Pierogi - Shawn Ryan Calls Scammers and Destroys Their Computer LIVE | SRS #347

Episode Overview

• Exposing the Global Scam Industry: Host Shawn Ryan (CEO of Vigilance Elite, former Navy SEAL, and former CIA Contractor) sits down with "Pierogi," the cybersecurity expert and creator behind the Scammer Payback platform, to dissect how international criminal syndicates steal an estimated $600 billion annually in the United States.
• Mechanics of Modern Cyber Fraud: The conversation details how scammers weaponize legitimate American infrastructure—including Microsoft Windows tools, banking systems, FedEx/UPS, data brokers, and AI voice-cloning technology—to drain the life savings of victims ranging from 20-year-old college students to elderly retirees.
• Vigilante Cyber Warfare vs. Institutional Failure: Pierogi explains how his team infiltrates overseas call centers, geolocates criminals within 10 meters, and works alongside law enforcement to dismantle US-based money-laundering rings when traditional government and banking safeguards fail.
• Faith, Spiritual Warfare, and Personal Vulnerability: The discussion pivots deeply into Christian theology, exploring speaking in tongues, faith healing, fasting, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, as both men share raw personal struggles with identity, demonic attacks, and spiritual renewal.
• Live Scammer Takedowns and Victim Rescue: The episode concludes with a real-time demonstration where Pierogi and Ryan infiltrate a Delhi scammer's computer to deploy a custom virus payload, followed by a high-stakes live intervention to stop a 78-year-old Texas woman from wiring her life savings to a fraudulent account.

Key Concepts

• The Scale and Evolution of Scammer Payback: Pierogi started his YouTube channel in 2019, growing from 35 subscribers to 17,000 in August 2019, to 100,000, to 500,000, and now close to 10 million subscribers with 1.5 billion total views. His focus shifted from prank calling to real-world victim intervention after encountering "Susan" in California, who lost everything ($36,000). This year alone, Pierogi’s team helped stop more than $20 million in scams (initially misread by Ryan as $200 million). Over the last 1.5 years, his team has accessed 5,000 to 8,000 scammers (though Pierogi hedges that his tech lead, "Night," might make him backtrack that number), with Night bringing in 100 to 150 scammers a day at their peak and geolocating them within 10 meters.
• Weaponizing Legitimate Infrastructure and "Quick Assist": Rather than relying solely on complex malware, scammers turn everyday systems against victims. They send mass phishing emails (such as fake $1,500 Amazon iPhone charges) and instruct victims to open Quick Assist, a legitimate remote-access tool pre-installed on Microsoft Windows. Because it is native to Windows, antivirus software ignores it. Scammers also maintain rosters of up to 1,500 victims on remote-access software, logging into their computers at 3:00 AM while victims sleep to transfer funds from bank accounts into crypto wallets, sometimes stealing $100,000 in a single session.
• Caller ID Spoofing, AI Voice Cloning, and Insider Data: Scammers easily spoof phone numbers to appear identical to institutions like USAA—a tactic that drained the life savings of Shawn Ryan’s Chief of Staff a month prior. They even trick victims into dialing the number on the back of their debit card while still connected to the scammer, who simply mutes the line and answers as the bank. Furthermore, scammers rip audio from social media videos and use tools like ElevenLabs to clone voices (including pretending to be Pierogi). Their targeting is fueled by bank insiders who extract customer data (account balances, SSNs, addresses, phone numbers) and data brokers selling spreadsheets of 100,000+ people or data on a whole neighborhood block for $2,500.
• Overseas Call Centers and Brutal Working Conditions: Because India is 10.5 hours ahead of the US, scammers work overnight (e.g., 3:00 AM local time) in massive operations employing up to 1,000 people. Some even pay rent to operate out of official government IT parks, such as the Webel IT Park in Siliguri, India. Workers are flown in for 3-to-4-month "seasons" and sleep on cots with rats crawling on them. An insider paid by Pierogi reported that a coworker overdosed on drugs and died in a northern India call center run by a boss named Krishna Yadav, who refused to pay the deceased worker's family the money he was owed.
