Speaker 1: Nine podcasts.
Speaker 2: Now, if you've ever been scammed, or you've ever worried
Speaker 2: about being scammed, and who doesn't you need this now
Speaker 2: to speak to a man whose life's work is really
Speaker 2: tracking down and recovering money from scammers, recovering money. Most
Speaker 2: times it's gone, but he has a record of finding it.
Speaker 2: His name is Ken Gamble. He's chair of a company
Speaker 2: called IFW Global. He's a private detective. Now, when you
Speaker 2: think about a private detective, you probably think about somebody
Speaker 2: in an overcoat with a camera peering through a motel
Speaker 2: window to catch somebody in the act of adultering. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: the divorce laws have changed, that doesn't happen anymore, but
Speaker 2: the private investigators still exist and do a lot of work.
Speaker 2: Ken Gamble is a man. He's arguably becoming one of
Speaker 2: the best known private detectives in Australia. Unlike most, he
Speaker 2: does not have a background in the police force. He's
Speaker 2: been various things, including an auxiliary firefighter or a reservist
Speaker 2: in the army, a boxer. He's been involved in many
Speaker 2: high profile cases. He's been on TV often. His work
Speaker 2: on scammers has been successful and it's clear from evidence
Speaker 2: he gave to various parliamentary committees. He doesn't think enough
Speaker 2: is being done for average Australians to protect them first
Speaker 2: and to get their money back second, and to catch
Speaker 2: the crooks third. He's been shouting about this for many
Speaker 2: years and well, if people had perhaps listened earlier, there
Speaker 2: would have been fewer victims. The first four months of
Speaker 2: this year, scams took nearly one hundred and twenty million
Speaker 2: dollars out of pockets in this country. There has been
Speaker 2: a twenty eight percent increase on the previous year. Now
Speaker 2: as fewer scams, there's more money going out. Social media
Speaker 2: scams specifically doubled in the first half of this year.
Speaker 2: Ken Gamble has been warning this would happen, and it is.
Speaker 2: Ken Gamble, thanks very much for speaking.
Speaker 1: With us, my pleasure.
Speaker 2: I'd love to get straight to it. We'll get more
Speaker 2: on your background later. Peering through windows or whatever your
Speaker 2: Tit is a private investigator. Scams growing changing. But you've
Speaker 2: been warning about this for years, haven't you.
Speaker 1: I have, Neil, I have, and it started a long
Speaker 1: time ago, actually, back in two thousand and seven when
Speaker 1: I started getting involved in investigating scams. It was the
Speaker 1: Rugby World Cup ticket scam. In France and then the
Speaker 1: world ticket scam of the Beijing Olympics in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. So I went public back then, initially started
Speaker 1: to go public repeatedly after that time, warning the police
Speaker 1: and the government that online scam and internet related crime
Speaker 1: is going to become one of the greatest threats to
Speaker 1: national security all over the world. And but thirteen years
Speaker 1: ago I made a public appearance at a Western Union
Speaker 1: conference and I made a comment to a journalist that
Speaker 1: police had lost the battle with scams at that point.
Speaker 1: That was twenty twelve, and within a few hours it
Speaker 1: was headlines in the Daily Telegraph. Internet fraud watchdog says
Speaker 1: that police have lost the battle of scams, and I
Speaker 1: was heavily criticized by police. I even received a phone
Speaker 1: call from Cold Ice and the head of the fraud
Speaker 1: squad criticizing me for making that comment, saying that we've
Speaker 1: got no problem with scams. We're well and truly on
Speaker 1: top of it. But of course that was far from
Speaker 1: the truth.
Speaker 2: But have they listened to you yet as any You've
Speaker 2: appeared before these parliamentary committees and the rest, and pretty
Speaker 2: much I think the most recent one was last year.
Speaker 2: The message is still the same. They're not on top
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: No. And the problem with law enforcement of the way
Speaker 1: in which it functions is it's very reactive. You know,
Speaker 1: they react to crimes after they're committed. Police don't do
Speaker 1: a lot of proactive enforcement. They do in the world
Speaker 1: of drugs and terrorism. They do a lot of proactive
Speaker 1: work in relation to even child exploitation, you know, those
Speaker 1: types of crimes that are regarded to be crimes against
Speaker 1: children or vulnerable people, or even national security concerns. They
Speaker 1: do proactive work in relation to those crimes. But never fraud.
Speaker 1: And what nobody ever saw coming was that fraud was
Speaker 1: going to become the number one income earner for organized crime,
Speaker 1: for terrorists, for all of the biggest criminal enterprises on
Speaker 1: the planet. And that's what That's exactly what's happened.
Speaker 2: Now, Well, are they doing enough now? Is enough of it?
Speaker 1: Nowhere near? Nowhere near it? Nowhere near it? They have
Speaker 1: launched Operation Firestorm at the AFP, They've launched at the
Speaker 1: JPC three several months after I testified. I testified in
Speaker 1: May last year at a Senate inquiry as to the
Speaker 1: catastrophic failure of our government to protect Australians and within
Speaker 1: a few months they had launched an anti scam task
Speaker 1: force at the JPC three and they are very busy
Speaker 1: and they are tackling scams, but they can only really
Speaker 1: look at a small portion of the amount of scams
Speaker 1: that have come in and plus a lot of the
Speaker 1: damage has done over the past decade. Just about every
Speaker 1: vulnerable Australian in this country has been targeted by a scam,
Speaker 1: so they've cleaned them out. Billions and billions of dollars
Speaker 1: has been cleaned out of vulnerable Australian So it's too
Speaker 1: late that the ship is sunk.
Speaker 2: Well, that means millions of people apart, what about from
Speaker 2: the money you've been victims, because it can be devastating stuff,
Speaker 2: and perhaps some of that could have been avoided.
Speaker 1: All of it could have been avoided. There's only a
Speaker 1: handful of syndicates that have been causing this destruction and
Speaker 1: damage to Australia. You know, the Israelis, the Israeli crime
Speaker 1: groups are putting up all the ads on Facebook. The
Speaker 1: Chinese are doing the pig butchering love scams.
Speaker 2: On what So what's pig butchering?
Speaker 1: So pig butchering is what law enforcement describes a specific
Speaker 1: type of scam orchestrated by Chinese organized crime groups out
Speaker 1: of compounds in Southeast Asia. It places like Me and
Speaker 1: mar Lao, Thailand, Cambodi, Philippines, and more recently in Dubai.
Speaker 1: And these are compounds of probably a thousand plus workers
Speaker 1: sitting in offices all day, every day on their iPhones,
Speaker 1: making connections with Australians, building relationships, sometimes romantic, sometimes business relationships,
Speaker 1: but building a relationship with a victim and then luring
Speaker 1: them into investing into cryptocurrency.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a bit like a call a crooks call center.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it is a call center. It's a big
Speaker 1: call center. The reason they call it pig butchering it
Speaker 1: comes from China. This particular scam started in China, and
Speaker 1: there's three stages to butchering a pig. There's finding the pig,
Speaker 1: there's grooming the pig, and then butchering the pig. So
Speaker 1: that's the three stages of pig butchering. And they've coined
Speaker 1: that phrase because of the callous act in which they
Speaker 1: find the victims. They then groom the victim, and then
Speaker 1: they financially butcher the victim. So pig butchering has become
Speaker 1: a global phenomenon.
Speaker 2: And is this are you talking more about investment scams
Speaker 2: or are they doing the lot through the system.
Speaker 1: All investment scams. It's luring people into making an investment
Speaker 1: into a cryptocurrency platform. And what they're very sophisticated and
Speaker 1: they make the people the victim, believe that they're making
Speaker 1: a lot of money, and so they kind of target
Speaker 1: vulnerable every day mums and dads who give it a go,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, the thousand dollars they
Speaker 1: put in is ten thousand dollars and then it's one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars and they get all excited and start
Speaker 1: throwing all this money in, but the profits are actually
Speaker 1: not real. The profits are fake. So at the end
Speaker 1: of the day they end up putting all their money
Speaker 1: in and then and then losing everything. And that's become
Speaker 1: a huge, huge scam.
Speaker 2: Well that's the Chinese. What are the Israelis doing? The
Speaker 2: Israeli organized crime?
Speaker 1: So the Israelis dominate the four X and cryptocurrency trading
Speaker 1: industry globally. They run massive syndicates all over Eastern Europe
Speaker 1: countries like Bulgaria, Cyprus, in Ukraine, Serbia, they have call
Speaker 1: centers set up again targeting Australians, putting ads up on Facebook.
