Jim Browning
Appearances
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
The scam is what you call a refund scam. So they'll pretend to be a big organization, typically Amazon, and the conversation will start off with, they say they're going to refund this charge, which the victim will know nothing about. Okay.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
So the scammer obviously knows that he's overpaid this victim, so the key to this scam is how they get the money back again. Our scammer comes up with a solution.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Inevitably, the victim asks how he can refund the money. Surely they can just take it back themselves.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Yes, he said Apple store. He wants his victim to go to an Apple store in order to get his money back.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
He spends the next few minutes explaining that he's going to need $5,000 worth of Apple gift vouchers.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Yeah. It is, yeah. So as of just over a year and a bit ago, I gave up my full-time job, my IT job. And my full-time job is now making YouTube videos and going after scammers. So it sounds like...
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
For sure, yeah. It's definitely a passion. I can't stand scammers. That is my little tagline, if you like, on my YouTube channel. I can't stand scammers. And
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
But this is the thing. Maybe it's something to do with my Irish accent or whatever, but honestly, when it comes to scams and scammers, I'm now devoting my life. But it is for that reason. If you watched what I do, if you listen to the calls that I hear every single day, You can't help not going after these guys.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I build up a bit of a hatred for them, but it probably doesn't come across in the way I make the YouTube videos or my inflections or anything else. But in a lot of ways, that helps me because if I appear calm, if I try to think it through, if I try to rationalize what I'm doing, it gives me in some way a bit of strength
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
to try and combat these scammers because I like to think I've got a level head when it comes to tracking these guys down. And I think that's why I've been as successful as I have been.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And of course, there's room for that. You know, I encourage everyone to be a formal scam bidder. And if you can waste someone's time who you know is trying to steal money from you, it means they're not stealing money from your parents, grandparents and whatever. So absolutely, there's room for everyone. I encourage everyone to do what I do.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Well, maybe not quite as far as I go because, you know, it could land you in trouble. And, you know, but there's nothing wrong with wasting a scammer's time.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Oh, yes. There's very, well, there's very few people I think don't like chocolate. I know. Yeah. Yeah, chocolate's great. Yeah, yeah. Keeps you going, bit of energy.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
The very first time that I was able to connect to a scammer's computer... was that the scammer actually gave me his user ID and password to connect to him, and then he would switch sides. So there was a period of time where if the scammers were using a bit of remote access software called Teamviewer.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
If they were using Teamviewer and the connections were coming from India, Teamviewer noticed that a lot of them were scams and they actually banned the entire country for a period of time.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
and during that time they wanted to keep the scams running so what the scammers would do is say well you connect to me and there's a little bit of software internally that says switch sides with partner and then they would connect back to the victim supposedly so i was actually given the scammers username and password so i can connect to their computer
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
The first time you did that, that must have been such a wild moment. It was unbelievable because what you can do is exactly what the scammers do, which is as soon as you make that connection, you can lock their keyboard and mouse and blacken their screen. So I knew how to do that because I'd seen it so often. So this was like a real gift for me.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
So I connected to them, locked them out of their computer, started to download all the files to try and figure out who this was.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I can't see communicate. Hi, are you still there? Hey, you mother... Well, you're the one who's scamming, aren't you? And of course, because their computer is completely locked and black screened, they're not really quite sure what goes on. You know, they maybe hadn't encountered this before. So I knew that my time was probably limited.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
So I grabbed as much as I could from, I could download all their files. They weren't seeing any of this. And I was able to work out exactly who they were.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
No, and I probably never will, simply because scammers will learn from that. And unfortunately, they watch my videos just like a lot of other people do. And I don't want to reveal that as a secret. But suffice to say... A lot of it is social engineering as opposed to some zero day compromise of the remote access software that I'm using.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
So I'm far more of a social engineer than a hacker, if that makes sense.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Hello, Jack. Hello, hello. Good, well, it's good evening for me. I guess you're in the States, so it's probably the afternoon.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I'm just very good at reading people's thoughts over the phone and I get this aura. I'm like a ghost.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Just simply because whenever you speak to me, I can pick up on vibes and I kind of know you create like an aura around you. I'm a little bit like a ghost.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Oh, Priya, please don't do this to me. Come on. You don't really work for Microsoft, do you?
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Okay. But you confirmed that to me earlier and you said, Your friends were Suspita and Mimi and, you know, you told me that earlier, so you've already confirmed that.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Yeah. Right, okay. Well, what if you want, Carolina? I don't really mind. So what's wrong with my computer?
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Sorry, your colleague's listening in, but I can hear her talk as well. Oh, she's hung up. That's okay.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I just told you. You can call me Ghost, because... Like, that's kind of the way I feel. I get this aura around people. I can tell who's around them.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
How long have you been working there, Priya? How long have you been working there?
