Sextortion Is Exploding: AI Makes Everyone a Target

➡ This article discusses the rise of scams during the COVID crisis, the work of Nina Callus, CEO of Morningside Analytics, and the increasing problem of online scams. Callus, who has a background in military intelligence, now uses her skills to combat scams and support victims of human trafficking. The article also highlights the growing influence market, which is now worth $250 billion worldwide, and the rise of ‘sextortion’ scams. Finally, it warns of scams in the gold market and encourages readers to subscribe to the author’s newsletter and support her affiliates.
➡ The text discusses the growing issue of scams, particularly online and through social media. It highlights how scammers use popular influencers to reach and deceive large audiences. The text also mentions the use of advanced technology like AI deepfakes to make scams more convincing. Lastly, it emphasizes the vulnerability of the elderly population to these scams and the importance of being vigilant and informed to avoid falling victim.
➡ The text discusses issues of elder abuse, online information theft, and fraud within the Somali community in Minnesota, with some of the stolen money allegedly supporting terrorism. It also touches on the importance of whistleblowers and the failure of authorities to act on their information. The speakers express their frustration with the situation, emphasizing the need for accountability and action against criminal activities. They also discuss the dangers of maintaining the status quo and the importance of immigrants respecting the opportunities given to them in their new countries.
➡ The speaker discusses the issue of criminal activity, particularly in relation to human trafficking and child abuse, and the lack of oversight and regulation in certain areas. They express frustration at the lack of action taken when crimes are known to be occurring, and the need for more consistent background checks, especially in organizations dealing with children. They also mention the importance of mandatory reporting of child abuse and the need for a uniform approach across all states. The speaker believes that more needs to be done to protect children and hold criminals accountable.
➡ The speaker discusses the importance of due diligence in preventing scams, particularly in learning centers and online. They express concern about the ease of committing fraud, especially with COVID relief funds, and the lack of consequences for scammers. They also mention a specific gold scam where people are tricked into buying overpriced gold rounds, resulting in significant financial loss. The speaker emphasizes the need for stricter enforcement and punishment for these scams to deter future fraudulent activities.
➡ Scammers are exploiting people’s fear of economic instability and lack of financial knowledge to steal their assets. High-profile influencers are promoting these scams, leading to a loss of trust in the gold and silver market. Another prevalent scam is sextortion, where explicit photos are used to extort money from victims, leading to devastating consequences. This issue is particularly affecting young people, who are often unaware of the legal implications of sharing explicit photos of themselves.
➡ The text discusses the harmful effects of inappropriate images being shared online, which can ruin reputations and even lead to suicide. It mentions the use of AI to manipulate images, making it appear as if someone is in a compromising situation. The speaker also mentions their work in providing digital vulnerability assessments, investigative due diligence, and help with reputation issues. They can be reached through their website and social media platforms.

The COVID funds. Right. We had so many different criminal enterprises, not only in the United States, but like across the world, like benefit from that. Because whenever we have a huge and large pot of money, right, and we’re responding to a crisis, what happens? The system gets overwhelmed because what ends up happening is that we don’t necessarily allocate the personnel, the each one of these programs to actually support, you know, the doing the due diligence. Welcome to business Game changers. I’m Sarah Westall. I have Nina Callous coming to the program. She is the CEO of Morningside Analytics.

She spent about two decades in the military and in intelligence, providing intelligence and analytics, you know, for the military. And she 2022, she started her own analytics company working with course different military, intelligence and ngos and helping with human trafficking. And you know, human trafficking is such an ugly topic. It’s so dark, it’s so bad. I, I spent years covering it, you know, exposing a lot of it. I just can’t, I personally can’t talk about it that much because it’s just so dark of. But I need to, we need to, the world needs to know it.

This show is not going to be deeply into that. We’re going to cover it a little bit. We’re also going to cover just the scams that are out there. She’s telling us that, you know, the influencers, the influence market is grown to like 250 billion worldwide. It’s massive. And they’re doing so many scams through influencers. But where the other market that’s really incredibly growing is sextortion. You know, it’s the blackmail, but the blackmail on everyday people now with the Internet and everything going out there and the deep fakes and the AI they can take. If you have a picture of your face out there, you know, like so many of us do, they can use AI and the advanced tools to make it look like it’s you.

So that’s going on too, but for the rigid pictures, it’s a major booming business and she helps a lot of people get out of problems with sextion. And you, you make a mistake, you take a picture with your, your husband or your boyfriend and next thing you know it’s out there, someone steals it off your computer and there you are. And that’s actually very common. And she’s going to talk a little bit about how that, you know, what’s going on in that world. We talk about the scams in the gold market. We talk about Andrew Tate being arrested and he should be, and how his attitude is of, of just scamming people and how that’s so cool is infesting the attitude of just that that attitude is growing and what is going on.

So that’s going to be the topic today. But before we get into that, I want to remind you to stop and subscribe. Subscribe on whatever platform you’re on. Please do that today. And then also sign up for my newsletter. It’s go to sarahwest.com you can sign up there. It’s also Sarah Wessel substack.com which is on the front page of my website. Be sure to do that. And while you’re there, go to sarah wetzel.com shop and please support my affiliates. That’s how I keep this show going. It’s how I support myself and through memberships of my substack.

If you’re a member, thank you. Thank you for being a member that supports the show and also by supporting my affiliates. I need to thank you for doing that because that’s how I survive. And remember, since we’re talking about scams, if you’re going to be buying silver and gold, the scam scams out there are massive. And make sure you’re buying from a company that you can trust. Just do me one favor. If you are in the market for buying silver or gold, go to sarahwestell.com Miles Franklin, fill out that form and get a copy of the special price list.

