Tootfinder

An in-depth look at how foreign scammers use US banks to facilitate large-scale transfers of funds stolen from victims of "pig butchering" scams overseas (Cezary Podkul/ProPublica)
https://www.propublica.org/article/pig-butcher…

How Foreign Scammers Use U.S. Banks to Fleece Americans
Asian crime syndicates’ online scams have reached industrial proportions, cheating victims around the world out of more than $44 billion a year. U.S. banks have been unable to stop them.

I've been through so many tech hypes. If I'd have to rank them for sheer stupidity, and leave out obvious scams like NFTs, I think the Multimedia Compound Document Wars of the early-to-mid 90s stand out.
Tech companies tried to sell everyone on suddenly having videos in their invoices and 3D searches in their file browsers.

CASE: An Agentic AI Framework for Enhancing Scam Intelligence in Digital Payments
Nitish Jaipuria, Lorenzo Gatto, Zijun Kan, Shankey Poddar, Bill Cheung, Diksha Bansal, Ramanan Balakrishnan, Aviral Suri, Jose Estevez
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.19932

CASE: An Agentic AI Framework for Enhancing Scam Intelligence in Digital Payments
The proliferation of digital payment platforms has transformed commerce, offering unmatched convenience and accessibility globally. However, this growth has also attracted malicious actors, leading to a corresponding increase in sophisticated social engineering scams. These scams are often initiated and orchestrated on multiple surfaces outside the payment platform, making user and transaction-based signals insufficient for a complete understanding of the scam's methodology and underlying patte…

Whatever success Trump had in his career was built on insight
-- not into the workings of capitalism but into the darker corners of human nature.
He succeeded through scams, lies, and bullying,
using the power he had over others to enrich himself at their expense.
So no one should be surprised that he brings the same spirit to policymaking.
In his second term, Trump is at last unleashed to fully realize his vision,
and on economics, that means a new kind…

Chairman Trump's Great Grift Forward
Move over, Mao.

But as much as my mother would bemoan their antics. My aunt… oh my aunt.
She was the most intellectual, the most proud, and the most outspoken person I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.
My aunt would give them a proper earful about what it meant to live in a society, about how their antics would lead to the entire west looking down on Poland, about how they were letting down their fellow citizen by running such scams.
I miss my aunt. She was a rock star and a role mode …

How Mode to Code, a nonprofit founded by a teenager, is teaching Bay Area seniors to use AI and avoid scams through free coding and tech literacy classes (CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2025/09/27/tech/sillicon-valley-seniors-ai-course

Silicon Valley’s seniors get a crash course in AI
From tech lessons to tech support, the Mode to Code program offers a positive space for the curious seniors who might be intrigued by the possible applications of AI in their daily lives or simply looking to set up their emails on their phones.

Anticipate, Simulate, Reason (ASR): A Comprehensive Generative AI Framework for Combating Messaging Scams
Xue Wen Tan, Kenneth See, Stanley Kok
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17543 …

Anticipate, Simulate, Reason (ASR): A Comprehensive Generative AI Framework for Combating Messaging Scams
The rapid growth of messaging scams creates an escalating challenge for user security and financial safety. In this paper, we present the Anticipate, Simulate, Reason (ASR) framework, a generative AI method that enables users to proactively identify and comprehend scams within instant messaging platforms. Using large language models, ASR predicts scammer responses, creates realistic scam conversations, and delivers real-time, interpretable support to end-users. We develop ScamGPT-J, a domain-sp…

FYI, accounts claiming to be part of the Mastodon Support Team are scams! The only support team here is me.*
*support only available for cats

Senator presses Musk on Starlink ‘misuse’ by Southeast Asian scammers https://therecord.media/starlink-southeast-asia-cyber-fraud-maggie-hassan-letter

Disrupting the scammer lifecycle: A dynamically-consistent numerical analysis of a compartment model for scam-victim dynamics
Y. O. Tijani, I. Ghosh, S. D. Oloniiju, H. O. Fatoyinbo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.19817

