Chris Thompson, Senior Investigator with the BC Securities Commission, to unpack the growing problem of "pig butchering" scams. Chris explains how fraudsters build trust over time, manipulating victims into draining their savings through elaborate schemes—many involving crypto transfers, fake platforms, and recovery scams. With stories of unsuspecting victims and shocking insights into how organized these global fraud networks are, this conversation is an essential wake-up call for anyone involved in financial transactions or working with vulnerable clients. Chris emphasizes the importance of vigilance, asking questions, and recognizing red flags like sudden large financial withdrawals or out-of-character transactions. Whether you're a frontline real estate agent, mortgage broker, or financial professional, staying aware of these indicators can help stop fraud before it starts.

Key Takeaways:

• Fraudsters coach victims on what to say to avoid raising red flags with financial institutions or advisors.
• Victims are often targeted during periods of emotional vulnerability, such as after a loss, divorce, or job change.
• Scammers manipulate online banking and crypto accounts, showing fake balances to gain trust.
• Pig butchering scams are sophisticated operations with HR departments, scripts, and extensive infrastructure.
• Always verify investment opportunities through trusted, registered sources and question any suspicious transactions.

About the Guest

Learn More about Christ at: https://www.bcsc.bc.ca/guardians/meet-our-enforcement-staff-investigator-chris-thompson

Connect with Greg and ReallyTrusted at:

https://reallytrusted.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ReallyTrusted/

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Greg Dent: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Know Your

Greg Dent: 00:00:03

Compliance podcast. I am excited to be having another

Greg Dent: 00:00:07

conversation. This is our first return guest, and I've brought

Greg Dent: 00:00:12

Mr. Chris Thompson back this time in his official capacity as

Greg Dent: 00:00:17

a senior investigator with the BC Securities Commission. So

Greg Dent: 00:00:22

Chris, welcome back.

Chris Thompson: 00:00:23

Thank you. Good to be good to be back at my

Chris Thompson: 00:00:25

kitchen table again, back at your kitchen table, talking

Chris Thompson: 00:00:28

about all sorts of geeky compliance topics. I love it.

Chris Thompson: 00:00:31

I'm also one of Greg's nerdy friends. It was like, I have all

Chris Thompson: 00:00:33

my own gear. Let's use it. Okay.

Greg Dent: 00:00:36

And my editor loves it, really. Love Oh, awesome.

Greg Dent: 00:00:39

All right. I was being sarcastic. Oh, okay.

Chris Thompson: 00:00:42

Like, really, I can't stand it.

Greg Dent: 00:00:46

No, I So today's topic is going to be pig

Greg Dent: 00:00:48

butcher, and we're going to, we'll delve into that in a

Greg Dent: 00:00:51

second. But let's, we kind of only touched last time on your

Greg Dent: 00:00:55

background. So let's, let's give people another couple of words

Greg Dent: 00:00:57

just to better understand who you are and why you're able to

Greg Dent: 00:01:00

speak to this topic. I think.

Chris Thompson: 00:01:01

Yeah. So I got the thumbs up from work to talk

Chris Thompson: 00:01:03

about this, because this is something we deal with, like all

Chris Thompson: 00:01:05

day, every day, kind of thing. So I worked for the BC

Chris Thompson: 00:01:08

Securities Commission. I've worked there since May of 2016

Chris Thompson: 00:01:12

before that, I was a lawyer for a while. I did a few years of

Chris Thompson: 00:01:14

tax law, which was pretty interesting. I did four months

Chris Thompson: 00:01:16

of divorce law, which was the worst four months of my entire

Chris Thompson: 00:01:19

life. And then long, long time ago, is also, also a financial

Chris Thompson: 00:01:24

advisor. And one of the reasons I got into financial crime,

Chris Thompson: 00:01:27

actually, was that one of our clients at the time in the in

Chris Thompson: 00:01:30

the advisor space was, was someone who had been victimized

Chris Thompson: 00:01:33

of about $120,000

Greg Dent: 00:01:35

okay?

Chris Thompson: 00:01:35

And it was thinking, You know what, if

Chris Thompson: 00:01:36

you're like, if you get mugged, or you get your wallet stolen,

Chris Thompson: 00:01:39

like, as long you know, the bruises will heal and you can

Chris Thompson: 00:01:41

kind of go about your life, but if you but if you get your

Chris Thompson: 00:01:43

retirement funds stolen, you're hooked like that. Is a life

Chris Thompson: 00:01:46

changing experience, a massive problem, sure, yeah. And so that

Chris Thompson: 00:01:49

sort of got me interested in financial crime. And then I did,

Chris Thompson: 00:01:53

I did an informational interview with someone that I met through

Chris Thompson: 00:01:56

one of my mom's neighbors. My mom's neighbor worked in

Chris Thompson: 00:01:58

financial crime. She put me in touch with someone who's an

Chris Thompson: 00:02:00

investigator at the commission, okay? And it was, it was really

Chris Thompson: 00:02:03

interesting. She said, like, look, we want people that are

Chris Thompson: 00:02:05

interested in the industry. We want people that are that are

Chris Thompson: 00:02:08

interested in and passionate about this type of thing, but

Chris Thompson: 00:02:11

you just don't have the experience we need, either

Chris Thompson: 00:02:12

accountants or lawyers. I was like, Well, okay, fair enough.

Chris Thompson: 00:02:15

Thanks for your time. Went back to law school when I was 30, got

Chris Thompson: 00:02:18

out worked in private practice for a while, realized it was

Chris Thompson: 00:02:20

terrible. And, long story short, I went back to the I went to the

Chris Thompson: 00:02:24

commission. Interesting opened up. So, yeah, so you kind of, I

Chris Thompson: 00:02:27

didn't, I don't think I knew this, that you actually went

Chris Thompson: 00:02:30

back to law school somewhat to possibly end up in in this kind

Chris Thompson: 00:02:33

of a role, or at least with this in the back of your mind, as a

Chris Thompson: 00:02:36

possibility that would exist as a result of that. Yeah. I mean,

Chris Thompson: 00:02:38

I never, I didn't directly think, like, I'll take my law

Chris Thompson: 00:02:43

degree to go to the commission, yeah, but my, my boss, at the

Chris Thompson: 00:02:46

time, paid for me to go to these this, like, workplace

Chris Thompson: 00:02:48

suitability consulting thing. Okay, so I did a bunch of tests.

Chris Thompson: 00:02:51

They did this big report on me that said I should either be a

Chris Thompson: 00:02:54

financial analyst, a university professor or a lawyer. And so,

Chris Thompson: 00:02:59

financial analyst, I think it's all just voodoo. They just make

Chris Thompson: 00:03:01

stuff up and throw against the wall. Quite no offense to

Chris Thompson: 00:03:04

financial analysts out there. They've all turned off the show.

Chris Thompson: 00:03:06

Now, talk to a university professor who's like, Don't

Chris Thompson: 00:03:11

bother the competitions too much, and it's not really that

Chris Thompson: 00:03:13

much fun. And then so law school it was. So I got into UBC law

Chris Thompson: 00:03:16

and just kind of ran with it. That's fun. Yeah. So BC

Chris Thompson: 00:03:20

Securities Commission,

Chris Thompson: 00:03:22

maybe give us like a two second, 22nd whatever, what does? What

Chris Thompson: 00:03:27

do they do? Like, I know, protecting the public is first

Chris Thompson: 00:03:31

and foremost, but what does that look like? Give us a quick

Chris Thompson: 00:03:34

version of that, and then we'll delve into pig veteran, sure. So

Chris Thompson: 00:03:36

in general, we regulate the investment market in BC and in

Chris Thompson: 00:03:40

Canada, investments are provincially regulated, so all

Chris Thompson: 00:03:43

of the provinces have their own securities regulator. So there's

Chris Thompson: 00:03:46

a few different aspects to what we do. There's the there's parts

Chris Thompson: 00:03:49

of the BC Securities Commission that deal with companies raising

Chris Thompson: 00:03:52

money, and not that they've done anything illegal. They're just

Chris Thompson: 00:03:55

trying to get they're trying to raise funds via equity or debt

Chris Thompson: 00:03:58

or whatever. We take people's prospectuses. We review the

Chris Thompson: 00:04:01

prospectuses. We we don't draft the laws. That's parliament, but

Chris Thompson: 00:04:07

we basically enforce them, and that's the enforcement. So

Chris Thompson: 00:04:09

that's me. So the ninth floor, we're all but we're I call it

Chris Thompson: 00:04:12

the Goon Squad, even though none of us look like goons, we're all

Chris Thompson: 00:04:15

lawyers and accountants. You don't get a badge, though,

Chris Thompson: 00:04:17

right? Yeah, some of us have badges, yeah, yeah. Some of us

Chris Thompson: 00:04:19

are special provincial constables. We don't get guns,

Chris Thompson: 00:04:21

so everyone asks like, No. And so enforcement, where I work is

Chris Thompson: 00:04:26

generally a reactive division, because what happens is

Chris Thompson: 00:04:30

complaints come into the commission, and if they're

Chris Thompson: 00:04:33

enforcement related, they'll come down to enforcement, and

Chris Thompson: 00:04:35

then we investigate them. Generally. How it works, I work

Chris Thompson: 00:04:38

in the detection assessment and disruption team, so we do more

Chris Thompson: 00:04:42

proactive steps. There's been a couple cases where we've either

Chris Thompson: 00:04:45

found stuff online or kind of been contacted by friends, like,

Chris Thompson: 00:04:51

I've had a couple friends of mine say, like, hey, is this a

Chris Thompson: 00:04:53

scam? Right? Yes, if you have to ask me, I've never, I have not

Chris Thompson: 00:04:58

yet in the eight and a half years I've been working with.

