CRITICAL TIMES FROM ASCERTAINING FRAUD TO WHISTLEBLOWING FRAUD
WHISTLEBLOWING CYBERCRIMES
My Substack is a replica of my X and used strictly to show the internet what’s been happening to me via my devices. Devices I paid for and pay monthly services to use.
I use X over BlueSky only because I have a security key to X. I was able to activate the security key to X, Google and Apple in spring 2022.
*Please excuse the grammatical errors. I don’t have the luxury to concentrate on the little things when my mental state has been one of constant turbulence and hypervigilance.
*All phone calls, voicemails, texts, and documents mentioned in text below are recorded as videos, screenshots, emails, hardcopies or still on my devices.
Dec 15th 2022, I ascertained my ConEd bills were fraudulent.
Jan 5th 2023, I took the day off work to visit the ConEd Building in Manhattan at 4 Irving Place. I took with me a stack of documents: my ConEd bills; printouts of my apt’s energy usage from my online ConEd account; a letter from ConEd on my apt’s smart meter installation on March 1st 2022; screenshots of my checking account showing payments to ConEd; a letter from my employer who confirmed my employment began in Aug 2021 to present, and that I worked on site Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm; photos of my apt with scarcely any hardware and with only basic appliances, a stove, refrigerator, microwave; and a Chase Bank Fraud Packet to prove that I was a victim of other fraud.
To my surprise, there are no representatives at the ConEd Building except for a lone worker at front desk who collects in-person payments. When I told her I wanted to dispute my ConEd bills, she directed me to what looked like a rotary phone at the far end of the room and said to call a toll-free number. No different from calling on my iPhone. On my way to the ConEd Building, after getting off the train, I had searched its address on my phone to be sure I was heading in the right direction, and I was harassed. Google maps was defunct. I took screenshots to document the harassment.
After the wasted trip to ConEd, I stopped in WholeFoods to grab a snack and to make phone calls. While sitting in the eat-in area, I noticed a male sitting next to my table who kept surreptitiously staring at me and when I took his photo believing him to be suspect, he abruptly got up from his chair, frantically waved his one arm and said something to the effect, There you are!, before disappearing. The calls I made were 3-1-1, NY’s non-emergency go-to number and Astoria NYPD. I called 3-1-1 to inquire how to report ConEd fraud and was referred to NY’s Public Service Commission website to file a claim. I then called Astoria NYPD and recall having a lengthly conversation with a detective Fernandez who responded in the same aggressive push back as the Con Edison representatives any time I called to question my exorbitant utility bills.
Jan 7th, I stopped at Astoria’s Internet Cafe to use the computer, believing I would have privacy. I immediately noticed the signs of a compromised network and left without using the computer.
Jan 8th, with no notification or authorization, Inspector Santos called my phone at 9:24am and left a voicemail while I was at the office that he was at my apt building to do “inspection on your equipment.” I returned his call and told him I did not want him to look at my apt’s meter; I did not authorize for him to be there. I preferred to be present with ConEd appointments. He ignored me, and had rang the superintendent’s apt to let him in to look at my apt’s smart meter. The superintendent later sent me an image of Inspector Santos recorded on the building’s security camera.
At 12:16pm, Billy Schmittgall from ConEd’s security department left a voicemail on my phone to return his call. He said that he had sent a “crew over to make sure there was no tampering with your meter.” I returned his call, and though I was polite, didn’t believe a word he said. After my call, I had googled “Billy Schmittgall” and saw a search result (there weren’t many) that showed the name to be linked to NYPD with a corruption charge. I googled the name again as I type this, and this time several Billy Schmittgalls show. What look to be mostly social media accounts.