Disrupting the scammer lifecycle: A dynamically-consistent numerical analysis of a compartment model for scam-victim dynamics
Online deception and financial scams represent a pervasive threat in the digital age, yet a quantitative analysis and understanding of their propagation is lacking. This study introduces a novel model based on the framework of epidemiological models to describe the interaction between scammers and their victims. We propose a five-compartment deterministic model ($S-V-R-A_s-R_s$) calibrated using longitudinal data in fraud reports from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. The model's theoretical prop…

A Nigerian cybercrime ring is actively targeting established companies in the transportation and aviation industries with BEC scams.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/07/phishers-target-aviation-execs-to-scam-customers/

Gerade die letzte Folge durch: Die sechsteilige Serie House of Scam ist ein irrer Dauer-Kopfschüttel-Podcast, aber sehr zu empfehlen. Was Kriminelle für Geld so machen, wenn man sie nur lässt. Mit absurden Verbindungen, die mir so nicht klar waren.
Zu abonnieren über den Podcast "Legion":
https://www.rbb-online.de/legion/

Legion
Wir alle kennen Online-Scams. Doch "Love Scams" haben sich zu einer globalen Bedrohung entwickelt. Heute sprechen viele von "Pig Butchering Scams". In Südostasien existieren Scam-Fabriken, groß wie Städte. Hunderttausende Scammer*innen arbeiten dort für ein einziges Ziel: Sie betrügen Menschen weltweit. Online. Mit gefälschten Krypto-Investments, Liebesschwindel und Catfishing. In der neuen Staffel von LEGION tauchen Khesrau Behroz ("Cui Bono: WTF happened to Ken Jebsen?") und sein Team e…

WhatsApps neue Warnung bei Gruppenchat-Einladungen soll Scams eindämmen
Bei Gruppenchat-Einladungen von unbekannten Personen wird WhatsApp künftig eine "Sicherheitsübersicht" zeigen. So sollen Betrugsversuche schnell erkannt werden.

Any thinkpad people have a smallish travel charger? I got a used X1 carbon (USB C charge) that is great but the charger is a little bulky. Looking for a smaller one to throw in my bag, doesn't have to fast charge, just something in case battery runs low, I can find a plug and continue working. (usually available right on the desks in classrooms these days) Online is so full of scams and trash I figured I'd ask here before I purchase anything.

A look at life in online scam compounds run by Chinese gangs on the Myanmar-Thai border, with purported Thai immigration officials luring trafficking victims (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/SOUTHEASTASIA-SCAMS/mypmxwdwwvr/

They traveled to Thailand. They wound up cyber scam slaves in Myanmar.
A multibillion-dollar fraud industry has taken root across Southeast Asia, fueled partly by trafficking victims. In lawless zones along the Myanmar-Thai border, Chinese-run compounds force thousands to scam strangers online under threat of violence. Thailand has become a key transit hub, Reuters found.

Het is echt fucking onhandig dat DHL Express Whatsapp for Business gebruikt voor hun communicatie. Ik krijg op Whatsapp vaak spam en blokkeer daarom berichten van accounts die zich als een bedrijf voordoen onmiddellijk. Als het ineens ook voor berichten van bedrijven die geen scams zijn gebruikt wordt is het dus heel moeilijk te weten wat nou wel of niet een scam is. Met e-mail kun je tenminste nog checken of het bericht afkomstig is van het juiste domein, maar bij Whatsapp is er enkel een v…

Police warn of SMS scams as ‘blaster’ is used to send thousands of texts
#fraud

Intergenerational Support for Deepfake Scams Targeting Older Adults
Karina LaRubbio, Alyssa Lanter, Seihyun Lee, Mahima Ramesh, Diana Freed
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11579 http…

Intergenerational Support for Deepfake Scams Targeting Older Adults
AI-enhanced scams now employ deepfake technology to produce convincing audio and visual impersonations of trusted family members, often grandchildren, in real time. These attacks fabricate urgent scenarios, such as legal or medical emergencies, to socially engineer older adults into transferring money. The realism of these AI-generated impersonations undermines traditional cues used to detect fraud, making them a powerful tool for financial exploitation. In this study, we explore older adults' …

"De plus en plus d'éléments tendent Š prouver que Meta tire activement profit de la fraude financière en autorisant délibérément la diffusion de publicités frauduleuses sur ses différentes plateformes, ce qui constitue une complicité effective avec la criminalité."
#Meta #IA

