143: Jim Hates Scams

0:00JIM Hello, Jack.

0:03JACK Hello, hello.

0:05JIM Good — well, it’s ‘good evening’ for me. I guess you’re in the states,

0:10 so it’s probably the afternoon.

0:11JACK Yeah, yeah, I just ate lunch. I’m having some chocolate. You like chocolate?

0:15JIM Oh, yes. [Inaudible]. There’s very — well,

0:20 there’s very few people, I think, don’t like chocolate, but — yeah.

0:25JACK I know. Yeah, chocolate’s great.

0:26JIM Yeah, yeah. Keeps you going, a bit of energy…

0:29JACK Yeah, a little caffeine hit.

0:32JIM Indeed.

0:33JACK You know, there’s only a few places in the world that have caffeine. There’s tea,

0:37 coffee, cola, chocolate, and I think that’s it. That’s the natural sources.

0:43JIM Yeah. No, it’s — yeah, it’s hard to do without it,

0:47 yeah. I do like a bit of chocolate. You’re actually making me hungry. I probably got you at a bad time. I wasn’t actually expecting you to say, yeah, I’m ready to go and we can just do this, but it absolutely suits me down to the ground, so…

1:01JACK You know what? The thing is is that you are the most requested guest maybe I’ve ever had.

1:06JIM Well, okay. That’s amazing.

1:08JACK So, if you’re available, I’m available. Let’s go. I’m gonna put

1:11 the chocolate to the side, and let’s get — let’s make a podcast.

1:15JIM Yeah, that’s cool. I’ve gotta say even before we do this, I have listened to loads

1:19 of your podcasts and honestly, it’s an honor for me even to be asked onto it. So, there you go.

1:26JACK So, you’re the guy that everyone knows, and you’re ready to go?

1:32JIM Oh, I’m ready, yeah, yeah. Fire away.

1:39 (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

2:02JACK Today I have the absolute pleasure to speak with Jim Browning. Jim was the first

2:10 person I ever saw do scambaiting, and I was blown away that someone even does this sort of thing. Scambaiting is just as it sounds; he tries to bait scammers to scam him, and he records it for YouTube, and it’s really quite amazing to watch.

2:24JIM [MUSIC] So, it still says ‘connecting’.

2:27SCAMMER1 [Inaudible] taking a long time because I…

2:28JIM Yeah, I don’t know why.

2:29SCAMMER1 …your computer and internet is working really [inaudible] because

2:33 it got infected with the virus. [CROSSTALK] So, let me explain…

2:36JIM Oh, is it the virus doing this? Alright.

2:38SCAMMER1 Yes.

2:40JIM Nothing to do with the livestream, then.

2:40SCAMMER1 Let me explain to you now what happened, actually. The alert which you got,

2:43 that is that security block alert which is coming from internet, because right now you have no — any internet security. That is the reason, while browsing over the internet by mistake or by accidentally. You might have — click any link which was not secure, okay?

3:03JIM Oh, I see.

3:04JACK How did all this get started for you? What’s your origin story with this whole scam thing?

3:10JIM [MUSIC] Well, I wish it was a bit more like Batman, you know? Batman has

3:13 got this — an injustice [inaudible] and they — he’s after the Joker and all this. Very, very different for me. The way I got started was probably like most people; I receive lots of scam phone calls. You keep hearing those incessant phone calls, people pretending to be Microsoft, pretending they’re Amazon, your bank, and so on. Most people know just to hang up those calls, but I am one of those people who — I love to dig a little bit deeper because I am an engineer. I know about computers, know about networks, and I thought to myself, surely someone is doing something about this, and if they’re not, maybe I can do something.

3:59JACK I’m sure you’re familiar with the fake Microsoft support scam calls. It’s

4:04 typically where someone from India calls you up and says you have a problem with your computer, and it sounds something like this.

4:12JIM [PHONE RINGING] Hi, hello?

4:13SCAMMER2 Oh, yes. Hello. I’m calling from We Support [inaudible] and my name is Sandeep, Jim.

4:18JACK They’ll try to convince you that your computer has a virus and they can help,

4:23 and they’ll ask for control of your computer to fix it. But the thing is, you don’t actually have a virus at all. They just made up this problem and they want to take your money. Jim finds this whole thing really fascinating and just can’t stop thinking about this.

4:36JIM I really want to find out about what makes the scam tick.

4:41JACK So, Jim finds himself on these calls to hear how it works and watch

4:48 their whole operation, and then he calls them out on it like this.

4:52SCAMMER2 Yes, I just need to inform you that we have finished

4:54 all the work with the computer now and everything is working fine with it.

4:57JIM Right. Did you find any Trojans or anything?

5:01SCAMMER2 Yes. We have already removed all your network infections,

5:05 and also we have blocked them so they will not enter from now onwards.

5:10JIM Right. Just that I was watching everything you were doing and also recording what you’re

5:16 doing and recording your voice, because you’ve removed nothing whatsoever from this machine. It was never infected in the first place and all you’ve done…

5:24SCAMMER2 I’m sorry?

5:25JIM It was never infected with anything in the first place, and you know that. So, you say

5:31 that you’ve removed a Trojan. Tell me what Trojan you’ve removed and show me evidence of that, then.

5:37SCAMMER2 Alright. Now, we have already removed — and

5:39 everything is recorded at our end as well. Yes?

5:42JIM Yeah, show me. Tell me what Trojan I had, then.

5:47SCAMMER2 We have removed all the Trojans.

5:49JIM Yeah, show me. Show me one Trojan that you’ve removed.

5:55SCAMMER2 Okay, let me explain it to you. There were Trojan horses in it.

6:01JIM Yeah, show me evidence of that. That’s what I’m asking.

6:04SCAMMER2 But how should I show you now? But they are already removed.

6:07JIM Because if it was something like, oh, this particular tool, it would have logs and it would

6:14 show you in the history what was removed, okay? There’s nothing been removed here.

6:22SCAMMER2 This is an anti-malware software.

6:24JIM So, go on then. Tell me what software you used to remove any Trojan. Bear in mind,

6:29 I’ve recorded everything you’ve done. So, are you gonna still stand by that story that you removed a Trojan?

6:35SCAMMER2 So, may I put the line on hold for one to two minutes?

6:38JIM You can do what you want, but don’t forget; all of this is going to

6:41 be uploaded to YouTube very shortly, so be very careful what you say in the next few minutes.

6:46JACK Jim is pretty good at catching them in a lie, and then he tries to get

6:50 them to explain themselves. When they continue denying it, he reports them.

6:54SCAMMER2 Definitely.

6:55JIM What I will do is now that I’ve got your IP address, this one, and the timestamp,

7:00 which is Mumbai — so it’s now 6:00 PM; it’s been running for a few hours, this one, though — I can go to your ISP, and that’s Tata Tele Services in Italy. They provide that IP address to you, and that’s the one you’re using at the minute. So, I’m gonna get them to identify exactly who you are, because I know your address isn’t in California. I know you’re located in India. Or…

7:25SCAMMER2 Okay…

7:25JIM …I’ll probably just publish all of this on YouTube anyway. Right?

