September 15, 2024 • 23 mins
In this episode, we sit down with Ken Gamble, a leading cybercrime investigator, to dive into the shocking Arup deepfake scam and how it all unfolded. Ken, with decades of experience in tracking international fraudsters, breaks down how technology is being used for serious financial crimes.
We also look at the rise of deepfake pornography in Australia and the new laws aiming to stop it. Noelle Martin, a strong advocate for digital safety, shares her personal journey and how she's fighting for change in this space.
** AI voices have been used extensively in this podcast.**
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Approche production.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
The use of AI voices has been used in this
podcast to help recreate some moments.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Our financial stability and business operations were not affected and
none of our internal systems were compromised.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
That's arap's Global Chief Information Officer, Rob Greig. He's in
charge of the company's computer systems. Rob was the one
that had to front the media.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Like many other businesses around the globe, our operations are
subject to regular attacks, including invoice fraud, phishing scams, WhatsApp voicepooving,
and deep things. What we have seen is that the
number and sophistication of these attacks has been rising sharply
in recent months.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
He went on to say that he hoped that arap's
experience would raise awareness of the increasing sophistication of cyber attackers.
And that's I guess why we're making this show. We
know the power of can be used for good, But
what about when it goes wrong? Like when Taylor Swift's
deep fakes of her naked went around our socials tonight.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
The controversy or were fake pornographic images of Taylor swept?
Speaker 5 (01:18):
One post viewed forty seven million times before it.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Was reaching all the way out to the White House,
which says it is called alarmed by the use of
AI deep fake technology.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Lift's name now blocked after deep fake images of the
superstar flooded the platform before spreading to other sides.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
It's big news when it's someone like Tate, But what
about if it's someone that doesn't have a swift army,
someone like Noel Martin.
Speaker 6 (01:47):
So I'm I'm Noel Martin. I'm a lawyer, activist and researcher.
What's happened to me is that I had perpetrators create
fake images of me and poster online and then over
time they've escalated and the continued the abuse, and they
(02:09):
have gone on to create fake videos, so deep fakes
of me and I've just been fighting this ever since.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
So how did Nowel find out there was deep fake
porn images of her online?
Speaker 6 (02:23):
So the images originally it was just a simple Google search.
That's how I found out about what was happening to me.
And then when it came to the deep fake videos,
it was someone had emailed me. But you know, I
had to be contacting these webmasters to take down this
(02:43):
material of men. And then you know, years later, I
was alerted to the fact that there was a video,
a deep fake video of me. What I believe is
that they had done this in terms of escalated it
to a deep fake until technically a deep sake and
(03:06):
what they call a cheap fake, but so a cheap
sake is like a less prig version of a deep fake,
but it's still like a moving video, a movie image.
And I do believe that it was because I was
speaking out and fighting back. They obviously knew what I
was doing, and in fact, like perpetrators were doctoring images
(03:31):
of me like in my activism mode. I mean, they
had images of me when I was holding like a
certificate fighting against this, and they edited edited it where
they put the background as like me appearing at a
at a like a pornographic event, holding a certificate for
(03:54):
like an adult film. So they knew what was happening,
They knew I was speaking out. They would even actually
take images of me from the media and doctor into
the very thing that I was fighting against. I do
believe that it was because of the fact that I
was speaking out and the fact that I was fighting
against it. But you know, ultimately I don't know, because
(04:18):
they're the ones who didn't and I don't know who
who they.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Are, so was nowel able to track these cheap bakers down.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
I didn't do much because this has just become completely normalized.
I mean, there's really not much I can do, and
that's because I did try. And that's the reality of
the situation is I don't know who they are. The
process of trying to find them is just I might
not be able to find them because law enforcement might
(04:48):
not be able to find them, and they might be overseas,
and you don't really have much to do, Like you
really have nothing less that you can do when they
are overseas. So I really gave up when I tried before,
and now I just and now I just like have
to deal with it because they don't think it's just
(05:10):
one I think it's many people, because it isn't just
one who creates it. It's it's all the people who
post it and then they take it and then they
store it somewhere else, and so there becomes like a
chain of people who are involved, and it's just really
hard to control. Yeah, it's never just one person. And
(05:33):
now with this deep fake pipeline that you're dealing with,
is you're not just dealing with perpetrators who create it.
You're dealing with the people who ask and solicit for
the content. You're dealing with people who host these sites
and these hubs that are like where everyone goes to
get get this material or see this material, or consume
(05:54):
this material. And then you've got like payment processes these
are in MasterCard that are involved in in the monetary
exchange in facilitating that. Then you've got search engines involved.