Chris Thompson: 00:04:59

Commission, I have not found a case where someone has asked me,

Chris Thompson: 00:05:02

Is this a scam? And the answer was no, that's awesome.

Chris Thompson: 00:05:06

There's actually two. But one, I have a also 100% track record of

Chris Thompson: 00:05:10

people asking me about stocks, and those stocks going to

Chris Thompson: 00:05:13

effectively zero. Okay, so if you're asking me about stuff,

Chris Thompson: 00:05:17

yeah, yeah, unless it's like, Chris, should I invest in index

Chris Thompson: 00:05:20

funds. Yeah, that's probably a good plan.

Greg Dent: 00:05:21

I was gonna say, I Dare I ask, like, money in a

Greg Dent: 00:05:26

Vanguard fund.

Chris Thompson: 00:05:27

I think I think you'll be okay, yeah, so do i

Chris Thompson: 00:05:30

That's

Greg Dent: 00:05:31

all right, all right. So that's really cool. And then

Greg Dent: 00:05:36

so protecting the public kind of dealing with that incoming

Greg Dent: 00:05:39

information.

Greg Dent: 00:05:39

And then, I guess top turning to today's topic, where does pig

Chris Thompson: 00:05:42

I was gonna make a bacon joke, which beat me to

Chris Thompson: 00:05:45

it. There you go. Well, it's interesting. A lot of people

Chris Thompson: 00:05:45

butchering fit into all of that? And let's, let's maybe start

Chris Thompson: 00:05:48

haven't heard the term. I did a podcast on it a while ago for

Chris Thompson: 00:05:48

with a definition, because it sounds really cool. I really

Chris Thompson: 00:05:52

like bacon and pork chops, all right.

Chris Thompson: 00:05:52

the International Association of financial crimes investigators,

Chris Thompson: 00:05:56

and I told my wife, Anna, that I was going to do podcast on pig

Chris Thompson: 00:06:00

butchering. She's like, What? Like, what do you mean? What? We

Chris Thompson: 00:06:04

have lived together for over a decade. This is all what I do

Chris Thompson: 00:06:07

all day, every day, and she didn't know what it was. It's

Chris Thompson: 00:06:11

essentially luring investors into investing in fraudulent

Chris Thompson: 00:06:15

schemes via online relationships. Okay, that's,

Chris Thompson: 00:06:18

that's sort of kind of my definition of it, where it comes

Chris Thompson: 00:06:21

from, where the actual term pig butchering comes from. It's a

Chris Thompson: 00:06:25

Chinese phrase shazu pan, which literally translates to

Chris Thompson: 00:06:28

something like killing pig plate. I didn't make up the

Chris Thompson: 00:06:32

term. We didn't make up the term, but what it is, is the

Chris Thompson: 00:06:35

process of, sort of fattening up a pig for slaughter. And we get

Chris Thompson: 00:06:39

into it a little bit in more detail later. But really, you're

Chris Thompson: 00:06:43

you get an initial investment from from a victim, through

Chris Thompson: 00:06:47

whatever means, and then that, that initial investment looks

Chris Thompson: 00:06:50

like it's growing. And then you, you can pay a little bit of

Chris Thompson: 00:06:54

money out back to the investor to give them the idea that, hey,

Chris Thompson: 00:06:58

this is a legit investment. There's real money there. And

Chris Thompson: 00:07:02

then that induces the investor to put in more and more money,

Chris Thompson: 00:07:05

which is sort of fatting The pig bit. And then when the when the

Chris Thompson: 00:07:09

whole thing collapses, or they think they're not going to get

Chris Thompson: 00:07:13

any more money from the person, that's the sort of slaughter

Chris Thompson: 00:07:17

part, right? And so there that's, that's where the term

Chris Thompson: 00:07:20

pig butchering comes from.

Greg Dent: 00:07:22

So there's often a layer of, like, a bit of a

Greg Dent: 00:07:24

pyramid scheme worked into there, potentially, like, if

Greg Dent: 00:07:27

there's some money going back to the investor, it's helpful to

Greg Dent: 00:07:29

have other money coming in. And,

Chris Thompson: 00:07:32

yeah, yeah, I guess you could say that, yeah,

Chris Thompson: 00:07:33

yeah, yeah.

Greg Dent: 00:07:36

Okay. So, So, generally speaking, fraud that

Greg Dent: 00:07:40

is over a long period of time that's kind of slowly growing

Greg Dent: 00:07:45

the amount and then getting to some sort of denouement, for

Greg Dent: 00:07:49

lack of a better word, where there's going to be a massive

Greg Dent: 00:07:51

amount of money taken at the end, kind of thing, or along the

Greg Dent: 00:07:55

way something. It's always along the way. The types of cases we

Greg Dent: 00:07:59

see are, for some reason, it's all it's 250 us. It's usually

Greg Dent: 00:08:03

the initial investment we see, okay, tons of those. And because

Greg Dent: 00:08:08

most people like, Oh, 250 bucks, even if this is a scam, I'm only

Greg Dent: 00:08:10

out 250 bucks. Pretty small, whatever, yeah.

Chris Thompson: 00:08:17

$250 on some random investment platform, and

Chris Thompson: 00:08:31

then it'll grow to 10,000 and they'll be like, Oh, this is,

Chris Thompson: 00:08:34

this is awesome. Can I put some more money? And then they'll

Chris Thompson: 00:08:37

put, oh, yeah, you can. You can go to tier two of whatever

Chris Thompson: 00:08:41

investment program, if you invest, if you have $25,000

Chris Thompson: 00:08:44

invested, so they'll send another 15 grand, right? And

Chris Thompson: 00:08:46

then over time, they'll send, you know, a tramp, bank

Chris Thompson: 00:08:48

transfers or crypto transfers of 1020, $50,000 until they've

Chris Thompson: 00:08:53

invested however much money. I mean, we've seen anything up to,

Chris Thompson: 00:08:56

I think my record is about 2.1 million. Whoa. Uh, yeah, that

Chris Thompson: 00:09:00

was a that was a big one. And then when you try and get your

Chris Thompson: 00:09:04

money out, that's when the fees start. It's like, okay, well,

Chris Thompson: 00:09:07

you know, Mr. Dent, we were happy to process your withdrawal

Chris Thompson: 00:09:10

of $100,000 but what you have to do this is, as you know, in

Chris Thompson: 00:09:13

Canada, you have to pay tax, taxes 43.7% so you have to pay

Chris Thompson: 00:09:17

us 43.7% of the of the gains before you can withdraw your

Chris Thompson: 00:09:20

money, and then that's where the sort of Slaughtery bit part

Chris Thompson: 00:09:24

starts, because someone's like, well, what? That's not how it

Chris Thompson: 00:09:25

works. Well, no, I'm sorry. Like, that's the law. You have

Chris Thompson: 00:09:27

to pay tax. You can't just not play tax. Mr. Dent. And then so

Chris Thompson: 00:09:31

they get the tax, and there's another fee, and then there's a

Chris Thompson: 00:09:34

wire transfer fee, and then the wire transfer gets stuck, and so

Chris Thompson: 00:09:36

there's this unending series of fees, just as so the scammers

Chris Thompson: 00:09:40

can get as much money via money out of you as they can. And then

Chris Thompson: 00:09:44

at some point, the person's like, f this. This is a scam.

Chris Thompson: 00:09:47

And then the scammers are like, okay, and then they stop

Chris Thompson: 00:09:50

contact. But then the recovery room scammers start so what

Chris Thompson: 00:09:53

happens is this, the initial scammers take your information.