7:29SCAMMER2 So, thank you for choosing We Support…

7:30JIM Thank you for choosing scammers in Mumbai, yes. Okay. [TO JACK] Yeah, in my — my background

7:39 is that I have been in IT really all my professional life, all my working life.

7:45JACK Yeah, let’s hear about that. What’s the specialty that you are in IT?

7:50JIM Yeah, so, I guess up until very recently I had a real job,

7:55 as in a real, normal IT job. I worked for a large company, should we say in the UK, and part of their specialty was dealing with IT services and setup, and I have personally supported an organization with more than two or three hundred people in it. So, I’m the kinda admin, the sysadmin, for a large IT company. So, that’s my background. As part of that, I am also a programmer, I’m a network engineer, and — but I have no form of qualifications in, for example, cybersecurity, although at this stage I think I could probably do fairly well in a cybersecurity exam. But my background is a normal IT job. That’s it.

8:49JACK [MUSIC] A lot of times what these scammers will do is type commands on your computer to prove

8:54 you have a virus, but all they’re doing is just showing you really normal computer activity, and it doesn’t prove anything. In fact, one time I saw a video of his where a scammer just typed on the screen that the firewall is damaged and is at 2%. The scammer was trying to say hackers are gonna soon break through and get everything. But the thing is is that firewalls don’t have a percentage, and it’s great that Jim knows a lot about IT and can easily spot every one of these bad attempts at showing him that there’s a problem on his computer.

9:26JIM …type these things into your computer and, look, you’ve got hackers, you’ve got viruses,

9:32 you’ve got computer problems. You’re gonna have to pay me $200, $300 to fix that problem.

9:38JACK Now, these scammers are not sophisticated at all. Their scam is really basic, but their

9:45 method of collecting payment is crazy ridiculous. What they should do is just act like a normal company and set up a website where you enter in your credit card details and send the money, but they can’t do that because payment processors will quickly spot and shut them down and freeze their money, maybe even charge them a fee. So, Stripe and PayPal are just out of the question here, which means they’ve gotta come up with some creative, alternative ways to get money from you.

10:13JIM They will get you to buy a giftcard. They won’t use the word ‘giftcard’. What they say

10:17 to their victims is you’ve got a security problem; you’re gonna have to solve it with a security card, and you’ll have to go to your local Walmart or whatever to get the security card. They won’t use the word ‘giftcard’ if they can avoid it, but of course, whenever you go in there and you’re outside the store, they will say, right, I need you to go in and buy an Apple card or an eBay card or whatever it is. As soon as you read out that number, that’s as good as them taking the value of that card because they can launder that almost immediately. So…

10:53JACK So, I’m curious on that. How do they launder it? Because

10:56 if you give someone an eBay card, they’re not going to buy something on eBay. They’re probably selling that for pennies on the dollar.

11:02JIM They do, exactly, and they’d be lucky to get maybe 50% of the actual value of the card.

11:08 But what they do is they take those numbers and there is quite a — well, shall we say a black market for giftcard numbers? They are legitimate websites like Paxful, for example, where people will buy Google Play cards, eBay cards, you name it, any sort of giftcard, and they will give you 50% of the value and they will mark that up, and they may directly or indirectly buy items from those stores. So, yes, absolutely, they’re gonna lose half the value, but if you’re a scammer, you have completely, cleanly washed that money because there’s almost no way of getting money back when someone’s bought a giftcard and it’s been used.

11:55JACK This always seems surprising to me, to convince your victim to hang up the phone,

12:00 go drive to the store, buy a giftcard, then drive back home and call the scammer back up to give them the giftcard details. I just think you’re gonna lose your victim every time in that process. On top of that, they’re only getting half the value that’s on the card. But this seems to be pretty effective. These scam centers are making quite a bit of money this way, and I guess this means that even though the scam is hilariously bad and the method of collecting money is ridiculously complex, the thing that makes this work is the numbers, the relentless attempts at scamming people. If they try over and over and over, they’ll eventually get people to pay them. Now, of course, some victims don’t want to send giftcards,

12:47 so the scammers say, that’s fine. There’s another way; send us cash.

12:51JIM They actually persuade people to go to their local bank and withdraw cash. They will say,

12:59 I’ll instruct you in a moment what you do with the cash. So, they generally get the victim to take the cash home, and then they’ll say — and this is typically for a bank-type scam. They’ll say, we’re gonna create a new account for you and you need to send that money to a secure facility. They will say, look, you need to put the cash into pages of a book. So, between pages of a book, wrap that in silver foil, and they will actually get you then to go to the nearest FedEx or post office and mail your cash to an address, and it’s a money mule address.

13:37JACK That sounds even more bizarre. Have these victims never paid for anything in their life

13:43 before? In what world is it normal to wrap cash up in tinfoil and stuff it in a book and then ship it somewhere to get your computer fixed? I don’t want to be victim-blaming here, but come on, how colorblind to you have to be to not see these giant red flags? One of the scams that Jim sees often is called a refund scam, and it might start out with a phone call that sounds like this.

14:08SCAMMER3 [ROBOTIC VOICE] Hi. We are calling you from your computer maintenance department.

14:12 If you remember, you have a contract with us. For computer support and services, unfortunately we are closing the business. So, you can give us a call for the refund of the amount you paid to claim your refund.

14:28JACK This is a real voicemail or a phone call that somebody got, and people are

14:32 falling for this and calling up the number. To you and me, that phone call sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Like, it’s a crappy robo voice and it’s not fooling us. But just think about the mechanics of this call. They’re clearly using some text-to-speech software, right? I don’t know why, but they’re using a terrible version and have terrible English, but technology is rapidly improving. There’s way better software out there today, and I just wonder, you know, some day the scammers are gonna upgrade and use the good stuff. Let me demonstrate. Here’s what I’m gonna do; I’m gonna improve this whole scam attempt. Are you ready? First, I’m gonna take the text that they said in that call and ask ChatGPT to rewrite this but make it sound more like a natural

15:20 English-speaker would say. Cool. Now, take that and make it sound even more casual, like something you’d just hear on a phone call or something. Okay, that looks good. Now I’ll run this through a more modern text-to-speech software. Okay, it’s done. Let’s take a listen to this call now.

15:39SCAMMER3 Hello, sorry to bother you. My name is Sarah from the computer maintenance

15:44 department. I need to talk with you about your support contract with us. Here’s the thing; we’re closing the business. I know, it’s a bummer. I’m sorry. But here’s the good news; you’ll be getting a refund for the amount you’ve already paid us. Whenever you have a moment, can you call me back? I want to get this refund to you as soon as possible. Hope to chat with you soon.

16:06JACK You see how much better it is with modern tools? Seriously,

16:11 that took me two minutes of just using automated tools to fix it up. The audio went from stupid…

16:18SCAMMER3 [ROBOTIC VOICE] …computer maintenance department…

16:19JACK …to scary.

