Romance Scam

Romance scams have evolved far beyond the "Nigerian prince" era. Host Michael Slider, joined by AI co-hosts Bernard and Tammy, draws on 43 sources, including FBI and FTC data, DOJ indictments, and investigative journalism from 2022 to 2026, to expose how organized syndicates weaponize loneliness to drain the life savings of older adults. From deepfaked soap-opera stars and fake crypto dashboards to "pig butchering," recovery scams, and victims unknowingly turned into money mules, this deep dive traces the full anatomy of a modern psychological trap, and the one defense that actually works.

Host: Michael Slider
AI co-hosts: Bernard & Tammy

CHAPTERS

(00:00) The "open door" - why perimeter defense fails against psychological breaches
(02:20) The staggering scale: $7.7B in losses, 201,000+ victims over 60
(03:04) Targeted by design: who scammers hunt and why
(04:29) Stepping outside the banking system into unregulated crypto
(05:39) "Pig butchering" explained - fattening trust before the slaughter
(06:13) The rigged-casino playbook: fake dashboards and "proof" withdrawals
(07:36) When ChatGPT, not the bank, caught the scam
(08:43) AI at scale: voice and face deepfakes, and the General Hospital case
(10:08) The grooming pivot: framing fraud as "our shared future"
(11:37) Isolation tactics and the collateral damage
(12:38) Recovery scams and the "sucker lists"
(14:07) The darkest turn: victims as unwitting money mules
(15:50) The legal gray zone - victim or accomplice?
(16:15) Can law enforcement keep up?
(17:05) Key takeaways and the human-connection defense
(18:20) A chilling new frontier: when scams move offline
KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Losses among older adults roughly quadrupled from 2020 to 2024, reaching $2.4B; FBI data later cited $7.7B in total fraud losses for victims over 60, with an average loss around $83,000.
2. "Pig butchering" builds trust over weeks or months before pivoting to a fake crypto investment, and small early "winnings" destroy the victim's skepticism.
3. AI has collapsed the barrier to entry - seconds of public audio can generate a live, interactive deepfake persona.
4. The scam doesn't end at zero balance: recovery scams and money-mule recruitment often follow, sometimes with criminal liability.
5. The strongest safeguard is social, not technical: regular human connection and honest conversations.

WARNING SIGNS TO WATCH FOR

- A new, secretive online relationship
- Sudden, intense interest in cryptocurrency from someone with no prior interest in finance
- Reluctance to discuss a partner they've never met in person
- Large or unusual money transfers, and defensiveness when questioned
- A partner who frames doubts as betrayal ("Don't you trust me?")

RESOURCES

FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center: https://www.ic3.gov
FTC fraud reporting: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov
National Elder Fraud Hotline: [phone] (U.S. Department of Justice)
AARP Fraud Watch Network: https://www.aarp.org/fraudwatchnetwork

Creators and Guests

Host

Michael Slider

Retired LAPD detective (30 years) and licensed PI Michael Slider exposes the scams targeting seniors — and shows you how to fight back.

Producer

Michael Slider

Retired LAPD detective (30 years) and licensed PI Michael Slider exposes the scams targeting seniors — and shows you how to fight back.

What is The Senior Fraud Report?

The Senior Fraud Report with Host Michael Slider (Ret. LAPD Detective) helps seniors and their families fight back against the scams that drain victims of billions—breaking down how they work and how to stay protected.

Copy of Romance Scam
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[00:00:00] Bernard: You know, when we think about, um Protecting our homes, we tend to focus almost entirely on the perimeter.

[00:00:06] Tammy: Right, the outside stuff.

[00:00:08] Bernard: Exactly. Like, you lock the doors, you install an alarm system, maybe you set up one of those motion sensor cameras. It is all structural. The whole goal is just to keep the bad guys out.

[00:00:17] Tammy: Yeah. It is a very physical, external defense strategy. You build a wall, and, you know, you assume you are safe inside it.

[00:00:24] Bernard: Right. But what if the threat doesn't even try to pick the lock?

[00:00:27] Tammy: Oh, man.

[00:00:28] Bernard: What if they just knock on the front door, tell you that you look incredibly lonely, and you just, well, you willingly invite them in?

[00:00:35] Tammy: Yeah, that completely changes the dynamic.

