Stolen Podcast

Episode 61: Erin West connects with Frank McKenna, a 30-year fraud-consulting veteran and founder of Point Predictive, who has built four separate industry data consortiums — including efforts that now touch credit card, mortgage, ATM, and auto-lending fraud. McKenna shares how simple, incremental data-sharing agreements can disrupt fraud rings that are already collaborating freely on platforms li...

Episode 60: Anola Johnson thought LinkedIn was the one platform safe from scammers — professional, vetted, serious. A connection request two days after a work trip to Paris changed that. Over the following months, a charming "oil rig engineer" supposedly stationed in Abu Dhabi convinced her to wire money again and again: $1.4 million to a supplier in Singapore, $180,000 more days later, and a $350...

Episode 59: Her heart stopped when Mariana van Zeller climbed into a boat to cross into Myanmar. In this episode of Stolen, Erin West sits down with the National Geographic journalist behind Trafficked to talk about the two minutes that separate Thailand from Shwe Kokko — the gleaming, casino-lit city that a Chinese crime syndicate built on forced labor and pig butchering scams. Mariana describes...

Episode 58: Despite his careful research and skepticism, scammers defrauded Syd of $50,000. Next came the challenge of dealing with law enforcement. Erin West sits down with a former securities industry professional who lost more than $50,000 to a technically sophisticated crypto investment fraud. Syd’s story isn’t one of carelessness; he had identified several earlier scam pitches before one — bu...

Episode 57: A scammer can counterfeit your face, your voice, and your documents. What they can't fake is where your phone actually goes. That's the solution André Ferraz built. The founder of Incognia joins Erin to explain how physical-world behavior — precise to eight feet, accurate enough to tell one apartment from another in a high-rise — became a living identity that AI can't counterfeit. They...

Episode 56: What happens when a romance scam survivor sits down with the scientist who can explain exactly what was done to her? Last week you heard Kirsty's story. This week, Erin brings her together with Dr. Martina Dove, a fraud psychology expert, to review the scam, step by step. The verdict is unsettling: Today's scammers don't simply mirror you. They study you, find the wounds you've spent y...

Episode 55: A six-month romance fraud dismantled Kirsty’s finances, her sense of self, and nearly her life. In this deeply moving episode, Erin West speaks with Kirsty Guest — a single mother of four from the UK — about the romance fraud and psychological manipulation that upended life as she knew it.  Kirsty’s story is not a cautionary tale about carelessness. She is a businesswoman, a devoted pa...

Episode 54: Keven Hendricks, a 20-year law enforcement veteran, pulls back the curtain on the dark web and the connections with cybercrime and drug sales. “Cryptocurrency, whether you like it or not, is a means of moving wealth that is being used by bad guys.” — Keven Hendricks Erin West sits down with Keven Hendricks — 20-year law enforcement veteran, former task force officer with both the FBI a...

Episode 53: Who knew that creating a deepfake video that merged Will Smith and Cardi B into one person would become a viral success? Who knew that the creator of that video would now be focused on stopping the criminal use of the same technology? Now you can be anybody you want to be. You can be Beyoncé at a concert. You can be skydiving as an alligator. — Carl Bogan on the simplicity of deepfake...

Erin West and AARP's Kathy Stokes flip the script on the 50th episode of Stolen. It’s not about risky behavior. It’s that the scams are coming at us in every possible communication channel. We can’t avoid it. — Kathy Stokes, AARP Episode 50: Erin and Kathy dig into one of the most overlooked dimensions of the scam epidemic: the language we use — and the harm it causes. AARP’s Fraud Watch Network h...

Episode 52: UK survivor-turned-advocate Anna Rowe breaks down the brain chemistry behind romance fraud — cortisol, dopamine, trauma bonds — and why victims blame themselves instead of the criminals manipulating them. You don’t see anything wrong. All the red flags appear beige because of what’s going on in your body. — Anna Rowe, co-founder LoveSaid.org From the dopamine flood of love bombing to t...

Episode 51: Erin West sits down with Dr. David Maimon, a Georgia State University professor and cybercrime researcher for SentiLink, to dig into what the data tells us about online fraud, where it’s headed, how scammers select victims, and why our approaches to stopping them may need to change. Current trends are alarming:  A dramatic rise in home equity line of credit (HELOC) account fraud target...

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...

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 crack...

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 Sihanoukvill...

Fraud Detective Marc Evans provides insight into how scammers use social engineering to scam individuals and businesses. 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-supp...

AARP’s Amy Nofziger outlines why scams keep working, who they really target, and what actually helps people heal. 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...

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 A...

Episode 43: Ken Westbrook shares how his mother got him into fighting scams, the challenge in measuring the scale of scams, and the actions the U.S. needs to take to better fight scams. 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 Ame...

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...

Episode 41: Erin West returns to Cambodia to investigate whether the world’s largest pig butchering scam operations are truly shutting down—or simply regrouping. From Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville, she walks inside abandoned scam compounds, examines the crackdown tied to Chen Zhi and Prince Group, and exposes the human trafficking driving global crypto fraud. Are these compounds finished—or just pau...

Episode 40: Erin West and Scamnetic CEO Al Pascual discuss the growing issue of scams and the development of innovative technology solutions to combat them. They explore the importance of technology in monitoring communications, verifying identities, and providing evidence to help individuals recognize scams. Their conversation also highlights how AI and deepfake technology is making scams more ef...

Episode 39: #whatifwecould actually slow the global scam epidemic? In this episode of Stolen, Erin West speaks with former bank executive and fraud leader Donna Turner about the hard truths behind scam prevention — including why banks can’t solve this alone, how outdated rules are protecting criminals, and what regulators, fintech, telecom, and social platforms need to do next. This is a candid co...

Update from Cambodia: Shakilu was released from the scam compound where he’d been trafficked and forced to scam, but he’s now trapped with no way to get home.   Stolen is hosted by Erin West, former Santa Clara County prosecutor and founder of Operation Shamrock. Learn more about Operation Shamrock: operationshamrock.org Meet Our Sponsors BioCatch prevents financial crime by recognizing patterns i...

In this episode of Stolen, Erin West shares an update she never expected to give. Months ago, Erin was in regular contact with a young man from Uganda who had been trafficked into a scam compound in Cambodia. Beaten, confined, and forced to scam victims around the world, he disappeared in late September—leading Erin to fear the worst. Then, a WhatsApp message arrived. This episode unpacks what hap...