Scammed: Getting Even

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To help us trick scammers into revealing their identities and catching them red-handed. We are hunting down scammers wherever they hide. I unlock it and bringing justice to our victims. This is scammed. Getting weaker.

And this is all part of a special on Fox Nation, a brand new series called Scam Getting Even. It premieres today.

So you can go another reason to get the best streaming service in the country. And with me in studio, if you're watching our stream, Ashton Bingham and Art Kulik. Guys, welcome. Ryan, thanks for having us. Fresh show for your appearance on Fox and Friends.

Yes. First, tell me how you became somebody that was interested in unmasking the scam. I think we've both always had a passion for justice. We came together as best friends about 15 years ago, and Both moved to Los Angeles with dreams of being content creators, entertainers. And as I was telling you off camera, we kind of stumbled into it in 2016 when I received a robocall, wasted the guy's time, and the call went crazy.

It was one of those fake IRS calls where they're like, hey, you got to pay your taxes, pack due taxes, or we're going to come arrest you right now. And I knew it was fake, but I wanted to waste his time and just make a funny video. And it ended up going crazy.

So you just quickly, you get this call and you pick out your iPhone? Yeah, I was recording on an old MacBook. webcam like with four pixels. But what made you like how why were you on your uh I don't know. I think I was, I mean, we had actually just opened Trilogy as like a production company, like maybe a month prior.

Right. And so I had content creation on my mind, but I wasn't thinking this was going to be anything. Like, I thought I was going to make a fun Facebook video for my friends. I remember Ashley now, we used to live together. He was my roommate, unfortunately.

And one of the mornings, people like grumpy going to the kitchen, he was like, brother, do you receive like these robocalls? They're so annoying. He was like, I'm getting like bombarding 10 phone calls per day. I was like, no, never had one. And he just said something to himself, all right, then maybe I will answer it one day.

I thought it would last like three minutes, and the call was like 50. And what were they trying to say? Intimidate you to pay them. Telling him, I'm going to be arrested. You know, classic pressure, gift cards, go to Target, get the thing.

I mean, it's very ridiculous on paper. But, you know, of course, since then, we've learned how deep these cams go and how crazy they are. But he was just trying to get money out of me. I was just wasting his time being, I was playing aloof, just playing dumb, just letting him do his thing. And he got so mad that I wasted almost an hour of his time that he went off, screamed at me.

He was taking credit for 9-11. He was like, I'm going to come and kill you. I know you're in California. I'm going to come tomorrow and get you. Actually, at the time, it freaked me out.

But I still posted the video and it went like, at this point, it's got like 300 million views or something. 300 million. Yeah. And then you thought to yourself, what?

Well, you and I were already working on stuff. We wanted a platform. To be us, entertain people. We had spent many years in Hollywood trying to fit into the boxes that they wanted to put you in. And we're like, you know what?

This is the vehicle right here. This is allowing us to be kind of an impractical joker style of a duo. We can do something that's important to raise awareness about. There's not a lot of this right now. Let's give it a shot.

And so we just started making videos together, wasting their time. At that time, it's such a niche category on YouTube from back in the days to present day. Obviously, community got better. But when we started, it was like... two, three content creators.

And those content creators, you know, hackers, whatever you call them, social engineering people, they would not show the face.

So it's like nobody, and especially us, we're so different. And we like, you put us together, some magic happened. And we just like start doing impractical jokers and just going with different type of scams and having a lot of fun with it, but also educating people about this.

So, tell me how you play this out.

Now, I saw some of the video already.

So, give me an idea.

So, what happens is you get, they come after you, or you go after them. As far as the scammers go, we go after them. And this show in particular. People can get in touch with you to say, I'm being scammed. Yeah, that's right.

And we don't try to help them. We're fortunate enough to have built an audience, and now we get inundated with more submissions than we can handle, to be honest. But it's heartbreaking. You read these stories every day. But this show has given us an outlet, a platform.

For us to be able to um You know, see these victims, interview them, get their story, and actually pursue with the help of our revengers in the show, actually pursue the scammers and bring them to justice. We have public submission right on our YouTube channel on Trilogy Media.