Speaker 1: These are all the celebrity adverts that you see on Facebook.
Speaker 1: You've heard about the celebrity endorsement adverts that pop up
Speaker 1: all over Facebook. Well, the Israelis are behind those. This
Speaker 1: is an Israeli born sort of very unique and very
Speaker 1: sophisticated scam. So they promote it on Facebook and Instagram,
Speaker 1: and then when someone joins, they immediately get a call
Speaker 1: from a call center in the Philippines or in Eastern
Speaker 1: Europe from a customer service helping you to start trading.
Speaker 1: And again they make it look like you're making a fortune.
Speaker 2: You said targeting Australians. They're targeting people around the world,
Speaker 2: I suppose. But is Australia a particular.
Speaker 1: Time, Yes, number one target in the world that we
Speaker 1: have been for a number of years. And I've interviewed
Speaker 1: various criminals from different countries that we've arrested during operations,
Speaker 1: and I've asked them straight, why do you target Australia
Speaker 1: And their answer is always the same. We have the
Speaker 1: most luck in Australia because Australians are the easiest to trick.
Speaker 1: They're the easiest.
Speaker 2: What's wrong with us?
Speaker 1: Well, because it's not. Well, it's bad that all these
Speaker 1: people are getting defrauded, but it's a sign of what
Speaker 1: sort of country we are. There's a lot of honest, hardworking,
Speaker 1: trustworthy people in this country and that's the reality is
Speaker 1: that a majority of this country is honest, hardworking, trustworthy
Speaker 1: type of people that could never imagine that someone could
Speaker 1: get on the phone and tell you this incredible story.
Speaker 1: And the level of deception that has been per portrayed
Speaker 1: by these gangs has never seen, never been seen before
Speaker 1: in Australia. So these vulnerable people don't they don't understand
Speaker 1: that this actually could exist.
Speaker 2: Well, is the police and government in action or slowness
Speaker 2: to act? Is that part of the reason Australia as
Speaker 2: a target as.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the core reason why Australia target.
Speaker 2: That we're gullible and honest, decent people and we're not
Speaker 2: being protected by the system.
Speaker 1: No, because the system was never set up to investigate
Speaker 1: these type of crimes coming from a foreign based, international,
Speaker 1: cross border syndicate. Because when someone gets to fraud and
Speaker 1: loses their life savings, they go down the local police station,
Speaker 1: whether it's Melbourne, whether it's Country Victoria, whether it's Perth,
Speaker 1: anywhere in the country. They go down the local police
Speaker 1: station and make a complaint. As soon as the police
Speaker 1: look at the case and they say, well, you've dealt
Speaker 1: with someone overseas. There's nothing much we can do. It's
Speaker 1: out of our jurisdiction, so they won't investigate it, and
Speaker 1: if they do escalate it up up to the AFP.
Speaker 1: AFP up until very recently, didn't have the ability to
Speaker 1: investigate it either. They had no mandate to investigate fraud
Speaker 1: against individuals in Australia. That's just the way the rules were.
Speaker 1: But if you defrauded a comwealth government agency then of
Speaker 1: course you'd have the AFP all over you. They but
Speaker 1: that's all changed since last year since they launched the
Speaker 1: Operation Firestorm at the JPC three.
Speaker 2: You mentioned Chinese, Israelis, Nigerians are still in it. These
Speaker 2: are the people who used to send me facts as
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago saying they had twenty million dollars for me.
Speaker 1: That's right. The Nigerians still play a part, but they're
Speaker 1: not in the top three. They'd be probably number four,
Speaker 1: so that the third biggest group that's targeting Australians is
Speaker 1: the British so the British classic boiler room fraudsters, the
Speaker 1: Wolf of Wall Street, the sleck talking posh British accent,
Speaker 1: selling stocks and shares and promoting an IPO with American
Speaker 1: corporation so that they are still getting the most amount
Speaker 1: of money out of investors because they're targeting high net
Speaker 1: worth people that would never normally invest or take a
Speaker 1: risk with their money. But someone may have just got
Speaker 1: their superannuation cashed in they want to put it into
Speaker 1: a safe term deposit. For example, they might want to
Speaker 1: buy a bank bond. They don't want to send their
Speaker 1: money overseas. They just want to put their money into
Speaker 1: a bond. So they go online, they start looking for comparisons,
Speaker 1: percentage rates, and all of a sudden they get a
Speaker 1: call from a posh British accent from a financial advisory
Speaker 1: firm in downtown Sydney. Will help you to set up
Speaker 1: your to set up the term deposit. We'll do everything
Speaker 1: for you. We have relationships with the banks. We have
Speaker 1: an AFSL. You can check the AFSL. It's a real one.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, the Australian Financial Securities in
Speaker 1: financial services license, so as regulates anyone that offers investments.
Speaker 2: So they have a real one. They have one.
Speaker 1: They have a real one. These days are setting up companies,
Speaker 1: putting directors into the companies, obtaining an AFS license and
Speaker 1: using it. We've just investigating a twenty five million dollar
Speaker 1: fraud right now, of which they used a real financial
Speaker 1: services license and the director of the company is a criminal.
Speaker 2: Well how do they get the license?
Speaker 1: Great question, something that we'll be asking ask very soon.
Speaker 1: They actually rent the license from another license holder, and
Speaker 1: they pay several thousand dollars a month to rent it
Speaker 1: under what's called a corporate authorized representative.
Speaker 2: So it's a legal license and a proper license which
Speaker 2: they've borrowed and people, of course you check it out.
Speaker 2: So legitimate, correct, license.
Speaker 1: Correct, And that's what's been happening. So the sophisticated investor
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to take a risk with his money,
Speaker 1: does his due diligence, finds out that the company has
Speaker 1: got an AFS sell and all of a sudden he's
Speaker 1: sending millions of dollars into the bank account, which is
Speaker 1: also an Australian bank account under the company name, and
Speaker 1: within twenty four hours that money has gone off to
Speaker 1: a crime syndicate in Hong Kong. It's gone to an
Speaker 1: account in Hong Kong and then distributed through crypual currency
Speaker 1: to crime bosses around the world.
Speaker 2: Interesting you mentioned the British link. It can be difficult
Speaker 2: and we're not going to get much luck. We're dealing
Speaker 2: with the Chinese police in terms of tracking something down,
Speaker 2: but surely the British is a lot of cooperation between
Speaker 2: Australian and British police. Can't they get on to it together?
Speaker 1: And that's the big problem, Neil. That's the problem that
Speaker 1: the British police. It's outside of their jurisdiction because all
Speaker 1: of these British gangsters are not in England. None of
Speaker 1: them are in England. They're in Southeast Asia. They're in
Speaker 1: the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, they're all over Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: They would never base themselves in the England because they'd
Speaker 1: be vulnerable to British law enforcements. So they're very clever.
Speaker 1: They set themselves up in places third world countries where
Speaker 1: they can live the life, and they target Austrains from
Speaker 1: those countries where the laws are weak.
Speaker 2: Is greed behind this? I mean, is there an element
Speaker 2: of I was always taught and I'm financially literate and
Speaker 2: financially very careful person. I reckon I work hard for
Speaker 2: the money. I'm not going to give it to anybody
Speaker 2: else easily. Perhaps too much so, but I was always
Speaker 2: told if it looks too good to be true, if
Speaker 2: the interest rate's too good and they're telling you it's
Speaker 2: no risk and it's double the interest rates, then you
Speaker 2: can get in a legitimate place like the local bank.
Speaker 2: Be suspicious. But is greed underlying this? Do you think
Speaker 2: other people being con.
Speaker 1: It's definitely part of it. There are certain individuals that
Speaker 1: get scammed that are just doing it purely by greed.
Speaker 1: You know, they're just trying to trying to get as
Speaker 1: much money as they can. And certainly there is a
Speaker 1: part of it, But what we see in a majority
Speaker 1: of cases, it's not greed at all. These are people
Speaker 1: that went out. These are hardworking mums and dads of
Speaker 1: Australia who are honest and trustworthy people who have gone
Speaker 1: out to put a secure investment into a bank, bond
Speaker 1: or something of that effect, buy some shares. This is
Speaker 1: a very conservative investment that they've sought to invest in
Speaker 1: and then been scammed. So these are not people even
Speaker 1: these are risk adverse people. These are people that would
Speaker 1: not normally take a risk. And the only reason they
Speaker 1: put it into this particular bond was because it was
Speaker 1: only two percent higher than the standard bank. So that's clever.
