23 April 2026 Erin West of Operation Shamrock on Payments Scams
episode
Off the Rails from the U.S. Faster Payments Council - FPC
31 min
2 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, I'm Reid Lutannan, CEO of the U.S. Faster Payments Council, and this is Off the Rails from the U.S. Faster Payments Council. Today, I'm joined by Aaron West, founder and executive director of Operation Shamrock. Aaron and I talk about the horrifying world of international scams, but first, the headlines. We're beginning to build out our fall member meeting, which will be in Kansas City in November. Keep an eye out for more information in our newsletter and on our website under news and events. That's fasterpaymentscouncil.org, of course. And as always, a huge thank you to our fall member meeting sponsors. First, our platinum sponsors, ACI Worldwide, North American Banking Company, and Visa Direct.
And our gold sponsors, Aloya.com. And FC will be in San Diego for Notch's conference April 26th through the 29th. I can't wait to see all my payments, friends. And I have a number of items I think you'll want to be aware of if you're also going to be out there. First... FPC and ACI Worldwide are hosting a networking event immediately after the exhibit hall reception on Monday. Official start time for that is 6.50 p.m. I'll drop a link to register for that in the show notes. Second, I'll be participating in three sessions at the conference. On Monday at 4.30, I'll be moderating how instant payments are gaining momentum at community banks with Mike Bilski of North American Banking Company, Cassandra Tucker of ABNB Credit Union, and Jessica Johnson of First National Bankers Bank.
Then on Tuesday at 4.30, I'll be joining Mike Thomas of U.S. Bank and Andy Schmidt for... From rails to results, igniting innovation in U.S. real-time payments. Then Tuesday evening, the Payments Beer Nerds are hosting an informal get-together at Barley Mash in San Diego. That's right after the big party on the USS Midway. Learn more about that at paymentsbeernerds.com. And finally, on Wednesday at 1010, I'll be participating at Pay by Bank in the U.S., breaking through the bottlenecks with Greg Lloyd and Scott Harkey from Ally Bank and Addy Muse from Verizon. And with that, it's time for my discussion with Aaron West of Operation Shamrock.
All right. We're joined by Aaron West from Operation Shamrock. Aaron, thanks for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad to be here.
All right, Erin, how about we start off with you? Just tell us who you are. What's your background? What are you working on? What's your deal?
Thanks for asking. I am a former prosecutor. I was a prosecutor for 26 years in Santa Clara County, California. And while I was a prosecutor, I worked the last eight years of my career with a high-tech task force where we put bad guys in jail, identity thieves, account takeover people, and SIM swappers. Really... ugly work happening on the internet. And then the last three years of my career, I was really inundated by people who were being hit with pigwitching. It's a really devastating crime involving a romance that then leads to an investment scam. And people were losing all of their money. So ultimately, I retired from I fought it in every way I could as a prosecutor. And but I realized it deserved more time.
So I when I retired from my work as a prosecutor, I started a nonprofit that fights scams all day, every day.
All right. And that nonprofit is called Operation Shamrock. So tell us about Operation Shamrock. What is it? What's the mission? How can folks who are listening, you know, payments professionals, financial institution, employees, things like that, people like that, how can they help?
Awesome. Well, Operation Shamrock is for exactly all of those type of people. So what I saw when I was a prosecutor was we were being hit by a new crime. Like we all understand romance fraud. We understand investment scams. But what we had not seen before is the type of crime that was bankrupting people. It was stealing every penny that people had. And they were using a new technology to do it. They were getting people to invest in cryptocurrency. And when those people were reporting it to local law enforcement,
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:22–14:32
2
Who is Erin West and what led her to found Operation Shamrock?
14:32–21:36
3
What is Operation Shamrock's mission and who does it bring together?
21:36–31:40
4
Why should payments professionals and financial institutions care about pig butchering scams?
31:40–31:44
Speakers
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