Stolen Podcast

Episode 67: How an assignment with the DEA led to Detective Scott Simons becoming one of the nation’s go-to crypto tracers and the investigative lead for Operation Shamrock’s Crypto Coalition.
The Greenfield, Wisconsin officer's career took an unusual turn in 2015 when he opened one of the earliest cyber drug-trafficking cases in the history of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Simons taught himself to trace cryptocurrency and navigate the dark web to investigate cases that spanned Miami, Argentina, and Albania.
Scott’s self-taught expertise now anchors his role leading Operation Shamrock’s law enforcement triage team, where he has personally worked on or overseen hundreds of crypto fraud cases. Erin West and Scott trace his path from beat cop to one of the country’s most trusted resources for tracing stolen crypto.
Watch the video of the episode on the Operation Shamrock website.
 
Episode Sponsors: Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬
 
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Romance scam survivor Cecilie Fjellhøy helps expose fraud — and find justice for fraud victims.
Well-known for Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler documentary, Cecilie Fjellhøy joins Erin West to expose the real cost of online fraud — and why justice is still out of reach for victims.
This isn't just a story about one scam. It’s a roadmap of what happens when a financial crime destroys your life — and no one shows up to help. In this powerful episode of The Stolen Podcast, Erin and Cecilie dive deep into:
What really happened in the “Tinder Swindler” romance scam
The psychological tactics scammers use to trap targets
Why fraud victims are sometimes ignored — or even criminalized — by law enforcement
How romance fraud survivors can fight back
The nonprofit Cecilie built to help other victims navigate the system
 
🎥 Watch The Tinder Swindler on Netflix📅 Watch Cecilie’s Netflix series Love, Con, Revenge🛡️ Visit Cecilie’s nonprofit at LoveSaid.org
 
This episode was originally released on August 5, 2025.
 

Episode 66: Erin West invites 20-year fraud-fighting veteran Lenny Gusel of Feedzai — former Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Robinhood fraud leader — to talk about why banks are the last line of defense against pig butchering scams, not the first.
They dig into behavioral biometrics, why financial institutions can't even share fraud data within their own organizations, and why the real fix isn't more regulation — it's getting people to actually share information.
Get the episode notes and watch the video. 
 
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Episode 65: Don was a retired engineer building his dream home when a Facebook "friend of a friend" request turned into a years-long journey into the world of investment scams. Host Erin West and Don trace how a slow-building pig butchering scam that began in late 2021 cost him $700,000 — and how he did the investigative work law enforcement couldn't, or wouldn't.
Don walks through the grooming process, the moment a single click handed scammers full access to his crypto wallet, and how he chased his stolen money through Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, and Gemini. He and Erin dig into what happened next: Don obtained records identifying two Chinese nationals — then spent years trying to get the US Secret Service and police in China, Singapore, and Laos to act on the evidence he'd gathered.
Erin also reflects on what Don's case — and others like it — reveal about a fraud crisis and the challenges of law enforcement as it continues to grow.
 
Get the episode notes and watch the video.  
 
Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.
 
Episode Sponsors: Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬
 

Episode 64: When Patrick Coughlin's mother got a call telling her that her daughter had been kidnapped and would be killed unless she paid up, it wasn't real — but it was terrifyingly convincing. In this episode of Stolen, host Erin West sits down with Patrick, a former national security and cybersecurity expert, to unpack how that "grandparent scam" changed the course of his career.
Patrick walks through the moment-by-moment terror of the scam call, why AI-powered voice cloning is making these attacks more personal and harder to detect, and what he learned mapping out the criminal ecosystems behind them. He and Erin dig into the structural failures enabling fraud at scale — under-resourced law enforcement, telecom systems built to connect calls (not verify them), payment rails that make stolen money nearly impossible to trace, and social media platforms with little incentive to intervene.
Patrick's response wasn't just to write about it — his book, Dark Side of the Boom: How Scammers Hijack the AI Revolution, breaks down the "five families of fraud." He also co-founded Savi Security, building consumer tools like Scamwise (a free scam-checking tool) and an in-call AI assistant that gives people a second opinion during a live phone call.
Chapters:00:00 – Intro02:33 – Patrick's background in counterterrorism and cybersecurity03:35 – The call: A fake kidnapping scam08:01 – Where these scams are coming from09:03 – The "five families of fraud" by region11:08 – Why Patrick decided to write the book14:13 – How the money moves — payment rails and crypto15:26 – Why telecoms can't verify calls, only connect them17:09 – Chasing ghosts: why law enforcement struggles to investigate19:33 – Regulation vs. relationship-building across borders20:34 – Why law enforcement is exponentially under-resourced22:29 – Rethinking cybersecurity products for everyday families25:26 – The mission behind Savi Security28:03 – Why we don't talk about this the right way28:34 – A national security issue, not just a consumer one33:14 – Social media's business incentives35:15 – Inside Patrick's product: Scamwise and Savi Security41:15 – Looking ahead: the "deepfake decade"44:53 – Final thoughts: what real progress would look like
Prefer to watch? Find the Stolen podcast on YouTube.
Episode notes: https://operationshamrock.org/podcast/stolen
Episode Sponsors
Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, Biocatch and Scamnetic.https://www.biocatch.com/https://scamnetic.com/
Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

