Stolen Podcast with Erin West

Episode 72: Brian Mason of the Edmonton Police Service shares how live scam intelligence and public-private partnerships can stop scams in progress.

Erin West talks with Detective Brian Mason of the Edmonton Police Service, a leading expert in cybercrime and large-scale scam investigations in Canada. Injured in the line of duty in 2019, Mason turned to the one crime he believed was never fully investigated: fraud. He now leads a team focused on transnational organized crime, money laundering, and the networks behind scams.

The footprints, the fingerprints; everything is there. The data trail is there. We can find those digital pieces. — Brian Mason, Edmonton Police Service

Get the episode notes and video version of the podcast on our website.

Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

Help more people learn about scams and how to fight them by sharing and rating Stolen.

Episode 71: Transnational organized crime expert Jason Tower explains why crackdowns on scam compounds aren’t stopping scams, just moving them from one region in Asia to another.

The Myanmar military targeted 3 hubs in a border area that has 43. So there’s a lot of choices. And so Myanmar military went about demolishing KK Park. — Jason Tower, Global Initiative against Organized Crime

When Congress wants to understand the criminal empires behind scams, they call Jason Tower. Jason is a source for many news outlets worldwide. He is a leading expert, specifically what’s happening in Myanmar and new activity in South Asia. 

Erin West and Jason Tower meet to talk about his new report, “Criminal Convergence? Chinese-origin scam syndicates and their reach into South Asia.”  (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal). Jason traces how the industry follows a predictable pattern: When a country cracks down on organized criminal operations — as the Philippines did with offshore gaming operators or POGOs — the syndicates simply relocate to wherever regulation is weakest.

>> Watch the video version and get the episode notes.

Episode Sponsors  

Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬

Episode 70: Mike Bliss didn’t know much about crypto fraud when he met his first victim in August 2025. With coaching from experienced peers, he now investigates fraud cases and helps other officers.

She said, ‘I just lost $15,000.’ She was distraught; she didn’t know what to do. And quite honestly, I didn’t know what to do. — Mike Bliss, Crypto Coalition

Erin West talks with Mike Bliss, a patrol officer in Fairway, Kansas, who dove headfirst into crypto fraud investigation after a single case pulled him in. In August 2025, a 27-year-old victim told Bliss she'd lost $15,000 through a crypto ATM — a concept he initially dismissed as untraceable “fake money.”

But the case intrigued him. He posted a message on a listserv and was lucky enough to connect with Tom Alber, known as “US Crypto Cop.” Alber drove out to Fairway in the middle of the night shift, walked Mike through tracing the funds, and introduced him to Operation Shamrock’s Crypto Coalition, a global network of law enforcement crypto investigators and analysts.

Episode notes and video: https://operationshamrock.org/podcast/stolen

-- 

Episode Sponsors  

Thank you to our Stolen podcast sponsors, ‪BioCatch and Scamnetic.‬

Episode 69: Iowa has found a way to stop elder financial fraud on the very first transaction — before the money is gone. Matt Mortvedt and Jessica McGraw of the Iowa Insurance Division join Erin West to break down their "detect, deploy, disrupt" playbook. They explain how they reach victims early, seize scam websites and the crypto wallets behind them, curb crypto ATMs, and treat every scam victim as the victim of a serious crime. It is a blueprint that any state could copy.

Get the episode notes and video.  

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 68: Susan Ralston outlines the evolution of fraud and why she considers it a human, emotional crime whose victims deserve empathy over judgement.

Erin West meets with Tower Federal Credit Union VP and COO to talk about changing the fraud conversation to focus on empathy. Susan’s career started at a grocery store cash register and evolved into decades of frontline fraud-fighting experience.

Susan traces the transformation of fraud from small-town check washing to organized, transnational scam operations that exploded after COVID-19. She explains why considers she fraud to be a fundamentally human, emotional issue. And she shares how her team trains credit-union staff to spot red flags, avoid judgment, and slow suspicious transactions before it’s too late to help the member.

The victimization isn’t just money. It’s trust, it’s loved ones, it’s people’s dreams that are being taken away. — Susan Ralston, TFCU

Get the episode notes and video.  

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 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.‬

Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

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

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. 

Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.

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:

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.

Subscribe to Stolen for straight truth, survivor-centered storytelling, and bold conversations about the scamdemic and the people fighting back.