Speaker 1: So the criminals are very clever. They just make it
Speaker 1: a couple of percent more, not something ridiculous that they'll
Speaker 1: offer these investments where they're just getting that little bit
Speaker 1: better deal. And so you've got investors coming along that
Speaker 1: are doing their utility, they're doing everything right and they're
Speaker 1: not greedy people at all, but they still fall victim
Speaker 1: to a scam.
Speaker 2: I was reading that so far this year scams investment
Speaker 2: scams on social media of doubled in Australia and up
Speaker 2: to about twenty three and a half million dollars already
Speaker 2: social media alone, investment scams of doubled. The same groups doing.
Speaker 1: That a majority of investment related scams. So on social
Speaker 1: media you've got every type of scam. You've got so
Speaker 1: many different types. But when you look at the majority
Speaker 1: of where the money goes, it's in investment scam. So
Speaker 1: if you look at the three groups, and I'll include
Speaker 1: Nigerians in there, because the Nigerians have resurfaced recently very
Speaker 1: heavily doing cryptocurrency scams. But they're not as sophisticated as
Speaker 1: the Israelis or the British. Probably a little bit better
Speaker 1: than the Chinese, because the Chinese have to employ English
Speaker 1: speaking people, so they can't do the scams themselves. They
Speaker 1: have to rely upon others who can speak English because
Speaker 1: they're targeting Australians. So those scams that you see on
Speaker 1: Facebook and all these online social media scams, you've got
Speaker 1: a majority of those scams coming from those four crime groups,
Speaker 1: the Nigerians, the Chinese, the British and the Israelis majority
Speaker 1: and we know that because we've traced We've tracked hundreds
Speaker 1: of them and a majority of them come back to
Speaker 1: a syndicate that is run by one of those four
Speaker 1: crime groups. And then you've got some other groups like
Speaker 1: Eastern Europeans, Russians, Ukrainians. You know, you've got a smaller
Speaker 1: minority of criminals that also do those scams. And increasingly
Speaker 1: we're seeing scams perpetrated from Australia on other Australians. So
Speaker 1: we're seeing a lot of scams come out of the
Speaker 1: Gold Coast, for.
Speaker 2: Example, Australian crooks.
Speaker 1: Australian crooks doing the same sort of scams, but now
Speaker 1: doing them on shore because of the difficulty in you know,
Speaker 1: the police response is so slow that they can run
Speaker 1: their scam for three months, shut it all down, pocket
Speaker 1: you know, a million dollars or more, and then get
Speaker 1: on with the next one and by the time law
Speaker 1: enforcement come along, they're gone. They're long gone.
Speaker 2: We must be talking about in a year internationally, billions
Speaker 2: and billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, about five billion in the last few years. That's
Speaker 1: gone out of Australia into the hands of criminals and terrorists.
Speaker 2: But what about Heaven knows what. Well we guess what
Speaker 2: the terrorists are using it for. And if you expand
Speaker 2: that to the rest of the world. I see Australia
Speaker 2: as a world leader, but we're in the binions each year.
Speaker 1: One of the highest per capita, one of the highest
Speaker 1: lost countries in the world. The United States has been
Speaker 1: hit with these pig butchering scams during COVID. They've lost
Speaker 1: a record number a record amount of money. It's up
Speaker 1: in the many many billions of US dollars in losses.
Speaker 1: So Western countries themselves are being very heavily targeted by
Speaker 1: these types of scams, but Australia is still up there,
Speaker 1: and I'd say we have to be up there in
Speaker 1: the top five countries in the world that are targeted
Speaker 1: by these criminal groups.
Speaker 2: So I was going to say, so this this is
Speaker 2: the crime scenario for the future, but it's actually now,
Speaker 2: this is the crime issue in the world.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. You see what's happened is billions of dollars
Speaker 1: of money has gone into the hands of organized crime groups.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned terrorism because we've traced some of these
Speaker 1: scams to members of terrorist organizations. We've traced it to
Speaker 1: people in Israel, in Egypt, in Lebanon. We've got a
Speaker 1: number of cases where we've got hard evidence and proof
Speaker 1: that these have gone into the hands of has Bowler
Speaker 1: sympathizers for example. You know, everyone is getting in on
Speaker 1: the act now. Outlaw motorcycle gangs are doing scams. Organized
Speaker 1: crime groups, traditional mafia that used to do a lot
Speaker 1: of other serious crimes have all turned now to financial
Speaker 1: crime because it's very high profit and very low risk.
Speaker 2: So okay, what do you do with that information? And
Speaker 2: what he's done with it. You obviously pass it on
Speaker 2: to the authorities or the law and law enforcements.
Speaker 1: What happens, we pass it all on. We just pass
Speaker 1: it on. We leave it to the hands of authorities.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not our job to track down terrorists,
Speaker 1: although we track down the people that are responsible for
Speaker 1: our clients frauds. So if someone hires us and loses
Speaker 1: a million dollars and they want to know who who
Speaker 1: got the money, will we'll find them and we will
Speaker 1: track them down and will arrest them.
Speaker 2: Well, is anything being done with the information you're providing
Speaker 2: our terrorists who are making this money being arrested anywhay?
Speaker 1: I'm sure the information has passed through the relevant channels,
Speaker 1: but it's never shared back with us because you know,
Speaker 1: there's long been no sharing between private investigators and police.
Speaker 1: That's been historical for decades. So the same with banks.
Speaker 1: They won't share information with us. When our client loses
Speaker 1: millions of dollars the money goes into an Australian bank,
Speaker 1: we can't get informed from the banks. They suppress our
Speaker 1: ability to get information to chase down the criminals.
Speaker 2: But you're a fully licensed operator yourself and the organization.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's no questioning your credentials.
Speaker 1: Correct, that's right, But every bank in Australia will tell
Speaker 1: you we're not allowed to do that because of banking secrecy.
Speaker 1: We can only do it through a subpoena. So they
Speaker 1: send the victim to court who's just lost their life
Speaker 1: savings and has no money left to spend another twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars on lawyers to get the information which could
Speaker 1: just easily be handed over a couple.
Speaker 2: Of specific scams. As mentioned in the past day or
Speaker 2: so about concerns about crypto ATMs and the amount of
Speaker 2: money being scammed through. Now, I didn't even know crypto
Speaker 2: ATMs exist, but apparently there's more crypto ATMs in Australia
Speaker 2: and they're not all crooked, but more crypto ATMs than
Speaker 2: there are some banking ATMs. What happens there? What is
Speaker 2: a crypto atm?
Speaker 1: Well, it's where you can go and you can exchange
Speaker 1: your money for cryptocurrency and then you can use that
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency for goods and services because a lot of people
Speaker 1: now are choosing to use cryptocurrency to pay for goods
Speaker 1: and services online. It's also used for legal purposes. I mean,
Speaker 1: they can't control what happens to the ATM. But the
Speaker 1: crypto ATMs are just really like a giant iPad. I
Speaker 1: mean they're just connected. They have a back end connection
Speaker 1: with exchanges, but it's just really a computer. It doesn't
Speaker 1: spit out money, but it's connected to an exchange and
Speaker 1: you can purchase money from those exchanges. Now, just recently
Speaker 1: I heard that some of these cryptocurrency ATMs have popped
Speaker 1: up in all sorts of places, including a hydroponics store.
Speaker 1: So they're appearing everywhere, and of course, you know, the
Speaker 1: government can't really do much to stop it because of
Speaker 1: the way that cryptocurrency is proliferated in Australia and will
Speaker 1: continue to do so in the future.
Speaker 2: Well what's the scam here though? Do you actually get
Speaker 2: the cryptocurrency or are you be losing your money?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, no, there's no scam with the crypto ATM
Speaker 1: is just a facility to be able to exchange your
Speaker 1: real fit money into cryptocurrency. So if you want to
Speaker 1: take money out of your own exchange, you want to
Speaker 1: cash it in. Say you've got an account with a
Speaker 1: crypto exchange that has a relationship with an Australian bank. Then
Speaker 1: you can go and take money out of that ATM
Speaker 1: the same as what you can do with the bank.
Speaker 1: It So instead of taking money out of NAB or
Speaker 1: Westpac out of an ATM on the wall, taking your
Speaker 1: cash out of your bank, the ATM, crypto ATM are
Speaker 1: usually taking it out of your cryptocurrency exchange, the same philosophy.
