The Expert Podcast

Okay You've been a victim of an online fraud or scam So what do you do next. If you've sent hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars To somebody online And you're now finding that that is a not legitimate Operation. maybe you thought it was an investment maybe it was Bitcoin Maybe it was some type of business opportunity. And now you're suspicious or skeptical or maybe even sure That the whole thing was a scam There's some steps You can take. put some comments below let us know if this is happening to you or has happened to you. and ask questions that maybe this video doesn't cover. So the first thing you want to do is to make sure that you don't send any more money. Any payments that are in process Cancel. Any payments that are recent try to undo with your bank. you may not be able to. Step number two is you want to make sure that your personal And physical security is intact Does this person know where you live. Are there any physical connections Usually there's not usually these are all online and most of the time the people are in other countries So they're not going to come harm you. But you want to make sure of that. Third thing is you want to make sure that you're not vulnerable to any kind of identity theft Or other act activities that the fraudster could take. Even if you don't send them any more money can they access your bank account. Do they have your credit card number. Do they have your social security number. Did they have a copy of your license. You may want to change Credit card numbers. You may want to put a security freeze on your credit report. You may want to report Documents stolen or your license stolen if that's the case. Once your personal security Is handled Next is you want to contact law enforcement. Contact your local police department and contact the FBI using a process called IC3 which is their internet crime division. now don't expect that any of the Law enforcement agencies are going to take immediate action. They're not going to drop all their cases and work on your case even if you lost 50 60 $80,000 Because that's not really what they do. You want to get these cases filed so that if any of the agencies know about Physical danger that you might be in They'll tell you. if they know that this is a larger Case that they're already working on at least now you're in their system as being part of that larger case. But if it's not a larger case they're already working on They're not going to probably drop everything and get your money back for you. If you file a case against let's say XYZ investments whatever the name of the company is I'm just making up a name. And other people file those cases Also with the IC 3 it may coalesce together as a larger case that maybe they take on at some point. how would that help you. Well if the IC3 or FBI ever takes on the case and they prosecuted and they recover funds then they can distribute it to people who have filed Notices that they were victims of that case. So you want to do those things first. now what can you do on your end To do your own work To try to recover money. Well Whether you do it or you hire an investigative agency to do it like us here is what those steps are. They're very clear set of steps you want to take. first You want to collect all the evidence You already have all your text messages Screenshots of websites Communications If you have voicemails record those. If you have copies of statements Record those go into your account and print out all your statements If you have access if you have a login. what you don't want to do If you haven't already done it Don't let the other person fraudster know that you're onto them. Don't accuse them of fraud Don't say you're a scam because if you do they may shut down your access. They may block your login. They may not communicate with you anymore. And once that's done that might prevent you from gathering more information that might be helpful to you or an investigator To prosecute your case. Save and document everything Put it in two places put it on your hard drive on your computer Save it also Put it in the cloud. If you have a Google drive account and apple cloud account Any you know Dropbox account put it somewhere else besides your computer So that if the fraudster somehow accesses your computer they can't delete it. If you ever get ransomware or your computer breaks you don't lose this valuable record Package. Put it in two places at least two three if you want to. Then what you want to start doing is looking through all those records to find Step one is who is the identity of the person. whatever names they give you Phone numbers are probably all fake. Every time we run One of these cases we find that the initial identity of the person is fake. Their name really Isn't Joe Schmoe. Their phone number really isn't one, two, three, four, five. It's something other than that they use fake information because they don't want to have you know who they really are. Right That's the whole purpose of being a criminal is to not know who you are. So if you look through all these records you may find clues That'll tell you who they are. even if it's not directly there The information in these files can help you find it. For example If they have a website And they have a fake name Email address on the website When you look at the source code of that website which you can do You may find snippets of code or snippets of Instructions or APIs that connect you to other websites connect you to other technologies. most websites what you see on the page Is different from what's in the code and inside that code are hidden Documents hidden references Connections to other places that can reveal who's really behind that website. And if you know how to look through the code and do forensics on it you may find look we had a case You've heard us talk about this before Where a fraudster was scamming people with a fake Crypto account Bitcoin investment. And they had a website that looked really slick polished It looked like a nice professional company. And it was just a scam but when we did forensics on that website we found that it was copied from another website And just change the names and the logos. But they left some code in there that reference a website for a landscape company in San Diego. And we found that the person running the scam actually had a legitimate regular company doing landscaping in San Diego. It was real simple They may not all be that easy but they left And identity fingerprint in their website and we contacted them and it was resolved. Next thing you want to do is cross reference the different Piece of data you have find if there's similar Records Within the website the text messages the WhatsApp the phone number Because that might help you cross reference. and then you're going to go outward. And this is how we do it We do a matrix We searched for all those pieces of information the phone numbers the emails the IP addresses The digital forensics On the web on the dark web on the hidden web In official records and we find are any of these reference anywhere else. people get lazy they'll use some of these fake identities in other places That will give you a cross-reference. So hopefully by this time We are you have identified who the actual true identity of this person is. what's the real name and address where they live That's step one. Once you've done that Then you're going to search for their assets. You know it's not Joe Schmoe It's really Robert Franklin That's the real name They live at 12 main street. Now you're going to run an asset search on that person And find their assets. Where's the house they own do they own vehicles where are their bank accounts where they're corporate assets. all of the things that Are their valuable Holdings. And you can make a list of those By running an asset search. Step three is going to be recovering those assets. Now step three normally requires A court involvement because just because you know somebody's bank account has a million dollars in it and they ripped you off for 50,000 you can't go knocking on the door of that bank and saying Hey give me 50,000 from this account This guy ripped me off. They're not going to take your word for it. Even if it's true even if you bring them a copy of the Text message where they ripped you off the bank is not going to just hand over $50,000. You're going to have to get a court to sign off On a document usually called a writ of garnishment That directs the bank to give you the money. That's a legal process You could do it yourself You may need to get an attorney You don't want to take legal advice from anybody other than an attorney. We're not giving you legal advice but that will be the third step. But before you do that you're going to have to know the identity of the person and their assets. You can't get a writ of garnishment or go to that court process Until you know who it is that you're trying to get the money from They're not going to do that work for you. And the court can't just randomly give you judgment Without having that information. So those are the three steps You can do all this yourself There's More instructions on our website about doing this. Active intel.com There's options where we could do it for you The only downside if we do it for you is now you're have more expense out of pocket. Right We're glad to do it I'm not trying to talk you out of it but sometimes Victims Don't want to put more money out of pocket 'cause they're already lost money even though You know the money they lost is to a scammer and the other money would go to a legitimate business Sometimes people conflate the two and they're they're fearful of putting more money out To try to solve their problem. That's why we give you these consumer resources. So put your message below let us know what you think Ask questions use our website as a resource And let us know What is your situation For being scammed online Through an investment or other type of loss.