Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to behind the Scams. This is Nick Henley, and sitting right across from me, back in her rightful seat, is my wife and incredible co host, Sue. And as always, I am thrilled to have you by my side.
As I always say in marriage and in podcasting.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Wow, I like that, Nick. A little spice of romance and a little business keeping it real.
But it is so good to be here, Nick. As always, I am so excited to dive into this episode. We have been itching to get to this case for a while, and now it's time to scratch that itch.
Because, Nick, the scale of this investigation and the final asset forfeitures coming out of the Pacific Northwest is remarkable.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: It really is, Sue. In this episode, we are opening a major federal case file from the Western District of Washington in Seattle.
This is the prosecution of United States vs Sergey Potapenko and Ivan Turugin. This was not some minor Internet side hustle or a clunky email phishing ring. It was an international $577 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme built on smoke and mirrors.
Prosecutors say it targeted more than half a million victims worldwide, including families, retirees, and young investors who thought they were buying into the future of digital finance.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: What makes this case so unsettling is that it highlights a major shift in the modern threat landscape.
Historically, running a classic Ponzi scheme team required a substantial physical presence.
You had to look like Bernie Madoff sitting in a polished midtown Manhattan high rise, wearing a custom tailored suit and manufacturing institutional trust through proximity and exclusive networking.
But Potapenko and Tarogin showed that in the digital era, visual polish on a computer screen can replace physical prestige.
They ran their operation thousands of miles away from Estonia.
Yet with a slick professional user interface, they persuaded hundreds of thousands of people that they were dealing with a tech juggernaut.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Exactly, Sue. From my perspective, having investigated crimes like this during my former life as a special agent, the underlying social engineering and psychological manipulation here are identical to the classic frauds of the past. But the automated scale is extraordinary.
Let's break open act one of this machine, which operated under the name hashflare.
Around 2015, cryptocurrency was entering the mainstream, but the barrier to entry was high. If you wanted to mine Bitcoin, you needed to buy thousands of dollars worth of specialized computer rigs, place them in a cooled room, and deal with heavy electrical costs.
Hashflare stepped into that friction point and sold a beautiful, effortless solution called cloud mining.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: The marketing was incredibly effective, Nick. They told the Public. You do not need to buy a single piece of machinery or or worry about your power bill.
We have built massive industrial scale server farms packed with cutting edge mining rigs. All you have to do is log on to our website, choose a contract level that fits your budget, and lease a specific allocation of our computing power.
We do the heavy lifting. We run the server farms and the Bitcoin or Litecoin mined by your least power will be deposited directly into your account balance every morning.
It was framed as the ultimate stream of passive income, and people fell for
[00:04:11] Speaker A: it by the hundreds of thousands because the visual validation was flawless.
When an investor set up an account, they were given access to a polished personal dashboard. It featured financial graphs, indicators of global hash rates, and a ticker that showed their digital balance rising every day.
If you see numbers going up on a professional looking portal, your brain naturally tells you the investment is real.
But on the back end, it was a ghost ship.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Potapenko and Turagin operated less than 1% of the computing power they claimed to own.
The daily payouts victims saw on their screens were not coming from newly mined cryptocurrency.
They were recycled funds from later investors.
It was a classic textbook Ponzi scheme wrapped in a high tech bow.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: And what makes that opening section so important for listeners is that it explains why the fraud looked so modern while behaving like something very old.
A lot of people hear the word cryptocurrency and assume the mechanics must have been too complex for an ordinary investor to evaluate.
But that was part of the illusion. The pitch did not require victims to understand blockchain architecture in any deep way. It only required them to believe that a sleek interface, a stream of daily numbers, and a professional looking company website were enough to stand in for real proof.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: That is exactly right. In older fraud cases, the theater happened in a conference room, a brokerage office, or a private lunch, where the promoter could use status and social pressure to create trust.
Here, the theater happened on a screen. The dashboard became the office. The charts became the body language. The daily balance became the handshake. And once that kind of visual trust is established, a victim can start treating software output as if it were the same thing as audited reality.
