Latest news with #conartist
Irish Times
12-06-2025
- Irish Times
Text scammers in ComReg's sights as it implements SMS registry for businesses
When my phone pinged to let me know I had received a new text message from my bank, I ignored it. Like many people would these days, I imagine. There had been rash of messages lately claiming I needed to contact my bank, that a transaction had been declined because the bank had flagged it as suspicious activity, or that a purchase I had no recollection of had gone through. And if this wasn't a legitimate purchase, could I please contact them via this website to flag it. In most cases they were, of course, phishing messages, trying to trick me into handing over information that could be used fraudulently at a later date. They were easy to spot in most instances, even though some looked like they were coming from an official source. One message came from a bank I had never held an account at, for example. Others contained obviously fake website addresses. If I had followed the link, all I would have been doing was handing over my personal details to a con artist to use against me. READ MORE But this particular time, it was different. A short time after getting the message, and taking no action, I got a call from the bank to follow up. Being naturally suspicious of the whole process – scammers can use phones too – I declined to hand over the required personal data to verify my identity, and chose to call them back. [ Banks warn customers to be vigilant over holiday scams Opens in new window ] Someone had tried to charge my account, but the transaction hadn't gone through. The bank had prevented several hundred euro being taken. It was a similar story for a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago. Again, a message claiming to be from her bank, saying a transaction through eBay had completed for a few hundred euro, giving a card identifier. The details matched up but the transaction didn't. She immediately suspected it was a fake message. But a quick call to the bank revealed that it wasn't – and that fraudsters had managed to get some money from her account before the bank flagged it. It shows how little we trust the messages that arrive on our phones these days. Warnings via the very channel that is supposed to protect us from falling victim to fraud are, ironically, being ignored as coming from potential fraudsters. The suspicion of SMS is warranted. There was a stark warning from Bank of Ireland last week about the rise in fake texts targeted at its customers, luring them into calling fraudulent phone lines. The bank said there had been a spike in reports and calls about the messages over a 24-hour period that was 10 times the weekly number reported in April and May. [ Fraud offences rise significantly in first quarter, Garda data shows Opens in new window ] The messages follow the same pattern: they claim to be from the bank, flagging suspicious activity – logging in from a new device, a declined transaction, a hold placed on a car – with a number to call if there is an issue. The end result was to dupe victims into transferring funds to a 'safe account' controlled by the fraudsters, because their existing accounts had been 'compromised'. So it is understandable, amid a barrage of fake messages, that we might ignore a genuine text or two. Things may be about to change , however. The communications regulator is trying to tackle the problem through a registry that aims to help weed out the scammers and hopefully stop people from falling prey to this particular scam. Businesses and organisations that use SMS sender IDs – those short names that identify your bank or delivery company – must register with ComReg. From next month, any text messages coming from unregistered senders will be flagged as 'likely scam', giving consumers the heads up that we need to be on our guard. From October, those messages will be blocked from reaching consumers, giving businesses a few months to get their ducks in a row. ComReg won't just be taking a company's word for it. Each of the registrations will be validated in some way to make sure that only legitimates sender IDs are registered. In theory, that means you can reasonably expect when a message arrives that says it is from your bank, it actually is. But we should still be on our guard. If the registry is a success, scammers, being scammers, will inevitably try another avenue to try to defraud people. And with the development of even more powerful AI technology, it is becoming harder all the time for consumers to tell the real from the fake.
