He Turned His Own Father In. Then Built a Career Catching Con Artists.

Javier: Last year I got invited to speak at a cybersecurity conference in Dubai. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Little old me, a podcaster from Raleigh, North Carolina, talking in front of hundreds of cybersecurity experts from around the world, totally wild. At the event, I met a lot of interesting people: former identity thieves, hackers, amateur sleuths. One woman introduced me to a colleague of hers. She said he'd be perfect for the podcast. His name is William Ruzich. After I got home, William and I hopped on a video call, and he told me this incredible story, not just about his investigative work, but his personal life, too, and I was floored. William's father stole his identity while he was deployed in Afghanistan, and when William came home from war, he found bills, liens, and creditors in his own name. He had to turn his father in for fraud. Then William told me that he went to work hunting fraudsters from around the globe. Think of him as an international private intelligence operative, tracking down the people who steal, scam, and cheat, just like his dad. And then guess what? I lost the recording. I searched everywhere, and to make matters worse, I forgot William's last name, so I couldn't even look up his email. I figured that this story was gone for good, the Pretend episode that never was. Then, a year later, I get a message. It's William, just checking in. I told him, "Oh, my God, I am so glad to hear from you." So we set up a new call. I'm Javier Leva, and this is Pretend: stories about real people pretending to be someone else. If you're at a dinner party, you know, and somebody asks you, like, "What do you do for a living?" Tell me how, how does that conversation go?

William Ruzich: Usually it depends who the company is. So I was out with a colleague the other day, and they asked us, like, what we did, and so I was just like, "Oh, I'm, um, I'm a political advisor." Which that's not a lie. I do advise on a political level with certain governments, and so yeah, so I just… very broad, and usually people just, like- Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: That way you don't have to get into it, right? Yeah, or people just, like, they hear politics and like, "Oh, God," and they just, like, kind of- … drown Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: out. Move on. William Ruzich: Yeah.

Javier: But I mean, you do have a really cool job, and I, I'm sure it's, like, a cool bar trick, you know, like just even telling people just one of, one of your crazy investigations, I'm sure. William Ruzich: I'm not one for fame. I don't want attention. I just wanna blend… Like, I, like, I'm covered in tattoos. I'm a big guy. Like, everyone, you know, I stand out, but I don't wanna stand out. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: Think of him as a private-for-hire CIA operative who happens to have a team of analysts and hackers at his disposal. The only difference is he doesn't have a badge. William was telling me about a case that came to him through a sheriff's department. A local guy, a personal friend of the sheriff, got his phone hacked. William Ruzich: Somebody got inside of his phone, so basically what they did was it was, like, sim swapping. They paid some guy in America to go in with a fake ID, you know, get a new sim card. They got into his phone, and then they got into his PayPal, his bank account, and, uh, I think, like, his crypto account, and they just flushed it. Like, it within a matter of, like, days, and he never got any notification that this was happening. And so they gave us all the information. They gave us, like, the PayPal, like, all the login information to, like, IP addresses. So what we did was we found, like, they had an IP address. I ran it through our database. We have, like, a giant database with over, like, 10 billion different records, and it popped up with somebody that was in New York, and it correlated with the login. So I'm like, "This has to be it." So he did the only thing that made sense. He picked up the phone. William Ruzich: And so I called the kid up and I'm like, I was like, "Hey, you know, you never paid your bills." And he's like, "What?" I was like, "Come on, like, you know, we gave you the money, so you need to pay your bills." And the kid was like, "No, no, no, I'm sorry, you know, what- whatever." Think about what he's actually doing. He's calling a stranger he believes is involved in draining a man's bank accounts. If he opens up with, "I know you committed fraud," the kid will just hang up immediately, and that was the end of that. William told me that part of how this works is all psychological. He'll let a target know just how much he already knows about them, their family's names, where they travel, things they never would expect a stranger to find. The kid must have been wondering, "Who the hell is this guy?" It's less of a threat and more of a demonstration. You can't hide from me, so you might as well talk. It's lying, it's manipulation, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. William told me in an email, "Why can't we fight fire with fire? You know, as long as we're not breaking the law." This is what people in the industry call social engineering, otherwise known as lying. William Ruzich: He's like, and he's like, "Like, I'll give you the, the other contact." And so he gave us this contact in South