Now, as an investigator, you know exactly what happens when a classic Ponzi scheme starts getting too big.
Incoming cash from new investors eventually fails to keep pace with the compounding weight of daily referral bonuses and payout obligations.
By 2017, the strain on hash flare was reaching a breaking point.
But instead of Packing their bags and running, Potapenko and Turagin did something both strategic and alarming. They launched a second act to serve as a massive cash injection. For the first, they announced plans for a virtual currency bank called Polybius.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: This is where the financial engineering gets more sophisticated, Nick.
They did not just ask for bank wires this time.
They capitalized on the 2017 initial coin offering boom.
They generated their own digital token and told investors that buying Polybius tokens was like buying dividend yielding shares in a fully licensed, highly regulated digital bank that would bridge the gap between traditional fiat currency and crypto.
They published technical white papers loaded with regulatory terminology and architectural diagrams that looked legitimate to the untrained.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: They even hired high end marketing agencies to place press releases across major financial media outlets.
To everyday investors, it looked like a certified Silicon Valley disruptor operating out of Europe.
They raised a reported $25 million during that token sale alone.
People were draining checking accounts and retirement savings to buy into Polybius, believing their money was being held to secure future banking charters.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: But as the grand jury indictment from the Western District of Washington alleged, the entire Polybius infrastructure was another digital facade.
There was no bank, no regulatory charter, and no reserve accounts.
The $25 million raised from the token sale did not go towards software engineers or compliance officers.
Instead, prosecutors say the money was quickly split up and routed through an international maze of shell company accounts.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: A major portion of that money was allegedly recycled back into the hash flare system to pay investors who were trying to withdraw their balances, keeping the original cloud mining illusion alive for another year.
The rest was funneled into personal accounts to fund a lavish lifestyle. For the two operators, it is a sharp example of affinity and technical fraud combined. Su they weaponize the average person's limited technical knowledge of blockchain systems.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Because people did not understand how a mining pool or crypto bank would actually function under the hood, they relied on the polish of the dashboards, technical charts and marketing materials to evaluate risk.
The manipulation was effective.
Investors were made to feel like they were part of an exclusive financial revolution, when behind the curtain, the operation resembled an automated electronic version of a century old mail fraud trap.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: And that is part of what made the Polybius pivot so effective.
It did not ask investors to abandon the original story.
It offered them a larger one. Instead of saying, trust us to mine coins, the message became trust us to help build the future financial system itself.
That is a much more powerful emotional pitch because it allows the victim to feel not just profitable, but early, informed and sophisticated.
Once the money poured into Hashflare and the Polybius token sale. Potapenko and Turagin had to solve a problem every major fraud operation faces. How to move more than half a billion dollars in fiat currency and cryptocurrency without triggering anti money laundering controls.
As a former federal agent, I can tell you that hiding a few hundred thousand dollars is relatively simple. But moving $577 million requires an industrial scale financial laundromat.
They could not just deposit that into a local savings account.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: So they constructed an international maze of shell companies, bogus contracts and layered transactions designed to break the audit trail.
Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Washington traced money from victims credit cards and digital wallets into accounts controlled by the conspirators across Europe. Europe.
But it did not stay there.
Investigators say the funds were quickly moved through corporate entities registered in Estonia, Latvia, Switzerland and Cyprus.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: And to make the transactions look legitimate on paper, they fabricated a paper trail of phony business arrangements.
When international banks began asking questions about why millions of dollars were flowing into newly formed shell company accounts, the duo produced fraudulent equipment purchase agreements and fake consulting contracts.
They claimed the incoming wires were routine business to business payments for cloud computing hardware and technical infrastructure services.
In reality, prosecutors said, no such equipment was being purchased.
The paper trail was fiction created to get past compliance departments.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: But they did not just keep the money in digital loops, Nick. They used the proceeds to fund a luxury lifestyle in the real world.
According to the Department of Justice, the asset forfeiture allegations were extensive.
