Covert Acquisition Specialist

Get in, no time to explain, we're doing a sting ...

OK, perhaps I was a bit over the top there - I DO have time to explain.

But it’s a little complex - there’s a non-profit, we have a show on Rumble of all places, and we just caught a gig grifter … one that has a trail that leads back to what might be a Russian cybercrime operation.

Attention Conservation Notice:

We’ll apply some online conflict tradecraft to a serial fraudster running a gig economy scam. Who knows what we’ll uncover once we start digging. If this is your bag, we’ll be talking about it on the Non-State Actors Guild show Sunday at 23:45 Eastern.

Aletheia’s Voice:

My frenetic friend, Libby Shaw, started a non-profit called Aletheia’s Voice back in 2022. I’ve been quietly assisting here and there, and I recently admitted to this on my LinkedIn profile - I have the best job title ever.

My role is nosing around and finding contributions to the cause, which have mostly been “soft” in nature. We’re hunting for that niche where there’s some funding to address … there’s no polite way to say this - cognitive security. We have an open border, not to our south, it’s everywhere, this atrocious internet stuff. And we’re obviously not ready for what it has brought.

The Sunday night show is called Non-State Actors Guild, which I first mentioned in The Internet That Was. This is part of an extended gag that’s been going since last year. There were so many crackpots trying to claim that NAFO was a CIA operation that we started talking about the Canine Intelligence Agency. That name is overloaded - multiple groups using it, so some specificity was in order - the Directorate of Intelligence Logistics & Disinformation Operations was next. Social media is plagued by LARPers, so it naturally followed that we claimed the Live Action Role Playing Agency as the parent org. They don’t treat us so good, naturally unionizing followed from there …

There are even some @non.state.actors clips on TikTok, if you do not attention span.

Hapless Grifter:

Here I need to be a little bit cautious, I don’t want to disturb the water until the ambush predators get themselves in position. Generally speaking …

• There is a technical gig website that has fraudsters.

• One prolific problem bid on a thing I was managing for a client.

• Things didn’t add up in terms of the profile.

• There are a LOT of easily located victims.

• Dollar amounts are just below the FBI’s $7,500 event horizon.

• There is an infrastructure component to the scam.

• The infrastructure looks too big for just one grifter, it’s a nexus.

And that nexus … it’s not IN Russia, but I am immediately suspicious of the Russia friendly locations that are mentioned.

Methods:

We know what they look for in a target, so we’re gonna rig up a false front, post a job, and wait for the approach. Since we know it’s a scam from the start, it’s weapons free in terms of what we do - spearphish and ransomware is of course a crime, but if the victim is a criminal, they can’t very well go whining to IC3 about it …

There is some infrastructure involved. I’ll post the full Maltego file once we finish the interactions with the grifter - if we’re lucky The Internet will pile on.

Some of it shows signs of having been taken down, but I’m kinda blind any more without RiskIQ. We’ll map it out and see if we can get the service providers involved to pull the plug.

Conclusion:

I grew up in Iowa on a working farm in a town of seven hundred people. Skunks are nocturnal; if you see one out in the daylight, it’s got rabies. Doesn’t matter whose property its on, you pull over, get your shotgun from behind the seat of the trunk, and put an end to the hazard. You don’t hate the skunk, if anything you feel sorry for its suffering, but it has to be done, lest barn cats catch the disease and bite a child.

This is a similar situation. I don’t wish this person ill, it just makes me sad that their economy doesn’t provide them a better opportunity than posing as something they are not in order to defraud others.

Did I mention that Non-State Actors Guild airs Sunday nights at 23:45 Eastern?