CNN
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
TikTok's scam sleuth wants to show you how companies are cheating — in a fun way
We live in the golden age of grift. Most of us can't go a day without at least one scammy text about an unpaid toll or a call from an unknown number with a shockingly human-like AI voice on the other side. The scale of the scam onslaught feels like it's part of some Faustian bargain we all entered into: In exchange for the miracle of, like, access to all the world's knowledge and people in our pockets, all the world's knowledge and people similarly have access to us, including the hustlers and the con artists. But way more hustlers, con artists and grifters than any other generation of human beings on Earth has ever had to comprehend before, let alone fend off. Thankfully, all the scam spam doesn't seem to have killed anyone's appetite for the grift as a genre. Elizabeth Holmes' Theranos con? I'll take a book, a podcast, a documentary and at least one serialized streaming project, please. Lifting the veil on a doomsday cult? I'm in, every day, and twice on Sundays. Never forget: We once had two dueling Fyre Festival documentaries on Hulu and Netflix. OK, maybe I'm just a mark for tales of clever cons, exposed. This newsletter is, in part, an outlet for my own fascination with the business hype cycle, which tends to, you know, exaggerate the truth. Or straight-up lie. But (thanks again to the miracle of the internet), I know that I'm not alone. Alex Falcone, an LA-based comedian, is a fellow con connoisseur (a con-noisseur?). Through his TikTok channel, Falcone excels at the art of the two-minute explainer, tackling frauds big (AI) and small (white chocolate). Falcone says he isn't a journalist, but he approaches his work with a similar hunger to peek behind the facade of a thing and expose it. Of his early foray into 'unfun facts,' Falcone says, he wanted to find the intersection of 'a little bit of a wet blanket, but you're OK afterwards… I don't like ruining people's day.' He's hit a nerve on TikTok, where he has more than half a million followers and a popular recurring series called 'Is it a scam? Yep.' (The delivery here is crucial: 'Is-it-a-scamyep!') The schtick is fast-talking facts and plenty of jokes about the companies and people and concepts that are, in one way or another, selling a bill of goods. I caught up with Falcone recently over Zoom to discuss the businesses of grift, comedy and journalism. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Nightcap: Can you tell me how you got on the scam beat? Alex Falcone: I've always liked the scheme-y underbelly. My grandfather worked in a few different contexts in carnivals, but the bulk of his life he was a pitchman, setting up a table by the midway selling kitchen gadgets and magic tricks. My dad's first job was as a kid standing in the audience while his father demonstrated a magic trick then yelling, 'How did he do that? I'll take two!' I met a con man when I was 16, and he taught me how to do card-cheating and pool-sharking stuff… and, like, mostly didn't use it for evil. I just like knowing how it works. It's sort of like the glass elevator where you see the mechanism behind it. Like, how am I being manipulated? I was working on 'unfun facts,' which is like the opposite of a party trick. My party-ruiner is telling people something that's going to bum them out that they didn't know. And that, it turns out, had a lot of overlap with my interest in things that were slightly crime-y. Nightcap: Why do you think people on TikTok have been so receptive to the scam series? Falcone: I think everybody is vaguely aware that they're walking around in a haunted carnival all the time — that everybody is trying to take advantage of them. If you're at a midway, then you know the basketball hoop is harder than other basketball hoops. Otherwise they wouldn't give you stuffed animals for making one free throw. Why is that? It's because it's 11 feet, and it's not perfectly round… and you know that it's wrong, but then it's still fun to be like, 'Oh, that's how you were getting me.' Nightcap: Do you find yourself, or your audience, experiencing scam fatigue? Falcone: So this is the trick. By slightly redefining what 'scam' means, it allows me to keep finding new ways to talk about things instead of just being bummed out. Whenever I'm tired of talking about AI or crypto, I can do an episode on white chocolate. Nightcap: Ugh, such a scam! Falcone: It's disgusting! It was originally invented as a medical coating for pills. And then they were like, 'we can sell this because we have all this extra cocoa butter lying around, and we can mix it with palm oil, which we've cut down the rainforest to make, and now we have too much of it.' Every step of that is terrifying, but also it tastes like cat vomit. So that's inherently funny. That's my palate cleanser. I have an escape valve for a lot of this. Actually, if you hadn't asked that, I would have asked you the same question… How do you avoid getting bummed out by this? Are all of your colleagues just sort of zombie-brained now? Nightcap: There's a bit of zombie-brain going around. I will say I spend a good amount of time — like a shameful amount of time — disassociating on TikTok. Falcone: I think that's great… There are a lot of problems with the way algorithms work, but one of the things that's great is you can just create an account with a new name, a fresh algorithm, and decide this algorithm is just for escapism. I did a video about algorithms a while ago, and so as a demonstration I decided to make an account for videos about bunnies. In TikTok, it took me 15 minutes before the algorithm was just rabbits and nothing else… So that is one of the ways that I've kept myself sane — having multiple algorithms that I play with depending on my mood. Having a rabbit account as a side project is really fun. Nightcap: You've covered AI hype and marketing a few times… Falcone: It feels like there's an emperor-has-no clothes situation — that we're all just waiting for somebody to be like, Oh, wait, it's bad! Oh… we thought so, and then you told us we were dumb for thinking that it's not working, but it is actually bad. Nightcap: How do you source your scam material? Falcone: I have what I think of as the mainline scam, where the answer is 'yep,' and I just have a backlog of those. Occasionally, stuff from friends pops up. Somebody mentioned to me the other day that the Oscars were originally started to prevent actors from unionizing, which I assumed couldn't possibly be true. But it turns out, [Louis B. Mayer] of MGM was the founder of the academy, and that was what he said he was doing. (Editor's note: This checks out.) The user submissions have a separate path, because the answer to 'Is it a scam?' can sometimes be 'no.' Nightcap: I was so nervous when I came across one of your videos about Costco. Please don't ruin Costco! Falcone: Costco was a great 'nope.' The thing about Costco, and this is true of a lot of these things, is it's not a scam, but it's definitely a scheme. You have to pay to shop, which is such a crazy business model. You pay to walk in the door of a store where everything still costs money. That's definitely a scheme. But I don't think it's a scam. Now I have 100-150 messages every day on the different platforms, asking 'can you look into this thing for me' … But the main source is just things that I'm generally mad about in my own life. I have plenty of those to keep this going for another couple years.
