#686 - Mariana van Zeller on Scamming the Scammers, Why Anyone Can Fall for It & the Shocking Stories of Victims Who Lost Everything

0:06 This is what's driving these black markets and these scams. It's not that people are born wanting to be scammers or criminals. It's because of lack of opportunities that leads people to these lives.

0:18 Hey everybody, I'm here and we're going to talk with Mariana Van Zeller, one of my favorite guests ever. She has a new documentary. It's called Super Scam Me. And she's going undercover on dating websites and dating apps. She transforms herself and her identity. And she's just setting out to get scammed. These celebrity scams where they're acting like celebrities.

0:39 She talks about a four-star general that tried to scam her. George Clooney tries to scam her, not the real one. And then they ask for money. And so many people, so many people this has happened to here in the States. And that's what she wanted to uncover. Like how it's happening, why it's happening. and just for everybody to be aware of it. She is one of the best journalists that I've ever got to know. She was a host of Trafficked.

1:05 She's now on a whole new podcast that she has created called The Hidden Third. And again, check out Super Scam Me, which we're going to talk about now. It premieres October 17th on Nat Geo, Hulu, and Disney +. We do talk about AI as well coming up. We do talk about the political system. But here she is, Mariana Van Zeller. Mariana, good to see you again.

1:27 Great to see you, Bobby.

1:28 Your show, the one that's coming out in October, it's so interesting because on my radio show and on this, we talk about scamming a lot because it's such a prevalent part of being online, especially in my community where blue check marks, that's got to be the way that people know not to, if they don't have a blue check mark, You will get scammed. People have been scammed in my name multiple times, like thousands and thousands of dollars to where I've even wanted to give them money back after being scammed by somebody else. And my attorneys have said, don't, because that could be somebody scamming you saying they were scammed. So it's head on a swivel.

2:06 Like you always have to be looking around. Romance scams. And this is what I want to talk about with you, because that's what this whole, your whole show is about. I know a woman. Who lives in a state close. Who thought she was dating one of my friends, Dierks Bentley, who's a country music artist, for a year.

2:25 Yeah.

2:26 For a year. And obviously she wasn't. Never met him. Never got on FaceTime with him. But just believed that she was in a relationship because they would communicate. And sent him a lot of money. And so then I start to think, is this happening to people far more than I thought?

2:46 So.

2:47 Why did, so Super Scammy is the name of it.

2:49 Yes.

2:50 How did this start? Yeah, in part because of that.

2:53 So I've, you know, I had my show on National Geographical Traffic about black markets and I've reported extensively on scams. And one of the things that happened was every time I'd come back home and talk to my friends and family about victims of scams, the general answer is like, it would never happen to me. I mean, how stupid could these people be? Like, how do you believe you're talking to a famous person and sending them money, right?

3:12 Right.

3:13 But it usually sort of misses the point because they don't realize just how good these scammers are, how incredible the technology has become, and how they really sort of exploit the vulnerabilities that we all, at the end of the day, have some sort of vulnerability and we could all become a victim of a scam as well. So I thought the only way that I can show this is to place myself at the center of all scams.

3:38 So the initial idea for Super Scam Me was that I was just going to say yes to every single scam that came my way. And I sort of did that. But then early on, I realized that actually, as I was taking in these scams, the biggest industry in terms of scams out there right now are romance scams. And this, you have celebrity scams, which you mentioned. You have crypto scams that a lot of them start as romance scams as well. So a lot of these scams start with a romance scam. I mean, it's a at least a billion dollar industry just here in the United States. It's much more than that. That's just reported cases. And so I had this idea, okay, I'm going to come up with a persona. So I got a fake nose, fake hair,

4:20 new identity. I put myself on all these dating websites. My new name was Mary Zell. I was a 50-something-year-old divorcee with kids in college. And within seconds, as soon as I started opening up these dating websites and putting my profile on social media websites, I started being contacted by romance scammers, but also by celebrity scammers. So at one point, kid you not, I was talking to Three George Cloonies, a couple of Keanu Reeves, several Brad Pits, and some of them were really convincing. The majority of them were not, but some were, you know? Yeah, it was a ride. And then I ended up in a very, very serious romantic relationship with a four-star general who was deployed in Syria, who obviously was not a four-star general

5:11 and who was not in Syria.

5:12 Was there a reason that you picked a 50 something divorcee, is that who gets fooled the most?

5:20 Yes.

5:21 Yeah. Older, so older women and men, usually women are more likely to come forward and talk to the authorities and sort of report to the crime than men, which is interesting. Having reported a lot on romance scams, you know, I did one of our first stories about scams was exactly about romance scams. It was for season two of Trafficked, I believe. And we went And we spent time here in the U.S. talking to a lot of these victims of romance scams. And we were trying to convince people to come on camera because there's a lot of shame around.

5:52 It, right?

5:53 And eventually we got like a handful of women willing to talk to us, no men. And we were thinking, well, maybe this happens mainly to women. And then we went to Ghana and we actually spent time interviewing the scammer side of it, scammers. in this industry and realized that a lot of them were scamming men as well, but those were less likely to sort of want to talk about it because there's, again, just so much shame. So, yes, but older people are usually the victim, are very often more the victims, but it's happening to everybody. I mean, sextortion is impacting teenagers mostly. You know, pig butchering is happening to people just like us. So there's scams, yeah, affecting everyone.

6:35 You're so right about men. I think they would be too embarrassed to ever say it happened to them. And you don't have to be a celebrity. Men are such cavemen in general. I would imagine they're easier to scam because all you need to do is act young and pretty.

6:51 Yes, 100%. 100%. That's what the scammers actually in Ghana told us repeatedly, how it's so much easier to scam men.

7:00 So do you think the number that is used where it's a billion dollar industry in the United States is actually far more than that because we're not hearing the men's side of what they're losing.

7:08 Yeah.

7:08 And we're not hearing a lot of the women's women as well. And I think that the one billion number comes from just strictly romance scams, but big butchering, which is a romance crypto scam that originates in Southeast Asia is it was estimated last year as being at least 12 billion dollars, again, just the reported amount. So, again, it's billions and billions of dollars stolen from Americans every single time.

7:31 Year.

7:31 It's crazy. I think Warren Buffett calls fraud and scamming the fastest growing industry in the world right now. It surpassed drug trafficking.

7:41 Your disguise was funny. Just because I know you, it was funny to see you wearing that. So in real time, when you create these profiles, I'm assuming you're doing apps and sites and like everything. Yeah.

7:53 I have an Instagram account, TikTok, everything.

7:55 Which did they come at you the most on?

7:58 It depends. I got a lot of dating. I was very popular on dating websites, but I don't think I think the vast majority of those were not scammers. I was actually very happy to be very popular and with a lot of younger men, actually, a lot of like 20, 30 year olds contacting me. Mary Zell, who is supposedly, you know, like a 55-year-old woman. So that made me very, very happy that I still got.

