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  • Geebo 8:00 am on September 6, 2024 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Human trafficking, , , ,   

    Victim Kidnapped and Forced to Scam Others 

    By Greg Collier

    Victims of a cryptocurrency scam known as “pig butchering” are coming forward to share their experiences, aiming to protect others from falling into the same trap. While many focus on the financial losses suffered by victims, the human toll runs even deeper, with some individuals forced into scamming others.

    The term “pig butchering” describes how scammers gradually build trust with their targets, encouraging small investments that appear to yield quick returns. As confidence grows, victims are convinced to invest larger amounts—often their life savings—before the scammers vanish, leaving their victims devastated.

    One especially tragic aspect of this scheme involves individuals who are not only victims of fraud but also of human trafficking. One woman, believing she had secured a legitimate job abroad, was instead kidnapped and forced to work for the very scammers behind these cons. After arriving at what she thought was a job location, her passport was confiscated, her phone disabled, and she was imprisoned in a compound where she was coerced into scamming others.

    She described being trapped for months, made to impersonate different personas to convince others to invest in fake cryptocurrency schemes. Her captors monitored every move, ensuring she remained compliant. The conditions were harsh, and she was forced to work long hours, manipulating people into handing over their savings. Despite the physical and emotional strain, she was left with no choice but to continue under constant threat.

    While the financial losses from these scams are staggering, there are unseen victims like this woman, whose stories rarely make headlines. The scale of the operation is global, with money often funneled to foreign countries, making it difficult for law enforcement to recover the stolen funds or dismantle the operations behind them.

    This darker side of the crypto scam world highlights how far-reaching and damaging these schemes have become. Beyond the financial devastation experienced by victims, human trafficking and forced participation in scams add another layer of exploitation to an already harmful crime.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on January 21, 2022 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Human trafficking, , National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC, ,   

    Human Trafficking Scam threatens victims 

    Human Trafficking Scam threatens victims

    By Greg Collier

    Human trafficking is something that affects all communities around the country, regardless of ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Many more people have become aware of the human trafficking problem over the past few years. So, it should come as no surprise that scammers are using the scourge of trafficking in their scams.

    Police in Wichita, Kansas, have been reporting about a new phone scam that uses human trafficking to try to extort money out of local residents. The scammers are calling their victims and claiming that the victims are being investigated by the National Exploited and Missing Children’s Unit for child trafficking crimes. The scam victims are then asked for $5000, or they’ll be arrested and taken to court.

    There are many layers to this scam about how someone can tell it’s a scam. The first is that there is no such organization as the National Exploited and Missing Children’s Unit. However, there is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. As much great work as the NCMEC does when it comes to missing children, they are not an arm of any law enforcement agency. They do assist law enforcement in their investigations by passing on tips that they receive, but they do not arrest people.

    Secondly, if someone is being investigated for a major crime let alone one that involved children, no law enforcement agency is going to announce that to the person being investigated, especially over the phone.

    Lastly, no law enforcement agency will demand money over the phone and threaten arrest if it’s not paid. If someone does need to pay some kind of legal fine, they’ll be notified through the mail. Even then, it doesn’t hurt to call the courthouse who issued the fine to make sure the fine is on the up and up.

    If you receive one of these phone calls threatening you with arrest, hang up and contact your local police department.

    If you’d like to learn more about how human trafficking really happens in America, please read our previous posts discussing the matter.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on March 9, 2021 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Human trafficking, , ,   

    Why is Craigslist failing? 

    Why is Craigslist failing?

    By Greg Collier

    Since Craigslist is a privately owned company, they do not have to disclose their finances. However, the AIM Group recently asserted that Craigslist has lost close to 50% of their revenue in just two years. The AIM Group is a sort of watchdog organization that keeps tabs on the online marketplace space. They once famously referred to Craigslist as a cesspool of crime.

    Using what the AIM Group calls their proprietary methodology, Craigslist’s revenue dropped from $1 billion in 2018 to $565 million in 2020. Again, that’s an almost 50% drop in just two years. Part of the drop can absolutely be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the decline started long before lockdown. Part of the drop can also be attributed to the number of competitors that have recently started occupying the marketplace space. Other niche sites like Airbnb have also taken a chunk out of Craigslist’s userbase. However, we think it’s because of poor business decisions Craigslist has been making for the past 20 years.