Chris Thompson: 00:09:57

Oh, Greg dent invested $280,000 Is on such and such dates, and

Chris Thompson: 00:10:01

they'll send it to a different group of scammers who will call

Chris Thompson: 00:10:03

you up and say, Mr. Dent, my name is Chris Thompson. I'm with

Chris Thompson: 00:10:05

the blockchain association of of of North Kentucky, I don't know,

Chris Thompson: 00:10:13

whatever. Yeah, sure, yeah. Or the UK. Now they'll make it

Chris Thompson: 00:10:17

legitimate, though. I'm with the blockchain association of UK,

Chris Thompson: 00:10:19

and he'll call you from a UK number which is, of course,

Chris Thompson: 00:10:22

spoofed. Yeah, we've recently arrested the people at scam coin

Chris Thompson: 00:10:25

Comm, and I understand you invested $280,000 so we rated a

Chris Thompson: 00:10:29

call center. We've seized a bunch of Bitcoin, and we like to

Chris Thompson: 00:10:31

get your money back. And the investors are like, Oh my god,

Chris Thompson: 00:10:33

really. Well, this is amazing. Yeah. So what did he did? To do?

Chris Thompson: 00:10:37

I need you to set up, set up a wallet at the such and such a

Chris Thompson: 00:10:40

crypto company, and just send a link payment of 2.7% of the

Chris Thompson: 00:10:45

value recovered. And then that'll confirm your account,

Chris Thompson: 00:10:47

and then we'll send the money over, wow. And then, so then

Chris Thompson: 00:10:50

there's darkies and what? Yeah. And it just keeps on going. That

Chris Thompson: 00:10:54

is dark so

Greg Dent: 00:10:57

now you've, you've just given us a couple of

Greg Dent: 00:10:59

examples that we're mostly focused on crypto, yeah. And I

Greg Dent: 00:11:03

think, generally speaking, in my kind of loose knowledge, crypto

Greg Dent: 00:11:08

is a fairly frequent version of that. But this doesn't have to

Greg Dent: 00:11:11

be crypto, correct?

Chris Thompson: 00:11:12

Yeah, yeah. We see a lot of bank transfers as

Chris Thompson: 00:11:14

well. Okay, there's a kind of one or many money laundering

Chris Thompson: 00:11:19

networks, I mean, or there's many money laundering networks

Chris Thompson: 00:11:22

around the world, but we've seen kind of the same bank accounts

Chris Thompson: 00:11:25

show up time and again in a number of in a number of these

Chris Thompson: 00:11:29

cases. And so that's a term called Money mule. So a money

Chris Thompson: 00:11:32

mule is someone who either intentionally or unintentionally

Chris Thompson: 00:11:35

lets their bank account be used by nefarious parties. And so, I

Chris Thompson: 00:11:40

mean, we've, we've done a few meal visits, there have been

Chris Thompson: 00:11:42

press releases, and we've done news about this. So I can, I can

Chris Thompson: 00:11:44

talk about it where we have a number of cases people invest in

Chris Thompson: 00:11:49

scam coming.com it's, I mean, that's not an actual site. I

Chris Thompson: 00:11:52

mean it, well, it is, but there's nothing there I looked

Chris Thompson: 00:11:54

so I just say, we can continue to use that, whoever, whatever,

Chris Thompson: 00:11:57

random owner of that can, I don't know. I'll buy it off you

Chris Thompson: 00:12:01

if you have but so whoever's invested in scamcoin.com

Chris Thompson: 00:12:05

sometimes they'll say, Yeah, send a wire transfer to such and

Chris Thompson: 00:12:08

such a person, and it's like some company in Richmond or a

Chris Thompson: 00:12:12

guy in Burnaby or whatever, right? And so we see those bank

Chris Thompson: 00:12:15

transfers, and then we throw on a list, and we're like, you know

Chris Thompson: 00:12:18

what? We're gonna go see this person. We'll talk to this

Chris Thompson: 00:12:20

person, because they're a real human, yeah, in the Vancouver

Chris Thompson: 00:12:23

area, yeah. And so we talked to a bunch of them, and now the

Chris Thompson: 00:12:26

problem is, at least for Securities Act purposes, we

Chris Thompson: 00:12:29

can't prosecute them for anything, because our provisions

Chris Thompson: 00:12:32

require at least some level of knowledge of what's going on.

Chris Thompson: 00:12:35

And in some cases, they just had no idea. Like there was, I

Chris Thompson: 00:12:38

talked to one person who received like, $2,000 or

Chris Thompson: 00:12:41

something like that. And she was like, Yeah, I make wigs, and I

Chris Thompson: 00:12:45

sold a wig, and that was the payment. Like, Well, okay, and

Chris Thompson: 00:12:51

it was just sort of this confluence of factors that

Chris Thompson: 00:12:53

somehow a scammer needed a wig and directed the payment from

Chris Thompson: 00:12:57

the victim to, like, the wig maker. And now the scammer has.

Chris Thompson: 00:13:00

So somewhere around here, there's someone that's quasi

Chris Thompson: 00:13:02

related to a scammer with a $2,000 wig.

Greg Dent: 00:13:05

Oh, weird. So like, the the actual commercial

Greg Dent: 00:13:08

transaction there, I don't know if that's the right market value

Greg Dent: 00:13:11

for a wig, but let's assume a wig is worth $2,000

Chris Thompson: 00:13:14

that person literally did nothing wrong.

Chris Thompson: 00:13:16

They just were selling their wares. Yeah? And now I don't

Chris Thompson: 00:13:20

know if, I mean, I could say, like, yeah, maybe she should

Chris Thompson: 00:13:23

check ID. But I don't know how many of us have sold something

Chris Thompson: 00:13:26

on Craigslist and, like, No, dude, if you show up with the

Chris Thompson: 00:13:28

amount of money, matches the ad and whatever, here's the widget.

Chris Thompson: 00:13:31

Yeah, I just never, I just sold some tires off of Facebook

Chris Thompson: 00:13:34

marketplace. Like, I took 300 bucks that. Like, I don't care,

Chris Thompson: 00:13:37

I don't know. Yeah, right. Like, dusting cocaine off the head

Chris Thompson: 00:13:42

bills as you give them to me, I'm kind of okay with it. Yeah?

Chris Thompson: 00:13:45

So there's some of those situations where these people

Chris Thompson: 00:13:48

are just completely unwitting mules, right? Then there's the

Chris Thompson: 00:13:52

spectrum of sort of people in the middle where it's like, oh

Chris Thompson: 00:13:54

yeah, I gave my passport to my buddy, and I guess I've never

Chris Thompson: 00:13:58

seen this bank account, yeah?

Greg Dent: 00:13:59

Well, and I mean, if I like, if I can tie this back

Greg Dent: 00:14:02

to an episode, a previous episode of our show, there's

Greg Dent: 00:14:05

probably an element of human trafficking, where there's

Greg Dent: 00:14:07

people who are victims, whose accounts are being used for

Greg Dent: 00:14:12

money mulling purposes as well. Would be a, yeah, that's another

Greg Dent: 00:14:15

one the there's victims of the of the scams, and the scam

Greg Dent: 00:14:18

doesn't say, Okay, well, if you want to start making your money

Greg Dent: 00:14:20

back, oh, you can help us with with some of our money

Greg Dent: 00:14:24

transfers. And so victims of scams will allow their bank

Greg Dent: 00:14:27

accounts to be used to send money to and from another.

Greg Dent: 00:14:30

People get some of their money back, maybe, but, yeah, they'll

Greg Dent: 00:14:32

get, you know, 5% of each cut or something. And so, like the

Greg Dent: 00:14:38

banks are sort of aware to this, in that, you know, they have

Greg Dent: 00:14:41

their their fraud detection systems. And if there's large

Greg Dent: 00:14:43

amounts of wire transfers coming in and out, especially to and

Greg Dent: 00:14:46

from strange jurisdictions, I mean it, I have to keep in mind

Greg Dent: 00:14:51

that I only see like to me, it just seems obvious. But again,

Greg Dent: 00:14:54

the problem is I don't see everyone else's bank account. I

Greg Dent: 00:14:57

just see the bank accounts of people who are already. Dealing

Greg Dent: 00:15:00

with this mighty mule stuff. So I don't know how many bank

Greg Dent: 00:15:02

accounts are are out there that look like that for people that

Greg Dent: 00:15:05

aren't laundering money. So to me, it seems obvious. It's like,

Greg Dent: 00:15:08

Well, duh, there's these wire transfers, you know, in from

Greg Dent: 00:15:12

someone in, in, you know, the interior, and 30 seconds later

Greg Dent: 00:15:17

it goes out to shake pay, right, or binance or like, some Hong

Greg Dent: 00:15:21

Kong company, I'm like, what looks super sketchy like the

Greg Dent: 00:15:24

first time? Okay, maybe. But then when there's like, 10 in a

Greg Dent: 00:15:27

row, and you've got some 75 year old farmer who has $130,000 of

Greg Dent: 00:15:31

wire transfers going through his account in a month, like someone

Greg Dent: 00:15:34

should take a look at that. That seems like a Yeah. That seems

Greg Dent: 00:15:37

like transaction monitoring should have picked up on that as

Greg Dent: 00:15:39

a weird thing. I to me anyhow, isn't that Yeah. And, I mean, to

Greg Dent: 00:15:42

be fair to the banks, like, they'll, they'll fill out their

Greg Dent: 00:15:44

STRS, they'll send it off the fin track, sure. Yeah. And, and,

Greg Dent: 00:15:47

I mean, unless the bank wants to pump the client, which some of

Greg Dent: 00:15:52

them do, oh yeah, I've seen a number of cases where the banks

Greg Dent: 00:15:54

are led by, like, we're closing your account, like, sign our

Greg Dent: 00:15:56

dude, totally.