Africa Javier Leiva: Now William is pulling on this thread. The man in South Africa only speaks Afrikaans. Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch William Ruzich: And I speak, I speak enough Dutch to get by. And so we started speaking on that level. I don't know. I just started like connecting with the guy. I was just like, I'm like, Hey, you know, you stole money from my client and you don't know who my client is, but he's not someone you want to steal money from. And then he was just like, Hey man, these guys that hired us, they didn't pay me. So I'm out for them as well. Luckily for my part is that the guy got burned in South Africa and I spoke Dutch. So we had some kind of like mutual level of like, Hey, we both been burned. You burned my client. You've been burned. Let's burn these guys. And then I'll, you know, I'll make sure that your name's not in this. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: William says that he earned the trust of this man, and little by little he starts explaining how the whole scheme works. The South African man told him,

William Ruzich: So then he kind of gave me the breakdown of it. He goes, so we hired this guy out. And so they hired me to be the researcher. So he would research everybody in the United States and he would find like the stringers or the guys that would get the fake IDs. He would find like the guys like in New York that would kind of like facilitate the transaction as well, like the money mules. And then there was another guy that was helping launder the money. He was in Denmark. And then there was two kids that were like 26 years old in Spain. And he goes, I'll introduce you to them because they owe me about $30,000. And I'm like, cool, let's do it. And so he puts me in their telegram group. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: Inside their Telegram group chat, it was basically black market bartering. Who's got a login to pull someone's Social Security number? Who's got access to someone's tax filings? all this crazy stuff and they were getting this stuff and so like they asked one time on something and like I gave them some like fraudulent one they're like oh bro this is good and then they kind of like gave me a little bit more than they should have about them and then so I just started running it against like our database other databases and then finally pulled up these these kids that were 26 just had 50 like 56 million bucks and they were just blowing through like coke and having cars fast cars all this kind of stuff and then hand it over to secret service and they're like how did you get this and i'm like you ever just talked to the criminal Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: William told me about another case. This one, he said, was still active. A man had taken something like $86 million from an investor and then vanished. The exact dollar amount doesn't really matter to him, because William's job is just to find the guy. William Ruzich: He owned, like, a bunch of hotel chains or something along those lines, and he got investors' money. He was just like, "Oh, company went bankrupt," and then he just disappeared.

Javier: Like many of William's stories, I couldn't verify it, but that's the nature of the business. He doesn't know what ends up happening with many of the cases he works on. Like I said earlier, he doesn't have a badge. He's like an international bounty hunter, except at the end of the chase, he passes off the baton to law enforcement. But let's get back to the story. So basically, this guy owes a ton of money and skips out of town. William Ruzich: And we looked at his, like, house out in, I think it was, uh, one part of LA, and then he had a bunch of other properties, and he was a Chinese national. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: So how do you find someone who doesn't want to be found, someone who could be anywhere in the world?

William Ruzich: So by using, like, yeah, consumer data that, you know, you can buy out there from, like, different app companies and whatnot, we were, we were able to say, like, "Well, A, he's not at the house that you guys think he is." So with that consumer data, I was, I was able to go, you know, "All right. He sleeps here. He's been here. He's been here at this beach house. He's been here over at this place in Toronto."

