True scam stories with a prevention mission.
Scammer Stories treats fraud as both a financial crime and an emotional trap. Episodes move between survivors, family members, investigators, advocates, and technology voices working around romance scams, pig butchering, sextortion, and prevention.
PRESS PLAY
Scammer Stories treats fraud as an intimate crime, not just a clever con. Its center of gravity is the person who believed, paid, doubted, explained it away, and then had to live with the damage. Recent episodes return to romance scams and pig butchering, while also making space for sextortion, fake banking pages, remote access to devices, money mules, elder-related scams, and the people trying to stop transfers before they are completed. The show’s strongest material comes from that collision between emotion and procedure. A victim may describe a false romance, a convincing bank login, or the steady pressure of gift cards and airfare. Then the conversation widens to advocacy kits for police departments, FBI comments on alleged romance-scam crimes, or a technology company using behavioral analysis to flag danger in real time. The host’s stance is openly protective of victims. Shame is treated as something scammers exploit, not something survivors deserve. That gives the show a practical edge. It is not only asking how the scam worked; it is asking what families, therapists, police departments, financial institutions, and advocacy groups can do when persuasion fails. The recent Al Pascual conversation brings in the banking-industry tension between personal control over money and intervention when a transaction looks harmful. The Kate episode shows how education campaigns can turn one survivor’s story into material for police training. The sextortion-focused episode follows the fear and confusion that can surround threats, copied identities, and family members trying to intervene. Scammer Stories is blunt, emotional, and prevention-minded. It belongs near true crime, but its purpose is less mystery than warning. The recurring promise is information: what the pattern looked like, what the victim missed, what outsiders tried, and why the same traps keep finding new people.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants true-crime material grounded in victim experience, family impact, and practical fraud awareness. It also fits people trying to understand romance scams, pig butchering, or sextortion without sensational treatment.
What sets it apart: Suits a listener who wants the emotional testimony and the prevention infrastructure in the same place. The show pairs survivor accounts with advocacy, law-enforcement, banking, and scam-detection perspectives rather than staying only inside the story of the con.
Scammers are targeting you and your loved ones. I know all too well. My mother spent $350,000 on a man she believed was her soulmate right before her death. The only way we can fight back is to arm ourselves with information. Scammer Warriors unite! These stories are from victims and their families. The details are so shocking that they're hard to believe.
A daughter calls her mother's scammer, and you hear what happens when the script gets interrupted.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Al Pasquale connects banking fraud investigation to real-time tools for stopping scams.
Scammer Stories shifts from survivor testimony to the machinery of prevention, giving Al Pasquale space to trace how banking work led him into fraud investigation and then to Scamnetic.
Fraud stories with comic whiplash.
Experts explain the con; the hosts ask what to do.
Family accusations meet evidence, pointed questions and consequences.
A married father loses $2 million to scammers after being encouraged to join social media, detailing his life before and the scam's onset.
["Scammer Stories interviews Scamnetic CEO and co-founder Al Pascual about NoScam, AutoScan, and ID Everyone, tools designed to detect scams in real time across email, text, and payment channels.", "Pascual traces his path from a family of police detectives to banking fraud teams, Javelin research, a consumer data-breach startup acquired by TransUnion, and the launch of Scamnetic about three years ago.", "He argues that scam education alone is too weak because behavior changes only 3 to 5 percent of the time, so banks, telecoms, and consumers need in-the-moment verification and warnings.", "The conversation covers romance scams, pig butchering, sextortion, money mules, UK-style reimbursement rules, and how AI now helps scammers build convincing phishing campaigns, fake sites, and deepfakes."]
Kate explains how a romance scammer turned one COVID gift card into repeated financial demands.
Scammer Stories examines romance scams, with volunteer advocate Tracy warning that sextortion can follow online romance and AI can create explicit images from ordinary photos.
A niece discovers her uncle is being scammed in a romance scheme while battling PTSD and alcoholism.
In Scammer Stories, Jackie describes discovering that her Massachusetts mother had spent nearly a year communicating with people impersonating Vince Gill.
Scammer Stories presents a phone call between Carrie, the daughter of a romance-scam victim, and Alex, who asks Carrie’s mother for money while claiming to care about her.