Prosecutors say the defendants converted victim funds into physical assets, including a large portfolio of real estate across Europe, luxury vehicles and high end properties. They lived like international tycoons while the families who trusted them watched their savings disappear.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: What they underestimated, however, was the sophistication of modern blockchain forensics and international law enforcement cooperation.
They assumed that because they were in Tallinn using digital addresses and cross border shell companies, the United States justice system could not reach them.
But IRS Criminal Investigation and the FBI worked with Estonian authorities to trace blockchain activity, connect shell company records to the defendants, and build a criminal case that stripped away the illusion of invincibility.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: And for a podcast audience, that laundering phase matters because it is where the crime becomes legible.
Digital fraud can feel abstract when you describe it only as contracts, dashboards and token sales.
But once prosecutors start tracing funds into shell companies, property vehicles and investment accounts, listeners can hear the shape of the misconduct more clearly.
The money stops looking like numbers in a cloud and starts looking like something prosecutors can actually seize, document and explain to A judge.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: By this point, we already know the core deception. Hash Flare sold far more mining capacity than it actually possessed.
What makes this phase important is how investigators proved it. Federal agents compared the contracts sold to users with the physical server infrastructure on the ground and found a massive gap between the marketing and the machinery.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: The numbers are what make that finding land.
At its peak, hashflare would have needed an enormous hardware footprint to support the contracts it sold.
But when authorities examined the actual facilities, they found only a fraction of the infrastructure that would have been required.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Right.
Prosecutors pointed to roughly 164 physical machines on site, nowhere near enough to support what customers had been promised.
That helped investigators show that the dashboards were not reflecting real mining output at scale. They were sustaining the appearance of a working system.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: And that is the key forensic takeaway. This was not just aggressive marketing, investigators say. It was an automated recycling system.
New money coming in helped create the appearance of returns going out, which is exactly what kept the platform looking alive.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: And for listeners, that matters, because it explains why the scheme looked credible for so long.
A polished dashboard can substitute for proof when people do not know what evidence to ask for.
That psychological leverage is what carried the fraud forward.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Another reason this section deserves extra attention is that forensic proof in a crypto case can sound mysterious when it really is not. At the basic level, investigators are comparing claims against capacity. If a company says it sold a certain amount of mining power, there should be corresponding hardware, electrical usage, hosting arrangements, maintenance records and output. When those categories do not line up, that gap becomes evidence.
The technology may be new, but the investigative logic is familiar.
By 2017, the problem for the operators was liquidity.
Hashflare still needed fresh capital to keep withdrawals moving. So the story shifted.
That is where Polybius enters, not as a brand new business line, but as the next funding mechanism.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Exactly.
In fraud cases, a second venture often appears when the first one can no longer sustain itself.
Prosecutors say Polybius served that role here. A high concept pitch designed to attract new money under the COVID of innovation and legitimacy.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: And the pitch was smart.
Instead of selling mining contracts again, they sold the image of a future bank.
White papers, compliance language and media placement.
It gave investors a new story to believe in.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: The government's position is that the money raised through Polybius did not build a functioning bank.
Instead, it became another source of capital feeding the broader scheme.
That is what makes Section 5 important.
It is less a separate fraud than an extension of the first one.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: And there is another layer to that.
Polybius arrived during a period when a lot of investors were already primed to believe that traditional finance was about to be rebuilt from the ground up.
So the offering did not only benefit from technical confusion, it benefited from cultural momentum.
In that environment, a white paper, a token, and a promised future bank could sound less like a red flag and more like the next inevitable step in the industry.
Once that money started moving, the next question was practical.
How do you route that volume of cash without drawing immediate scrutiny?
That is where the shell company network matters. Not because it repeats the fraud, but because it shows how the operators allegedly tried to preserve it.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Right. In a case like this, moving the money is almost as important as obtaining it.
Prosecutors say Potapenko and Turagan used layers of shell companies and false paperwork to break the audit trail and keep financial institutions from seeing the full picture.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: The indictment describes entities in Estonia, Latvia, Switzerland, and Cyprus.
On paper, they looked like real businesses.
Investigators say they functioned more like buffers, Intermediate stops that made the money harder to trace back to the original victims.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: And when banks asked questions, the paperwork allegedly supplied the answer.
