Robert Riggs
You lock your doors at night. You check on your kids.
But what if the real threat is already inside—hiding in your phone, your smart TV, or your child's video game chat?
In this episode of True Crime Reporter®, former federal probation officer Art Bowker takes us into the digital battlefield unfolding inside your home. (https://www.truecrimereporter.com/)
Bowker’s book Surviving a Cyberattack: Securing Social Media and Protecting Your Home warns how predators groom teenagers with flattery, how romance scammers bleed retirees dry, and how artificial intelligence is being weaponized to impersonate loved ones. (https://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Cyberattack-Securing-Social-Protecting/dp/1501523120)
Bowker and his coauthor Todd Shipley call themselves “The Cyber Safety Guys”.
This is the story about how cybercriminals not only bleed their victims but leave them emotionally devastated, isolated, and too ashamed to ask for help.
Art Bowker
What we wrote the book about, was to give the general public, and we're talking about parents and grandparents to a lesser extent, but parents that are, you know, they've either got kids that they're worried about, or they've got elderly adults they're worried about. They may be running a small business at home. They may be engaged in marketplace, buying stuff and selling stuff in online markets. So we cover, we have individual chapters for that. We start off with a baseline of the first chapter is, you know, kind of like, Hey, here's where we're at. You're more than likely going to be a victim of a cyber crime, either a breach or hopefully nothing more serious than that. But you know, no matter what you do to your system, somebody else has got your data, and they're they're liable to drop the ball. So we, we came up with the idea is, look, we want to prevent you from being a cyber victim. We want to give you the tools to overcome if you do become a victim and to survive that and to continue on. So, along with the prevention and the discussion about detecting if somebody's a victim in your family, whether it's your minor children or maybe an elderly parent, is being subjected to some kind of scam. We also provided information on how to report it to law enforcement to get it to the proper authorities so that those people can get prosecuted. And maybe you know if you're if, depending on the circumstances, you can recover your losses.
Robert Riggs
What are the principal online threats today, as well as what's coming through your cell phone?
Art Bowker
Oh, gee. The big thing that I'm seeing right now is the targeting of the elderly there. There is a scheme that's that's come to the forefront, and it's called pig butchering schemes. And basically that's a Chinese term. There's actually a Chinese word for it, but translates into pig butchering. And basically, they target vulnerable, usually elderly folks. They target them with love attention. They fatten them up with that attention. Then somewhere along the line they go, You know what we need. We want to be together. Let's I've got an investment, and they get them to invest their money into some kind of Bitcoin scheme that's got incredible returns, basically a Ponzi scheme, and they're producing these phony sheets that show how much money they're making. And basically they fatten them up with the love, and then piece by piece, they cut off their finances. They take their 401(k), their college funds. And then when the folks go, you know, I'd like to get my investment back, they go, oh, there's fees for that. And they hit them with those fees, and it just continues on until they have financially butchered them. And the losses are, in some cases are, it's hard to believe that people would get sucked into that, but they're losing, you know, their entire retirement funds, their their kids, college funds, possibly, and then, you know, along with the financial aspect now, they feel they can't trust anybody. So there's an emotional impact. And that's that's dealing with the with the elderly, and the I'm seeing reports on sextortion, which I've, you know, I dealt with sex offenders, and it was as horrendous as that was, you know, it was usually a guy that had a predator who had interest in children and was trading pictures and was trying to do sexual exploitation, meeting for sex online, that type of thing. Well, you know, there might have been what's called Sextortion like, you know, give me pictures, or I'll show this to your parents, or something like that. It's taken it up to an incredible notch. It's now a financial based thing where there's organizations that are victimizing young males through sextortion schemes, and some of those males are killing themselves because they focus on this is going to ruin your life, unless you pay up. And I just within the last few weeks, there's reports of criminal organizations not only going after the finances, but getting their victims to like, carve their initials into their skin, mutilate them, attack other people, basically blackmailing them into doing those other things. So it's, it's scary. I've never seen this kind of stuff before. And then, you know, we talk about the AI. AI is out there, and it's being used in both incidents. Was report of a gentleman who was taking pictures of children at Disneyland, and then he was taking those photos and putting them into an AI program and making pornographic images with them. And then there's a report out of South America where AI is being used to download a voice off the internet of a family member and taking that voice and using AI to imitate that voice in those grandparent schemes. Oh, I've been in an accident, and I need you to send money. Well, it becomes more believable with a voice that sounds like the relative. So it's very troubling the things that are going on and, you know, it just so happened, our books coming out about the same time. All this, this kind of damages, is being rampant out there.