You should not be paying any more for gold and silver than what’s on that price list. That’s what sophisticated buyers pay. That’s in the, you know, it’s he’s claims, Andy Schectman claims is better than anybody out there. But regardless, you should not be paying more than that. That is the competitive industry. You’re going to be treated like a sophisticated buyer. You’re going to be paying lower premiums. It’s a commodity based business. Sarahwestall.com Miles Franklin, fill out that form and get a copy of the special price list. Okay, let’s get into the show with CEO of Morningside Analytics, Nina Callis.

Hi Nina, welcome to the program. Well, you are very impressive. You’re the CEO of Morningside analytics and you’ve been working with intelligence operations and, and you have your own business now. But you’ve been doing this type of work for a few decades now and you are helping out. You’re helping a lot of people deal with the scams that’s out there and actually provide intelligence for operations too. Can you talk a little bit about your background and what your company does. And then I want to get into the I, the fact that to me and I’m going to use some examples and you’re going to have way more than me scams to me feel like they’re going mainstream just based on what I’ve seen with.

We could talk, we’re going to talk about the gold scams, we’re going to talk about the sexual perversion scams, all sorts of stuff. But talk a little bit about your company first. So Marcel analytics and we are a risk management and consulting company with specialized and investigative due diligence, digital forensics, risk management and we also do provide government solutions. I came to the United States when I was a teenager from the Dominican Republic and I made my way towards the American dream by joining the military. From the military I joined the intelligence community and I’ve been working in various capacity within the intelligence community for over 20 years.

In 2022 I founded Morningstar analytics. And then in there like our first type of clients were actually nonprofits and we started to provide the nonprofit space with analytical solutions especially regarding anti human trafficking causes and you know, providing human trafficking victim with support. Various support. And you know, I’m very glad to be here with you and hopefully we can spread some information to, to help everybody that’s listening to you. Well, yeah, well my audience is not foreign. It’s this, the whole idea of all these things that are going on around the world, the human trafficking, all that stuff.

I’ve talked about it a lot over the years. We know it’s a really bad issue. And so thank you so much first of all for spending your time doing that because I know it’s a passion of yours. But one of the things that you do too is just showing how the scams that are out there, it seems and the scams do overlap with some of these really seedy areas. But you know, I just got involved with, you know, the gold scams and this is a different thing. But the gold scams have hit mainstream. I mean literally all these influencers are selling these scam companies.

They don’t even know that these people are scamming people. And they’re so good at telling these influencers that they’re legit. And I mean they have this and they don’t. The influencers don’t have maybe the financial background or the understanding people are being scammed and so they’re using them to scam people. Oh, absolutely. So I will say that as it pertains to social media influencer looking at it from the monetary standpoint and why we’re looking, you know, we’re seeing this kind of explosion of scams that are being kind of like voice or like monetized or even just amplified by the social media influencers.

It’s because, you know, social media influencing has become pretty much its own economy, right? On a annual basis, we are bringing in about $250 billion. And this is globally. This is. All the social media influencers out there are getting paid. So what happens is that like all of the threat actors understanding that this new economy is out there and that it’s being use to reach the masses, they provide all of these different scams to all of these different platforms and it permeates across each country. Because this is not only innate to us in the United States, but it happens even worse in third world countries because people don’t really grasp that, hey, it might be just fake news.

We have a lot of scams that are going on in WhatsApp, especially in Latin American countries. It is, you know, it is a plague. And, you know, it’s something that is affecting pretty much everybody. Even my mom. It’s affecting absolutely everybody. You know, Andrew Tate was just arrested, which thing I. Yes, I’ve covered him. I think he needs to be arrested. He said in his own word. I mean, if you just listen, I did a show. Here’s Andrew Tate in his own words. And we just. The whole thing was like an hour of his own words and then with some commentary around it.

It’s like, it’s a. It’s so obvious. This guy, he was scamming, you know, he was taking men for everything they had. We’re going to take his house, we’re going to take all these things. And he was laughing about it. And. But that’s the attitude almost. And it’s, it’s the attitude that was behind that that was so scary to me and how that was being normalized and glorified. Oh, absolutely. But I mean, let’s even talk further about how many viewership or like, how many, you know, likes and subscribes that he get per episode. And more importantly, what was the social media following? Because that’s really, that, that’s really what the scammers are looking for.

They’re looking at how many people can we influence. So you take somebody like Tate, right? He might or might not be part of the scam, but he’s getting paid by somebody to, you know, perpetuate the scams. He has what, like a hundred million maybe? Yeah, he’s A wow. Yeah, he has, unfortunately, he has a right. Yeah. So from, from there, right. Let’s just say half of the, half of the people they listen to him are going to be like, oh, okay, yeah, like let’s, let’s go buy crypto or like whatever is, you know, pills or whatever.

Now even, even just like mathematically speaking, you’re going to get at least 10% of the scam that’s going to be successful. So that is pretty much a cost benefit analysis. It’s like, how many people can we reach via this, you know, quasi legitimate platform to get to the people that were really going to scam? I can tell you that even their own people that are pushing scams are getting scams themselves. That’s another thing that we find that’s very ironic in all of it. Everybody’s being scammed. Everybody’s being scammed. And the saddest thing of all is that now with the added of AI deepfakes and all of that, it has, it has pretty much brought to bear a new and more disturbing side of scamming.