Greg Dent: 00:15:59

So that's that's interesting, and that's where we start to get

Greg Dent: 00:16:02

an intersection between what our company generally works in, in

Greg Dent: 00:16:06

that AML space, and pick what string. And that's kind of why I

Greg Dent: 00:16:09

wanted to have this conversation. Yeah, as a if I'm

Greg Dent: 00:16:12

a frontline real estate agent, if I'm a frontline mortgage

Greg Dent: 00:16:16

broker, for that matter, if I'm a compliance officer at any of

Greg Dent: 00:16:19

these things, where am I going to see that? What's that going

Greg Dent: 00:16:22

to look like? What should I be kind of thinking about, and,

Greg Dent: 00:16:26

yeah, trying to,

Chris Thompson: 00:16:26

yeah, there's, I think, two things you want to

Chris Thompson: 00:16:28

look at, transactions that are out of character based on the

Chris Thompson: 00:16:31

banking history, and transactions that are out of

Chris Thompson: 00:16:34

character based on the person, okay, so a lot of what we see on

Chris Thompson: 00:16:38

these investments, I mean, I see them just from the pig

Chris Thompson: 00:16:40

butchering context. So you know someone, and it's not usually

Chris Thompson: 00:16:44

like you used to think it's a lot of old people getting

Chris Thompson: 00:16:46

scammed out of stuff, yeah, because they're the one, they're

Chris Thompson: 00:16:47

the only ones, ones that will actually answer a phone. But

Chris Thompson: 00:16:50

it's not necessarily the case, like it's all ages, all races,

Chris Thompson: 00:16:53

like everyone. It's a fairly wide spectrum.

Greg Dent: 00:16:56

Well, the crypto thing probably opened up a whole

Greg Dent: 00:16:58

new demographic of potential victims,

Chris Thompson: 00:17:01

100% because old people don't understand crypto,

Chris Thompson: 00:17:03

and they don't care. They're like, I'm not sending you

Chris Thompson: 00:17:05

tether. I don't know what that is. What good? That's a good

Chris Thompson: 00:17:08

answer. You don't understand it. Don't send 100,000 Yeah.

Chris Thompson: 00:17:13

But if you, if you have, like, we had one case where I was

Chris Thompson: 00:17:16

dealing with a money laundering network, and there was a guy who

Chris Thompson: 00:17:19

was in his, like, mid 70s, and his eye like he looked like a

Chris Thompson: 00:17:23

farmer, and there's $400 million of tether of usdt going through

Chris Thompson: 00:17:27

his his crypto account in like two months. 400 million, yeah,

Chris Thompson: 00:17:31

like hundreds of millions of dollars of usdt.

Chris Thompson: 00:17:35

So for sorry for those of you listening. So tether usdt is

Chris Thompson: 00:17:39

basically, it's called a stable coin where a company called

Chris Thompson: 00:17:43

tether has said, okay, one US dollar, tether is worth the US

Chris Thompson: 00:17:48

dollar. So they have a US dollar somewhere, and you're basically

Chris Thompson: 00:17:50

just trading US dollars in a blockchain. Like, that's the

Chris Thompson: 00:17:52

theory. So $400 million went through this guy's account, and

Chris Thompson: 00:17:56

it's like, Okay, that should be kind of like a 76 year old. I

Chris Thompson: 00:18:00

mean, maybe I'm stereotyping, but I don't know any 76 year old

Chris Thompson: 00:18:03

guys that are going to have that kind of money running through

Greg Dent: 00:18:06

Well, I would say I can name a few of them, but I

Greg Dent: 00:18:06

their account.

Greg Dent: 00:18:10

can name almost all of the ones who would have financial

Greg Dent: 00:18:13

capacity to do that legally.

Chris Thompson: 00:18:14

So yeah, that's true. And you're not going to

Chris Thompson: 00:18:16

live in like some backwater Street in Cyprus or something,

Chris Thompson: 00:18:19

right?

Greg Dent: 00:18:19

Like, these are names we know, yes, my point, yeah.

Chris Thompson: 00:18:22

You know, they put the address on there. You

Chris Thompson: 00:18:24

can look it up on Google Earth, and if it's like some dingy

Chris Thompson: 00:18:26

second floor apartment, you're like, that's not, this doesn't

Chris Thompson: 00:18:28

make sense. Yeah.

Chris Thompson: 00:18:31

You can also look at it from the electronic perspective, like, we

Chris Thompson: 00:18:35

have one case where I had a couple of accounts. I got some

Chris Thompson: 00:18:38

crypto accounts out of some some residents of China, and there's

Chris Thompson: 00:18:42

a bunch of crypto being laundered through them. So I

Chris Thompson: 00:18:44

emailed the account owners, and they got back to me and he said,

Chris Thompson: 00:18:47

like, Oh, I haven't I sold that account three years ago. Oh.

Chris Thompson: 00:18:50

Like, what? Oh, yeah, no, China banned crypto, so someone in a

Chris Thompson: 00:18:53

telegram group offered me some money for the account, and I

Chris Thompson: 00:18:55

sold it. Oh, but dude, like, It's your name, like, It's your

Chris Thompson: 00:18:59

name and address on the thing and, like, what? Like, okay,

Chris Thompson: 00:19:05

whatever. But so, I mean, there's, like, there's some

Chris Thompson: 00:19:09

knowledge there, or at least some some reckless disregard for

Chris Thompson: 00:19:14

how life actually works.

Greg Dent: 00:19:16

Oh my gosh. So personal responsibility aside

Greg Dent: 00:19:20

and lack of personal automobiles, I'm still stuck.

Greg Dent: 00:19:23

And this is, this is always where our audience struggles, is

Greg Dent: 00:19:29

that's cool, and these are really fun, but I don't ever see

Greg Dent: 00:19:33

as a real estate agent, as a mortgage broker, I don't have

Greg Dent: 00:19:36

that financial that access to those accounts, right? And so I

Greg Dent: 00:19:39

think the the second thing you said, there, there's behaviors,

Greg Dent: 00:19:45

there's answers. That's where I think maybe we could, we could

Greg Dent: 00:19:48

help our audience a little bit more.

Chris Thompson: 00:19:50

Yeah, so we've seen a few mortgage brokers

Chris Thompson: 00:19:53

involved, not as much in pig butchering, but in some of these

Chris Thompson: 00:19:56

investment frauds. And I can, I can sort of tie it in, because

Chris Thompson: 00:19:59

it's. Underlying concepts, like a lot of not a lot. Some of the

Chris Thompson: 00:20:03

cases that I've dealt with have had mortgage brokers involved

Chris Thompson: 00:20:06

for a person to get a second mortgage on their place because

Chris Thompson: 00:20:08

they want to invest in something. And if it comes to

Chris Thompson: 00:20:10

me, it's probably a fraud, because it's falling apart. I

Chris Thompson: 00:20:14

mean, in some of the cases, it's not, but let's assume it is.

Chris Thompson: 00:20:18

If it's a pig butchering or online scam type fraud. A lot of

Chris Thompson: 00:20:22

these investors are going to be coached on exactly what to say.

Chris Thompson: 00:20:25

So they'll take out a second mortgage, and the people are

Chris Thompson: 00:20:28

going to say, Okay, well, like, you know, what are you going to

Chris Thompson: 00:20:30

use the money for? Right? And then that's where the scammers

Chris Thompson: 00:20:32

will coach them. And they'll say, I would like to do X.

Chris Thompson: 00:20:34

They're not going to say, I want to invest in an online

Chris Thompson: 00:20:36

investment platform that I heard about two weeks ago from this

Chris Thompson: 00:20:39

extremely attractive woman that DM me out of nowhere on

Chris Thompson: 00:20:42

Instagram,

Chris Thompson: 00:20:46

they'll say, I would like to buy some bitcoin to hold it in cold

Chris Thompson: 00:20:51

storage. Okay, that'll be their story. And I'm like, Okay, well,

Chris Thompson: 00:20:53

I guess that's sure if you want to invest in Bitcoin, that's how

Chris Thompson: 00:20:56

it's gonna work. I mean, up until it on the blockchain, it's

Chris Thompson: 00:21:00

for a time it's almost indistinguishable. That story is

Chris Thompson: 00:21:03

almost indistinguishable from investing in a scan, just

Chris Thompson: 00:21:06

because of the way the tracing looks.