Robert Riggs
It seems to me that artificial intelligence can put all the proven scams on steroids and now make them sound very real. Who's behind these? Who are the criminal organizations behind these? Typically, where are they? Well,
Art Bowker
for the pig butchering schemes they have started out in Southeast Asia. They initially were groups that were targeting Chinese citizens, but then they realize American citizens, that's where the money was at, and they started targeting the Americans. And they're targeting them for a variety of reasons. One, they've got the finances. If they're retired, they've got those resources. The other thing is, they're vulnerable because one they may be lonely, they may feel isolated, they're they're not as sophisticated with the technology and understanding scams. They may be affected by diminished health, diminished mental capacity. So they become easy targets. They're basically going after the vulnerable. That's like, I say it was in Southeast Asia that has started, but I believe it's been branched out, and it's in it in an industrial and there's an industrialization of it there. They actually use trafficking. There's been reports of getting people to come into the country, promising them tech jobs. They get into the country, they take their passport, and they force them to do these, to be involved in these pig butchering schemes, these fraud schemes. Or they, you know, they won't let them leave, and they beat them and those kinds of things. So it's a that's a criminal organization, and I know they've branched out from Southeast Asia, they're going into other countries. They're going to countries that don't have the sophistication or the willingness to stop that kind of conduct. As far as the sextortion, stuff that's coming out of Africa, there was a report the National Center for Missing Exploited Children said most of them are coming out of Africa. But the report I saw recently is there's these western hacker groups that are involved in it, and they're they're not just interested in the financial aspect, but the manipulation and control of the victim. And that's where the, you know, mutilate the target, get the target to brand themselves or carve their initials in as and then they'll film it live stream it to others and say, see how much control I have over this person.
Robert Riggs
On the pig butchering. I continually get text messages on my phone, and I get messages on LinkedIn, and you know, they're they're typical will say, I found your name in my contacts and I don't remember you. Who are you? Or, Hey, I'm still waiting to meet you at the mall. Or I really like your profile on LinkedIn. I Let's talk. Tell me more. When you go to their LinkedIn profile, there's nothing there. But is that typical? Is that the way it starts? They
Art Bowker
are. They are targeting any kind of media, really. I've seen them on like, like you. On LinkedIn. I've seen them on Facebook. They're prevalent on dating sites. The dating site profile will tell them, tell the target to let's go to another application or platform, and then they will start there. I've seen them on text messages from cell phones. So somebody could not maybe, maybe they don't have a social media presence, but they got a cell phone, they get a text message, and they start hitting them up. And so, so every they're targeting every avenue. With the with the kids, Instagram is a big platform, although there's some reports that Instagram may be reporting it more than others, Snapchat’s another one, but there's some evidence that they're gravitating to other platforms. And the study I saw, or the report that I saw, is they were, it's not just the social media, but they're doing it on the gaming platforms, getting the kids, you know, they're engaged online in some game, and they're going after them in that gaming platform.
Robert Riggs
Well there are a lot of people who think, well, you know, I've got an antivirus software on my computer and all, I'm immune to this, but I take it, you're not.
Art Bowker
No, no, what? What the, what the antivirus software does is it prevents you from getting, from downloading a virus that somebody sends you that is known to the antivirus software, it's its definition or its signature has been identified. It does not prevent somebody sending you a message with a link, and you click on that link, and it takes you somewhere that has an exploitation that the antivirus software is not prepared for. So, you know, it's a preventive measure. It's like the one of the first steps, but not opening emails. You don't know who you who they're from, not clicking on links. Those all go hand in hand and making sure your software, just your regular software, is up to date, your browser is up to date. And, you know, we talk about router security, and we talk about the Internet of Things. You know, there was a report, and we mentioned it, where a casino in Las Vegas was attacked, its system, its database of high rollers, was attacked through a thermostat that was connected to the internet, the Internet of Things. That device, that thermostat did not have high security, and they were able to go into the thermostat and go into the system through there.