So, like you see, within the last five, six years, we have seen an explosion of deep fakes of voices, right? So one thing that was very prevalent and especially in the Hispanic community I’ve seen that a lot is, especially people that go from into the border region is people calling them and telling them that their kids are being kidnapped or like that they’re being detained in a foreign country utilizing their voice and like now they’re sending money. I tell you something that happened to us. We had a lady that called our call our business, and we’re like, hey, you know, my boyfriend is being held in jail in Turkey.

And like, all of the information that the lady provided, there was no such thing as Dalit jail because she said the Interpol was keeping her boyfriend and that some people were like, the boyfriend was part of the military, which absolutely already, like, it’s like five red flags, like within the first five seconds of the conversation. And like, they were asking for her to send $3,000 for him to be raised. And so what did she do? Well, she contacted us and we contacted you. And you’re like, oh, okay. I mean, I mean, like, the whole thing was a red flag.

I mean, like, for me, it’s like, okay, well, there’s no way that Interpol is going to retain a service member in Turkey. And then you’re getting called by the Turkish Interpol. I mean, the whole thing was. It all happened on WhatsApp. She was getting all of this through WhatsApp and they even used like a picture. But the saddest and craziest thing of all is that the lady herself was being scanned through a romance scam. Well, you know, you know what happened to me? I had a call and it came up from Apple Computer right on my cell phone and I answered it and it was a, an engineering claim from Apple and that my, my stuff was hacked and that we need to re, you know, get into your system and we need to protect it because you know, we’ve just flagged that your stuff.

But that came up on my phone was from Apple Computer. So they figured out how to make it look like it was from app then. I just happen to have a computer science background. So when they told me to go to a domain that had, what was it? Apple, Apple something at it was, it wasn’t an Apple domain. Right. I knew it wasn’t an Apple domain even though they had the Apple Apple. It was like Apple testing.com or something. So I knew that it had to be the second word, not the first word in order to afford to be legit domain.

And I said to him, this isn’t an Apple domain. I’m not going here. And he goes, and it was a well spoken American voice and he’s like, he’s like, oh well that’s what they told me to use. And I’m like, well, it’s not an Apple domain. I’m not going there. And then he hung up the phone. He just contacted the wrong person. But I’m telling you, that probably would have worked for 95% of the population because I can tell you it worked for me almost in 2023. They did it to you too. Okay, interesting. Yes. And it was, it was even worse because it was from my computer, from my Internet provider.

So it came up. But it came up on your phone, from your Internet provider or on your email. Yes. AT&T allegedly was calling me because I was an Internet provider at the time that you know, they were having some issues with because we had just recently moved at that point too. Right. So we had had like issues like getting things like up and running. So you know, one will deduce at the point, at that point, hey, yeah, you know, it’s like at&t like checking on, you know that our Internet and the modem or all that stuff and just like you, I just had a bad feeling about the whole situation and I kept asking them like, where are you located? Yeah.

And like they kept hesitating and then that’s when I hung up the phone, but, like, my heart was like pounding. Like, I mean, because, you know, for, for me, it was the first time because I’m usually like, very on. I’m like, no, this is, this is like, this is bs. They were really good, but really good. And it was not like, like a foreigner. It was 100%, you know, yeah, American accent. But, you know, they get to a point in the script in which if they divert, that’s what gives them away in this person. You know, she hesitated.

She hesitated. And I call at&t right away. And we had to like, redo all of it. So we had to like pretty much restart all of our computers, like start like from scratch from everything, because now you have a compromise. So I mean, that happened to me and you know, like somebody that has been in this business for a very long time. It happened to you with a background like that, imagine the rest of the population. You don’t have a chance. They don’t. Wouldn’t have had a chance. I mean, I knew right away so that I wasn’t compromised, but I’m like, wow, this is really good.

And so I contacted some people there and I said, this is what just happened. I mean, that’s really. It was really good. And this is what people are up against. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I tell you what, we have. Every year, we have so many different digital vulnerability issues across our industry because it’s not only happening to us personally, this is also happening across the corporate side, our critical infrastructure. And unfortunately, we don’t hear about it until it’s too late. Right? So every time there’s like a major spillage, like for example, AT&T got SU because they had like a cyber breach, we don’t hear about the cyber breach into like six, seven, eight months into the cyber breach has already occurred, right? At that point, all of your information is already on the dark web.

So people are out there buying, you know, for 25 cents, your Social Security number, all of your PI information and like doing gun own swap with it. And we see a lot of that especially with like, our clientele when they come to us, right? Because for us being a risk management company, we’re also a private investigative agency. So when they come to us is because unfortunately, it’s too late. So for us, it’s like, hey, this is, this is how you need to go and straighten, like your, your personable, you know, like your information. So this is not.

Doesn’t continue happening. We see that a lot with like the, the elder population. The, you know, the gray hairs, unfortunately they are like prime target for this kind of scam. I mean every day. Exactly every day you see even. Even within the people that are there to ensure that nothing is happening to them. Which is even more heartbreaking. I was looking of the news the other day and there was this company out of. I believe it was Georgia. They have sent to different home attendants and the home attendants were stealing the information like the titles like stealing all of this and taking pictures of it.