CNN
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
TikTok's scam sleuth wants to show you how companies are cheating — in a fun way
We live in the golden age of grift. Most of us can't go a day without at least one scammy text about an unpaid toll or a call from an unknown number with a shockingly human-like AI voice on the other side. The scale of the scam onslaught feels like it's part of some Faustian bargain we all entered into: In exchange for the miracle of, like, access to all the world's knowledge and people in our pockets, all the world's knowledge and people similarly have access to us, including the hustlers and the con artists. But way more hustlers, con artists and grifters than any other generation of human beings on Earth has ever had to comprehend before, let alone fend off. Thankfully, all the scam spam doesn't seem to have killed anyone's appetite for the grift as a genre. Elizabeth Holmes' Theranos con? I'll take a book, a podcast, a documentary and at least one serialized streaming project, please. Lifting the veil on a doomsday cult? I'm in, every day, and twice on Sundays. Never forget: We once had two dueling Fyre Festival documentaries on Hulu and Netflix. OK, maybe I'm just a mark for tales of clever cons, exposed. This newsletter is, in part, an outlet for my own fascination with the business hype cycle, which tends to, you know, exaggerate the truth. Or straight-up lie. But (thanks again to the miracle of the internet), I know that I'm not alone. Alex Falcone, an LA-based comedian, is a fellow con connoisseur (a con-noisseur?). Through his TikTok channel, Falcone excels at the art of the two-minute explainer, tackling frauds big (AI) and small (white chocolate). Falcone says he isn't a journalist, but he approaches his work with a similar hunger to peek behind the facade of a thing and expose it. Of his early foray into 'unfun facts,' Falcone says, he wanted to find the intersection of 'a little bit of a wet blanket, but you're OK afterwards… I don't like ruining people's day.' He's hit a nerve on TikTok, where he has more than half a million followers and a popular recurring series called 'Is it a scam? Yep.' (The delivery here is crucial: 'Is-it-a-scamyep!') The schtick is fast-talking facts and plenty of jokes about the companies and people and concepts that are, in one way or another, selling a bill of goods. I caught up with Falcone recently over Zoom to discuss the businesses of grift, comedy and journalism. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Nightcap: Can you tell me how you got on the scam beat? Alex Falcone: I've always liked the scheme-y underbelly. My grandfather worked in a few different contexts in carnivals, but the bulk of his life he was a pitchman, setting up a table by the midway selling kitchen gadgets and magic tricks. My dad's first job was as a kid standing in the audience while his father demonstrated a magic trick then yelling, 'How did he do that? I'll take two!' I met a con man when I was 16, and he taught me how to do card-cheating and pool-sharking stuff… and, like, mostly didn't use it for evil. I just like knowing how it works. It's sort of like the glass elevator where you see the mechanism behind it. Like, how am I being manipulated? I was working on 'unfun facts,' which is like the opposite of a party trick. My party-ruiner is telling people something that's going to bum them out that they didn't know. And that, it turns out, had a lot of overlap with my interest in things that were slightly crime-y. Nightcap: Why do you think people on TikTok have been so receptive to the scam series? Falcone: I think everybody is vaguely aware that they're walking around in a haunted carnival all the time — that everybody is trying to take advantage of them. If you're at a midway, then you know the basketball hoop is harder than other basketball hoops. Otherwise they wouldn't give you stuffed animals for making one free throw. Why is that? It's because it's 11 feet, and it's not perfectly round… and you know that it's wrong, but then it's still fun to be like, 'Oh, that's how you were getting me.' Nightcap: Do you find yourself, or your audience, experiencing scam fatigue? Falcone: So this is the trick. By slightly redefining what 'scam' means, it allows me to keep finding new ways to talk about things instead of just being bummed out. Whenever I'm tired of talking about AI or crypto, I can do an episode on white chocolate. Nightcap: Ugh, such a scam! Falcone: It's disgusting! It was originally invented as a medical coating for pills. And then they were like, 'we can sell this because we have all this extra cocoa butter lying around, and we can mix it with palm oil, which we've cut down the rainforest to make, and now we have too much of it.' Every step of that is terrifying, but also it tastes like cat vomit. So that's inherently funny. That's my palate cleanser. I have an escape valve for a lot of this. Actually, if you hadn't asked that, I would have asked you the same question… How do you