I was weaponized against myself
Sandra’s Story
This story is part of Operation Shamrock’s Survivor Stories series.
Operation Shamrock’s mission is to raise awareness of pig butchering with everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Our goal is to educate the public, mobilize collective action, and disrupt the operations networks of transnational organized criminals to prevent further harm.
Names and other personally identifying information have been changed to protect the victim’s identity. To read other stories or take action against pig butchering scams, visit www.operationshamrock.org.
Sandra knew it might be a scam. She was, in her own words, driving around town literally stealing money from herself and it all seemed a little sketchy, but she and her husband were completely terrified by the potential that the crisis they’d found themselves in was legitimate. So they ignored the little voices in the backs of their minds and kept doing what they needed to do to get out of trouble.
It all started when the community college Sandra worked for asked her to take on running their social media accounts. Sandra, an adjunct professor who taught writers and trained writing tutors, was always looking for ways to supplement her income and agreed to take on the new work. There was just one problem.
Sandra’s seldom-used Facebook account was locked and she couldn’t log in. Without her own Facebook account, she couldn’t access the school’s account. So she did the same thing everyone does when they need assistance. She Googled “Facebook tech support” and found a couple websites that looked legitimate. She called the 800 number on one of the pages.
The “Facebook” agent Sandra reached was a scammer. He said he could see that her account was hacked and that an investigation was necessary. She downloaded a program onto her work laptop so the agent could “investigate the network.”
After just a few seconds, the investigator audibly gasped over the phone. He told Sandra her entire network had been hacked. She was being listened to and watched. Her identity had been compromised and involved in a felony. That’s why her Facebook account was inaccessible.
Sandra didn’t exactly know what any of this meant, but she certainly knew it wasn’t good. For all she knew, her “network” really had been hacked and her identity compromised. When the investigating agent advised her to take out her bank card and call the number on the back of it, she thought that was a pretty good idea. So that’s exactly what she did.
Sandra doesn’t know exactly how it happened, but her call didn’t actually go to her bank. It instead was routed to scammers impersonating her bank. She asked for fraud tech support and was redirected to someone who told her a $16,000 purchase of Russian child pornography had been made from her account. The banker added “a member of the US Treasury” to the call to help further resolve the issue.
The fake Treasury agent told Sandra she had two options. She could hire a lawyer to protest her innocence which would result in a court battle and all of her accounts being frozen for the next six months. Or she could work with the US Treasury Department who understood she’d unwittingly been hacked. Panicked, Sandra went home and woke up her napping husband. She told him everything that had happened. The law-abiding couple who were certain they’d not intentionally done anything wrong agreed that Sandra just needed to cooperate with the Treasury Department.
Sandra called back the scammer posing as a Treasury agent. He informed her that she and her husband had to move all of their funds under the auspices of the Treasury. Once they cooperated, the Federal Trade Commission would reinstate their accounts and secure them new Social Security numbers that were clean. If they didn’t comply fully, they were going to be prosecuted for and found guilty of money laundering.
If that all sounds scary and confusing to you, then you know how Sandra felt. She and her husband had just received inheritances and they were worried they’d lose these new funds. Sandra didn’t know anything about money laundering or network security or the US Treasury. She just wanted to get this all cleared up as fast as she could and get back to tutoring students at her college.
Over the next three weeks, Sandra and her husband removed $300,000 — their accumulated life savings — from accounts at multiple banks and put it into Bitcoin ATMs $1,000 at a time. The Treasury agent gave them QR codes and alternate phone numbers to use to get around the $1,000 daily limit on these kiosks.
The fraudulent bank and US Treasury representatives were in constant contact with Sandra. “I was weaponized against myself,” she said. On the handful of occasions where she wavered, they yelled at her, told her she was complicit in money laundering, and was going to be prosecuted with the full force of the United States government. She was scared and confused. Looking back, Sandra says it’s obvious that the scammers were incredibly well rehearsed. Their voices carried so much authority. They played their roles like Hollywood stars.
The ironic shame of Sandra’s story is a few weeks after her last Bitcoin deposit, her employer provided training about these kinds of scams. Had the hackers simply found her a couple months later, she might have reacted differently. Absent that educational seminar, though, Sandra fell victim to the same high pressure psychological manipulation that works against so many victims.
There’s a very simple reason scammers use an approach like this: it works. It works a lot. And it works even with smart, worldly people like Sandra who you’d never think would be scam victims. Sandra’s fear took over, her flight or fight defenses triggered, and she deferred to the newfound authority figure in her life who promised to safely guide her out of this traumatic scenario.
Stories like Sandra’s are the reason that the first goal of Operation Shamrock is to educate. The more people know about these scams and the high pressure psychological tactics they employ, the less successful they’ll be. Talk to the people in your life about scams. The only way we turn the tide against this scourge is by working together.