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I'm trying to, you know, you give off this aura and I'm trying to kind of work out Why you do all this scamming stuff? That's really what I wanted to know.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Can't you get, like, a different job that doesn't steal money? And how do you know the name?
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
It's coming through to me. I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure that's Susmita.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I mean, the moral bit is quite easy for me because I quite deliberately let the scammers attempt to scam me. I cannot and I don't have the technical expertise, shall we say, to arbitrarily hack into anything. I can't do it. I'm not able to do that. A lot of the people that you've spoken to on this podcast probably would be able to do that. I cannot.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I have to rely on a scammer connecting to me and trying to steal money from me. And that's the only way that I can ever access their computers. They have to try to steal money from me first.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I mean, I'm not... And I hate to be known as a hacker because that always has quite negative connotations. And I hate the term because it just has all of that baggage. But... That is true. And every single person that I feature on any video on YouTube has at some point connected to my computer.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And don't forget, scammers don't always make it clear that what you're typing out gives them access to my computer. because they will quite deliberately say just type this this on your command line when they when people question well what is this thing that you're getting me to download and run and it's in fact a remote access tool they will not explain that so
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
already there is a remote access connection, which is a sort of hacking attempt because the scammer doesn't make it clear to the victim. They are taking access of your computer and they are not making it clear. Obviously, they're scammers. And I just go a little bit further to say, well, OK, you're trying to
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
misuse my computer so internally I'm thinking you're now fair game for me to do the same to you so the only people and I've said this a number of times in other interviews as well the only people who could ever have a problem with what I do are the people who try to steal money from others okay and if they ever want to raise a legal complaint or whatever
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
please bring that on because what I will have done is record how I managed to get access to their computer. And the answer is because they were trying to steal money from me. Now, that's not a defense on its own, but it just means that if I ever have to defend myself for any reason, I have a good reason as to why I have access to their computer.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
The only complaints I've ever had are privacy complaints on YouTube. Scammers don't like their faces or voices or documents displayed on YouTube. And tough cases.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I have my email address on YouTube and a lot of people just simply email me saying, hey, have you seen this pop up or I've just had a phone call from this number and or I've had this email and it's a fake invoice or my grandparents have just been scammed to use the phone. I get all of that all the time.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
But actually, in a lot of ways, I don't even have to use that because I'm on what's called a mugs list. So in the past, I have pretended to pay scammers because remember this bit where I say I actually need the scammers on? I give them fake information, including credit card details.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And if you work your way onto a list of people who they think they've scammed in the past, they will call you again and again. Those lists are like gold dust for scammers. So the end result of that is I get so many phone calls directly to my home phone number that I don't need anyone else's input. I'm already in the middle of a load of scans. And honestly, there's nearly too many to cope with.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
So what do you have, like 16 different phones over there? I do, literally. I mean, I have one phone service with 10 different phone numbers in the UK and I have something similar with US phone numbers. I've dropped a lot of those recently from their number. It just, it has nearly got to the point where I just can't, you know, have an evening free of scam phone calls.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
The way that I got access to the reverse access, I'll not go into that part in detail, but suffice to say that when I did get access, I got access to just one PC, and it was from a supervisor. And I was able to watch what that supervisor was doing. And one of the things that he was doing was watching CCTV. So I could see the IP address of the server that he was using.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
It wasn't an internal server, it was an external one. And when he logged into it, he logged in with the username of admin. and a password of eight characters. And for the particular CCTV system that he was using, I did a Google search of what is the default password for this system. And would you believe they were still using the default password.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I guess you could call that hacking, but I could see the IP address, the username, and I just tried the default password and I was straight in. Admin123 was his password to protect this scam operation.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
It was gold dust for me because they had records of all their calls. I could see it on which server they were using. And I could directly download these things because I had access to that scammer's supervisor's scammer's computer. So I managed to download nine months worth of calls, about 70,000 separate calls.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
yeah oh it was so tempting that whenever you i mean i am watching live on the cctv i know the number that they're using uh the victims to call that day so i can call that number and i'll be speaking to somebody in a room that i can see on cctv hello yes sir yeah so what's all this about stop services then when they should be running i don't get it yeah
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I don't always know who I'm speaking to, and sometimes if the room is full, it can be quite difficult to work out which agent. There may be 20, 30 agents in the room, and I can't always work out who I'm speaking with. And there's four cameras. Each corner of the room has got a camera. And what I do was actually invite the scammer onto a computer.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I had my desktop background set to a purple or a green color. And then what I would do is look around the cameras and look for that green screen or that purple screen. And then I knew, ah, right, there's the guy. That's who I'm talking to. And sometimes I had to do that just to work that out. And