So we will go and we will do the interviews, we're gonna talk to the victims, we're gonna see like what kind of story, and go through the story, meet the victims, and you learn: all right, how did you get scammed? How did you move like how scammers took your money? And we, you know, follow the money, you're gonna find the bad guy. And we learn and we go either confront, working together with police, do whatever it takes. Do you get the cops involved?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. That started a we learned a lot about that over the course of, you know, since 2020, since we've been confronting them in person. We would notice that we'd post a video and then like a year later, we'd get a call from, you know, US government or an email from .gov. And they'd be like, hey, we're now looking into this thing that you happened to cross over. Can we get your raw footage?

Sure, no problem.

Now it's gained some traction, especially with the show. We've been able to do collaborative efforts. We're actually seeing more law enforcement take action on scam baits, which is huge. And it's never really been done before.

So the fact that they're actually teaming up with us and listening to us, and we just had a federal indictment that was for like a $65 million scam. Your goal is to get their money back? That would be nice. It's usually not possible. That's usually not the case.

And it's out of our hands if it is. Right. But what we can do because we have an amazing platform and we have amazing fans. We will. open GoFundMe for some cases and try to get money Some money back.

We want to play out the scams. We've done that a few times. GoFundMe's are a big place for a scam? No, no, no, to help victims out. If they let us tell their story publicly and take the vulnerability that comes with saying that I was a victim to a scam.

So there's a couple of categories that we're going to see on the Fox Nation special. Number one, tech support scams.

So we're here to help you, or Apple, or somebody else. Pop-up scam on your computer. Can you give me an idea how they lure me in? It'll come either with a, like you said, a pop-up on your screen. What's really prolific right now is emails with fake invoices attached from companies.

They'll impersonate PayPal or Amazon. And they'll send you a receipt for a purchase that you didn't make. And we're like, I didn't make this purchase. It's $500. I don't want to pay for this.

And they're encouraging you to call the number back. You call the number back, you get a scam call center, and they are telling you, oh, it must be a mistake. We'll fix it for you. And then they want remote access to your computer. It's a whole social engineering process against the victims.

And once they get that access, they have access to your banks, they have access to everything, and they convince you that your money is in jeopardy and you have to move it somewhere else to keep it safe. And that's where the scam comes in.

So I was here with Ashton Bingham and Art Kulik, and they have this brand new series on Fox Nation called Scammed, Getting Even. It premieres today.

So you can go right now on Fox Nation, but don't leave yet. Art, in particular, for example, if I get lured in and I think that PayPal, for example, someone charged on my PayPal account.

So I go in and I call the number and I'm saying, oh, you're going to get this fixed.

So by the time I'm hit and I lose, let's say, thousands of dollars, I contact you. And then what do you do? Can you possibly bring them out?

Well you don't track them down? You try to get yourself scammed too? Right. Well, that's secondary. First, you have to contact FTC, right?

You have to file a police report. You have to call your bank, fraud department. Right, absolutely for the victim. Victim have to you have to follow the procedure. Then again, you do the public submission, you will give us like this is what happened to me, this is fake PayPal, Venmo, whatever, whatever it was.

Then we're gonna call. And we're just gonna p Do exactly what happened before. We're going to pretend to be victims and we're going to learn what happened. And they want to move your money, right?

Somebody have to pick up your money. Usually, Tax support originates from India. India Mafia works really good with Asian mafia here in San Francisco and Bay Area.

So, scammers are internationally, but somebody has to come to your house, to your grandmother's house, and move that half a million, $100,000, $50,000, doesn't matter, right?

So, they will send thugs to your door who are gonna say, Hey, I'm from the government, Federal Reserve, we need to secure your money. And mafia will take money from your family. and gonna disappear. And when did have you been able to stop this? Oh, yeah.

We're sitting in the bushes with the cameras. That's actually a couple of the episodes are about this scam specifically. And we were able to collaborate with Homeland Security, FBI, and some law enforcement out in Arkansas and actually stage stings with this exact thing.

So we pretend to be old. I put on a mask. I do a pretty good old man voice. And I get them to come to my house and pick up the money. But instead of getting the money, they get handcuffs.

They're going to get arrested. Here's an example of the intersection trying to stop a scam, mid-scam. It's him. Let's go.

So we're looking for a scammer, the guy that we're going after. He instructed our victim to send money to you. We'd like to figure out kinda what's going on.