LOKI: Proactively Discovering Online Scam Websites by Mining Toxic Search Queries
Pujan Paudel, Gianluca Stringhini
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12181 https://

LOKI: Proactively Discovering Online Scam Websites by Mining Toxic Search Queries
Online e-commerce scams, ranging from shopping scams to pet scams, globally cause millions of dollars in financial damage every year. In response, the security community has developed highly accurate detection systems able to determine if a website is fraudulent. However, finding candidate scam websites that can be passed as input to these downstream detection systems is challenging: relying on user reports is inherently reactive and slow, and proactive systems issuing search engine queries to …

#KI bastelt Klone, Meta träumt vom Metaversum, und ein Fake-Profil verspricht Reichtum – der Haken: nur für den Betrüger! Vielleicht sollte ich einfach dem nächsten „Finanzexperten aus der WhatsApp-Gruppe“ vertrauen… Was kann da schon schiefgehen?
Meinung von Chris Stoecker: Instagram-Betrug: Doppelgänger als Werkzeug für Social-Media-Scams

It’s almost as if RTOs and grind-for-welfare are scams. 🤔 https://aus.social/@rakkar/114888408069212569

Yes, I use #Monero, almost daily!
But today, I decided to spin up a fresh wallet, feel free to support me, or spoil me a bit for my birthday this Friday, August, 22.
84PZaY3aMkVWKr8164cj5mEA7y3JsSwezbc1uSiSiZRkeqCLYWbi6GgSxoY8GyEa6r9kwPk583JR2PpxPHmqZpCgE7g4CyK
Unlike the hype coins, surveillance “crypto,” scams, government-controlled money, Monero is built on real privacy, r…

Africa cybercrime crackdown includes hundreds of arrests, Interpol says https://therecord.media/africa-cyber-fraud-crackdown-ghana-senegal-cote-divoire-angola-interpol

Starten Sie jetzt durch mit folgenden innovativen neuen Scams aus Merzdeutschland.

Misschien wel de grootste tragische bedreiging voor de mensheid is goedgelovigheid – 'gullibility' in het Engels, waarschijnlijk zo genoemd naar meeuwen (gulls), die alles maar slikken wat ze wordt toegeworpen. Het vermogen van mensen om vrijwel alles te geloven is verbijsterend. Je ziet het in reclame, nieuws, politiek, religies, complottheorieën, scams, enzovoort. Er lijkt geen effectieve remedie tegen te zijn.

Check out today's Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you might have missed over the weekend, including
--DPRK's Kimsuky forged a deepfake military ID using ChatGPT for S. Korean attack,
--Vastaamo hacker who released psychotherapy center records is set free,
--FBI issues warning of UNC6040 and UNC6395 targeting Salesforce users,
--Shiba Inu stopped damage from attack,
--DC AG charges Athena ATM operator for ignoring elderly scams
-…

DPRK's Kimsuky forged a deepfake military ID using ChatGPT for S. Korean attack
Vastaamo hacker who released psychotherapy center records is set free, FBI issues warning of UNC6040 and UNC6395 targeting Salesforce users, Shiba Inu stopped damage from attack, DC AG charges Athena ATM operator for ignoring elderly scams, much more

WhatsApp adds a new "safety overview" that appears in new group chats, including info on the group and when it was created, to help protect users from scams (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/718881/whatsapp-group-chat-scams-safety-ov…

WhatsApp will show a ‘safety overview’ before you join unknown group chats
WhatsApp is trying to combat group messaging scams by launching a new “safety overview” that appears before you can accept group chat invites from someone you might not know.

London #FT reports on investors that lost billions on #PumpAndDump stock scheme that inflated values of little known traded entities of small US-listed #ChineseStocks that plunged in value shortly after being heavily

Please keep an eye on your bank accounts.
Yesterday husband had two relatively small (under $50) pending transactions that he definitely did not make show up in his CommBank app. They were both for food places in the USA. Disputed the transactions and cancelled his debit MasterCard. Just be alert for this sort of thing as it seems to be happening more and more frequently.
#Scams

A look at celebrity impersonation scams and the steps taken by Hollywood to combat them, including a likeness management tool CAA is developing with YouTube (Rebecca Keegan/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

