Crypto Pig Butchering Scams, Elder Fraud and Bond Market Warnings with Courtney Werning
Steve Sexton talks with investor-rights attorney Courtney Werning of Meyer Wilson & Werning about pig butchering crypto scams, impersonation fraud and Ponzi schemes targeting seniors, before closing solo with a warning on rising bond yields.
Welcoming Courtney Werning To Discuss Crypto Fraud
Steve Sexton opens the show by thanking his growing audience before turning to a subject he calls scarier than Halloween: financial scams. He cites cyber crime losses reaching roughly twenty billion dollars in a year, a twenty percent increase, concentrated among people over sixty, and introduces Courtney Werning, a partner at Meyer Wilson and Werning, one of the country's leading investor-rights law firms. He calls her the driving force behind the firm's cryptocurrency litigation and says she has recovered millions from a single pig butchering scam. Werning gently corrects part of his introduction, noting she currently serves as vice president of the Public Investors Advocacy Bar Association and will become its president next year rather than holding the role now. She explains that after thirteen or fourteen years representing investors against financial institutions, her practice has shifted heavily toward digital assets over the last four or five years as defrauded seniors increasingly seek her help.
Inside The Pig Butchering Scam
Sexton shares a listener's story about a woman who met someone online, believed she was building a relationship, and drained her 401(k) repeatedly after being told she needed more money in an account before withdrawing. Werning says she hears versions of that call multiple times a day and calls the pattern a global health crisis for seniors, worsened by artificial intelligence making scams look more polished. She explains that about ninety-five percent of these scams begin with an unsolicited message on a dating app or social media platform, with trust built over weeks or months before an investment pitch appears, often alongside screenshots of fake profits. Sexton recalls a friend nearly sending a hundred thousand dollars to a supposed Wall Street cryptocurrency genius who turned out to be texting from Taiwan. Werning describes scammers sometimes releasing early profits to the victim, then inventing crises like fake SEC investigations once the money runs low, pulling in still more funds before the victim is cut off entirely.
Tornado Wallets And The Duty To Protect Clients
After a break, Sexton asks Werning to explain how stolen money disappears through what she called a tornado mixer. She says blockchain transactions are irreversible once funds leave American financial institutions, since law enforcement cannot easily reach wallets held in foreign jurisdictions. The real fight, she argues, is prevention at the brokerage and investment-advisor level, since roughly thirty-five trillion dollars in retirement assets sits with FINRA-registered broker-dealers and SEC-registered advisors rather than under mattresses or on exchanges. She says those firms carry a legal duty to spot red flags and escalate suspected fraud, yet sometimes fail to act even when an advisor privately suspects something is wrong. Sexton calls that admission shocking. Werning attributes the gap to inadequate training rather than malice, saying frontline employees often do not know how to raise concerns or involve a fraud department, leaving a disconnect between what firms are supposed to do and what actually happens when money is about to leave the door.
Trusted Contacts, Safe Words And Family Protection
Werning highlights FINRA's trusted contact rule, in place since 2018, which lets account holders name someone a firm can call if something seems wrong, without giving that person authority over the account. She says firms often fail to properly offer it, but fraud staff tell her that once a trusted contact gets involved, it is often enough to stop a scam. Sexton recalls his grandmother once receiving a call she believed was from his brother, which the family verified through a separate phone call before acting. Werning recommends families adopt a spoken safe word, so any request to move money without it is immediately suspect. She stresses that intelligent, successful people, including doctors, engineers and a former CIA agent among her clients, have fallen for these scams, and argues the narrative must shift from blaming victims for being fooled to asking how everyone can better prevent the manipulation from working in the first place.
Impersonation Scams And Ponzi Schemes Persist
Werning describes government impersonation scams as especially effective on seniors, recounting a ninety-three-year-old client who spent a month believing she was helping the FBI, moving one and a half million dollars through crypto ATMs before realizing she had been deceived. She warns that government agencies never call asking people to move money, and urges families to verify any such call independently. She also describes family-voice impersonation using short audio clips and social-engineering calls where scammers quote a victim's real account details, stolen from data breaches, to sound convincing before asking for a wallet transfer. Sexton shares a story about his wife nearly giving up a bank PIN to a caller posing as Wells Fargo. Werning separately explains Ponzi schemes, saying they always eventually collapse once new investor money dries up, and warns that any investment promising extraordinary, low-risk returns, often pitched by someone charismatic and trusted, like a son or church friend, deserves serious suspicion rather than belief.
Recovery Steps And A Closing Look At Bond Yields
Werning advises anyone scammed to file a police report and an IC3 report, preserve every message, email and wire receipt, and contact a securities attorney through a site like investorclaims.com to see whether an institution's negligence contributed to the loss. She notes a bipartisan bill could restore a theft-related tax deduction for fraud victims, after one of Sexton's listeners was later billed by the IRS for retirement funds a scammer had drained. After thanking Werning, Sexton closes solo on the bond market, noting Treasury Secretary Bessent's failed attempts to buy back ten- and thirty-year bonds to cap yields, and the ten-year rate pushing above five percent as it did in 2022. He warns that heavily indebted tech companies funding data centers face rising borrowing costs that can pressure portfolios, and urges listeners to ask their advisor three questions about handling uncertainty, performing in good times, and absorbing losses before making any portfolio adjustments.