avoid getting bummed out by this? Are all of your colleagues just sort of zombie-brained now? Nightcap: There's a bit of zombie-brain going around. I will say I spend a good amount of time — like a shameful amount of time — disassociating on TikTok. Falcone: I think that's great… There are a lot of problems with the way algorithms work, but one of the things that's great is you can just create an account with a new name, a fresh algorithm, and decide this algorithm is just for escapism. I did a video about algorithms a while ago, and so as a demonstration I decided to make an account for videos about bunnies. In TikTok, it took me 15 minutes before the algorithm was just rabbits and nothing else… So that is one of the ways that I've kept myself sane — having multiple algorithms that I play with depending on my mood. Having a rabbit account as a side project is really fun. Nightcap: You've covered AI hype and marketing a few times… Falcone: It feels like there's an emperor-has-no clothes situation — that we're all just waiting for somebody to be like, Oh, wait, it's bad! Oh… we thought so, and then you told us we were dumb for thinking that it's not working, but it is actually bad. Nightcap: How do you source your scam material? Falcone: I have what I think of as the mainline scam, where the answer is 'yep,' and I just have a backlog of those. Occasionally, stuff from friends pops up. Somebody mentioned to me the other day that the Oscars were originally started to prevent actors from unionizing, which I assumed couldn't possibly be true. But it turns out, [Louis B. Mayer] of MGM was the founder of the academy, and that was what he said he was doing. (Editor's note: This checks out.) The user submissions have a separate path, because the answer to 'Is it a scam?' can sometimes be 'no.' Nightcap: I was so nervous when I came across one of your videos about Costco. Please don't ruin Costco! Falcone: Costco was a great 'nope.' The thing about Costco, and this is true of a lot of these things, is it's not a scam, but it's definitely a scheme. You have to pay to shop, which is such a crazy business model. You pay to walk in the door of a store where everything still costs money. That's definitely a scheme. But I don't think it's a scam. Now I have 100-150 messages every day on the different platforms, asking 'can you look into this thing for me' … But the main source is just things that I'm generally mad about in my own life. I have plenty of those to keep this going for another couple years.
CNN
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
TikTok's scam sleuth wants to show you how companies are cheating — in a fun way
We live in the golden age of grift. Most of us can't go a day without at least one scammy text about an unpaid toll or a call from an unknown number with a shockingly human-like AI voice on the other side. The scale of the scam onslaught feels like it's part of some Faustian bargain we all entered into: In exchange for the miracle of, like, access to all the world's knowledge and people in our pockets, all the world's knowledge and people similarly have access to us, including the hustlers and the con artists. But way more hustlers, con artists and grifters than any other generation of human beings on Earth has ever had to comprehend before, let alone fend off. Thankfully, all the scam spam doesn't seem to have killed anyone's appetite for the grift as a genre. Elizabeth Holmes' Theranos con? I'll take a book, a podcast, a documentary and at least one serialized streaming project, please. Lifting the veil on a doomsday cult? I'm in, every day, and twice on Sundays. Never forget: We once had two dueling Fyre Festival documentaries on Hulu and Netflix. OK, maybe I'm just a mark for tales of clever cons, exposed. This newsletter is, in part, an outlet for my own fascination with the business hype cycle, which tends to, you know, exaggerate the truth. Or straight-up lie. But (thanks again to the miracle of the internet), I know that I'm not alone. Alex Falcone, an LA-based comedian, is a fellow con connoisseur (a con-noisseur?). Through his TikTok channel, Falcone excels at the art of the two-minute explainer, tackling frauds big (AI) and small (white chocolate). Falcone says he isn't a journalist, but he approaches his work with a similar hunger to peek behind the facade of a thing and expose it. Of his early foray into 'unfun facts,' Falcone says, he wanted to find the intersection of 'a little bit of a wet blanket, but you're OK afterwards… I don't like ruining people's day.' He's hit a nerve on TikTok, where he has more than half a million followers and a popular recurring series called 'Is it a scam? Yep.' (The delivery here is crucial: 'Is-it-a-scamyep!') The schtick is fast-talking facts and plenty of jokes about the companies and people and concepts that are, in one way or another, selling a bill of goods. I caught up with Falcone recently over Zoom to discuss the businesses of grift, comedy and journalism. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Nightcap: Can you tell me how you got on the scam beat? Alex Falcone: I've always liked the scheme-y underbelly. My grandfather worked in a few different contexts in carnivals, but the bulk of his life he was a pitchman, setting up a table by the midway selling kitchen gadgets and magic tricks. My dad's first job was as a kid standing in the audience while his father demonstrated a magic trick then yelling, 'How did he do that? I'll take two!' I met a con man when I was 16, and he taught me how to do card-cheating and pool-sharking stuff… and, like, mostly didn't use it for evil. I just like knowing how it works. It's sort of like the glass elevator where you see the mechanism behind it. Like, how am I being manipulated? I was working on 'unfun facts,' which is like the opposite of a party trick. My party-ruiner is telling people something that's going to bum them out that they didn't know. And that, it turns out, had a lot of overlap with my interest in things that were slightly crime-y. Nightcap: Why do you think people on TikTok have been so receptive to the scam series? Falcone: I think everybody is vaguely aware that they're walking around in a haunted carnival all the time — that everybody is trying to take advantage of them. If you're at a midway, then you know the basketball hoop is harder than other basketball hoops. Otherwise they wouldn't give you stuffed animals for making one free throw. Why is that? It's because it's 11 feet, and it's not perfectly round… and you know that it's wrong, but then it's still fun to be like, 'Oh, that's how you were getting me.' Nightcap: Do you find yourself, or your audience, experiencing scam fatigue? Falcone: So this is the trick. By slightly redefining what 'scam' means, it allows me to keep finding new ways to talk about things instead of just being bummed out. Whenever I'm tired of talking about AI or crypto, I can do an episode on white chocolate. Nightcap: Ugh, such a scam! Falcone: It's disgusting! It was originally invented as a medical coating for pills. And then they were like, 'we can sell this because we have all this extra cocoa butter lying around, and we can mix it with palm oil, which we've cut down the rainforest to make, and now we have too much of it.' Every step of that is terrifying, but also it tastes like cat vomit. So that's inherently funny. That's my palate cleanser. I have an escape valve for a lot of this. Actually, if you hadn't asked that, I would have asked you the same question… How do you avoid getting bummed out by this? Are all of your colleagues just sort of zombie-brained now? Nightcap: There's a bit of zombie-brain going around. I will say I spend a good amount of time — like a shameful amount of time — disassociating on TikTok. Falcone: I think that's great… There are a lot of problems with the way algorithms work, but one of the things that's great is you can just create an account with a new name, a fresh algorithm, and decide this algorithm is just for escapism. I did a video about algorithms a while ago, and so as a demonstration I decided to make an account for videos about bunnies. In TikTok, it took me 15 minutes before the algorithm was just rabbits and nothing else… So that is one of the ways that I've kept myself sane — having multiple algorithms that I play with depending on my mood. Having a rabbit account as a side project is really fun. Nightcap: You've covered AI hype and marketing a few times… Falcone: It feels like there's an emperor-has-no clothes situation — that we're all just waiting for somebody to be like, Oh, wait, it's bad! Oh… we thought so, and then you told us we were dumb for thinking that it's not working, but it is actually bad. Nightcap: How do you source your scam material? Falcone: I have what I think of as the mainline scam, where the answer is 'yep,' and I just have a backlog of those. Occasionally, stuff from friends pops up. Somebody mentioned to me the other day that the Oscars were originally started to prevent actors from unionizing, which I assumed couldn't possibly be true. But it turns out, [Louis B. Mayer] of MGM was the founder of the academy, and that was what he said he was doing. (Editor's note: This checks out.) The user submissions have a separate path, because the answer to 'Is it a scam?' can sometimes be 'no.' Nightcap: I was so nervous when I came across one of your videos about Costco. Please don't ruin Costco! Falcone: Costco was a great 'nope.' The thing about Costco, and this is true of a lot of these things, is it's not a scam, but it's definitely a scheme. You have to pay to shop, which is such a crazy business model. You pay to walk in the door of a store where everything still costs money. That's definitely a scheme. But I don't think it's a scam. Now I have 100-150 messages every day on the different platforms, asking 'can you look into this thing for me' … But the main source is just things that I'm generally mad about in my own life. I have plenty of those to keep this going for another couple years.