This Is Not Keanu: Inside the Billion-Dollar Celebrity Impersonation Bitcoin Scam
Victims think they’re talking to Keanu Reeves. Or Kevin Costner. Then come the pleas for cash. The brazen AI-fueled con that fleeces lovestruck fans and has Hollywood finally fighting back.

i gotta hand it to them, if there's any group of users here slightly more suseptible to the types of scams tech literate people see through immediately, it's pixelfed users

Amid border dispute, Thailand goes after Cambodian tycoon over alleged cyber scam ties https://therecord.media/thailand-goes-after-cambodian-tycoon-cyber-scams

"Seeing No Red Flags: Why Do Authors Ignore Journal Titles?" https://doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2025.2530958 [closed access 🙄]
"Publication scams have plagued academia for decades, with fraudulent journals impersonating legitimate ones to deceive authors. Compounding the…

Don't miss today's Metacurity for ongoing reports from hacker summer camp and all the other critical infosec developments you should know, including
--US feds clawed back $1 million from BlackSuit and Royal gangs,
--US seeks to recoup $1m from DPRK hackers,
--US charges four Ghanian nationals for romance scams and BECs,
--Personal data of 500K cervical cancer victims stolen,
--FCC issues new rules for subsea data cable security,
--Erlang/OTP vulnerab…

US feds clawed back $1 million from BlackSuit and Royal gangs
US seeks to recoup $1m from DPRK hackers, US charges four Ghanian nationals for romance scams and BECs, Personal data of 500K cervical cancer victims stolen, FCC issues new rules for subsea data cable security, Erlang/OTP vulnerability exploited in the wild against OT networks, much more

The internet is full of scams.
Our company receives many fake invoices for this or that.
One that really annoys me is from a company called Domain Jamboree LLC. that appears to operate out of a UPS mailbox storefront in a shopping mall in Buffalo NY. They also call themselves "Domain Name Services".
They send a form that looks a lot like an invoice, although it contains weasel words that tries to wiggle and present itself, as a mere solicitation.
They want …

Fake CNN and BBC sites used to push investment scams https://therecord.media/news-websites-faked-to-spread-investment-scams

Perhaps the foremost tragic threat to humanity is gullibility – so named after seagulls, which swallow everything that's thrown at them. People's ability to believe pretty much anything is astounding. You see it with advertising, news, politics, religions, conspiracies, scams, et cetera.
There doesn't seem to be an effective remedy, believe me. Let me know if there is one.

It’s only since Covid and lockdowns ended that the first “reverse hacked” #scammer call centre was published on YouTube by a security expert. It was in parallel with that time Mark Rober made a glitter bomb with streaming cameras that porch pirates stole, but led to a bigger network of gift card scams and money mules across borders.
Since then a bunch of other channels have (righteously?) ri…

An Overview of 7726 User Reports: Uncovering SMS Scams and Scammer Strategies
Sharad Agarwal, Guillermo Suarez-Tangil, Marie Vasek
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.05276 https://

An Overview of 7726 User Reports: Uncovering SMS Scams and Scammer Strategies
Mobile network operators implement firewalls to stop illicit messages, but scammers find ways to evade detection. Previous work has looked into SMS texts that are blocked by these firewalls. However, there is little insight into SMS texts that bypass them and reach users. To this end, we collaborate with a major mobile network operator to receive 1.35m user reports submitted over four months. We find 89.16% of user reports comprise text messages, followed by reports of suspicious calls and URLs…

Austin-based CertifID, which develops tech to prevent wire fraud in real estate transactions, raised a $47.5M Series C led by Centana Growth Partners (Ryan Lawler/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/fintech-deals/2025/07/15/certifid-47-million-real-estat…

Exclusive: CertifID raises $47.5 million to fight real estate wire fraud
Real estate wire fraud is surging, driven by increasingly sophisticated scams.

"People want to believe, and the fact that it is AI generated is causing widespread crisis among people who thought that AI slop would only fool their parents."
We are witnessing the AI slop singularity.
https://www.404media.co/ai-bunnies-on-tram

Cybercriminals are using AI to execute highly targeted attacks at scale, causing people to unwittingly send money and sensitive information or simply open themselves up to theft.
Hackers are now able to rent generative AI large language models created in the underground cybercrime community to help formulate text-based scams.
But just as generative AI is enhancing and scaling social engineering attacks, so too is it giving defenders a leg up.