Speaker 2: I was reading another report today and this is a
Speaker 2: whole different area talking about cruel the romance scams. A
Speaker 2: gentleman though I think he's in his sixtiesmmed out of
Speaker 2: one point four million dollars. How do they work and
Speaker 2: how common are they?
Speaker 1: The romance scams, these are also very common. The Nigerians
Speaker 1: definitely take the number one spot for those. The relationship
Speaker 1: building over a long period of time. They're very cunning,
Speaker 1: they're very well trained. These types of building relationships and
Speaker 1: relationship scams and romance scams are long term, you know.
Speaker 1: They sometimes we've seen these go for two or three
Speaker 1: years the relationship and the victim thinks that they're going
Speaker 1: to marry the other person and they're even making wedding plans,
Speaker 1: but of course it never eventuates. But what happens again,
Speaker 1: it's vulnerable Australians who are not aware that they may
Speaker 1: become separated or divorced, or they may, you know, in
Speaker 1: their older years, they may get lonely and they may
Speaker 1: go on a dating site and meet someone who they
Speaker 1: believe is the person of their dreams, and that person's
Speaker 1: actually a scammer, putting up a fake profile. And then
Speaker 1: they develop a relationship and the person starts to groom
Speaker 1: the victim by giving them compliments and telling them how
Speaker 1: beautiful they are, and then the perpetrator will come up
Speaker 1: start coming up with all sorts of reasons why they're
Speaker 1: in financial trouble they need some help. A common one
Speaker 1: is that they're in the US Army and they're based
Speaker 1: over in an area of conflict and they're not allowed
Speaker 1: to make phone calls or do video calls because of
Speaker 1: security reasons, so they tell the victim that they can
Speaker 1: only communicate via email. That's a classic scam. So these
Speaker 1: romance scams probably not as big as they used to be,
Speaker 1: but they're still going.
Speaker 2: The AI terrifies, well, that's not right, but it concerns
Speaker 2: me in a lot of ways. Outside the scamming area,
Speaker 2: we've seen specific AI folkes on the Prime ministrants in Albanisi.
Speaker 2: One talking about investment opportunity, which was a scam. Another
Speaker 2: one was talking about gambling legislation, which was totally fake.
Speaker 2: Is this the future? These sort of and how on
Speaker 2: earth do you tell that's not elbow? How do you know?
Speaker 1: Well, again, it's awareness. These deep folks are just starting.
Speaker 1: We are going to see futuristic scams. They're already coming
Speaker 1: out now. I've got people doing deep fakes for me.
Speaker 1: My company has been the subject of hundreds of imposter websites,
Speaker 1: even people purporting to be me using my photo and
Speaker 1: using one recently I saw with me talking with an
Speaker 1: American accent, and that was used in a fraud in
Speaker 1: Denmark to take twenty thousand euros off somebody. So the
Speaker 1: deep fakes are a real concern, and again it's got
Speaker 1: to be addressed from a legislative angle, from a law perspective,
Speaker 1: because it is identity fraud, taking someone's identity and using
Speaker 1: that identity. So it's a time.
Speaker 2: Is it not illegal at the moment to do that.
Speaker 1: Well, it's I don't think it's. There's specific laws for
Speaker 1: AI yet, they still need to be drafted, but there's
Speaker 1: laws on using someone's identity. So if someone uses my
Speaker 1: face to commit a crime, then it's identity fraud. They're
Speaker 1: using my identity even though it's in an AI sense.
Speaker 1: So there are laws that can be used, but there's
Speaker 1: still you know, there's still needs to be new legislation
Speaker 1: in relation to these types of scams because AI and cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: those two combined have created a whole new crime set
Speaker 1: for these organized gangs. So all of these criminal groups
Speaker 1: that I've just mentioned earlier are now getting heavily into
Speaker 1: AI and cryptocurrencies to conduct all their operations, which gives
Speaker 1: them another unique cutting edge advantage over other criminals.
Speaker 2: So these celebrity scams, it's the same thing. Is that also?
Speaker 2: And I've seen a few of them on Twitter myself,
Speaker 2: people I know, David Kosh, Eddie Maguire people, and I
Speaker 2: just no weigh that stem and I know that I
Speaker 2: know that they wouldn't be doing that, but people have
Speaker 2: been sucked in. Is that an AI trick as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well what happened They started off just using their images,
Speaker 1: just putting their image up and creating fake media stories,
Speaker 1: and then when the deep fakes came in and these
Speaker 1: AI apps like Parrot, for example, one called Parrot that's
Speaker 1: an AI app you can download on your phone and
Speaker 1: you can get Arnold Swartzen and get to give you
Speaker 1: a testimonial or Sylvester stallone. You can just do anything.
Speaker 1: You can create anyone in the world. You can put
Speaker 1: You only need a few seconds of somebody's voice to
Speaker 1: create a voice print, that is, to create their voice
Speaker 1: and then superimpose it onto a face, and the AI
Speaker 1: program will make the lips move in coordination with what
Speaker 1: you're saying. So it's very, very realistic. So what we've
Speaker 1: seen now is we've seen a diversion of those original scams,
Speaker 1: the ones using just the photographs of Koshi and Eddie
Speaker 1: McGuire and all those. Now it's progressed to deep fakes
Speaker 1: where they're actually talking. I've got one just a few
Speaker 1: days ago with our Foreign Minister making a public statement
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump criticizing the austrane government for covering up
Speaker 1: this ability for all these people to make all this money,
Speaker 1: suppressing it. So you know, that's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that we're facing at the moment.
Speaker 2: Tell me what the process is to go through it.
Speaker 2: If I'm fall into something and I'm scammed, for five
Speaker 2: or ten thousand dollars. Where do I go?
Speaker 1: Well, if you've scammed for five or ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: you're probably never going to see that money again because
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be worth while trying to pursue it. But
Speaker 1: the first step is cyber dot gov dot au. That's
Speaker 1: the national cybercrime reporting portal for any cybercrime complaint in Australia.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't realize that that's the place
Speaker 1: to go. It's the only place to go. You can't
Speaker 1: go down the police station anymore. You can't. There's no
Speaker 1: point contacting scam Watch or ASSEK or any of these
Speaker 1: other agencies because they simply don't investigate. They will refer
Speaker 1: it to the proper agency, and that's the Australian Cyber
Speaker 1: Security Center, which run cyber dot gov dot au, and
Speaker 1: they treas the case and they will immediately escalate that
Speaker 1: complaint directly to your local police station in the area
Speaker 1: of where you live. And then that could be Broken Hill,
Speaker 1: so you will get Broken Hill detectives all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they have got a fraud which has happened online,
Speaker 1: and what they generally do is they assess it and
Speaker 1: then they say, look, you know, this is out of
Speaker 1: our jurisdiction. There's no chance of finding out who these
Speaker 1: people are. The money's gone overseas. They may do an
Speaker 1: initial investigation and find out that the money was transferred overseas,
Speaker 1: and that's about as far as it goes, because you know,
Speaker 1: state police and even federal police can't work on They
Speaker 1: can't go into foreign countries investigating without the permission and
Speaker 1: authority and cooperation of foreign law enforcement.
Speaker 2: Well is it make any difference for instead of ten
Speaker 2: grand I've been scammed of dominion or five hundred thousand,
Speaker 2: Does that make a difference.
Speaker 1: Well, it doesn't make a difference to the level of
Speaker 1: effort put in by law enforcement, because even if it's
Speaker 1: a lot of money, they still have the same problem.
Speaker 1: They've got the jurisdictional problems. But if you lost a
Speaker 1: million dollars, then you'll go start starting finding people that
Speaker 1: can actually go after the money, like my firm, IFW Global,
Speaker 1: and there's others as well that go after the money,
Speaker 1: that actually track down where the money's gone. We can
Speaker 1: trace the cryptocurrency. We have certified traces in house. We
Speaker 1: can trace where it's gone, where it was cashed, out,
Speaker 1: who cashed it out, get the records of the wallet holder,
Speaker 1: and then we can file a criminal case, prepare a
Speaker 1: case against that person in the Philippines, or in Bulgaria
Speaker 1: or in South Africa, can file a case against it.
Speaker 1: And we do that all the time. That's our business model.