Geek Girl Authority
05-06-2025
- Business
- Geek Girl Authority
LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION Season Finale Recap: (S03E10) The Side Job
For a finale, Leverage: Redemption, 'The Side Job,' doesn't feel all that final. Not to say it isn't a masterclass in building an engaging and layered narrative. But, honestly, that's kind of a given with this series. It also elegantly bookends the season with Hardison (Aldis Hodge) returning and Parker (Beth Riesgraf) holding him to his six-month reflection on the reason they do what they do. We can only hope Prime Video gives them a few more seasons with which to continue doing. RELATED: Catch up with our recap of the previous Leverage: Redemption episode, 'The Polygeist Job' In this episode, the unique use of black-and-white and color footage to denote the scenes 'in' the con versus adjacent is a multi-purpose device. It sells the film noir style of story. It highlights the epically dramatic lie Parker sells to the mark. Most brilliantly, it reminds us that Parker sees the world in black and white. Always has. Always will. It's her con. Her way. Image Credit: Courtesy of Prime Video Leverage: Redemption, 'The Side Job' Cold open on a black and white pan over Puerto Nuevo, Colombia. In a shadowy pub, a hatted man seated at the bar answers his phone, saying that he needs to get to the island to close the deal before 'the blonde' finds him because she's going to kill him. Further down the bar, the camera focuses on Parker glancing over with a grin. In Louisiana, two weeks earlier, at the Ramirez Processing Plant, the hatted man, wearing a suit and no hat, directs a hesitant worker to dump the load into the bone-grinder. In his office, he finds Parker rifling through his files. He's the plant's owner, Edgar Ramirez (Ricardo Chavira). She's [allegedly] Elise Bannister, a social worker. RELATED: Olivia Morris Shares How The Librarians: The Next Chapter Hooked Her From Page One She's investigating the child labor he uses. As he escorts her out of the building, she notes how small his workforce is, height-wise, and gives the bone-grinder a hard look as she passes it. Outside, he's impressed by the sports car she drives. Putting together her surreptitious entrance, her ransacking of his office, and the fancy wheels, he guesses she's up to something and promises to find out what it is. She scoffs and drives off. Reality As Ramirez heads back into the plant, the picture flips to color. Elliot (Christian Kane) and Sophie (Gina Bellman) drive up, looking for Parker. Sophie checks in with the rest of the team to see if they know what Parker's up to. Breanna (Aleyse Shannon) and Harry (Noah Wyle) are in a hospital room, asking a woman about a boy, Rodrigo (Adan Carvacaño), who lies unconscious in the bed, his arm in an external fixator device. She tells them he had told her that he got a good-paying job, but she didn't know it involved dangerous machinery. She tells Harry they can't sue because Rodrigo had fake work papers saying he was old enough. When Breanna asks where he got the papers, Rodrigo wakes up and says it was Ramirez, but he can't testify because Ramirez will punish his undocumented cousins. Boundaries At headquarters, Sophie asks Elliot if the particulars of this case don't have him worried. Harry gets off the phone with his mom and asks them how to get around answering her questions about Leverage. Breanna enters and debriefs Edgar Ramirez, who repeatedly violates child labor laws. He deflects the bad press onto the employment agency, saying Dean Cisco (Garrett Hines) didn't vet the employees properly. However, Breanna's learned that Ramirez actually owns Cisco's company. RELATED: TV Review: Leverage: Redemption Season 3 Harry wants to know why they're so concerned about Parker. Parker arrives and explains that she is triggered by cases involving kids. She's installed bugs and cameras in Ramirez's office and a backdoor to his computer. Breanna has access to all of it. Parker promises to call if she needs help. When Elliot questions her going it alone, she points out that everyone on the team has their personal side job projects. Elliot looks out for veterans. Harry takes on legal clients. Breanna does her white-hat hacking. The team wishes her well. As Parker leaves, Sophie asks Elliot if he believes Parker's explanation. He doesn't. The Set Up Back in black-and-white. Ramirez and Cisco discuss Parker's visit. Ramirez tells Cisco that she was looking for paperwork on his employees connecting them to Isla Nubla, a tiny island off the coast of Colombia. He remembers receiving a voicemail from a Marta Cabrera from Gold Star Properties asking about employees from Isla Nubla. He plans to go see her in person. RELATED: Dean Devlin Dishes on The Librarians: The Next Chapter's Magical Homecoming In color, at the Gold Star offices, Sophie lets herself in. Over the cons, Breanna reminds