16:20SCAMMER3 I know, it’s a bummer.

16:22JACK Maybe you can still spot that that’s AI-generated, but would your grandparents

16:27 think that? I improved it because I want you to be aware of the tools that scammers have at their disposal today if they wanted to, and I want you to think about how much better their scams are gonna be in the future. We see that they’re using text-to-speech software today, and it’s just a matter of time that that text-to-speech software sounds really convincing. Then what? What red flags would you notice in this audio to make you think it’s a scam? Now you’ve really gotta think, well, hold on, do I actually have a support contract somewhere? Who are these people? Let me call them up and find out.

17:04 Now you’re on a phone call with a scammer, a position you really don’t want to be in, and you can see how this whole thing is gonna get trickier and trickier in the future.

17:16JIM [MUSIC] The scam is what you call a refund scam. So, they’ll pretend to be a

17:21 big organization, typically Amazon, and the conversation will start off with — they say they’re gonna refund this charge, which the victim will know nothing about.

17:33JACK Okay. If I’m the victim, I’d be like, okay,

17:38 I have no memory of this charge. Go ahead, refund me, and see you later. But it’s trickier than that. Here’s one of the actual scam calls that Jim captured.

17:46SCAMMER4 We can easily send you the money into your account in five to

17:50 ten minutes and you will get your amount right back right now, okay? Alright. So, do you do online banking then? So, which bank do you do online banking?

18:00JIM This victim mentions Mid Oregon Bank.

18:03SCAMMER4 Just go ahead and log into your bank. Log into your bank first of all, sir. Alright,

18:09 that’s great. Now, sir, you have to tell me — like, your account has been opened, right? Alright, sir. I do need that — you have to tell me in which account do your need your money back?

18:22JACK Now, here’s where the scam part comes in. The scammer will say that they want to

18:26 make sure the money goes into the proper bank account and will ask to see the victim’s screen by using some screen-sharing application, and then they’ll ask to take control of the victim’s computer. Once they have control of the victim’s computer and can see their online bank balances, then they’ll say they’re initiating the refund for, whatever, say $300. Since the victim is logged into the bank’s website, what the scammer will do is edit the web page in the browser to make it look like the money was just deposited into the account. But it’s a fake deposit, though. It just looks like the money went in, but the scammer just faked the whole transaction by editing the HTML on the victim’s screen. But here’s the tricky part; the scammer will put in

19:10 the wrong amount for the refund. If the victim was expecting a $300 refund, the scammer would instead put in a $5,000 deposit instead, then act all surprised that they put in the wrong amount.

19:24SCAMMER4 $5,000 [inaudible], you said? Oh,

19:26 my goodness. Will you please hold on for a minute, sir?

19:28JIM So, the scammer obviously knows that he’s overpaid this victim. So,

19:33 the key to this scam is how they get the money back again. Our scammer comes up with a solution.

19:38SCAMMER4 Sir, I just got a mail from a [inaudible] server, and unfortunately that you

19:44 got extra amount in your account by mistake, sir. So, sir, will you please refund me my money back?

19:50JIM Inevitably, the victim asks how you

19:52 can refund the money. Surely they can just take it back themselves.

19:55SCAMMER4 Oh, sir, I can tell you — I can tell you,

20:00 sir, what you have to do to refund me my money back to me, alright? Let me have a — speak with my manager, okay, sir? Let me have a word with them.

20:06JIM A few moments later, there’s a proposal.

20:08SCAMMER4 …have a word with my manager, sir, and they said there is some financial institution

20:12 where you can send our money back to us, alright? So, do you know any Apple Store near someplace?

20:18JIM Yes, he said ‘Apple Store’. He wants his

20:20 victim to go to an Apple Store in order to get his money back.

20:26SCAMMER4 You don’t know? Okay, well, let me find Apple Store for you, sir. Hold on for one minute.

20:30JIM He searches on the victim’s PC for the nearest Apple Store.

20:34SCAMMER4 Can you see, sir? There is a place called Simplymart. Do you know this place?

20:40JIM He spends the next few minutes explaining that he’s

20:43 going to need $5,000 worth of Apple gift vouchers.

20:48JACK Jim says he’s seen scammers also try to get people to send back the money using Zelle and bank

20:54 wires, too, and some people have lost quite a bit of money to these refund scams. It really does look convincing when you look at your bank balance and it shows $5,000 more than what you were expecting. The victim could just refresh the page and the whole thing would reset, but the scammers are really good at preying on the victim’s goodwill, you know? The victims will give back the money, which is a pretty jerk thing to do, to exploit the goodness in people. [TO JIM] You said that up until recently you had a real job. Is this now your full-time job, is content creator?

21:30JIM It is, yeah. So, as of just over a year and a bit ago, I gave up my full-time job, IT job,

21:39 and my full-time job is now making YouTube videos and, yeah, going after scammers.

21:45JACK So, it sounds like this is something you’re really passionate about, to leave your career

21:51 behind, go right into chasing after scammers and exposing them. Is that true? This is your passion?

21:58JIM Oh, for sure, yeah. It’s definitely a passion. I can’t stand scammers. That

22:04 is my little tagline, if you like, of my YouTube channel. I can’t stand scammers.

22:10JACK The thing about you, Jim, though, when I’m watching you and I’m listening to you,

22:15 your voice is just so calm and cool and I never hear passion in there and I never hear things like, I can’t stand scammers. There’s not even — you don’t even have inflection when you say that. You’re just like, I can’t stand scammers.

22:28JIM But this is the thing; I really don’t — and maybe it’s something to do with my Irish accent or

22:33 whatever, but honestly, when it comes to scams and scammers, now I’m devoting my life, but it is for that reason. If you watch what I do, if you listen to the calls I hear every single day, you can’t help not going after these guys. I’ve kinda — I build up a bit of a hatred for them, but it probably doesn’t come across in the way I make the YouTube videos or my inflections or anything else. But in a lot of ways that helps me because if I appear calm, if I try to think it through, if I try to rationalize what I’m doing, it gives me, in some way, a bit of strength to try and combat these scammers, ‘cause I like to think I’ve got a level head when it comes to tracking these guys down, and I think that’s why I’ve been a success as well as I have been.

23:29JACK Yeah, you have a unique approach that — you’re not sensationalizing it.

23:35 This is what I loved about it, actually, honestly, is there’s kind of been a trend of people doing things similar to you now, and they’re making it into a big game and lots of excitement. They’re trying to get the other person to just lose their mind, you know, and start screaming back or something, and you’re always very calm and…

23:53JIM Of course, there’s room for that. I encourage everyone to be a form of scambaiter. If you can

24:00 waste someone’s time who’s — who you know is trying to steal money from you, it means they’re not stealing money from your parents, grandparents, and whatever. So, absolutely there’s room for everyone. I encourage everyone to do what I do. Well, maybe not quite as far as I go because it could land you in trouble, and — but there’s nothing wrong with wasting a scammer’s time.

