 We need to talk about scammers because there's too many people that still fall for these scam emails these scam phone calls So anytime you get an email or a phone call that's unsolicited From somebody you don't know you didn't contact them to begin with they contacted you and they promise you something or they threaten You in some way if you don't give them some kind of personal information That's always a scam and too many people are still falling for this and in many cases Some of these people that are falling for these scams are really smart people and I don't understand it just a couple of days ago I came across this article how a fake job offer took down the world's most popular crypto game I don't know anything about this particular crypto game, but this company apparently is a big deal So they deal with hundreds of millions or maybe even billions of dollars of cryptocurrency Involved in this play-to-earn kind of crypto game So even though this article is just a couple of days old this actually happened back in March this company It is revealed now that they lost $540 million in crypto to a hacker to a scammer really who sent some emails to some of their employees about offering jobs at a fake company and One of the employees at their company decided to apply for the job now because of the sensitive nature of this a lot of the Details behind this are not known, but ultimately what happened is one of the employees at this company They opened a PDF file that had a job offer because this job offer was amazing It's a whole lot of fake money being offered to this guy to work for this fake company and he fell for it, right? One of the things about scammers you have to understand is the first rule of Anybody trying to run some kind of scam on somebody you're trying to manipulate you in some way Think of every politician that's ever talked to you promised you something You know, there's two things you always do if you're trying to scam somebody you play on their hopes And you play on their fears, right? You play on their hopes and dreams You promise them something amazing and they'll probably fall for it because they desire something so much They want to believe it's true even when they know it's probably not and then of course you play on people's fears as well Many people have real fear and anxiety all the time some people not everybody but a lot of people And I'm sure you guys know this people that are scared of everything everything around the corner So when you get an email or a phone call saying that you owe You know an outrageous amount of back taxes because you messed up on your taxes or you did this wrong You did that wrong the cops are coming to arrest you yada yada yada if you don't do this You don't send this amount of money to this company That's a scam but most of the time it works because again so many people have these fear and anxiety issues So that's how the scammers get you they play on your hopes and they play on your fears and anytime you get a phone call or Email unsolicited and you should immediately spot whether they're trying the the hope or the fear method And as soon as you recognize it's one of those two methods. It's always a scam So in this particular case they were playing on the hopes and dreams of these people that worked for this crypto company So, you know, you send somebody a job offer and this job offer is way too good to be true But these people wanted it to be true and at least one of them fell for it Now obviously a scam as big as this this was probably a serious effort by a large group of people They have this linked to a major hacking group in North Korea called Lazarus They're they're well-known in North Korea and this was you know a pretty elaborate setup. They had fake social media accounts They had fake LinkedIn accounts that everything looked right to this guy that was actually applying for the job And of course, he was delivered this PDF file that you know, he downloaded right in this downloaded PDF actually had spyware That infiltrated this company's systems their crypto system Which was known as Ronin and they have these validators on this Ronin crypto network There's nine validators and if you have control of five, which is the majority of nine, right? If you have control of five you pretty much can control the network and the spyware actually gave this hacking group control of four Of the nine validators. So they actually needed one more and they were actually able to get that through another Fishing attack on another group that was associated with this particular crypto currency They don't go in the details of how they infiltrated that particular group but they eventually got control of at least five of the nine validators and of course That's when they were able to take $540 million worth of cryptocurrency from this company again That's kind of light on details other than we know that this company was hacked A whole bunch of money was stolen and they do mention that the employee that applied for the fake job Which was really the catalyst behind all of this that employee no longer works for this company which I would hope for because Obviously he deserves to be fired for falling for this scam But also when you're involved in a scam like this where a company has money stolen from them You can never be sure if that person is in on it. So you always have to fire them You can't keep somebody like that around so assuming that this employee that was scammed He's not some nefarious actor that was in concert with this hacking group Let's assume that he was just a normal guy and he was legitimately duped into this What could he have done to prevent this well by now? I think everyone knows never to open an attachment in an email never Open anything never download anything from an email, especially if it's unsolicited if somebody you don't know or somebody You didn't contact to begin with send you a file never download it and absolutely never open it 1,000% of the time that is spyware and I seriously don't understand why people open these things. I'm assuming again Fear and hope right there's something in the email that either you know plays on people's hopes and dreams And they imagine that this attachment is gonna do something for them like the job offer, right? It's magical something magical is gonna happen when I open the attachment, right? I'm gonna get a whole lot of money in this