Sophie that Parker wasn't taking anything from Ramirez's files; she was planting the Isla Nubla stuff, including the voicemails from Cabrera. As Sophie wonders why Parker laid a trail to Gold Star, Breanna realizes that Ramirez should be arriving any second. Sophie finds a blue folder with a sticky note on it that reads, 'FOR SOPHIE.' Grinning, she opens it up, picks up some wardrobe props, and acknowledges that Parker set her up. Drawing Sophie In When Ramirez knocks on Gold Star's door, it's back in black-and-white. Sophie greets him as Marta Cabrera. He says he's there to discuss Isla Nubla. She jumps on the topic, explaining that Gold Star owns the island now, and they're waiting for investors to develop a deep-water cruise ship port. Parker makes her entrance, pointing out that the island is empty because Hurricane Frances forces everyone to evacuate, and no one was allowed back on. However, before they can develop, they need someone born on the island to sign off to satisfy Colombia's government's mandate to respect indigenous claims to the land. That person will get a million dollars a year for life as compensation. RELATED: Geek Girl Authority Crush of the Week: Leverage: Redemption 's Parker Outside, Ramirez tells Parker he doesn't need her now. He'll find someone born on Isla Nubla by the weekend. Parker coerces him back with talk of making even more than the payout Mart Cabrera mentioned. She texts him an address to be at in an hour. Something Like That He leaves, and the picture blinks back into color. Parker returns to the conference room and debriefs with Sophie. They agree that the seat-of-the-pants grift was a lot of fun. Sophie guesses that the real reason for Parker's con is that their current jobs are too safe. Parker allows that might be part of it. Parker tells Breanna to meet her at the address she just texted Ramirez. They arrive on the 34th floor of a partially constructed building. Parker tells Breanna she wants to put the mark under stress to distract from the lie. Playing the building's architect, Breanna guesses that the real reason for Parker's con is that she wants to innovate their cons. Parker allows that might be part of it. RELATED: On Location: The Belgrade Fortress on The Librarians: The Next Chapter Flip to black-and-white for Ramirez's arrival on site. Breanna calls Parker and Ramirez over to where they can't be overheard. They step out onto an unfinished balcony. Breanna tells him that Marta didn't divulge that anyone indigenous to the island will get a piece of any business established there. She wants her firm to be the one to build the port. If Ramirez wants in, he needs to buy in at 10 million dollars. She guarantees a ten-to-one return, minimum. Spinning Stories At headquarters, in color, Harry checks in on Sophie, who is reviewing Parker's sting. Sophie explains how Parker's combined two different cons to convince Ramirez to empty his coffers into an escrow account that the Leverage team will pillage. She's concerned that Parker's placing herself in danger in order to close the deal. In black-and-white, Parker attends one of Ramirez's fundraisers. On the dance floor, he accuses her of being a bigger bad guy than him because she uses people to get ahead. His phone pings, and he shows her that Cisco has doctored papers to prove that Ramirez was born on Isla Nubla. This pulls the rug out from under Parker's plan. Recovery In color, Parker sits in the corner of Rodrigo's hospital room. His aunt comes in and tells Parker that he's improving slowly. She tells Parker that she's a good person for helping them. Parker gets up and leaves. RELATED: A Leverage: Redemption Primer: Get Ready to Steal Season 3 Harry gets into his car, unaware Parker's hiding in the backseat. She startles him. He screams and jumps out of the car. She follows and tells him she admires him because he changed. He points out that she did, too. She admits she did eventually, but it started out as a way to do new crimes, a challenge. She says she changed with the team while he changed on his own. He guesses that the real reason for Parker's con is that she's trying to figure out how people change. Parker allows that might be part of it. She asks him to revert to evil lawyer mode temporarily as a favor. At the plant, in black-and-white, Harry finds Ramirez. Calling himself Dexter Cheeble, Harry asks for employment records on Hector Ortez, a 19-year-old born on Isla Nubla, Colombia. Ramirez tells Harry that if he comes back in the evening, he'll get the paperwork for him, and they can discuss some potential financial accommodations. Shaking hands on it, Harry leaves. Ramirez places a call, saying that they've got a problem. Flipped In his office, he tells Parker about Harry's visit. She recommends they pay Harry off. Ramirez argues that blackmailers just keep on taking. They're better off just killing him. He's already engaged some men from