[00:00:36] Bernard: And then over the next few months, you sit at the kitchen table and happily hand them the keys to the safe. I mean, in that scenario, the perimeter defense is completely useless because the breach is entirely psychological. You bypass the alarm system yourself.

[00:00:51] Tammy: You open the door.

[00:00:52] Bernard: Exactly. And that is exactly the dynamic we are exploring today on this deep dive. We are talking directly to you, the listener, because if you are [00:01:00] listening to this, you are probably thinking, uh, "My parents or grandparents would never fall for something like that. They know better."

[00:01:05] Tammy: Which honestly is a very dangerous assumption to make.

[00:01:08] The modern iteration of these schemes, they bypass logic entirely. They aren't targeting gullibility. They are targeting grief, isolation, and, you know, just deep loneliness.

[00:01:20] Bernard: Yeah. Today's deep dive is gonna look at some truly staggering data we've gathered. I'm looking at a massive stack of 43 unique sources.

[00:01:27] Tammy: That's a huge pile.

[00:01:28] Bernard: It really is. Everything from FBI and FTC reports to DOJ indictments and investigative journalism covering 2022 up to 2026. And the mission here is to uncover how romance scams have evolved. We are not talking about simple catfishing anymore.

[00:01:43] Tammy: No, not at all.

[00:01:44] Bernard: We are talking about an AI-driven, multi-billion dollar psychological trap.

[00:01:48] And even if you aren't a senior yourself, you almost certainly have loved ones navigating an online world that has just become an absolute financial minefield.

[00:01:56] Tammy: It's terrifying when you actually look at the scope of it.

[00:01:59] Bernard: It is.

[00:01:59] Tammy: [00:02:00] Yeah.

[00:02:00] Bernard: This isn't just about someone getting tricked into buying, like, a few iTunes gift cards at the pharmacy.

[00:02:05] It involves international money laundering, incredibly convincing celebrity deepfakes, and massive cryptocurrency schemes. So, okay, let's unpack the, uh, the-- Where do we even begin to grasp the sheer scale of an operation this vast?

[00:02:20] Tammy: Well, to really understand the mechanics of the crime, we have to first look at the incredible pool of capital these networks are draining.

[00:02:27] Mm-hmm. I mean, when you look at the raw data we gathered from those federal agencies, the trajectory is genuinely terrifying.

[00:02:33] Bernard: Yeah, the numbers are wild.

[00:02:34] Tammy: They are. Older adult fraud losses roughly quadrupled from 2020 to 2024.

[00:02:40] Bernard: Wait, quadrupled?

[00:02:41] Tammy: Quadrupled, hitting $2.4 billion.

[00:02:43] Bernard: Wow.

[00:02:44] Tammy: And that was just the warm-up.

[00:02:45] By the time the 2025 FBI data rolled in, over 201,000 victims over the age of 60 reported a staggering $7.7 billion in total fraud losses.

[00:02:55] Bernard: That is just-- That's hard to even wrap your head around, 7.7 billion.

[00:02:58] Tammy: Yeah. And [00:03:00] consistently, romance scams are cited as the pre- Primary driver of all this devastation

[00:03:04] Bernard: And the catastrophic nature of this hits older adults uniquely hard, right?

[00:03:10] Like looking at the AARP data, the average loss for an adult 60 and older caught in one of these schemes sits around $83,000.

[00:03:17] Tammy: Yeah, which is just life-ruining money.

[00:03:19] Bernard: It is an entire retirement nest egg- Yeah ... just gone in a matter of months. And looking through the source material, the intentionality of the targeting is, it's chilling Scammers are specifically hunting for women over 40 who are divorced, widowed, elderly, or disabled.

[00:03:35] Tammy: They know exactly what they're looking for.

[00:03:36] Bernard: They do. They infiltrate platforms marketed specifically to seniors, places like the dating site OurTime. They know exactly who has the resources and the emotional vulnerability they need.

[00:03:47] Tammy: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:47] Bernard: Like there was a heartbreaking case from 2023 in The Guardian where an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor was defrauded of $2.8 million by a woman in Florida.

[00:03:56] Tammy: Ah, that is just tragic. Yeah. But you really have to view this from the [00:04:00] scammer's perspective. You have a generation that has accumulated significant wealth over a lifetime, right? Home equity, retirement accounts, life savings. Combine that localized wealth with a widespread epidemic of isolation, and you have the perfect target.