After work, I stopped at the superintendent’s apt. His adult son had agreed to let me view the video of Inspector Santos. Despite the superintendent’s son’s efforts with troubleshooting the program, he was unable to log in that we eventually gave up. While the son was trying to access the security system, I had a hunch to look at my iPhone’s settings and was simultaneously surprised and not surprised that Astoria Internet Cafe showed as a network. I have never input any network name on my iPhone’s wifi. It showed in my phone’s settings up until late 2023, along with two other network names “t-mobile” and “TMobileWingman” that had been on my phone since 2022. I had made several calls to Apple and TMobile about them and was told by reps from both businesses that they came with the phone. Suddenly, all three disappeared at the same time.
Jan 16th, the superintendent’s son sent a text message to my phone at 4:13pm while I was at the office—“Hi, are you home? I think the fire department is at your door. [They’re] there now breaking your door.” I text back asking why the fire department was at my apt, and he replied he didn’t know. I immediately told HR I had an emergency and walked back to my apt in all of 20 minutes. By the time I arrived, everyone was gone except the superintendent, maintenance man and their helpers. The apt door had been axed open, leaving the bolted lock damaged. A new one had to be put on the following day. I had to use another personal/sick day as I did the other times because of my compromised iPhone. I spoke to my landlord over the phone about the matter and recorded the call. He seemed as shocked as I. Later that night, I connected with an officer from Astoria NYPD who told me that someone had submitted a request to FBI to do a wellness check on me, not NYPD, but FBI. I also recorded that call. I was stunned, and at the time, believed it all.
Jan 20th, 4:22pm, I open an email from my boss that began, “Erica—Our website and info email is getting a barrage of these that obviously are coming from you…” Included in the email was an example of one of the messages sent to the info email. The subject reads “Erica Wissick is going viral!” The message verbatim reads:
“yo, this is blowing up your phone, she hella rude, and racist—and making a youtube sensation / “you’re a miserable piece of sh* (and i am gonna destroy you. keep up the good work, hilarious! black james”.
Included in the message from “black james” was a link to one of my videos on my YouTube when I tell a scammer who called the office “l will destroy you”—and I am. From Sept 2022 to Jan 2023, I recorded on my iPhone over one hundred robocalls to the office; the ones I couldn’t whip out my phone fast enough to record, I documented on my, what was then, Twitter wall that included the phone number, timestamp, and the duration of the call (I always waited for the caller to hang up first for the ones that were silent). I was immediately terminated and told to remove myself from the premises in the email sent from my boss. Before leaving, I stopped in his office to thank him for the opportunity. I wanted to leave on whatever good note I could manage. As the receptionist, I had little interaction with him; he evidently had no clue of the harassment I was contending with at my desk byway of robocalls. I had reported it to his wife, the comptroller, and made a police report on the harassment, but apparently she didn’t fill him in. My entire time at the company that started on Aug 4th 2021 was disrupted by spyware and robocalls. I was intensely alienated and misunderstood. This was the first employer I had divulged having PTSD and tried to explain the cybercrimes happening to me to both HR and to the comptroller, but I may as well have been speaking another language. I believe it was a cultural barrier as 95% of the workers were Eastern European. The business was construction.
Screenshots above: 1) Rotary-looking phone is the only way to connect to a representative; no face-to-face customer service in ConEd Building. 2) Text received by the superintendent's son informing me of the fire department breaking my apt door. 3) Apt door axed open by the fire department for false wellness check. 4) Inspector Santos. 4) The stranger at table who kept surreptitiously staring at me until I took his photo that made him immediately lurch up, pretend to wave to someone across the room and disappear.
Screenshots above: 6) Wifi networks I never input on my iPhone and that were immutable until late 2023 when all three suddenly disappeared. 7) Notice from ConEd on my apt's smart meter installation that I never asked for nor received prior notification on March 1, 2022, seven months after I moved in the apt on August 1, 2021.
-ONE YEAR AND TEN MONTHS LATER-
Nov 8th 2024 was my last day at the driving school after I was told by the owner on Nov 4th that the week would be my last. I was employed there since May 6th. The reason he gave was that the Queens location out of the Brooklyn and Manhattan wasn’t making enough sales, he was closing the office. This prompted to me to calculate the sales from the last four years in the ledger after finishing the day’s tasks. I found that my sales were about the same as the last three years except immediately after lockdown when sales increased significantly and right before the pandemic when sales were significantly lower.
