When people discover that they've been a victim of a scam, it can feel like the world is being pulled out from under them.  The aftermath of a scam is sometimes a very long and painful road to walk, and the worst part is that scam victims are often very much alone on that journey. But there's a growing push to change that.

We've come to the finale of Season Three of Nickel and Crime, and after so many episodes dissecting the world’s most devastating scams, today we're doing something a bit different: we’re focusing on surviving them. 

In this episode, we're looking at what happens after a scam. We’ll hear from Amisha Datta, a scam survivor who knows first hand how lonely being scammed can feel, and what needs to change with how we help victims. We're also talking to Mel Lanning from the Better Business Bureau about her organization’s incredible work in preventing scams and how they help victims who've been harmed by them.

About the Show

Take a deep dive into today’s most devious scams, as we expose the psychological tactics and surprising methods used to drain thousands of victims of billions of dollars every year.

At a time when financial crime is increasingly sophisticated, we go behind the schemes to understand the often brilliant – and sometimes foolish – crooks at work, so you can stay alert and avoid becoming their next victim.

In season 3, Nickel & Crime returns with new mind-twisting stories… and something more. We’re also taking a peek behind the curtain to see how Early Warning helps keep the U.S. financial ecosystem healthy using technology that can stop these bad actors before they strike.

With more focus on what you need to know to spot a scam, alongside our signature immersive storytelling, Nickel & Crime is back to dissect the deception, for your protection.

About Early Warning

Nickel & Crime is the award-winning financial true crime show brought to you by Early Warning®, a financial services technology leader that has been empowering and protecting consumers, small businesses, and the U.S. financial system with cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades. Through unmatched network intelligence and partnerships with more than 2,500 bank and credit union brands, we increase access to financial services and products, and protect financial transactions. We are the company behind Zelle®, and PazeSM online checkout solution. To learn more about Early Warning, visit www.earlywarning.com.

What financial crimes fascinate you? What questions do you have about risk and security? Connect with Nickel & Crime by commenting in the reviews.

In recent years, fires, storms, floods and even pandemics have threatened lives and caused extraordinary damage for millions of people. The good news is that governments, disaster relief specialists, and even ordinary, kind people always move in to help. The bad news is that in many of these emergency situations, scammers see an opportunity to pounce.

Disasters create a surge of vulnerable people, which, unfortunately, means easy picking for fraudsters. Victims are often overwhelmed, exhausted, and not thinking straight, and relief agencies are trying to help everyone all at once… and this is when the influx of fake charities, identity thieves, insurance scammers, and other nefarious actors arrive on the scene.

In this episode, we’re examining the calculating crooks behind disaster scams. We’ll look at the many ways scammers capitalize on the chaos of disaster, and how they steal financial support when people need it most.

About the Show

Take a deep dive into today’s most devious scams, as we expose the psychological tactics and surprising methods used to drain thousands of victims of billions of dollars every year.

At a time when financial crime is increasingly sophisticated, we go behind the schemes to understand the often brilliant – and sometimes foolish – crooks at work, so you can stay alert and avoid becoming their next victim.

In season 3, Nickel & Crime returns with new mind-twisting stories… and something more. We’re also taking a peek behind the curtain to see how Early Warning helps keep the U.S. financial ecosystem healthy using technology that can stop these bad actors before they strike.

With more focus on what you need to know to spot a scam, alongside our signature immersive storytelling, Nickel & Crime is back to dissect the deception, for your protection.

About Early Warning

Nickel & Crime is the award-winning financial true crime show brought to you by Early Warning®, a financial services technology leader that has been empowering and protecting consumers, small businesses, and the U.S. financial system with cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades. Through unmatched network intelligence and partnerships with more than 2,500 bank and credit union brands, we increase access to financial services and products, and protect financial transactions. We are the company behind Zelle®, and PazeSM online checkout solution. To learn more about Early Warning, visit www.earlywarning.com.

What financial crimes fascinate you? What questions do you have about risk and security? Connect with Nickel & Crime by commenting in the reviews.

Successful scams never quite disappear – they just shift and change over time, becoming new, slightly different versions of themselves as time goes on. But they all have to start somewhere, and in this episode we’re examining the evolution of one of the most famous scams of all: the Nigerian Prince scam.