• US Money Laundering Cells and "Aluminum Foil" Cash Drops: While average victims are 55 to 65 years old, scammers also target 20-year-old college students (such as a Georgia student who lost $30,000 in a Social Security scam). Victims are coached—while the scammer listens on the phone in their pocket—to lie to bank tellers (e.g., claiming they are renovating a house) to withdraw massive sums of cash. Pierogi’s team once drove an hour to stop a recent stroke victim from feeding $40,000 into a Bitcoin ATM, only for the woman's bank manager to get angry and kick Pierogi out when he asked why they allowed the withdrawal. Victims are instructed to wrap cash in aluminum foil, place it in a duct-taped box inside a gift-wrapped box, and ship it via UPS/FedEx to vacant houses or Airbnbs. Low-level US runners are paid a couple hundred dollars to pick up these packages, or scammers force homeless individuals to open LLCs and bank accounts to launder money.
• Law Enforcement Takedowns and Geopolitical Ties: Pierogi’s team tracks these packages (though when he first mailed a bait parcel containing a camera and Wi-Fi hotspot, police confiscated it because the drop address was already "hot"). A 5-to-6-year investigation into one foreign money-laundering syndicate in the US resulted in 24 to 25 arrests across 2,000 victims and $65 million stolen. Because that $65 million represented only the launderers' 20% cut, the total stolen was closer to $500 million; the main suspect lived in a $10 million to $15 million house in Los Angeles, and charges for wire and elder fraud carry sentences of 20 to 40 years (up to life) in prison before deportation. Scammers also trade stolen gift card codes (e.g., $5,000 in Target cards) on Telegram for cryptocurrency in seconds. Pierogi hedges that some laundering groups are "probably" or "I would assume" tied to overseas terrorist organizations, though he lacks a specific example and expresses uncertainty about direct nation-state control.
• Psychological Manipulation Across Scam Types: Criminal syndicates deploy tailored psychological warfare:
• Pig Butchering: Scammers lure victims with $100 to $150 crypto investments, spoof returns showing $1,000 gains (totaling $1,150), and convince them to invest everything before freezing the funds; Pierogi met a man at a local dump who lost $550,000 this way.
• Romance Scams: Pierogi’s office landlord had a family member send $150,000 to $190,000 (and phones) to a fake Garth Brooks claiming to need seed money for an album, while a woman in France left her husband and sent nearly $1 million to a scammer using AI photos to pose as Brad Pitt in the hospital.
• Sextortion: Scammers extort teenagers for $300, $500, or $1,000 and tell them to take their lives if they don't pay, leading to the extradition of several African scammers following the suicide of a Michigan teenager.
• Government Inaction vs. Vigilante Impact: Citing Scott Bessent's estimate of $600 billion in annual US fraud, Pierogi and Ryan debate government intentions: Pierogi believes the government cares about protecting people but doesn't know how, whereas Ryan states he doesn't know if they care at all, pointing out that a guest named "Legend" exposed on his show two years ago that the US government sends the Taliban $80 million a week in cash. Pierogi wants to head up a coalition uniting banks, tech companies, and federal/state/local governments, noting that when an executive order on scams came out, nobody called him. Ryan highlights the real-world power of independent media, claiming that after his show exposed child exploitation and active shooter recreations (Columbine, Sandy Hook, Uvalde) on Roblox with guests Ryan Montgomery and Schlep, Roblox took a $38 billion stock cut (including $6 billion in a single week or month).
• Christian Faith, Spiritual Gifts, and New Age Infrastructure: About 2.5 years ago, Pierogi began diving deeply into the Bible. For the past 1 to 1.5 years, he has practiced speaking in tongues in private (noting his wife has done it longer), describing it as the spirit connecting with God while bypassing the mind ("flesh"), though he hedges on the exact mechanics ("Whatever that means, man, I'm open. I don't know what that means"). He claims that after believing the scripture "by His stripes we are healed" (Isaiah and 1 Peter 2), he did not get sick for 3 years, hedging that a recent illness was "maybe... because I wasn't sleeping much or something." He also recounts laying hands on a pregnant woman at church whose baby had a bad diagnosis, resulting in a completely different diagnosis the next Sunday. He points to John G. Lake ("hundreds of thousands of verified healings" in the early 1900s) and Curry Blake of John G. Lake Ministries (who baptized Pierogi, and whose daughter Pierogi claims was dead for "I think it was over 45 minutes... at his house, I'm pretty sure" before coming back to life). Pierogi argues that quantum physics and neuroscience prove the Bible, noting that while people are healed of cancer at New Age conferences run by Joe Dispenza (whom Pierogi hedges "I think he's like a neuroscientist now"), Dispenza is opening portals and acting as a "thief" by using the world infrastructure Jesus created without going through Christ.
