Fighting Fraud: Resources for Professionals and Victims

Behind every scam and fraud statistic, there’s a human story. Teams of fraud fighters are working to transform the way institutions respond to fraud and protect victims. Prevention and catching the criminals are important, but fighting fraud is also about helping victims recover and protecting them from further threats. See Post-Scam Guidebook with Freddy Massimi for a complete transcript of the Easy Prey podcast episode. Freddy Massimi has spent his entire career fighting fraud and supporting victims. He’s an award-winning fraud fighter and has a passion for protecting people from financial crimes. Currently, he works at Truist Bank as a Financial Crimes Technology Specialist, and is also a program manager at The Knoble, which is a collaborative group of financial services professionals. He’s seen time and again that being targeted by fraud isn’t just about the money, and it’s become his mission. The damage doesn’t stop when the money is gone. One story Freddy can’t forget is a victim of a pig butchering scam . She’d lost her husband and met a guy online who convinced her to invest in a crypto exchange . She put in $300,000 over the course of five months. Freddy got an incident report from her local bank. He picked up the phone and called her. When she answered, he said, “If you hadn’t called me today, I was going to commit suicide.” After talking to her, he called law enforcement in her city and asked them to do a wellness check. They found her with no lights in her house because she couldn’t afford utilities. They got her the help she needed. Freddy sees her on Facebook every now and then, and it looks like she’s thriving. It’s a story he comes back to whenever he feels unmotivated. The Knoble is a group of financial services professionals, law enforcement, regulators, and non-government organizations that have joined forces to stop human crime – which includes things like human trafficking, human smuggling, force, fraud, and coercion. Through The Knoble, Freddy helped develop a post-scam victimization guide. The guide was sponsored by Ally Bank and is a trauma-informed, step-by-step playbook for fighting fraud and giving practical tools to help people recover and prevent further harm. Over fifty fraud fighters came together weekly to help develop the guide. It has screenshots, scripts, and tips to talk to victims for each type of crime. The worst thing you can do as frontline staff interacting with victims is just give them a pamphlet. This guide helps them have better conversations and help victims more. This guide isn’t just another awareness tool. It’s an actionable guide for fighting fraud and gives institutions, fraud fighters, and advocates scripts they need. It also gives victims clear steps on what to do first, where to report , how to secure their accounts , and where to go for real help. There’s lots of short guides out there, and those have their place. But this is a detailed, 56-page guide. You can get this guide from The Knoble at theknoble.com by clicking on Member Center. You will have to sign up and get vetted first, as they want to make sure they’re not sending the guide to someone who will hand it over to a fraudster. But especially if you’re part of a financial institution or law enforcement, Freddy encourages you to get it. The guide contains links and QR codes to resources like the National Elder Fraud Hotline , the Internet Crime Complaint Center , reportfraud.ftc.gov , Operation Shamrock , Adult Protective Services, and LoveSaid . It also has direct contacts to banks and other task forces, which makes it easier to reach the right person. And it provides different types of wording to use when talking to victims, because victims of different scams respond to different things. With romance scams , for example, telling them that they’re a victim of a scam often doesn’t work – but asking them how they’re going to pay their mortgage this month is more likely to get through to them. It’s very easy these days for someone to click a suspicious link, go on a website and get redirected, or do something else to get malware on their device. Most banks will tell you to go to Best Buy or Staples to get your computer cleaned . But the issue is that places like that won’t remove all malware, especially remote access software. You need to install something with a remote access blocker. Kitboga is a YouTuber doing great things exposing scammers, and he also created Seraph Secure, a software that blocks malware and remote access software. If you don’t remove that, fraudsters can keep watching your device. As soon as you log into online banking, you’re compromised again. Another common type of fraud is recovery fraud . The same people who stole your money in the first palace tell you they can help you get it back for a fee. It’s revictimization. When people are fraud victims, it’s easy to only focus on any chance of getting the money back. People are desperate and looking for hope, and recovery scammers prey on that. Preventing revictimization is a big part of fraud recovery. This goes back to the guide, which is full of resources. The main things are helping people, connecting victims to advocates, and walking them through recovery. It’s very unlikely victims will get their money back, but they can recover mentally. There are resources out there and people fighting fraud who can help. Are you going to get your money back? There is a slim chance. But mentally, you are going to recover from this. Once, Freddy was in a pharmacy and heard someone talking on the phone while picking out gift cards. It sounded suspicious, so he went over and said, “Ma’am, I think you may be a victim of a scam. Do you mind if I ask you who you’re on the phone with?” She responded that it was her boyfriend. The store manager happened to be close enough to overhear the conversation, and interrupted at that point to tell Freddy to mind his own business. So Freddy called corporate and complained that they were more concerned with making money than with someone being a victim of a crime. Two weeks later, he was back at that same pharmacy, and they had a new poster warning about scams above the gift card display. Effectively fighting fraud means we can’t just stand by and hope someone else does something. We have to speak up. And that also means reporting. Fraud is vastly under-reported because people are embarrassed that it happened. But if law enforcement doesn’t know what’s going on, it’s hard for them to apply the right resources. Even if you’re not entirely sure it’s fraud, even suspicious activity should be reported just in case. In the fraud fighting world, you have to speak up and say something. If you think you may be a victim of a scam, the first step is to stop all contact. That means absolutely everything, every method of contact. You’re probably going to get phone calls from unknown numbers threatening you. Block them and let them leave voicemails. If they threaten you, take the emails or voicemails to law enforcement and have them charged with communicating threats. Don’t delete anything. Document all of your losses and all communication with that individual. That will help you down the road. If there’s any chance of recovery, law enforcement is going to want to see those communications. It’s also useful when reporting. Report it to your bank, to the FBI through ic3.gov if it’s an internet crime or cryptocurrency. Secure all of your accounts. Change passwords and turn on multi-factor authentication . Scan your devices with any kind of anti-malware software you can get – or even better, use Seraph Secure . Finally, seek support. Any victim over age 60 is considered a vulnerable adult and qualifies for Adult Protective Services and social worker support through there. Some churches have support groups. If you were a victim of a crypto scam, reach out to Operation Shamrock . Some local law enforcement agencies do a good job getting help for victims. No dollar amount is too small to get help, and there’s always someone to talk to. Talk to a friend, a pastor, or even call Freddy because he’s a person first and wants to make sure you get the help you need. It’s hard, but there are resources out there. No dollar amount is too small to get help. A couple weeks ago, Freddy was asked about the biggest mistake people make after being the victim of fraud. And the answer is staying silent. Scammers and fraudsters want you to stay silent. They don’t want you to talk to anybody about it while it’s happening. And they definitely want the shame and fear to keep you quiet afterwards. The faster you say something, the more options you’ll have to recover from the scam and protect yourself. Of course they don’t want that. Silence is what scammers want. … The faster you speak up, the more options you’ll have to recover and protect yourself. Never let them pressure or scare you into not telling anyone. Run things by someone else before you take action to help spot a scam in advance. And if you got caught, say something. Report it and get support. Part of fighting fraud is knowing when fraud happened. Sharing it helps you recover and also helps future victims. Find Freddy Massimi on LinkedIn – he’s the only Freddy Massimi III there. He invites you to follow him, because fighting fraud means you never stop learning or talking about it.