in the databases are the concerning ones. Some of them are concerning ones where some bad actor or someone with, you know, bad intent, can pay five to $10 and get your home address. So you gotta you want to knock that down. A very big myth is once it's on the internet, once something's on the internet, it's archived forever, you can never get it down. Now. Exactly. There's caveats to that. And we work inside those caveats. So for instance, caller you can say, Hey, Chris, can you see how exposed I am Casey Nelson from Texas, or Maine or wherever can land on my doorstep, we'll do that. But identify the databases that you're exposing, and will mitigate, will take that information down. So you'll go from 70 Different levels of exposure points down to five or 10 or 12, you'll never be 100%. But if you can reduce the pathways that lead to your literal life, your real world life, it's I call it the Nexus that that bridges between the cyber world and the physical world if you can reduce that to by you know 80 90% You're better off right? So you want to be careful with that. You want to understand how really exposed you are.

Collier Landry 1:09:48

So to my listeners, we have found our first show sponsor, it's points investigations, and I'm going to promote their product and they're going to keep me safe. That's where we go. No, this is this This has been bad. This has been so great. Well, Chris, I want to have you back on the program because you mentioned a lot of things at the top talking about cults and all these other investigations. So I would love to bring you back if you if you alright love to. Yeah, you're you're great and I do when I engage with you crime con up a great guest on the show. So thank you for joining us. My guest today is Christopher Salgado, he is the CEO of all points investigations, LLC, and we have been discussing social engineering, love frauds, romance scams, everything. And Chris, thank you so much for joining us on the program. I really appreciate

Unknown Speaker 1:10:35

it. I appreciate you having me. Thank you very much.

Collier Landry 1:10:40

Okay, so, God, that's a lot. Um, I don't know, if I feel better or worse, after listening to this, I gotta tell you, or safer or less safe. I mean, look, at the end of the day, you have to sort of protect yourself, but you also could not live in fear. I mean, the world is a crazy place. I know that because I found that out at a very early age, but you just can't let fear control your decisions and control you from leading a fulfilling and happy life. I mean, you really can't. But you do have to be cautious. And you do have to, like, you know, sometimes be on guard just a little bit. And it's so heartbreaking to hear this woman losing her savings. And that is more heartbreaking is her not believing and believing in this twin brother, situation. I mean, it's just, you know, it's really sad. And I think, you know, part of it is my heart breaks for this particular person, because I know a lot of you are like, Oh, she's a fool. They're this. People, they get scammed in these ways, are fools. But look, at the end of the day, we have just come through a massive trauma collectively on this planet COVID-19 Hitting the entire world shutting us down for close to two years. And hopefully that's it, that's the end of it, my goodness. And a lot of people were disconnected from loved ones from family members from, from from online dating from dating in person with people and going out and organically meeting someone and connecting with them, whether it be in a coffee shop, whether it be at a bar or restaurant, whether it be in a nightclub, or whether it be at the public library, which is where I like to meet my dates, just kidding. But maybe who knows. But no, in all seriousness, you know, we were really striving for that human connection that we we really lost. And I feel like people were just more and more susceptible to this. And you couple that with the fact that they have been possibly, you know, locked up in house, apartment, whatever quarantine with someone and maybe that person is their partner, their their husband or wife, their domestic partner, their life partner, whatever it is boyfriend, girlfriend, and maybe they realize that that person isn't the person that they thought they were. So then they turned to other means of having these strictly online relationships, that in hopes of really genuinely connecting with someone because they're losing that connection with others. And they're losing that with the people that they're quarantined with. And there's having another relationship. I mean, I know many people in my sort of personal orbit that all were engaged in online relationships during the pandemic. And then once the pandemic sort of ended, they actually met the person that they were talking to, and they were having, obviously video dates and, and chats and sharing text messages and FaceTime and all those things, but they were actually just getting to connect with them for the first time. Once we all got out of quarantine, we were like, Hey, we're free, yay. So, you know, it's a real thing. And I think that again, you know, you got to you got to protect yourself, you got to look out for yourself, you got to look out for your loved ones. But at the same time, you just can't live in fear. And there's a lot to be there's a lot to take in, you know, from what Christopher said, but I think, as I always say, I like to look at the world as a glass half full. I'm a perpetual optimist, despite all the horrors that I've seen in my life. And that's how I choose to look at the world. And I hope you guys do too, you know, but hey, look, it doesn't matter what I think it matters. What do you guys think? And I love hearing from you guys. DM me right on Instagram, right on, on on my social medias. You know, at Twitter on tick tock, you send me a message. you comment on my YouTube videos, I try to take in all of your messages that you guys send to me. You can email me at moving past murder@gmail.com You can go to my website color lynda.com Submit a message there, whatever you want to do. I like hearing your feedback. And you could tell me about hey, have you been a part of a romance scam? Have you been susceptible to this type of thing? I mean, I don't know I love to hear this from you guys. Because I want to engage with you and I want to make better program that you guys really are into. So on that note.

I'm Collier Landry, and this is Moving Past Murder. Thanks y'all.

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