Bait, Trap, Bust: The Art of Scambaiting

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Bait, Trap, Bust: The Art of Scambaiting"

Podcast: Kennedy Saves the World
Host: Kennedy (FOX News Podcasts)
Guests: Art and Ashton, stars of "Scammed Getting Even" (Fox Nation)
Date: October 29, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Kennedy dives into the world of scambaiting with Art and Ashton, the dynamic duo behind “Scammed Getting Even.” With both humor and urgency, they reveal how they’ve turned the tables on international scam rings—tracking scammers, working with law enforcement, and sometimes saving victims in real time. The conversation mixes wild scam stories, behind-the-scenes action, and practical warnings for listeners.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Scambaiting Began

[01:46] – [03:22]

• Art and Ashton launched their channel in 2016, initially focusing on pranking robocallers and basic phone scams.
• Over time, they discovered deeper layers to scams: not just foreign call centers, but complex, multi-level operations involving money mules and U.S.-based accomplices.
• They started “scambaiting” by pretending to be victims, following scammers’ instructions up to the point of money transfer—then showing up at drop-off addresses to confront local operatives.

“We pretend to be victims so I can do an old man voice, you know, and we just pretend. We just let the scammer take us through the steps.” — Art [02:50]

2. From YouTube Pranks to Real Crime Busts

[03:33] – [04:26]

• Their work escalated from entertainment to investigative journalism, sometimes aiding federal busts:
  • Their videos helped launch a federal investigation that took years and led to dismantling a $65 million scam ring—including testimony before a grand jury.
  • They discovered extensive operations involving Chinese mafia, Indian call centers, and American cash mules.

“That $65 million ring we just dismantled all started from your videos...Chasing it took five years just for that one thing.” — Art [04:10, 04:22]

3. Making a Real-Life Difference: Saving a Victim's $25K

[05:13] – [06:22]

• Art and Ashton recount a harrowing near-miss where they intercepted a package meant as a scam payout, saving a real victim’s $25,000:
  • They tracked the shipment, confronted the cash mule, and managed to contact the victim, who was initially in denial and under audible pressure from a scammer.
  • The money was recovered and returned only due to Art and Ashton’s timely intervention.

“I see our fake empty package and real victim. $25,000 cash...We got a hold of her and explained what was going on. She eventually said yeah, I’m freaked out...They showed up, seized the cash, and got it back to her.” — Art [05:52–06:22]

4. Scambaiting Tactics and The Reality of Danger

[06:53] – [08:52]

• Relatively few scam victims recover money; stopping scams preemptively is the real victory.
• Confronting cash mules in person involves serious risk—violence and firearms are not uncommon, especially overseas.
• Their methods have evolved from a two-man show and a GoPro to small teams with security and law enforcement collaborations, including full-fledged sting operations.

“Our resources have grown over the years. It started with just me, Art and a GoPro...now you have special operators, security, actual law enforcement collaboration.” — Art [08:04]

• Teamwork and quick thinking are essential: “Sometimes he’s the muscle and I’m the mouth.” — Art [08:52]

5. Behind the Scenes: Real Drama and Justice

[09:04] – [10:54]

• The series takes Art and Ashton all over the world—U.S., India, Nigeria, Canada, Spain, UK—pursuing scammers across jurisdictions.
• They describe the satisfaction of seeing justice served, from seeing local law enforcement prioritize scam busting to orchestrating real-life action sequences (sting houses, car chases, K9 units).
• Cooperation between agencies isn’t always smooth: “All our elderly community getting scammed. Elderly babushkas getting scammed...All the agencies have big egos. Nobody wants to get along together. Enough is enough.” — Ashton [09:52, 10:20]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• The Evolution of Scamming:
  “It’s not like, hello there, I’m a Tanzanian prince... by and large, they’re getting more sophisticated.” — Kennedy [01:06]

• Inside the Operation:
  “They had Chinese nationals stay in Airbnbs in Southern California, wait for packages to be shipped, collect them, put them into crypto, laundry it, and send it back to India.” — Art [04:38]

• Real Risks:
  “I know you’ve been in danger...you’ve had guns pulled on you multiple times.” — Kennedy [07:35]
  "Yeah, it's been...especially in India..." — Ashton [07:51]