Chris Thompson: 00:21:08

And that's what they'll tell that's what they'll tell the

Chris Thompson: 00:21:12

crypto companies too, because the the mortgage broker will

Chris Thompson: 00:21:14

help them get a loan or get a second mortgage and get $100,000

Chris Thompson: 00:21:18

right? That $100,000 gonna be a wire transfer to probably a

Chris Thompson: 00:21:21

Canadian institution, a registered Canadian crypto

Chris Thompson: 00:21:23

institution, like index. Shake pay, binance was in Canada for a

Chris Thompson: 00:21:28

while, but they left. I'm trying to think of who else.

Greg Dent: 00:21:31

Shake pay is the only name. I actually, yeah,

Chris Thompson: 00:21:33

shake pay index, there's another wealth simple,

Chris Thompson: 00:21:35

oh, yeah, crypto and wealth simple, yeah, I think there's

Chris Thompson: 00:21:37

about six exchanges that are registered in Canada, okay, and

Chris Thompson: 00:21:40

they're, I mean, if they're registered in Canada, we know

Chris Thompson: 00:21:42

who they are, they'll answer to us. We've got good working

Chris Thompson: 00:21:44

relationships with all of them. They'll help us out if victims

Chris Thompson: 00:21:48

contact them or contact us. And so I have no problems with any

Chris Thompson: 00:21:52

of those, with any of the registered exchanges.

Chris Thompson: 00:21:55

And so the mortgage brokers and sort of the front line staff

Chris Thompson: 00:21:59

have to keep an eye out for this type of thing where someone's

Chris Thompson: 00:22:01

taking a giant wire transfer and sending it to a crypto

Chris Thompson: 00:22:03

institution, and if, if it's out of character for them, or if

Chris Thompson: 00:22:08

it's out of character for the account, like if this person's

Chris Thompson: 00:22:10

been investing in, you know, if they have a net worth of $5

Chris Thompson: 00:22:12

million and they've been investing in Fly By Night

Chris Thompson: 00:22:14

startups for the last 15 years, maybe not. Yeah, that's their

Chris Thompson: 00:22:18

you want to buy 100,000 Dogecoin or whatever Trump tokens is

Chris Thompson: 00:22:23

coming out. Like, I don't know what kind of crypto stuff fill

Chris Thompson: 00:22:27

your boots, right? Yeah, but if you're a 76 year old grandmother

Chris Thompson: 00:22:31

who has one GIC of $100,000 and you want to cash it out and send

Chris Thompson: 00:22:34

a wire transfer 50 grand to somewhere that

Greg Dent: 00:22:36

that should flag something,

Chris Thompson: 00:22:37

yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and

Greg Dent: 00:22:39

so the mortgage broker, one you just gave us is

Greg Dent: 00:22:41

actually super helpful in that I can quite see somebody

Greg Dent: 00:22:47

approaching a mortgage broker to secure that second mortgage, not

Greg Dent: 00:22:51

having a particularly rational reason for doing so that's

Greg Dent: 00:22:56

interesting.

Chris Thompson: 00:22:56

Yeah, that's a great example. And I mean, it's

Chris Thompson: 00:22:58

even got to the point where there's sort of this evolution

Chris Thompson: 00:23:01

of an arms race between the compliance people and the

Chris Thompson: 00:23:03

scammers, because the compliance people will ask more and more

Chris Thompson: 00:23:05

questions like, What do you plan on doing with this money for the

Chris Thompson: 00:23:08

crypto exchange, for the crypto accounts, you have to fill out

Chris Thompson: 00:23:11

this questionnaire when you open an account, like, what's your

Chris Thompson: 00:23:13

intent with this money? How are you going to fund it? Is anyone

Chris Thompson: 00:23:16

helping you fill out this form, right? And the scammers will be

Chris Thompson: 00:23:18

on the phone with them, like, what they asked me. This is

Chris Thompson: 00:23:21

anyone helping me? Oh, no. Okay, tell them no. Otherwise this

Chris Thompson: 00:23:23

isn't going to work. Yeah. Okay. Then they say no, and then they

Chris Thompson: 00:23:26

they have to lie through, through a lot of the form,

Chris Thompson: 00:23:29

because the scammers know that if they tell the truth on any

Chris Thompson: 00:23:31

part of it, their account is going to get rejected.

Greg Dent: 00:23:33

It's going to raise red flag, yeah.

Chris Thompson: 00:23:34

And then we get a lot of complaints where it

Chris Thompson: 00:23:36

said, you know, I sent a bunch of money to index, and the

Chris Thompson: 00:23:39

scammers was on the they were on the they were on the phone with

Chris Thompson: 00:23:41

me, and they told me to lie on all these things, and now my

Chris Thompson: 00:23:43

money's gone like, Well, yeah. And the other thing I wanted to

Chris Thompson: 00:23:48

mention, too, a lot of the times, victims won't know the

Chris Thompson: 00:23:53

legal difference between a Canadian platform, like a

Chris Thompson: 00:23:56

Canadian investment or crypto platform, and like the scam

Chris Thompson: 00:24:00

coin.com because we get a lot of complaints where it's like, Hey,

Chris Thompson: 00:24:03

I invested in in shake pay, right? Like, well, no, you sent

Chris Thompson: 00:24:07

crypto to shake pay, and then your shake pay account forwarded

Chris Thompson: 00:24:10

the crypto to the scammers. But the way the scammers set it up

Chris Thompson: 00:24:14

is they're like, Okay, well, no, they may have pretended to be

Chris Thompson: 00:24:16

with shake pay, or they may have have pretended that shake pay

Chris Thompson: 00:24:20

was related to them or something. And so that's one of

Chris Thompson: 00:24:22

the ways that the scammers get the victims trust, is they send

Chris Thompson: 00:24:25

your money is actually going to a trusted, regulated Canadian

Chris Thompson: 00:24:29

institution. Okay, so people trust shake pay. Yes, it's, you

Chris Thompson: 00:24:32

know, and end acts are, well, simple, because they're

Chris Thompson: 00:24:33

legitimate companies. They're registered. You can see they're

Chris Thompson: 00:24:36

registered. And then the the victims have it in their mind

Chris Thompson: 00:24:40

that their money went to shake pay, and that that's where the

Chris Thompson: 00:24:43

trouble was, but it didn't. The money went to shake pay. And a

Chris Thompson: 00:24:46

lot of the times, the scammers will use some remote desktop

Chris Thompson: 00:24:48

software like any desk. And there's others, I just don't

Chris Thompson: 00:24:51

know which one, any of them, off the top of my head, the money

Chris Thompson: 00:24:54

will go shake pay. The scammers will will log on to the person's

Chris Thompson: 00:24:58

shakepay account. Oh, and just say.

Chris Thompson: 00:25:00

The money there, yeah, so the people don't know where they've

Chris Thompson: 00:25:02

sent them.

Chris Thompson: 00:25:03

Oh, there's been a few cases where I've had to basically walk

Chris Thompson: 00:25:07

the victims through, okay, you have to contact, shake, pay, get

Chris Thompson: 00:25:09

them to send them your send you their transaction history, send

Chris Thompson: 00:25:12

that to me, and then I can trace your crypto and figure out where

Chris Thompson: 00:25:14

it went.

Greg Dent: 00:25:15

Right, right. Fascinating. As a, as a, yeah?

Greg Dent: 00:25:20

Okay, no, that's fascinating. So I guess there's if, from a

Greg Dent: 00:25:26

serving our audience point of view, I think just just

Greg Dent: 00:25:28

generally asking questions and knowing your client and

Greg Dent: 00:25:30

understanding what doesn't doesn't make sense for your

Greg Dent: 00:25:33

client. And I mean, I hate to always come back to that,

Greg Dent: 00:25:36

because so many, so much of what we do in Financial Crimes really

Greg Dent: 00:25:39

is just like thinking about it, right? Like, if you're a

Greg Dent: 00:25:42

compliance officer, just thinking through the transaction

Greg Dent: 00:25:46

is, I don't know, some massive percent, and I could make up a

Greg Dent: 00:25:50

number of 95 but some massive percent of it is actually just

Greg Dent: 00:25:53

solved by thinking through and putting yourself in the person's

Greg Dent: 00:25:56

shoes. And does this make sense?