So there's so many actors, so many perpetrators on people
involved in the pipeline, that if you really wanted to
(06:18):
tackle it, it wouldn't never just be let's deal with
the one person.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Noel couldn't find the perpetrators of her deep fake images,
but she's been a strong voice in changing the law
in Australia about this type of deep fake crime.
Speaker 6 (06:34):
This specific reform about deep fakes is I mean, I
can't take the credit for like directly leading the charge,
but I have been fighting for justice and stronger laws
and for awareness about this for a very very long
(06:54):
time in Australia and all over the planet, and so
I think that the work of survivors who do that
is links to changes that we see. But I can't
take you know, I can't take credit for that. This
is just this is just like a continuation of what
(07:15):
we've already had. And I think that you know, this
move to like expressly name what we're dealing with with
the fact of like the issue of deep fakes and
to raise awareness by by education is powerful. But the
fact of the matter is Australia can only do so
much because you really aren't dealing with an issue that
(07:39):
is isolated to this country. I mean, even though these
laws have just like passed through parliament, they would never
apply in my case, and even if things were happening
to me today, would never apply. Sorry, especially when when
perpetrators are overseas. So so it's really just like a
(08:04):
powerful parents and an educative an educative tool. But whether
or not it's actually going to be effective when you're
dealing with a global issue is another is another question.
I don't and I just don't see that happening. The
(08:25):
laws aren't too different to what we already had, and
what we already had were laws that essentially criminalize the
distribution of digitally altered intimate material, So now it's essentially
just the same thing. But they've kind of expressly stated
that this is like to include deep fakes, and that's
(08:46):
I think because we've just in the in the media
that's been such a huge issue. And essentially just laws
that deal with the distribution or in this case, the
transmission and the creation of intimate images intimate videos, and
(09:07):
it's essentially punishable by six years imprisonment for those who
transmit sexual material without consent and then two aggravated offenses,
one for repeat offenders and that seven years, and then
another aggravated offense for those who create this and also
(09:31):
transmit it in that's seven years. So that's what we're
dealing with. Do I think that the severity of the
punishment is is good enough? Well, I I think the
question is how well or how strong they're going to
(09:53):
be dealt with in the courts. That's really key. I mean,
we had we had laws that dealt with this issue
in New South Wales for example, and for from what
I know about one of the years that the laws
are actually applied was that those that were convicted or
those that were dealt with weren't being handed the most
(10:18):
severe sentences. And I think you can get fines instead,
and in my view, I don't think that's enough and
we have to just wait and see how courts deal
with this issue. But I really don't I don't think
it's enough if it's if it's at the lower end,
because the implications and the consequences for victims can be lifelong,
(10:44):
and it's just like one thing for perpetrators to be
dealt with, But like what about the justice victims? And
in other ways, I mean, how are they going to
how are they going to get jobs if no one's
going to hire them? How are they going to pay
for like their counseling fees? How are they going to
(11:04):
deal with navigating life when their future, like their earning
capacity has been destroyed because the reputation has been destroyed.
So criminal law can only do so much, and it
also can't really do much to take down the content either.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Ken Gamble is a well known cybercrime expert. He is
the executive chairman and co founder of IFW Global, an
international firm that specializes in cybercrime investigations, online fraud prevention,
and recovery of stolen assets. His expertise spans digital forensics,
online fraud, and the emerging threats of deep fakes and
(11:49):
AI manipulated content.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Heymile it's lovely to chat to you today.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Ken has some immediate thoughts when he heard about the
forty million dollar deep fake fraud.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
I was waiting for it to happen, so I was
not surprised at all. We've been talking in the industry
about this is going to be the next big thing,
and it was just a matter of time. So as
soon as it happened, I said to my colleagues, here
we go. Here's number one, here's the first one, and
of course you're going to see a lot more to come,
(12:18):
but we're seeing it. We started seeing it on a
smaller scale, like the hay Mums type scams, using the
real voice of the son or daughter asking desperately for
some money, usually only small amounts of a few thousand dollars,
but now you're seeing it used in a very large
scale fraud.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
So it was just for me.