• On the Emotional Payoff for Viewers:
  “When you see justice—this is the luck of so many decades—it was no justice, no awareness.” — Ashton [09:52]

• For Future Victims and Listeners:
  “The best way to fight these scams is to prevent them from happening at all.” — Art [06:53]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:46] — How Art & Ashton started confronting scammers
• [03:33] — The $65M crime ring case and law enforcement collaboration
• [05:13] — Real incident: Stopping a cash mule and saving $25K
• [06:53] — On recovering money and scam prevention
• [07:35] — Facing real danger and their evolving security
• [09:04] — Show growth and global reach
• [10:20] — Frustrations and challenges with law enforcement cooperation
• [10:43] — Real-life action: helicopters, dogs, car chases

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Conclusion

Kennedy’s conversation with Art and Ashton is both entertaining and eye-opening, offering a thrilling peek into the real world of modern scambaiting. Listeners will gain practical wisdom on the craftiness of scams today, the importance of scam prevention, and just how far these sleuths will go to balance the scales of justice—while risking their own safety in the process.

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For further information, watch “Scammed Getting Even” on Fox Nation, and follow Art and Ashton for more scam-busting stories and tips.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Hello and welcome to this episode of Kennedy Saves the World. Have you ever been scammed out of some money and been so mad you wanted revenge, but the. The faceless people in some international crime syndicate are just laughing while they're sp. Spending your thousands or millions of dollars and you have no recourse? Well, my next two guests were absolutely sick of that. So they started confronting and taking down the scammers, finding them, getting to them, and in some cases, getting federal law enforcement to bust up these massive crime rings. Art and Ashton are here. They're the stars of Scammed Getting Even. It is on Fox Nation and you can watch some episodes now. Ashton, Art, thank you so much. Kennedy Saves the World.

[C]

This is the best intro. Thank you.

[A]

We'll have to clip that. Exactly.

[B]

But I, I know the feeling. Like I have fallen prey to scams of various kinds because now they're super sophisticated. It's not like, hello there, I'm a Tanzanian prince and you're my relations and I've got $3 million.

[A]

Those still exist? Yeah. By and large, they're getting more sophisticated. A. It's making it really hard.

[B]

I got an email from Apple and was like, you need to update your credit card. It's been declining. This was years ago. And I'm like, okay, cool. Boop, boop, boop. And then after I had done that, I clicked on the email address and it was like a zccq. And I was like, no. And I called Apple and they're like, yeah, that's a scam.

[A]

Yeah. Canceled your credit card immediately.

[B]

So when did you, when did you first start confronting scammers? How did it start?

[C]

We started our channel 2016 and it all was like calling scammers robocalls, like, everything over the phone. And 2020, that's when we start knocking on doors and like, look.

[B]

How did you find them?

[A]

We, we learned as we went. I mean, when we started our channel scam baiting, there's like two or three channels that did this. And we, you know, we always wanted to make content as like a personality driven kind of entertainment kind of aspect instead of just like one gimmick of scam baiting.

[B]

And then it became scam phototainment.

[A]

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Scam baiting was kind of an accident for us, but just over time, as we learned about scams and, you know, you kind of assume it's just like the Nigerian prince or an Indian call center. Like, no, they actually have, like, levels to this. And there are people in the states that are like facilitating it like people going to like grandmother's houses and physically collecting their trash.

[B]

Gosh.

[A]

Muffled. So cash mules, you know. So we're like, wow. Like when we started getting addresses that were near us that were as a scam bait, we were told to send money to. We're like, well let's go to the address. Like who is there? Like why are they expecting my money right now?

[B]

So how did you contact them or how did they contact you?

[A]

Well, we're scam baiting. So we pretend to be victims so I can do an old man voice, you know, and we just pretend. We just let the scammer take us through the steps.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Eventually they need to get money out of you. And usually the person you're talking to is overseas, you're not going to get money directly. So they need to have steps of people leading up to somebody here in the States that'll take the money. Either it's cash or maybe a wire transfer to some weird LLC or whatever it is. So once we get the instructions to send the money, we pretend to send it, but then instead of the package showing up, we show up and we're like, hi, why are you expecting my money? What the hell's going on here?

[B]

I'm not old.

[C]

And imagine things like you go to a basement with a flashlight. Yeah, it's never been done before. The stuff that we came across in 2020, nobody talks about it, nobody knows anything about those scams.

