He Scammed Her, So She Decided To Get Even | A Perfect Scam | Forensic Files

[intense music] Steve Secor: I had heard of romance scams, but it's not something working violent crime
matters that you're exposed to every day. Douglas Walker: Tisha Raines sent a significant amount
of money to a person, and she thought they were going to have a romantic relationship.
Tiffanie Richards: She thought, you know, I met the man of my dreams and we're going to be happy.
But that's not what ended up happening. Will McCoskey: This scam artist pushed her over the edge.
Steve Secor: The moment Tisha Dawn Raines used her phone to solicit for a hit man, she's right on that line
of having committed a crime. Doug Fodeman: When we are so severely traumatized, we have varying reactions, many of which
we almost have no control over. - There is potentially a victim here. Somebody could wind up dead.
[theme music] ♪ ♪ Steve Secor: New Castle is a small town here in Indiana. If you don't know everybody else there,
you're not more than one or two degrees removed from somebody who knows everybody there.
Douglas Walker: It was an industrial town for much of the 20th century. The economy, and to some degree, the city,
dominated by a large Chrysler plant that was there. At one point, it employed more than 6,000 people.
As the auto industry went through changes, the production there declined and it closed in 2009.
As those jobs have gone away and have been replaced largely by lower paying jobs, we have the descendants
of these people who worked in the auto plants, leading, frankly, tougher lives. Steve Secor: Tisha Raines, having grown up in that area,
was not unknown to law enforcement. Her entire life has just been a series of-- of poor decisions, because she just doesn't know
how to do the right thing. My very first partner had a great expression, and it's stuck with me to this day 21 years later.
He said, "Some people just can't fly straight." Douglas Walker: Her criminal history was limited to things
along the lines of drunk driving, until she was arrested for dealing narcotic medications
there in Henry County. Tiffanie Richards: Tisha was in and out of the jail system.
She was known mostly for drugs. Will McCoskey: Methamphetamine, unfortunately, is a drug of choice of users throughout the Southern
District of Indiana, and certainly in a lot of these little rural counties. It's a big deal.
Making the meth in the backyard thing in rural Indiana is really not a thing anymore.
It's this trafficking of meth coming from across the border, and it is very prevalent.
It's horrible, and it makes people do horrible things. Tiffanie Richards: She got out of jail,
must have hopped online, and she met somebody named Andrew. And Andrew charmed her.
She was just looking for love like everyone else. You know, she had obviously a troubled past,
and she just wanted a better life. So she thought, you know, I met the man of my dreams.
He's, you know, overseas. He's going to be deployed. And we're going to be happy.
But that's not what ended up happening. [tense music] ♪ ♪ Andrew actually ended up asking her for $1,500.
Tisha, she didn't have a lot of money. So when she gave him the $1,500, she really thought it
was going to bring her love. As soon as she gave him the money, he stopped talking to her.
She knew she had been scammed. Steve Secor: I had heard of romance scams, but it's not something working violent crime
matters that you're exposed to every day. The people who perpetrate romance scams are very keenly
aware of how to short circuit people's good judgment, and how to blow past any red flags
that people might see in any particular situations. Tiffanie Richards: They start a relationship
with somebody online. They earn your trust. They-- they actually-- they play on your feelings,
on your emotions. And then they drop the money bomb. They need money so they can come see you.
They need money so they can furnish the house that you guys are going to buy together.
I mean, some of these go very, very deep into where they're picking out houses and all this online,
but none of it is real. In 2023 alone, there was $1.14 billion worth just in romance scams.
Steve Secor: If Tisha Dawn Raines had come to us and said, hey, I've been scammed out
of money by somebody, that's something that we might have taken an interest in and--
and classified her as a victim in the matter. [melancholic music] ♪ ♪ Tiffanie Richards: Where it takes
a turn is she decided that she was going to take the law into her own hands, instead of maybe filing a complaint
or trying to find where this Andrew actually was. She decided she was going to hire a hit man,
pay him $5,000, and she was going to kill Andrew. Steve Secor: This case came to us back in the spring of 2018.