[00:04:14] The scammers are essentially weaponizing loneliness to unlock decades of saved capital.

[00:04:20] Bernard: It is like a highly targeted corporate acquisition strategy.

[00:04:23] Tammy: Yeah, exactly.

[00:04:24] Bernard: But instead of buying a company, the target is someone's loneliness and their life savings.

[00:04:28] Tammy: Uh.

[00:04:29] Bernard: But wait, I have to push back and stop you there because this is where the mechanics just do not make sense to me.

[00:04:34] Tammy: Okay, what do you mean?

[00:04:36] Bernard: Well, banks have massive fraud departments, right? If my grandmother tries to wire $80,000, let alone $2.8 million, to a stranger she's never met in person, her bank is legally obligated to flag that.

[00:04:49] Tammy: Right, they are.

[00:04:49] Bernard: So how are these criminal institutions letting billions of dollars slip through the cracks without tripping every single alarm in the banking system?

[00:04:56] Tammy: Well, what's fascinating here is that the scammers actually hit that exact [00:05:00] wall. Because banks eventually catch on to these massive wire transfers, the scammers had to completely invent a new financial ecosystem to bypass those traditional safeguards.

[00:05:11] Bernard: Oh, so they just stepped outside the banking system entirely.

[00:05:14] Tammy: Precisely. They aren't asking for direct wire transfers from Bank of America to a foreign account anymore. They are moving the victims away from traditional banking entirely and into unregulated digital environments.

[00:05:27] Bernard: Which explains the shift into high-tech financial grooming we saw in the reports.

[00:05:31] Tammy: Mm.

[00:05:32] Bernard: We are moving away from traditional, you know, send me money for an emergency plane ticket scams.

[00:05:37] Tammy: Right. The Nigerian prince era is over.

[00:05:39] Bernard: Exactly. And the term that keeps appearing across all the aging advocacy reports is pig butchering. Wow. Which is just a horrific term.

[00:05:47] Tammy: It's awful, yeah. But it perfectly describes the psychological methodology, though. Pig butchering refers to the agricultural practice of fattening up a pig before the slaughter.

[00:05:55] Bernard: Right.

[00:05:55] Tammy: In a digital context, it starts as a romance or a very close friendship. The [00:06:00] scammer builds trust over weeks or even months without ever asking for a single dime.

[00:06:04] Bernard: Wow, just pure patience.

[00:06:05] Tammy: Yeah.

[00:06:06] Bernard: Yeah.

[00:06:06] Tammy: Then once the emotional hook is really set, they slowly pivot the conversation into a fake cryptocurrency investment scheme.

[00:06:13] Bernard: And the mechanics of how they pull this off are incredibly sophisticated. It is not just a text message asking for Bitcoin. They direct the victim to a fake cryptocurrency dashboard that looks exactly like a legitimate trading platform.

[00:06:28] Tammy: Yeah, they build whole websites.

[00:06:30] Bernard: It has moving tickers, professional UI, customer service chat bots.

[00:06:33] I mean, it is basically like a rigged casino machine. The house lets the victim win early on.

[00:06:39] Tammy: Right, to build that false confidence.

[00:06:41] Bernard: Exactly. They put in $1,000. The fake dashboard shows it doubling in a week, and the scammer might even let the victim withdraw a small amount of money to prove it is, quote-unquote, "real."

[00:06:51] Tammy: And that small withdrawal is the fatal blow to the victim's skepticism. Once the victim actually holds the profits in their hands, the scammer has achieved total [00:07:00] credibility. They are fattening the victim's confidence.

[00:07:02] Bernard: Which leads to the slaughter.

[00:07:03] Tammy: Exactly. Then the victim liquidates their 401, remortgages their house, and pours absolutely everything into the platform.

[00:07:11] And the moment they try to make a massive withdrawal, the platform suddenly demands a fake tax fee or a security deposit to release the funds.

[00:07:19] Bernard: Which they obviously never get back. And the amounts lost to this specific tactic are staggering. Like there was a report out of San Jose about a widow in her 70s who was lured into one of these crypto schemes and lost nearly one million dollars.

[00:07:34] Tammy: A million dollars, just devastating.

