A street thief steals a wallet.

A cybercriminal steals millions of dollars.

A terrorist steals lives.

Different crimes. Different weapons. Different battlefields.

Yet, after more than three decades of working across military operations, diplomatic intelligence, and corporate investigations, I have reached one uncomfortable conclusion: they all think far more alike than most people realise.

Crime constantly changes its form. It adapts to new technology, new opportunities, and new societies. 

What once required a crowbar can now be achieved with a laptop. What once demanded physical presence can now be executed from another continent.

But despite these changes, human nature remains remarkably constant.

Every day we are overwhelmed with crime statistics. 

Vehicle thefts continue to rise, cyberattacks cost businesses billions of dollars each year, and headlines report violent offences, organised crime, domestic violence and politically motivated attacks across the globe.

It is easy to become overwhelmed by the scale of modern crime and believe we live in an era of complete unpredictability.

Yet once we strip away the headlines and statistical jargon, one simple question remains.

Every day, millions of people voluntarily walk into an interrogation room.

The only difference is that they carry it in their pocket.

Across the screen sits someone smiling, confident and persuasive. Not a detective. Not a prosecutor. An influencer.

Without realising it, we begin answering questions they never actually asked.

What should I buy?

Who should I trust?

What does success really look like?

After decades working in military environments, diplomatic intelligence and corporate investigations, I have reached one uncomfortable conclusion.

The most dangerous lies are rarely shouted.

They are carefully edited.

Picture this: you’re sitting in a dimly lit interrogation room. Across the table is a suspect accused of fraud. He’s tight-lipped, weighing every word, and his eyes widen ever so slightly each time you present another piece of evidence.

Now replace the interrogation room with a ring light.

Swap the silence for upbeat music.

Instead of denying a fraud, the suspect is enthusiastically explaining how a fifty-dollar tub of powder transformed his body in two weeks.

Welcome to modern digital forensics.

After years of working in Insight Intelligence, analysing influence networks and understanding how information travels, I have learned one universal truth.

People become remarkably adept at lying to themselves long before they lie to anyone else.

Today, your smartphone has become the world’s largest interrogation room.

The difference is that very few people realise they are being questioned.

Imagine spending days researching a product, writing an honest review, earning the trust of your audience, and finally convincing someone to make a purchase through your recommendation.

Weeks later, the sale goes through.

The customer is pleased.

The retailer makes money.

But your commission disappears.

Not because you did anything wrong.

Not because your content wasn’t good enough.

It disappears because someone you’ve never met quietly stole the credit before the customer even clicked the “Buy Now” button.

That may sound like something out of a Hollywood cybercrime thriller, but it is happening every day across the internet.

Recently, a friend of mine who breathes, sleeps, and eats affiliate marketing called me in a panic.

“Someone told me my partner platforms might be losing money to something called cookie stuffing,” she said. “They also said I could be losing legitimate commissions because of it. What on earth does that even mean, and how do I stop it?”

It was a fair question.

Despite working behind the scenes of billions of dollars in online commerce, cookie-stuffing remains one of the least understood forms of digital fraud. Most people have never heard of it, yet many unknowingly become part of it.

The reality is that cookie stuffing isn’t a new scam.

In fact, it is one of the oldest tricks in digital marketing.

What has changed is who is allegedly using it.

Recently, Bloomberg reported on allegations involving an artificial intelligence shopping startup called Phia, a company co-founded by Phoebe Gates, the 23-year-old daughter of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Phia promotes itself as an AI-powered shopping assistant designed to compare clothing prices across the internet and help consumers find better deals.

Investors certainly believed in the idea, pouring more than US$43 million into the company and reportedly valuing the startup at around US$185 million.

But according to Bloomberg’s investigation, the company’s browser extension allegedly did more than compare prices.

Researchers claimed the extension opened hidden browser windows during online purchases, inserted its own affiliate tracking codes, and potentially redirected affiliate commissions to itself instead of the marketers who had legitimately earned them.

The company responded by describing the issue as a coding error that had since been corrected.

The public continues to debate whether the behaviour stemmed from flawed programming or a more deliberate action. Flawed programming or something more deliberate remains a matter of public debate.

However, from an investigative perspective, the underlying mechanism has a familiar name.

We call it cookie stuffing.

And if allegations of this nature can emerge around a venture-backed AI company operating at the highest levels of Silicon Valley, it raises an uncomfortable question:

How many smaller businesses, affiliate marketers and online shoppers have no idea similar practices may be happening every single day?

As someone who has spent decades investigating deception—from organised crime and corporate fraud to intelligence operations—I have learned one simple lesson.

Technology changes.

Human behaviour is often unpredictable.

Fraudsters are constantly searching for opportunities where complexity hides accountability. The more technical something appears, the less likely ordinary people are to question it.

That is precisely why understanding cookie stuffing matters.