We have relationships with a lot of the local police departments, and information had
come to a sheriff's department just east of here, a couple of counties over. A deputy had spoken with an individual.
That individual told the deputy that he knew of somebody who was soliciting for a hit man
to commit a murder for hire. I had investigated a murder for hire case a couple of years before this, which had come
to a successful resolution. So my supervisor thought that I'd be the perfect person to go to for a brand
new murder for hire case. ♪ ♪ It's not uncommon, but it is a rarity for any law enforcement
agency to be involved in an investigation before somebody gets hurt. [tense music]
Will McCoskey: It's unclear to me to this day why she decided to take that very weighty, important,
and scary step of hiring somebody to try to kill somebody. Steve Secor: The fact that a scam
is what kicked this off and led Tisha Dawn Raines to solicit for a hit man, is something that was unusual.
- I don't know if there was something that-- that this fraudster or scam artist said to her that pushed
her over the edge, but clearly, one morning, she was willing to tell our cooperating
witness that she wanted to have somebody killed for $5,000. She was willing to pay because this person
had stolen from her. And so that's what started this investigative process. - Why would someone who's a victim of a romance scam
want to reach out and harm someone else? When we are so severely traumatized, we have varying reactions, many of which
we almost have no control over. I am no psychologist, but anyone can understand that when
you are so emotionally invested in something and then are triggered by hurt and pain, that some people cannot control
how they react or respond. - When you start messing with people's feelings and emotions,
you are in a whole nother lane. Because money, yes, like obviously, there's attachment to money.
But once you actually make a connection with somebody like that, and they think that you are X, Y, and Z, and you're coming,
and you love me, and you're saying all the right things, and Lord knows what he was promising her.
To find out that there was no relationship to be had, I'm sure she was very upset.
[melancholic music] ♪ ♪ They knew they had to react to Tisha very quickly because they
didn't know who else she had been reaching out to for this hit. So they knew if they couldn't beat someone else to the punch,
that this could actually happen. Will McCoskey: How do we, first of all, make sure that this is legit?
Is this somebody who's really looking to hire somebody to kill somebody? We want to look into it.
But if there's something there, what evidence do we need to satisfy the three essential elements?
The use of a facility of interstate commerce, that intent to kill somebody, and some sort of an agreement
to pay for that killing. Those are the three essential elements. So, as we investigate this case,
how are we going to develop evidence in those three elements? - Will and I discussed this.
We had the interstate communications, half of the equation. Now we needed the other half of the equation,
and that is the exchange of something of value for the solicitation for the murder.
[tense music] Will McCoskey: One of the things we knew we had to do was get an undercover agent involved in this.
♪ ♪ What is a murder for hire case? Under federal law, it's against the law for somebody to use or
cause someone else to use what's called a "facility of interstate commerce," kind of technical, but in this case,
a cellphone or something like that, with the intent to have a murder committed in exchange
for a payment or a promise to pay something of pecuniary value. That could be cash.
That could be something that's obviously of value to most of us-- gold, gems. ♪ ♪
Steve Secor: One of the first things I did was I called our cooperating witness and
I confirmed the information from the Sheriff's Department, with him over the phone.
But then I arranged to meet him in person. I don't like-- and I don't think anybody likes just to take something over the phone
and then run with it. You want to meet with somebody. You want to sit across from them.
You want to get a real sense of who they are and the information that they're bringing to the table.
He corroborated everything he told me over the phone. I saw the text messages between him and Tisha Dawn Raines,
where she's soliciting for a hit man. And based on that, went back to the office
and sat down with my partner and my supervisor, and I said, here's what I'd like to do.
I would like to have the cooperating witness introduce an undercover agent to Tisha Dawn Raines.