Episode 63: Erin West and researcher Paul Raffile spent six days on the ground investigating the criminal network behind sextortion.
TRIGGER WARNING: This episode discusses psychological manipulation, sextortion, teen suicide, and animal cruelty. If you’re struggling, the 988 Lifeline Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24x7 by call, chat, or text.
What they found:
• A scam that has been linked to over 60 teen suicides worldwide.
• A ritual performed to "charm" a real US target
• A room full of masked scammers who freely discussed their tactics
• A real scammer they tracked down and confronted
This episode is the debrief: the investigation, the fear, the breakthroughs, and what it actually takes to hold these criminals accountable from 6,000 miles away.
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS BEING TARGETED WITH SEXTORTION
1. Don't pay
2. Screenshot everything
3. Block the account
4. Report it to NCMEC's CyberTipline and IC3.gov.
Use "Take It Down" (takeitdown.ncmec.org) to help prevent images from circulating.
 
Episode Sponsors  
Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬
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Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

Episode 62: Host Erin West sits down with Kate Griffin of the Aspen Institute's Financial Security Program to unpack how she brought together 80 organizations — from banks to tech companies to nonprofits — to build the first-ever national blueprint for fighting scams. Kate walks through how the project came together, the four key focus areas the task force identified (data sharing, law enforcement collaboration, consumer awareness, and measuring the problem), and why getting competitors and cross-sector players to agree on anything is harder than it sounds. She also shares what's next: Aspen's new Scam Prevention Initiative, aimed at turning that 70-page strategy into real, actionable change — including work already underway with Congress, where dozens of bipartisan bills have been introduced this session alone. This conversation offers a rare look behind the scenes at the slow, often invisible work of building consensus on one of the biggest financial crimes of our time. Episode notes: https://operationshamrock.org/podcast/stolen
Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬
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Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

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 like Telegram. The conversation moves from the origins of Southeast Asian scam compounds to how generative AI is transforming everything from romance scams to "digital arrest" extortion schemes, and closes with McKenna's prediction that fraud-fighting careers are about to boom, not disappear.
 
Episode notes and video: https://operationshamrock.org/podcast/stolen
 
Episode Sponsors  
Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬
 
Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

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 $350,000 home equity loan she drained over multiple trips to her bank.
By the time it was over, Anola had lost $850,000 — and her job. She joins former prosecutor Erin West to explain how it happened, why she refuses to fit the "little old lady" scam-victim stereotype, and how she's turned her story into testimony before the Utah legislature and her own podcast, Romance Scam Rebellion.
 
Episode notes and video: https://operationshamrock.org/podcast/stolen
 
Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬
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Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting bac

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 the dog-and-pony tour, the anti-trafficking posters hung for show, the karaoke night with a criminal gang, and the moment she realized the scammers behind the keyboards were as trapped as the victims they targeted.
Mariana van Zeller and Erin West are two women who've walked the same ground investigating transnational organized crime, money laundering, and the journalism crisis that's keeping the world's largest modern enslavement operation in the dark.
 
Episode notes and video: https://operationshamrock.org/podcast/stolen
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Episode Sponsors  
Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬
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Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.