New York. 38 Prince Street in Manhattan’s ultra-chic SoHo district, a six-story brick townhouse worth a cool US$21 million.

With eight bedrooms, a sweeping multi-level spiral staircase, and a monthly rent of US$40,000, it is the epitome of the modern American Dream—or, at the very least, the hyper-glossy, cryptocurrency-fuelled version of it.

But in May 2025, this playground for the newly wealthy transformed into a literal chamber of horrors.

Inside, a 28-year-old Italian investor named Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan was tied to a chair with electrical wire.

For 17 agonizing days, his captors subjected him to an ordeal that reads like a Hollywood script rewritten by a sadist. He was tased while standing in pools of water, beaten with a firearm, and sliced on his arms and legs with a chainsaw.

His tormentors dangled him over the vertigo-inducing drop of that beautiful spiral staircase, threatening to drop him five stories onto the hard floor below.

When physical pain failed to break his resolve, they resorted to psychological humiliation, urinating on him and forcing him to smoke crack cocaine.

All of the torture was done for a single piece of information: the password to a digital wallet containing roughly US$28 million in Bitcoin.

This isn’t just an isolated, bizarre crime story.

It is the most extreme example of a terrifying global phenomenon known as a “wrench attack.”

It connects ultra-modern cybercrime with medieval thuggery, demonstrating that while your money may be securely stored in the decentralized cloud, your physical body remains firmly grounded.

What makes this case particularly significant is that it is no longer an anomaly. 

Security researchers and law enforcement agencies have observed a steady increase in violent attacks targeting cryptocurrency investors, executives, and influencers across Europe, North America, and Asia. 

As digital wealth has become easier to move than traditional assets, criminals have increasingly shifted their attention from hacking computer systems to coercing the people who control them.

There is a precise moment, usually around 4:15 AM, when the rest of the world is wrapped in warm blankets, snoring softly, and you are standing in a freezing garage or a dimly lit gym parking lot, wondering if you have finally lost your mind.

Your joints ache.

The silence of the city is heavy, almost mocking.

From the outside looking in, you seem like a lunatic. A man over fifty who should be nursing his lower back and accepting the comfortable decline of middle age, yet instead choosing voluntary suffering before sunrise.

My friends told me I was crazy.

They didn’t say it maliciously. They said it out of genuine concern.

But I had to face a reality that many men my age quietly ignore: if you want different results, you have to be willing to do things differently.

For decades, I lived by that principle.

I trained throughout my life, stayed physically active, and when the absolute worst happened—when war caught up with me—that physical readiness wasn’t just a hobby. It became the foundation of survival. I had to remain sharp, capable, and unbreakable because there was simply no alternative.

Then civilian life happened.

Not overnight, but gradually.

The slow creep of routine, successive crises, economic uncertainty, and the constant mental demands of modern life started piling up. Unlike war, civilian life rarely announces when it begins changing you. It happens quietly, one responsibility at a time, until one day you look in the mirror and realize the man staring back at you is carrying the weight of the world but has forgotten how to carry himself.

Mental and physical strain never asks for permission.

It simply settles in.

In my experience, many men accept aging as an unavoidable part of getting older. I don’t.

And in our world, as men, no one is coming to save you. Eventually, you have to accept responsibility for rebuilding yourself, because nobody else can do that work for you.

So, I decided to become “unreasonable.”

Not for attention.

Not to prove a point.

I realized that ordinary thinking almost always leads to ordinary results. If I wanted to become a stronger version of myself, I had to stop negotiating with comfort.

If you think scams only happen to the naïve, the uninformed, or older citizens still learning how to send a text message, prepare yourself for an uncomfortable reality.

Recent evidence reveals a starkly different narrative.

Cybercriminals increasingly target people in their professional prime—business owners, executives, university graduates, and individuals with above-average incomes.

Scammers and confidence tricksters are as old as humanity itself.

Technology has simply made them faster, more scalable, and infinitely more precise.

Instead of walking through crowded markets looking for victims, today’s criminals use social media algorithms, artificial intelligence, leaked databases, and behavioural profiling to identify people who are most likely to respond emotionally.

Official figures from the Australian Signals Directorate and international law enforcement agencies show that online fraud, identity theft, business email compromise, and investment scams continue to increase every year. 

The victims are not selected because they are unintelligent.

They are selected because they are human.

So, relax.

If you have ever purchased clothing from an Instagram advertisement that did not arrive, you are not alone.

Believed fake online reviews.

Clicked a convincing email.

They may have relied on a website that appeared to be professional.

You are not alone.

Smart people do not fall for scams because they lack intelligence.

They fall because scammers do not attack intelligence.

They attack emotion.

Let us begin with the front door, which is surprisingly ordinary.

If you wish to work for organisations such as the Central Intelligence Agency or MI5 as an analyst, linguist, cybersecurity specialist, or intelligence officer, you should not wait for a mysterious invitation.