• Spiritual Warfare, Fasting, and Inner Healing: Shawn Ryan reveals he stopped doing psychedelic therapy after a "total demonic experience" triggered two months of dark demonic attacks. Following synchronicities where a friend in Virginia Beach, his chiropractor, and his Catholic priest all mentioned fasting three days in a row, Ryan completed a 72-hour fast and a 48-hour fast to purify himself, and is considering combining a 7-day fast with a 7-day silent retreat in the woods. Pierogi shares that he quit drinking alcohol in 2023 (calling it "spirits" and a gateway), quit social media (calling phones "portals" to the devil), and cautions against lukewarm Christianity (hedging on the Bible translation, "might be wrong, sorry," that Jesus vomits out the lukewarm). In a tearful moment, Pierogi discusses completing an 8-hour intensive in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, processing childhood memories of being bullied and benched in baseball at age 6, realizing he was acting to protect his 3-year-old self and overcoming the fear that who he is outside of YouTube isn't enough.
• Live Cyber Operations and Victim Intervention: During the podcast, Pierogi remotely accesses a scammer's PC in Delhi, India at 1:41 AM local time, uncovering a fake $488 Geek Squad invoice, HTML email templates, non-spam-flagged email lists, stolen IDs, UPS tracking numbers for cash boxes, and $500 Target gift cards converted to crypto. Using a burner number on his Glacier phone, Ryan calls the scammer (who calmly lies that he is in Tampa, Florida, gives the fake name "Lori Helen Burrito," and says "Best of luck") before executing a custom virus (shawn.exe -bear) that rains Vigilance Elite gummy bears across the screen and destroys the PC's CPU/memory/storage. Immediately after, Pierogi intercepts a live scam on another computer ("5BS") targeting 78-year-old Melva E. Stevenson in Houston, Texas (whose house is worth $150,000). Impersonating the SSA/FTC via UltraViewer, the scammer had accessed her saved browser passwords and initiated a pending $25,000 Bank of America wire transfer (leaving $11,000 in her account while prepping a $30k account). Pierogi uses data broker sites to find her address, remotely shuts down her PC to sever the scammer's connection, and messages a Canadian law enforcement contact to dispatch Houston police to her door and alert Bank of America to stop the wire.
• Disclosed Business Ties, Sponsors, and Partnerships:
• Shawn Ryan's Ventures & Partners: Owns Vigilance Elite (which makes Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears); co-founded the Glacier privacy app (theglacierapp.com), disclosing he put his own name, money, and a year of his life into building it, and claiming that two days after launch it blocked 837 trackers on his phone before lunch; discloses a Patreon account that supported the show from its beginning in his attic; discloses Sig Sauer is a partner; mentions recently launching a new company.
• Pierogi's Ties: Sells Scammer Payback merchandise ("Hack All Scammers" hoodie); works with Swiss email provider Proton and knows CEO Andy Yen (explicitly noting they are not sponsoring his statement); works with several data-broker opt-out companies (hedging that removal takes "I think it's 30 or 45 days").
• Episode Sponsors: Ladder App (ladder.fit/srs for a 7-day free trial and $10 off the first month); BUBS Naturals (bubsnaturals.com/shawn, code SHAWN for 20% off, donating 10% of profits to help military transition to civilian life in honor of Navy SEAL Glen "Bub" Doherty); Shopify (shopify.com/srs, which powers shawnryanshow.com and which Ryan claims converts up to 36% higher with Shop Pay); Helix Sleep (helixsleep.com/srs for 20% off sitewide, a 120-night trial, and limited lifetime warranty); and Factor Meals (factormeals.com/srs50off, code SRS50OFF for 50% off the first box plus one free breakfast item per box for a year until 10/31/2026).

Quotes

• At 0:01:56 - "These guys are pretty good, like they can spoof, just like we can even spoof numbers. You can spoof the number, and some of the times they'll actually have the victim, they'll say like, 'Take your debit card and then the number on the back, like punch it in,' but they're still on the phone with the scammer, and the scammer will like mute the line and then say, 'Oh, this is Brian with USAA.'" - Pierogi explaining how scammers trick victims into believing they have independently verified their bank's phone number.