Speaker 7 (12:39):
It just reiterated what I've been saying for many years
that we're not ahead of the game. None of our
governments are ahead of the game with this, and we
need to be, and it's going to get worse.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
What's crazy is how fast the money moves from one
account to another in these types of scams.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
As soon as it he's that account, it's gone straight
away from that account, and they will use different accounts
in case one of them gets frozen. If there's a
suspicious transaction alert, then that account could get frozen. They're
not going to risk all that money into one account
because if all of them went in one account they've
got a frozen they're going to be pretty pissed off
that they've lost all that money. So what they do
(13:17):
is they split it out into they split the risk
out into multiple accounts so that if one or two
of them go down, they're still going to get away
with a bulk of the load, the payload, the money
that they're stolen. So what happens is they've got these
accounts that they would have put money into would have
already been used for laundering money. They're not going to
be brand new accounts set up because brand new accounts
(13:40):
have alerts put on them by the banks, and any
suspicious transactions will be flagged immediately. So they're probably training
accounts belonging to Chinese traders, or there'll be accounts potentially
where lots of money go through them on a regular
basis that have been hijacked by criminals, But I would
guess that the money's moved out almost immediately into a
(14:02):
cryptocurrency platform, perhaps multiple transfers into crypto, and then that
cryptocurrency then laundered through the relevant processes that criminals use
to launder the money, and then cash the money out
before law enforcement can can catch up and find out
what's gone on.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
So how does can track down missing.
Speaker 7 (14:22):
The alim Well, the first thing we do is notify
all the banks to freeze the money.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
That's number one.
Speaker 7 (14:27):
Hit them with a letter immediately while the complaint's being made.
We've got a lot of these cases that have come
in real time where people have just lost the money.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
The first thing is we notify the bank.
Speaker 7 (14:36):
We tell the bank that this account has been used
for fraud and money laundering, and we serve them with
a formal notice. Now they don't have to freeze the
account on our notice, but we're licensed by the US
f Wal's Police as a private investigator, So if they
don't take notice from us, that's okay. Then we can
go back and sue them later for negligence if that
account transacted after they received our notice. So we do
(14:58):
serve the notice, so we have a record, but we
also ask the police. We file a police complain immediately
so that the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Hong Kong
Police can immediately contact that bank and get those accounts frozen. Now,
in many times we can actually freeze a lot of
money in the accounts. We've frozen one six million dollars
in one account in Hong Kong because we acted quickly.
(15:21):
So the idea is to act and try and freeze
that money. Now, if the money's gone, then we're going
to profile who the owners of those accounts are, the
corporate entities for example, find out as much as we
can through open source information as to the directors of
the company and so forth, and immediately start investigating and
profiling those directors. And then we would immediately engage a
(15:43):
lawyer on behalf of our client to commence a discovery action.
It's called a Norwich pharmacal order. It's a civil search
warrant on those bank accounts, and we take that out
in the court and we serve those notices on the
bank and we get them to disclose all of the
transactions and all the account opening forms and all of
(16:03):
the relevant information as to who were the perpetrators that
move that money and who logged in, where was the
IP From all of that intricate data that the police
need to get, we would do that civilly and then
we would follow the main trail. We'll find out whether
it's cashed out in a crypto exchange, whether it's gone
to China, whether the money's gone to the British Virgin Islands, Dubai, Switzerland,
(16:27):
anywhere in the world where money may be launded through,
and then we start.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
The process of recovery and prosecution.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
So how does that recovery process work.
Speaker 7 (16:40):
We find the assets and we seize them and freeze them,
so we trace money where it's gone, and if it's
been cashed out, then we'll immediately file a case against
that perpetrator. They'll be defendant number one. If that's been
cashed out by a dozen different people, then there's trial
defendants that we're going to go after and will immediately
commence proceedings against all of those people. What happens in
(17:00):
these cases is there's often a race between the criminal
and the civil. A lot of people make the big
mistake of relying upon the police to recover their money.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Well, that ain't ever going to happen because police don't
recover money. So if someone loses a large amount of money,
they have to.
Speaker 7 (17:15):
Engage civilly with an outset recovery specialist, across border specialists
so that they can go after the money and after
the people that have taken that money, because ultimately that's
where the assets have ended up. So it's a matter
of tracing where the money's gone, and usually there's a
money trail.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Even in crypto, there's a trail.
Speaker 7 (17:35):
The money will get cashed out, it could get launded
through various different ways and means and methods, and it
can become very murky with crypto. But we see a
lot of money on a regular basis. We recently got
a four and a half million dollar case which was
stolen and of USDT and we're pursuing that. We've managed
(17:57):
to free some of the tether wallets that took some
of that money. So if you act quickly, you've got
a good chance of freezing money. And if you freeze it,
then you just got to go through the civil process
of recovering it.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Even without the defendant being held accountable.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
You can still seize the money from their accounts or
seize their assets once you have an appropriate judgment from
a court of law.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Ken told me that Hong Kong Police are very good,
but they have limitations.