8:24 It, basically, or Mary Zell still got it.

8:29 And then the celebrity part of it all was insane. So- I hadn't realized how big it was until I started basically liking all these fan accounts for all these celebrities. And it was literally, I remember we started this experiment in my office. We said, okay, let's go first with my favorite celebrity, which is George Clooney. And I was hoping maybe this would lead me to actually meet the real George Clooney. And I started clicking on a bunch of his fan accounts. And there's gazillions of them out there.

8:58 And a lot of them have the check mark. It's a fake checkmark, but it looks real. If you don't look at it very closely, you could believe it, you know? And so there it was. And within, I think I went to the bathroom, I came back and I already had a message on, this was on Facebook actually, from a supposed George Clooney. And then that same week, I believe, I got an email from a woman. It's actually a direct message on Instagram from a woman saying, I've become a little bit of a 911 call for scam victims because of my reporting on scams. So I got a text message from this woman saying that she believes she's been talking to Jon Bon Jovi for a year, that of course she suspects he might be a scammer, but

9:39 she is unsure. And so if we could help her investigate this. So we immediately flew to Louisiana where she lives. Her name's Leslie. Wonderful, wonderful human being. And she was willing to sort of not be embarrassed about her story and share with us her story because she believed it could help other people.

9:57 Wow.

9:58 Yeah.

9:58 It was incredible.

9:59 What happened on Saturday? of my posts is on TikTok or Instagram, I'll just post some pictures or a video. And then there'll be 50 comments, 100 comments. And somebody with a name similar to mine with my picture will go underneath every comment will go, hey. thank you so much. Do you mind if I message you? And it looks close, but it's not quite that. But they're acting like they're me underneath. And it seems like it's just a numbers game, though.

10:25 If they throw a wide enough net, are they playing a numbers game? If they just do so many, they expect a couple to actually catch.

10:32 100%.

10:32 And they usually get it. It doesn't seem like it's very, very difficult. And the problem is that You know, you now they have access to people all over the world with people just holding their phones or on their computers.

10:48 Right.

10:48 It's in your house all the time. It's available. And that is a problem. And this woman, you think, I mean, how can you how can you truly believe that you're talking to Jon Bon Jovi?

11:00 Right.

11:00 How is this possible? She was at the verge of losing her house because she'd given so much money. But if you listen to her story, and I actually, you know, spent some time with her. I just had her on my podcast as well because I want people to understand how it can happen to any of us. And in her case, she'd been contacted by a bunch of these celebrity scams. She knew it was all fake, but this one had the checkmark and it was on Instagram, which most she believed that wasn't happening as much on Instagram.

11:30 And this guy was just asking or spent months just basically courting her and asking her questions about what's your favorite. She's been a Jon Bon Jovi fan all her whole life. So what's your favorite Jon Bon Jovi song? And then he started saying, like, I really enjoy talking to you because I'm surrounded by people who are rich and famous and you're not. And you're I really think you understand through my music. You understand my character. They started talking.

11:53 It was months and months of this. Until he said, look, I'm coming to where you live and I'm doing a meet and greet and I'm going to put you in touch with my manager so you can pay for a meet and greet. These meet and greets actually exist and people pay for them. And she was like, my God, this is my opportunity of meeting this man that I've been a fan of my whole life and who's now I sort of become a sort of friend slash friend.

12:17 romantic interest. And eventually, yeah, the meet and greet didn't happen for all these excuses. And then she has to give more money for security and all this stuff. And then eventually ended up giving thousands of dollars that she didn't have.

12:30 Do you find the scammers are playing more of a long game than ever before?

12:35 Yes.

12:36 I mean, my romance scammer, who is the guy that was pretending to be a four-star general in Syria, He was basically using photos of this guy that is actually a person. We ended up communicating with the real guy whose photo I thought I was talking to. I knew it wasn't him. And this is a real guy who did time in the military. So there's a lot of photos of him during his time in the military and with military uniform and in training with guns and all of that stuff. So there's a lot of photos of this guy out there. And so my scammer was using his photos and his identity to pretend he was him.

13:13 His name was Sam Havlock. He was pretending to be Sam Havlock. And he didn't initially immediately ask me for money. He was love-bombing me, courting me. I would wake up every day with dozens of messages from this guy. And I have to sort of– it's interesting having covered these scams a lot. I had never been on the receiving end, right?

13:37 It's really hard to understand what it's like when you're the actual victim. And it's actually really nice, right? You wake up in the morning and you have all these messages about how you're the most beautiful and special person in the world and how you've you know, there's nobody else like you. And it was kind of got weird because there I was, you know, sleeping next to my husband and getting these messages where this guy would also send photos of him without his shirt. And eventually I was playing the victim, right? I was pretending I believed him.

14:08 So I played along. And eventually he would send me messages about how his dreams and aspirations and all the money he had and the places he was going to take me with that With his wealth and, you know, the trips we were going to make and all that stuff. And if, like in Leslie's case and in so many of these victims' cases, not all but many of them, if you lead a very lonely– if you lead a lonely life, right, if you don't have companionship, if you don't have community– even if this smells like it's potentially a scam, it's a happier life, right? So I think a lot of people just at the end of the day, and that was certainly in Leslie's case, even when she started suspecting it, the reality of her own life was

14:55 so grim comparatively that you just want to believe it. It's a little bit, it's sort of that dopamine rush and it's, To me, I like to compare it to gambling almost, right? Where people are losing money, but they just keep at it because there is the possibility that the next turn you do it, you're going to get all this money and recover all the money you've lost, right?

15:18 So it's a little bit that idea that it's, I know this probably isn't true, but my life as it is, is sort of lonely and depressing perhaps. And this at least brings purpose to my life, you know?

15:29 Are these scammers... Well organized, because if they're running multiples of these with different people, I would assume there's got to be some sort of notes app or something they can.

15:40 Yeah, they're very organized. They usually work in groups. So that's something that we found out when we were reporting on the trafficked episode. But we were able to verify this and super scam me as well. Yeah, and they have somebody whose specialty is sort of going out and sending all the messages. They're like the initial hook, right?

15:59 And then they have the person who's really good at doing voice impersonations and the person who's really good in documentation. So if you need proof of identity or passport or whatever it is, they have the person who's really good in AI and coming up with fake photos and all of that stuff. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, they're making– A lot of money, like millions of dollars, some of these groups a year, or billions if you're talking about pig butchering, yeah.

16:26 So then they don't mind investing in their business.

16:29 And more, yeah, of course.

16:31 It's not just an old warehouse with six guys that are broke.

16:33 No, that's what used to be the case, not any.