[B]

And obviously is that the $65 million crime ring that with FBI, homelands?

[C]

Gosh, you prepared.

[B]

I love it. But they gave you, they gave you credit for that.

[A]

Well, I'm glad they guys out. Well and that story is amazing because it's so indicative of like the difference in the timeline. Cuz we made those videos with that very ring in 20, 20 years ago. They didn't reach out to us until 21. They're like, yo, something crossed over with what we're doing. Can we get your raw footage? Like yeah, sure. Hey, 20, 20, 22, can you guys come testify in front of a grand jury? Because we're like, we're like actually working on prosecuting these people. Okay, 2025, like two months ago, they're like, oh yeah, by the way, that $65 million ring we just dismantled all started from your videos and we in.

[C]

Nigeria shooting scam, getting even. Right. So we like.

[B]

So you went international at this point?

[C]

Absolutely. We went to India, went to Nigeria, Canada, Spain, uk.

[A]

Chasing it took five years just for that one thing that we had already forgotten. About, you know.

[B]

And one of the victims was according to the press release, a 97 year old widow whose husband was a holocaust survivor and she lost her entire life savings. Did she get that money back?

[A]

I don't know. That's not a victim that we met. Okay. These, these cash mules are slash were assigned to pick up multiple packages per day. Like they had. It's, it's all organized crime with Chinese mafia. The Indian call centers. Like you think it's just, oh, I'm Apple calling from India. No there's like a lot of layers and a lot of people involved all the way up until them sending in this case a lot of Chinese nationals to stay in Airbnbs in Southern California, wait for packages to be shipped to them, collect them, put them into crypto laundry it however they're going to do it and send it back to India. So there are literally hundreds of.

[B]

Pretty fast the way they do it.

[C]

The money, money disappear. Like we have video that we've done maybe 2022, we went to San Francisco. Same stuff baiting. We send package overnight. We, we show up earlier and I'm and I see UPS truck dropped our package. We put duct tape, everything like bright, right. So we know the drill. We already learned what's going to happen waiting for Cashmiel right. Show up and just confront him. All of a sudden we see like our package dropped. Another package dropped, same address. I was like ash, let me go check the package. I'm arriving and I see our fake empty package and real victim. $25,000 cash.

[B]

Did you grab it?

[A]

Yeah. So thankfully the return address had the lady's name on it. She was from Illinois. She was an old lady. She thought she was being talking to PayPal like fixing an issue or she was a whole. It's a very elaborate scam. We got a hold of her initially on the phone. She said no, no, no, I'm not doing that at all. But then we hear an Indian accent on the phone behind her talking to her, say don't talk to them, don't talk to them, don't talk to them. Tech support. So we were able to break through to her and explain what was going on. She eventually said yeah, I'm freaked out. I didn't know who to trust. But yes, I sent that cash. We, they showed up, they seized the cash and got it back to her.

[B]

Oh my gosh. Okay.

[A]

Just because we were there on the right day at the right moment, don't go anywhere more.

[B]

Kennedy saves the World right after this.

[D]

It's Will taint country. Watch it live at noon Eastern Monday through Thursday@fox news.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss the show. Listen and follow the podcast five days a week at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

[B]

Has that happened in other circumstances where you've seen you were able to intercede and save someone's money in different ways?

[A]

Yes, the money recovery is the least often thing that happens with this, unfortunately, which is why the best way to fight these scams is to prevent them from happening at all. But we've, we've come across cash mules that, you know, when they talk to us, they get a little freaked out about what's being exposed. Like just last year we had one where the guy showed us on his phone videos because they're, they're told very specifically they don't, the people don't let them carry IDs, they rent them cars, they're not allowed to have anything. And so they have to take videos of the cash. They pick up the cash, have to open the box sometimes. Like this guy had a safe, like a little pocket safe and he was busting it open to get the cash out of it. And he's supposed to record this, send it to his boss and like so everything is like very nuanced, very specific. But he was like showing us all this like all the pickups he had done in the last like 48 hours.

[B]

Well, obviously so when there is millions and millions of dollars at stake with these criminal organizations, it's dangerous. So are you, do you have special training if you, because I know that you've been in danger. Like you've had guns pulled on you multiple times.

[C]

It's, yeah, it's been, especially in India when we went to Ashton.

[B]

You, you look very tough.