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Well, I wish it was a bit more like Batman. You know, Batman has got this, you know, an injustice done and, you know, he's after the Joker and all this sort of thing. Very, very different for me. The way I got started was probably like most people, I receive lots of scam phone calls and you keep hearing those incessant phone calls, people pretending to be Microsoft.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
The really, really tempting thing would be to say to the guy, hey, that's a nice Czech shirt you're wearing. Or, you know, stop playing Pac-Man whenever you're speaking to me. You know, can you stop doing that? But I couldn't give the game away. I couldn't be just as obvious as that. Although it was incredibly tempting to do that.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
So I kind of figured out I was really on to something quite big at that stage. And I thought I would bring it to the attention of more mainstream media, specifically the BBC. I had never had contact with the BBC until that point. But Because I had personally tried to close down a lot of scam operations and been pretty unsuccessful about it.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
So I have previously gone to the police in India to say, here's a scam call centre on your doorstep. Here's where they're located. I was able to get that sort of information, but nothing really ever came of it. And I thought, perhaps I'm going about this wrong. Perhaps what I really need is more mainstream media involved. So I got in touch with, really a general purpose BBC email address.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And before too long, I was reached out by a team called Panorama. Panorama are like a very long running documentary program where they cover all sorts of current affairs issues. But this particular team were interested anyway in scam phone calls. And as soon as I get in touch and said, look, this is what I have. Of course, that team were very, they wanted to work with me from that point.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
pretending to be Amazon, your bank and so on. And most people know just to hang up those calls. But I'm one of those people who I love to dig a little bit deeper. Because I'm an engineer, I know about computers, know about networks. And I thought to myself, surely someone is doing something about this. And if they're not, maybe I can do something.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
The police did their raid. They picked up whatever computers they could. They went to the boss's home address. And he lived in like the most luxurious accommodation you could imagine, something like $6,000 a month to rent this place, which is completely unheard of if you're in Delhi where he was.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
What I had expected was that this would be such an easy case for them, there would be no problem, and ultimately the guy who ran the thing would be locked up. But that was very far from the truth. And what actually happened was, number one, it took about a year for the trial to even come up. Then COVID kicked in, so it was delayed by another year. But eventually, whenever the case did go to trial,
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
the police never actually followed up on any of the evidence that was given to them or that they had collected. So they had scripts about scams from the boss's computer, but they didn't, for example, follow the money trail from the victims to the boss.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
So they could very easily, if they had any kind of incentive to do so, they could have easily gone to PayPal and say, we need evidence about what happened with this particular PayPal account. They never asked for that. They never followed up on any of the thing. In fact, what they actually relied on was the one laptop that they managed to pick up.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And obviously, because the documentary had gone out, the YouTube video had gone out, all of the computers were immediately wiped before the police actually arrived. So they only really had one laptop to go on, and that wasn't enough for them. And any of the independent evidence of scams, the 70,000 phone calls, the video footage of the scams actually happening was never presented.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
In fact, what they said was, well, that YouTube footage could have been done by AI or that YouTube footage could have been faked. And it looked like the judge just accepted that. So there was no pressure whatsoever to present anything which linked the boss to any of that scam victim money.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And that is just a travesty because I couldn't have handed it on a plate any more clearly to the police, or indeed the BBC could have handed the same evidence to the police. But the police never came to speak to me, never came to speak to the BBC. or follow up with any of the evidence that I presented in the video whatsoever. They just didn't bother.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And I can only imagine that's for one of two reasons. One is they're desperately incompetent, which I think is the more likely reason. they've been paid off because the guy who was in charge of this is the equivalent of a multimillionaire as a result of those scams. And unfortunately, in India, corruption is rife. So I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that's what happened.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Well, I mean, we've covered the moral one and I never have a problem with that one for the reasons I've just described. But equally, it's actually quite harrowing listening to victims actually getting scammed because there have been times that I have tried to intervene and I'll have gone as far as because the scammers typically are on the phone with their victims all the time to their cell phone.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And they're going out to buy gift cards or they're going out to a Bitcoin ATM. And the only way that I can try to get that scam stopped is if I can warn a neighbor. If I know they're going to a certain gift card store, I will call that store and say, there's a person about to come in. Here's their name. They're about to buy $500 worth of gift cards. Could you please stop them?
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And it's incredibly difficult to watch when stores, for example, warn the victim, but they... Unfortunately, they trust the scammer more than the person in the store talking to them. And it can be very difficult to listen to that. I've had people go to a Bitcoin ATM the store manager has tapped them on the shoulder and said, you're being scammed.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
That person who says they're from customs are not who they say they are. And if you put money into that Bitcoin ATM, you are going to lose it. They've actually explained that they're being scammed, but yet they trust the scammer more and they've moved on to the next Bitcoin ATM. And I've had that happen right in front of me. And it's incredibly difficult to watch that because...