Speaker 7 (18:23):
Well, they're very good in Hong Kong, but once to
go out of Hong Kong, they're not very good. Like
every other law enforcement agency in the world, once they
get out, once it's out of.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
The jurisdiction, it's out of their hands.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
So they can only rely upon Interpol channels, that is,
you know, liaison with other law enforcement in other countries
in order to assist them. But what happens with these
these criminals are very clever and unfortunately much more clever
than a lot of the law enforcement agencies that are
chasing them. Because they work across borders international, they have
(18:56):
huge funding, huge security, they can put countermeasures in place.
What they normally do is launder it to a country
that doesn't cooperate with Hong Kong.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
So they would just move the.
Speaker 7 (19:05):
Money into the Middle East or somewhere into a country
that has no cooperation with Hong Kong, and then Hong
Kong Police are stumped because they're going to rely upon
their mutual legal assistant treaties to cooperate with the cooperating countries.
But if it's gone to a country that doesn't cooperate, well,
then they're in trouble because they won't get cooperation, so
(19:27):
that it relies upon the civil procedure to go And unfortunately,
police don't want to release any information like.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Every other police force in the world.
Speaker 7 (19:38):
It's the secrecy of policing that has fueled these types
of financial crimes because the police don't want to work
with anyone. They don't want to share information. They can't
it's against them all. So they can't work with people
like us. They can't work with specialists, not just from
our industry, but any other experts that work in this industry,
whether it's whether it's forensic accounting, cybersecurity. They can't share
(20:03):
all that information. So they can't get to get there
with all the stakeholders and say, right, guys, let's go
after the money, which is what needs to happen, right,
but it does doesn't happen because of the secrecy of
law enforcement. So Hong Kong police will say, oh, we
can't share an information. It's all law enforcement sensitive, so
we can't share it. Meanwhile, the crooks are off about
(20:23):
sailing the Bahamas in there and they're supery.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
They've just purchased with the stolen money.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
From everything can can see. This scam has all the
hallmarks of organized crime.
Speaker 7 (20:33):
A scam of this audacity and this amount of money,
and the sophistication of the scam. The way that the
money has been moved so quickly and through Chinese accounts
has all the hallmarks of organized crime because organized crime
groups are able to laun the money very quickly because
they don't just have ten or fifteen accounts, they have
(20:56):
hundreds of accounts. We've seen one sending it in Hong
Kong with three hundred bank accounts active, ready to loan
the money all different banks, twenty different banks in that
particular case, with three hundred accounts in one Chinese organized
crime group. So these organized crime groups extremely savvy, they
(21:16):
have a lot of resources, and because of these types
of scams, they've got an enormous amount of money to
put into their infrastructure, so they can just go out
and recruit another three hundred money launders now because of
all the money they have.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
I set out in this podcast to try and tell
the story of the Arab scam, but as you can hear,
it's more than that, it's not just a finance crime
where a big business gets duped into losing big money.
It's showing how prevalent deep fake AI is now in
twenty twenty four, I wanted to know from Ken how
important public awareness is in tackling deep fake crime.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
This is a war.
Speaker 7 (21:53):
We're fighting a war against scams at the moment, a
trillion dollar industry. It's a war, so we need to
stem it well and without publicity campaigns. I don't know
why this type of things not on the six o'clock
years every night of the week. I mean, as far
as warnings and what's actually happening, there's not enough publicity. Really,
(22:15):
there's a lot of this sort of thing. There's a
lot of articles, these articles, podcasts, but mainstream media they
are covering these stories, but there's not enough awareness warnings
out there to the public.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
I don't think there's enough. There' certainly not enough in
Australia there hasn't been for a long time.
Speaker 7 (22:34):
But I think that public awareness is one thing to
become aware, but it really, you know, it requires such
a deeper level of understanding and education about financial crime
and how it works and the perpetrators behind it, and
that's why we at IFW try to expose it to
the world. We do a lot of TV documentaries and
(22:57):
work with the media to show the world how these
people operate, and how ruthless and horrible amas are, and
how organized they are, and how they're often even being
working under pressure. There's human trafficking involved, There's all sorts
of secondary issues that need to be taken into account,
(23:17):
but governments need to work together a lot more and
a lot more effectively, and that has not been happening
for a long time.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Next time on deep fake, the forty million dollar fraud.