16:37 Longer, yeah.

16:38 So whenever you're communicating, let's use the four-star general you're talking about. Like you try to FaceTime him, right?

16:46 So it took some time to get there. So his excuse was that he could talk on the phone with me all day long. And we talked a lot. He was very condescending. We'd get on fights even. But we were texting.

17:00 Sorry.

17:00 Initially, we were just texting. And he would tell me that he couldn't talk on the phone because he didn't have permission for security reasons. And then there was the one moment where finally after a month of texting back and forth and him knowing a lot about me and at this point about me, about Mary Zell, right? But at this point, they're good at remembering this stuff. So even if I pretended to be, you know, oh, I'm not, I can't, I'm not feeling great or I come up with it. an excuse for not wanting to talk to him that day or whatever. He would remember something that had happened weeks before and bring it back. Are you sad because your son went to college and whatever it was.

17:38 So they're very good at that. And then it wasn't until a month later of this back and forth, I think even more than a month, that he finally, I kept on insisting that I wanted to talk to him on the phone and I wanted to do a video call because I wanted to see how far I could take this. And then finally he said, look, I've gotten permission.

17:56 My boss has given me permission to do so, but in order to do so, I need $ 1, 000. And $ 1, 000 so I can get access to the best in internet speed that will allow me to make this video call with you. And this is where we eventually realized we needed sort of somebody that understood technology because I wasn't about to give this guy $ 1, 000. So I had this idea of how can we find somebody sort of a hacker who can work with us and come up with a way that by pretend giving this guy money, we can actually locate him. And that's what we did when we eventually were able to scam the scammer. But we had that moment where we spoke with him on the phone because he believed he had received $ 1, 000. It was

18:43 a whole thing to get there. It was pretty funny. And I mean, he was using the face of Sam Havlock. So it looked like I was talking to the man that I was supposedly talking to all these months.

18:56 What do you mean he was using the face?

18:59 So the guy that I was talking to, I found out, was not, surprise, surprise, a four-star general in Syria, right? He was not even in America. He was a guy in Ghana. He was a West African man. And he was sending me photos of a guy that actually exists, an American guy called Sam Havlock, and pretending he was him.

19:22 When you talked, did you talk first? Like, did you hear his voice? Yeah, I heard his voice. Did it sound like a.

19:29 So that's a very funny moment in the story is that he starts talking and I immediately say, wow, Sam, you don't sound like I thought you did. You don't sound American. And he says, well, you know, I lived, and this is, it looks like the face of the mind. I think, you know, I was supposedly talking to it looks like Sam Havlock, right? So it was the voice was the big tell for me, right? And he said, well, I actually lived in Italy when I was younger. And I said, no way. And so I started speaking.

19:58 In Italian with him because I actually speak Italian. And that's when he said, oh, well, well, well, I just lived there until I was seven years old. And then my father, my parents were in the military and I was deployed to several countries and hence, My accent. So I've traveled throughout Africa, so I knew immediately this was a West African accent.

20:17 But a lot of people don't. And a lot of the victims that I've spoken throughout the years always said that they had an accent, but that they told them that they, you know, grew up in Italy or Russia or the Middle East or wherever, or sometimes even in Africa. But they continued believing that they were talking to the person that they were pretending.

20:34 So you got a hacker. How do you get a hacker?

20:36 I went to DEF CON, which is the hacker convention in Vegas. It happens once a year in August. It was super fun. And we went there with the sole purpose of finding a person that would be willing to go on this crazy project with me. And then we found a guy who had actually hacked into Microsoft. His name is Armand the Cyber. He was incredible. And he'd done time in prison for hacking and other nefarious activities.

20:59 But he's since turned his life around and now has a group called, I think, his White Hat Hackers and is doing incredible work to try to prevent scams from happening. And when I called him, I said, look, first, you know, I need your help. This woman thinks she's talking to Jon Bon Jovi and we need to figure out where this guy is. And I'm in this romantic relationship with a guy who says his name is Sam Havlock and I need to figure out where he is too. And he came up with an incredible, it took him a couple of days only to come up with a website that looked like it was a Bitcoin website, a Bitcoin machine website. And a lot of these guys are paid in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And you go on this

21:40 website and it looks exactly like the real thing. It looks like it's a website. It has like the location of these Bitcoin ATMs or crypto ATMs in every city in the US, some international. It has a customer support number that actually linked to Armand. So we filmed some interviews of him talking in customer support to some of the scammers. It was great. And then what we did, we had a printer. So- And eventually the day came where I was going to send $ 1, 000 to him so we could talk on video. And I sent him– it printed out a receipt and all he had to do on his end to receive the $ 1, 000 is do the QR code, take a photo of the QR code. It would take him to the website Armand had created. And then when you got to that website, you had to

22:28 allow location and then you had to put in your details. And we did this multiple times because I was actually speaking to a lot of scammers at the time. And we did this with Leslie's scammers. And more often than not, people just put in their locations and their names and phone numbers and all of it. And didn't realize that they were themselves in many ways also being scammed. It was the one time that we sort of turned the tables on the scammers. And it was quite fulfilling, I would say.

22:57 Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor.

23:09 And we're back on the Bobbycast.

23:12 Can they get in trouble if they're that far away and you catch them?

23:16 So the intention from the start was I wanted to confront one of my scammers face to face, right? I wanted to be able to look him in the face and have a conversation with them and explain to them what they did, what they're doing to victims and explain to them what it felt like to be to be me in that situation. But mostly sort of, you know, accountability moments that I wanted from the scammer. So it wasn't, you know, we didn't want to get that particular person in trouble with law. I mean, if police gets him, great.

23:48 But as a journalist, you know, there's a very fine line. Ultimately, my goal is to expose the problem, show how easy it is to be scammed, how any of us can fall for them, but also show how they what they do how we how they create these different identities and the technology that they go about using and and so that's what we did and and a few months later we actually flew to Ghana and confronted this guy face to face.

24:11 So you went right to him I went right to him do you go with security then no that's crazy because you never do it's insane no do you just show up and knock on the door.

24:23 Yeah, usually no. It took many, it takes many months in the black market reporting that I do, right? When I go and spend time with these cartel members and scammers and traffickers, it takes months to convince them to go on camera. And I think we've talked about why at the end of the day people do it. But in this case, it was a little different because here's a guy who's been actively trying to scam me. There was a whole pursuit that we did also where he asked me to send a box full of cash to this address in Houston. So we traveled to Houston to try to figure out where this box of cash was going.

24:53 And we met another victim of scams who had become sort of the money launderer for what she thought was her love of her life. She didn't realize she was just- She was inadvertently money laundering?

25:04 Yes.

