What if you could stop a scam in real-time before the damage is done? In this episode, I’m joined by Nick Stapleton, an investigative journalist and the face behind Scam Interceptors, the BAFTA award-winning BBC series that exposes online fraud and steps in to protect victims as scams unfold.
Nick brings a decade of undercover documentary experience to his current mission: fighting digital deception and empowering everyday people to stay safe. He shares jaw-dropping stories from the front lines, including the near miss that almost caught him off guard, and breaks down the complex operations behind everything from romance scams to global scam compounds.
As the author of How to Beat Scammers, Nick also gives practical advice on how to recognize red flags and build your own defense against a rising tide of fraud.
Show Notes:
- [01:06] Nick presents a show called scam interceptors for the BBC. He also does scam advice on a chat show called Morning Live. He also wrote a self-help book about How To Beat Scammers.
- [01:59] We learn how Nick got into the space. He began in investigative journalism and hidden camera work and now 5 years later Scam Interceptors is his full-time job.
- [06:17] He came very close to becoming a victim of a scam, because a lot of scammers try to get him.
- [14:30] About 300,000 accounts a day get hacked on Meta.
- [15:10] There are things you can enable on Meta to help protect your account.
- [16:43] In the UK scammers rarely go to prison.
- [17:18] When he first started the series the scale of some of the scam operations out there really shocked him.
- [18:43] There can be 200 people working in a scam call center.
- [20:52] A lot of the people who run pig butchering scams are indentured slaves.
- [24:12] They would even hire models to have video conversations with potential scam victims.
- [25:22] Why local governments don't break up these scam centers.
- [26:38] It's difficult to motivate the authorities when the victims aren't from that country.
- [29:21] APP refunds in the UK. In most cases we need to be aware and protect ourselves.
- [30:52] Assume everything out of the blue is fake. Come from a position of skepticism.
- [35:04] When investigations go wrong filming the show and they lose people to scams.
- [39:10] When the show first began, sometimes the people they were trying to stop from being scammed thought they were the scammer.
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