Chris Thompson: 00:25:58

The other problem that you're going to run

Chris Thompson: 00:25:59

into when you're talking to people who are victims, they're

Chris Thompson: 00:26:02

not going to believe you, right? If they're at the point where

Chris Thompson: 00:26:05

they're sending money to this online scam, they think it's

Chris Thompson: 00:26:07

real, particularly large amounts, especially large

Chris Thompson: 00:26:10

amounts of money, like especially when you've already

Chris Thompson: 00:26:11

sent a large amount of money, because then you're essentially

Chris Thompson: 00:26:13

having to admit that you've sent 75% of your net worth to

Chris Thompson: 00:26:18

scammers in Cambodia or Laos or Myanmar, or wherever the case

Chris Thompson: 00:26:21

is, right? And, I mean, that's the hardest part of my job, is

Chris Thompson: 00:26:26

talking to people who don't realize it's a scam yet, like,

Chris Thompson: 00:26:30

I've got one file right now where the son wrote in and say,

Chris Thompson: 00:26:34

Hey, like, my dad sent a half million dollars to this scam. I

Chris Thompson: 00:26:37

mean, they're, they're well off. This isn't, I don't think it's

Chris Thompson: 00:26:40

life changing amounts of money, but it's a big chunk. It's, it's

Chris Thompson: 00:26:44

like 2g wagons, amount of money.

Chris Thompson: 00:26:46

And and I've been trying to talk to the dead. The only way I got

Chris Thompson: 00:26:52

the dead to answer the phone is by spoofing the caller ID of the

Chris Thompson: 00:26:57

scammer. Wow. So the son sent me. He's like, Yeah, this is the

Chris Thompson: 00:27:00

scammers name. This is, this is Professor Shane, okay, whatever.

Chris Thompson: 00:27:04

This is his phone number. And so I downloaded a tool onto my

Chris Thompson: 00:27:08

phone, and the first one didn't work, and my money went to, God

Chris Thompson: 00:27:11

knows, like, it's, it's sort of this gray area, of course. And

Chris Thompson: 00:27:14

so I got one that did work, and then I punched the numbers in,

Chris Thompson: 00:27:17

and he actually, he's like, Oh, hang on, hang on, hang on. Like,

Chris Thompson: 00:27:19

he actually answer the phone since then, like, I told him

Chris Thompson: 00:27:22

I'm, like, this is a scam. Or, how do you know it's a scam?

Chris Thompson: 00:27:24

Like, dude, I do this all day, every day, literally. What i i

Chris Thompson: 00:27:28

have another complaint about the thing you're investing in, the

Chris Thompson: 00:27:31

guys, like, I can't get my money out. That to me, that's proof.

Chris Thompson: 00:27:34

Well, that's not absolute proof. Like, it, it's, it's really

Chris Thompson: 00:27:37

hard, yeah. And then I left him a bunch of messages, and then,

Chris Thompson: 00:27:41

and one of the we have a kind of a handbook of dealing with

Chris Thompson: 00:27:44

victims, okay? And one of it actually says, like, shake it up

Chris Thompson: 00:27:47

a bit like, yell at the person. Swear at them. Like it might

Chris Thompson: 00:27:50

snap them out of their snap them out of their, their stupor. And

Chris Thompson: 00:27:54

so I, like, I left them a swear at them.

Greg Dent: 00:27:57

I was gonna say, Wait, as a government swear

Greg Dent: 00:28:00

people, this is amazing, and it's in the handbook.

Chris Thompson: 00:28:02

It's I didn't I didn't swear it, I didn't yell

Chris Thompson: 00:28:05

it. It was definitely like, hey man, like, I'm not gonna call

Chris Thompson: 00:28:08

you again about this, because I've spent enough time, I spent

Chris Thompson: 00:28:10

my own time and money trying to actually get you the answer the

Chris Thompson: 00:28:12

phone. I want you to think long and hard about what you're gonna

Chris Thompson: 00:28:15

say when you realize this is a scam and you have to admit to

Chris Thompson: 00:28:18

your family that they were right and that how an RCMP officer

Chris Thompson: 00:28:22

came to your door and told you it was a scam, how the bank

Chris Thompson: 00:28:25

officials told you it was a scam, and how the BC Securities

Chris Thompson: 00:28:28

Commission employee spent a ton of time in his own money to

Chris Thompson: 00:28:31

spoof a caller ID of your scammer to get you to answer the

Chris Thompson: 00:28:35

phone and you didn't, yeah, and so like, maybe That's gonna

Chris Thompson: 00:28:39

switch something in his brain to, like, it's really hard.

Greg Dent: 00:28:44

So yeah, no, I've seen this. I've had somebody who

Greg Dent: 00:28:48

tried to convince me to invest in a crypto scam.

Chris Thompson: 00:28:52

I know that case, that is one of my favorite

Chris Thompson: 00:28:54

cases, for a number of reasons, but yeah,

Greg Dent: 00:28:56

and so we had, we had talked about that one, but yeah,

Greg Dent: 00:28:59

and he was absolutely, absolutely convinced. And I just

Greg Dent: 00:29:03

the numbers to me, just didn't make sense. There's a return,

Greg Dent: 00:29:06

and I think that's the

Chris Thompson: 00:29:07

3% a week,

Greg Dent: 00:29:08

yeah, like, and I think that's the like as a look.

Greg Dent: 00:29:13

I think we've done a bit of where compliance nerds and

Greg Dent: 00:29:15

compliance officers and frontline staff can help. If

Greg Dent: 00:29:19

we're gonna have this episode out in the wild, I think we

Greg Dent: 00:29:22

could probably do a bit of public service as well on it,

Greg Dent: 00:29:24

which is to me, if it sounds too good to be true, uh huh, it

Greg Dent: 00:29:29

probably is. And just because you see on a screen or on an

Greg Dent: 00:29:34

email or a piece of paper that you're made so much money

Greg Dent: 00:29:38

doesn't mean you actually have Yeah, and I think, like, those

Greg Dent: 00:29:41

two things alone are probably, I don't know, is there more to

Greg Dent: 00:29:45

from a public service point of view, would be other things that

Greg Dent: 00:29:48

we'd want to make sure we Yeah,

Chris Thompson: 00:29:49

I just wanted to mention something about the

Chris Thompson: 00:29:51

screen, because that was a point I wanted to bring up. That's

Chris Thompson: 00:29:54

what happens all the time. These websites, they're just hooked up

Chris Thompson: 00:29:56

to a database that the scammers can manipulate, right? And they

Chris Thompson: 00:29:59

just make whatever.

Chris Thompson: 00:29:59

Terms they want. Also, for those of you that don't know, huge

Chris Thompson: 00:30:04

really, in detail how they, excuse me, how the internet

Chris Thompson: 00:30:07

works. What happens when you go to your banking web page, you

Chris Thompson: 00:30:11

send your credentials to the bank, and then the bank sends a

Chris Thompson: 00:30:15

bunch of data to your computer, and your computer that data

Chris Thompson: 00:30:17

stores is stored sort of in RAM, and then that data gets

Chris Thompson: 00:30:20

displayed on your computer, on your computer. On your computer

Chris Thompson: 00:30:22

through a web browser, you can edit that data. So what the

Chris Thompson: 00:30:27

scammers do when they go onto your computer, like any desk or

Chris Thompson: 00:30:29

anything like that, they'll get you to log into online banking,

Chris Thompson: 00:30:32

and then they'll do a bit of like, Hey, look at this other

Chris Thompson: 00:30:34

thing while they monkey with the data, and they can edit what

Chris Thompson: 00:30:36

your online banking is showing, or what your crypto account is

Chris Thompson: 00:30:39

showing. Wow. And so I had a case where a lady told me she's

Chris Thompson: 00:30:42

like, Yeah, I have $275,000 in my I think it was crypto.com or

Chris Thompson: 00:30:47

something like that account. And what had happened was the

Chris Thompson: 00:30:49

scammers had actually edited the HTML data on her computer to

Chris Thompson: 00:30:53

show that balance. Oh, wow. And you had to, like, you would

Chris Thompson: 00:30:56

refresh it, it would still stay there. You had to hard refresh,

Chris Thompson: 00:30:58

like, Control f5 Yeah, to actually get the balance to

Chris Thompson: 00:31:01

update to zero, and it was insane, like, the scammers are

Chris Thompson: 00:31:05

just so good at manipulating data here and there, so You even

Chris Thompson: 00:31:08

can't even really trust stuff you see on your own screen

Chris Thompson: 00:31:10

sometimes.