25:04 So she was receiving checks and boxes of cash from women all over the United States and then converting it to crypto that she would send to her, who she thought was her, you know, the love of her life, who was supposedly living in Russia. And in fact, that guy was connected to my scam, was part of the same network. And I had to break it down to her.

25:27 It was quite an emotional scene in Super Scam Me where I break it down to her and I tell her what had just happened and how the man, she'd been talking to three years with this man. Her husband died from cancer. She was incredibly lonely, thought she would never find love again. went on some of these dating websites and eventually met a man that she, again, thought was finally somebody that could make her happy. And he told her he was in Russia working in an oil field and eventually started convincing her that he had all these oil businesses in the United States and if she could receive the money and then send him that money.

26:04 And she had no idea. I mean, she collapsed. It was really emotional and sad.

26:10 When you finished the project, what did you learn That you really didn't have any idea about going into it, even though you were like wildly educated about what was happening.

26:23 I think just how much more prevalent these are than even I imagined. So once we started going down the rabbit hole of this one case, of my case, of my scammer and how it was connected to the woman in Texas. and then found out that it was actually connected to another woman in New York and another man in another town in Texas and sort of how they were all connected and how Americans are being used to launder money. I think that was pretty eye-opening to me.

26:52 I had no idea that it was this sort of sophisticated and how even the scam victims that they can't squeeze money out of anymore, they can't. keep their numbers and their relationship going so they can use them for something else. Whether it's to, you know, use their bank accounts or to launder money, they keep them there. And that was, to me, it was mind-blowing.

27:18 Are you able to see from their side of things and empathize with the scammer at all once you get there?

27:24 With my guy, so having reported on this before, very often, and I will never forget the sort of last scene of the trafficked episode we did on romance scammers where we would spend time with this group, right? The guy who was the best at doing this and that. And then the leader told me, hey, I want to take you to where I grew up. And I think that's going to explain a lot. So the next day, he took me to a slum, very similar, wasn't exactly where he grew up, but it was a slum very similar to the one where he grew up. And this was in the outskirts of a big city in Ghana as well.

27:58 A And it is like poverty like you've never experienced or you've seen. It's extreme poverty. It's sort of houses, huts built on top of sewage. It's just really, really bad and depressing. And he took me around and he was– all the kids, he was very popular with the kids. They were all coming up to him and high-fiving him.

28:25 He started talking to a bunch of them. And then he asked, like, what do you guys want to be when you grow up? And the vast majority of the kids– said they wanted to be scammers. And he explained, look, the people that are bringing money back to these communities or actually are taking families out of these communities are the scammers. It used to be the, you know, the football stars or the rock stars. And in some very, very, very rare cases, the doctors or lawyers. But the majority of cases now are the scammers, are the ones that are responsible for taking their families out of poverty. So who do you think these kids are going to want to be? You know, who are their role models? I think that, yes, that's the part that I sort of

29:05 it's impossible not to empathize.

29:07 Right.

29:07 And I think that for them, it is easier if they're doing this and if they're helping their families. And if at the end of the day, you cannot, you know, you're coming back home and your kids are crying because there's not enough food on the table. Right. You have to sort of become empathetic. cold-hearted in a way and not see the American victims or the Western or the people that you're scamming as actual people. And that's what I heard again and again. Once they do, there have been many cases of people that are scammers that I've spoken to that when they realize the extent of the pain that they were sort of making people, giving people, or in, what's the word?

29:49 Like inflicting?

29:50 Inflicting, thank you. Inflicting on people that that's, you know, many of them decide, or a few, I won't say many, but that they decided that was it. They couldn't do it anymore because they couldn't live with it. But it's not difficult to understand that at the end of the day, the big creator of these black markets in general, including scams, is inequality. You know, again, it's when you have half of the world's population living with under $ 7 a day.

30:17 This is what's driving these black markets and these scams. It's not that people are born wanting to be scammers or criminals. It's because of lack of opportunities that leads people to these lives.

30:28 Yeah, or born wanting to be evil.

30:32 Yeah.

30:32 You know, in my high school, we took in kids that were kicked out of other schools for gang activity. And so... Those kids didn't really grow up wanting to be in gangs. It was just kind of their only way to have or be included. And there were things they had to do that they weren't proud of or that was their lifestyle then. But they never were, hey, I just want to be a bad person. But because they had no options, they felt, true or not, their only option to get out was to be in a gang, to do illegal things that the gang was a part of, which was drugs and other things. And when you tell a story like that, I mean, I think about me in the situation, or if you're poor, would you steal?

31:17 And if you had to feed your kid?

31:18 Yeah, I would.

31:19 Like, no doubt about it. If I have a baby now that's six months old, and if she were hungry, and I have to go commit a crime to feed her, I would commit a crime. And I would also think, and you can tell me if I'm wrong here, if I'm living in a place like Ghana, or these very impoverished Do we still say third world? Is that okay? Yeah, of course.

31:36 Developing world.

31:37 Yeah. That I would view America as... excess, that everybody has a lot of money in America, so it's not going to hurt if we take a... That's how I think I would view from there to here based on what everyone's fed through the media. Is there any of that where they just think everybody in America is rich, so it's really not going to hurt them anyway?

31:55 Yeah, there's that. There's a lot of that. So they think... I remember in this in Super Scam, me being on the phone with an Indian scammer. So one of the things we did, it actually ended up not making the film itself, but I was just answering all my phone calls and all the emails and everything. So I got to speak to a lot of scammers. And at one point in the conversation, I would tell them, actually, I'm not going to fall for this. When they wanted me to hit send or do the one thing that was going to unlock all the money, it was a point that I'd come out and say, I'm actually a journalist doing this story and would you talk to me? And one of the Indian call centers scammers actually ended up talking to me for a long time. It was And

32:30 he was telling me how a lot of the people working this call center are actually forced to do what they do for several reasons. And he says, look, in my mind, when I get access to people's bank accounts, I see how much money they have. And if they have over this amount, I think it's okay because they're rich.

32:53 And so how much money is that, I asked? Over how much? He said $ 1, 000. $ 1, 000. If they have over $ 1, 000, for me, they're rich. And so it's not going to be a big problem for them. Because $ 1, 000 in his community, in his town in India, is a shit ton of money. So yeah, there's that disparity. But on the other hand, there's also, I remember doing a story about sort of the lottery scams and those, you know, when you get the call saying you won the lottery or you won a car or whatever. It was in Jamaica. It was the first scam story I ever did. It was season one of Traffic. And talking to scammers there, that talked a lot about retribution, basically. This is our way of, you know, Western countries have exploited Jamaica for decades, took

33:38 all our riches, and this is our chance to get that money back from where, you know, because we deserve it.

33:47 It's so much perspective. Yeah. And it's so hard to have it for something you do not relate to or understand at all. Yeah. And again, I've known people who have been romantically scammed. And the woman that I know never admitted to giving money. But I would always think, well, if you did it for that long, for over a year, like at some point, like what would you find the point is where they have to make a decision if they're not going to get money? Or to move on.