    For a large majority of Craigslist’s history, it was long rumored that they received the majority of their traffic from their erotic services section. Due to mounting legal pressure over human trafficking concerns, erotic/adult services was shuttered in 2010. Craigslist’s revenues took a slight dip in 2011 but continued to climb until 2018. So, what happened in 2018 to cause such a downward spiral? That’s when Craigslist shuttered their personals section over fears of the anti-sex trafficking laws FOSTA/SESTA. After Craigslist closed their erotic services section, traffickers would instead just post their ads selling women and girls to the personals section. By closing the personals after FOSTA/SESTA was signed into law, Craigslist virtually admitted that their platform had a sex trafficking problem.

    Craigslist’s problem is that in their 26 years, they’ve refused to moderate any section of their site to keep out criminals and scammers. Craigslist only seems to moderate content on their platform when threatened with legal action. Except moderation costs money and Craigslist has a reputation of maximizing profits above all else, even at the expense of the safety of their userbase. Geebo.com and several other platforms moderate their content and still manage to be profitable. The only security measures Craigslist has is a list of safety tips and unless they change their tune, they will continue to decline.

     

  • Geebo 9:00 am on December 30, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Human trafficking, , , ,   

    New scam threatens you with human trafficking arrest 

    New scam threatens you with human trafficking arrest

    Police impersonation scams are nothing new. They can range from something innocuous like owing a traffic ticket to something major like your Social Security number being involved with a major crime. All of these impersonation scams rely on one thing, and that’s a fear of being arrested. Scammers will use that fear to try to pressure you into either making a payment to them or giving them your personal information. A new scam not only tries to take advantage of that fear of arrest but also uses the fear of potential public embarrassment.

    Police in Colorado Springs, Colorado are warning residents about an impersonation scam that’s affecting their area. Scammers are posing as police detectives and calling their victims to tell them that the victim’s phone number was found in a human trafficking ring. While the report we’ve seen doesn’t specify, we imagine that the scam’s victims are being told that their phone number was found to have been used soliciting the services of a human trafficking ring.

    Usually, in a scam like this, victims are told that payment can make a situation like this go away. The payment is almost always made in some form of untraceable funds like gift cards, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency. However, in the case of the Colorado Springs scam, the scammers are directing victims to a website and enter their personal information. The victims are also being told that if they don’t go to the website, a warrant will be issued for their arrest. It seems like these scammers aren’t after a quick payout but are after identity theft for a bigger score.

    More often than not, if your phone number were to pop up during a police investigation, investigators would be sent to talk to you personally. However, if you were to receive one of these phone calls, it’s recommended that you take down the caller’s name and badge number then contact the department’s non-emergency number to verify if what the caller says is true or not.

     

  • Geebo 8:00 am on September 14, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Human trafficking, , , ,   

    Delivery text message scam not linked to human trafficking 

    Delivery text message scam not linked to human trafficking

    Recently, we posted a story about how a text messaging scam was fooling victims into giving up their personal and financial information. If you’ll recall, the scam entailed receiving a text message that claimed to be from a delivery service like UPS or FedEx. The text message will say that you have an undelivered package and it will provide a link for you to click on to supposedly set your delivery preferences. Here’s a sample of what the message could look like.

    What happens once you click on the link is you’ll be taken to a page that is designed to look like a page from Amazon. The fake Amazon page will then ask you to fill out a customer service survey in order to claim a prize. After you win the prize, you’ll be asked to pay for shipping by providing your financial information. From there, the scammers can do pretty much what they want with your financial information. In some instances, victims have been signed up for subscription services related to their ‘prize’ that ended up costing them $100 a month.

    For some reason on social media, this texting scam started to be passed around as being part of a human trafficking ring. Multiple anti-human trafficking agencies have gone on record to say this is simply not true.

    Unfortunately, the reality is when recruiting victims for human trafficking, it isn’t so elaborate. More often than not, traffickers will prey on the more vulnerable members of our society such as the homeless and those struggling with addiction or untreated mental health issues. If the traffickers are looking to recruit children, they’ll often take to social media to look for children who are having problems at home or school and are looking for a way to escape their lives. Random unsolicited text messages are not one of the tools in the trafficker’s arsenal.

     

  • Geebo 8:00 am on March 9, 2020 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Human trafficking, huntsville, Huntsville International Airport, ,   

    Modeling scam victim almost lured into trafficking 

    Modeling scam victim almost lured into trafficking

    Whenever we discuss the modeling scam we usually talk about how it could lead the victim into spending a lot of money that they don’t need to. For example, a number of online and radio ads for modeling jobs are actually just sales pitches for overpriced classes or photo packages. However, there is a much darker side to the modeling scam that can have grave consequences for the victims involved and that is human trafficking. Traffickers often pose as modeling or talent agents in order to find victims and a recent story shows what lengths they will go to find their victims.