24:22JACK Huh, he’s encouraging everyone to waste scammers’ time, and that’s an interesting idea,

24:27 I think. Imagine if every time you got a call from one of these scammers, you instantly got excited and you’re like, oh boy, this is gonna be a fun call. Of course, you don’t give them access to your computer or send them money, but what could you do to waste their time? I say someone should just create an app on my phone that’s AI-driven, that I could just pass the call over to it and it acts like me and it talks to the scammers for hours, keeping them going just a little longer.

24:49 Like, maybe there’s really long loading screens or web pages aren’t loading right or something, and things just keep timing out and they have to start all over again. You know, there are a few scambaiters out there, and one of them is called Kitboga, and I did see him dabbling with a AI bot tool to try to waste scammers’ time. [MUSIC] But as Jim spent more and more time with these scammers, something really fascinating happened to him one day. He somehow ended up controlling one of the scammers’ PCs, and this sent Jim in a whole new direction.

25:21JIM The very first time that I was able to connect to a scammer’s computer was that the

25:27 scammer actually gave me his user ID and password to connect to him, and then he would switch sides. So, there was a period of time where if the scammers were using a bit of remote access software called TeamViewer, if they were using TeamViewer and the connections were coming from India, TeamViewer noticed that a lot of them were scams and they actually banned the entire country for a period of time. During that time, they wanted to keep the scams running, so what the scammers would do is say, well, you connect to me. There’s a little bit of software internally that says ‘switch sides with partner’, and then they would connect back to the victim, supposedly. So, I was actually given the scammer’s username and password, so I can connect to their computer.

26:21JACK That must have been — the first time you did that, that must have been such a wild moment.

26:26JIM Oh, it was unbelievable because what you can do is exactly what the scammers do,

26:30 which is as soon as you make that connection, you can lock their keyboard and mouse and blacken their screen. So, I knew how to do that because I had seen it so often. So, this was a real gift for me. So, I connected to them, locked them out of their computer, started to download all the files to try and figure out who this was…

26:51SCAMMER5 Now, just beside ‘communicate’, do you see the option which says ‘connect to partner’?

26:56JIM Yeah, okay.

26:57SCAMMER5 Hey, what are you doing?

27:00JIM I can’t see ‘communicate’. Are you still there?

27:05SCAMMER5 [AUDIO BREAKING UP]

27:07JIM Well, you are — you’re the one who’s scamming, aren’t you? [TO JACK] Of course,

27:10 because their computer is completely locked and black-screened, they’re not really quite sure what goes on. They maybe hadn’t encountered this before. So, I knew that my time was probably limited, so I grabbed as much as I could from — I can download all their files. They weren’t seeing any of this, and I was able to work out exactly who they were.

27:29JACK This is why I love watching Jim’s YouTube videos. This isn’t the only time he hacked into a

27:36 scammer’s computer. He does it practically every video now. He’s figured out so many different ways to get into the scammer’s computers. You just heard one way he does it, and he won’t tell me any of the other ways that he gets into these computers because he says if he tells us, then the scammers are gonna hear this and fix it and he’ll lose access, so he keeps his little hacking methods secret. But my mind cannot help but start to brainstorm ideas on how you could hack into a scammer’s computer. So, let me just think out loud here for a minute. Okay, so, when you connect — when the scammer connects into Jim’s computer to do that remote support, right, that scammer’s gonna be coming from a specific IP, and Jim could probably see that,

28:19 right? If he does Wireshark or something, he could capture that IP, and then he’s got their public IP. From there, could he then port scan that IP and look for open ports and then try to find some exploits or vulnerabilities to hit those ports? Maybe. Maybe that is possible. Another thing is if they’re using some remote desktop software, is there a bug in that software that Jim can exploit to reverse the connection? I don’t know how he does it, but even if I hit the nail on the head, Jim’s not gonna admit to how he hacks into their computers.

28:54JIM No, and I probably never will simply because scammers will learn from that,

29:01 and unfortunately they watch my videos just like a lot of other people do, and I don’t want to reveal that as a secret. But suffice to say, a lot of it is social engineering as opposed to some zero-day compromise of the remote access software that I’m using. So, I’m far more of a social engineer than a hacker, if that makes sense.

29:24JACK We’re gonna take a quick commercial break but when we come back,

29:28 I’m gonna play you some of my favorite clips from his channel, and you’re not gonna want to miss this. Jim is known for hacking into scammers’ computers and exposing them, and it’s really quite wild to watch. He has over a hundred videos on YouTube now, and many of them are exactly this, and it’s amazing just to hear the scammer’s reaction when he tells them some detail about them that he shouldn’t know. For instance, there’s one where he hacked into someone’s computer in the call center and got a list of everyone’s names and their fake names. This was one of my favorite videos. Let me just play a clip for you from it.

30:06JIM Hello?

30:07SCAMMER6 Hello?

30:08JIM Hello.

30:10SCAMMER6 Yeah, hi, sir. My name is Catalina Fernandez. I am calling you from the Microsoft.

30:16JIM Oh, hi, Priya.

30:19SCAMMER6 [GASPS] JIM: Hi. Who are you?

30:20JIM I’m a ghost.

30:21SCAMMER6 Idiot. JIM: Don’t call me an idiot. I’m a ghost. What’s your name? Tell me your name.

30:25JIM My name is Ghost.

30:29SCAMMER6 I don’t understand. You tell me — you already tell my name.

30:36JIM I know. You’re Priya. I’m a ghost, you see? Priya? At least talk to me. Hello? Hello?

30:51SCAMMER7 Hello.

30:52JIM Yeah, who’s this?

30:54SCAMMER7 Hello?

30:54JIM Who’s this?

30:56SCAMMER7 Yeah, do you know my name?

30:57JIM I don’t know. What is your name?

30:59JACK I love this part. You can hear this guy’s brain just breaking real time.

31:03JIM What is your name?

31:04SCAMMER7 I’m talking about — yeah,

31:06 I’m talking about your computer. You have a Windows computer, right?

31:10JIM I do, but I don’t understand why you can’t tell me your name.

31:14JACK At this point, this entire call center is listening in on this call. Like,

31:19 what is happening here? They even have him on speakerphone, and this new lady jumps on the call.

31:24JIM Hello.

31:24SCAMMER8 Hello?

31:25JIM Yes, hello. Who’s this?

31:26SCAMMER8 Yes, hello.

31:28JIM Who am I talking to?

31:29SCAMMER8 Hello? JIM: Yes, who am I talking to? Yeah, hi, this is Mary William from the

31:34 headquarter of Microsoft Security Department. Tell me what happened.

31:39JIM Mary, are you sure your name is Mary?

31:44SCAMMER8 Yeah, definitely. I know my name. I’m very sure for it.

31:48JIM But it’s actually Sushmita.

31:50SCAMMER8 No, my — not — I’m not Sushmita. My name is Mary William.

31:57JIM Are you getting… SCAMMER8: Do you understand? Are you getting a little bit hot, Sushmita?

32:01SCAMMER8 Sorry, no. Listen, you are speaking to me and my name is Mary.