[C]

But hey, we all have our strong parts.

[A]

His physicality doesn't hurt the situation.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

But yeah, our, our, our resources have grown over the years. It's definitely started with just me, art and a GoPro.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You know, and now you have like special operators security. And with this show we were able to do actual law enforcement collaboration. Like we did a full on sting house for just this scale.

[B]

Aren't the Marshalls the best?

[A]

Oh yeah, no, we have a guy named Marshall, but he's an ex marine and. Yeah. Anyway, so we have, yeah, now we have more reinforcements.

[C]

But yeah, it's like one of those things that we learn as we go and it, it was only me, Ashton and camera guy and Like a movie.

[B]

And your man bun.

[C]

Yeah. Yes.

[A]

Can't forget that.

[C]

You can't forget that. And they said, you know, the cameraman, while we survived, so you cannot get shot. But, like, I will knock on the door, Ashton watching my back. Camera guy watching Ashton back. So everybody has like, you know, a role to play.

[A]

And sometimes he's the muscle and I'm the mouth, you know, and I'll just reach. All the things that happen with the baby. It helps.

[B]

Absolutely. So, you know, where do you go from here?

[A]

Like, well, the last five months have been absolutely insane. We've been to how many countries? I can't even.5 seats. We've been 20 states. So many states. We've been filming for this show. This has been grounded. Groundbreaking. And credit to Fox for taking a risk. This is a difficult show to make, but we're. We're done with the first season now, and so we'll see what happens with that. But we're. We're back to work. We don't stop. We busted a scammer in the Bronx yesterday. Yesterday. Yeah. We have a channel, we have a platform too, where we stream stuff. So, yeah, we don't stop. And scammers don't sleep.

[B]

This be satisfying for viewers?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Oh, we just. Actually, we just. And our crew with our manager in hotel, we just watched our episode two hours ago. Two hours ago. Screaming, yelling. I was like, okay, let's see what happened. Post production, right?

[B]

And you're like, I was there. I know how it ends. And I'm still screaming at the screen.

[C]

When you see justice, and this is the luck of so many decades, it was no justice, no awareness. And even you scambait, the arrest happening five, ten years. Interpol involved. Now we're going to Arkansas and sheriff, local sheriff John Montgomery, he said, guys, freaking FBI. They have big egos. Homeland Security have big egos. Nobody want to get along together. He said, enough is enough. All our. All our elderly community getting scammed. Elderly babushkas getting scammed.

[B]

All right, leave the babushkas alone.

[C]

Rented a house, put everybody together, put sheriff car in the garage and we scambaiting. Cashmere's coming. Knock on doors.

[A]

It's the next episode. Next on Wednesday is this one.

[C]

And the most satisfying things are rests.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Helicopters, dogs, canine chasing scammers, freeway car chases.

[A]

Don't spoil it.

[C]

Oh, so good.

[B]

No, I. Now I have to watch them now that there's helicopters and dogs.

[C]

Yes, it's an action movie, but it's a real life problem.

[B]

Yeah, it is. And you know, it's like there are people who will have hope watching this and maybe they will reach out to you in seasons two through 17.

[A]

Thank you. From your mouth to God's ears.

[B]

Absolutely right. Well, Ashton and Art, thank you so much for being here.

[A]

Thank you for having us.

[B]

I don't want to get it wrong scammed getting even on Fox Nation. So subscribe to Fox Nation. It's amazing. There's so much great stuff on there, especially this show, which you have to watch right away because there may be some tips for you. And hopefully, unlike me, you won't fall for the payer tolls.

[A]

Oh, no. Oh, that's another one.

[C]

Did you get that QR code?

[A]

Did you click a link or something?

[B]

Yeah, I did and I put everything in.

[A]

Change your passwords. Yeah, that's not good. Well, anyway, cancel those credit cards and.

[B]

Get a new one. They did.

[A]

Okay, good.

[B]

Sadly. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much.

[A]

Thanks again.

[B]

Don't ever get scammed again. This has been Kennedy Saves the World along with Ashton and Art. I'm Kennedy. Let's go listen.

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

With a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcast and Amazon prime, members can listen to this show ad free on the Amazon Music app. Oh, go ahead and leave me a review while you're there. I'd love to hear what you have to say. You've been listening to Kennedy Saves the World on the Fox News podcast network.