You simply visit their careers website.

Upload your résumé.

Complete an application.

Attend interviews.

In many respects, intelligence agencies resemble any other large organisation competing for highly skilled professionals. 

They attend university career fairs, advertise graduate programmes and recruit engineers, data scientists, psychologists, accountants, and software developers, while presenting themselves as employers offering meaningful careers and public service.

For most applicants, the process appears remarkably familiar.

Until it doesn’t.

Unlike multinational corporations, which conduct routine background checks, intelligence organisations undergo one of the most comprehensive vetting processes anywhere in the government.

Every significant aspect of an applicant’s life may become relevant.

• Financial history.
• Foreign travel.
• Personal relationships.
• Professional conduct.
• Digital footprint.
• Psychological resilience.

Security clearances are not simply granted because someone possesses technical competence.

They are awarded because the organisation believes an individual can be trusted with information that compromises national security.

During my years working within security-intelligence, one lesson became abundantly clear.

Intelligence services are not merely recruiting knowledge.

They are assessing character.

An applicant’s technical expertise may secure an interview.

Their judgement, integrity and emotional stability determine whether they progress further.

Candidates frequently undergo extensive background investigations, structured psychological assessments, and, in many jurisdictions, polygraph examinations. Investigators seek to understand not only what an individual knows but also how they respond under pressure, handle personal adversity and resolve ethical dilemmas.

The objective extends well beyond confirming honesty.

It is about identifying future vulnerability.

Could significant debt make someone susceptible to bribery?

Could unresolved grievances create resentment?

Could egos, ideologies, or personal ambitions eventually override professional loyalty?

Ironically, the gateway into a profession built upon secrecy requires extraordinary personal transparency.

It remains one of intelligence work’s enduring paradoxes.

To understand why this trap is so effective, we need to examine one of the most powerful influence engines ever created:
The entertainment industry.

For more than a century, the world of film, music, television, and celebrity culture has functioned as a global factory of dreams.

It attracts two distinct groups of people.

The first are wealthy, powerful individuals who live under extraordinary public scrutiny. Despite their fame, many experience isolation, distrust, and loneliness.

The second group consists of ordinary people searching for success, purpose, recognition, or a glimpse into the lives of those they admire.

When these two groups intersect, a compelling marketing ecosystem emerges.

Years ago, a highly commercialized movement based on ancient mystical concepts gained remarkable visibility within celebrity circles.

Suddenly, some of the world’s most recognizable actors, musicians, and public figures began appearing with a simple red string tied around their wrists.

Others promoted special spiritual products, blessed water, exclusive teachings, or promises of hidden knowledge capable of unlocking personal transformation.

To the casual observer, it looked harmless.

Perhaps even inspiring.

Yet beneath the surface existed a sophisticated lesson in influence.

The lesson was simple:
People often trust what successful people endorse.

We live in a world obsessed with accumulation. We collect degrees, job titles, frequent flyer miles, and bank balances.

From a young age, we are taught that the measure of a successful life is determined by what we manage to pull into our orbit.

But there comes a benchmark moment, usually after life has thoroughly knocked the wind out of you a few times—when you realize that success isn’t measured by what you accumulate.

It’s measured by what you contribute back.

I didn’t learn this lesson from a self-help book. I learned it across three lifetimes packed into one. I’ve lived through war, navigated diplomacy, conducted investigations, and built businesses from the scratch.

But the most challenging and rewarding title I’ve held is volunteer.

I must be honest with you.

When I started this journey and launched the podcast called “Life the Battlefield,” I didn’t have all the answers.

On the contrary, I was full of doubts.

Fear, excitement, unanswered questions, and immense anticipation all mixed inside me.

Those of us who have faced significant life challenges are familiar with that gut-wrenching feeling. You are at a literal or figurative crossroads, fully aware of the risks but knowing you can’t go back.

I vividly remember standing in the absolute centre of a cool road on the Primitivo, the world narrowed down to two distinct orchestras: the joyful conversation of birds in the chestnut canopy above and the rhythmic thrumming of my heart in my ears.

I felt a quiet melancholy, realizing this beautiful adventure was curving toward its end.

It made me reflect on how life itself is a compressed momentum. We spend our middle years trying to navigate that speed before the eventual finish line, standing in that transitional space where the novelty of youth has faded, but the wisdom of age hasn’t yet fully taken root.

My experience in the war taught me what the ultimate point of human suffering looks like but also what true, unseen courage means. Working in security intelligence has taught me to discern the truth that others often conceal.

When you enter business with such a background, you become disinterested in cheap tricks. You know that the goal is not just to make money or have good intentions.

True magic occurs when your creations, crafted with your hands, directly benefit people while also allowing them to thrive and sustain themselves in the market.

That is when mission, business, and life’s purpose become one.