Robert Riggs
And I've heard of them breaking into systems through the garage door opener and appliances. What should a person do?
Art Bowker
Well, you know, one of the first things is, when you get one of those devices, what do you do? You actually need that kind of do you need that kind of connectivity on certain devices? But the first thing we talk about is change the administrative password. So many times, people keep the same password that comes with a factory, and people know what that is, and they will buy, you know, if it You haven't changed that password, you know, that's a you know, it's just as good as not having a password. I guess. You know, the other thing is about cars, too. Cars are now susceptible to being hacked, either stolen or the operations and you know we talk about, you've got to know what your what system your car has, if you can change the passwords for that when you connect your Bluetooth for the phone to operate. Do you clear that out when you get rid of the, rid of the, you know, the car, or do you, you know, forget about it, and then they've got all your contacts and all men, depending on how what kind of system it was, maybe the messages and stuff. Do you do that when you get into a rental car and you connect your your phone? So we talk about all those things. We focus a lot on raising the awareness of knowing what your risk is and how comfortable you are with certain things and steps to overcome that.
Robert Riggs
Well, you mentioned earlier that we can all be a victim of a data breach that occurs somewhere else, not on our computers. And this has happened to me with AT&T, you know, they got hacked, and so they have sent out notices giving people free monitoring service. And so, you know, I get these reports, and I recently heard they said, Well, we have, we have found your social security number on the dark web. Should I be concerned?
Art Bowker
Yes, yes, I would do a, I would do a credit freeze so that they can't open up credit in your name with your social security number. I was, as well as my co author, were victims years ago of the breach that OPM, the federal personnel office, because we all had background reports and they had our dates of birth and social security numbers, and they had our families names and addresses, we got notification that we were both victims of that and that data, the initial theft has value for the social security numbers, account numbers and everything, but it's it's got a short shelf life for that, because people will change bank accounts, or close accounts, freeze accounts, so to actually use that to sell those for the account numbers and whatnot, that is a short shelf life, but it still has value because it will connect say your name to your email, to your cell phone, to your address, and that can be used as a social engineering attack against you. I know you've probably seen the stories about people getting these emails. We know what you've been doing on your computer. Here's a picture of your house, which they've pulled off the internet through Google, and the people are like, Oh my gosh, what did I do? They must be watching them all that is smoke and mirrors. They're getting that data because it's tied to some breach. They've got your name, your address, your email, they can identify you, and they can tailor this social media scare to get, get you to pay up, like you need to pay this right away. And they do these psychological tricks, you know, oh, you got to you got to act fast, or you're going to lose out on this deal. You got to act fast, or this bad thing is going to happen to you. And it's a sales technique, and they are very sophisticated in the social engineering attacks, and again, with AI, they're just going to get even more harder to detect. Correct. You're not going to see, you know, I'm sure you used to see the emails where there were spelling errors and the syntax was all wrong. AI is going to correct all that. You're not going to see. You're you're not going to see those flaws with the sophisticated attacks.
Robert Riggs
And, you know, I remember seeing the OPM attack and that they got the security background checks and stuff, and China was reportedly behind it, besides fraud, what sort of intelligence value is there there to use against us in a conflict?
Art Bowker
Well, it's, it's funny, you mentioned about that AT&T breach that that just recently happened. I know that there's government agencies in in in Ohio, and I'm assuming all over the country, where AT&T provided the cell phone services for the law enforcement folks so they have their text messages that and, you know, cross checking well, this person, this number, goes to an agent, maybe this agents communicating with somebody who might be an informant. That kind of data, for, you know, those involved in criminal acts such as drug trafficking or spying, is immensely valuable, and that I didn't see any kind of report about, you know, AT&T the number of citizens, but there were government entities, I'm sure, that were AT&T providers.