So, you gotta, how do you explain that? Did I respond or anything? You kept the money. Yeah, you got the money. No one sent it back to me?

You get it? See how that looks really bad, right?

Okay, that's no sense of talking there. There's no sense in talking.

Alright!

So Bring us up to date. Where was that? That was in Maryland. Maryland. Oh my God, we've been in so many places since then.

He's a cash mule, you know, allegedly. Cash mule, we were instructed by a Nigerian scammer who the scammer that was scamming Ann from that episode was instructing me as who I was playing her grandson, I believe. He believed I was her grandson. I was helping him move her money. He was instructing me to send it to people around the country, and he was one of them.

And you had to go there. And then the cops aware of this at the time when you're doing this? Oftentimes. I looked at some of that video. I'm thinking this guy might have a gun.

Yeah. It's happening.

So do you call the cops ahead of time? Not really, like at this time, again, for the show, like we're blessed that we have a bigger budget than YouTube. We have security. Oh, you have your own? Yeah, yeah.

We will have security who will come with us. But you're a big guy. No one's messing with you.

Well, yeah, they'll try, yeah. 6'5, yeah, they will try. You would not believe, like, again, when it comes to when you have a gun, doesn't matter how big you are, right? You get shot, you get shot.

So we still went and we did police report, we still notify police and everything, but we went only with our security and we asked questions, and he was. He knew what happened with like...

Somebody sends you money. And you keep that money, you didn't return it. Like, what's wrong with you? And he was like, Yeah, well, I was like, How did you find this guy? He was like, I was in the grocery store.

He came to me and he said, Can I use your Venmo or whatever, PayPal? Which isn't true. Yeah. Yeah. Which it's a total scam.

Oh, yeah, because we sent him the money. Please tell me he got arrested. Not yet. Not yet, but still working on it. That's the problem.

This is a problem we've had over and over and over again, long before we had any law enforcement collaboration. When we're coming in and somebody we know is involved, the law enforcement, I love them to death, but they take forever. And so if it's a case like in Arkansas where we can have a pre-setup operation and we can show the proof of our scam bait and they come to us, they can get arrested on the spot. But when we're coming into a scam that's already happening and we're identifying individuals through our methods, police usually can't or won't just show up and arrest them. They have to Take the chain of custody of everything we've collected.

They have to investigate it. They get more people involved. It's months down the line. The big federal indictment that just came out a couple of months ago from San Diego was from videos we did in 2020.

So we confronted these guys in 2020. We confronted like three different ones from the same kind of mafia group that we came to learn. FBI or no Homeland approached us in 21 or 2. We testified in 23. And then we finally learned that they were arrested just a couple of months ago.

That's how long it takes. We have more categories of scams. This could help you avoid being a victim. You might have gotten some of these emails, but one guy is there's two guys taking action, and you're looking at them right now. If you're watching the stream, Aston Bingham and Ark Tulik.

Back in a moment. Scammer's not getting paid today. Hey, Ashman is off with a new police department. I was just over there with you when we cut in the package. If you just give me a call back, I'm looking for that video footage of.

in the Google classes.

so we can see if we can get that vehicle into our system and track it down. All right, you just give me a call or text me on this number. Thanks. Bye. Hello.

Hey Patricia. Patricia. Are you doing okay? I'm doing okay, yeah, I really you know, I mean, you've witnessed this so many times, but when it's such a shock and it happens so quickly, you know, you have to have some reflective thoughts afterwards. Absolutely.

And so, obviously, that's what you go through now. But the police officer, you know, followed through with his additional information and. You know, um, thank God to you guys. I mean, I don't know what brought you to that spot at that time. That was from the YouTube channel of Trilogy, right?

Trilogy Media. Trilogy Media, yep. Trilogy Media. And that is one of the reasons that Fox Nation has a brand new series called Scam Getting Even. Ashton Bingham and Art Kulik are here.

Guys, what was I listening to? Art? It's actually one of the happy ending stories that you can that we ever came across, like as of as of today. Again, it's complicated, but basically, make story short, we will send a baiting package that is like fake, right? And we're gonna wait until Cashmore is gonna show up and pick up the package.