[00:07:36] Bernard: But there is a wild, almost dystopian detail in that specific case from the ABC7 report. She didn't find out from her bank, and she didn't find out from her family ChatGPT was the entity that finally alerted the widow she was being scammed.

[00:07:52] Tammy: Wait, really? The AI told her?

[00:07:53] Bernard: Yeah. She apparently fed the conversations and the crypto platform details into the AI, probably because she had a tiny [00:08:00] sliver of doubt but felt too ashamed to ask her own kids. The AI analyzed the texts and told her it was a textbook pig butchering scam.

[00:08:07] Tammy: Oh, wow. Which, I mean, is a remarkable defense mechanism.

[00:08:10] Bernard: It is.

[00:08:10] Tammy: But it's an ironic twist considering that AI is exactly the tool the scammers are using to scale these operations to a global level in the first place. Right. Generally, technology is vastly working against the victims. Like we saw a crypto scheme called SpireBit that specifically targeted Russian-speaking seniors.

[00:08:26] They used shared cultural language, a localized slang, and regional familiarity to build deep trust really rapidly.

[00:08:33] Bernard: Oh, that's clever.

[00:08:34] Tammy: Yeah. And in a very rare win, NPR reported that one victim actually recovered $140,000, but they are the absolute exception.

[00:08:43] Bernard: Right. Because the scammers are using AI to generate trust at such a massive scale.

[00:08:49] I mean, in late 2025, the DOJ indicted a Ghanian criminal network that was using AI software to assume false identities. They weren't just sending stolen photos anymore. [00:09:00] They were perfectly mimicking voices and faces to form romantic relationships with elderly Americans.

[00:09:04] Tammy: That's next level deception.

[00:09:06] Bernard: It is.

[00:09:06] They stole over $8 million. And then there's this story from the LA Times of a 66-year-old woman who lost absolutely everything because she thought she was flirting with a star from the soap opera General Hospital.

[00:09:16] Tammy: Oh, I read about that one.

[00:09:17] Bernard: Yeah. It was a complete deep fake. The video, the audio, everything looked and sounded exactly like the celebrity she had watched on television for decades.

[00:09:26] Tammy: Because the barrier to entry for this technology is practically zero now.

[00:09:29] Bernard: Really?

[00:09:30] Tammy: Oh, yeah. You no longer need a team of highly skilled hackers in a basement to create a deep fake. A scammer operating out of a boiler room overseas can just scrape three seconds of public audio from a social media profile or a TV show, run it through freely available software, and generate a live interactive video persona.

[00:09:50] Bernard: That is terrifying.

[00:09:51] Tammy: They can sit on a WhatsApp video call with an elderly woman in Ohio, and she sees and hears the exact person she thinks she is falling in love with.

[00:09:59] Bernard: Okay, so here's where [00:10:00] it gets really interesting, though. Even with flawless deep fakes and beautiful fake crypto websites, I still struggle with the psychological leap.

[00:10:08] Let's say I am a senior on a dating app I'm lonely. I'm looking for a romantic connection. How does a scammer realistically pivot the conversation from, you know, "I love you. I wanna spend my life with you," to, "Hey, let's buy some unregulated cryptocurrency" without immediately setting off my alarm bells?

[00:10:28] Tammy: Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture, you have to realize it is never framed as a transaction. It is a masterclass in slow, methodical grooming.

[00:10:37] Bernard: Okay.

[00:10:37] Tammy: They don't just abruptly ask for money. They say, um, "I have found this incredible financial vehicle, and because I love you and because I want us to buy that house on the lake together, I want you to benefit from it too.

[00:10:49] I wanna build our shared future."

[00:10:51] Bernard: Wow. So they tie it to the relationship.

[00:10:52] Tammy: Yes. The investment is framed as an act of love and partnership. They are essentially combining emotional intimacy with [00:11:00] financial planning.

[00:11:01] Bernard: They weave the financial scam right into the fabric of the romantic dream.

[00:11:04] Tammy: Precisely. They build a state of complete blind trust, and in that state, questioning the investment feels like questioning the relationship itself.

[00:11:14] If the victim says, uh, "I don't know about this crypto site," the scammer acts hurt. They say, "Don't you trust me? Don't you want our future together?" It uses the victim's own empathy and desire for connection as a weapon against them.