Robert Riggs
You know, the old term for being aware and protecting yourself has been cyber safety, but y'all call it cyber survival. Explain,
Art Bowker
okay, cyber safety implies you're doing you know the basics. You're doing, your antivirus, you're making sure your system is up to date, and you're maybe not leaking information out. You're keeping everything private. Cyber survival implies not only your systems, but being aware of what data that everybody else has, and being able to react if there's a breach, keeping up to date with, you know, the breaches that happen, or the trends when we actually provide a couple websites that are really good that keep track of that information. And you know, back to the OPM breach. I was aware of the OPM breach before OPM sent out the notice that they had been breached. You know, if you depend upon a company to send you out the notice, you know you're you're waiting too long. And I'm sure you heard the AT&T breach was all over the news, and they, for whatever reason, they're not sending out those notices as as quick as that. So survival, you know, cyber survival, implies doing everything you can and being able to overcome if you do, if there's some kind of hiccup, you're able to recover and get back to what you need to do. And we talk about for businesses, making sure you're backing up your data, having a data protection or a backup system, so that if your system is attacked, you can get those backups and get yourself back up and running. And that's not just for cyber attack, but, you know, a flood or a fire, you need to have backup systems to get your data back up and running. So it's the whole, the whole thing of, you know it's one thing to be safe, but you need to be able to survive in this environment. And it also implies, too that you know you're not just looking out for yourself, but you know, if you have you know people who have kids or the elderly, you know elderly parents, you're looking out for them, and it's more than just I'm going to monitor my kids computer, or I'm going to check my parents bank accounts or credit it's communicating with them, talking with them, finding out you know what they're doing. You know you can monitor your kid's computer, but if your kid goes over to the neighbor's house where nobody's monitoring and you're not asking what they're doing over there, you're not going to find out. Same with, you know, the elderly, if you're only talking to them about, you know, the bank account, and you're not finding out that they've connected with somebody from overseas who wants them to keep it secret, you've got to have that communication back and forth. So it's more than software, it's more than hardware. It's a mindset of communicating with one another,
Robert Riggs
just visiting with a friend who's got an eight-year-old daughter, and they've really tried to maintain a screenless life for her. They don't hand her the cell phone to entertain her when they're out at dinner and stuff like that. They've got things locked down on the computer with software, but they then find out she goes over to a friend's house and comes back and said, Well, honey, what did y'all do? And she said, Oh, we were on YouTube all evening, and they were horrified, because maybe you can explain of that. You can see lots of bad things and put bad things in your head on YouTube.
Art Bowker
Yeah, you know it's, it's the social media providers, there's rules on what they can how old they can have somebody. That's what, how old they have to be to have an account. And people kind of think, Oh, if they're allowed to be on there and say, 13, it's got to be safe. Well, no, that just means they're allowing them to be online. It doesn't mean there isn't bad things on on those social media sites and Facebook, run by Meta and Instagram, they have prohibitions against having sex offenders online. They're not allowed to be online. They will kick them off, but they are not actively screening for sex offenders. I know that because I supervise sex offenders, and I would catch a sex offender who opened a Facebook account. And you know, they're not, they're not taking the sex offender registration and running it against those pictures, you know, it's basically they're depending upon somebody reporting and, you know, they say, Oh, we don't like porn. You're not allowed to have porn on Facebook. They will have links to porn. They will have adult sites that say, Oh, come and click on this. And they will shut them down eventually, but it takes a while to locate them. So you know, we need to be aware of that. And you know, just because it's allowed doesn't mean it's appropriate, and you shouldn't, shouldn't monitor what's going on.
Robert Riggs
Is the bottom line is, for adults staying safe is you just got to be suspicious. You've really got to challenge what you see.
Art Bowker
Oh, definitely, yeah, definitely, I think, a good skepticism, especially with AI, you know, we talk about, you know, a method of when you're being presented with a story, how to ascertain whether that story is really truthful or if it's just somebody's agenda, you know, tracing it back to the source, finding secondary sources. So, you know, we need, and we talk about, when you're when you're discussing those issues with your kids that they need to understand that just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's true. I mean, it was we had we talked about a story where a young girl saw a post, I believe it was on Instagram that was announcing the next day was national rape day, where any any females were going to be raped. It was a national day, and it was a result, she took a pocket knife to school to protect herself and got into trouble because she brought a pocket knife. And if she had just talked to her parents, they would have said, that's nonsense, and she would have avoided getting into trouble over, you know, bringing a knife to the school. But yes, definitely, we got to be skeptical of what we're told online and how we react to it and those personal interactions that I don't know how many of those I get, where somebody goes, Oh, you're so attractive. You, I'm interested in guys like you, and I'm confident enough to know that that is not something that's coming up in these young ladies mindsets, and I kind of think of it is, it's not a young lady, it's probably some guy somewhere in a dark room trying to convince me to do something I I'm going to regret
Robert Riggs
Given your law enforcement background, What are the challenges of prosecuting these cyber criminals, and is there any hope of even getting your money back if they're sitting overseas and they and you've sent it to them?