32:09JACK Now Priya picks the phone back up, and she’s really curious and wants some answers.

32:14SCAMMER6 Can I request you, sir…?

32:16JIM Yeah.

32:17SCAMMER6 Just one request.

32:18JIM Yeah.

32:19SCAMMER6 Can you please tell me, sir, how do you know the names that — like,

32:23 Priya, Sushmita? Like, they’re Indian names. Where are you getting from?

32:29JIM Did I get that right? ‘Cause I was just guessing.

32:32SCAMMER6 No. So, you are using some technology or anything? How do you know the names?

32:40JIM I’m just very good at reading people’s thoughts over the phone,

32:45 and I get this aura. I’m like a ghost.

32:47SCAMMER6 Really?

32:48JIM Yeah, yeah.

32:48SCAMMER6 But sir, it’s quite impossible that — how do you know the name by hearing their voice?

32:56JIM Just simply because whenever you speak to me, I can pick up on

33:01 vibes and I kinda know — you create an aura around you. I’m a little bit like a ghost.

33:07SCAMMER6 Okay, yeah, I’m from Microsoft, sir, and you are talking about a [inaudible], right?

33:14JIM Oh, Priya, please don’t do this to me. Come on, you don’t really work for Microsoft, do you?

33:20SCAMMER6 Sir, my name is not Priya. I’m not Priya, sir.

33:25JIM You’re not Priya. SCAMMER6: Again, you made a mistake. Okay, but you confirmed that to me earlier and you said your friends were

33:30 Sushmita and Mimi and — you told me that earlier, so you’ve already confirmed that.

33:36SCAMMER6 Mimi, yes, and then you used — you can use another name for me.

33:41JIM Well, is Priya not your name?

33:44SCAMMER6 No, I’m not.

33:46JIM Oh, Carolina Fernandez; you’re sticking to that, are you?

33:50SCAMMER6 Yes, I’m Carolina Fernandez.

33:54JIM Carolina Fernandez.

33:54SCAMMER6 Why are you using the Indian names? Okay, yeah.

33:57JIM Right, okay. Well, whatever you want,

33:59 Carolina. I don’t really mind. So, what’s really wrong with my computer?

34:03SCAMMER6 Sir, your computer is completely infected by some hackers.

34:08JIM Right.

34:08SCAMMER6 That’s why we are receiving some warning signals from your computer.

34:12JIM Okay.

34:13SCAMMER6 Okay?

34:14JIM Okay.

34:15SCAMMER6 And that point of time, sir,

34:18 we are calling you to make you aware about your computer problem, okay?

34:23JIM Okay.

34:26SCAMMER6 [SPEAKING INDIAN] JIM: Hello? Yeah, are you still there? [SPEAKING INDIAN] JIM: Hello?

34:31SCAMMER9 Hello?

34:33JIM Sorry, your colleague’s listening in,

34:35 but I can hear her talk as well. Oh, she’s hung up. That’s okay.

34:38SCAMMER9 Um, uh…

34:38JIM Yeah, no, she wasn’t very good, was she?

34:40SCAMMER9 Oh my god. Who are you, sir? May I know, who are you?

34:44JIM I just told you. You can call me Ghost, ‘cause that’s kind of the way I

34:51 feel. I get this aura around people. I can tell who’s around them. I can tell just…

34:56SCAMMER9 So, what is your job, sir?

34:57JIM How long have you been working there, Priya? SCAMMER9: You tell me the exact location. How long have you been working there?

35:01SCAMMER9 Well, I’m working. Tell me the location…

35:07JIM A fake Microsoft.

35:08SCAMMER9 …where I am working.

35:09JIM Salt Lake, Sector-V.

35:11SCAMMER9 Yes, then why you…

35:12JIM Salt Lake, Sector-V.

35:14SCAMMER9 Why are you taking the name of…? JIM: Salt Lake, Sector-V… Kolkata?

35:15JIM Salt Lake, Sector-V.

35:17SCAMMER9 Sorry?

35:18JIM You heard.

35:20SCAMMER9 [SPEAKING INDIAN]

35:24JIM Hello? Please don’t hang up. Hello?

35:28SCAMMER9 No, no. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

35:32JIM What’s the weather like there?

35:34SCAMMER9 Weather? Now it’s…

35:37JIM Yeah, what’s the weather like in Kolkata?

35:41SCAMMER9 You tell me. You know everything about me. Then you tell me…

35:47JIM I’d say about 33 degrees…

35:47SCAMMER9 …what is the weather, what’s my name. Do you know my father’s name?

35:49JIM …33 degrees, it’s raining. Yeah, I dunno what…

35:49SCAMMER9 Do you know my father’s name?

35:51JIM I dunno, but is your father proud of you, what you do? Does he think you work for Microsoft?

36:00SCAMMER9 Yes, of course.

36:03JIM But you don’t work for Microsoft. Did you tell him that?

36:06SCAMMER9 Sir, you just tell me one thing. Why are you wasting my time?

36:11JIM I’m not wasting time. SCAMMER9: I’m talking about your computer and… I’m trying to — you know, you give off this aura and I’m trying to kind of work out

36:19 why you do all this scamming stuff. That’s really what I wanted to know.

36:23SCAMMER9 Then why are you wasting your time?

36:26JIM Can’t you get a different job?

36:28SCAMMER9 And how do you know the names? How do you know the names?

36:32JIM I know everybody’s name.

36:33SCAMMER9 Do you know another name?

36:34JIM Yes, everybody.

36:34SCAMMER9 How many names do you know?

36:36JIM Everybody.

36:36SCAMMER9 Tell me the names.

36:38JIM Everybody.

36:38SCAMMER9 Tell me the — tell me my colleague’s name.

36:40JIM I’ll tell you one more name…

36:43SCAMMER9 One by one. JIM: Will I tell you one more name? Yes.

36:45JIM Suini.

36:46SCAMMER9 Yes? JIM: Suini. [GASPS] [BACKGROUND CHATTER] My god, Suini! And tell me another name.

36:57JIM No, I’m not gonna — look, I get this from…

37:00SCAMMER9 Any male names?

37:02JIM Well, apart from Abhijit…

37:04SCAMMER9 Any male names?

37:04JIM Yeah, apart from Abhijit?

37:07SCAMMER9 So, I do respect your talents, okay? Can you please…? Yes,

37:13 I’m here. Can you please tell me who is beside me right now?

37:18JIM Which side?

37:22SCAMMER9 In my left-hand side.

37:26JIM I think that’s Mimi.

37:34SCAMMER9 [GASPS] [BACKGROUND TALK]

37:34JIM Hello? Did I get that right? Hello? Hello? Hello?

37:44SCAMMER9 Okay…

37:45JIM You went very quiet.

37:46SCAMMER9 Okay, yes, yes, I’m here. JIM: Can you tell me, did I get it right? I’m so excited.

37:50JIM Did I get it right, though?

37:51SCAMMER9 I’m so excited about you, sir.

