It can often seem as if phone and online scammers are beyond accountability. Often operating from abroad, where illegal activity is either tolerated or ignored, the organized criminal groups behind the scams that annoy and frustrate so many of us, have reaped billions in stolen gains from some of society’s most vulnerable.
But there is a small army of good guys fighting back.
Three of the world’s most popular “scambusters” — who have a combined following of more than 10 million across their social media platforms — joined forces with CBC’s Marketplace to create a fraud-fighting centre, using their unique skills to infiltrate criminal networks overseas, reroute 62 active scam call centres back to their operation and intercept fraudulent calls to stop scammers from accessing money from Canadian victims.
Jim Browning: The ‘godfather’ of scambusting
Scambuster Jim Browning infiltrates scam call centres to expose who’s behind them and shares that information with authorities who can shut them down.
Jim Browning keeps his hood up and mask on — a necessary security measure given the threats he faces following dozens of successful takedowns of worldwide scammer networks.
Browning is known as the “godfather” of scambusting, he’s been taking on fraudsters since March 2014. A computer engineer by training, he reverse engineers scams, meaning that when fraudsters try to gain remote access to his computer, he accesses all of the information on theirs — everything from their real identities, locations and information on their illegal operations, including the scripts they use for scamming and the details of their victims.
This method of infiltration has gotten him inside upwards of 3,000 scam call centres — and he’s made thousands of “saves” by intercepting scammer calls and warning their victims while they were on the phone with the fraudsters. He’s also worked with police forces all over the world to locate and shut down scam operations.
In 2024, Jim produced a video about a scam taking place in Dubai, known as “pig butchering,” where fraudsters form a fake online friendship to gain the victim’s trust and then persuade them to invest in cryptocurrency by promising quick profits.
After the release of that video, Jim released an update on his YouTube channel, sharing that 2,000 scam call centre workers were arrested in the largest bust of scammers in any one location in the world — and his videos played a role, at least in part, in the takedown.
Pleasant Green: The Protector
Pleasant Green inserts himself into scams to educate people on what to watch out for.
Another scambaiter known by the online handle Pleasant Green attempts to understand the psychology behind the scammer — and tries to convince them to break out of scamming.
“I like to look at scammers as human beings, and I think that a lot of them do what they do because they might be in parts of the world where they can’t find better opportunities,” he said. “So if I can convince a scammer that there’s a better way to make a living, then I’m going to give them that opportunity.”
While he’s trying to persuade scammers to change their ways, he also inserts himself into various scams to help potential victims understand how the scams work and red flags to watch for.
He teaches courses online about digital safety, including how to manage passwords and privacy settings on your smartphone, how to identify phishing scams, such as text messages that claim you’ve received a deposit and you need to click on a link.
Inside the Marketplace anti-scam centre, he alerts our team to an intercepted call between a scammer and a female victim.
“This woman is terrified. She thinks that she’s in legal trouble. I have her phone number, and I keep trying to call her, but she won’t answer my call because the scammer is saying, ‘Oh, that guy calling you, he’s just trying to steal your money.'”
Pleasant Green is in a race against the scammers to keep this woman from losing her money. He knows she’s been directed to go to her nearest bank branch. When he can’t reach her, he calls her bank instead.
“She’s going to want to withdraw some money,” he says. “But I believe she’s a victim of an internet scam.”
His team also calls the local police.
“We knew that her computer was being compromised and that she was being pressured to send money.”
He received confirmation that a police officer warned the potential victim before any money was lost.
It’s one of many wins for the scambusters over a two-day period of fraud-fighting.
Kitboga: The crime-fighting comedian
Popular YouTube and Twitch streamer Kitboga turns the tables on scammers by pretending to be victims to waste their time.
YouTube star Kitboga is one part technical wizard and another part improv comedian — using different voices, such as “Old Man Richard,” and AI to waste scammers’ time by convincing them they are successfully defrauding someone.
“I try to use humour to shed light on some really dark things. It’s kinda like a big inside joke,” he tells his audience in one of his recent videos. “We’re able to laugh because the scammer thinks he has the upper hand. Really, we’re the ones scamming him.”
He started scambusting or scambaiting — wasting a scammer’s time so they’re not calling unsuspecting victims — in 2017 after he came across tech support scams he knew his grandparents would have fallen victim to.
“From the very beginning, it was ‘You know what, if I could spend five or 10 minutes on the phone with a scammer, that’s five or 10 minutes that they’re not talking to someone’s grandma.’ And I think that still is in the back of my mind.”
So using his software engineering background, he has managed to tie up some scammers for days — even weeks — in encounters that are comically absurd.
In one instance, Kitboga wastes almost 11 hours of a scammer’s time — over four days — promising to send the scammer $500 worth of Google Play cards, only to watch the scammer unravel as they learn he redeemed the funds instead.
He’s also used his expertise to create a software company called Seraph Secure, which offers free software designed to block fraudulent remote computer connections, preventing access to scam websites and alerting users when a threat is detected on their devices.
Watch these scambusters work with Marketplace journalists to confront fraudsters, intercept live calls and save people from losing their money.
Financial crime continues to be a worsening problem across Canada.
In 2024, total losses climbed to more than $630 million, accounting for all different types of cybercrime, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre — an increase from $576 million dollars in 2023.
The most common solicitation method used by fraudsters is calling their victims. Canadians lost more than $73 million to phone scams alone last year, more than double the reported losses from 2020.
Cybersecurity experts, law enforcement agencies and scambusters continue to recommend education as being the best tool in the fight against scams.
Marketplace has helped bring some of those scams to light, through travels to Mumbai, exposing where many of the overseas criminal operations are based. The team has also taken hidden cameras inside tech support scam centre operations to reveal what’s happening and the victims scammers usually target. In 2022, the team exposed some of the Canadians with alleged financial connections to the overseas criminal operations running scam call centres.