Purchase orders, licensing agreements, consulting contracts.
Whether or not those documents were real, their purpose was the same. To make suspicious transfers look ordinary.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: And once that layer held, prosecutors say, the money could be converted into real world assets, Property, vehicles, and other luxury holdings.
So Section 6 gives us the bridge from digital fraud to physical benefit.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Exactly.
That. Asset conversion is often where an abstract fraud becomes tangible to a jury and to the public.
It is one thing to talk about digital balances on a screen. It is another to trace those proceeds into real estate and luxury purchases.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: And it also explains why the international investigation mattered.
Once investigators could connect the the digital flow, the shell company structure, and the asset trail, the distance between Estonia and Seattle stopped looking like protection.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: And that is where the first half of this story really lands, because now we are no longer looking at separate pieces. A fake mining business here, a token sale there, a set of shell companies somewhere else.
We are looking at one integrated system.
The sales pitch brought money in. The dashboard kept confidence up. The second venture refreshed liquidity. And the shell company network helped move the proceeds into places that looked safer and more permanent.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: That brings us to the turning point of the case. Nick.
Up to this point, we have followed the money and the mechanics.
Now this is where the investigation becomes custody and jurisdictions, where the paper case turned into a physical arrest and an extradition fight.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: This is where the reach of modern international law enforcement becomes clear. Sue.
In my law enforcement career, whenever we targeted fugitives overseas, we knew a federal warrant was only as strong as the host country's willingness to cooperate.
In November 2022, that cooperation came into focus.
In a coordinated operation, Estonian police, working with the FBI, executed arrests in Tallinn and took Potapenko and Turogin into custody.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: They were arrested there. But that was only the start of a long legal fight over extradition. The defendants did not simply agree to transfer to Seattle. They contested the move through the Estonian court system system over many months. They challenged the transfer on jurisdictional and procedural grounds and argued that the case should be handled in Estonia rather than in the United States.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: It was less about retelling the fraud and more about whether U.S. prosecutors could bring the defendants into an American courtroom.
That is what made the extradition phase so important.
Once Estonia's courts cleared the transfer, the case moved from theory to federal process in Seattle.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: By the time Estonian authorities approved the extradition in early 2024, the legal options had narrowed significantly.
Potapenko and Turaguin were then transferred to the United States and brought before a federal court in Seattle. For the many victims who had watched these men project an image of success for years, that moment carried clear symbolic weight.
The distance that once seemed to shield the operation was no longer a barrier.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: And that transfer mattered for another reason.
Once the defendants were physically in Seattle, the case stopped being a distant international fraud story and became a domestic courtroom process with deadlines, appearances, plea negotiations, and sentencing exposure.
According to the W, both men later pleaded guilty to consult conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and the case moved from accusation to formal admission.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: And that moment matters for another reason that is easy to overlook.
Extradition is not just a transportation step. It is a legal threshold.
Once defendants arrive in the United States, every issue that had been abstract to the public's jurisdiction, charging decisions, plea leverage, sentencing exposure suddenly becomes concrete.
Court calendars replace speculation.
Deadlines replace distance.
And the story becomes less about whether the case can happen and more about what the record will prove. Once they were in federal court, the focus changed again.
The central question was no longer how the scheme worked or where the money went went, but how the court would measure harm. That is the math fight at the center of sentencing.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Exactly. In white collar cases, loss calculations can shape everything that follows. The defense tried to narrow the number, while prosecutors argued that payouts made during the scheme did not undo the underlying fraud.
So this section is really about competing ways to define damage.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: The defense arguments were highly technical, Nick. They pointed to records showing that some customers did receive real cryptocurrency transfers during the operation's peak years.
From there, they argued that in at least some cases later. Increases in crypto prices complicated the government's effort to define a single net loss figure.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: They were essentially trying to use crypto market volatility to narrow legal liability. Sue Their position was that gross deposits alone did not tell the full story if some users received payouts along the way.
Prosecutors pushed back, arguing that any payments to customers were part of the mechanism that kept the scheme alive.