37:52JIM ‘Cause this doesn’t always work.

37:53SCAMMER9 Who are you?

37:54JIM Did I get it right?

37:55SCAMMER9 Tell me who is — who — wait, wait, wait. Can you hear me properly?

37:58JIM You keep asking me questions. Can I ask you

38:01 one thing? Did I get that right? ‘Cause I can never tell. Is Mimi on your left?

38:07SCAMMER9 And right-hand side? In my right-hand side?

38:12JIM It’s coming through to me. I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure that’s Sushmita.

38:24SCAMMER9 [BACKGROUND LAUGHING]

38:24JACK I love it. Jim caused such chaos in that scam call center. He told them their real names,

38:30 their location, even the name of the company that employed them, and they passed this phone around to at least five different agents to talk to him. Of course, any information that Jim does get from hacking these scammers, he reports it. So, if he sees that they use a certain service, he’ll report that to the service provider that scammers are using their product, and this is their user ID. He’s gotten some of the actually banned from using certain software, but they could just make a new company and then register the software again under a new company name.

38:59 Sometimes when these scam centers make new company names, they even get their company listed by the Better Business Bureau and then even get some people to make fake reviews about their company. So, if he can find this, he’ll definitely report that to the Better Business Bureau, and he’ll do everything he can to slow down these scammers and waste their time. Once he got into a scammer’s computer and grabbed all their files, and in there was a plane ticket for a recent trip. So, Jim had this guy’s real name, his travel details, and from there he could look the guy up on Facebook and find his friends and family. Yeah, when these scammers call him up and have no idea that Jim has all this information on them, it’s quite a riot to watch the whole

39:43 thing unfold. [TO JIM] The question does come up, though — and I’m sure you’ve answered this a thousand times — which is like, hold on a second, hacking is illegal. You can’t just go hack people’s stuff, and here you are hacking into someone else’s machine. What’s going on here? Where’s your justification? Where’s your moral compass or ethical framework in this way?

40:05JIM Yeah, the moral bit is quite easy for me because I quite deliberately let the scammers

40:12 attempt to scam me. I cannot — I don’t have the technical expertise, should we say, to arbitrarily hack into anything. I can’t do it. I’m not able to do that. A lot of the people that you’ve spoken to on this podcast probably would be able to do that. I cannot. I have to rely on a scammer connecting to me and trying to steal money from me, and that’s the only way that I can ever access their computers. They have to try to steal money from me first. So, morally…

40:48JACK This is a really nice ethical line you’ve painted yourself. Like,

40:52 okay, you know what? Unless you walk into my home and get onto my computer and attempt to steal money from me, I’m not gonna do anything to you, and once they do that…

41:02JIM Correct.

41:03JACK …and you open your door to allow that to happen, and you see — okay…

41:06JIM I mean, I’m not — and I hate to be known as a hacker ‘cause that always has quite negative

41:11 connotations, and I hate the term because it just has all of that baggage. But that is true, and every single person that I feature on any video on YouTube has at some point connected to my computer and they — don’t forget; scammers don’t always make it clear that what you’re typing out gives them access to my computer, because they will quite deliberately say, just type this on your command — like, when they — when people question, well, what is this thing that you’re getting me to download and run and it’s in fact a remote access tool, they will not explain that. So, already there is a remote access connection which is a sort of hacking attempt, because the scammer doesn’t make it clear to the victim they are taking access of your computer and they are not making it clear.

42:10 Obviously they’re scammers. I just go a little bit further to say, well, okay, you’re trying to misuse my computer. So, internally I’m thinking you’re now fair game for me to do the same to you. So, the only people — and I’ve said this a number of time in other interviews as well; the only people who could ever have a problem with what I do are the people who try to steal money from others, okay? If they ever want to raise a legal complaint or whatever, please bring that on, because I — what I will have done is record, hi, I managed to get access to their computer, and the answer is because they were trying to steal money from me. Now, that’s not a defense on its own, but it just means that if I ever have to defend myself for any reason, I have a good reason as to

43:12 why I have access to their computer and it’s just because of this theft that they’re attempting.

43:19JACK There’s almost no recourse that they can have. I mean, I’m assuming you haven’t

43:23 had any legal complaints that you’ve had to have — seriously take care of.

43:28JIM Not once, not once. The only complaints I’ve ever had are privacy complaints on YouTube.

43:35 Scammers don’t like their faces or voices or documents displayed on YouTube, and — tough.

43:51JACK [MUSIC] Okay, so, my absolute favorite video of Jim’s is when he hacked into an entire

43:56 call center and could watch everything that was going on there. [TO JIM] Wait, first, before we get into this story, how do you typically find these scammers?

44:05JIM Yeah, I have my e-mail address on YouTube and a lot of people just simply e-mail me saying,

44:09 hey, have you seen this pop-up, or I’ve just had a phone call from this number, and — or I’ve had this e-mail and it’s a fake invoice, or I — my grandparents have just been scammed; he used the phone. I get all of that all the time. But actually, in a lot of ways I don’t even have to use that because I’m on what’s called a mug’s list. So, in the past I have pretended to pay scammers because — remember this bit where I say I actually lead the scammers on? I give them fake information including credit card details, and if you work your way onto a list of people who they think they’ve scammed in the past, they will call you again and again. Those lists are like gold dust for scammers. So, the end result of that is I get

44:58 so many phone calls directly to my home phone number that I don’t need anyone else’s input. I’m already in the middle of a load of scams and honestly, there’s nearly too many to cope with.

45:09JACK So, what do you have, like sixteen different phones over there?

45:12JIM I do, literally. I mean, I have one phone service with ten different

45:17 phone numbers in the UK and I have something similar with US phone numbers, though I’ve dropped a lot of those recently from the number — it’s just — it’s nearly got to the point where I just can’t have an evening free of scam phone calls.

45:34JACK Okay, but this story doesn’t start with an inbound phone call. Instead,

45:40 someone told Jim about a malvert. This is an ad on a website which has malware on it. Basically, if you went to a website, you would hear this.

45:49MESSAGE [ROBOTIC VOICE] Important security message: your computer has been locked up. Your

45:54 IP address was used without your knowledge or consent to visit websites that contains identity theft virus. To unlock the computer, please call support immediately. Please do not attempt to shut down or restart your computer. Doing that may lead to data loss and identity theft. The computer lock is aimed to stop illegal activity. Please call our support immediately.

46:17JACK Now, this was just an ad on a website, but it had some malicious JavaScript in it

46:22 which maximized the browser, showed this giant warning, played this audio on repeat, and then made the mouse disappear which made it seem like the screen was frozen. It’s not actually a virus, though. You can just tap on Ctrl+Alt+Del and close the browser and all is fine. But to someone who doesn’t know better, this could be scary and they might call the number to get help. So, Jim called the number and said that his computer is infected, and the scammers immediately tried gaining remote access to Jim’s computer and tried to scam him for money. So, that means in Jim’s mind, they crossed the line and it was time for him to try to hack them back.