34:19 Because there's got to be some point in the relationship, right? That they're going to.

34:23 Yeah, the end goal is always getting money. Yes. But even if they can't, they will use that victim for something else.

34:29 Like the money laundering.

34:30 Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure if I talked to you about this last time we spoke, but one case that will... stay with me forever, was this truck driver in, cannot remember where he's from right now, I'm blanking, but a truck driver in Minnesota, sorry, truck driver in Minnesota, whose daughter, Nicole, wrote to me and said, hey, I've gone to the authorities, I've gone to congressmen, nobody cares about the story. My dad was a victim of a scam and he's doing time in a prison in Mozambique.

35:00 So we traveled to Mozambique. Went into the prison, spoke to him, investigated his whole case. Turns out this guy, scammers were trying to get money from him. He's a retired truck driver, didn't have any money, didn't want to give any money. And then they started communicating with him saying that his wife, who had recently passed away and had an Italian heritage, that she had inherited all this money in Italy, $ 11 million. It was waiting for him in Italy. And all he needed to do was go to Africa first, pick up a suitcase or briefcase with paperwork, and then take that briefcase to Italy. And they would pay for all his trip, his hotel, his flights, everything.

35:39 He had never traveled outside of the U.S., thought, what's the worst that can happen? Like, never crossed his mind, right? Never what he was going to be used for. And told his family and said, I have this incredible opportunity. He even said, maybe it's not real, but hey, why would they be paying for my flight and my hotel?

35:56 They're even giving me cash when I get there. So I'm going to do this. What's the problem? And then guess what? He gets to Mozambique. They give him a briefcase. And he's going to Italy with the briefcase. And he stopped at the airport. And he's carrying, I think it was four or five kilos of heroin. It was this candy that looked exactly like real bags of candy. And it was wrapped perfectly and it was sealed and everything.

36:20 And inside the candy that they had given him inside the briefcase and said it was a gift for the person he was going to meet in Italy, inside the candy was heroin. And this guy ended up being sentenced to 17 years in prison in Mozambique.

36:35 Wow.

36:35 Yeah. The Bobbycast. We'll be right back.

36:38 The Bobbycast.

36:42 We'll be right back. This is The Bobbycast.

36:50 Did he have to serve all of that with the understanding of what had happened to him?

36:56 He ended up not serving all that time, partly, I believe, because of the investigation we did into his case. We communicated or we tried to communicate. I mean, we sent lots of emails and tried to interview the embassy, the American embassy in Mozambique at the time. Somebody in the embassy actually got very invested in his case, and eventually they were able to release him. He did, I believe it was five years in prison. And when we visited him, five, six years in prison, when we visited him, he'd been there for four years. And we took Nicole, the daughter, with us for the first time, for her first time traveling outside the U.S. and her first time seeing her dad.

37:34 After four years. And it was one of the most emotional moments of the show for me. I still get a little emotional talking about it. But it was, yeah, I mean, a beautiful moment, a really hard moment, not knowing if he was ever going to be released. He was also extremely sick, dealing with diabetes and terrible living conditions inside the prison. I mean, he was sleeping on the floor, very malnutrition, bad food. And yeah, and her having to leave him that day without knowing if she was ever going to be able to see him. But she did. And he came back.

38:04 He was scammed and then had to serve prison time. Yeah.

38:07 And not even his lawyer believed this guy was innocent. I interviewed his lawyer. So in Mozambique, they speak Portuguese. I'm from Portugal. So I interviewed the lawyer. And then his fourth lawyer, the first three basically had taken his money and ran. And this fourth one was the one who represented him in trial. The trial lasted one day.

38:28 And the lawyer, I asked, do you go? I mean, he stayed in a hotel. There's cameras at the hotel. Did you go and see if there are cameras that he says he was visited by this man who brought him a briefcase? Have you investigated? And basically his answer was not even a baby would believe that this guy is innocent.

38:46 He was even scammed by three lawyers, it sounds like.

38:48 Yeah, in Mozambique, yeah. Yeah, because they saw him as an American, as somebody who had money probably, even though he did not. It was sad. That case is... And he's not the only case. I mean, there's actually dozens, if not hundreds, if not thousands of people all around the world. And a lot of them are Americans. And I'm continuing to investigate this. So I've been contacted by several family members of people who are in prison because they were victims of scam. And they transported drugs unknowingly.

39:18 It's horrible.

39:19 That must mean, though, it's successfully happening a lot.

39:22 It is successfully happening a lot.

39:24 Because if we're seeing people get caught, that's a small fraction of... Yeah.

39:27 And in fact, inside the Mozambique prison where this guy was held, there was another American who had been released a couple of years before or a few months before we visited the prison. But there was a Canadian who was there and had been caught exactly at the same time as Rodney. And same network, same scammers, all of it.

39:49 And he had done the trip successfully a couple of times. And they kept coming up with excuses as to why he wasn't able to get his inheritance. And again, it's that idea, like that $ 10 million is right there, right? And not knowing that you're carrying drugs, you're like, okay, maybe if I go this one more time, my life is about to change.

40:10 If I just bet on the Dallas Cowboys one more time, I'll make my money back.

40:13 Exactly.

40:14 That's what it's going to be. So this is my hypothesis, that a lot of these digital crimes with scamming and hacking or even some of the AI that's being used, that the legislation is not happening because, maybe unfair, that the people making the decisions are old and don't understand what's happening with technology. How do you feel about that thought?

40:43 I think that there's, are we talking AI now?

40:46 I'm talking just any digital crime that happens, and it can be AI, but it can be the scams, the romance scams. It can be social media. It can be anything. But because our senators, our presidents are a lot of members of house, although that tends to skew a bit younger, because they're so old, they don't understand the actual impact it's having.

41:03 That's probably part of it as well. I also think they don't realize how widespread these are, and they don't think it's an issue that's worth really fighting for because they think it's not going to get them any more votes. Talking about immigration can get you a lot more votes. You know, talking about crime in general can get you a lot more votes. But they are wrong. Let me tell you that they are wrong. Every single one of us knows somebody who's been scammed. And I think that a politician going out there with this as a platform and really trying to keep Americans safe could make it very far. Unfortunately, there are not enough people talking about this.

41:38 There are not enough politicians talking about this. And quite frankly, there are not enough victims willing to come forward and be as brave as Leslie in Super Scam Me was in sharing her story because she believes she can make a difference. I think we need more of that. We need people to realize that this can happen to anyone.

41:56 And it doesn't mean it doesn't say anything about your lack of intelligence at all, that they are incredibly good at exploiting our vulnerabilities. And every single one of us has a vulnerability.