The undercover agent posing as a hit man, saying-- for the cooperating witness to say, hey, Tish,
here's the guy I've got to do, you know, what it is you want him to do. And you guys need to talk about it now
and come to some agreement. So that's-- that's exactly what we did. The next step in that was identifying
who we wanted to be the undercover agent on this case. ♪ ♪ I don't think this is going to be a surprise to anybody.
The FBI has agents who will sometimes operate in an undercover capacity. Being an undercover agent is something that you
volunteer for in the bureau. It's not something the bureau can make you do. I serve-- every FBI agent serves the needs of the bureau.
There are a handful of things, though, the bureau will not force you to do. And one of those things is work undercover matters.
So it takes a certain mindset to want to sign up for something like that. I wanted to identify who I thought
would be the perfect undercover agent for something like this. We need somebody who looks the part,
who can play the part, who can talk the talk and walk the walk. With our undercover coordinator,
we identified the perfect undercover agent for this matter. Undercover agents have the leeway
to accept or reject a request to pose as an undercover. Given the circumstances, they might say,
you know what, that's not something I'm comfortable doing. We don't force undercover agents
to do undercover stuff if they're not comfortable with it. The agent we approached to be undercover in this matter,
he was on board right from the get go. And he said, it's something-- yeah, I can get this done.
[intense music] Will McCoskey: This is always going to be a dangerous situation for an FBI agent,
an undercover to place himself or herself in. I will say that they are the trained experts at this.
And when the case agent, in this case, Agent Secor, and I decide that this is how we're going to follow up and
investigate this case, I put a lot of trust in them-- and it's well deserved, I think--
that they will undertake whatever security and safety protocols they have to do to make sure
that the agents are safe, to make sure that the target of the investigation is safe,
and of course, anybody else. [suspenseful music] Steve Secor: So we arranged for that undercover
to meet with Tisha out in a park in New Castle, Indiana. They had a face to face meeting,
where they discussed the circumstances of the murder for hire. We had a surveillance team in place to make sure
that everybody stays safe. ♪ ♪ We set up that undercover meeting. Right from the get go, she was on board and
letting our undercover know that she wanted this gentleman killed. ♪ ♪ During the discussions with the undercover agent about how
payment was going to be made, she said money was a little tight for her right now,
but she could get what she called go for him. And go was a street slang for methamphetamine.
And so they negotiated, basically, a down payment on the hit in methamphetamine.
The undercover mentions something like, oh, is this all there is? And she says, well, I can go and get more.
And she actually leaves the undercover meeting and goes directly to a local hotel there in Newcastle,
and comes back with another baggie of meth. During that meeting with the undercover
that she was hoping the original baggie of meth that she gave him, she was hoping to flip that and make
a little extra money on it. So she's even out there like, here's a baggie of meth
that I can pay you in. If I don't give it to you, I may go out and try to flip that into even more money
than I paid for it. So, this is somebody who is familiar with how-- how illegalities work in this world.
I've been doing this job long enough to know that people don't often think rationally.
So the notion that she had been scammed out of $1,200, but was willing to pay $5,000 to have an individual killed,
like monetarily, that makes absolutely no sense. But from a vengeance standpoint,
from the emotional end of things, it went to show how invested she was in having
this individual killed. [intense music] Douglas Walker: Clearly, Tisha has been a victim of drug abuse
and also a victim of a con artist, who took her money and led her to believe that romance
was coming when it was not. And I'm sure that was-- especially after spending a number of years in prison,
that had to be a major disappointment for her. And she didn't respond in the right way.
- I think this should be eye opening to people who are doing these kinds of things,
because you never know how they're going to turn out. People all react in different ways,
and she had murder on the brain. [melancholic music] ♪ ♪ Steve Secor: As soon as the meeting was over
and the hit man left the undercover meeting, we did a debrief with our undercover agent.
We took from him the two baggies of meth that had been put down as a down payment.
We immediately sent that off to be tested, and it came back as meth. - As far as I'm concerned, as a prosecutor,
the three elements have already been met as of now-- as of now. We've got the use of a cellphone, the intent
to kill, and also now the payment or promise to pay something of pecuniary value.