And thank God he got caught all on camera. But like this is the stuff that we are catching on camera. Right? How many of the. Of the elderly are being abused right now by people they are closest to them. They’re supposed to be, you know, checking up on them and then selling their information information online. And then they are left with nothing. And so does the state is. It’s pretty. It’s pretty ridiculous. It’s easy to steal everything they have if you know what you’re doing. Naive. Yeah. We also have. I’m out of Minnesota where we’ve had the Somali fraud that the.

The. It’s unfortunate that a whole group of people have been targeted or been not targeted. But it is framed that way because it’s not Everybody. And obviously 100 it’s. That’s. That’s a sad situation. But the fact that they allowed it to on so long and the government did nothing is what caused it. If you deal with things soon you can keep it escalating the point it’s at. So it’s the people who are upset that this is. That this is where it’s at are part of the problem. You’re part of the problem because you didn’t deal with it right away.

Now you created the phenomena and now you’re mad because of the. And so you. They created this issue. However, what I want to say is that the Somalians who are doing some of this have come out of a war torn environment and the culture because it’s so corrupt over there. It’s one of the most corrupt countries on the planet. And it’s every measure and marker says it is. But their mindset just to survive is to do kind of corrupt activities, whatever goes just to survive. And then that mindset can infiltrate here. And then next thing you know, if we’re naive or if people aren’t keeping people in check, it ends up ballooning out of control.

For me the whole situation with, you know, in Minnesota and with Somali community, you know, like I’m right with you. Not everybody within our community is Representative of the crimes that were committed by a sector of the community. However, one of the things for me, especially coming from the intelligence community and haven’t dealt with, you know, kind of terrorism, is that at preponderance, there’s a big chunk of that money that went back to Al Shabaab. Many of you have heard of me talking about my weight loss journey and how I’ve lost over 25 pounds with peptides, specifically with retatrutide.

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Use the link below, sign up as a VIP and get started today. You can also go to sirwestell.com under shop and do not forget to use the coupon code Sarah to save 15%. That’s right. That’s what needs to be looked at for me. Right? What I’m looking at, it is like, yeah, I can, I can see, you know, crime exists in every single. You know, I agree. You know, I’m from the Dominican Republic, right? We are prime suspect number one for shenanigans, dealing with EBT and all kinds of other stuff. Right. Does that mean that all of us are doing it 100% not.

Do we need to go and tame it down a thousand percent? Right. However, does the money that they steal go back to support terrorism? No. Right. And I’m not saying that because, you know, because again, we have tremendously bad apples in the Dominican, you know, community. You know who you are and you deserve to be deported. I’m not gonna like, mince words because that is the reality of it. Right. Well, and not just deported. They need to be contained in jail. Bad for everybody. Yeah, 100%. Because this is deal, like for me being an immigrant, you know, like, I work, like, I work my way up to, you know, all the lines, waiting in line with my family.

We did it a correct way, went into the military. I became a US citizen when I was in the military. You know, to me, being an American has been like one of the greatest, you know, things that have happened to me, right? This country has opened the opportunity, and, like, the last thing I’m going to do is turn around and pretty much, you know, like, trample on all of those benefits and all of that, you know, goodwill that this country has offer me for being here. That’s, you know, and, like, to me, you know, for me as immigrant, as a legal immigrant, right? Like, I think of it as, like, wow, not only are you, you know, trampling on the good faith of the American people, all of the people, they have afforded you that opportunity, but you also burning the bridge for the people that come after you and for everybody else in your community that did nothing wrong other than hardwork.

100%. 100%. Because. Go ahead. Here’s the deal, right? What is Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and all of those groups doing? They are. They are taking child bribes. They are pretty much, you know, conducting piracy. They’re attacking our chips. They are supporting, you know, the IRS sea, right? They’re supporting Iran. And are we supposed to just sit here and be like, oh, yeah, they’re corrupt. So, like, you know, like. Yeah, like, that’s how. No, absolutely not. How do we get into a position, though? I mean, like, walls had over 500 people tell, you know, whistleblow, and say, this is what’s going on.

And with that much going to terrorism, a lot of it, how is that allowed to happen? I mean, this is a major failure. It’s cognizant dissidents and also tribalism. I mean, it’s just. It’s just human behavior, right? So. Well, but why. Why did we let the whole abstinence thing get away? I don’t see. I. I’m not gonna just say it’s tribalism and human behavior. I think that they’re. The Epstein thing. There’s too many. It’s a network of bad guys there, too, right? It’s really bad. And so I think that there’s powerful people who are getting somehow.

Getting greased, somehow benefiting, because there’s no reason to allow this level of criminal activity to go ongoing unless powerful actors are benefiting. It makes no sense to me. One of the most dangerous things in any society, any organization, is the status quo. Because, you know, we don’t want to rock the boat or we don’t want to, like, you know, do this or do that. That is. That is a very dangerous, you know, way of thinking. And I think that a lot of it, we look at it like, oh, man, you know, like, There must be somebody involved.

No, sometimes it’s just sheer incompetence or like sheer failure to actually rock the boat and actually take the step and like, and like have the integrity to actually see, hey, here’s a problem, we’re gonna do it. I think I’m gonna push back a little bit because there was over, like in Minnesota there was over 500 people that talked and they were, they were actively being suppressed, told they’re racist if they say anything by whom, but within the community, I mean this is what was going on. So I, and because there was so much money going to the terrorist groups, they were incented.

Now it’s not everybody. The status quo can be the majority, but there are certainly people with power that are getting Greece, that know and, and set the tone and are making sure that they keep their operations going. I will say that from what I read, obviously I’m not like as in depth because you live there. But from what I read, the whistleblower complaints were brough to the state government at which point the state government pretty much turned a blind eye and the attorney general prosecuted some, did not prosecute in some other cases until the pressure actually became at a federal level.