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
That could be my grandmother, my grandfather, your parents. It's someone's relative, yet you can't do anything about it. You try your best, but there are some people who are just going to be scammed. There's very little that can be done about it. And that is very hard to listen to. It is very hard to watch it.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Actually, I would love to see India. And I'm honest about that because I've spoken with Karl Rock, so my partner in crime when it comes to all the kind of drone footage and so on. And I actually admire India as a country. And I'm not just saying this jokingly. to kind of justify me slagging off people in India when they're scamming.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
This is a country that I genuinely would like to see, and I do intend to go there. I will be at some point in Delhi. The nice thing about my YouTube channel is I don't show my face, so I'm not that scared about going. I probably would stand out a little bit if I went to Kolkata or Calcutta but Delhi I think would be quite a place that I could easily go to.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Yeah. It's hard to do without it. I do like a bit of chocolate. You're actually making me hungry. I probably got you at a bad time. I wasn't actually expecting you to say, yeah, I'm ready to go and we can just do this. But it absolutely suits me down to the ground.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
right just that i was watching everything you were doing and also recording what you're doing and recording your voice because you've removed nothing whatsoever from this machine it was never infected in the first place and all you've done i'm sorry it was never infected with anything in the first place and you know that so you you say that you've removed a trojan tell me what trojan you've removed and show me evidence of that then
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Because if it was something like, oh, this particular tool, it would have logs and it would show you in the history what was removed. Okay, there's nothing been removed here.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
So go on then, tell me what software you use to remove any Trojan. Bear in mind, I've recorded everything you've done. So are you going to still stand by that story that you removed a Trojan?
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
You can do what you want, but don't forget, all of this is going to be uploaded to YouTube very shortly. So be very careful what you say in the next few minutes.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
What I will do is now that I've got your IP address, this one, and the timestamp, which is Mumbai, so it's now 6 p.m. It's been running for a few hours, this one, though.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
um i can go to your isp and that's tata teleservices in italy they they provide that ip address to you and that's the one you're using at the minute so i'm going to get them to identify exactly who you are because i know your address isn't in california i know you're located in india or i'll probably just publish all of this on youtube anyway Thank you for choosing Scammers in Mumbai.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
My background is that I have been in IT really all my professional life, all my working life. Yeah, let's hear about that. What's the specialty that you are in IT? Yeah, so I guess up until very recently, I had a real job as in a real normal IT job. I worked for a large company, should we say, in the UK. And part of their specialty was dealing with IT services and setup. And I
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
I've personally supported an organization with more than 200 or 300 people in it. So I'm the kind of admin, the sysadmin for a large IT company. So that's my background. As part of that, I'm also a programmer. I'm a network engineer. But I have no form of qualifications in, for example, cybersecurity. Although at this stage, I think I could probably do fairly well in a cybersecurity exam.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Type these things into your computer and look, you've got hackers, you've got viruses, you've got computer problems. You're going to have to pay me $200, $300 to fix that problem.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Yeah, that's cool. I've got to say, even before we do this, I have listened to loads of your podcasts. And honestly, it's an honor for me even to be asked on to it. So there you go.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
They will get you to buy a gift card. They won't use the word gift card. What they say to their victims is, you've got a security problem. you're going to have to solve it with a security card and you'll have to go to your local Walmart or whatever to get the security card. And they won't use the word gift card if they can avoid it.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
But of course, whenever you go in there and you're outside the store, they will say, right, I need you to go in and buy an Apple card or an eBay card or whatever it is. And as soon as you read out that number, that's as good as them taking the value of that card because they can launder that almost immediately.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
They do, exactly. And they'd be lucky to get maybe 50% of the actual value of the card. But what they do is they take those numbers and there is quite a, well, should we say a black market for gift card numbers? There are legitimate websites like Paxful, for example, where people will buy gifts.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
Google Play cards, eBay cards, you name it, any sort of gift card, and they will give you 50% of the value and they will mark that up and they may directly or indirectly buy items from those stores. So yes, absolutely, you're going to lose half the value.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
But if you're a scammer, you have completely, cleanly washed that money because there's almost no way of getting money back when someone's bought a gift card and it's been used.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
They actually persuade people to go to their local bank and withdraw cash. And they will say, I'll instruct you in a moment what you do with the cash. So they generally get the victim to take the cash home and then they'll say, and this is typically for a bank type scam, they'll say, we're going to create a new account for you and you need to send that money to a secure facility.
Darknet Diaries
143: Jim Hates Scams
And they will say, look, you need to put the cash into pages of a book. So between pages of book, wrap that in silver foil. And they will actually get you then to go to the nearest FedEx or post office and mail your cash to an address. And it's a money mail address.