Steve Secor: During the undercover meeting between Ms. Raines and our undercover agent, Ms.
Raines showed our undercover agent a photo of the individual she believed had scammed her out of $1,200.
It was a picture of Brandon Burleson in his Navy BDUs with his name on his lapel very clear.
So if she were soliciting another hit man, somebody who wasn't an undercover FBI agent,
they had clear identifiers who this person was, what branch of the military he was in.
And it probably wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to figure out where that person is, and go out
and have that person murdered. - Well, because she does have a past history of drug use,
and the fact that she kept meeting up with them to give them more money, like at least three times, that they
knew she was serious. And the fact that now they had to find out who this Andrew was, because also he's in the military,
so he's in the Navy. So, you have a respected person whose life is on the line. So there are so many moving parts in this.
But I think the fact that an undercover was actually playing the role, they were able to really
see the case for what it was. [intense music] Steve Secor: We could have had her arrested
relatively quickly after that. But one of our biggest concerns was we had information that our undercover agent might
not be the only person she was talking to to have the hit done. So we wanted to make sure that we cut off any other attempts
that she might be making to have Brandon Burleson out in California murdered. Will McCoskey: It's possible that somebody
else is on the hunt. You know, besides our fake hit man, there's a real one out there.
That's the worst possible case. And so the FBI had to track down who this person was
because we need to warn them. Steve Secor: So one of the first things we did was I confirmed that Brandon Burleson was
active duty military. I confirmed his duty station. I placed a call to Brandon Burleson, told
him who I was on the phone. Oftentimes people might get telephone calls from people
saying they're with the FBI. We are always of the mindset that you should always
confirm that the person who's calling you is indeed from the FBI. I gave him our main contact number
to give me a call back to confirm that I am indeed an FBI agent, and to give me a call back
and I can share some details with him. And that's when I let him know, hey, here's what's going on.
I'd like to send a couple of agents out to talk with you and get some more information from you directly.
Will McCoskey: So he was approached and made aware that this whole thing was going on.
And he told the agent who interviewed him in California, look, this happens to me all the time.
This is like hundreds of times that my image has been used in these scams because he's all over the place
on social media. [melancholic music] ♪ ♪ - Identity theft is a very common crime.
And frankly, it does not seem that sensational. And I assume it was a shock for this individual
to determine not only did someone take his identity, but he was actually put in a place
where he very easily could have been killed as a result of that. Steve Secor: The person she believes
scammed her was not who scammed her. That person was a victim of online identity
theft, which was part of something that we call a romance scam. Will McCoskey: Further investigation by the FBI
revealed that he was a very real person, the person in the picture. Brandon Burleson was a chief petty officer
in the United States Navy, on active duty as a recruiter out in California. In his job as a recruiter, he has to have a social media
presence that's pretty big. And so his picture's all over the place out there. And somebody we believe found his picture
and sent that picture to Ms. Raines and conned her into sending some amount of money.
Tiffanie Richards: He had received about 100 emails from other women who were really pissed
off that he took their money. But he has no idea who any of these people are. He hasn't talked to any of them.
None of them looked familiar. He didn't know any of this was happening until, all of a sudden, there was a hit on his life.
That's got to be scary, because that's just taking this to a whole new level. Now it's not just, OK, you stole my money,
but now it's turning into, I'm going to kill you. And he had nothing to do with it.
[intense music] Steve Secor: I cut a lead out to our Los Angeles field office to have Brandon Burleson interviewed face to face
by a couple of FBI agents. And as part of that, because Brandon Burleson is considered
a victim in this case, we also had contact made with Mr. Burleson by what's called a victim specialist, just to let him know.
In this case, Mr. Burleson was very cooperative with us, even being surprised by the fact that somebody
might be soliciting to have you murdered. He was very cooperative right from the get go.