Javier: Here's something that sounds like spycraft but actually isn't. Since around 2001, there's been a hobby called wardriving. These days, people drive around with an app running, and it silently logs every Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signal that their phone picks up, then tags it with the GPS coordinates, and all of this is uploaded to a free public website that anyone can search. William Ruzich: And they'll collect all your, like, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth data, and they'll post it on… Like, there's, like, a website they p- It's a free kind of website. You can go in and look. And they name their house, their, like, router, after their, their name. Right. Back, back in 2000. You're like- Yeah, it's, so you, so you're just giving yourself away Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: So I probably shouldn't name my Wi-Fi router Javier's House. Stick to the classics like It Hurts When I Pee or Hide Yo Kids, Hide Yo Wi-Fi. This type of data collection is not hacking, it's just a hobby. People driving around mapping the wireless world one street at a time, and the database is huge. I'm talking millions of networks dating back years. And you might be asking yourself, why do people even do this? Some are security researchers trying to prove how exposed open networks really are, and some of them are just collectors of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals. It's like a scavenger hunt with a leaderboard, and all of this gets uploaded to a free website. Man, I wish I had that kind of time. And for investigators like William, this Wi-Fi and Bluetooth data is gold. And William Ruzich: so I'm like, "Here's the five addresses. Send people out there," and then bam, they, they ended up finding him and serving him. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: I think that normies, you know, like people who are not in this world, would be shocked to know how much commercial data is out there, you know? Then there's the location data itself. Two companies, Babel Street and Anomaly Six, buy up location data harvested from ordinary apps on your phone, like the weather app, the game you downloaded, anything that quietly shares your GPS position with advertisers, and then they resell that data to government, to defense agencies, to intelligence agencies. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that police need a warrant to track your phone's location through your cellphone carrier. And then just this June, the court went even further, ruling that even asking a company like Google to hand over everyone's location in any given area counts as a search, and so police need a warrant for that as well. But none of that touches what these companies like Babel Street and Anomaly Six do because they are not compelled to hand over anything. They actually want cops to buy your location data on the open market. Homeland Security, ICE, the Secret Service, they've all been reported buying this exact same kind of data, and no warrant needed. Technically, they're not tracking you, they're just shopping, and we should all be very concerned about that. The same tool is available to the bad guys, right?

William Ruzich: Yeah. If they do their KYC properly. If they don't do their KYC properly, yeah, you, you can. "

Javier: If they do their KYC properly" means that if the data vendor is actually checking that the customer is a licensed investigator, a law firm, a real business with a legitimate use case, then presumably these bad actors get screened out. So the entire safety of this world rests on whether we can trust these data companies? No law, no license required, no independent oversight body is actually gatekeeping who gets to buy Americans' locations in bulk. You're telling me this whole thing is based on the honor system? I think a lot of people don't realize that you're walking with a tracking device basically. William Ruzich: Yeah. Right?

William Ruzich: Yeah. There's Bluetooth. Like, this is a tracking device. I have a, I have an analyst, he has an implant in his back for his nerve, and that gives off a Bluetooth. So, or, or the people that have that, uh- Or hearing Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: aids. Yeah. Yeah, anything that gives off- Yeah, the diabetes thing … a radio signal. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: Yeah. Yeah. You can- Yeah … you can track that. Like, we have a tool that does that, and we can… We teach government how to do it, but you can exploit that and get into your Bluetooth, make it think like it's a device, and connect it with it, and then you can sit there and track it as long as it's within range. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: In this day and age, there's no expectation of privacy, and there's nowhere to hide. There are so many ways to track people down. When we come back from the break, William tells us about his father's fraud. Then he takes me inside the industry where he works now, an industry that's supposed to be full of good guys, except some of them aren't. Fraud is William's origin story, whether he would frame it that way or not. His father stole his identity while he was at war, racking up a bunch of debt under his son's name. So William decided that he wasn't going to follow his father's footsteps. He went into a business built on catching people just like that That brings me to my next question because I've been to a lot of these conferences. There's a lot of players in this field, and some of them are legit and some of them aren't, you know? And it's hard to tell who's who, really William Ruzich: I put it this way. So my dad was in the, was in the Marine Corps, and he would say, "Anybody out there that talks, that, like, talks a big game about, like, their combat experience, like, over and over and over again, they're full of shit." And he goes, "There'll be a person that just talked about it one time or they won't talk, they won't say a word about it, and then you'll just, you'll just know." I've had several people that have come to me and said that were victimed Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: But here's the thing about that business, though. The clients who show up aren't calm. They're in crisis. Somebody just took their money and they need it back fast. There's no time to vet who they're hiring, and William says that that's exactly what some people in the industry count on. William Ruzich: They were victims, like double victims I guess you could call it. They were stolen from, and they went there, and they were, they stole their money, and they were like, "Can you help us?"