Speaker 2: You've said to one of the inquiries I was looking
Speaker 2: at it was time for the authorities to put Australians first,
Speaker 2: to put Australians first. Have they done that yet?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. No, I don't think we're anywhere
Speaker 1: near it. You know. This is what amazes me is
Speaker 1: that the banks and the banks and the government has
Speaker 1: spent billions of dollars on cybersecurity related issues, but very
Speaker 1: little money on doing proactive enforcement. And what I mean
Speaker 1: by proactive enforcement is actually stopping the scams. I know,
Speaker 1: the National Anti Scam Center doing a lot, and we
Speaker 1: can't deny that they're doing a lot, but I can
Speaker 1: get on lot that.
Speaker 2: Eighty six million dollars in itself the Anti Scam Center.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, that's what it costs. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of money gone into blocking phones,
Speaker 1: calls and websites and all the rest of it. But
Speaker 1: I can can jump online right now today and I
Speaker 1: can find a half a dozen scam site within a
Speaker 1: matter of seconds that are targeting Australians as we speak,
Speaker 1: and that people are sending money today to those scam companies.
Speaker 2: But it sounds like, why are you described as a
Speaker 2: very peacemeal effort. I mean, we've got bits and pieces here.
Speaker 2: We've got some poor young detective in Broken Hill trying
Speaker 2: to investigate something which is right out of his league.
Speaker 2: We've got a bad reporting system, we've got bad warning systems,
Speaker 2: We're not alert to it. If it's that piecemeal, how
Speaker 2: do we bring it all together? What's the answer.
Speaker 1: The answer is a national task force that deals with fraud.
Speaker 1: Federal police, federal police, state police, every type of every
Speaker 1: type of individual that has the skill set to go
Speaker 1: after these criminals. And that includes cybersecurity professionals, forensic workers,
Speaker 1: crypto tracing, you know, not just law enforcement. Law enforcement
Speaker 1: can't do this on their own, and they're the first
Speaker 1: to admit it. So there needs to be a national effort.
Speaker 1: That is a task force built up a private and
Speaker 1: public sector professionals that can actually attack this at its
Speaker 1: core and also attack the financial trail, the financial trail,
Speaker 1: go after the money and attack the assets, because what
Speaker 1: is not being done is nobody is going after all
Speaker 1: the assets that all these billions of dollars that have
Speaker 1: gone into the hands of organized crime. Nobody really is
Speaker 1: looking into that. So a National cyber Fraud Task Force,
Speaker 1: for example, their sole responsibility would be to attack and
Speaker 1: to block all of these frauds that are coming into
Speaker 1: Australia on a daily basis, and that's not being done.
Speaker 2: I can't quite work out the lack of will here.
Speaker 2: I mean, is it that they're inner sense soft? Victims
Speaker 2: have just lost money, but it's the same as having
Speaker 2: a gunpointed at you though I could ruin lives. Is
Speaker 2: there not enough sympathy for the victims because they've sort
Speaker 2: of got themselves into it. Is that part of the problem.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's another huge part of the problem. For many,
Speaker 1: many years, there's been a lot of victim blaming. You know,
Speaker 1: I've even had police office tell me, you know, on
Speaker 1: the quiet, just how can this victim be so stupid?
Speaker 1: How can they be so stupid? So there's this victim
Speaker 1: blaming when it comes to and of course greed may
Speaker 1: play a part in that someone invests money and then
Speaker 1: they lose it all and they get themselves into a
Speaker 1: big mess and then want the police to clean it up.
Speaker 1: And so some of the police, you know, their view is, look,
Speaker 1: we're so busy fighting violent crime and other types of crime.
Speaker 1: We don't have the resources to chase someone online because
Speaker 1: you've been you know, you've been a victim of a fraud.
Speaker 1: So for a long long time there was victim blaming.
Speaker 1: But I think in recent years, with the emergence of
Speaker 1: organized crime groups behind these scams and the sophistication of them,
Speaker 1: there's been a change of perception within our government. And
Speaker 1: of course the Senate inquiry last year helped a lot,
Speaker 1: when I was able to sit face to face with
Speaker 1: the state senators and explain into them the actual damage
Speaker 1: that this was doing to the community, every community all
Speaker 1: over the country, and the amount of casualties that have
Speaker 1: been left behind and the lives that have been destroyed.
Speaker 1: I mean, I deal with these victims on a daily
Speaker 1: basis and have done for years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to ask you some of the war stories,
Speaker 2: if you like, some of what you've been involved in.
Speaker 2: On your website, there's a story of an architect called
Speaker 2: Tony Camalieri, which involved a lot of money and a
Speaker 2: lot of effort. Tell me that story.
Speaker 1: What happened, Well, Tony got juoped into investing money into
Speaker 1: a company called Smith and Olsen, which was an American
Speaker 1: company based in Chicago. Looked very slick, posh British accents
Speaker 1: on the other end of the phone. He ended up
Speaker 1: investing into stocks and shares and his portfolio was growing
Speaker 1: quite well. He was very happy with it. They weren't
Speaker 1: putting pressure on him. All of a sudden, He's done
Speaker 1: his one point eight million dollars superannuation, all of his
Speaker 1: money was in the shares, only to discover that it
Speaker 1: was a scam. So he woke up one day realizing
Speaker 1: that he'd been a victim of a scam, and they
Speaker 1: cut contact with him, and he actually asked them he
Speaker 1: actually wanted to go to Chicago and meet them in person.
Speaker 1: They said, yep, come over and meet us. We'll be there.
Speaker 1: We'll send a limo to the airport and pick you up.
Speaker 1: And he went to Chicago. He got on a plane
Speaker 1: and went there and there was no limo. He went
Speaker 1: to the offices of Smith and Olsen downtown Chicago, and
Speaker 1: went to the security guard, and the security guard just
Speaker 1: shook his head and said that they're not here, and
Speaker 1: you better talk to the FBI because they were here
Speaker 1: last week looking for the same company. And anyway, that
Speaker 1: luckily for Tarney, he went to North Sydney Detectives. He
Speaker 1: spoke to police. He ended up finding out that there
Speaker 1: was an agency at that time, which was my firm,
Speaker 1: that did recoveries, and he subsequently contacted me. I had
Speaker 1: a meeting with him in Sydney. He told me the
Speaker 1: whole story. And I already knew a lot about these
Speaker 1: syndicates because I'd already been over in the Philippines busting
Speaker 1: them years before. So I had a lot of intelligence
Speaker 1: about this type of scam and the type of people
Speaker 1: behind it. So I said, well, let's track him down.
Speaker 1: And he engaged my services, and against the advice of
Speaker 1: his family and friends, all of them said, don't do it,
Speaker 1: don't spend any more money, just leave it behind. Don't
Speaker 1: waste more money chasing good money after bad. You know,
Speaker 1: he went against their will. His marriage broke up, his
Speaker 1: family were against him. Everyone was against him except me.
Speaker 1: I said, if you invest in my time and effort,
Speaker 1: I will give it. I will relentlessly pursue these people.
Speaker 1: Fast forward a couple of years, we arrested the mastermind
Speaker 1: and we froze two point two million US dollars in
Speaker 1: his bank account in Hong Kong, and within three months,
Speaker 1: I had that money transferred back into the one point
Speaker 1: eight million dollars, the money that Tony had lost. I
Speaker 1: had that money transferred back into his bank account.
Speaker 2: How did you do it? How did you track them?
Speaker 2: How did you do it well? Which said a professional secret.
Speaker 1: No, no, we follow the money trail. So the boiler
Speaker 1: room fraud industry used money mules. They outsourced all the
Speaker 1: banking to third party contractors, third party criminal contractors who
Speaker 1: who launded the money. So what they had done is
Speaker 1: they'd hired an Israeli group from Tel Aviv and they
Speaker 1: launded this money through Belgium, UK, other countries, and we
Speaker 1: just chased the money. We followed the money. We started
Speaker 1: following the money trail, doing discovery applications on banks, and
Speaker 1: we followed the money trail. We found out they're all
Speaker 1: Israeli nationals that were on all the banks. So we
Speaker 1: decided to do a confrontation operation where we go to
Speaker 1: every single address in Belgium, London, and Israel. Three addresses.
Speaker 1: We confronted these three bank account holders all at once
Speaker 1: on one evening, all simultaneously. Now that shook them up
Speaker 1: a bit, because they all contacted the Israeli guy and said,
Speaker 1: we're in trouble here. We've got all these investigators coming
Speaker 1: after us. And so the Israeli money launder he decided
Speaker 1: to come clean with me. He contacted me and said,
Speaker 1: I can help you, but you've got to leave my
Speaker 1: people alone. So I'll make a deal with you. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you who we launded the money for, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you exactly who's behind your client's fraud, but you have
Speaker 1: to leave us out of it and don't go after
Speaker 1: my people.