    In Huntsville, Alabama it’s believed a 21-year-old woman almost fell victim to human traffickers posing as a modeling agency. If it wasn’t for her mother losing her car in the airport parking lot the woman might have never been seen again. When an airport employee saw the woman frantically looking for her car the employee stopped to help the woman. As they got to talking the woman said she had just dropped off her daughter at the terminal and that her daughter was leaving for a modeling offer in Phoenix. The mother told the employee that the agency even bought her daughter the ticket to fly to Phoenix. Thankfully, the airport employee had been trained on how to recognize human trafficking.

    Thankfully, they were able to find the woman before she boarded the plane. The employee was able to convince the woman that the modeling offer may not be on the up and up and arranged to have a police officer escort her at her destination. The employee then called the ‘agency’ to tell them that the woman would be escorted by police. It was shortly thereafter when the woman received texts from the fake modeling agency saying her flight had been canceled. Both Homeland Security and the TSA have said that the phony agency has been linked to other instances of human trafficking.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8TNT4fHJ3g%5D

    If you or a family member has ambitions of getting into modeling, have realistic expectations of what can be achieved in such a field crowded with treachery at every turn. Always do as much research as you can into any offer or opportunity you might find. Not everyone can be a model but these scammers, predators, and traffickers target victims who believe they have a shot in the modeling or entertainment industry and take advantage of their dreams. The Federal Trade Commission website has some tips on how not to get scammed by modeling ads.

     

  • Geebo 8:00 am on October 16, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Human trafficking, , ,   

    Potential modeling scam poses threat 

    Potential modeling scam poses threat

    The modeling scam isn’t one we discuss often but it can have potentially devastating effects. The damage can range anywhere from simply being swindled out of a substantial amount of money to becoming the victim of an online predator. Modeling can artists like to prey upon the insecurities of their victims and promise them lives of luxury and fame even though the odds of becoming a legitimately successful model are about the same as someone becoming a successful professional athlete. Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped victims from being scammed and the swindlers are always looking for new ways to find more victims.

    For example, recently in the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina, a number of women were sent text messages asking them if they wanted to be models for Victoria’s Secret. The texter was reportedly posing as a former model and asked the women for photos, personal information, and possibly a meeting. Authorities in the area believe this could potentially be a plot to recruit victims for human trafficking. Usually, human traffickers rely on social media to try to recruit victims instead of text messaging. However, the women that were texted in Myrtle Beach are all public figures in their profession and their numbers could have been obtained in any number of ways.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8TNT4fHJ3g%5D

    If you are thinking about getting into the modeling industry, have realistic expectations and do your research on the pitfalls it entails. What may sound like a great job could be any number of ways you can put yourself in danger. While you may be able to find one or two legitimate modeling jobs online, for the most part, legitimate modeling jobs are done through modeling agencies. The Federal Trade Commission has a website on how to tell if a modeling job is legitimate or if you’re dealing with shady charlatans.

     

  • Geebo 8:00 am on August 12, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Human trafficking,   

    Jeffrey Epstein: What Happens Next? 

    Jeffrey Epstein: What Happens Next?

    Jeffrey Epstein

    We’ve been following the story of billionaire financier and accused child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein since the news first broke of the generously lenient plea deal he received in Florida. If you’ll recall, Epstein was given his plea deal back in 2005 by Alexander Acosta who was a Miami U.S. Attorney at the time. More recently, Acosta was President Trump’s Secretary of Labor before resigning after Epstein’s New York arrest. By now you’ve probably heard the news that Epstein took his own life over the weekend. So, how does Epstein’s death affect the overall investigation into the crimes he was accused of committing?

    Many of Epstein’s victims feel like Epstein has escaped justice as they would have preferred to have had their day in court against him. However, Epstein’s death does make it easier for prosecutors and investigators to use evidence against any of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators. Any evidence seized should be admissible against any other defendant without a possibility of a motion to suppress. Ghislaine Maxwell has been accused in civil lawsuits of procuring Epstein’s victims. While she has not been charged with any criminal charges, it is possible that she could be assisting in the current investigation of Epstein.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_uTLwxJ5xc%5D

    Of course, the elephant in the room has to be addressed as many people believe the conspiracy theory Epstein did not take his own life but that instead, his death was a politically motivated murder. Many of these people feel that his death was either ordered by the Clintons or President Trump since Epstein had connections to both parties. However, the truth is more likely less fantastical. While Epstein had been on suicide watch prior to his death he had been removed from it. Also, suicide watch may not be what you think it is. It doesn’t mean that a prison inmate is being watched at all times around the clock with cameras in their cells for years upon end. According to a former correctional treatment specialist for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, suicide watch rarely lasts longer than a week. Not only that, but the unfortunate reality of prisons is that inmates take their own lives on a fairly consistent basis.