So I think that everything starts from taking accountability and ownership of the mess ups at the local level. If the locals and the state level and did not take accountability for the fraud. I mean that is more a reflection of them, you know, and also a wider issue. Because now is like I said, a lot of the whistleblower were like, well, we brought this up and they were like well, you know, we don’t want to go there, right? Or like this is like, let’s not marginalize like a whole population. But again, it comes back to the status quo, right? What is the status quo in there? The status quo is like, hey, we don’t want to rock the boat.

You know, maybe it’s a campaign, you know, year or whatever issue. If I was a criminal in there, if I was a criminal, I would make sure, I would grease that, that idea. I would say, because criminals have criminal minds, I would grease the idea and say I know that they’re not going to go after us. If we use racism as a, as a means of making sure we get away with this, this. I mean I, that’s what I would do if I was a criminal. I would use whatever I had to make sure they back down.

And, and, and the, the, the majority of people are not tied in that way. But those who are the criminal minds, those guys are, and they are not afraid to do any of this stuff. It’s like with human trafficking or with the Epstein stuff. Every. These powerful businessmen who are all blackmailed, they. There’s something else going on and it’s not just Epstein. It’s other networks like that. And I just don’t. You wouldn’t allow children to be raped on a continuous basis as a society. I mean, like we know it. And so people are revulsing, People are very angry and they’re ignoring the.

The people for what? I mean, to do nothing when the people are like in uniform. Like everyone is repulsed by it. Literally. You can’t find a person out there who has any ounce of decency that isn’t really angry that nothing has been accomplished and nothing is done. Politicians and people in authority do not ignore that unless there’s a really strong incentive to ignore it. That’s what I don’t understand, I can tell you. And I’m coming back to the whole Minnesota fiasco over there with, with the Learning center because again, so I have, I have worked with various, you know, echelons within the Florida.

Within Florida, right? With some of those organizations, right? They go and they go and do like a no notice evaluation of your business, right? So one of the things that I do that I deal with is like illicit massage businesses, right? So like, I’m very communicative with like the war of, you know, the massage business board and like trying to understand like how do they go and take out licenses. So there’s always a procedure for each one of this, you know, business units to actually have some sort of, sort of like oversight by the state for me is like we have all of these centers called the leering center, right? Because it was the only one.

There was several. So we have like a sheer typo going on and they’re supposed to be learning. And then second of all, who was the last person that went and did an inspection in any of them? Because that’s another thing. Who is inspecting this type of situations? There’s no oversight in management of what’s happening. And then we are blaming everything. Everybody’s now trying to diverge responsibility. And it’s like, no, let’s look at the whole system holistically. Let’s start from the. The time that you get that license. Because all of us have a business understand that we need a business license, right? Everything is regulated.

Who is the regulatory body that’s supposed to be like going over there and doing, you know, the, like, their regulatory checks? And then also like, who is looking at the Financials. Nobody was. But. But do. See, I don’t know if I like the regulation as much as the fact that once we know there’s crimes going on, we don’t do anything. Because I’m ok. Freedom. I’m okay with lack of. I don’t think everybody needs to be watched on a daily, microscopic level. But once we know there’s a crime going on, then we have an obligation to stop it.

That’s where I feel the problem. 500 whistleblowers talking about the same issue. Yeah. Some point somebody needed to go and check those learning centers. That’s exactly right. It’s like once we know there’s a freaking crime. Why you sitting on your butt? Yes, yes. It’s one of those situations where it’s like, huh. Like for example, one thing I just made a post today, my personal LinkedIn. And one thing that I’m very, you know, incensed about is the lack of background checks that pertains to, you know, organizations that deal with children. It’s not uniform across the board. So like in the state of Florida, we passed a law last year in which every single, you know, activity that has, has, you know, deals with a child, child is involved people, even at a volunteer level, they need to have a criminal background check done on them.

Yeah. So we had a situation, we had a pastor, right. And again, I’m very agnostic, like when it comes to religion. So this has nothing to do with like religion or any, any of that for me. It’s like you have a pastor. They willfully hid the fact that one of his volunteers had a no contact order with kids because he was a child predator and allowed this person for years to be part of this, of this group. Right. And they like, they had like, because of how apparently they were set up, like the way that it works in the state of South Carolina, they were not mandatory reporters because one of the teachers in that particular group was like, hey, do you know this guy is a child predator? So now like the pastor, the in the dude and other people within it are all arrested.

And it’s like, for me, it’s like that’s a huge oversight. Right? Like, it should not be left to states for all of us to require a criminal background check to ensure that we don’t have child predators, like volunteering at our freaking, you know, daycares or like at our churches or like at our youth groups. And you know, this is where oversight is actually needed. Like right now we cannot just leave it to the states because it’s too it’s too inconsistent. So you think something like that needs to be federally? I’m not so sure if I agree with you on that.

That’s not, that’s okay though. You can come forward and say what you think. I, I just, I, I, I get it. The, the consequences are too large and maybe the having a database of, of child predators should be, I mean, I, I, every year I had to do, when I was working with youth groups and stuff, every year I was doing a freaking background check and everybody had to do it. And it is scary not to think that, that certain states are not doing it. But same standpoint, I don’t know if federal, I don’t know if I like that.

