This is NOT Fraud Advice--Scam Dens

Happy Friday and happy August everyone.

This summer has been flying by at Footprint! We have been busy with new product updates, onboarding new customers, and obsessing over how we can help block fraud.

We have had a blast with this "Not Fraud Advice" series, but today, we want to take it in a different direction.

So far, we have broken down types of internet fraud in an approachable way to better understand the actions we work to prevent. While this has been fun, we do not want to misrepresent the perpetrator. The average fraudster is not some kid looking to make some spending cash.

Today, let's turn to the enemy we are up against and bring light to the vast and complex ecosystems conducting most of these scams. Today, we want to introduce you to scam dens.

Last week, the WSJ wrote an excellent profile on Billy, a man who posed as "Alice" to scam hundreds of people online.

Billy wasn't the mastermind but a victim in a much broader plot, conducted mostly by Chinese gangs and carried out in a lawless jungle in Myanmar.

Myanmar has emerged as the global epicenter of the scam industry. Throughout COVID, Chinese gangs moved into the jungle to focus on scamming people online.

In four years, massive complexes, known as scam dens, have emerged to house scammers.

The residents are not born criminals but instead victims themselves. Many of the "employees" are tricked into traveling to Thailand for the promise of a job, often escaping countries in political turmoil. Billy arrived in Thailand from Ethiopia and expected to start at a fintech, Huilong Network. When he arrived, he was smuggled across the border and joined hundreds of other captives.

The captives are given PDFs they must memorize, which outline the online identity they will assume. They are split into groups, with a prospecting group sending thousands of messages daily. Once a victim replies, another group builds a relationship before asking for money. Finally, a third group handles the technical process of the wire transfers.

These fraudsters are not enterprising teenagers. They are part of a much larger criminal organization that has studied, tested, and perfected strategies to steal money online.

This is a scary reality, but we must face it in order to develop the tools necessary to finally end internet fraud.

We are proud of the tools we have built to counteract these criminal networks. With robust identity verification capabilities, we bring more trust to the internet. The identity tools paired with fraud detection work together to protect your companies and your end users. As always, we would love to chat and share more about how we plan to win this fight.