On Hacking Humans, this week Dave Bittner is on vacation so our two hosts Joe Carrigan, and Maria Varmazis (also host of N2K's daily space podcast, T-Minus), are sharing the latest in social engineering scams, phishing schemes, and criminal exploits that are making headlines. Our hosts start out with some follow up on chicken talk from last week. Maria shares the story of scammers impersonating police officers in England to steal cryptocurrency by exploiting leaked personal data, creating fake fraud reports, and tricking victims into revealing their seed phrases, leading to losses totaling £1 million. Joe has two stories this week, his first one is on a $21 million "Grandparent Scam" in which 25 Canadians were charged for running a scheme from Montreal call centers, posing as grandchildren in distress to deceive elderly Americans into handing over money, with 23 suspects already arrested. Joe's second story is on two people charged in a ticket scam that exploited a loophole in StubHub’s system to steal and resell over 900 tickets—mostly for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour—netting more than $600,000 in profit before being caught by the Queens D.A.'s Cybercrime Unit. We have a special catch of the day this week, where we are joined by N2K's own Ma'ayan Plaut, who joins to discuss going out of business scams.
Resources and links to stories:
- ‘Fake police call cryptocurrency investors to steal their funds
- Dozens of Canadians Are Charged in $21 Million ‘Grandparent Scam’
- 2 People Charged with Taylor Swift Eras Tour Ticket Scam That Allegedly Netted More Than $600K
- BBB Scam Alert: How to spot a fake "going out of business" sale
- Joann Fabric’s going out of business scam
You can hear more from the T-Minus space daily show here.
Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@n2k.com.