In that view, apparent gains did not erase the underlying fraud.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: That left the court with a complicated fight over how to measure harm.
On one side, the government pointed to the scale of the scheme and the number of affected accounts.
On the other, the defense tried to reduce the loss figure by emphasizing payouts and valuation questions.
For months, both sides filed expert analyses and competing legal legal arguments, leaving the final damages model unsettled for listeners. This is one of the easiest places to lose the thread, so it is worth slowing down A loss figure in a fraud case is not just an accounting exercise. It can influence sentencing ranges, plea leverage, restitution arguments, and the overall moral frame framing of the case.
The higher the defensible loss figure, the more severe the picture of harm becomes in court.
That is why both sides spent so much energy fighting over what should count, what should be offset, and how to treat payouts made during the life of the scheme.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: And for anyone listening who does not live in the world of white collar litigation, the simplest way to think about this is that the loss number tells the court how wide the damage pattern was. It is one of the main ways a sprawling fraud gets translated into something a sentencing process can use.
That is why seemingly technical fights over inflows, outflows, valuation dates and offsets can end up carrying enormous practical weight.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: And once that fight over losses narrowed, the case shifted towards something more practical.
Recovery.
This is not another damages debate. It is about what assets could actually be seized and whether those recoveries could be turned into meaningful relief for victims, right?
[00:27:34] Speaker A: In a case of this scale, forfeiture is not just a side issue. It can shape plea decisions, sentencing arguments, and the public meaning of the outcome.
So now we advance the story by moving from legal theory to recoverable value.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: And that asset recovery is one of the most striking parts of the case.
It did not stop with bank accounts. The resolution involved cooperation with the government's forfeiture process and the surrender of a wide range of assets, including real estate, vehicles and digital holdings.
The overall value described by prosecutors reached into the hundreds of millions of dollars,
[00:28:18] Speaker A: and that created a major administrative challenge. Sue managing a large pool of seized digital assets, foreign Real estate and related records requires careful coordination.
The Department of Justice then had to build a process for verifying claims, tracing ownership, and determining how recovered value might be routed back to victims through remission.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: And that remission process is worth highlighting because it is easy to hear the word forfeiture and assume the money simply disappears into government accounts. In fact, the DOJ stated that the forfeited assets would be made available for a remission process to compensate victims with details to be announced later.
That does not make recovery simple, but it does mean the case was moving toward a victim compensation structure rather than stopping at punishment alone.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: And remission itself can be slower and more administrative than people expect.
It usually involves notice procedures, claim review, verification of victim status, and decisions about how recovered value should be allocated.
So when we talk about a remission path, we are talking about a process, not an instant return of funds. But even having that process on the table is significant in a case built on losses this large.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: That brings us to the final legal question, Nick.
How punishment would be balanced against cooperation and. And recovery.
The audience already knows the fraud was large. The new issue here is why the sentence looked different from what many listeners might expect in a case this size.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: That is what many observers expected. Sue.
But when the case returned to U.S. district Judge Robert S. Lasnick for final judgment, the resolution was more complicated than many anticipated.
The defense emphasized the defendant's cooperation in identifying assets, turning over account access, and assisting the forfeiture process.
Their position was that asset recovery and restitution had become central to the outcome.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Exactly. This works because it focuses on that tension. The court was not deciding whether the fraud was serious. That had already been established. The harder question was how much weight to give cooperation, asset recovery, and the possibility of returning value to victims.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Exactly. Sue. In white collar cases, courts often weigh more than the headline number. Cooperation, criminal history, and the practical prospects for victim recovery can all influence the final sentence.
In this case, the court imposed a sentence of 16 months in federal custody.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: And one of the most important details for listeners is how custody credit factored into that outcome.
The court gave credit for time already spent in detention during the extradition process.
As a result, the remaining custodial time was significantly reduced.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: It is a nuanced ending sue beyond custody. The judgment also included financial penalties and supervised release conditions.
Because immigration consequences can be highly case specific, it is better to describe that part of the outcome carefully rather than treat it as a standard framework. And this is where the later record became even more striking.
