Investigative reporting on scams, fraud, and consumer traps
Con Job is a media and investigative education site that exposes scams, identity theft, fraud, and everyday consumer traps through episodes, case breakdowns, and practical red flags. We start with one viewer tip and follow the pattern until the warning becomes useful to someone else.
Every dispatch on this page began as a confused screenshot, a charge that did not belong, a phone call that arrived a beat too quickly. We turn those moments into reporting: who got hurt, how the con actually worked, what evidence still exists, and what to █████████ before the same playbook spreads to another inbox, another lobby, another █████.
A cloned online retailer ran for eleven days before the chargebacks caught up. Inside the dispatch: the domain trail, the freight-forwarder dead drop, and the three details every shopper missed.
Read the breakdown —How a single SMS from a spoofed short-code drained a commuter's debit card in under nine minutes — and the carrier loophole that kept it ringing.
Read the breakdown —Synthetic identity fraud, told one frozen mortgage application at a time. Where the trail starts, who profits, and which alert nobody answered.
Read the breakdown —Inside an AI voice-cloning extortion call that nearly cleared out a retirement account. The 14 seconds of audio that made it possible.
Read the breakdown —A storm-chaser ring that worked a single zip code for a season. The paperwork trail, the warranty claims, and the HOA that finally said enough.
Read the breakdown —
We don't chase every fraud. We chase the repeatable ones — the templates a stranger can rent on a Tuesday afternoon and aim at your grandmother by Friday.
Phishing emails, fake websites, spoof domains, crypto scams, fake online stores, and app-based fraud — the templates that scale the fastest and leave the cleanest paper trail when you know where to look.
Fake toll texts, package delivery messages, bank-fraud alerts, and wrong-number approaches that drift into investment pitches. The cheapest delivery vehicle in fraud, and the hardest one to trace.
SSN misuse, synthetic identity fraud, data breaches, and medical identity theft warning signs — the slow-burn cons that show up months later, in a denial letter or a bill that was never yours.
Ponzi schemes, fake advisors, retirement traps, government impersonation, and AI voice cloning scams. The category where confidence costs the most and trusts the wrong voice.
Contractor problems, utility disputes, home warranty pitches, HOA conflicts, and repair or maintenance schemes that lean on confusion at the property line. The cons that live where you do.
Turn a viewer tip or reported case into a clear scam type, affected audience, and repeatable warning signs. One incident isn't a story — a recurring template is.
Show how the con worked, what evidence exists, what money or access was at risk, and where the consumer got stuck. The mechanics matter more than the outrage.
Package the story as an episode, short alert, checklist, or education guide that helps others avoid the same trap before it reaches them.
A con works because no one names it out loud. Our beat is what happened, who got hit, which warning signs were there in plain view, and what to write down before the same pattern reaches the next neighborhood.— From the Hawaii Beat · Editorial
A scam you saw, a charge you didn't make, a contractor who never returned — send it to the desk. Tips stay confidential. We only publish patterns, never private identifiers, without your explicit consent.
The fastest dispatches start with one screenshot and a clear timeline. Use the intake to the right, or mail the wire desk directly.