Speaker 2: So it's cost a victim one point eight million. What
Speaker 2: did costume to get it back?
Speaker 1: He spent about one hundred thousand dollars getting it back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: about one hundred thousand with legal fees and our fees.
Speaker 1: Probably around maybe a bit more, but certainly a minimum
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars he had to spend to get
Speaker 1: to get the money back, and to get to that point,
Speaker 1: of course, there's no guarantee that you're going to get
Speaker 1: it back. But that's an example of when you do
Speaker 1: invest into going after the perpetrators, there is a chance
Speaker 1: of recovering money.
Speaker 2: Is there something that stands out to you as perhaps
Speaker 2: the saddest job you've had in front of you?
Speaker 1: I think a lot of them are sad, Neil, There's
Speaker 1: so many sad cases of people who have just given everything.
Speaker 1: They have given away the money that were supposed to
Speaker 1: go to their children, They're given away, the money that
Speaker 1: was supposed to go to their husband for treatment because
Speaker 1: he's got a terminal illness. I mean, there are so
Speaker 1: many sad stories from people who are vulnerable. I don't
Speaker 1: know if there's any particular ones that stand out more
Speaker 1: than others. I have dealt with a lot of very
Speaker 1: sad cases, but I don't I try not to get
Speaker 1: emotionally attached to these cases because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: time and effort goes into our investigations, and a lot
Speaker 1: of time and effort goes into counseling those victims as well,
Speaker 1: And you know, we try to keep them positive and
Speaker 1: keep them motivated, and you know, we're almost doing counseling
Speaker 1: for a lot of these victims as to how they
Speaker 1: can recover and what are going to do in their
Speaker 1: life if they don't recover the money, how are they
Speaker 1: going to move forward?
Speaker 2: You're talking about a hell of a lot of money.
Speaker 2: You're talking about well organized, sophisticated, dangerous criminals. Has your
Speaker 2: own life been on the line.
Speaker 1: A number of times? Yes, There's been a number of
Speaker 1: threats made to me by syndicates overseas in the Philippines
Speaker 1: and Thailand, criminal syndicates, criminal groups that have tried to
Speaker 1: tried to get me to stop coming into the Philippines,
Speaker 1: for example, particularly Philippines. There's been a number of very
Speaker 1: credible threats made against me in the Philippines by local
Speaker 1: enforcers whose job it is to protect the criminal groups.
Speaker 1: And these are pretty heavy people. Some of them are gangsters,
Speaker 1: some of them are very dangerous criminals who are connected
Speaker 1: to organized crime groups. And so I have to use
Speaker 1: my discretion, but to be honest that when I hear that,
Speaker 1: and I hear that people are trying to do, that
Speaker 1: makes me more relentless to go after them. And I
Speaker 1: have gone in and arrested some of these people that
Speaker 1: have made threats against me. One particular group in the
Speaker 1: Philippines threatened me back in two thousand and eighteen, and
Speaker 1: they sent me a text message saying I was on
Speaker 1: a death wish and if I don't leave the Philippines
Speaker 1: within twenty four hours, that I'm on a death wish,
Speaker 1: meaning that there's a hit man coming after me. About
Speaker 1: three months later, I flew back in in an evening
Speaker 1: to conduct a seven am raid on the syndicate and
Speaker 1: arrested the whole lot of them, including.
Speaker 2: You can't arrest them though you're working with local police.
Speaker 1: The correct correct you know. So I was present during
Speaker 1: the arrest When I say I'm present with the police.
Speaker 1: When we kicked the doors in with a swat.
Speaker 2: Team, everyone shot at.
Speaker 1: No, I haven't been shot at, but I've had firearms
Speaker 1: produced twice. In my younger days. I used to be
Speaker 1: an insurance investigator working for Goo and Nrama and all
Speaker 1: these insurance companies, and a couple of incidents has happened
Speaker 1: in my younger days. One was out at Menindi near
Speaker 1: Broken Hill. I was chased by kangaroo shooters who were
Speaker 1: firing shots in the air, I would assume, but they
Speaker 1: caught me on a property and chased me through the
Speaker 1: bushes and they about five or six of them with guns,
Speaker 1: came roaring through the bushes trying to chase me off
Speaker 1: a property because I used to do a lot of
Speaker 1: bush surveillance in those days. The other one was in
Speaker 1: Gilgandra where I stumbled across a marijuana plantation trying to
Speaker 1: film someone for insurance fraud for having a fake compensation claim.
Speaker 1: And that person again found footprints around the marijuana plantation,
Speaker 1: come out and started searching the property and saw me
Speaker 1: approach my position and I had to get up and run,
Speaker 1: and he went and grabbed a shot gun and came
Speaker 1: after me and again fired shots in the air. I
Speaker 1: don't know where the shots were being fired, but there
Speaker 1: were shots fired.
Speaker 2: Obviously, spent a lot of time following people surreptitiously, but
Speaker 2: your face is very well known. Now how do you
Speaker 2: do it? I can't wander down the street behind them.
Speaker 1: Can you. Well, I don't follow people anymore. I've got
Speaker 1: a team that does that. I've got operations running right
Speaker 1: now in multiple countries, and we just did a raid
Speaker 1: last week in the Philippines and I'm not there. We've
Speaker 1: got other raids coming up in different countries. So I
Speaker 1: don't show my face until I walk in the door
Speaker 1: with the police.
Speaker 2: Ken Gamble from my FW Global is really running one
Speaker 2: of the biggest anti scam operations, certainly in Australia and
Speaker 2: perhaps in the world. But he started life as your
Speaker 2: average private detective. What is your average private protective? More
Speaker 2: of that in the moment. Now, how did you become
Speaker 2: a private detective? You sort of went to almost went
Speaker 2: to a course or a school. How do you become
Speaker 2: a private We're pretty young too, how do you become
Speaker 2: a private detective?
Speaker 1: Very young? Back in nine eighty eight, I was twenty
Speaker 1: two years of age. I just come out of the
Speaker 1: Army Reserve and I was looking for an opportunity. And
Speaker 1: I had a great uncle, Uncle Ray Stubbs. He was
Speaker 1: a private investigator in the nineteen sixties and seventies for
Speaker 1: about twenty years, and he used to mainly do matrimonial
Speaker 1: work in the old days, because that was a big
Speaker 1: part of it, busting husbands and wives playing up. You know.
Speaker 1: I think in those days it was illegal to have
Speaker 1: an affair, you know. So he actually said to me,
Speaker 1: why don't you think about becoming a private investigator. That
Speaker 1: was in nineteen eighty seven before I left Queensland to
Speaker 1: go to Sydney. And I got down to Sydney at
Speaker 1: the beginning of eighty eight and he got me an
Speaker 1: interview with a company called Webster's Investigations, and I went
Speaker 1: in there. I spoke to a guy called Kevin Lehman,
Speaker 1: who was the manager. I put out my portfolio of
Speaker 1: my achievements and I'd been a boxer, I'd been in
Speaker 1: the Fire Service, I've been a soldier, and he said, yep,
Speaker 1: sounds like you might be a good fit. We're looking
Speaker 1: for people to sit in the back of vans and
Speaker 1: go out in the country and spy on people who
Speaker 1: are ripping off the Goio are doing insurance sheets, insurance,
Speaker 1: fake insurance claims, people claiming to have a million dollar
Speaker 1: back injury, but in fact they're doing hard labor every
Speaker 1: day on the farm. So I become part of this
Speaker 1: surveillance team and over the next three years ran operations
Speaker 1: all over the state of New South Wales, particularly down
Speaker 1: in Griffith and the River Arena area, on all the
Speaker 1: Italian families, because there was over fifty million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of claims came out of Griffith alone. Back in nineteen
Speaker 1: between nineteen eighty nine and ninety two, and we knocked
Speaker 1: those claims down by fifty percent by investigating and getting
Speaker 1: evidence to prove that these people were not disabled. So
Speaker 1: that's how I started my career.
Speaker 2: And actually, do you go you study anything, do you'll
Speaker 2: do to a private tech class or something?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Not on the job.