42:08 I almost got got once. I haven't always been the stud muffin you see in front of you now. Just confident, masculine stud muffin.

42:16 I doubt that. I do not believe that.

42:18 And I was single for a long time. Single. Before I had any real success. Lonely. And I got a message on social media from a guest jeans model named Bree Condon.

42:31 Mm-hmm.

42:32 And sent all the pictures. And again, all I did was work, and I couldn't get girls.

42:38 Mm-hmm.

42:40 And so I started talking back and forth with her. And there were a lot of pictures that were sent. I didn't have to send any. She didn't ask any from me. She would just send me just random pictures of her on the boat. And she was coming into town. I was living in Austin, Texas at the time. And we had tried to get on cam. This is when webcams were massive. So I was like, let's get on cam.

43:02 But I could only ever hear her voice. Couldn't ever see her. So her webcam was always broken. And so this went on for like two months. And she was flying into town from Los Angeles, obviously, since she was a guest jeans model. She lived in LA and she was going to meet me at the mall. And I remember going to the mall and the food court and just waiting for like an hour. And then I got a text, Hey, the flight was delayed. Sorry, I wouldn't be able to make it. And so I still never questioned it because again, I was just lonely. I was just a lonely guy. And finally here was a model talking to me. And I'm saying this because I feel like I'm a smart person. And even I was in.

43:38 I was in because my vulnerability was I was so lonely. And no girls would ever talk to me my whole life. So I was like, wow, someone finally likes me. They finally see the prize that I am. Someone is realizing. And I had said, hey. I need you to prove who you are. So come on my radio show, like call in. Cause I wanted the rest of my show to hear her voice. Cause I talked to her a couple of times, but none of them believed me. And I was telling them, I'm talking to a guest jeans model.

44:05 It's amazing. They were like, no way. So she came on just her voice on the show and she sounded a little off, kind of drunk. And they were like, that's not real. So all of a sudden she disappeared. And then months later, it was a guy who was in a hotel and had had tricked all these men into giving him money. Wow.

44:25 How did you find out?

44:26 It was in the news. No way. And a listener sent me a link and said, hey, do you know the guy that was acting? Because he was that same model to all these men.

44:34 Oh, shit.

44:34 Yeah. And so I never gave any... I didn't have any money. Might have. But I didn't have any money to give her. But he was a little tiny guy that was able to do a female voice because he also was small.

44:47 Wow.

44:48 And he was arrested. And a lot of men.

44:52 Had fallen for it.

44:54 Wow.

44:55 And did he ever or she ever ask you for money?

44:59 I don't think it got there. I think it was right around that point where it was about to start happening. But no, I was never asked for money. But.

45:06 And were you ever embarrassed to talk about it or have you spoken about this at length?

45:10 Not at length. I've talked about it a couple of times. I'm not embarrassed of anything.

45:13 Okay, good.

45:16 I'm out there. I've written books about like all my deepest, darkest. So, yeah, embarrassment is not really my thing. I questioned my own judgment after that because I always felt like I'm smart. I'm not falling for this.

45:34 Right.

45:35 But I started, that's when I started to question, man, if I feel like I have nine out of 10 awareness, 10 out of 10 awareness, and I fall for it, they didn't get me in the areas that I'm smart, that I'm aware. They got me in like my weakness, which was, I was just lonely and I didn't see it coming. And yeah, they arrested him and never paid any money and But it was real. And when people fall for it, I just think back at me. The reason they got me wasn't because I was dumb. It was because I had a vulnerability.

46:09 Yeah, that's exactly it. And they're really good at exploiting it. You know, a couple of things. One is as I'm filming Super Scammy, right? So I have a camera with me at all times. I'm filming with my phone. And I have a little tripod that I'm holding in my hand and I'm filming me taking all these calls and all these emails and all that. And in the middle of this filming, I get a call and it's from my bank. It says Chase Bank. And I answer the call and it's a woman with an American voice, American accent telling me, you know, there's been suspicious activity in your account and sounded completely legitimate, completely legitimate. and started asking me just general information. Do you have a bank account?

46:50 I can see here you have a bank account with us. And can you just give me the last four numbers of that bank account number? And initially, I was like, the last four numbers, what's the, of course, I'll give you the last four numbers just to check your security. And then she asked more and more questions. And that's when I was paused. And even I was doing a film about scams, right? But I was this, it was this close for me actually giving sensitive information. And it wasn't until I paused, took a moment to breathe and thought, and there was like an urgency to her voice, which is what scammers usually do. You have to act now or else, you know, the world can end. They're very good at that. And so that's my tip number one

47:29 for people who are experiencing this is just if there's urgency if it sounds like you need to do it now or everything can change that's usually a telltale sign but just like give it a breather like think about what you're doing and and usually and also hang up the phone and call back that number.

47:46 That's been mine because they're able to spoof yeah yeah where it's like hey i'm gonna call i'm gonna go to your website and find your number and call back yeah and because they're so good now yeah that that has been my it's not not trick but And at times it's been real and I've called them back and they've been, yep, it's me. It's the same person. But I've needed to do that. So I felt comfortable about it.

48:07 Yeah.

48:08 Yeah.

48:08 Good.

48:09 Yeah.

48:09 So that's what I lean on is if I call them from a site with a lock on it.

48:15 Right.

48:15 Then it feels like I'm not going to be scammed.

48:18 Yeah. It's like you said, we all have our vulnerabilities. I think the best way and AI, you know, technology is getting better. So it's only going to get worse for all of us. And, yeah, the best way is to be very, very aware of this, to take a moment to think about it. I was just thinking about this other way that I think I've mentioned it a couple of times, pig butchering, but it's huge.

48:41 Can you explain what that is?

48:43 Yeah, absolutely. So it's called pig butchering because it originated in China. And the idea is it starts as sort of a romance or a friendship scam. It starts with a contact online. that you become friends with or romantically involved with online first. And only after a month, and they're sending photos to you of them living this luxurious life and in planes and amazing trips and in Italy and all these places. And eventually you start, wow, you like, you're like, what do you, you know, they start telling you they work in crypto. And eventually they say, hey, do you want to make a little money with crypto?

49:22 I can help you invest. And they send them to this website that looks completely legitimate, like a real crypto investment site. And you start buying. They tell you what to do. You buy coins here. And then you start seeing your money actually go up. You can check in the next morning and you've doubled that money or tripled.