Art Bowker
Well, in the US there are, there's agreements with other countries, certain countries, to recoup those losses and investigate, particularly with the sextortion cases where there's been a death, they will investigate those and they have brought individuals back from overseas who've committed a sextortion case where a minor has died and prosecuted them. We talk about reporting victimization to the Internet Crimes center run by the FBI, and the reason we do that is it puts you on record if they are able to identify you as a victim, and they've identified other other victims, and they've there's an investigation, you know, you will be identified as a victim, as opposed to them catching somebody who victimized one person but then victimized countless others, and has assets, they're being held in the bank. So it gives a way of identifying you as a victim and possibly recovering some of the money, because you clearly been identified and on record. So there, well, it seems like, but you know, again, I want to one of the things I want to stress is there is hope, but it's far better to be preventive. Don't be taken in. It's and the FBI is initiative that they recently, recently announced, is focusing on the prevention, educating people not to get involved in these schemes.
Robert Riggs
And the basic advice for that education is, what when you're online?
Art Bowker
Well, you're gonna when you go online, you're gonna want to make sure your system is up to date, you have antivirus software. You don't call you know where you're at. You know whether you're if you're on Wi Fi, if you're in the public area, where are you at this Wi Fi? Maybe you should be on a virtual private network so somebody can't intercept your communications. It's an awareness of what website you're on, whether it's a secure website, and not clicking on links that you know pop up in your email, and not responding to messages from people you don't know, and even people that you do know, because they will imitate, impersonate others in an attempt to get at their victims. So it's it's akin to when you go out at night, know your surroundings, what's going on, and also, there's a recognition, I think, that you know most of us know, don't go into certain areas after night. It's dangerous. And the same applies to the internet. Don't go to areas that you shouldn't be in, like if you know porn sites and stuff like that, because those sites, a lot of those sites, will give you, give you viruses. So general awareness, making sure you've got all your armor on and just, you know, keeping, keeping aware of what's going on digitally. You know, while you're online,
Robert Riggs
anything right now that keeps you awake at night.
Art Bowker
I I just my my parents, my father, just passed away last it'll be a year this this year, so I don't have to worry about him. Although I there for a while, I was getting notices. He was calling me the FBI wants to arrest me. They're sending me emails. I go, Dad, it’s not the FBI. They don't do that, those calls, so I don't have that worry anymore. But I have grandchildren and, well, my adult children are they grew up with me. They. Pretty confident they know better than to do certain things, but I'm worried about my grandchildren, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to get this book out, because they're going to be faced with these dangers all the way through their adult life, from being a child to growing up to how they buy things online, things that, you know, I didn't have when I was growing up, I didn't have to worry about that. And even when I was an adult, for most of my, well, not most, but a lot of my adult life, I didn't worry about, you know, computer crimes and the effect on me, that's what scares me, the in the trend of these, you know, was bad enough with the sex offenders, but this business of exploiting going after the vulnerable, and they're actually they're looking for kids that, you know, they may say, Yeah, I've contemplated suicide or I'm depressed, and they're specifically targeting them because they're vulnerable, and to me, that's an evil that can't be tolerated.
Robert Riggs
Criminals overseas—often backed by hostile governments—are waging war on a new front: your screen.
It’s a digital battlefield for your trust, your money, and your loved ones.
They don’t need a crowbar or a gun. Just one careless click.
So Stop. Pause. Observe. Before you trust that text, link, or email.
Talk—really talk—with your kids and aging parents.
And if something feels off, report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at IC3.gov.
I’ve placed a link in the show notes.
This is Robert Riggs reporting.