Javier: A lot of these companies in the fraud prevention business, William says, are just as slimy as the con artists that they claim to catch. He found out firsthand at a conference he was speaking at in Thailand. William Ruzich: I knew exactly who they were. They were, they were a crypto asset recovery company. I knew from, like, investigating them already, and I knew from talking to someone at the FBI that they were, they were, like, under investigation, and I couldn't believe that they were there. It happens all the time, like, at these, at these conferences. It's either you'll meet… 50% of them will be real. Then the rest will just be, like, you know, just random fraudsters that are looking, trying to get their foot in the door or something. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: That's interesting. And you actually called them out? But you let them know that you knew, like- William Ruzich: Oh, yeah Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: they knew that you knew what was going William Ruzich: on. Yeah. And, and I just turned and I was like, "You know what? You know, I know half of us in the room here, like, you know, we're trying to solve this problem and get this, and get this out of our way, and it doesn't affect us any more than it already does, but there's some of you in this room that are the problem. And I know who you are, and you just enjoy your, you know, your little vacation in Thailand right now because you're under investigation by the FBI." And then I just, like, did a, a mic drop- … and everyone was just like- Awkward … "What? What, what did he say?" And then I had people come up to me and they're like, "Is it, is it those people over there?" And I'm like, "I'm not gonna say anything." Yeah. Like, but- Right, right, yeah … they knew who they were. If you know, you… If you know, you know. You know. Yeah. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: That's the William who's comfortable calling out the fraudsters in a room full of strangers, but I could tell that this next story, he was bracing for it. Because it's easier to talk about someone else's fraud than your own family's So this is the part of the story that I think is gonna perk people's ears, because y- you're, you're coming back from Afghanistan, and you come home to, like, a huge surprise, and that's an understatement, right?

William Ruzich: Yeah. You know, my, my mom and dad divorced when I was, like, 12 or 13 years old, and so my dad lived in Florida. My mom lived in Chicago, where we're from. And so my dad was, you know, living his, his life down in Florida, playboy life, you know, what- whatnot. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: While he was still deployed, months before he even came home, letters started showing up at his barracks. William Ruzich: And they're just like, "Hey. Hey, Ruzich, like, what's going on? Like, are you taking out loans or this and that?" I'm like, "Whoa, wait, what are you talking about, sir? Like, I have no idea what you're talking about." And they're just like, "Well, it says here, like, down in Pinellas County, Florida, like, you got, you know, you got a tax lien against your house, and this, this." I go, "I never lived there, sir. Like, I don't know what's going on."

Javier: Someone using his name and his Social Security number was taking out loans using William's name. William Ruzich: Come to find out it was, like, my dad Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: His dad was dating a woman who had a grown son of her own. He was in his early 20s, and at some point he made a fake ID using William's identity and started using it to open up cellphone accounts, car loans, maybe even a house William Ruzich: And it was her son, uh, that was helping him with the fraud. But the thing was, it wasn't like they were trying to enrich themselves. Like, my dad was, he was more along the lines of, like, because his credit was so screwed, because he'd done this for years, he was just trying to do it just to maintain, you know, the lifestyle that he had. And then, but he would always pay off his stuff, but it was just like, it, it just, I think it just kept compiling. I talked to somebody down, I talked to an officer down in, in Florida, and we got him arrested, and he's just like, "Hey, you wanna press charges?" I go, "You know, I don't really care." William tells me that his father was never charged. William Ruzich: This isn't the first time I've heard of my dad being in trouble. Like, when I was back at, um, Fort Gordon for training, he called me up and he was just like, "You know, they, they nicked me for, you know, s- uh, they said I stole some tools and whatnot." And, like, my dad used to do some weird stuff. He'd go to Home Depot, buy a tool, use that tool for the job, and go back to Home Depot and be like, "Eh, tool didn't work," and then return it. Return it. And I'm like- Yeah … like, what? You know- Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: I mean, who hasn't done that, right?