I like the states to have more power. I will say no. I’m not saying for the states not to have their liberties. I’m just saying that we need something across the board. So for example, one thing that one of the organizations that I’m affiliated with spearheaded and really supported and pushed for was for revenge porn to be federally pretty much a crime. But like now, before, if somebody took your pictures, your nudes or whatever and plastered it all over the Internet, that was not a federal crime. That was no crime at all. Awful. No, it’s a crime.

It’s so freaking. But do you have exactly, do you have to see, this is where I’m thinking is because these, the databases needs to be accessible to everyone on who these criminals are. So you’re saying there should be some, some, some ways the databases are already accessible to everybody. They will. Look, my thing is it should be mandated that you have a background check on everybody because you’re supposed to be a mandatory reporter. So like if a child comes to you, right, and you’re in a position of authority, like every state is designates them a little bit differently.

Like if a child comes to you and say, hey, this person touched me inappropriately, like the first thing that you’re supposed to do is go report that. You report that to law enforcement, reporting to cps, whoever it is within your reporting chain. But for me, this has to be uniform across the board. We cannot have states that don’t mandate because usually what states do is that they will mandate it to things that are mandatory reporting in a school setting. But if you are a private school, it doesn’t always mean that you’re going to be a mandatory reporter.

So for me, especially if you’re getting brands from this, you know, from the federal government, from the Department of Education, you and like it touches anything dealing with a Kid, you should have a background check. It’s not hurting anybody, right? It’s just knowing that, hey, we’re not going to hire hearing. Also think about it like, think about it as you’re doing your due diligence and on top of that, right, you are minimizing the risk associated with not only your organization, yourself. And more importantly, the one thing that I’m really upset about is the kids. Well, it’s looking after the kids.

So. And you work with kids all the time. So what states are not ensuring those details and, and the predators know where those states are and they probably congregate there, right? I’m not gonna say that because I don’t have any evidence to, you know, to support that. All I can tell you is that like the requirements for, for it is not uniform across the war. So henceforth, why we have the situation in South Carolina, right? Because like that religious institution, they obviously did not, did not follow what was already established. But I can tell you that.

So I don’t work with kids that age. I normally my population, unfortunately when it comes to human trafficking is adolescents and us up. And it’s very deliberate. Just because it’s really heartbreaking for me to deal with the younger population. I always tip my hat to those that work with the CSAM and crimes against children in the cyberspace because it’s something that you need to have the heart and the mind. And I think that for those of us that have worked in the community, you realize exactly where your niche is at. And unfortunately for me, that’s not it.

Not that I’m not going to support an organization that doesn’t because for me it’s such a big thing. But it’s just you have to look after them and just kind of tie it up together. Right? Who was doing background checks of the learning centers? Anybody was doing background checks of the people that were working at the learning centers, especially the people that were conducting the this, you know, scams because a lot of them actually, fun fact, they were posted all online too. That was something that was extremely comical to me because a lot of people that were, you know, perpetuating the scams were actually posting themselves with like high level, high priced cars and like, you know, money statues.

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If you are interested in trying this and really cleaning up your body from microplastics, graphene oxide, you can also test yourself. You can get your hair test to see what you are before and what you are after. You use this for a few months. They stand behind what they’re doing with test studies and real results. And look for the link below where you can buy masterpiece yourself. It’ll provide you a discount. Or you can go to sarah westall.com under shop. Well, I, I kind of think that when it comes to scams, everybody needs to do due diligence for yourself, you know, and then, and then once we know there’s a scam and we know there’s a crime that’s committed, then we need to do something about it.

I, I’m not sure if we want to predictive program, you know, predictive. All the scams that are going to go out other than because if you nail, if you freaking nail these people when they do do it instead of letting them go. Because like the gold scam, we know for years now that there’s these gold scam where people are getting massively taken, like the majority of their life savings being stolen and that kind of stuff. We know this, it’s been going on for years now and that nothing is happening to them. Right. I think that if we nail.

Once we know that these scams are going on, it’ll greatly minimize it. I think that’s where it needs. I mean, if we just did that, we don’t even do that. God, we can’t even take down criminals once we know. I will tell you that a lot of criminal enterprises are actually not even done here in the United States. They’re actually done overseas. What happens is that there are criminal outfits out there, like all around the world. Their job is to sit down pretty much and look at things they, you know, for example, like the, the COVID funds, right.

We had so many different like criminal enterprises, not only in the United States, but like across the world, like benefit from that. Because whenever we have a huge and large pot of money, right, and we’re responding to a crisis, what happens? The system gets overwhelmed. Because what ends up happening is that we don’t necessarily allocate the personnel to each one of these programs to actually support doing the due diligence henceforth. Why the whole situation with Minnesota became so pervasive at the local, at the state level, to the point in which the feds had to get involved.

It wasn’t because there was people saying, hey, this is what happened. And probably Minnesota is a little bit of a bad example because at least they have 500 people to say, hey, this is how. It’s ridiculous. That’s willful ignorance. I think it’s. But I was saying they’re, like, criminal. Yeah, exactly. Like for. For the. The different crimes that we’re finding now for, you know, with the COVID money. It was just. It was just ridiculous. I mean, like, there are people all across the world that have gotten, you know, brought back to the United States because they got caught, you know, getting loans.

Right. You know, it was really easy for people to get loans back now. Like, it was ridiculously easy. And for me, you know, like, coming back to the whole, you know, being an immigrant and being proud of this country, like, to me, I feel like it’s a betrayal of the United States if we come to this country and we are provided with all of these different opportunities to then turn around and commit those frauds. You know, there are. Exactly. But it has it. Okay. We make it easy, but it doesn’t mean because it’s easy that we should be doing it.