The Nigerian Prince scam is an old, confidence scheme where the fraudster promises a big reward for a small, up-front price. But while that legendary con is now mostly a punchline, it has a fascinating history that goes back more than 100 years. It’s also the framework for more sophisticated and dangerous scams that are draining billions from victims every year.

Today, we’ll dive into the timeline of the Nigerian Prince scam, and how it has evolved into modern lucrative romance scams. We’ll also get a closer look at the enormous community of perpetrators: Nigeria’s hundreds of thousands of “Yahoo Boys”.

About the Show

Take a deep dive into today’s most devious scams, as we expose the psychological tactics and surprising methods used to drain thousands of victims of billions of dollars every year.

At a time when financial crime is increasingly sophisticated, we go behind the schemes to understand the often brilliant – and sometimes foolish – crooks at work, so you can stay alert and avoid becoming their next victim.

In season 3, Nickel & Crime returns with new mind-twisting stories… and something more. We’re also taking a peek behind the curtain to see how Early Warning helps keep the U.S. financial ecosystem healthy using technology that can stop these bad actors before they strike.

With more focus on what you need to know to spot a scam, alongside our signature immersive storytelling, Nickel & Crime is back to dissect the deception, for your protection.

About Early Warning

Nickel & Crime is the award-winning financial true crime show brought to you by Early Warning®, a financial services technology leader that has been empowering and protecting consumers, small businesses, and the U.S. financial system with cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades. Through unmatched network intelligence and partnerships with more than 2,500 bank and credit union brands, we increase access to financial services and products, and protect financial transactions. We are the company behind Zelle®, and PazeSM online checkout solution. To learn more about Early Warning, visit www.earlywarning.com.

What financial crimes fascinate you? What questions do you have about risk and security? Connect with Nickel & Crime by commenting in the reviews.

You know Nickel & Crime as the award-winning financial true crime show where we dissect the inner workings of modern fraud cases…but what do you know about Early Warning, the company behind the show? In this episode, we’re stepping away from our usual format to tell you all about our origin story.

Early Warning is a financial services technology leader that has been providing cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades, but what does that actually mean? The company has been around for 35 years but the average person has never heard the name. So, today, Deb chats with Tracy Cheney, General Counsel at Early Warning, Member of the Executive Team, and self-described “original intern”. With 27 years of service, Tracy is the company’s third longest tenured employee, starting out as an intern all those years ago.

Tracy and Deb will wade into the history of Early Warning, the evolution of technology in fraud prevention, and how the organization works in tandem with financial institutions to bring trust to the U.S. financial system.

About the Show

Take a deep dive into today’s most devious scams, as we expose the psychological tactics and surprising methods used to drain thousands of victims of billions of dollars every year.

At a time when financial crime is increasingly sophisticated, we go behind the schemes to understand the often brilliant – and sometimes foolish – crooks at work, so you can stay alert and avoid becoming their next victim.

In season 3, Nickel & Crime returns with new mind-twisting stories… and something more. We’re also taking a peek behind the curtain to see how Early Warning helps keep the U.S. financial ecosystem healthy using technology that can stop these bad actors before they strike. 

With more focus on what you need to know to spot a scam, alongside our signature immersive storytelling, Nickel & Crime is back to dissect the deception, for your protection.

About Early Warning

Nickel & Crime is the award-winning financial true crime show brought to you by Early Warning®, a financial services technology leader that has been empowering and protecting consumers, small businesses, and the U.S. financial system with cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades. Through unmatched network intelligence and partnerships with more than 2,500 bank and credit union brands, we increase access to financial services and products, and protect financial transactions. We are the company behind Zelle®, and PazeSM online checkout solution. To learn more about Early Warning, visit www.earlywarning.com.

What financial crimes fascinate you? What questions do you have about risk and security? Connect with Nickel & Crime by commenting in the reviews.

When it comes to pulling off financial crime, do women have an edge? Some research suggests that they do. It also suggests that while women are actually more likely than men to engage in financial crime, they are often the least suspected. The reason might stem from a powerful bias that women are largely “nice”, and usually trustworthy. In this episode we explore how this belief might have been at play in a 200 million dollar Ponzi scheme run by a Florida woman named Johanna Garcia.