Yeah. William Ruzich: I've ne- like, I've … It was just so random. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: But, but that's how, like, certain people think, right? You know what I mean?

Like- William Ruzich: Yeah …

Javier: some people are, like, some people are just opportunists, right? Like- Yeah … and, like, y- even the, the stuff that you were saying is like, I mean, for the most part, actually you probably have met people who are career con men. William Ruzich: Yeah. Like, those people are, like, that's their job to be a con man. But, like, the, the con man the way we traditionally think about it- Mm-hmm … eh, for the most part they don't go in with the plan of screwing somebody over. It's like, uh, one of those things where they get in over their head, and then it's like it's either you or me, and they pick me, you know what I mean?

Yeah. William Ruzich: Yeah, man. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: Um, is that, would, is that a fair representation of your dad?

William Ruzich: You know, I wouldn't- I wanna say that he would just take advantage of a situation. If he saw, like, "Hey, I can do this, not get in trouble, you know, let's do it." Um, like, it was… I, I think the, the, the biggest realization I knew my dad was probably involved in fraud when I was, like, maybe 15 years old, when I was a stupid kid and I tattooed myself with, like, a needle and thread. You know, whatever. And my dad's like, "That looks stupid. You're gonna get it covered up." My dad made me a fake ID to say I was 16 years old, and I'm like, "How did you know this?" Like, it was very strange. And then I was supposed to live down there with him in Florida, and he lied on my job application and all this kind- I was like, "No, this is, this is weird. Like, why would you do this? Like, just tell them who I am. Like, tell them I'm, I'm 15 years old." You know, you work in this area, you're surrounded by odd people all the time, and they don't make it… Th- people aren't human to them. Like, these people that are scamming, they're not human. They're- They're just- Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: detached. Yeah. Yeah, they're detached from them. And so that, like, I would- I get that if you were doing that to other people. But your own son or your own family members, like, that's, that's cold. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: Yeah. I mean, so yeah. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: And, and, like, how was your relationship before, like you said, you got him arrested? Like, how was, was, were you guys close, or, like, how was that? I used to play football a lot, and, uh, like, he wanted me to go to Notre Dame, and like… So we were, we were, like, tight. Like, we were, we were good. I did a little, like… After, like, a lot of stuff came out, I did a big investigation on him, and I was just like, "You know what? I need to know more about him," 'cause I really actually don't know who my father is, to be honest with you. And I've, I cracked into some of his, like, dating profile, like old dating profiles and whatnot, and he would… He had stuff written in there like, you know, "I have two sons. They're, they're the li- like, they're my life. Like, I love my sons, but…" You know, and I was like, "Okay, that, that really didn't…" Like, you know, I was like, "Okay." You know, he was telling people that.

That's Javier Leiva: good.

Yeah. William Ruzich: You know, and so m- like, our relationship was, was… I would say it was good. Like, even when I joined the Army, he was-- I remember he came down for my graduation, and he was like, he was so proud. He was like, "You know, your grand…" Like, "All of us are, like, really proud of you, and I'm glad you're doing something with your life." And so, like, you know, like, it, it was, it was good. I, I still wish he was alive today. Like, I would really look past this, you know? I'd be like, "Hey, man." Yeah. You know, "I, I, I agree that, you know, what you did was shitty, but, you know, you're my dad." You know? So unless he kept doing it, then it'd be like, "All right. All right, bro."