Right. That’s right. My mom used to tell me all the times is to be. Exactly. It’s just like. Just because your friend jumped the bridge doesn’t mean that you have to go jump the bridge. And that’s. And that’s the thing. That’s the thing with it. So tell me, you were talking. You keep referring to the. To the gold scam. So, like, what happened with that? Like, did that happen to you personally? Tell me. No, no, I. I. No, no, no. I. I have. I sell gold. Right. Or I promote it. I don’t sell it. I promote it.

I’m a. I’m a affiliate of mine is Miles Franklin. But we realized. I realized. And it’s kind of a long story how we got to that point, but, you know, I do an economic show every Friday, and we started talking about the fact that. That people are being scammed. I. And so I. I’ve had hundreds of people come in, and Miles Franklin actually helps people get out of these scams. We’ve saved a lot of people their life savings that they’ve gotten back. You know, where I’ve sent them Hundreds of people. But these are like these scamming companies.

What they’re doing is they’ll take somebody who has a life. You know that I had one woman that came in and had three different IRAs and one of them was like a million dollars and now it’s only worth 400,000. So they stole about 600,000. And they do that because they convince them to buy these gold rounds and they charge them premiums of like 176% or something. And there should only be like a 2% premium and something like that. That. And so they convince these people that it’s worth. They don’t understand the. How much these coins are really worth.

And so they’re buying these coins thinking that they’re getting something that’s worth 250 bucks when it’s really only worth $50, something like that. And they’re sc. Then they’re just pocketing the difference. And then they’re paying these influencers godly amount of money every month to promote them. And then the ones that I always tell people, if you’re getting free free silver or free. Usually it’s free silver. That’s $10,000 worth of free silver. If you buy Red Flag. Red Flag, that’s a scam company. That’s how they do it. That’s how they run. Because otherwise you just be paying lower premiums.

Right. And so the fact that they even have that much money in as. As cushion means they’re scamming you on the premiums. And people just don’t realize it. And the influencers don’t realize it. It. But if a person is getting like, let’s say the, the, you know, gold is doubled, you know, or silver is double. All these things have double. They should. Instead of it being if it was a million dollars that they purchased in 2024, it should be worth 1.6 million now, not 400,000. So that’s how much they’ve gotten scammed out of it. Right. And so we are working to at least get their initial investment back plus a little bit it, you know, and that makes the, the company that scanned them still wins.

I mean you’re. They’re still winning with that. And. But what. We’re making these people whole. But that’s the level of scam that’s going on. And it’s happening. It’s usually to older people. It’s people who are afraid that the country is going to collapse. They need to protect their assets, which you do need to diversify into different assets, especially now that the economy is at, you know, we’re, we’re having a shift over things are, are crazy. But it’s a preservation of wealth really from a financial standpoint. But they’re using their naive, naivete and their ignorance of finance, their ignorance of precious metals industry to host to steal from them.

And these big influencers, and I’m talking big influencers all over the place are still selling it. And some of the worst offenders are being sold by the most high profile people. People. And I, you know, and that’s the saddest thing of it all, right, because it’s like again, coming back to like how many, how many followers you have in the sphere of influence of that following ship, right? And like how that converts into the scam or like how the scammers are taking, you know, getting, getting all that money from all of that, you know, amplification on the various, you know, social media platforms is despicable because how many of the people they are at the receiving end of the scam actually get any restitution? Probably almost no.

Hard. Almost no. Nobody. Yeah. Yes. I mean ours, ours that we helped is like a sliver, it’s almost nothing. That’s why we’re able to do it. If it became like massive, then things would shift around. But the fact that we are a sliver is why we’re able to get some of this done. But the, the massive amounts that they’ve been scammed and I actually think part of the reason that the gold market, silver market is soft in this community right now is because of these scams, right? They’ve, they, it’s starting to pan out. It’s not soft with the most sophisticated buyers.

They’re buying more than they’ve ever bought ever. I mean the amount of gold and silver, that’s, that’s because the economy shifting over so government and sovereign funds are buying in mass. But the average people, because they’ve been scammed and they don’t trust anybody, a lot of them are moving into higher risk categories, you know, higher risk investments when they should still be just holding onto this because they’ve been scammed. It’s really sad. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. And I tell you that there’s another scam that we hardly ever talk a lot about and it’s extortion. And it’s something that is absolutely and utterly devastating.

The millennials, the Agency Alpha. What does it mean by sextortion? Like what? Because I know sextortion is the act of somebody like pretty much holding hostage one of your explicit photos and then coming back to you and saying like hey, you paid me or I will, you know, release this content to your family or I will release it, you know, to people within your workspace. You know. And it’s pretty much the whole main idea is to create panic and to force this person to provide the scammer with a monetary reward for it. And then if you do not do it then they start applying pressure, right? Because the stealing of your, of your photo is just one aspect.

You know, we had seen people that started out with a photo and then now they are into inside your computer, inside all of your devices, right? So like you already have an intrusion in there and they will go and release that, you know, that photo if you don’t pay kind of like the ransom to pretty much everybody in your network. I mean I seen people that it has devastated to the point that they kill themselves. And that is like the most, the most, you know, pretty much egregious part of it. You see a lot of the different things that are being done, right? It’s like the FBI going.