Speaker 1: No. On the job. Back in those days, it was
Speaker 1: purely surveillance work. So I did surveillance work for the
Speaker 1: first fifteen years of my career. Back in the nineties,
Speaker 1: I had a surveillance company that specialized in surveillance. In fact,
Speaker 1: ninety nine, I was poached by the Commonwealth Government and
Speaker 1: I won a tender to provide covert surveillance services to
Speaker 1: the Comonwealth government. And that was the first time in
Speaker 1: history that the Commonwealth Government had ever ever outsourced work
Speaker 1: to private investigators. And I was one of the companies
Speaker 1: that won that tender.
Speaker 2: In ninety nine, What were you surveilling for the government?
Speaker 1: Central Link cheats ah, people that were rauting the centillink system.
Speaker 1: But this was more than just people cheating the doll
Speaker 1: This is someone who had twelve identities and was getting
Speaker 1: paid twelve times their normal payment. Because they had twelve
Speaker 1: different identities, you know, or people in the Centerlink office
Speaker 1: that was working with crime groups outside to cheat the system.
Speaker 1: So we were doing sort of organized criminal stuff but
Speaker 1: with sindling, and that was a very interesting job. We
Speaker 1: had to go through a protective clearance and working for
Speaker 1: the government so as a contractor. So that lasted several years.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and two, I gave it away because
Speaker 1: it was not financially viable anymore, and I made a
Speaker 1: commercial decision to get out of all that type of work,
Speaker 1: insurance work, and I went overseas and started doing it
Speaker 1: in national work.
Speaker 2: And that's how you got into cybercrime.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's how I got into cybercrime. I went and
Speaker 1: lived in America. I worked two years with a company
Speaker 1: over in the States that had former CIA guys working
Speaker 1: for them. So I made a lot of intelligence contacts
Speaker 1: around the world. Started to get to know a lot
Speaker 1: of people that worked in intelligence services in various different countries,
Speaker 1: and they were a different breed than law enforcement because
Speaker 1: intelligence people are very very different different skill sets. So
Speaker 1: I started learning the art of gathering intelligence, particularly in
Speaker 1: foreign countries. So over the next few years, I started
Speaker 1: doing all these different operations, kidnapping investigations, child abduction cases,
Speaker 1: fugitive tracking, you all sorts of different types of work.
Speaker 1: And then it wasn't until two thousand and seven, when
Speaker 1: I was asked to investigate a big scam syndicate at
Speaker 1: the Rugby World Cup, when I started getting involved in
Speaker 1: Internet related crime, and then I saw the opportunity to.
Speaker 1: In fact, when I started, I wanted to. I wanted
Speaker 1: I believed back in two thousand and seven that Internet
Speaker 1: editet law enforcement should be privatized, and that was what
Speaker 1: started me off on this mission. You know, I said,
Speaker 1: one day the internet will be the crime on the
Speaker 1: Internet will be uncontrollable. And IPOLD just made an announcement recently
Speaker 1: saying that law enforcement cannot cope future in the future
Speaker 1: of crime on the Internet. They're not geared up for it.
Speaker 1: So there's going to have to be a lot of
Speaker 1: public private partnerships going on. So that's basically how I
Speaker 1: got into it, and from there, you know, the rest
Speaker 1: is kind of history. I've never stopped lessly pursued it.
Speaker 2: Your personal background grew up for some years in a pub,
Speaker 2: You learned to fight, you were a boxer. But according
Speaker 2: to see that you left school very early.
Speaker 1: I did. I did.
Speaker 2: Ye. What year of schooling did you finish?
Speaker 1: Year ten nineteen eighty at Nurser District High School in
Speaker 1: Kiroi on the Sunshine Coast. I did year eight, seventy eight,
Speaker 1: seventy nine and nineteen eighty. So I left school at
Speaker 1: year ten at fifteen. And of course my dad was
Speaker 1: a builder, and he always used to try and encourage
Speaker 1: me to get into building, carpentry whatever, and I didn't
Speaker 1: like the idea of working outside in the hot, so
Speaker 1: I became a wood machinist and I got an apprenticeship
Speaker 1: as soon as I left school as a wood machinist
Speaker 1: in Page Furnaces in Pomona, which is a small town
Speaker 1: north of Kuroi where I went to school. And I
Speaker 1: went there and there was a there was a big,
Speaker 1: big furniture factory that a government contract, and for the
Speaker 1: next four years I learned the trade of a wood machinist,
Speaker 1: and nine to eighty five I graduated with my trade
Speaker 1: certificate as a wood machinist.
Speaker 2: Still on the tools a bit. It's an interesting thing
Speaker 2: to me here though you've left school very early and
Speaker 2: very young, yet what you're doing now is extremely complex,
Speaker 2: sophisticated work. So clearly you had the aptitude to go
Speaker 2: on and study at a high level if you wanted to,
Speaker 2: But obviously school didn't appeal didn't.
Speaker 1: No, And I think the type of work we do,
Speaker 1: you've got to be a good writer. You've got to
Speaker 1: be able to express yourself. You've got to be able
Speaker 1: to write reports and put intelligence together. You've certainly got
Speaker 1: to have a skill set. You've got to be educated
Speaker 1: and be able to write well in this job. But
Speaker 1: the rest of it really boils down to experience. And
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of probably ninety percent of the
Speaker 1: work we do is really knowing what to do and
Speaker 1: how to do it, So that comes from experience. But
Speaker 1: I was never really a person that was very interested
Speaker 1: in school. My life skills were taught at a very
Speaker 1: young age. I was driving at twelve, I was riding motorbikes,
Speaker 1: driving my full By first bulldozer at d six. At
Speaker 1: the age of thirteen, I drove my first Kenworth truck
Speaker 1: at the age of twelve, a big semi trailer, like
Speaker 1: a huge semi I'd kind of done it all by
Speaker 1: the age of thirteen. In the bush, just.
Speaker 2: I want to wrap up in a moment with the
Speaker 2: sort of takeaway points because a lot of people will
Speaker 2: be watching this and listening to this because they want
Speaker 2: to make themselves safer or because they have been scammed.
Speaker 2: But just mentioned Peter Foster a moment, probably Australia's most
Speaker 2: famous con man, describes himself as an international man of mischief.
Speaker 2: Is he jail at the moment.
Speaker 1: By the way, No, he's not. He's on trial for
Speaker 1: a case of which resulted in him being arrested on
Speaker 1: the beach in Port Douglas, which everybody has seen the
Speaker 1: crash tackle on the beach. He's on trial or he's
Speaker 1: going to trial. He's still going through the courts. But
Speaker 1: again the Queensland legal system, you know five years now
Speaker 1: going through the courts was not five years because he
Speaker 1: was on the run for a little while. But it
Speaker 1: takes too long for these cases to go through the
Speaker 1: courts and the court systems half the problem in this country.
Speaker 1: But he's going through court and ultimately he'll be heading
Speaker 1: to trial to be tried on whether or not he
Speaker 1: committed the fraud that he was alleged to commit which
Speaker 1: led to his arrest back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Okay, look, I really appreciate your time. Let's wrap it up.
Speaker 2: Let's summarize it. How summary? How do I avoid being
Speaker 2: scammed on the average person going around the average life?
Speaker 2: How do I avoid being scammed?
Speaker 1: Well, don't invest on the internet. That's the golden rule.
Speaker 1: I would say to anybody that's wanting to invest, wanting
Speaker 1: to make money, don't think that you're going to make
Speaker 1: money on the internet. I don't. I rarely have ever
Speaker 1: met in my thirty seven years of doing this job,
Speaker 1: I have rarely met anybody that has actually made money
Speaker 1: by investing in a some sort of scheme that involves
Speaker 1: something online. So my best advice is just don't invest.
Speaker 1: And if you are going to invest into something like
Speaker 1: a bank bond or a term deposit, do extensive due
Speaker 1: diligence and speak to professional advisors, accountants, lawyers, investigators, even
Speaker 1: speak to people and do a fair bit of due
Speaker 1: diligence before you invest in any type of investment. That's
Speaker 1: the number that is the golden rule, essentially is because
Speaker 1: that's where everyone gets caught lack of due diligence and
Speaker 1: lack of awareness.
Speaker 2: And do we expect and you predict scams become more
Speaker 2: devial to pick. They only become more sophisticated. They're going
Speaker 2: to grow. I mean, we're stuck with this, aren't we.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to see we're already seeing it, the
Speaker 1: scams morphing into different types scam types. So we're going
Speaker 1: to we're probably going to see the classic cryptocurrency trading
Speaker 1: platform that's going to slow down dramatically, already has. The
Speaker 1: celebrity adverts are going to change. They won't be necessarily
Speaker 1: celebrities anymore. They will morph into something different. There's going
Speaker 1: to be different methodology, you know, years to engage with people.