Like allegedly stolen money. When we showed up, it was our package that arrived, empty box. And it was. Package package on a purge with $25,000 with a real victim. From Amazon, right, I believe Amazon or PayPal, yeah.

Amazon or PayPal.

So, and it was returning address.

So we immediately Googled the address, the cell phone number.

So we called Patricia and we're like, Patricia. Did you talk to Amazon PayPal recently? She was like, no. I was like, Patricia, there is money right now sitting, and we see it. and then we can hear that there is Skammer talking to Patricia.

saying, Do not talk to them. Hang up.

So she got brainwashed, but finally she came to realizing that she just sent $25,000 to pay for whatever she wanna pay. And we literally holding her package in our hands. We called the cops and they came and. Seized the money and got it back to her. Wow.

And what was the first? We were hearing the cops call and inquire for the- Yeah, so that was after the interaction. He wanted, uh, we had goop, like, uh, Camera glasses and stuff we have hidden cameras. Yeah. Yeah, well I mean they're not they're not Google brand, but we have actually they're really old.

They're not working too well to get new ones. But we record everything obviously so we have people that are walking around and the the whole interaction. He wanted the raw footage of that to be able to put in his report, which we always provide. We showed up. Two minutes before Thugs showed up to pick up that money, that stolen money from elderly people.

And we saw that cash mule in the corner show up with a package. They, you know, collect 10, 20 packages per day. And we said, not today. This package, this money going back to the money. How did you know to show up there?

Throughout the scam bait, when we're pretending to be victims and we were collabing on this one, they gave. Give us instructions on where the victim is supposed to send the money. In this case, it was to an address. Came to find out that address was vacant.

So they do that sometimes.

Sometimes the cash mule lives there, sometimes it's vacant. Packages get dropped off and then somebody will come and just scoop it up. And they know what's they go they go on, you know, Zilla or whatever, they'll find vacant residences and they'll use them.

So in this case, lots of scammers were sending it to this door, and ours just happened to arrive at the exact same moment as Patricia's actual money. And you could spot it from a mile away 'cause they tell you to wrap it in a bunch of duct tape.

So we saw it. We're like, that's a scam. That's a scam package. I 100% we call the cops. Could I throw some scams at you and you tell me w how it goes down?

Debt collection scams. Give me an idea. Like, how would I? Wh wh do I get hit by an email? Is it a phone call?

All of the above for those debt collections. Do they know your debt on your credit card? And do they is that what hit home? They know more than you'll want them to know, especially with like public databases and you know. if they can get a hold of your your email or your god forbid your social security number, they can run credit checks and You know, that's what I think honestly, I think everybody should have their credit locked unless you're gonna use it, you know.

But yeah, they'll use that against you. They'll advance fee scam, same thing. They'll they'll get you to try to pay something up front in in hopes of helping you get out of a bad situation and then just disappear. Virtual kidnapping You mean I have your son, I have your daughter, I need a scam. It's actually one of those things.

And AI can do the voice absolutely. Yeah, that's why we literally just had this conversation. What happened to you? I tried to get my grandma with that one. Yeah, they impersonated my voice.

They called my grandma. This is a number of years back. But they said my grandma would call me AJ. They say, hey, grandma, it's AJ. I'm in Mexico.

I just got arrested for DUI. I need bail money right now. And she didn't know what to do. Thankfully, she called my aunt, who verified it with me, that that wasn't true. But Unfortunately, a lot of people do fall for it.

And with AI, they can totally get it. With AI, right now, it's absolutely this is catastrophe. What would you recommend if that happens to somebody?

Well, first of all, you need to set up a password. Set up a password. Password, right. Only like you you you have kids, right?

So something only your kids know, something between you and kids.

So if that if you call somebody impersonates you and gonna call your kids and ask for something, You can throw that question. Hey Dad, what's these and these?

So it has to be only between family members. All right.

So check out their series. It's now on Fox Nation. It is called Scammed, Getting Even. And that's what they try to do for everybody if they can get to you in time. Aston Bingham, RQL, gets a win-win.

Great series, great TV, and you're helping people. Thank you, Brian. Nice job. I really appreciate that. Brian, kill me, Cho.

Keep it here. It's Will Tane Country. Watch it live at noon Eastern Monday through Thursday at FoxNews.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss the show. Listen and follow the podcast five days a week at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.