Check out Bob Sullivan's podcasts. He's also on Substack.
Sophisticated Cybercrime Is Growing: Protect Yourself! with Bob Sullivan @RedTapeChron
— The Solari Report (@solari_the) August 7, 2024
By Catherine Austin Fitts
Bob’s illustrious resumé displays an unwavering dedication to helping people understand and avoid corporate misbehavior and a variety of “21st century headaches”… pic.twitter.com/OJWlV5Eaig
"All the news while they're still time to do something about it." And that's how I think of you, that you give the people the news they need to know while they can still use that knowledge to really protect them and I think you've done an incredible job in helping consumers navigate which is a really high friction environment so thank you.
00:56. I'm not so sure there's anything you can do about it cuz I've come to the realization over the last 5 or 10 years that while consumer education is great I think it's important to arm yourself with all the tools that you can get but at the same time some of these crimes are so sophisticated and some of the systems are so built against you that in truth consumer education is not going to solve the problem the problem has to be solved at a much higher level. Cybercrime scams are no longer the orbit of small operations where there are a couple of people in a dark room trying to steal $500 at a time this is all big business now billion-dollar businesses that use customer relationships management software they're organized, they have dozens of employees.
01:37. One thing I don't think we talked about nearly enough is that there are all these things that we can put in place to protect people in commercial situations but in the end there's always a moment of trust that is required in any transaction not to oversimplify it when you're buying something there's a moment where one person has both the money and the thing. Business shuts down if trust disappears, and that's why these scams are a bigger deal than just someone losing money or having money stolen from them. We risk our entire way of life. If we continue to let these scams proliferate, trust just disappears.
02:20. Excellent point I hadn't thought of that what do you tell people what can they do to protect themselves?
02:30. There are a couple of really straightforward things that work well and are hard to do on a human level. Silence is the biggest weapon that all of these criminals have whatever the cover story is there all cover story the first instructions don't tell anyone and there's some really interesting research about how these crimes work or don't work that even a telling of the story to one other person whether it's law enforcement or a friend or someone like your face like yourself someone at a financial institution so I got this call and they said that there was this warrant out for my arrest, so I'm going to go to this Bitcoin machine the person reacts, "that doesn't sound right," just the words coming out of your mouth often are enough to give you pause.
03:30. They break the trance.
03:35. So talking really is an effective way of stopping all these things, but that means you have to trust. So if you are the son of an older person or again it's going to happen to anybody, at family parties, bring up my podcast, bring up your report. A big reason that we do the podcast is that I want to be my story true play wants to be like a Netflix series that you can just talk about to raise a subject in a non-threatening way. My podcasts are true crime narratives.
Find Bob Sullivan's podcasts here.
Stop Getting Ripped Off! Why Consumers Get Screwed and How You Can Always Get a Fair Deal, Bob Sullivan, 2009.
The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success, Bob Sullivan, 2013, 9-hour audiobook.
Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day and What You Can Do About It, Bob Sullivan, 2007.
Your Evil Twin: Behind the Identity Theft Epidemic, Bob Sullivan, 2004.
