Video Transcript

It's eye-opening to be there. When you're there and you realize how far away you are from your country and your family, and you suddenly start to feel a bit disconnected, you can see how disconnected the subjects feel from their victims because it's not real to them.

They're having a conversation via chat. Maybe it progresses to a phone call. They don't know that victim, and it's easy to see how they can get caught up in that. And like once they do at one time, then they become numb to it. They don't realize the impact or effect that it has on the victim or their families.

And it's evident because I did multiple interviews, like, that that’s how they feel. They don't remember their victims generally by even, you know, face. Like if we showed them a picture of the victim, they don't remember them because they do have so many.

Going into it, I think we had a lot of assumptions, one of which being why would they choose this over any other sort of, call it scheme, given that there's a higher payout: business email compromises, romance frauds, title fraud, where they can make hundreds or thousands of dollars in a shot. And one subject said, “It's fast money, I can just move on to the next one if I, if I don't get any traction.”

And when you think about it, it only happens inside of an hour, it makes sense why they would go that route, because they could target 40 victims in a day working multiple at a time, and maybe of those 40 three pay. But if three paid $200, that’s $600; they might not get $600 working romance fraud for two months.