There's another scam that is so hard to believe. It's
not one that can hurt anyone, but it's so clever
it could fool any everyday person and probably already has
Approche production.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
The use of AI voices has been used in this
podcast to help recreate some moments.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Our financial stability and business operations were not affected and
none of our internal systems were compromised.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
That's arap's Global Chief Information Officer, Rob Greig. He's in
charge of the company's computer systems. Rob was the one
that had to front the media.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Like many other businesses around the globe, our operations are
subject to regular attacks, including invoice fraud, phishing scams, WhatsApp voicepooving,
and deep things. What we have seen is that the
number and sophistication of these attacks has been rising sharply
in recent months.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
He went on to say that he hoped that arap's
experience would raise awareness of the increasing sophistication of cyber attackers.
And that's I guess why we're making this show. We
know the power of can be used for good, But
what about when it goes wrong? Like when Taylor Swift's
deep fakes of her naked went around our socials tonight.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
The controversy or were fake pornographic images of Taylor swept?
Speaker 5 (01:18):
One post viewed forty seven million times before it.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Was reaching all the way out to the White House,
which says it is called alarmed by the use of
AI deep fake technology.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Lift's name now blocked after deep fake images of the
superstar flooded the platform before spreading to other sides.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
It's big news when it's someone like Tate, But what
about if it's someone that doesn't have a swift army,
someone like Noel Martin.
Speaker 6 (01:47):
So I'm I'm Noel Martin. I'm a lawyer, activist and researcher.
What's happened to me is that I had perpetrators create
fake images of me and poster online and then over
time they've escalated and the continued the abuse, and they
(02:09):
have gone on to create fake videos, so deep fakes
of me and I've just been fighting this ever since.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
So how did Nowel find out there was deep fake
porn images of her online?
Speaker 6 (02:23):
So the images originally it was just a simple Google search.
That's how I found out about what was happening to me.
And then when it came to the deep fake videos,
it was someone had emailed me. But you know, I
had to be contacting these webmasters to take down this
(02:43):
material of men. And then you know, years later, I
was alerted to the fact that there was a video,
a deep fake video of me. What I believe is
that they had done this in terms of escalated it
to a deep fake until technically a deep sake and
(03:06):
what they call a cheap fake, but so a cheap
sake is like a less prig version of a deep fake,
but it's still like a moving video, a movie image.
And I do believe that it was because I was
speaking out and fighting back. They obviously knew what I
was doing, and in fact, like perpetrators were doctoring images
(03:31):
of me like in my activism mode. I mean, they
had images of me when I was holding like a
certificate fighting against this, and they edited edited it where
they put the background as like me appearing at a
at a like a pornographic event, holding a certificate for
(03:54):
like an adult film. So they knew what was happening,
They knew I was speaking out. They would even actually
take images of me from the media and doctor into
the very thing that I was fighting against. I do
believe that it was because of the fact that I
was speaking out and the fact that I was fighting
against it. But you know, ultimately I don't know, because
(04:18):
they're the ones who didn't and I don't know who
who they.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Are, so was nowel able to track these cheap bakers down.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
I didn't do much because this has just become completely normalized.
I mean, there's really not much I can do, and
that's because I did try. And that's the reality of
the situation is I don't know who they are. The
process of trying to find them is just I might
not be able to find them because law enforcement might
(04:48):
not be able to find them, and they might be overseas,
and you don't really have much to do, Like you
really have nothing less that you can do when they
are overseas. So I really gave up when I tried before,
and now I just and now I just like have
to deal with it because they don't think it's just
(05:10):
one I think it's many people, because it isn't just
one who creates it. It's it's all the people who
post it and then they take it and then they
store it somewhere else, and so there becomes like a
chain of people who are involved, and it's just really
hard to control. Yeah, it's never just one person. And
(05:33):
now with this deep fake pipeline that you're dealing with,
is you're not just dealing with perpetrators who create it.
You're dealing with the people who ask and solicit for
the content. You're dealing with people who host these sites
and these hubs that are like where everyone goes to
get get this material or see this material, or consume
(05:54):
this material. And then you've got like payment processes these
are in MasterCard that are involved in in the monetary
exchange in facilitating that. Then you've got search engines involved.