49:38 And now, you know, the $ 1, 000 investment is now $ 10, 000. And hey, if you put in, you know, $ 100, 000, then you can really make some money. Like, why don't you cash out your 401ks and your retirement savings and put it all here? And you just see your money going up and up. And it's there. And it looks like a legitimate website. And it's a friend or a girlfriend or a boyfriend who's, you know, who's leading this very exciting life, who's helping you through it. And it's something that only you get access to, right? They also sell you on this. Like this is incredibly exclusive. I'm helping you and only you. And it's a secret. And please don't share with your friends because, you know, this is

50:17 a very exclusive club. And then, of course, it comes to the moment. And initially, this is where they're brilliant, too. is that they allow you to take some money out. So your first investment, you make money, you want to cash out, they allow, you're able to cash out and then you feel, okay, this is totally legitimate, right? And that's when you start doubling down and putting more and more money and then eventually they disappear and they're gone with all your money. And this is billions of dollars.

50:42 I think it was something like $ 40 billion that the United States was able to retrieve from this one guy who ran all these call centers, all these pig butchering scams. And they're called pig butchering because- It comes from the Chinese term that is you fatten the pig before you kill it. So that's why it's pig butchering. It's a great term. But it's, yeah, billions and billions of dollars.

51:04 Did you see the Dijon Love scandal, the scammer, the football player?

51:07 Yeah, the football player. Pretending to be a football player, right?

51:10 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, wasn't.

51:11 Yes, at all.

51:13 Yeah. And then he would get these women to give him money. Yeah. And his business manager, who was just 18 years old, like his investment. And Now he's in prison, obviously. But that story was wild because it was just a couple of fact checks. It was like just two checks and you realize that's not true. How often is it domestic?

51:38 Very often. I think there was just last week that a kid who actually is from Singapore, but was living here in the United States and was working with a bunch of American Kids was, I think it was a sentencing last week. They stole this crew of kids. They're called The Calm, as they call themselves. It's a group of kids online who basically do crypto scamming, fraud. They steal crypto from people who have crypto. And in one case alone, they stole $ 250 million in one transaction from somebody who'd been an early investor in crypto and had a lot of it. And they stole in one transaction.

52:18 But here's the thing that they did is that they recorded because they were all online on Discord. They recorded that moment and they're all cheering and laughing. And then these stupid kids go out with those millions of dollars that they just made and spent, you know, months just partying. The one main kid, I think, had like 12 exotic luxury cars. They were spending half a million dollars at nightclubs in L.A. and Florida and And of course, eventually they caught the attention of the authorities and they were all taken down. But it has spawned an industry and there's a gazillion more kids out there, a lot of them Americans, a lot of them teenagers doing this exact same thing.

52:57 The documentary is Super Scammy, October 17th on Nat Geo, Hulu, Disney Plus. It's all kind of the same, all the same. How's The Hidden Third going?

53:08 It's going well, really well. I love doing it. I never thought I was going to like podcasting as much as I do. And yeah, we're growing. We're going to, as part of the Hidden Third, you know, it's a podcast, but it's also I want to start going out and doing some investigative work, boots on the ground journalism, the kind of, you know, being surrounded by armed men with masks, the sort of thing I love. So we're actually going to go soon in a couple of weeks going out on our first investigation under the Hidden Third umbrella for YouTube and platforms. I'm excited.

53:39 It's exciting. You get to own it.

53:41 I know. It is really exciting. As much as it's incredible to work, as you have worked with National Geographic as well, which is, you know, a brand that's recognizable all around the world, it is pretty awesome to be able to have complete creative control over my own shit, you know, and not have 100 lawyers telling me what I can't do, especially when I'm trying to go after these bad guys.

54:02 Or what you can't show that you've already done. Yeah. That happened with us some too. It's like, we did this. Yeah. And they're like, well, you can't show that or say that even though you already have it. Yeah. because of the one one-hundredth of a chance.

54:15 Yeah, it's always the one one-hundredth of a chance. You know, role number one, which I understand, it's to protect the brand, right? To protect Disney, the corporation. But our jobs, or my job as a journalist, is most of all to expose the crime and the criminals and to sort of try to get awareness around it. So being able to do that on my own terms and complete creative control is pretty awesome.

54:38 Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. And we're back on the Bobbycast.

54:52 Do you think something really bad has happened with AI now and that's why they're saying we need to slow down?

54:59 I think that what has happened that is bad with AI is out there already, which was the hugging face scenario. What I don't understand is why aren't we all– why isn't this the cover of every single newspaper, the front line, the headline of everything out there? Why aren't we all just continuously just talking about AI?

55:22 I know the answer. I know the answer.

55:23 Why?

55:24 Tell me.

55:24 Because there's not a good translator to people who live everyday normal lives. Like no one talks to them about what is happening, what can happen. what has happened in a language that is easily understandable and is explained in a way that will easily affect them.

55:45 And do you think that person should be sort of a podcast guest or a politician?

55:49 It shouldn't be a politician because I don't trust them, any of them. So no, I don't know who it is. Or if it's, it doesn't have to be an it, like a single person. But the problem with podcasters or just, we'll call them influencers, because I think even if you have a podcast, you're an influencer, is that there's so much disinformation and sometimes inadvertently. Like sometimes people think they're telling the truth and they're not because they're not educated.

56:18 I think the system doesn't fundamentally have the ability to be trusted anymore because... Why would we trust someone who's lied to us so much, even if they didn't mean to? So I don't know the answer, but I know why people don't care. It's because they're not taught why they should care and how it can affect them by somebody that they do believe. And so that's why it's not on the cover of everything. Because... Also, gas is $ 5 a gallon.

56:50 I think it's also because it doesn't sell, right? If the cover of your newspaper is the humanity can end in the next three to five years, nobody's going to want to read that, right? But if you have news on corruption in politics or immigration or crime, that sells more. But I think the number one issue that we should all be talking about is there is the guy who There was actually an interview, Joe Rogan just did an interview with a guy who's sort of on the security side of AI. He worked at all these companies inside and is now out there explaining why we have to put the brakes on this. And there was recently the Anthropic guy. Anthropic is supposed to be the most responsible of all these AI companies. And he just came out

57:35 saying it was a 10% chance that humanity will end in the next 10 years. That's a holy shit moment, right? 10% chance. That is... And I just watched Dari Amadei, who's the head of Anthropic, on an interview on CNN where he's asked, do you believe that there's a chance that humanity will end? And if so, what's the percentage, you think? And he wasn't able to answer that.

57:58 He stammered a lot. A lot.

58:00 And in fact, at one point he says, look, do I think there's a percentage? Yes, there is a percentage.

58:06 What?

58:07 Wait, you're minimizing this? Even if it's 1%, it should be a holy shit moment for all of us, right?

58:12 Yeah.

58:13 The ability that he couldn't even communicate a non-answer scared me. Yes. Because as soon as I asked him, he went into– Right. That to me was the scariest part was just hearing him do that.

58:26 Me too. Because this is a guy who's for sure trained.

58:29 Yes.

58:29 And for sure knew he was going to have to answer this question. A guy who has a press team around him who's worth billions of dollars. And if that guy can't answer that question, then we're in for– Not a great future.