[00:11:27] Bernard: Questioning the investment feels like questioning the relationship. That completely shifts the paradigm.

[00:11:33] You aren't just losing money, you're betting on your future happiness.

[00:11:36] Tammy: Exactly.

[00:11:37] Bernard: And that emotional entanglement leads us to a truly dark place in the source material because hitting a zero balance in the bank account isn't even the bottom of the trap. The psychological manipulation is so strong that it forces victims into unbelievable collateral damage.

[00:11:51] Tammy: Yeah, because once a victim's defenses are breached, the syndicates ruthlessly exploit that open door. The psychological conditioning doesn't just vanish when the money does. [00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Bernard: No, it doesn't. We see that in the San Francisco retiree who wired away her entire $500,000 life savings. She did it despite explicit repeated warnings from her own family and her friends.

[00:12:11] Tammy: Right, they tried to stop her.

[00:12:12] Bernard: They saw the red flags.

[00:12:14] Tammy: Yeah.

[00:12:14] Bernard: They were practically begging her to stop sending money. But the scammer had already isolated her. He'd convinced her that her family just didn't understand their love, that her children were just greedy and wanted her inheritance. He drove a wedge between her and her actual support system.

[00:12:29] Tammy: It's textbook isolation.

[00:12:31] Bernard: Yeah. And then for victims who do finally wake up to the reality of the scam, the nightmare often starts all over again.

[00:12:38] Tammy: Yeah, the secondary scams, specifically recovery scams. The criminal underworld maintains databases of victims, which they cruelly refer to as sucker lists.

[00:12:48] Bernard: Ugh, that's sickening.

[00:12:50] Tammy: It really is. They know these individuals are vulnerable, financially desperate, and most importantly, already psychologically conditioned to comply with authority or promises of salvation.

[00:12:59] Bernard: Which [00:13:00] is exactly what happened to a Long Island widow we read about. She lost $468,000 in a romance scam. She is completely devastated at her absolute lowest point, and then she was targeted again by people pretending to be a cybersecurity agency offering to help her recover the stolen funds.

[00:13:17] Tammy: Right. They pose as law enforcement, FBI agents, or white hat hackers. They claim they have frozen the scammer's accounts and can retrieve the victim's money. They just need an upfront fee for legal processing or software costs.

[00:13:31] Bernard: And she fell for it.

[00:13:32] Tammy: The victim is so desperate to be made whole again that they borrow money just to pay the fake recovery fee, falling into a second trap laid by the exact same syndicate.

[00:13:42] Bernard: A 67-year-old victim in The Guardian who lost £100,000 described this emotional vulnerability perfectly. She said, quote, "I opened up like a giant elevator."

[00:13:53] Tammy: That's a powerful way to put it.

[00:13:54] Bernard: She just completely let her defenses down, and they systematically hollowed her out. But the [00:14:00] darkest turn in all of this data, the absolute bottom of the trap, is what happens when the victim literally runs out of money to give and cannot borrow another cent.

[00:14:07] Tammy: Right, and that is when the networks turn the victims into money mules.

[00:14:12] Bernard: Money mules.

[00:14:13] Tammy: Yeah. The syndicates are pulling in billions of dollars globally. They have a massive logistical problem. They need to move stolen funds from other victims without triggering international banking alarms. Because the senior victim has an established clean bank account in the United States with a long financial history, the scammer manipulates them into receiving and forwarding illicit funds.

[00:14:34] Bernard: They turn the victims into active criminals without them even realizing it.

[00:14:37] Tammy: Exactly. The scammer might say, um, "My business accounts are frozen because of a tax audit. I need you to receive this contract payment from a client for me and wire it to my supplier in Dubai. It would really help me out of a bind."

[00:14:52] Bernard: So the senior thinks they're just doing a favor.

[00:14:54] Tammy: Yes. The senior thinks they are just helping their partner. In reality, they are layering and laundering money for an international [00:15:00] crime syndicate.

[00:15:00] Bernard: Which brings devastating real world legal consequences crashing down on them. Like a District of Columbia auditor actually faced federal money laundering charges tied to one of these international romance scams.

[00:15:12] The human cost here goes so far beyond a depleted bank account.

[00:15:16] Tammy: It ruins lives on multiple levels.