    Look at it this way, Epstein was a man who lived a life of decadent luxury and probably didn’t care how many underage girls he had to hurt to get what he wanted. Looking at the rest of his life being spent in prison for one of the most heinous crimes that is even looked down upon by the other inmates, Epstein probably felt that death was the better option for him.

     

  • Geebo 8:16 am on July 15, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Human trafficking, ,   

    Secretary of Labor quits after Epstein arrest! 

    Secretary of Labor quits after Epstein arrest!

    US Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta resigned his post this past Friday in the wake of the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein. If you’ll recall, Acosta was the Miami U.S. Attorney who negotiated the relatively light sentence the supposed billionaire received after pleading guilty to state charges of that involved trafficking underage girls. Not surprisingly, President Trump stood behind Acosta amidst the recent controversy.

    Trump said he believed Acosta thoroughly “explained” his decision making at the news conference, which sources said the president urged him to conduct. The president praised Acosta’s performance “under pressure,” saying he did a “fantastic job.”

    [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRQzJBD92us]

    However, that wasn’t the only revelation that came out over the weekend. According to part of his indictment in the Southern District of New York, it was revealed that Epstein never bothered to check in with New York officials since he was a registered sex offender and maintained a residence in New York. That’s a potential felony violation that could carry a sentence of four years behind bars alone.

    Epstein is also said to have paid $350,000 to two potential witnesses after the Miami Herald first broke their story about Epstein back in November. Prosecutors argue that this is just one of many reasons to have Epstein denied bond while he awaits trial. Of course, with Epstein’s wealth and resources at his expense, he could be considered a considerable flight risk. A bond hearing is set for later today.

    Lastly, and possibly one of the more disturbing aspects of this story, is that even though Epstein was a convicted sex offender, he was still welcomed among the financial elites and celebrities.

    In 2010, the year after he got out of a Florida jail, Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos dined at his Manhattan mansion with a British royal. The next year, Mr. Epstein was photographed at a “billionaire’s dinner” attended by tech titans like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

    Had this been just about anyone else, they would have never been released from prison in the first place. Justice is supposed to be blind, but apparently it doesn’t stop it from being greedy. Just ask Alexander Acosta.

     

  • Geebo 8:00 am on April 25, 2019 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Human trafficking, ,   

    Will traffickers lure your kids on Snapchat? 

    Will traffickers lure your kids on Snapchat?

    Within the past few days, there has been a rumor surrounding the photo-sharing app Snpachat. The rumor that’s been circulating mainly on Facebook claims that there is a sex trafficking ring operating in Lawrence, Massachusetts that recruits young girls over Snapchat. The rumor purports that strangers are adding your kids as friends on Snapchat and once they do that the traffickers are able to ascertain your child’s location and potentially kidnap them. However, according to the Lawrence Police, there is no such trafficking ring operating in Lawrence and fact-checking site Snopes says the rumor is gaining ground due to a misunderstanding about how Snapchat works.

    Snapchat does have a feature where friends can see each other’s location if both friends agree to enable the feature called Snap Map. But if one of the users does not enable Snap Map their location cannot be found. It’s not an automatic thing that turns on once you accept somebody’s friend request.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q-gjHtttGQ%5D

    Now while there is not currently a sex trafficking ring in Lawrence, that doesn’t mean that traffickers don’t use social media to approach children. In typical cases, traffickers will target children who are having problems at home or have run away in the past. In many instances, those children will have exhibited some evidence on their social media accounts. This allows traffickers to start grooming them by telling them how they understand the child better than the child’s parents do. In some other cases, the traffickers will promise kids from low-income areas with promises of fame and money and convince the child to run away.

    This could happen on any social media platform and not just Snapchat. These grooming techniques are not a new thing and were even used in the MySpace days. One of the best ways to protect your kids from traffickers and other online predators is to talk with them about how these predators operate and how most strangers online probably want something inappropriate from them. Another good way is to keep tabs on the apps your children may use and who is on their friends list. If it’s somebody that they’ve never met in person that you don’t know it’s a good idea to have them remove that person from their contacts. Lastly, you may want to consider holding on to all your children’s device after they go to bed in order to keep an eye on any unusual messages they may receive.

     

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