So there's so many actors, so many perpetrators on people
involved in the pipeline, that if you really wanted to
(06:18):
tackle it, it wouldn't never just be let's deal with
the one person.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Noel couldn't find the perpetrators of her deep fake images,
but she's been a strong voice in changing the law
in Australia about this type of deep fake crime.
Speaker 6 (06:34):
This specific reform about deep fakes is I mean, I
can't take the credit for like directly leading the charge,
but I have been fighting for justice and stronger laws
and for awareness about this for a very very long
(06:54):
time in Australia and all over the planet, and so
I think that the work of survivors who do that
is links to changes that we see. But I can't
take you know, I can't take credit for that. This
is just this is just like a continuation of what
(07:15):
we've already had. And I think that you know, this
move to like expressly name what we're dealing with with
the fact of like the issue of deep fakes and
to raise awareness by by education is powerful. But the
fact of the matter is Australia can only do so
much because you really aren't dealing with an issue that
(07:39):
is isolated to this country. I mean, even though these
laws have just like passed through parliament, they would never
apply in my case, and even if things were happening
to me today, would never apply. Sorry, especially when when
perpetrators are overseas. So so it's really just like a
(08:04):
powerful parents and an educative an educative tool. But whether
or not it's actually going to be effective when you're
dealing with a global issue is another is another question.
I don't and I just don't see that happening. The
(08:25):
laws aren't too different to what we already had, and
what we already had were laws that essentially criminalize the
distribution of digitally altered intimate material, So now it's essentially
just the same thing. But they've kind of expressly stated
that this is like to include deep fakes, and that's
(08:46):
I think because we've just in the in the media
that's been such a huge issue. And essentially just laws
that deal with the distribution or in this case, the
transmission and the creation of intimate images intimate videos, and
(09:07):
it's essentially punishable by six years imprisonment for those who
transmit sexual material without consent and then two aggravated offenses,
one for repeat offenders and that seven years, and then
another aggravated offense for those who create this and also
(09:31):
transmit it in that's seven years. So that's what we're
dealing with. Do I think that the severity of the
punishment is is good enough? Well, I I think the
question is how well or how strong they're going to
(09:53):
be dealt with in the courts. That's really key. I mean,
we had we had laws that dealt with this issue
in New South Wales for example, and for from what
I know about one of the years that the laws
are actually applied was that those that were convicted or
those that were dealt with weren't being handed the most
(10:18):
severe sentences. And I think you can get fines instead,
and in my view, I don't think that's enough and
we have to just wait and see how courts deal
with this issue. But I really don't I don't think
it's enough if it's if it's at the lower end,
because the implications and the consequences for victims can be lifelong,
(10:44):
and it's just like one thing for perpetrators to be
dealt with, But like what about the justice victims? And
in other ways, I mean, how are they going to
how are they going to get jobs if no one's
going to hire them? How are they going to pay
for like their counseling fees? How are they going to
(11:04):
deal with navigating life when their future, like their earning
capacity has been destroyed because the reputation has been destroyed.
So criminal law can only do so much, and it
also can't really do much to take down the content either.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Ken Gamble is a well known cybercrime expert. He is
the executive chairman and co founder of IFW Global, an
international firm that specializes in cybercrime investigations, online fraud prevention,
and recovery of stolen assets. His expertise spans digital forensics,
online fraud, and the emerging threats of deep fakes and
(11:49):
AI manipulated content.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Heymile it's lovely to chat to you today.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
Ken has some immediate thoughts when he heard about the
forty million dollar deep fake fraud.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
I was waiting for it to happen, so I was
not surprised at all. We've been talking in the industry
about this is going to be the next big thing,
and it was just a matter of time. So as
soon as it happened, I said to my colleagues, here
we go. Here's number one, here's the first one, and
of course you're going to see a lot more to come,
(12:18):
but we're seeing it. We started seeing it on a
smaller scale, like the hay Mums type scams, using the
real voice of the son or daughter asking desperately for
some money, usually only small amounts of a few thousand dollars,
but now you're seeing it used in a very large
scale fraud.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
So it was just for me.
Speaker 7 (12:39):
It just reiterated what I've been saying for many years
that we're not ahead of the game. None of our
governments are ahead of the game with this, and we
need to be, and it's going to get worse.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
What's crazy is how fast the money moves from one
account to another in these types of scams.