[00:15:18] Bernard: It does. A year-long investigation by CBS News into what was called the Hustle Kingdom highlighted the case of an Illinois widow named Laura Cole. She was manipulated into becoming a money mule after already losing one point five million dollars of her own money.

[00:15:33] Tammy: Wow.

[00:15:34] Bernard: Think about the psychological weight of that. Right. You realize the love of your life is a fiction. Your life savings are gone, and now federal agents are knocking on your door threatening you with prison time for international money laundering. The shame and the pressure were so absolute that her case ended in her tragic death.

[00:15:50] Tammy: And this raises an important question about the legal minefield investigators face. Law enforcement has to navigate a highly complex situation where the person moving the illicit money is [00:16:00] simultaneously a victim of devastating emotional and financial fraud and an unwitting accomplice to an international syndicate.

[00:16:06] Unraveling who is a co-conspirator operating with intent and who is a brainwashed victim acting under intense psychological pressure takes immense resources.

[00:16:15] Bernard: And with these massive operations based overseas, like the networks in Ghana or the boiler rooms in Southeast Asia, is law enforcement actually making a dent?

[00:16:26] Because reading these reports, it feels like using a bucket to empty the ocean. I know the DOJ has their Save Our Seniors initiative, which resulted in eight arrests recently. But does that even scratch the surface of a seven point seven billion dollar industry?

[00:16:40] Tammy: It is an uphill battle for sure.

[00:16:42] Prosecuting international cybercrime is inherently difficult because of jurisdictional boundaries. The syndicates operate in countries where US law enforcement has limited reach or cooperation. So while initiatives like Save Our Seniors are resulting in domestic arrests of lower-level operators and money mules, shutting down the overseas kingpins requires massive [00:17:00] international coordination.

[00:17:01] Law enforcement is largely playing defense, you know, reacting to the fraud rather than preventing it.

[00:17:05] Bernard: So what does this all mean? If we step back and synthesize all forty-three of these sources, the primary takeaway is that we have to completely update our mental model of what a scam looks like. These are no longer the obvious, poorly spelled emails of the early 2000s.

[00:17:21] They are highly sophisticated, AI-backed, crypto-driven psychological operations. They operate like ruthless multinational corporations, systematically targeting the immense wealth and the profound loneliness of the older generation.

[00:17:34] Tammy: And that means our defense mechanisms cannot just be digital. They have to be deeply social.

[00:17:38] The most effective safeguard against these financial predators isn't necessarily better banking software or AI detection tools. It is checking in on the older adults in your life, especially those who are widowed, divorced, or living alone.

[00:17:51] Bernard: Human connection.

[00:17:52] Tammy: Yes. The perimeter defense is human connection.

[00:17:55] We need to actively ask questions and look for the behavioral signs.

[00:17:58] Bernard: You have to watch for [00:18:00] sudden secretive online relationships Or an unexpected intense interest in cryptocurrency from a parent who previously showed no interest in finance.

[00:18:09] Tammy: Huh.

[00:18:09] Bernard: You have to be willing to have those uncomfortable conversations before the emotional hook is set too deep.

[00:18:14] Tammy: Because once that blind trust is established, extracting them from the scam is incredibly difficult.

[00:18:20] Bernard: Yeah. Before we wrap up, I wanna leave you with one final chilling thought to mull over on your own. We have spent this entire deep dive talking about the digital space. We've talked about digital manipulation, AI deepfakes, fake crypto dashboards, and bank accounts drained over the internet.

[00:18:37] It is all happening through screens.

[00:18:38] Tammy: Right.

[00:18:39] Bernard: But buried deep in the 2025 sources is a report from the Associated Press that signals a terrifying new frontier. A woman was accused of actually drugging and robbing older men in a deadly romance scheme.

[00:18:51] Tammy: Oh my God.

[00:18:51] Bernard: She lured them through dating apps using the exact same digital grooming tactics we've discussed today, but then she met them in person.

[00:18:59] As [00:19:00] public awareness of digital scams grows, as seniors become harder to fool with fake crypto sites, and as AI detection tools become standard on our devices, will we see these highly sophisticated grooming tactics increasingly spill over into the physical world? Will the scammers bypass the digital perimeter completely and just walk right through the front door, turning digital romance into literal face-to-face life or death situations?

[00:19:22] It is a disturbing evolution and something we all need to be vigilant about as this threat continues to adapt.