47:07JIM [MUSIC] The way that I get access to the reverse access to the — I’ll not go into that

47:10 part in detail. But suffice to say that when I did get access, I got access to just one PC and it was from a supervisor, and I was able to watch what that supervisor was doing, and one of the things that he was doing was watching CCTV. So, I could see the IP address of the server that he was using. It wasn’t an internal server; it was an external one. When he logged into it, he logged in with the username of ‘admin’ and a password of eight characters. For the particular CCTV system that he was using, I did a Google search of what is the default password for this system, and would you believe they were still using the default password? I guess you could call that hacking, but I could see the IP address, the username, and I just tried the default password,

48:16 and I was straight in. Admin123 was his password to protect this scam operation.

48:22JACK Okay, so, he got into a supervisor’s PC in a scam call center, but then from there was able

48:29 to get into the CCTV system. Now, this scam call center had a lot of cameras. [MUSIC] The supervisor could watch all the scammers do their calls and go on break and go outside, and there was even a camera in the boss’ office. But that wasn’t it. The supervisor also had the ability to listen in on the calls. In fact, all of these calls were being recorded with some software.

48:51JIM It was gold dust for me because they had records of all their calls. I could see

48:56 it on which server they were using and I could directly download these things because I had access to that scammer’s — supervisor scammer’s computer. So, I managed to download nine months’ worth of calls, about 70,000 separate calls.

49:13JACK Holy moly, 70,000 calls. Man, this is a much bigger operation than I thought. But Jim

49:21 started going through this and was able to match up some of the time codes of the CCTV footage and the recorded calls, and could essentially watch the scammers as they called these victims and listen in on the calls. It’s quite fascinating to watch because sometimes the scammers are playing video games or looking bored, but this also means he’s starting to identify what they look like, where their desk is, where they sit in the room, and how this operation looks from the inside. On top of that, on the supervisor’s PC, there was a list of victims which included the amount that was stolen from everyone and their names. It was quite a find. Just imagine having this access, being in Jim’s position. I mean, if I was in that position, I’d just put the computer down and take

50:09 a walk around the lake or something like that, right? Like, what do you do? What do you do with all this? He would open up his computer in the morning and would have live cameras of this scam call center on one monitor watching everything that was going on, and then on the other monitor he could tap into the phone calls and listen to them live as they were trying to scam victims.

50:30SCAMMER10 You’re calling support. My name is Alwin. How can I help you today?

50:35VICTIM1 I just got an important security

50:37 message. I’m making — it says my computer’s being shut down.

50:41SCAMMER10 What were you doing on the computer when you got this message?

50:50VICTIM1 [ROBOTIC MESSAGE IN BACKGROUND]

50:50SCAMMER10 Can you lower down the volume of the computer?

50:53JACK He pretty much had full supervisor access to this whole scam call center and

50:59 could watch and listen to anything. But what do you do with that access? It’s really tempting to just call them up and be like, hey, hey, I can see you, scammer. I can see you wearing a hat and playing video games. I gotcha.

51:12JIM Yeah. Oh, it was so tempting that whenever you — I mean, I am watching live

51:18 on the CCTV. I know the number that they’re using the victims to call that day. So, I can call that number and I’ll be speaking to somebody in a room that I can see on CCTV.

51:29SCAMMER11 Hello?

51:30JIM Hi. Yeah, so, what’s all this about stopped services,

51:34 then, when they should be running? I don’t get it.

51:37SCAMMER11 Yeah, sir, you’re ready to go ahead and get it

51:41 fixed? There will be a one-time charge, sir, okay?

51:45JIM [TO JACK] I don’t always know who I’m speaking to, and sometimes if the room is full,

51:49 it can be quite difficult to work out which agent. There might be twenty, thirty agents in the room, and I can’t always work out who I’m speaking with. There’s four cameras; each corner of the room’s got a camera, and what I do is actually invite the scammer onto a computer. I had my desktop background set to a purple or a green color, and then what I would do is look around the cameras and look for that green screen or that purple screen, and then — ah, right; there’s the guy. That’s who I’m talking to. Sometimes I had to do that just to work that out. The really, really tempting thing would be to say to the guy, hey, that’s a nice Chek shirt you’re wearing, or stop playing Pac-Man whenever you’re speaking to

52:34 me. You know, can you stop doing that? But I couldn’t give the game away. I couldn’t be just as obvious as that, although it was incredibly tempting to do that.

52:44JACK Yeah, and 70,000 calls with a whole list of victims here,

52:53 this is too much for one person to process all. So, what did you end up doing with this access?

52:59JIM So, I kinda figured out I was really onto something quite big at that stage,

53:05 and I thought I would bring it to the attention of more mainstream media, specifically the BBC. I had never had contact with the BBC until that point, but because I had to personally try to close down a lot of scam operations and being pretty unsuccessful about it — so, I have previously gone to the police in India to say, here’s a scam call center on your doorstep; here’s where they’re located. I was able to get that sort of information, but nothing really ever came of it. I thought, perhaps I’m going about this wrong. Perhaps what I really need is more mainstream media involved. So, I got in touch with really a general-purpose BBC e-mail address, and before too long I was reached out by a team called Panorama. Panorama are a very long-running

54:04 documentary program where they cover all sorts of current affairs issues. But this particular team were interested anyway in scam phone calls, and as soon as I get in touch and said, look, this is what I have, of course that team were very — they wanted to work with me from that point.

54:25JACK [MUSIC] The BBC has more resources than Jim. They can parse through this massive trove of data

54:30 quicker, and started putting pieces together even more. Together they built quite a detailed understanding of this whole scam operation. They figured out the name of the company, its address, who owns it, the employees who work there, and the victims, and how much money this whole place was making. Again, it was all clearly documented with the video footage and the recorded calls and the files that they got from that supervisor’s computer. They had a ton of evidence. They even reached out to the victims to let them know they were scammed.

55:01VICTIM2 I feel angry, angry and upset, angry that someone could do that knowing that there’s nothing

55:11 wrong with the computer, just to extort money from you, and upset with myself that I fell for it.

55:21JACK Well, with all this proof, it was time to learn who is leading this operation.

55:29REPORTER [MUSIC] We’ve identified the man behind the fraud,

55:33 Amit Chauhan. But Amit Chauhan’s not an ordinary businessman. The hacked footage includes recordings from the CCTV in his office. [BACKGROUND NOISE]

55:47JACK Okay, this is super interesting. There was a CCTV camera inside Amit’s office,

55:55 the head boss of this whole thing, and it’s the only camera that actually had sound on. So, there’s hundreds of hours of him talking on the phone and having meetings with people, and in those meetings he’s scheming up new ways to scam people and basically admitting to all this criminal activity on camera. It’s extraordinary. Well, with all this evidence in hand, the BBC reporter went to India to try to meet with him.

56:19REPORTER I want to meet Mr. Chauhan, but he’s away on a luxury holiday in

56:23 Thailand. [PHONE RINGING] So, I can only reach him on the phone.

56:30AMIT Hello?

56:33REPORTER Hello, is that Amit?