In a sentencing announcement, it said the defendants were sentenced to 16 months in prison with credit for the time they had already served, and that the sentence also incorporated forfeited assets collectively valued at over $450 million.
The same announcement said those assets would remain available for a remission process for victims.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: It is a reminder that in large transnational white collar cases, the system often has to balance punishment, asset recovery, and the practical goal of returning value to victims.
By the end of the case, the public image of success these men had projected for years had clearly collapsed under the weight of the criminal proceedings. That later outcome also helps explain why this case can feel counterintuitive to listeners on the front end. You hear a $577 million fraud allegation and expect only one one kind of ending.
But when a court is also looking at cooperation, time already served, the status of seized assets, and the possibility of meaningful recovery for victims, the path to a final sentence can become much more complicated than the headline alone would suggest.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: And in some ways, that is what makes this ending more instructive than a simpler one would have been.
It forces listeners to sit with the reality that accountability and complex financial crime does not always arrive in a form that matches public instinct.
Sometimes it looks like prison time.
Sometimes it looks like asset recovery.
Often it looks like a combination of punishment, cooperation, and a slow effort to return value to people who who were misled.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: And that is why the ending matters. Nick.
By this time, the story has moved from illusion to evidence, from evidence to extradition, and from extradition to sentencing and recovery.
What is left is the listener takeaway. How to recognize the same warning signs before the next version of this scheme appears.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: That is right, Sue. The point of the close is not to restate the case one more time, but to turn it into practical screening rules. If listeners remember the verification, audit and licensing checks, they will be better equipped to spot a polished fraud before they commit money to it.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Rule number one is what we call the physical verification mandate.
If a platform claims to generate profit through physical hardware, whether that means Bitcoin mining, rigs, data centers, or some other tangible infrastructure, you should look for independent verification that the assets actually exist.
If a company cannot point to credible third party documentation showing the equipment was purchased, insured and operating where it claims to be, treat that as a serious warning sign.
A polished dashboard does not prove the business is real.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Rule number two targets the financial engine behind the pitch. The independent audit rule.
Never rely solely on returns or balances displayed inside a company controlled app or website.
Legitimate financial businesses use outside custodians, independent auditors or other verifiable controls. If the only proof of your gains is what the company's own portal tells you, your skepticism should go up, not down.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: And rule number three is the affinity context. Rule Scammers often build credibility through sponsored content, dense white papers, or glossy press coverage. Do not confuse marketing with regulation.
Before you invest, check whether the entity is actually registered or licensed where it claims to operate, and verify that through official public sources.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: And maybe the biggest lesson from this case is that modern fraud often asks ordinary people to outsource skepticism.
It invites them to trust, design, momentum and jargon instead of verification.
That is why the closing rules matter. They are not just advice for crypto enthusiasts. They are a way of restoring a basic discipline that applies to any investment pitch.
If you cannot verify the engine, you should not trust the output, and listeners
[00:36:43] Speaker B: can apply those rules far beyond crypto.
If a company promises unusually smooth returns, relies heavily on branded visuals, or seems to treat independent verification like an inconvenience, the same warning lights should come on.
Fraud changes its packaging much faster than it changes its psychology.
That is why a disciplined screening habit matters more than mastering any one technical sector.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: If someone tells you their blockchain model, token structure, or digital banking concept is somehow exempt from normal scrutiny, slow down and verify every claim.
Put those three rules around your money and you will be in a much stronger position to spot the next scheme before it reaches your wallet.
Sue that is a wrap on a remarkable case file.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Truly a remarkable file. Nick to everyone listening, stay cautious, cautious. Trust your judgment over a flashy screen and we will see you right back here next time on behind the Scams.
[00:37:57] Speaker A: Oh yeah, sue, one last thing. I am sure the listeners hear all the time, but if you liked this episode, please leave a comment, share it with a friend or family member, subscribe to our podcast and if you can, please make a donation to our nonprofit organization at stampoutscams. Org, it would be greatly appreciated. Bye for now.