It's a story about how Johanna pulled in thousands of investors by leaning on her persona as a community builder from humble beginnings. The belief in Johanna’s kind-heartedness was so strong, that even as she was under investigation, and their money was frozen, her investors refused to believe she was capable of such a crime.

We’re joined by our guest fraud expert, Kelly Paxton, a certified fraud examiner and expert on pink-collar crime – a term that describes theft from the workplace that's committed by low or mid level employees; roles that are typically held by women. However, pink-collar crime has evolved to encompass much more than embezzlement by women, and today it’s on the rise. Kelly explains how women can often more easily build trust and fly under the radar as they steal from clients or employers.

This is a fascinating dive into the phenomenon of pink-collar crime and how Johanna Garcia built her Ponzi scheme from her small time bookkeeping business to a country-wide investment scam. It’s an examination of the idea that when it comes to fraud, being a woman can be the perfect cover.

About the Show

Take a deep dive into today’s most devious scams, as we expose the psychological tactics and surprising methods used to drain thousands of victims of billions of dollars every year.

At a time when financial crime is increasingly sophisticated, we go behind the schemes to understand the often brilliant – and sometimes foolish – crooks at work, so you can stay alert and avoid becoming their next victim.

In season 3, Nickel & Crime returns with new mind-twisting stories… and something more. We’re also taking a peek behind the curtain to see how Early Warning helps keep the U.S. financial ecosystem healthy using technology that can stop these bad actors before they strike.

With more focus on what you need to know to spot a scam, alongside our signature immersive storytelling, Nickel & Crime is back to dissect the deception, for your protection.

About Early Warning

Nickel & Crime is the award-winning financial true crime show brought to you by Early Warning®, a financial services technology leader that has been empowering and protecting consumers, small businesses, and the U.S. financial system with cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades. Through unmatched network intelligence and partnerships with more than 2,500 bank and credit union brands, we increase access to financial services and products, and protect financial transactions. We are the company behind Zelle®, and PazeSM online checkout solution. To learn more about Early Warning, visit www.earlywarning.com.

What financial crimes fascinate you? What questions do you have about risk and security? Connect with Nickel & Crime by commenting in the reviews.

Everyone loves a deal, but sometimes those deals come at a very high cost. Bargain hunters looking to save on high-priced brands can be easily sucked into buying counterfeit goods but today, luxury items aren’t the only fakes on the market. In the online, global economy, counterfeiting is highly organized, industrial in scale, and touches almost any product you can imagine. There are counterfeit car parts, electronics, alcohol, toys, and prescription drugs, so you’re not just getting ripped off anymore; products like these can cause real damage, injury and even death. What’s more, counterfeiting revenue often supports organized crime operations around the world.

In this episode, we’re looking at the multi-layered world of counterfeiting; a financial crime worth almost half a trillion dollars annually. Starting in New York City, exploring the biggest counterfeit raid in history, we’ll jump over to a luxury Palm Beach boutique selling fakes, and then look at the bottomless well of counterfeits sold on the web. We’ll also hear about the massive Bogus Bazaar scam, and how counterfeiting is connected to identity theft.

This is the story of vast counterfeiting networks that are increasingly dangerous, incredibly difficult to stop, and fed by an insatiable demand for bargains.

About the Show

Take a deep dive into today’s most devious scams, as we expose the psychological tactics and surprising methods used to drain thousands of victims of billions of dollars every year.

At a time when financial crime is increasingly sophisticated, we go behind the schemes to understand the often brilliant – and sometimes foolish – crooks at work, so you can stay alert and avoid becoming their next victim.

In season 3, Nickel & Crime returns with new mind-twisting stories… and something more. We’re also taking a peek behind the curtain to see how Early Warning helps keep the U.S. financial ecosystem healthy using technology that can stop these bad actors before they strike. 

With more focus on what you need to know to spot a scam, alongside our signature immersive storytelling, Nickel & Crime is back to dissect the deception, for your protection.