56:35AMIT Yes.

56:36REPORTER Hi, Amit Chauhan?

56:38AMIT Yes.

56:39REPORTER I want to get your comment, please, on allegations that you’re scamming people

56:43 in the UK out of thousands of pounds. What would you like to say to that, Mr. Chauhan?

56:50AMIT I don’t think there was any case like that.

56:54 There’s no such case. I’ll talk to my lawyer first and then we’ll get back.

56:58JACK Well, it was true; there was no such criminal case against him,

57:02 so the BBC reporter went to the police and asked, hey, why don’t you crack down on these scam call centers more seriously? Here’s what the Indian police said.

57:10POLICE This crime is a difficult crime. It’s

57:13 difficult to crack because we don’t have victim, we don’t have accused, we don’t have anything. It’s very difficult to link the accused with the victim.

57:20JACK Well, in this particular case, they did have victims, and the BBC recorded the victims’

57:26 testimony to hear how they got scammed. So, when the BBC published this story and when Jim publishes YouTube videos, it couldn’t be ignored by the police. They had victims, they had evidence, they had the address, they had the name of the boss. It was a very easy case to process. So, the Indian police raided the scam center.

57:46JIM The police did their raid. They picked up whatever computers they could. They went

57:52 to the boss’ home address, and he lived in the most luxurious accommodation you could imagine, something like $6,000 a month to rent the space, which is completely unheard of if you’re in Delhi, where he was. What I had expected was that this would be such an easy case for them, there would be no problem and ultimately the guy who ran the thing would be locked up, but that was very far from the truth. What actually happened was — number one, it took about a year for the trial to even come up, then COVID kicked in, so it was delayed by another year, but eventually whenever the case did go to trial, the police never actually followed up on any of the evidence that was given to them or that they had collected. So, they had scripts about scams

58:50 from the boss’ computer, but they didn’t, for example, follow the money trail from the victims to the boss. So, they could very easily — if they had any kind of incentive to do so, they could have easily gone to PayPal and say, we need evidence about what happened with this particular PayPal account. They never asked for that. They never followed up on any of the thing — in fact, what they actually relied on was the one laptop that they managed to pick up.

59:23 Obviously because the documentary had gone out, the YouTube video had gone out, all of the computers were immediately wiped before the police actually arrived. So, they only really had one laptop to go on, and that wasn’t enough for them. Any of the independent evidence of scams, the 70,000 phone calls, the video footage of the scams actually happening, was never presented.

59:50 In fact, what they said was, well, that YouTube footage could have been done by AI or that YouTube footage could have been faked. There was — and it looked like the judge just accepted that. So, there was no pressure whatsoever to present anything which linked the boss to any of that scam victim money, and that is just a travesty because I couldn’t have handed it on a plate any more clearly to the police — or indeed, the BBC could have handed the same evidence to the police. But the police never came to speak to me, never came to speak to the BBC or follow up with any of the evidence that I had presented in the video whatsoever. They just didn’t bother. I can only imagine that’s for one of two reasons. One is they’re desperately incompetent or — and which I

1:00:50 think is the more likely reason — they’ve been paid off, because the guy who was in charge of this is the equivalent of a multi-millionaire as a result of those scams, and unfortunately in India, corruption is rife. So, I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine that’s what happened.

1:01:09JACK Well, there you go. That’s disappointing. Indian authorities seem to not care about scam

1:01:19 centers there. It’s illegal but they say they can’t prosecute unless they have the victims, and since the victims are far away in another country, they just don’t have enough evidence. But even when the police are given the evidence wrapped up with a bow by Jim and the BBC and are even introduced to the victims, they still don’t take serious action on this. So, despite Jim’s huge efforts of dismantling this whole industry, it looks to me, at least, that it’s only gonna keep growing since these criminals can scam victims all day with impunity. [TO JIM] Are there situations — I mean, you’ve been doing this for nine years now, and this probably was one of them where you had this huge database of victims and all this camera footage and stuff. Are there

1:02:12 other situations where you have to just do a long stare out a window and take a walk around the lake or something wherever you’re — and just think about, what do I do with this situation I’m in?

1:02:24JIM Yeah. Honestly…

1:02:26JACK What are some of the difficult questions that you

1:02:28 have to — you’re answering — asking yourself?

1:02:31JIM Well, I mean, we’ve covered the moral one and I never have a problem with that one for

1:02:38 the reason I’ve just described, but equally — it’s actually quite harrowing listening to victims actually getting scammed, because there have been times that I have tried to intervene, and I’ll have gone as far as — because the scammers typically are on the phone with the victims all the time, to their cell phone, and they’re going out to buy giftcards or they’re going out to a Bitcoin ATM, and the only way that I can try to get that scam stopped is if I can warn a neighbor. If I know they’re going to a certain giftcard store, I will call that store and say, this person is about to come in. Here’s their name. They’re about to buy $500 worth of giftcards. Could you please stop them?

1:03:28 It’s incredibly difficult to watch when stores, for example, warn the victim, but they — unfortunately they trust the scammer more than the person in the store talking to them, and it can be very difficult to listen to that. I’ve had people go to a Bitcoin ATM; the store manager has tapped them on the shoulder and said, you’re being scammed. That person who says they’re from Customs are not who they say they are, and if you put money into that Bitcoin ATM, you are going to lose it. They’ve actually explained that they’re being scammed, but yet they trust the scammer more and they’ve moved onto the next Bitcoin ATM. I’ve had that happen right in front of me, and it’s incredibly difficult to watch that because that could be my grandmother,

1:04:21 my grandfather, your parents. It’s someone’s relative, yet you can’t do anything about it. You try your best, but there are some people who are just going to be scammed. There’s very little that can be done about it, and that is very hard to listen to. It is very hard to watch it.

1:04:38JACK Can I just do one last quick question?

1:04:40JIM Sure, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

1:04:42JACK Have you ever visited India or do you ever plan to go?

1:04:45JIM Actually, I would love to see India, and I’m honest about that because — and I’ve spoken with

1:04:52 Karl Rock, sort of my partner-in-crime when it comes to all the drone footage and so on, and I actually admire India as a country, and I’m not just saying this to kind of justify me slagging off people in India when they’re scamming. This is a country that I genuinely would like to see, and I do intend to go there. I will be at some point in Delhi. The nice thing about my YouTube channel is I don’t show my face, so I’m not that scared about going. I probably would stand out a little bit if I went to Kolkata or Calcutta, but Delhi I think would be quite a place that I could easily go to.

1:05:46 (OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] A big thank-you to Jim Browning for coming on the show and telling us all about the scambaiting he’s been doing. You can watch all his videos on YouTube by just searching for Jim Browning. This episode was created by me, the fickle finger, Jack Rhysider, and this episode was edited by the wisdom feather, Tristan Ledger, mixing done by Proximity Sound, and our theme music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Someone asked me the other day, what’s an Ethernet? I said, oh, that’s what you use to catch the Ether Bunny. This is Darknet Diaries.