and they are master manipulators and they will scam you and fool you why did you want to write the book and keep advocating for romance scam

I think I'd never heard a story like this.

I, of course, heard about people losing money to scams, but they seemed very stereotypical, far-fetched stories that were about people that I couldn't relate to.

It wasn't somebody that looked like me in terms of...

You know, it was always presented as a lonely, uneducated, middle-aged woman who's looking for love on the internet, and suddenly she sends all of her money across to a foreign prince.

And I just thought, that would never happen to me.

You know, and I guess we all think we're probably less vulnerable than we are, smarter than we are.

What's your money

and they are master manipulators and they will scam you and fool you why did you want to write the book and keep advocating for romance scam

I think I'd never heard a story like this.

I, of course, heard about people losing money to scams, but they seemed very stereotypical, far-fetched stories that were about people that I couldn't relate to.

It wasn't somebody that looked like me in terms of...

You know, it was always presented as a lonely, uneducated, middle-aged woman who's looking for love on the internet, and suddenly she sends all of her money across to a foreign prince.

And I just thought, that would never happen to me.

You know, and I guess we all think we're probably less vulnerable than we are, smarter than we are.

What's your money

and they are master manipulators and they will scam you and fool you why did you want to write the book and keep advocating for romance scam

I think I'd never heard a story like this.

I, of course, heard about people losing money to scams, but they seemed very stereotypical, far-fetched stories that were about people that I couldn't relate to.

It wasn't somebody that looked like me in terms of...

You know, it was always presented as a lonely, uneducated, middle-aged woman who's looking for love on the internet, and suddenly she sends all of her money across to a foreign prince.

And I just thought, that would never happen to me.

You know, and I guess we all think we're probably less vulnerable than we are, smarter than we are.

What's your money

and they are master manipulators and they will scam you and fool you why did you want to write the book and keep advocating for romance scam

I think I'd never heard a story like this.

I, of course, heard about people losing money to scams, but they seemed very stereotypical, far-fetched stories that were about people that I couldn't relate to.

It wasn't somebody that looked like me in terms of...

You know, it was always presented as a lonely, uneducated, middle-aged woman who's looking for love on the internet, and suddenly she sends all of her money across to a foreign prince.

And I just thought, that would never happen to me.

You know, and I guess we all think we're probably less vulnerable than we are, smarter than we are.

What's your money

In our efforts to turn this into some level of education to help preventing it happening to others, can you walk us through your understanding of what sophisticated scammers target to build your trust? And I would imagine it's a step-by-step process.

It is.

It does generally happen slowly and methodically and with calculation.

There's manipulation.

In most cases, most stories we hear, it starts small.

So they'll build your trust by something small, and it may not even be money.

They may even give you money or give you a gift.

What would you say are the clearest red flags in a romantic context, in a business context, in a digital context that tell you something's off?

in that regard.

There have been a lot of things that have been put in place as digital scams have kind of exploded whereby the banks and the telcos and some of the digital platforms are working together to extract those bad actors before they kind of even begin.

Yeah.

For example, we have a thing in Australia in our banking called confirmation of payee.

And that is if you do an online payment to somebody else when you put in their account details and then you actually have to put the name of the account, you click a button and it tells you whether that matches or not.

Now, if it doesn't match... then it comes up and says, this is not a matched account.

You might want to double check it.

But there are, well, there are some people out there that are really trying very hard to get the government to wake up and hopefully sooner than later we can do that.

Um, tell me about what that code was supposed to fix and, and where you think the gaps are now.

Yeah, I mean, there's still so many gaps, and this is my issue, is that 10 years on after I was deceived through meeting a fake profile or a fake identity on a dating app, nothing's changed.

The issues are still the same.

And yes, there are some safety features that the platforms have implemented, but in my opinion, they're tissue thin.

You know, they are so easy to manipulate and weaponize by criminals or bad actors.

It is not hard to be anyone you want to be on a dating app.

Fake name, fake date of birth, fake email address, fake profile, fake everything, and that's very dangerous for people on these apps who are, you know, looking for genuine connection and, and love.

So how often is this happening? To what extent are dating apps being used as a source for people to find potential victims to scam?

Unless you fall under an exception, if you plead guilty to an offense, the discounts are as follows: 25% if you plead guilty in the Local Court, 10% if you plead guilty up to 14 days before your trial is set down to start, and lastly, 5% if you plead guilty less than 14 days before your trial is set down to start or during the trial." End quote.

quote.My reaction and the reaction of all of the victims and the media that were in the court that day, and it was absolutely jam-packed, I was in disbelief.

I had in my mind a number much, much smaller than that.

Law enforcement had given us an indication of what it might be so that we could set our expectations.

When the judge read out that it was 16 years, we realized how huge that was.

I believe that the police and law enforcement did an incredible job pulling together the information and getting him the biggest sentence possible.

I just got this tunnel vision.

That's Q-U-I-N-C-E .com/wcn for free shipping and three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day returns, quince.com/wcn.

[gentle music]

My name is Tracy Hall.

These days, I am an author, a speaker, an educator, and an advocate for victims of scams and fraud, particularly intimate fraud.

But prior to that, I spent 25 years in corporate marketing, mostly working for US-based tech companies.

That was my career before a significant life event changed what I do for a living.

I'm a child of the '70s, middle class Australia.

I had a very stable nuclear family, I guess you could say, if you had to describe it.

See Mint Mobile for details.

It seems like he set you up to be the lesser, even though you are obviously so successful and smart in your own right.

I felt like there could have been a bigger opportunity is how it was sort of positioned.

And again, it was so patient and slow.

And in between all of this was a lot of very beautiful conversation.

It was very encouraging.

Things like, Tracey, you're the hardest working person I know.

You deserve to be financially independent.

Yeah, it

When I talk digital crime, when I talk AI-driven, what are we talking about? And also on a global scale with these syndicates that operate.

Well, it's true because we're dealing with transnational organised crime at an industrial level.

So that means across border, across every jurisdiction, you have organised crime syndicates.

that are operating businesses, scam businesses, to fool the world out of what is currently about $1 trillion a year.

Far greater than the whole global illicit drug trade, far more profitable, and it's operated digitally.

And because everything's gone to digital, it makes it very easy.

So we had a joke last year when we spoke is that, you know, you can't even come into this country with an Apple.

There's another particular crime that in our discussions you were talking about, and I refer to it as the Yahoo Boys, but this is when we're talking consequences of crime, have a listen to what's happening here and the concerns that we all should have that we all know young children and the exploitation of children through this crime.