Javier: This stuff is complicated, right? It's not like, ah, he screwed you over. You know, like, hey, he's your dad, right? And you had really good moments with him, too, right? Growing up, you didn't know him like that. You knew him as your dad, you know, the guy you played football with and all that. And, uh… But I would imagine that you probably didn't feel the way you do now when you came back from Afghanistan and you found out. William Ruzich: No, no, I just like, I was like, "Dude, get the, get the fuck out of my life." I was on the phone with him, and I was just like, "Just go fucking die." Like, "Leave me…" Like, "Leave me alone." And then, you know, I think like a year later, like, he died. He died of type 2 diabetes on the side of the road and, you know? And that was the last time I talked to him. I felt nothing. I was just numb to it. I was like, "You know, you know, you, you, you did this to your own son." People don't think about like, "Oh, well, th-this happened to me, and this is how, who I am because of that." Like, people don't think about that. But retrospectively, like, do you feel like your experience with your dad and, like, your career, how do you hold those two things together?

William Ruzich: I mean, I just, I live a great life. Like I have, I'm so, like I'm, I'm blessed with everything I have. Like I can't let, let just, you know, a little bit of daddy issues like destroy my entire life or let it, you know, like I, I have, you know, I have great people surrounding me. Javier Leiva - Host of PRETEND: William grew up with a guy who never thought twice about scamming his own kid, and now he spends his career trying to catch people who do the same thing to others. He's picked up a few of his dad's instincts along the way. Fight fire with fire, he calls it, trying to stay on the right side of that line most of the time. He's also a hard guy to pin down. William doesn't like to talk about where he actually lives. He's basically a ghost. I know for a fact that someone spent two years trying to find him for something official and couldn't. William Ruzich: But that's not where he lives. Like if you can find me- Right … I will give you money because like I am, I keep a very low profile, and yeah, there might be like public information out there about me, but like it ain't true. Like,

Javier: All right. That's it for today's show. Every now and then, I like to feature a small business who is also a Patreon supporter of this show, and today we're gonna feature a book called Kingdom Forge. It's a book that teaches kids about online safety. Think of a Diary of a Wimpy Kid meets Ready Player One. It's a fast-paced thriller about friendship, trust, and the hidden dangers of the online world. Online predators are using the gaming platforms our kids love to target them, and most kids have no idea what's happening. Kingdom Forge is a fun book that kids will actually wanna read, and then it also gives parents and teachers a natural way to start having these conversations about online safety. There's no lectures, just a story that sticks. So check out Kingdom Forge by Anders Edwards, a Patreon supporter of this show. If you're a Patreon supporter and you have a small business that you would like me to talk about for free, send me a message or an email at javier@pretendradio.org We are gearing up for a massive series on Gypsy Rose Blanchard. For those of you who listened to the last episode, there was a tease, and I wanted to tease it because I wanna grow my YouTube and Instagram and TikTok accounts. I have a massive podcast audience, but a very small presence on social media. So please, please do me a favor. Go to TikTok, go to YouTube, go to Instagram, wherever you like to go, and find me @pretendpod. If we all do it at once, if we all start following and liking and commenting on my content, maybe I have a fighting chance. You know, I don't know if you follow the podcast industry, but they are… We're having kinda like an existential crisis right now. They're saying these audio podcasts, if they don't move to video, they're gonna die, and I don't wanna die, and I don't want this thing to go away. So please follow me on those platforms. I'm gonna try to create more content on those platforms, and it's gonna be a different experience, but I want you along for the ride. So let's do this, all right? As soon as you're done with this episode, go follow me on social media @pretendpod. All right, that's it for today's episode. It was written by me, Javier Leva, and edited by the talented Puneet Shenoy with The Podcast Pundits. Our theme music is by Joe Basile with The Chicken.net. All right, that's all I got for today. Talk to you real soon