Speaker 7 (12:56):
As soon as it he's that account, it's gone straight
away from that account, and they will use different accounts
in case one of them gets frozen. If there's a
suspicious transaction alert, then that account could get frozen. They're
not going to risk all that money into one account
because if all of them went in one account they've
got a frozen they're going to be pretty pissed off
that they've lost all that money. So what they do
(13:17):
is they split it out into they split the risk
out into multiple accounts so that if one or two
of them go down, they're still going to get away
with a bulk of the load, the payload, the money
that they're stolen. So what happens is they've got these
accounts that they would have put money into would have
already been used for laundering money. They're not going to
be brand new accounts set up because brand new accounts
(13:40):
have alerts put on them by the banks, and any
suspicious transactions will be flagged immediately. So they're probably training
accounts belonging to Chinese traders, or there'll be accounts potentially
where lots of money go through them on a regular
basis that have been hijacked by criminals, But I would
guess that the money's moved out almost immediately into a
(14:02):
cryptocurrency platform, perhaps multiple transfers into crypto, and then that
cryptocurrency then laundered through the relevant processes that criminals use
to launder the money, and then cash the money out
before law enforcement can can catch up and find out
what's gone on.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
So how does can track down missing.
Speaker 7 (14:22):
The alim Well, the first thing we do is notify
all the banks to freeze the money.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
That's number one.
Speaker 7 (14:27):
Hit them with a letter immediately while the complaint's being made.
We've got a lot of these cases that have come
in real time where people have just lost the money.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
The first thing is we notify the bank.
Speaker 7 (14:36):
We tell the bank that this account has been used
for fraud and money laundering, and we serve them with
a formal notice. Now they don't have to freeze the
account on our notice, but we're licensed by the US
f Wal's Police as a private investigator, So if they
don't take notice from us, that's okay. Then we can
go back and sue them later for negligence if that
account transacted after they received our notice. So we do
(14:58):
serve the notice, so we have a record, but we
also ask the police. We file a police complain immediately
so that the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Hong Kong
Police can immediately contact that bank and get those accounts frozen. Now,
in many times we can actually freeze a lot of
money in the accounts. We've frozen one six million dollars
in one account in Hong Kong because we acted quickly.
(15:21):
So the idea is to act and try and freeze
that money. Now, if the money's gone, then we're going
to profile who the owners of those accounts are, the
corporate entities for example, find out as much as we
can through open source information as to the directors of
the company and so forth, and immediately start investigating and
profiling those directors. And then we would immediately engage a
(15:43):
lawyer on behalf of our client to commence a discovery action.
It's called a Norwich pharmacal order. It's a civil search
warrant on those bank accounts, and we take that out
in the court and we serve those notices on the
bank and we get them to disclose all of the
transactions and all the account opening forms and all of
(16:03):
the relevant information as to who were the perpetrators that
move that money and who logged in, where was the
IP From all of that intricate data that the police
need to get, we would do that civilly and then
we would follow the main trail. We'll find out whether
it's cashed out in a crypto exchange, whether it's gone
to China, whether the money's gone to the British Virgin Islands, Dubai, Switzerland,
(16:27):
anywhere in the world where money may be launded through,
and then we start.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
The process of recovery and prosecution.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
So how does that recovery process work.
Speaker 7 (16:40):
We find the assets and we seize them and freeze them,
so we trace money where it's gone, and if it's
been cashed out, then we'll immediately file a case against
that perpetrator. They'll be defendant number one. If that's been
cashed out by a dozen different people, then there's trial
defendants that we're going to go after and will immediately
commence proceedings against all of those people. What happens in
(17:00):
these cases is there's often a race between the criminal
and the civil. A lot of people make the big
mistake of relying upon the police to recover their money.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Well, that ain't ever going to happen because police don't
recover money. So if someone loses a large amount of money,
they have to.
Speaker 7 (17:15):
Engage civilly with an outset recovery specialist, across border specialists
so that they can go after the money and after
the people that have taken that money, because ultimately that's
where the assets have ended up. So it's a matter
of tracing where the money's gone, and usually there's a
money trail.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Even in crypto, there's a trail.
Speaker 7 (17:35):
The money will get cashed out, it could get launded
through various different ways and means and methods, and it
can become very murky with crypto. But we see a
lot of money on a regular basis. We recently got
a four and a half million dollar case which was
stolen and of USDT and we're pursuing that. We've managed
(17:57):
to free some of the tether wallets that took some
of that money. So if you act quickly, you've got
a good chance of freezing money. And if you freeze it,
then you just got to go through the civil process
of recovering it.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Even without the defendant being held accountable.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
You can still seize the money from their accounts or
seize their assets once you have an appropriate judgment from
a court of law.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Ken told me that Hong Kong Police are very good,
but they have limitations.