Cisco's bunch. They'll wait for Harry in the plant parking lot and kill him as soon as he arrives. Parker turns to one of her hidden cameras and shoots a meaningful look at Breanna. Breanna's surveillance footage is in full color. She tries to raise Harry on the coms to warn him. Next, she tries Elliot. Meanwhile, Harry arrives at the plant. He gets a warning text from Breanna just as a black SUV squeals up behind him. The goons chase him into the plant. RELATED: Read the Recap of the Best Leverage: Redemption Season 3 Episode, 'The Grand Complication Job' Parker slaps Ramirez in black-and-white, accusing him of screwing up by ordering the hit on the lawyer at the plant. He suggests they leave. In color, Harry fights the goons until Elliot arrives. Harry runs out and confronts Ramirez and Parker in black-and-white. Parker pulls out a gun and shoots Harry twice. Ramirez takes it from her and puts a final slug in his back. Elliot arrives, and Ramirez criticizes his hitman skills, leaving Elliot to dispose of Harry's body in the bone-grinder. Ending It Once Ramirez and Parker leave, the scene reverts to color. Elliot compliments Harry on his fall and helps him to his feet. Back at headquarters, Parker tries to make light of the real hired killers she didn't anticipate. Sophie and Elliot insist she finish the con immediately. She agrees once Breanna assures her that they will get every cent of Ramirez's money. In black-and-white, Ramirez leaves the plant with his papers. Parker drives up and offers him a ride. He gets in, and she stuns him with a taser. Grabbing his phone, she messages the plant supervisor to clear the floor and send everyone home because of a spot inspection. RELATED: TV Review: Cross Season 1 In color, Sophie's waiting at the Gold Star offices and tells Breanna and Harry that Parker's late. They ping her phone and discover she left it at headquarters. Back at the now-empty plant, black-and-white Parker prepares to send Ramirez through the bone-grinder, explaining that a little while ago, someone asked her why she does what she does. When the others asked her, they didn't let her answer: they just kept guessing. Starting up the bone-grinder, she gets ready to tip Ramirez in, stating she's not sure what she's going to do. The bone-grinder stops. Faint with relief, Ramirez sees Elliot and assumes he's there to stop Parker. Elliot denies this and walks away. Got Your Back Parker follows him in color and asks him if he's going to stop her or tell on her. He tells her that they aren't like the others. Whatever she chooses to do, he's got her back. In black-and-white, Parker rushes back to the bone-grinder. She turns it on. Desperate, Ramirez tips the trolley and rolls out. By the time Parker follows him out of the building, he's disappeared. Flashforward to the Colombian pub. Cisco tells Ramirez that the papers he traveled on aren't from him. Parker walks over and ends the call. RELATED: Read our Leverage: Redemption recaps Full color when the phone hits the bar. She tells him his papers are hers. Flashback: After Parker and Breanna pulled the construction site con, she had Breanna use Cisco's software to create new Colombian papers. In the pub, she tells him he's been traveling as a wanted fugitive. Her real reason for the con is redemption. She tells him his redemption begins with empathy. In the U.S., he's dead. Flashback: Parker leaves his shoes, wallet, and cell phone next to the bone-grinder opening. Now that he has to live in a country with no papers or resources, hiding from the law, maybe he'll understand the lives of the people he exploited in his plants. Not Just the Side Job Parker returns in time for Breanna to go pick up Hardison. Before Sophie leaves for a weekend with Jack, Harry asks her to meet his mother because he wants his mother to meet his best friend. Once Hardison's home, Parker gives the team her report, the product of six months of analyzing why she does crime. She's concluded that she's a thief. She breaks the rules because the rules sometimes say it's okay to hurt others, and that's not right. This is her way because it's their way. All three seasons of Leverage: Redemption are now streaming on Prime Video. Come on, Prime Video. Let's give Leverage: Redemption three more seasons. REVIVAL: Check Out 9 First-Look Photos From Melanie Scrofano-Led Series Diana lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where she invests her time and energy in teaching, writing, parenting, and indulging her love of all Trek and a myriad of other fandoms. She is a lifelong fan of smart sci-fi and fantasy media, an upstanding citizen of the United Federation of Planets, and a supporter of AFC Richmond 'til she dies. Her guilty pleasures include female-led procedurals, old-school sitcoms, and Bluey. She teaches, knits, and dreams big. You can also find her writing at The Televixen, Women at Warp, TV Fanatic, and TV Goodness.