About Early Warning

Nickel & Crime is the award-winning financial true crime show brought to you by Early Warning®, a financial services technology leader that has been empowering and protecting consumers, small businesses, and the U.S. financial system with cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades. Through unmatched network intelligence and partnerships with more than 2,500 bank and credit union brands, we increase access to financial services and products, and protect financial transactions. We are the company behind Zelle®, and PazeSM online checkout solution. To learn more about Early Warning, visit www.earlywarning.com.

What financial crimes fascinate you? What questions do you have about risk and security? Connect with Nickel & Crime by commenting in the reviews.

How often do you get texts from strangers saying “hi, how are you?” out of the blue? Most people with a cell phone or a social media account have received something like this at least once. It’s the opening line of a very common scam, and so many of us have seen these texts, because there are hundreds of thousands of people working in factory-like systems, across multiple countries sending them. But those texters aren't the heartless criminals you think they are, and many of them are victims of a scam themselves.

In this episode, we're looking at the scammers behind those texts. It’s the story of young workers who have been lured by what they believed would be lucrative, white collar jobs, only to be enslaved by criminal organizations, brutalized and forced to run online scams that net billions in stolen funds each year.

About the Show

Welcome to Season 3 of Nickel & Crime! Take a deep dive into today’s most devious scams, as we expose the psychological tactics and surprising methods used to drain thousands of victims of billions of dollars every year.

At a time when financial crime is increasingly sophisticated, we go behind the schemes to understand the often brilliant – and sometimes foolish – crooks at work, so you can stay alert and avoid becoming their next victim.

In season 3, Nickel & Crime returns with new mind-twisting stories… and something more. We’re also taking a peek behind the curtain to see how Early Warning helps keep the U.S. financial ecosystem healthy using technology that can stop these bad actors before they strike.

With more focus on what you need to know to spot a scam, alongside our signature immersive storytelling, Nickel & Crime is back to dissect the deception, for your protection.

About Early Warning

Nickel & Crime is the award-winning financial true crime show brought to you by Early Warning®, a financial services technology leader that has been empowering and protecting consumers, small businesses, and the U.S. financial system with cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades. Through unmatched network intelligence and partnerships with more than 2,500 bank and credit union brands, we increase access to financial services and products, and protect financial transactions. We are the company behind Zelle®, and PazeSM online checkout solution. To learn more about Early Warning, visit www.earlywarning.com.

What financial crimes fascinate you? What questions do you have about risk and security? Connect with Nickel & Crime by commenting in the reviews.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and for financial criminals, that’s doubly so. In a season when everyone is at their most generous (and their most stressed) now is one of the best times for scammers to scam.

That’s why, on this special holiday episode of Nickel & Crime we’re sharing everything you need to know about some typical holiday scams, and how to avoid them. We want you to be merry, but be wary.

From everyone at Nickel & Crime, have a safe holiday, and we’ll see you back here for more new episodes in 2025!

About the Show

Welcome to Season 3 of Nickel & Crime! Take a deep dive into today’s most devious scams, as we expose the psychological tactics and surprising methods used to drain thousands of victims of billions of dollars every year.

At a time when financial crime is increasingly sophisticated, we go behind the schemes to understand the often brilliant – and sometimes foolish – crooks at work, so you can stay alert and avoid becoming their next victim.

In season 3, Nickel & Crime has returned with new mind-twisting stories… and something more. We’re also taking a peek behind the curtain to see how Early Warning helps keep the U.S. financial ecosystem healthy using technology that can stop these bad actors before they strike.

With more focus on what you need to know to spot a scam, alongside our signature immersive storytelling, Nickel & Crime is back to dissect the deception, for your protection.

About Early Warning

Nickel & Crime is the award-winning financial true crime show brought to you by Early Warning®, a financial services technology leader that has been empowering and protecting consumers, small businesses, and the U.S. financial system with cutting-edge fraud and payment solutions for more than three decades. Through unmatched network intelligence and partnerships with more than 2,500 bank and credit union brands, we increase access to financial services and products, and protect financial transactions. We are the company behind Zelle®, and PazeSM online checkout solution. To learn more about Early Warning, visit www.earlywarning.com.

What financial crimes fascinate you? What questions do you have about risk and security? Connect with Nickel & Crime by commenting in the reviews.