And Nigeria unfortunately has the unfortunate distinction of being like prime suspect number one of like you know, doing all of this, you know, sextortion scams especially against like young adults, right. So you have boys and girls, right? They are pretty much bending these pictures, you know, all across different social media platform. And this, the social media, the scammers, they get a photo and other star like hey, I’m going to really release in this if you don’t do this. I’m going to release this to like everybody in your school. I’m to going with and like the pressure they will find like, like, like a.

They will take pictures of themselves nude for their boyfriend or something and, and then that is what they get a hand up handle on or like a sex. You know like we used to have like Kim Kardashian or something had their sex tape, right. And that made her famous. But that kind of stuff is what gets out and what they get their hands on 100%. And I will say that we don’t know specifically how many people are, have been victims because of the societal associated with it. So we only hear of the ones that have actually you know, ended up in fatalities in which you know, the person has committed suicide.

And I seen the, the suicide situation in both adults and children which is like the, the most despicable thing, right? Well and high school kids and middle school kids. That’s devastating. And, and it’s like it so, so one Thing is, and I talk a lot with, you know, the young adults, right? And like kids in middle school. So let me tell you this. Kids right now are starting in like junior high, right? So in middle school, they’re starting to have a phone, right? Possibly unrestricted because mom and dad is not really paying attention. And then they start taking pictures of themselves that they shouldn’t.

The second you take a picture, inappropriate picture of yourself, right. If you’re a minor and then you digitally send that to somebody else, that is already production of child exploitation material so you can catch a case even if you’re a minor, that’s just like number one. Now you’re providing that picture to somebody else. So you’re guilty of a minor. You’re guilty of doing pornography of a minor of yourself. I’m having to explain that to kids. If I’m 15 and I take a picture of myself, I send it out, then I’m guilty of crime for doing child pornography even though it was me.

Yes. Okay, that. That is weird. I mean, there. That’s kind of. It’s not weird. It’s not weird, right? It was. It makes sense. It’s technically correct. I understand. But. But it’s you, so you should. But go ahead. Yes. Yeah. But the problem is, right, they now we live in a society which is so permissible, right? Like, I talked, I went and did a speech with a group of high schoolers and I asked everybody who thought it was okay for them to take nudes. And I think I had two people did not have their hands up. It’s like a societal thing.

It’s like the new thing. I’m aging myself here. But back in my days, nobody ever thought about, like, posting a picture of you with your business out, right? Like, that was. That was not a thing. But like now it’s almost like, duh, you know, like. Yeah, like they are passing each other all of these pictures. And what happens is that they are some of the threat actors that actually target you, right? So you see all of these pretty girls, they’re posting pictures out there and they track these kids, right? They look at their other groups. They like, looking for, like, ingestion.

Who is vulnerable, who can they go and target? And unfortunately, it’s getting to the point now that even if you don’t have a nude, there’s no telling that one of those threat actors can take your picture, put it into a hype, like a powerful AI and develop a deep fake, you know, like, version of it, your face. And also videos, right? Yep. So it Is getting very icky out there when it comes to this extortion situation. The good news is the life extortion finally passed a couple of years ago in which it became a federal crime to do so.

And the same thing with revenge porn. But you know, this is still a scam that is affecting a lot of people. I had a situation, not me happen, but somebody that was like three rings removed from me. This person sent a photo, a young adult, a photo via snapshot to somebody that he thought was a girl. And then the girl instead took the picture. They hacked into all of his emails and everything else and like send this thing to every single contact that they had there because he refused to pay $3,000. That’s so sad. And then what happened after? She was just devastated.

I mean it was just devastating. It was, it was a male and I, it was more embarrassing because like grandma saw it. Yeah, no, I know nobody wants to see her grandkid in such a vulnerable state. But you know, it is, it is happening and this is affecting real people. I mean it has damaged people reputation, it has damaged our careers. It has led to people committing suicide. And unfortunately, you know, the, this is happening. If you’re an adult, send pictures of yourself that you wouldn’t want, you know, your grandma or your mom out there like seeing it.

But I can tell you this right now, I can see as a public figure they would. With AI, There could be easily. They can put your face on top of something else. And there you are. Oh 100. It’s not you, but it’s a naked person that looks like it’s you. And we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’m sure you see it all the time. I mean it’s just. That’s awful. We. I don’t, I’m so glad it’s a, it’s a federal crime because it’s, it’s gotten out of control. Well, okay, so you help a lot of. And that’s how I got to got you is that I.

There was an investigation that was going on and, and, and they, and that’s how I, I learned about you. So you help people and you help companies, you help organizations get the analysts, you know, get the data they need to, to track down the crimes. How can people reach you and what else can they know? Yeah, so we, we provide, you know, comprehensive digital vulnerability assessment. We do investigative due diligence not only of persons, but also company. If you’re having like reputation issues, we can go help you with that. Identity exposure analysis and the geo forensics and you can reach us morningside API.com we are out of the state of Florida and you can also reach us Morningside analytics in LinkedIn and on socials Morningside underscore analytics on, sorry, Instagram.

We just started our Instagram. So that’s the one that I always have a problem remembering. Well, thank you so much, Nina, for joining the program. This was really enlightening. Thank you so much. No, thank you, Sarah and I look forward coming back and talking more about how, you know, other things are happening in Minnesota or not just Minnesota. I’m Minnesota just because I live here. I pretty much do geopolitic. You know that when it comes to stuff and the edge of change, I like to do the edgy change. But Minnesota is only because I’m here. That’s it.

Otherwise I would not be covering it, I don’t think. But yeah, okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Sa.
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