Speaker 1: There's going to be a lot more personal engagement by fraudsters,
Speaker 1: in other words, in real life rather than online. There's
Speaker 1: going to be a lot more people committing frauds in
Speaker 1: real time, in real life, actually people coming to meet
Speaker 1: the victim. Those sort of frauds are on the rise
Speaker 1: again now, So I think, I think in general, your
Speaker 1: money is precious, Keep it in the bank, keep it
Speaker 1: invested in property. But at the moment you go risking
Speaker 1: your investment into something that has a high interest rate,
Speaker 1: or something that's online or some particularly cryptocurrency, you know,
Speaker 1: you're actually uh you're treading on thin ice. If you
Speaker 1: invest money over the Internet, that's the that's the bottom line.
Speaker 2: Well, that's how the victim can avoid being a victim.
Speaker 2: How can it be better policed? If you could, you
Speaker 2: could do one thing, and you've made all sorts of
Speaker 2: comparisons to various areas here about inaction, about warnings, about
Speaker 2: how long? How many people? God knows how many people
Speaker 2: have been hurt and scammed and become victims because of
Speaker 2: official inaction. What would you do? What you're you're running
Speaker 2: the world? What do you do?
Speaker 1: There needs to be better policing on the on the Internet.
Speaker 1: There needs to be more regulation around people using services online. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: there should be some sort of you know, national identity.
Speaker 1: I think we all should be identified by our face
Speaker 1: and our fingerprint.
Speaker 2: Oh should have an identity, national identity card.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that that and that identity then accesses your
Speaker 1: use of the Internet, and everyone that has that uses
Speaker 1: the internet. Because the Internet was set up for to
Speaker 1: create freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of everything you know,
Speaker 1: and that was the whole purpose. And of course criminals
Speaker 1: have now used it for nefarious purposes. So I think
Speaker 1: there needs to be a lot more regulation around the
Speaker 1: Internet moving forward into the future where it has to
Speaker 1: be policed a lot more because no one's policing the
Speaker 1: Internet as a whole. Nobody. There's no national or international
Speaker 1: global law enforcement agency that is policing the Internet as
Speaker 1: a whole, and that's the problem.
Speaker 2: Just just flesh out that idea on the card. How
Speaker 2: would that work? You'd need an authority to use the Internet?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's not a bad idea, but of
Speaker 1: course people will argue, well, that's an invasion of privacy
Speaker 1: where people want to be free to do whatever they like.
Speaker 1: But when you're dealing with the amount of crime that's online,
Speaker 1: you know, and there's always going to be people that
Speaker 1: will never agree. That's the problem. We live in society
Speaker 1: where people enjoy their freedom. They don't want to be
Speaker 1: having to put their fingerprint into access the Internet. But
Speaker 1: I think that there should be. I would love to
Speaker 1: see most self personally, based on everything that I've seen,
Speaker 1: I'd love to see when you log into the Internet
Speaker 1: to use the Internet, that you're identified that your face
Speaker 1: and your fingerprint, just like when you go to a
Speaker 1: crypto company and you buy cryptocurrency, they have to identify
Speaker 1: your face and your fingerprint, and they have to identify
Speaker 1: you and in order to use cryptocurrency, So why should
Speaker 1: it be a different to the Internet. You should be
Speaker 1: identified in order to use the Internet and get access
Speaker 1: to all of those services. It's a simple identification of
Speaker 1: who you are when you log in, your identity is
Speaker 1: logged in. Of course it can be exploited, but it
Speaker 1: would be a good start. Probably never could be implemented,
Speaker 1: but I think that's one way of starting to enforce
Speaker 1: the law when it comes to Internet and actually regulating
Speaker 1: the use of the Internet. That's the only real way.
Speaker 1: Look what they've done to social media, banning children under
Speaker 1: sixteen from social media. That was unheard of a few
Speaker 1: years ago, that no one would ever believe that could
Speaker 1: be possible in this country, you know, and now it's
Speaker 1: happening because of the amount of crime that's been committed
Speaker 1: against children.
Speaker 2: Just a final thing that comes to mind just as
Speaker 2: you're talking. Then, I assume a lot of maybe a
Speaker 2: majority of the victims or older people are they are
Speaker 2: not sufficiently internet or savvy, or suspicious or cynical about
Speaker 2: being approached. That'd be true, would it?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? For fifty years upwards, a majority of serious frauds
Speaker 1: that we deal with from fifty fifty to seventy age group,
Speaker 1: and then there's even I think our oldest victims eighty
Speaker 1: three at the moment, but from from fifty to seventy
Speaker 1: and then there's an then there's this seventy up age
Speaker 1: group as well, but from fifty onwards is the most
Speaker 1: vulnerable people in Australia.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe were meant to be targeting that. Maybe it exists.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it, but we should be targeting that
Speaker 2: age group specifically with warnings, with the education campaigns, with advertising.
Speaker 1: Correct correct And when you think about it, these are
Speaker 1: the people that missed the boat that were perhaps not
Speaker 1: They didn't grow up with the Internet, they didn't grow
Speaker 1: up with online tools, and they weren't educated kind of
Speaker 1: that age group. You know, I've been incredibly lucky because
Speaker 1: when I started in this job, there was no such
Speaker 1: thing as the Internet. I started nine to eighty eight.
Speaker 1: We had two way radios, you know, there was no
Speaker 1: mobile phones, no internet, nothing. So I've come all of
Speaker 1: a sudden in ninety one, when computers even just came out,
Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden, I've started at the
Speaker 1: very birth of the computer age. And the birth of
Speaker 1: the Internet was around ninety one. That's when sort of
Speaker 1: Google started ninety one ninety two, and that's when internet
Speaker 1: crime started. So I've been, in a way lucky to
Speaker 1: have been born into into investigating internet crime from the
Speaker 1: birth of internet crime, and that thirty seven years later,
Speaker 1: I'm still doing it. And that's the reason why I've
Speaker 1: got so much experience. People say, how do you do this?
Speaker 1: How do you go into a foreign country and arrest
Speaker 1: eighty people under the nase of corrupt police or whatever?
Speaker 1: And it's because I've been doing this since day one,
Speaker 1: So it takes a lot of experience. But unfortunately, law
Speaker 1: enforcement come in and out of their positions and their roles,
Speaker 1: and someone that's an expert at in that crime this
Speaker 1: week may not be an expert next week because they've
Speaker 1: been shifted to another department of the police or next year.
Speaker 1: So there's no long term investigators that are doing this
Speaker 1: type of work. That's the problem. There's no specialists around
Speaker 1: the world. The FBI told me that recently there's very
Speaker 1: few around the world that have specialized in this area
Speaker 1: over a long period of time, and that's pretty sad.
Speaker 1: But we have to create more and more of those sorts.
Speaker 2: Of people sad and dangerous. I agree with you. I
Speaker 2: appreciate your time, and let's hope we've maps helped a
Speaker 2: few people avoid becoming victims at least and maybe even
Speaker 2: woken up a couple of politicians. That'll be a.
Speaker 1: Change, I certainly hope, so Nil Thank.
Speaker 2: You, Ken Gamble. Thanks, thank you very much, Ken Gamble.
Speaker 2: Ifw global Ken Gamble. Now, just before I leave you
Speaker 2: to your life, I want to first can congratulate you
Speaker 2: on showing the good sense to listen to my podcast.
Speaker 2: Neil Mitchell asks, why there's one rule to this podcast.
Speaker 2: It's got to be interesting and different. I always try
Speaker 2: to get inside the head of the person I'm talking
Speaker 2: to before I go. I wanted to take a moment
Speaker 2: to thank Three point Motors the Mercedes dealers, for their
Speaker 2: continuing support sponsoring the podcast. They were longtime supporters of
Speaker 2: my radio program, and I'm delighted to say that continues here.
Speaker 2: I'm something of a dinosaur in the radio business. I
Speaker 2: don't read advertisements, but I will recommend the qualit of
Speaker 2: the company and the people who run three point many
Speaker 2: many times through our association, they've stepped up to help
Speaker 2: with my charity campaigns. They've provided superb support for one
Speaker 2: of my favorite charities, which is TLC for Kids. They've
Speaker 2: provided loan vehicles for people in trouble. Usually I didn't
Speaker 2: even have to ask. I'd hear me talking about on radio,
Speaker 2: some attempt to change the world. They'd bring in say okay,
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