But we still reach out with a victim specialist to let him know that there are victim
services available to him, should he need them. He told me over the phone that his photos
had been used by scammers to scam women out of money. He referred to them as soft heart scams.
We in the FBI would call them romance scams. His name and his likeness had been used
to scam people out of money. He had been contacted by hundreds of women, saying that he had scammed them out of money,
and he had to explain to them that that was not him who was sending them messages.
That was somebody who cut and pasted his picture off the internet and used them in fake dating profiles and fake Facebook pages
to scam them out of money. When I spoke with him, he was surprised, however, that one of these scams
had escalated to murder for hire. - I'll never ask you for money. I'm never going to ask you for inappropriate pictures
or send you inappropriate pictures. This account is strictly professional, make you laugh every now and then, acting goofball,
but I'm not going to ask you for money. Douglas Walker: I can't imagine that she
was terribly surprised to-- to have this unfold the way it did. I mean, she clearly was a person who took risks.
She sent a significant amount of money to a person she did not know. And had no idea at all who that person was,
and she thought they were going to have a romantic relationship. [intense music]
Doug Fodeman: Anyone watching this needs to know that it is emotionally damaging when
you have your identity stolen and used to defraud other people. Because there's misplaced blame, as we all know.
But also the fact that think about today's day and age, it's a digital world that we live in.
So that means our information is used to access dozens, if not a hundred different accounts.
There's financial accounts, credit card accounts, bank accounts, emails. Most people have more than one email in today's day and age,
especially younger people. You've got social media accounts, there's apps, there's phone.
It's just so pervasive in how much we use the digital world. So imagine if your personal information is stolen
and now you're at risk of identity theft or impersonation. Then it puts most of those things, in some measure,
at risk, as well as yourself because somebody's going to think that you're a fraud.
You've got different types of images stolen for different purposes. So yes, it's almost cliche to say that a very handsome man,
whether he's in his 60s or whether he's in his 20s, or a beautiful woman, whether she's in her 30s or in her 50s.
I mean, yes, it is cliche. They are stolen all the time and misused by cyber criminals
to represent themselves as this person. And anyone online who has a well-known internet presence
is at risk. - They use people in the military often because they are deployed. Because it's harder for them to be found out.
Because, I mean, they're away. They can't talk to you all the time. So if they happen to be deployed or they're doing this
or they're in a secret mission, obviously, you're not going to have the casual contact like you would
with somebody who is just a civilian. So I think that, number one, it's because it shows
that they're in great honor. I mean, you're serving your country. Of course you're going to want to believe them.
Then the fact that you don't have constant communication with them is kind of normal because of what they do,
and because at some point in time, these soldiers and people in the Navy, Army, all of it,
they have to come home. So now they have a reason why they need the money. So I think it kind of makes them an easy target.
Doug Fodeman: Cyber criminals, in order to prove who they are, they will send documentation, or
they will send IDs to the people they're trying to victimize. And those IDs are just everyday run of the mill people
that they pull off the web. There are thousands of fake websites on the internet.
Completely fake, completely fabricated. And many of them have the team, the CEO of the company,
the warehouse workers. And some of those are stock images. Absolutely. But many of those are images that are
stolen from other websites. And sometimes the criminals are clever enough that they actually will match what somebody's history is
and what their-- their business is or their trade. So, for instance, a lawyer, a real lawyer,
they'll take that image, put it on a fake website, and all the credentials-- I've seen this-- are identical to the real person,
but with a different name. - Unfortunately, identity theft is a huge issue, and you have to report it so it's on file.
That way, say, if they have a driver's license with your picture and all that on it, you're
not being accused of the things that this person is doing on your behalf. And sometimes they can find the people, sometimes they can't.
A lot of times, these perpetrators are in other countries. And that makes them a lot harder
to catch and to find, because everything that they tell you is a lie. Their location is a lie.
