Episode 49: BioCatch's Sharell Barshishat joins Erin West to dive deep into the fascinating (and alarming) intersection of banking, fraud, and technology.

Sharell breaks down how tech is changing the fraud-fighting playbook for banking. From spotting bots at account opening to detecting a pig butchering victim’s hesitation mid-transfer, Sharell explains how technology can read what people do — not just who they are — to identify fraud in real time.

He and Erin also discuss why stopping scams requires a unified approach across sectors, from banks to social media to government. From Telegram discussions to behavioral biometrics, the stakes have never been higher. ‍

• AI is accelerating the fraud threat landscape — fast.

• Behavior never lies, even when people do.

• Fraud travels on a highway of mule accounts.

• Australian banks show what’s possible with political will.

• Scams are a banking problem, not just a victim problem.

Episode notes and video: https://operationshamrock.org/podcast/stolen

Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬

Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

Deep in Cambodia's remote border region, journalists Lindsey Kennedy and Nathan Southern found something that wasn't on any map — a sprawling scam compound now known as Mansion 8. In this episode of Stolen, host Erin West and The Eyewitness Project team break down how a field discovery became an international sanctions target, what the UK action means for pig butchering networks, and why the crackdown is far from over.

You Can Help: Donate to the GoFundMe campaign to help trafficking survivors return to their home countries.

• Crackdowns are theater, not enforcement.
• It's planned economic development, not opportunistic crime.
• The sanctions against Chen Zhi and the Prince Group caused chaos, but not closure.
• The system is re-victimizing trafficking survivors.
• The scam industry is globalizing.

Episode Notes and Video https://operationshamrock.org/podcast/stolen

Sponsors

We're grateful to Sumsub for supporting travel to support Erin's investigation in Cambodia. Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪Biocatch and Scamnetic.‬

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Subscribe to the Stolen podcast for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

When no one believed them, The Eyewitness Project's Nathan and Lindsay kept reporting. Now the world is paying attention. Erin West talks with the investigative journalists whose frontline work in Cambodia is driving real change in how governments and law enforcement respond to transnational scam compounds.

In the first of a two-part conversation, Lindsey and Nathan trace the arc from Sihanoukville’s casino boom and China’s capital flight crackdown to the rise of sprawling scam compounds that now dot Cambodia’s borders.

Episode notes and video: https://operationshamrock.org/podcast/stolen

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Episode Sponsors

Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪Biocatch and Scamnetic.

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Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

Episode 46: Erin West sits down with Marc Evans, an active metropolitan fraud detective and the founder of Fraud Hero, for a deep dive into the mechanics of modern social engineering scams. Marc brings front-line insight into the schemes hitting hardest right now—from tech-support cons and business email compromise to casino heists pulled off entirely over the phone. He traces his own path into fraud investigation, including a personal brush with identity theft that almost cost him his law-enforcement career before it began.

Marc and Erin unpack how scammers exploit psychology — manufacturing authority, urgency, and trust — to steal money before victims even realize what has happened. They talk about how cryptocurrency ATMs have become the payment method of choice for scammers, and cover the efforts to rein them in. Marc shares his vision for Fraud Hero, an education platform designed to stop scams before they start by giving everyday people and businesses the knowledge he uses on the job.

Amy Nofziger has spent 24 years running AARP's Fraud Watch Network Helpline — and the one thing she wants every victim to know is this: you are not alone, and this is not your fault.

In this episode, Erin and Amy dig into why shame keeps victims silent, why the loneliness epidemic is a scammer's best weapon, why brilliant people fall hardest, and why if your gut felt off — that was your body trying to protect you. If you've been scammed, love someone who has, or just want to understand why these crimes are so devastatingly effective, this episode is for you.

BioCatch prevents financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting 3,000 anonymized data points – keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, physical device attributes, and more – as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch's models reveal patterns that distinguish the criminal from the legitimate.