Greg Dent: 00:31:13

Well, I mean, arguably, the mistake was made

Greg Dent: 00:31:15

earlier where they somebody let them have access to the computer

Greg Dent: 00:31:19

in the first place, which, from a, like, a security point of

Greg Dent: 00:31:22

view. I that, yeah, that would all like, I, you know, remote

Greg Dent: 00:31:26

desktop stuff is actually pretty, creates a pretty big

Greg Dent: 00:31:31

security vulnerability. Oh, sure, absolutely, yeah. And I

Greg Dent: 00:31:33

think that would be the other potentially. That's an

Greg Dent: 00:31:35

interesting, yeah, other public point of protection, I suppose,

Chris Thompson: 00:31:39

sorry, I veered us off. We wanted to get back to

Chris Thompson: 00:31:41

something.

Greg Dent: 00:31:41

Oh yeah, just, just kind of give it, well, no, it's,

Greg Dent: 00:31:43

it's, it's very topical. It's where, like, how are people

Greg Dent: 00:31:48

what? What can people do to protect themselves against pig

Greg Dent: 00:31:50

butchering, yeah, and then, and then, further to that, like,

Greg Dent: 00:31:53

what are the indicators that we should kind of, so I think we,

Chris Thompson: 00:31:56

yeah, as you said, it's, if it's too good to

Chris Thompson: 00:31:59

be true, it probably is. Yeah, right. And that's, that's the

Chris Thompson: 00:32:01

key, really the key message. You can check if companies are

Chris Thompson: 00:32:05

registered, that's a really good indicator. Like, if they're

Chris Thompson: 00:32:09

registered in Canada, it means they, you know, they've, they've

Chris Thompson: 00:32:12

sent us a bunch of documentation. We've, we've

Chris Thompson: 00:32:15

reviewed all the documentation. There's people that will answer

Chris Thompson: 00:32:17

our questions. They have certain capital levels, like, they're,

Chris Thompson: 00:32:20

they're legit companies, right? Yeah. I mean, sometimes people

Chris Thompson: 00:32:23

spoof those companies, but you know, you go to crypto.ca Well,

Chris Thompson: 00:32:28

that's not crypto.com right? And maybe they forgot to register

Chris Thompson: 00:32:31

crypto.net I don't know. So,

Greg Dent: 00:32:34

since we're doing the public service part of things,

Greg Dent: 00:32:38

investing in private companies, you mentioned that that's part

Greg Dent: 00:32:41

of your your job, your business, part of what BC securities does,

Greg Dent: 00:32:45

right? If somebody's going to be thinking about doing a private,

Greg Dent: 00:32:49

sort of private investment into some sort of a private company,

Greg Dent: 00:32:52

is there a way to check on on the legitimacy of that with you

Greg Dent: 00:32:55

guys? Or what's the, what's the

Chris Thompson: 00:32:58

sort of, I mean, private companies, they're not

Chris Thompson: 00:33:01

publicly reported companies. Anyone can start a company,

Chris Thompson: 00:33:04

anyone can be directors on a company. You know, for better or

Chris Thompson: 00:33:08

for worse, you can the best thing I can recommend is check

Chris Thompson: 00:33:12

on our website to see or on in the internet, really, to see if

Chris Thompson: 00:33:16

they've ever, if anyone in that company has ever been

Chris Thompson: 00:33:17

sanctioned. Okay, we've had a few cases where we've had

Chris Thompson: 00:33:23

people, we have victims, invest with people that had you googled

Chris Thompson: 00:33:27

them, you would have found out some very sketchy things about

Chris Thompson: 00:33:31

them, right? Okay, or done like a Cannely search. I mean, that's

Chris Thompson: 00:33:34

a little bit that's a little bit more in the weeds, but if you're

Chris Thompson: 00:33:36

investing 600 grand in something like you might want to get a

Chris Thompson: 00:33:39

lawyer involved to do bit more in depth research. And there was

Chris Thompson: 00:33:43

one canlead result where the guy, a judge, said, of this guy,

Chris Thompson: 00:33:46

something like this man, is extremely adept in the world of

Chris Thompson: 00:33:51

half truths and of obscuring answers, or something like that.

Chris Thompson: 00:33:56

And so, like, I wouldn't have invested my 600 grand in that.

Greg Dent: 00:33:59

There's, there's a version of that can be said for

Greg Dent: 00:34:01

much of the venture room It's

Chris Thompson: 00:34:04

usually not in a written court decision.

Greg Dent: 00:34:06

Well, that's fair, yeah. So that's, yeah, yeah.

Chris Thompson: 00:34:09

One of the other things I wanted to mention too,

Chris Thompson: 00:34:12

I think, in defense of pig butchering, I think a lot of the

Chris Thompson: 00:34:15

people who fall victim to these scams are going to be vulnerable

Chris Thompson: 00:34:19

for other reasons in their life, like they're going through

Chris Thompson: 00:34:22

divorce, they've lost their job, they've they're kind of in a bad

Chris Thompson: 00:34:26

place, and that seems to be common in a lot of the a lot of

Chris Thompson: 00:34:29

the things we've seen, and I think a lot of the things that

Chris Thompson: 00:34:32

make people vulnerable to bad relationships probably make them

Chris Thompson: 00:34:36

vulnerable to pig butchering as well. So I think overall mental

Chris Thompson: 00:34:39

health, like, I try and never judge their victims, because I'm

Chris Thompson: 00:34:43

not in their shoes, right? Like, if, if their parents just died,

Chris Thompson: 00:34:48

like, I don't know, maybe I'd fall victim to, you know, it's

Chris Thompson: 00:34:51

like, if you think about it like this, a lot of these people have

Chris Thompson: 00:34:53

been chatting online with some someone for months, yes, and if

Chris Thompson: 00:34:57

you actually think, like, Okay, if I've been having this online,

Chris Thompson: 00:34:59

Relationship with someone for weeks and weeks and weeks and

Chris Thompson: 00:35:02

weeks, and they're, you know, they're funny and they're smart

Chris Thompson: 00:35:04

and they're attractive and they actually care about me, I'd be

Chris Thompson: 00:35:08

hard pressed to say I wouldn't at least be confident in that

Chris Thompson: 00:35:11

person. I mean, I've got a good enough social circle, I've got

Chris Thompson: 00:35:14

friends, I've got, you know, I'm healthy, I've got a decent job,

Chris Thompson: 00:35:17

like, I wouldn't be more vulnerable to that type of

Chris Thompson: 00:35:20

thing, whereas other people would. So I think maintaining

Chris Thompson: 00:35:22

your friends and family's mental health and your own is probably

Chris Thompson: 00:35:25

a good defense against this type of thing.

Greg Dent: 00:35:27

That's super helpful, and something I just pulled out

Greg Dent: 00:35:30

of that that I think applies to anybody who's frontline. And

Greg Dent: 00:35:33

this is, this is realtor. This is actually where a realtor

Greg Dent: 00:35:36

might see. This is if you've got a client who approaches you,

Greg Dent: 00:35:38

who's going through all sorts of other things in their life,

Greg Dent: 00:35:41

yeah, and they're about to divest themselves of what might

Greg Dent: 00:35:44

be their largest asset for what may not make sense? Yeah, that

Greg Dent: 00:35:47

would be an interesting indicator.

Chris Thompson: 00:35:48

That is a massive red flag, right? Like,

Chris Thompson: 00:35:50

yeah.

Greg Dent: 00:35:51

And it's not unusual for somebody who's going through

Greg Dent: 00:35:53

a divorce to need to sell their home. That part might make

Greg Dent: 00:35:55

sense, yeah. But if they're going through a divorce, selling

Greg Dent: 00:35:58

their home, and they don't have a good answer as to where

Greg Dent: 00:36:00

they're going to live with their kids, that should probably raise

Greg Dent: 00:36:03

some red flags. Yep. And so I think there's the that's a super

Greg Dent: 00:36:07

insightful piece. I'm glad you mentioned it, because I think

Greg Dent: 00:36:10

that's where frontline staff, again, might see some sort of an

Greg Dent: 00:36:14

indicator in their in their day to day interactions with with

Greg Dent: 00:36:17

their clients, yeah.