Their occupation is a lie. So you really have nothing to go off of other than what
these people are telling you. Doug Fodeman: How dangerous it can be for the people who have their IDs stolen,
it's literally across the spectrum. So yes, you can imagine like a made for TV movie, where someone is actually stalked
by a victim found and killed. Have there been those circumstances? Yes. They're incredibly rare, thankfully,
and they're horrible. But then there's the complete opposite end of the spectrum, where I've had people say,
well, thank you very much. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm not worried about it.
It's not my fault. It's not my problem. Honestly, most people land in the middle.
And for that, I mean that there are people that they're empathetic and they don't like hearing that their images have been
used to hurt other people. They're concerned about their own well-being, and so they'll notify friends and family.
They'll put some warning up. They'll maybe change their practices a little bit, but it varies tremendously depending on the person
you're speaking with. Steve Secor: In speaking with him, I don't get the sense that he's somebody
who shies away from a fight. So I don't think he was scared. He was more surprised that one of these scams
had escalated to murder for hire. We wanted to control the situation. Our undercover agent texted Ms. Raines.
He had let her know about a week before that he had, quote, "Found the package," and that it was going to get done.
We wanted to make it look like he had already been murdered. And so if she was soliciting other people
to have him murdered, that she would be able to call that off or nobody would be out there looking for Mr. Burleson
to actually murder him. So we wanted to cut things off and make it look like that her solicitation for the murder
had come to an end. Will McCoskey: He agreed to cooperate and help us make staged photos.
Steve Secor: We were able to make it look like-- like Mr. Burleson had indeed been murdered.
[intense music] Our undercover agent texted those pictures to Ms. Raines. She responded with, "I don't know who that is."
And that was, I believe, the last substantive contact that our undercover had with Ms. Raines.
- You know, I think that was a statement to try to hide her complicity in the potential death
of somebody, you know. Wasn't really dead, of course, but that was the whole purpose, just
was to see what she would say, knowing that her plan had been successfully implemented.
Tiffanie Richards: To actually have the paint put on, and so it'll look like you've been shot
and you got to lay on the ground, like, that is just a whole nother level. Will McCoskey: He wanted to take this role
in helping educate others so that they could be alert to this type of scam. - I don't think anybody in this world jumps
from nothing to murder for hire. Whenever you look at someone's criminal background,
there's usually an escalation starting relatively early in their life. And Ms. Raines was no-- was no exception.
Relatively minor things early in her adult life, slowly escalating until we get to dealing narcotics.
And then a year after she gets out of prison, soliciting murder for hire. We had everything we needed to have.
Now I just need to go out and have her arrested. [intense music] We attempted to arrest Ms. Raines at her house.
She was not there. We figured after that, that she might be at work. We knew where she worked.
She worked at an auto parts supplier out in New Castle, Indiana. The arrest team moved there, and
we were able to locate her at her place of employment and placed her under arrest.
[radio chatter] When we first started interviewing Ms. Raines, we asked her where her cell phone was.
We were interested in getting that phone for evidentiary reasons. She tried telling us that her phone had been
waterlogged the night before. So this is the part of the interview where we're confronting her about that
and expressing our skepticism as to the story she's telling us. [melancholic music]
- It's interesting when-- when you confront people with inconsistencies in what they're telling you and the story keeps changing.
So she knew our undercover as T. She was introduced to him using the name, the nickname T.
And she tries telling us that she told T, no, that she did not want this done and that she
was emphatic about it. So, that's where I'm talking with her about that here. We eventually got her to admit that her phone was inside.
So we had somebody go in and pull it out for us. So, she gave him an 8 ball, which is an 1/8 of an ounce,
which the price of an 1/8 of an ounce of methamphetamine can vary from anywhere from $100 to $200.
She at first thought that Brandon Burleson's name was Andrew. She was calling him Andrew.
She thought Andrew was his middle name that he went by. So she knew him by Brandon and by Andrew.
So she would often call him Andrew as well. Here's where we showed her the picture
of Mr. Burleson that we had staged as if he had been murdered. So that was me confronting her with that picture.