• At 0:03:24 - "The number one thing we say is to hang up the phone and then call that actual person back, if that makes sense. So they're spoofing, they're not actually calling from that number. They're making it look like that." - Pierogi sharing the primary defense against caller ID spoofing and AI voice-cloning scams.
• At 0:13:01 - "I remember like the first time I ran across a victim, she'd lost $36,000 and she lost everything. And it was a real person in California, her name was Susan, and it changed everything. It was like immediately, this is very real, very fast." - Pierogi describing the turning point that transformed his channel from prank calling into a victim-rescue operation.
• At 0:22:25 - "They're not taking a couple hundred dollars of gift cards anymore. They're, I'm literally watching someone yesterday steal $100,000 in crypto. Like go into the victim's computer while they're not there, and go into their crypto account, and transfer money from their bank account to the crypto account, and then send the crypto to their wallet, and it's gone." - Pierogi illustrating the massive financial escalation of modern remote-access scams.
• At 0:23:16 - "They're using our systems against us. They're using like our banking systems against us, they're using our shipping like FedEx and UPS and things like that, they're using our shipping companies, USPS, they're using crypto against us, they're using our big box chains, Target, Walmart, they're using all of technology, Amazon, Microsoft, they're using all of this against us." - Pierogi summarizing how foreign criminal networks weaponize everyday American corporate infrastructure.
• At 0:25:55 - "They teach her how to lie to the bank. So the bank sits there and says, 'Are you sure you want to take this money out?' And grandma's like, 'Yeah, I'm sure! I'm renovating my house!' And meanwhile, the scammer is literally on the phone in her pocket listening to everything." - Pierogi detailing the psychological coaching scammers use to bypass bank teller security questions.
• At 0:32:54 - "I think the total that were arrested was like 24 or 25. And it was $65 million over a number of years. The main guy that got arrested had like a 10 or 15 million dollar house in LA, living the, you know, living the life off of scam money." - Pierogi discussing the scale of a US-based money-laundering ring dismantled by law enforcement.
• At 0:38:39 - "They have insiders at banking companies that will extract data and give it to them... Checking account, savings account, like dollar amounts, Social Security numbers, address, phone number, all of it." - Pierogi revealing how scammers obtain exact financial details to make their phone calls sound undeniably authentic.
• At 0:45:22 - "I think that there should be a coalition that happens between banks, technology, government, federal and state and local. And I would love to head that up. I know there's an executive order that came out on scams and nobody called me." - Pierogi calling for a unified institutional task force to combat cyber fraud.
• At 1:02:52 - "When I mean access, it means we can see their screen, we could type on their keyboard from overseas, we could use their mouse, we can listen to their scams, we can collect information on them, we can geolocate them within 10 meters." - Pierogi explaining the depth of his team's counter-hacking capabilities inside foreign call centers.
• At 1:21:15 - "Two-factor helps as well. Like I would use an authenticator application to run two-factor, that's really helpful. Instead of using like a cell phone. You know like where you get the code texted to you? Use the app instead, because those numbers, those tokens, they're called tokens, they're constantly rolling and changing." - Pierogi providing technical advice on securing accounts against SIM-swapping and unauthorized access.
• At 1:22:24 - "There's a thing called Quick Assist that's within Microsoft's operating system. It's literally installed on everyone's computer, so you already have a backdoor in. And they say, 'Go to Quick Assist and tell us the code,' and then within 30 seconds they're on the victim's computer." - Pierogi exposing how scammers hijack computers without needing malicious viruses.
• At 1:28:04 - "If you post a video, they're ripping your audio. And you could take a sample of your audio and create, you could go to ElevenLabs and I could be you. There's scammers that pretend to be me constantly." - Pierogi warning about the ease of AI voice cloning using publicly posted social media videos.
• At 1:58:47 - "Like, hey, I used to be into the psychedelic therapy shit, and now I'm not. I had like a total demonic experience that lasted for—I think it's almost gone, but it's been two months of like demonic attacks and shit, like really dark shit, like crazy shit happening." - Shawn Ryan explaining why he completely abandoned psychedelics and turned to fasting and prayer.