Speaker 7 (18:23):
Well, they're very good in Hong Kong, but once to
go out of Hong Kong, they're not very good. Like
every other law enforcement agency in the world, once they
get out, once it's out of.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
The jurisdiction, it's out of their hands.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
So they can only rely upon Interpol channels, that is,
you know, liaison with other law enforcement in other countries
in order to assist them. But what happens with these
these criminals are very clever and unfortunately much more clever
than a lot of the law enforcement agencies that are
chasing them. Because they work across borders international, they have
(18:56):
huge funding, huge security, they can put countermeasures in place.
What they normally do is launder it to a country
that doesn't cooperate with Hong Kong.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
So they would just move the.
Speaker 7 (19:05):
Money into the Middle East or somewhere into a country
that has no cooperation with Hong Kong, and then Hong
Kong Police are stumped because they're going to rely upon
their mutual legal assistant treaties to cooperate with the cooperating countries.
But if it's gone to a country that doesn't cooperate, well,
then they're in trouble because they won't get cooperation, so
(19:27):
that it relies upon the civil procedure to go And unfortunately,
police don't want to release any information like.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Every other police force in the world.
Speaker 7 (19:38):
It's the secrecy of policing that has fueled these types
of financial crimes because the police don't want to work
with anyone. They don't want to share information. They can't
it's against them all. So they can't work with people
like us. They can't work with specialists, not just from
our industry, but any other experts that work in this industry,
whether it's whether it's forensic accounting, cybersecurity. They can't share
(20:03):
all that information. So they can't get to get there
with all the stakeholders and say, right, guys, let's go
after the money, which is what needs to happen, right,
but it does doesn't happen because of the secrecy of
law enforcement. So Hong Kong police will say, oh, we
can't share an information. It's all law enforcement sensitive, so
we can't share it. Meanwhile, the crooks are off about
(20:23):
sailing the Bahamas in there and they're supery.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
They've just purchased with the stolen money.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
From everything can can see. This scam has all the
hallmarks of organized crime.
Speaker 7 (20:33):
A scam of this audacity and this amount of money,
and the sophistication of the scam. The way that the
money has been moved so quickly and through Chinese accounts
has all the hallmarks of organized crime because organized crime
groups are able to laun the money very quickly because
they don't just have ten or fifteen accounts, they have
(20:56):
hundreds of accounts. We've seen one sending it in Hong
Kong with three hundred bank accounts active, ready to loan
the money all different banks, twenty different banks in that
particular case, with three hundred accounts in one Chinese organized
crime group. So these organized crime groups extremely savvy, they
(21:16):
have a lot of resources, and because of these types
of scams, they've got an enormous amount of money to
put into their infrastructure, so they can just go out
and recruit another three hundred money launders now because of
all the money they have.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
I set out in this podcast to try and tell
the story of the Arab scam, but as you can hear,
it's more than that, it's not just a finance crime
where a big business gets duped into losing big money.
It's showing how prevalent deep fake AI is now in
twenty twenty four, I wanted to know from Ken how
important public awareness is in tackling deep fake crime.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
This is a war.
Speaker 7 (21:53):
We're fighting a war against scams at the moment, a
trillion dollar industry. It's a war, so we need to
stem it well and without publicity campaigns. I don't know
why this type of things not on the six o'clock
years every night of the week. I mean, as far
as warnings and what's actually happening, there's not enough publicity. Really,
(22:15):
there's a lot of this sort of thing. There's a
lot of articles, these articles, podcasts, but mainstream media they
are covering these stories, but there's not enough awareness warnings
out there to the public.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
I don't think there's enough. There' certainly not enough in
Australia there hasn't been for a long time.
Speaker 7 (22:34):
But I think that public awareness is one thing to
become aware, but it really, you know, it requires such
a deeper level of understanding and education about financial crime
and how it works and the perpetrators behind it, and
that's why we at IFW try to expose it to
the world. We do a lot of TV documentaries and
(22:57):
work with the media to show the world how these
people operate, and how ruthless and horrible amas are, and
how organized they are, and how they're often even being
working under pressure. There's human trafficking involved, There's all sorts
of secondary issues that need to be taken into account,
(23:17):
but governments need to work together a lot more and
a lot more effectively, and that has not been happening
for a long time.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
Next time on deep fake, the forty million dollar fraud.
There's another scam that is so hard to believe. It's
not one that can hurt anyone, but it's so clever
it could fool any everyday person and probably already has
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