And you can't see it, obviously, because it's audio. But if that interview had been video recorded,
you would see her just trying to avert her eyes and just not have anything to do with that picture.
And then the last clip is negotiating the amount of meth for the hit. [intense music]
There's no reluctance here on her part. She is-- she's negotiating, paying for this hit in any way
that she can. And given her circumstances and her background, the way she was going to pay for this
was to continue to pay in meth. When I told her that T was an undercover agent, she--
she deflated, physically deflated. So, not a whole lot of audio there, but physically, you could see that she just--
she knew the game was over. [melancholic music] That case resolved itself fairly
quickly, as far as federal cases are concerned. Will McCoskey: We charged Tisha with not only
the violation of the murder for hire statute, but also for the distribution of methamphetamine.
Also a federal crime, of course. But as part of our plea agreement, in this case,
the United States agreed to dismiss the meth counts if she would plead guilty to the murder for hire.
And that's how the case was resolved. Not a trial, but a guilty plea. Steve Secor: A little bit after that,
she was sentenced to almost 10 years in federal prison. [melancholic music] Her entire life has just been a series of--
of poor decisions, because she just doesn't know how to do the right thing. Will McCoskey: In cases like Ms. Raines,
I'm sure the communications were probably by text message or email from this scam artist.
Now, with AI, people can fake the voice of somebody that they actually know, a loved one.
Oh my gosh, Grandma, I'm stuck in Mexico and I need money for bail. And they can do this.
And that's a much harder question. But again, if these crimes, these actions are reported to law enforcement as early as possible,
that's probably your best bet. But even better than that, let's just hope that you don't become a victim
to begin with by being sensible about what information you put out there. It can sometimes lead to a plot to kill somebody.
[melancholic music] So these are things that matter a lot to people, not just the victims of these crimes, but it matters.
It should matter to everybody that uses a computer or uses social media or the internet or anything like that.
But they should know that we're doing our very best to fight it. - I do have videos about the scammers on my page.
There's really nothing I can do. I feel no obligation or responsibility for it whatsoever.
Just use your common sense. Life will be a lot easier for you. Will McCoskey: You kind of control how much presence
you have on social media. You know, you can put yourself all over social media. You can put all kinds of facts about yourself on social media.
And yes, even though you would become an unwitting victim, in a sense, you're making yourself open to that
if you're not careful about how you do that. Doug Fodeman: What can people do to better protect themselves
against ID theft, protect their information, their personal information online? There is a long list of things that people can do.
And let's make it crystal clear. Exiting from the internet, divorcing yourself from the use of the internet
is just not going to happen. Because, first of all, that's not the way life is going.
It is a digital world. We're in it. So the question is, how can you live in that digital world
more safely? Steve Secor: It is almost depressing how prevalent these scams are, and
how a lot of people who might not have a whole lot of money to begin with are being scammed out of whatever little money
they have left. The bad guys know how to play on people's emotions. And for them, oftentimes, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.
[melancholic music] ♪ ♪ [theme music] ♪ ♪

Believing she had finally found love, Tisha Raines discovers she has fallen victim to a romance scam.

Brief Summary

Tisha Raines hires a hitman after falling victim to a romance scam, leading to an FBI investigation and her eventual arrest.

Key points

The Romance Scam Unfolds. Tisha Raines falls for a romance scam, believing she met her dream man.
Descent into Crime. Tisha's desperation leads her to solicit a hit man after being scammed.
The Undercover Operation. FBI agents set up an undercover meeting to prevent a potential murder.
The Victim's Perspective. Brandon Burleson, the real victim, learns of the plot against him.
Romance Scams Unveiled. Scammers use stolen identities to defraud victims, leading to emotional and financial turmoil.
Escalation to Murder for Hire. A scam escalates dangerously, revealing the potential for real-life consequences.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I met the man of my dreams, and we're going to be happy.

Tiffanie Richards describes Tisha's initial feelings about Andrew.

0:24WatchJul 31, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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