Scamnetic is a leader in AI-powered scam detection and prevention, protecting individuals, businesses, and financial institutions from digital scams. With solutions like KnowScam and IDeveryone, Scamnetic delivers real-time scam insights, identity verification, and intervention. Restoring trust, reducing losses, and empowering organizations to safeguard customers in an increasingly complex digital world.

What if the person on your screen isn't real? Author and cybersecurity expert Perry Carpenter joins Erin West to break down how deepfakes, AI-generated voice cloning, and synthetic media have become the scammer's most powerful weapons — and why your own desire to believe is their greatest asset.

Perry is the author of Faik: A Practical Guide to Living in a World of Deepfakes, Disinformation, and AI-Generated Deception, and he doesn't pull punches. In this episode, he live-demos deepfake face-swapping technology that costs $60 and installs like any app, explains why deepfake detection software is always one step behind, and reveals how scam operations run Telegram channels where criminals share tips, troubleshoot their tech, and celebrate their "sales goals."

Erin and Perry also dig into the psychology that makes victims so vulnerable — and what regular people can do right now to stay grounded in a world where reality is increasingly malleable.

You'll learn:

• How cheaply and easily deepfake face and voice tech is available to scammers today
• Why confirmation bias is more dangerous than the technology itself
• The difference between AI, deepfakes, and synthetic media — and why it matters
• What to tell your family members about verifying what they see online
• Why scam compounds operate like legitimate businesses — complete with Telegram support channels

Perry and Erin will both be speaking at SXSW 2026 — catch them live in Austin.

Learn more about Operation Shamrock: operationshamrock.org

Stolen is hosted by Erin West, former Santa Clara County prosecutor and founder of Operation Shamrock.

When Ken Westbrook's elderly mother was targeted by a phantom hacker scam, he did what any former CIA analyst would do — he investigated. What he found shocked him: hundreds of billions of dollars draining from American pockets each year, flowing directly to transnational organized crime, and no one in the federal government in charge of stopping it.

In this episode of Stolen, Erin West sits down with Ken Westbrook, founder of Stop Scams Alliance, to talk solutions. Ken lays out a concrete three-step plan to turn the tide: a White House coordinator for fraud modeled after drug policy reform, a national data fusion center inspired by NCMEC, and stronger authentication standards for financial ads online. They also dig into the most comprehensive scam survey ever conducted — a Gallup study that will finally give policymakers the data they need to act.

America is losing this fight because we're not organized. Ken Westbrook has a plan to change that.

Episode 42: What do synthetic identities, bust-out credit card fraud, and pig butchering scams have in common? More than you'd think. In this episode of Stolen, Erin sits down with Steve Lenderman — a 26-year fraud prevention veteran who's worked across credit cards, PayPal, FinTech, and payroll — for a masterclass on how financial fraud really works, and why so many institutions are still failing victims.

Steve breaks down synthetic identity fraud (what it is, how it started, and why "digital ghosts" are now being used to launder scam proceeds), explains the mechanics of bust-out fraud in plain English, and connects the dots between old-school financial crime and today's cryptocurrency scams. He also gets into what banks could be doing right now — from device fingerprinting to behavioral analytics — to detect and protect customers before a pig butchering scam spirals out of control.

Plus: the fraud triangle, why KYC is not a fraud control, and why having great data scientists on your team means nothing if they don't understand what a scam actually looks like.

Stolen is hosted by Erin West, former Santa Clara County prosecutor and founder of Operation Shamrock.

Learn more about Operation Shamrock: operationshamrock.org

BioCatch prevents financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting 3,000 anonymized data points – keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, physical device attributes, and more – as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch's models reveal patterns that distinguish the criminal from the legitimate.

Scamnetic is a leader in AI-powered scam detection and prevention, protecting individuals, businesses, and financial institutions from digital scams. With solutions like KnowScam and IDeveryone, Scamnetic delivers real-time scam insights, identity verification, and intervention. Restoring trust, reducing losses, and empowering organizations to safeguard customers in an increasingly complex digital world.