• At 2:10:40 - "Just because people are getting healed doesn't mean it's of Christ. They're utilizing the world infrastructure that Jesus made, just like scammers use the infrastructure against us, these people are using the infrastructure to get healed." - Pierogi drawing a parallel between cyber-scammers and New Age healing practices like Joe Dispenza's seminars.
• At 2:18:24 - "So many people want to have Jesus as Savior to check a box to go to heaven, um, but they don't want him as Lord." - Pierogi critiquing superficial faith versus complete lifestyle surrender in modern Christianity.
• At 2:26:00 - "My channel was nothing when I think about what—how God has changed my heart. And I think for many years my fear was like, you let people in and like, um, they're going to be disappointed. Because in the past I thought that that—who I am actually isn't enough." - Pierogi breaking down in tears while reflecting on his personal identity beyond his YouTube persona.
• At 3:12:14 - "We're calling from a Glacier number that we're going to burn right after this, and I'm going to destroy your computer in three, two, one. Have a wonderful day." - Shawn Ryan speaking directly to an Indian scammer on the phone moments before executing a custom virus payload to brick the scammer's PC.
• At 3:28:00 - "Never save your passwords into your browsers. I know it must be really nice to do that, but it's not very secure." - Pierogi issuing a critical warning while watching a live scammer harvest a 78-year-old victim's saved credentials.
• At 3:35:01 - "Scammers do not want you to verify anything. They want you to stay on the phone with them, they want to stay connected to you, they want to keep talking to you. That's one of my tactics I use all the time is I hang up the phone and it puts stress into them, so then you can manipulate them." - Pierogi explaining the core psychological weakness of phone scammers following a live victim intervention.

Takeaways

• Enforce the "Hang Up and Call Back" Rule: Because caller IDs can be spoofed and voices cloned with AI, never trust an inbound phone call claiming a financial or family emergency. Physically hang up, make sure the line is disconnected, and call the institution or family member back using a verified number you already trust.
• Establish a Family Safe Word: Create a secret verbal password with your loved ones and elderly relatives so they can immediately verify whether an urgent call from a "grandchild" or "family member in trouble" is authentic or an AI voice clone.
• Switch to App-Based Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Stop relying on SMS text message codes for two-factor authentication; install a dedicated Authenticator application that generates constantly rolling tokens to protect your email and financial accounts.
• Never Save Passwords in Your Web Browser: Do not use browser-based password managers, because if a scammer gains remote access to your computer, they can view and steal all of your saved credentials in seconds.
• Never Grant Remote Access via Windows Quick Assist: Refuse any unsolicited request from "tech support," "Amazon," "Geek Squad," or a government agency asking you to open Microsoft Quick Assist or give them a security code to view your screen.
• Opt Out of Data Broker Websites: Utilize data-broker opt-out services to scrub your personal information (home address, phone numbers, and relatives) from public aggregator databases so scammers cannot buy your profile on spreadsheets.
• Use Burner Numbers and Encrypted Email for Public Transactions: Protect your primary phone number and identity by using burner number apps (such as Glacier) and encrypted email providers (such as Proton) when signing up for services online.
• Educate Elderly Relatives on "Bank Coaching" Red Flags: Warn older family members that no legitimate government agency (SSA, FTC, FBI) or bank will ever ask them to lie to a bank teller, withdraw cash to wrap in aluminum foil, deposit money into a Bitcoin ATM, or buy retail gift cards.
• Audit Your Digital Consumption and "Phone Portals": Treat your smartphone and social media feeds as spiritual and psychological gateways; consider deleting social media apps or eliminating alcohol if they are negatively impacting your mental clarity and spiritual walk.
• Pursue Root-Cause Emotional Healing: If you struggle with childhood trauma, perfectionism, or feeling trapped in a public persona, explore targeted therapeutic modalities like Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy alongside spiritual mentorship to heal underlying insecurities.
• Incorporate Fasting and Silence for Mental and Spiritual Clarity: Practice disciplined fasting and intentional periods of silence away from modern distractions to reset your mind, deepen your prayer life, and build spiritual resilience.
• Coordinate Immediately with Local Police and Bank Fraud Departments During Active Scams: If you discover an elderly relative is actively being scammed, immediately disconnect their computer from the internet/power, contact their bank to freeze pending wire transfers, and dispatch local police for an in-person welfare check if they cannot be reached by phone.