58:42 A question that they knew would be asked. Yes, of course. The question. That's the question.

58:48 The question.

58:49 And he still couldn't answer it. And then it went into, well, there are all these, there's forks. And if we go down this road. Yeah, same, same.

58:56 That was my number one takeaway. I sent it to my husband. I was like, I cannot believe this guy did not have an answer to something he knew he was going to be asked. When he has a team of freaking press people around him telling him or giving him, you know, sort of a plan on what to say in these particular situations. And if he doesn't know, it's because he does know. It's because he doesn't want to answer.

59:19 The thing that scared me the most was when they all together jointly said, we need to slow down because they're all racing to have the biggest, fastest, and be the richest.

59:28 Mm-hmm.

59:28 And if you're the leader, you own. But again, the other side of it to me is if we agree to chill, but China doesn't, do we want our adversaries really outpacing us?

59:45 No, we definitely don't. And I think that's part of what everybody who's in sort of the AI security space is advocating for is, yes, first of all, we all need to chill here in the U.S., but we also need to start communicating more. With China, much like it was done with nuclear weapons and other points in history where it was important to do so. And this is another case. And I think, you know, hopefully, I mean, this is my optimism side and always trying to see the bright side of things, where hopefully people realize what's at stake here and will, you know, be able to behave like adults.

1:00:19 I just don't think they will realize what's at stake until that stake is lost. Yeah. Again, the other part of it that I would put into context, into the whole context of this is times ain't good right now. No.

1:00:33 How does it feel for you being a recent dad? I mean, because I think about this a lot.

1:00:37 I think about it all the time.

1:00:38 I hate it.

1:00:39 Yeah, me too.

1:00:40 I was talking this morning to some of the other people on my show and I was going, there's a bit of guilt in me that brought a baby into the world when this could really go to piss, all of it. But then I have to go, okay, let's go back 40 years. Or however many years. And there had to be parents thinking this about nuclear weapons, too.

1:01:01 Yeah, for sure.

1:01:02 So it's not the first time that I think parents have had this burden of, should I bring someone into the world with the turmoil that's happening domestically, internationally, with the world? So I hope that's the case. I've had to do that with the political climate, too. And compare it to a time when I wasn't around in 1969. Mm-hmm.

1:01:22 So I didn't get to see Vietnam. I didn't get to see the protests. I didn't get to see the anger at the president. Like, none of that happened in my life. I can only read about it. What I'm experiencing now isn't like anything I've ever seen before.

1:01:32 Mm-hmm.

1:01:33 It is a vitriol that has not existed in my life.

1:01:36 Yeah, that's true.

1:01:38 But then I wonder, okay, is it only because I'm just able to see the cycle of me? Mm-hmm. And if I were able to see it in 1969, would I go, oh, this is just another version of the cycle of the wheel. What I hope is this is that. Because, you know, looking back, I think everybody thought that we're going to have a nuclear bomb from Cuba nail us.

1:02:03 Like just watching documentaries of people in their houses scared to death. But that at least you could explain. When it comes to technology... And also the economy.

1:02:13 Well, you could control, right? Yeah. But you can't.

1:02:15 This is uncontrollable. It's an alien thought. The AI is an alien thought. We didn't teach it what to think. We brought it into existence. And like I've been studying the singularity so much to when it does finally get smarter than us, like it overtakes us, and then it can create itself even better.

1:02:32 Yeah.

1:02:33 Like that scares me so bad.

1:02:34 Yeah.

1:02:35 Recursive AI, right?

1:02:36 Yes. So then I do think about my kid and go.

1:02:39 Yeah, me too. I've been thinking a lot about it because, I mean, we have led great lives so far. I mean, I think about myself. But what is it going to be like now for him? He's a teenager, and that's the part. I mean, all of it depresses me, but that really depresses me. It doesn't seem like it's fun, you know, like it's going to be exciting. I hope we're wrong.

1:03:02 I was saying hope at the same time you were. What I hope is because we got to see the Internet mature.

1:03:10 Mm-hmm.

1:03:11 And when the internet was first, when there was a broader understanding of the internet, it was, this can be really bad. And you know what? There are a lot of bad things on it. There's a lot of good that comes from it as well. Connection, communication, education. That's true. There's also still a lot of bad. Yeah. And so my hope with AI is there's obviously going to be some not pleasant and bad, but maybe the great is medicine.

1:03:43 Maybe the great.

1:03:45 Medicine is number one, right?

1:03:46 That's what we all want. To me, it's what I'm really leaning on being the savior as far as what AI can do. It can look at something and diagnose it 40 million ways when what a doctor could do three.

1:03:59 Yeah, 100%. And also crime, right? That it's going to be able to help us fight crime and Prevent scams or child sexual abuse things and all of that.

1:04:08 Yes.

1:04:09 I mean, 100 percent. If done well, it can be world changing.

1:04:14 I don't trust humans, though.

1:04:15 But yeah, that's the one when it's when we're in a race and when there's this much money and power involved, it's really hard to even for somebody as optimistic as I am to imagine a world in which this is going to be handled responsibly. Hopefully I'm wrong.

1:04:33 Flock cameras, thumbs up, thumbs down?

1:04:36 I haven't looked into them as much. Look, here's my thing. I am not the kind of person that thinks that privacy is the most important thing in the entire world. I know a lot of people are, and I respect that. I think that fighting crime is incredibly important. So I think that there is. A place for that kind of sort of surveillance to exist is how it's being handled, how those images are being handled. And again, are they being handled responsibly? That's an important question. I think we should be asking it.

1:05:10 But I also don't think that just the fact that they are there is something that would scare me, I think, is what are we doing now that we have that surveillance technology?

1:05:21 I hope everybody watches Super Scammy. Your disguise is so good.

1:05:24 It is good, right?

1:05:25 Yeah.

1:05:26 But you have to say that I'm prettier in real life than I am as Marisol.

1:05:28 Very much so. Okay, thank you. Very much. You really uglied yourself up for this show. Thank you.

1:05:32 Thanks, Mommy. That's what I wanted you to say.

1:05:34 October 17th. I'm such a fan of you and your work.

1:05:37 Thanks, Mommy.

1:05:38 Just a hundred times over. I'm always so grateful when we get to spend time together.

1:05:41 Me too.

1:05:42 And I hope you get from this what you set out to get. What did you set out to get from Super Scammy?

1:05:48 People realizing that any of us can become victims of scams and we're not above anyone else. And we should be more caring and compassionate and have more empathy towards people who are victims. And also be very careful because, again, it can happen to all of us.

1:06:02 Mariana, thank you very much.

1:06:04 Thank you, Bobby.

1:06:05 Thanks for listening to a BobbyCast production.