The hacking underworld has removed all of AI's guardrails, but the good guys are closing in
Fake Taylor Swift ads and malicious QR codes are just some of the newest ways cybercriminals are using AI as the cat-and-mouse cybersecurity game heats up.

Each week, Metacurity offers our free and paid subscribers a rundown of the top infosec-related long reads.
Don't miss this week's selection, which includes
--How the Huione Group launders billions in scams and crypto heists,
--Fears of China spying on the UK financial system,
--How stolen iPhones travel around,
--Cyber played only an incremental role in the Israel-Iran conflict,
--CISA 2015 must be reauthorized,
--Watermarks to weed out deepfa…

Best infosec-related long reads for the week of 8/2/25
How the Huione Group launders billions in scams and crypto heists, Fears of China spying on the UK financial system, How stolen iPhones travel around, Cyber played only an incremental role in the Israel-Iran conflict, CISA 2015 must be reauthorized, Watermarks to weed out deepfakes, more

@… I've got a concern about #MutualAid reposts in that affinity scams are a long term problem and are getting worse because the proliferation of industrial scam operations in Africa and Asia: it used to be that people targeted Christians by saying "I am…

Detecting Rug Pulls in Decentralized Exchanges: Machine Learning Evidence from the TON Blockchain
Dmitry Yaremus, Jianghai Li, Alisa Kalacheva, Igor Vodolazov, Yury Yanovich
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01168

Detecting Rug Pulls in Decentralized Exchanges: Machine Learning Evidence from the TON Blockchain
This paper presents a machine learning framework for the early detection of rug pull scams on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) within The Open Network (TON) blockchain. TON's unique architecture, characterized by asynchronous execution and a massive web2 user base from Telegram, presents a novel and critical environment for fraud analysis. We conduct a comprehensive study on the two largest TON DEXs, Ston.Fi and DeDust, fusing data from both platforms to train our models. A key contribution is th…

New York lawsuit against Zelle creator alleges features allowed $1 billion in thefts https://therecord.media/zelle-lawsuit-new-york-state-scams-fraud

World Liberty Financial blocking Justin Sun's wallet contrasts with the Trump sons' complaints about being "debanked", the issue they said inspired the project (Molly White/Citation Needed)
https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-92/

Issue 92 – The scam of all scams
The Trumps “debank” major customers from their “anti-debanking” cryptocurrency venture, and a CFTC nominee says the Winklevosses are blackballing him

Over 1,200 arrested in Africa-wide cybercrime crackdown, Interpol says https://therecord.media/africa-interpol-cybercrime-crackdown

🏦 Scam compounds labeled a 'living nightmare' as Cambodian government accused of turning a blind eye
... it looks like there is a Cambrian Explosion in all sorts of scams lately
https://therecord.media/cambodia-scam-compounds-amnesty-international-r…

Scam compounds labeled a 'living nightmare' as Cambodian government accused of turning a blind eye
Amnesty International said it identified dozens of scam compounds in Cambodia, calling the government's response to the nexus of cybercrime and human trafficking "grossly inadequate."

E-PhishGen: Unlocking Novel Research in Phishing Email Detection
Luca Pajola, Eugenio Caripoti, Simeone Pizzi, Mauro Conti, Stefan Banzer, Giovanni Apruzzese
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01791

E-PhishGen: Unlocking Novel Research in Phishing Email Detection
Every day, our inboxes are flooded with unsolicited emails, ranging between annoying spam to more subtle phishing scams. Unfortunately, despite abundant prior efforts proposing solutions achieving near-perfect accuracy, the reality is that countering malicious emails still remains an unsolved dilemma. This "open problem" paper carries out a critical assessment of scientific works in the context of phishing email detection. First, we focus on the benchmark datasets that have been used to asses…

Interpol identifies West Africa as potential new hotspot for cybercrime compounds https://therecord.media/interpol-west-africa-cybercrime-compounds

AI Bunnies on Trampoline Causing Crisis of Confidence on TikTok https://www.404media.co/ai-bunnies-on-trampoline-causing-crisis-of-confidence-on-tiktok/