guy's case, you know many people like I think you know Probably think that blackjack and hookers are just magically gonna explode out of these attachments when they open them And that's not the case again. It's always spyware. It's always malware Let's talk about the phone scams because I see a lot of especially elderly people here in the US fall for these phone scammers One thing that everyone needs to know and make sure if you have elderly parents elderly grandparents They know this no one will ever call you and ask you for your social security number No one that's legit. Anyway scammers will call and ask for that But no one I don't care if it's a government agency if it's a bank. They already have your social security number Why would they need to call you and ask you for it, right? And any company that legitimately doesn't have your social and needs it for some reason They're gonna have some kind of secure website. You go and enter that information They're never going to ask you to disclose that information over the phone Anyone that calls you and ask you for a social security number 1000% of the time that's a scammer and again, they begin all of this by playing on hopes and fears They tell you something, you know to hopefully get you to disclose this personal information You otherwise maybe would have common sense enough not to disclose but again, they play on your hopes They play on your fears. So the phone calls, you know, you forgot to pay your taxes This is the IRS. If you don't give me this information right now I'm sending the cops to come arrest you and that's a common kind of fear kind of tactic with these phone scammers They threaten you that you're going to be incarcerated that the police are coming to arrest you. Guess what here in the US No one calls you and tells you you're going to be arrested You've never received a phone call from the cops saying hey, we're coming to your house right now to arrest you That's not what they do. They just show up and arrest you and some of the more tricky scammers with these phone calls What they'll do is they'll call and say you've won something or you qualify for this or that We need some information. You don't have to pay anything They're not going to ask for like a credit card or anything because that's obvious that that's a scammer They you know want to steal your identity. So they want your social they want maybe some other personal information and they'll begin this by claiming to be some government organization or some company maybe that you've dealt with in the past and They'll give you some of your personal information to you in the call making you think they have all of your information But just to confirm that you're you would you please verify your social security number for me? That's a scammer. So they'll give you personal information like your date of birth and places You've worked at and things like that and what they do is everyone has social media, of course Many people have a Facebook page. So they go to your face page You know and they go get your personal information because you've already told people your birthday and where you live Not all this other stuff on your Facebook page and then they just play that back to you in the phone call They just recite this back to you. Hey, we know all of this about you, but can you please verify? It's really you by giving me your social don't fall for that Ultimately, if you're worried about falling for some of these scammers some of these hackers The only 100% surefire way to prevent you from actually being scammed by these people is just not interacting with them at all never Open read do anything with email that is from somebody you don't know and it's completely Unsolicited don't even open it. Don't read it. Just immediately delete it. That's what I do I don't even read the damn thing if it's from some name Some address that I don't know I don't bother reading it. I already know what it is It's a scam as far as phone calls if somebody calls you and they're not part of your contact list You know some unknown number that comes up never answer that thing Let it go to your voicemail if it's somebody that actually needed to get in contact you It was legit, you know They'll leave a voicemail and you can go listen to the voicemail and decide to call them back But 99 times out of 100 that was some kind of unsolicited scam call And it's a shame that we live in a world like this, but this is the way the world has always been There's always been these scammers these con artists, right these manipulators these people that tried to earn their money By stealing from others. Yeah, these scandalous nefarious kinds of people. They've always been with us They'll always be with us it just seems like it's more prevalent now because of technology because of the use of things like email and cell phones and They're coming at you a little differently now than in past years where they actually had to con you in real life in person Although those people still exist as well You should be on the lookout for them and again you can spot them hopes and fears anytime you come across someone whether it be through Email through phone calls or through real life if they trying to play on your hopes or your fears They're probably a scammer and you can probably just tell them to go jump and rotate now before I go I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of this episode Dustin Gabe James Matt Maxim Michael Mitchell Paul West while you bought Homie Allen armored dragon Chuck commander angry die. Okay Dylan Marsha Missed all of this up Dylan Marsha. I'm Erion Alexander the sergeant for door polytech realities for less red profit Steven tools Devler and Willie I should probably record that but I'm not going to these guys They're my highest tier patrons over on patreon without these guys this episode would not have been possible the show Is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen I won't name all of their names because if I messed up that shorter list of names There's no way I'd get through this without choking But I do appreciate each and every one of these people these are all my supporters over on patreon I don't have any corporate sponsors I'm sponsored by you guys the community if you like my work and want to help me out subscribe to distro tube over on patreon these guys Go jump and rotate. I hope that doesn't get me demonetized