Scammer Payback, also known by his nickname "Pierogi", is an American YouTuber and streamer, who specializes in creating content about scam baiting against phone scams and Internet scams. He works against a variety of scams over the phone, such as technical support scams, refund scams, social security scams, and IRS impersonation scams.[2]
| Scammer Payback | ||||||||||
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| Nationality | American | |||||||||
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| YouTube information | ||||||||||
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| Years active | 2019–present | |||||||||
| Genre | Scam baiting | |||||||||
| Subscribers | 7.78 million[1] (18 October 2024) | |||||||||
| Total views | 1.54 billion[1] (16 October 2024) | |||||||||
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Pierogi and his Scammer Payback team recently made a call center that is the opposite of a scam call center “The People’s Call Center” which has had 2 runs. His team worked with AnyDesk a Remote Desktop access software to ban over 2,000 AnyDesk Log in ids.
Career
editPierogi previously worked as a cybersecurity professional.[3] He launched his YouTube channel "Scammer Payback" on May 15, 2019, focusing on high-production scam-baiting content in which he pretends to be a scam victim by portraying a variety of characters with the use of a voice changer to waste the scammers' time and distract them. While distracted, Pierogi uses his expertise in cybersecurity to infiltrate the scammers' computer networks from his virtual machine, and proceeds to delete their files and gather their location and information to expose and use against them.[4][5][6] Throughout his career, Pierogi has been able to stop numerous scams in progress and give money back to scam victims.[4] He is known to read out the scammer's real name and location that he has discovered through the process.[6]
Pierogi has been in a number of collaborations with other content creators, having worked alongside Mark Rober, Trilogy Media, and Jim Browning.[7] In 2022, Pierogi and his team set up an anti-scam call center dedicated to scam baiting. Named the "People's Call Center", its participants consisted of Pierogi and several other scambaiters who spent one week at the call center monitoring scam call centers, wasting the scammers' time, and preventing people from getting scammed.[4]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b "About Scammer Payback". YouTube.
- ^ Johnson, Whit; Morris, Kaitlyn; Prince, Hannah. "FBI warns of rise in costly technical support scams". Good Morning America. Retrieved April 25, 2023.
- ^ Ryan, Shannon (August 18, 2022). "YouTuber Pierogi targets scammers with 'Scammer Payback' channel, new project". FOX 7 Austin. Retrieved August 15, 2023.
A former cybersecurity professional
- ^ a b c Ryan, Shannon (August 18, 2022). "YouTuber Pierogi targets scammers with 'Scammer Payback' channel, new project". FOX 7 Austin. Retrieved April 11, 2023.
- ^ Baleegh, Mohammed (June 7, 2022). "Hyderabad: Online scammers call cops after getting exposed". The Siasat Daily. Retrieved April 12, 2023.
- ^ a b "American YouTuber busts scam call centre in Hyderabad". TimesNow. June 7, 2022. Retrieved April 12, 2023.
- ^ Webster, Sophie (April 24, 2021). "Mark Rober, a Former NASA Scientist Turned YouTuber Content Creator That Engineered Glitterbomb Packages". Tech Times. Retrieved April 12, 2023.
External links
edit- Semuels, Alana (September 18, 2024). "Welcome to the Golden Age of Scams". Time. Archived from the original on September 18, 2024.