Chris Thompson: 00:36:18

And if you know the person, it might make a

Chris Thompson: 00:36:21

little bit easier to get a context. Like, I think

Chris Thompson: 00:36:23

investment advisors are the best frontline defense against a lot

Chris Thompson: 00:36:26

of the stuff, because you know your client. I mean, not it's in

Chris Thompson: 00:36:29

theory, but I liken it to, like, my mom's financial advisor knows

Chris Thompson: 00:36:34

a ton about her. She knows about me. I mean, full disclosure. I

Chris Thompson: 00:36:37

worked for her for a while, so the relationship's a bit

Chris Thompson: 00:36:38

different, but a lot of financial advisors should least

Chris Thompson: 00:36:42

know. Like, do you have a kid? Are you married? Like, how are

Chris Thompson: 00:36:44

things going? And if someone comes in and says, Okay, I'm

Chris Thompson: 00:36:46

going to, yeah, my boyfriend needs help, a bit of help, so I

Chris Thompson: 00:36:51

need 10 grand. Oh, interesting. Okay, well, tell me about your

Chris Thompson: 00:36:53

boyfriend. What does he look like? Well, you know, here's all

Chris Thompson: 00:36:55

the pictures of him. Oh, when did you meet him? Well, we

Chris Thompson: 00:36:57

haven't met yet. There we go. There's a huge you know, he's,

Chris Thompson: 00:37:00

he's on tour in Afghanistan. It's a bit of a dated example,

Chris Thompson: 00:37:03

but whatever he's, he works on the oil industry. Yeah, like,

Chris Thompson: 00:37:07

there's a lot of scenarios that come up and and where these

Chris Thompson: 00:37:12

scammers can create these plausible sort of worlds, where

Chris Thompson: 00:37:17

this person is overseas and they need money, and that all those

Chris Thompson: 00:37:21

types of things. So those that's where a frontline worker who

Chris Thompson: 00:37:25

knows a little bit about the person can say, like, well, this

Chris Thompson: 00:37:27

is out of character, right for that person.

Greg Dent: 00:37:29

Or this doesn't match what else I know. This doesn't

Greg Dent: 00:37:31

match what else I'm telling I'm being told by this person. And

Greg Dent: 00:37:34

or,

Chris Thompson: 00:37:34

yeah, yeah,

Greg Dent: 00:37:35

if I were in those shoes that would, that would

Greg Dent: 00:37:37

cause me to be of concern. Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Chris Thompson: 00:37:40

Or, like, hey, we had one case. It was us, I

Chris Thompson: 00:37:43

think was a 76 year old guy that started talking about his

Chris Thompson: 00:37:46

girlfriend, oh, yeah, from Instagram. And the girlfriend

Chris Thompson: 00:37:49

from Instagram was like, a Nike model that someone had just

Chris Thompson: 00:37:52

repurposed the picture of you. Like, yeah, it's good friend.

Chris Thompson: 00:37:57

No, yeah, that's not your girlfriend, dude. That's someone

Chris Thompson: 00:37:59

who's getting money from

Greg Dent: 00:38:00

you, yeah?

Chris Thompson: 00:38:02

And sometimes they don't care. They're like,

Chris Thompson: 00:38:04

so what? I get a ton of fun out of it. She's only got 10 grand

Chris Thompson: 00:38:07

of my money. I got lots of money. I'm like,

Greg Dent: 00:38:08

Well, you can spend your money how you want, I

Greg Dent: 00:38:11

suppose,

Chris Thompson: 00:38:12

funding North Korea. Like, I don't know what.

Chris Thompson: 00:38:16

Maybe I don't know where the money

Greg Dent: 00:38:17

well, there's a scary thought,

Chris Thompson: 00:38:18

yeah. I mean, some of it might go there, but

Chris Thompson: 00:38:21

most of it like that's the other part that I wanted to mention,

Chris Thompson: 00:38:23

too. Is what we're fighting here is not the the, you know, hacker

Chris Thompson: 00:38:29

in someone's basement, or like the guy in rural Nigeria with a

Chris Thompson: 00:38:33

cell phone, that sort of the stereotype from a while ago.

Chris Thompson: 00:38:36

There are compounds, there are industries and organizations and

Chris Thompson: 00:38:42

corporate machines behind this. There's, there's about a half a

Chris Thompson: 00:38:44

million people in Southeast Asia in this industry. Wow, it is run

Chris Thompson: 00:38:48

like giant organizations. They've got HR departments,

Chris Thompson: 00:38:50

they've got it, they've got manuals, they've got scripts,

Chris Thompson: 00:38:53

they've got, you know, ladders of escalation, like, there's a

Chris Thompson: 00:38:56

group of people that have 50 Facebook accounts on their

Chris Thompson: 00:39:00

screen at one time that are chatting to a number of people.

Chris Thompson: 00:39:02

They'll take no they'll take notes, and someone else will

Chris Thompson: 00:39:03

shift off and be able to talk to the victim as if they were the

Chris Thompson: 00:39:07

same person, because they've got the notes from the previous

Chris Thompson: 00:39:09

person. Wow. And then when the when the hook comes in and they

Chris Thompson: 00:39:12

get passed to a second set of people who are good at, you

Chris Thompson: 00:39:15

know, they're the closers, right? They're the ones that get

Chris Thompson: 00:39:16

the money. There's dedicated groups of money launderers, like

Chris Thompson: 00:39:19

it's, it's insane just how organized and and effective this

Chris Thompson: 00:39:23

industry has become, and how much time and energy is spent

Chris Thompson: 00:39:26

protecting it and maintaining it. So, like, this is what

Chris Thompson: 00:39:29

people are up against. Like, this is a well oiled machine.

Greg Dent: 00:39:32

This is a full on company, just a gazillion of

Greg Dent: 00:39:35

them. Yeah, that's crazy.

Chris Thompson: 00:39:36

A lot of it is oC Some of it's related to

Chris Thompson: 00:39:38

government, government corruption, okay? Like, in

Chris Thompson: 00:39:41

Myanmar, like, what's anyone going to do to Myanmar? Well,

Chris Thompson: 00:39:44

clearly, I mean, China's tried, I think they sent the army into

Chris Thompson: 00:39:47

one or something, but, but, yeah, like, it's, it's, I think

Chris Thompson: 00:39:50

investor, education and and defense is, is probably our most

Chris Thompson: 00:39:56

effective, our most effective weapon, unless we're going to,

Chris Thompson: 00:39:59

like. I sent Jason Statham into a compounded meme, how to do his

Chris Thompson: 00:40:02

thing like

Chris Thompson: 00:40:03

but I think they've already made that movie at this point.

Chris Thompson: 00:40:06

I watched on an airplane. Yeah, it's awesome and terrible at the

Chris Thompson: 00:40:09

same time. If you want to watch Jason Statham murder scammers

Chris Thompson: 00:40:12

for 92 minutes, watch the beekeeper, it's great. If you

Chris Thompson: 00:40:16

like an intelligent, coherent plot, maybe not.

Greg Dent: 00:40:19

No, this has been helpful. I really, is there

Greg Dent: 00:40:22

anything we've we haven't touched on that you thought was

Greg Dent: 00:40:24

important, that our audience really needs to know before we

Greg Dent: 00:40:27

kind of wrap things up here?

Chris Thompson: 00:40:28

Yeah. I mean, we've gone through a lot of it.

Chris Thompson: 00:40:30

There's we've got the BCSC website crypto scams.ca. Is

Chris Thompson: 00:40:34

actually a pretty cool website they've done to sort of spot the

Chris Thompson: 00:40:36

signs of a crypto scam. Okay, investright.org? Is our investor

Chris Thompson: 00:40:39

education site. You can go there. You can learn more about

Chris Thompson: 00:40:44

it. If you have doubts, like, call us, right we I can hire one

Chris Thompson: 00:40:50

of my co workers. Can go through and say, like, look, this looks

Chris Thompson: 00:40:52

like a scam because of a, b and c, and just remember, almost

Chris Thompson: 00:40:55

anything you can see on the internet is fake. We've had

Chris Thompson: 00:40:58

cases where scam crypto recovery companies, they also make those

Chris Thompson: 00:41:04

as a scam. Yeah, they'll just take your money and do nothing.

Chris Thompson: 00:41:07

But they have had 300 positive trust pilot reviews. Wow, it's

Chris Thompson: 00:41:10

all just, they just generate fake positive reviews. So it's

Chris Thompson: 00:41:14

Remember, it's so hard to separate the signal from the

Chris Thompson: 00:41:17

noise. Yeah, and a lot of these scams, but yeah, registration is

Chris Thompson: 00:41:22

a key one. Too good to be true is probably the best bet, right?

Chris Thompson: 00:41:25

It's too good to be true. It probably is

Greg Dent: 00:41:27

and and you can always call and get a get a

Greg Dent: 00:41:29

professional opinion if you're having doubts. But if you're

Greg Dent: 00:41:31

having doubts, you probably should reconsider before you get

Greg Dent: 00:41:34

too far down this path.

Chris Thompson: 00:41:35

That's that's probably the best piece of

Chris Thompson: 00:41:37

advice.

Greg Dent: 00:41:39

Well, Chris, thank you again for so much, for

Greg Dent: 00:41:42

sharing your knowledge, for taking the time for you always

Greg Dent: 00:41:46

bring like really cool, interesting perspectives, and I

Greg Dent: 00:41:49

have so much fun chatting with you. So thank you again for

Greg Dent: 00:41:52

coming on the show and really appreciate your input today.

Chris Thompson: 00:41:55

No problem more than welcome.

Greg Dent: 00:41:56

All right.