Nov 12th, I went to the Elmhurst Department of Labor. Approaching the front desk, I was told they were not accepting walk-ins due to a water leak. I was advised to visit another DOL with the addresses printed on a sheet of paper handed to me instead. Nov 13th, I went to the midtown west DOL, one of the addresses provided, but was told by front desk that the office had left the building “years ago”, before the pandemic. Nov 14th, I went to the downtown Manhattan DOL, and was finally seen by a worker who advised me to call their toll-free number on a phone at a desk that I could’ve easily done on my own phone. Once prompted for my social security number, I was told by automation that I already had an open claim and that I would have to connect with an agent. I waited four hours on the phone to connect with the agent. The agent told me I did not have an open claim and transferred me back to automation that told me again, I did. Nov 15th, I logged into my NYSdotgov account. I had been obstructed all of 2023 when I was on unemployment after the doxxing message sent to my employer’s email that resulted in my immediate termination. I had also made two wasted trips to the DOL in 2023; the reason then was because Google had provided misinformation both times. The first wasted trip was because Google showed that the Flushing DOL was open when in fact it had moved its office to Elmhurst; the second wasted trip was because Google showed President’s Day to be Social Justice Day and that the office was open when in fact it was closed. Once logged in my NYSdotgov account I completed the online process to file the unemployment claim except the last step, which required connecting to an agent. I did on Nov 18th. I was told by the agent that she would submit my claim for review and that a Determination Letter would be mailed to my address anywhere between 10-14 days. I was mailed a Determination Letter the next day, Nov 19th, that I was rejected for unemployment benefits. I had checked my mailbox Thurs, Dec 5th, and only then read the Determination Letter that shows the date it was mailed to be Nov 19th. I had certified for unemployment benefits twice as told to do by the agent while DOL reviews my claim—Nov 23rd and Dec 3rd—with automation, both times, ending with “Your claim has been entered for processing…”
I see clearly now that I had been scammed over my employment at the driving school. I found the job on Craigslist when I was frantically scrambling to find a job after my one support system, ex-boyfriend, had been fired from his position as the Chief Medical Officer. He had been financially assisting me when my unemployment benefits expired in Aug 2023. He was fired in Jan 2024 after five years with not even a severance package. He told me that he had been screwed over and that the pharmaceutical company where he was employed probably surmised a lawsuit wouldn’t have been worth it to him, and that they were right. He had been receiving several emails and text messages from the same criminals who sent the email to my former employer defaming my character. They emailed his work email, his boss, his daughter, none of who I ever met or know anything about. The criminals had also sent multiple character defamation emails of me to the driving school.
While scouring the internet for employment, I knew the websites were influenced by the signs of malware that’s ubiquitous on all websites and platforms.
I was worried that the scammers were obstructing my applications and hand-delivered my resume and applied on site to many businesses. Nevertheless, when the driving school hired me on the spot after the first and only interview via FaceTime back in May (the manager insisted on seeing me, not just talk over the phone), I was only too grateful as it was just in time to my destitution. I hadn’t paid rent that month because I couldn’t. The criminals text my then roommate that I hadn’t paid rent and that his share of rent was used for my personal spending. He moved out the next month after a year and half as my roommate. I had used his security deposit for June’s rent. He was an Egyptian migrant. I’ve found people have a hard time absorbing cybercrimes and that it’s even harder for foreigners to grasp. Since working at the driving school, I was paying May’s rent in installments and still owe $550.
I knew the driving school was linked to the criminals from day one. I knew by its website which showed all the signs of influence: the same person who is on several other websites, chat feature, pricing of packages to its policies and procedures that were reoccurring themes in BBB complaints to other businesses; and from my own experiences as a victim of fraud. I could see the office iPhone and desktop computer were compromised the same way my own devices are. It never occurred to me, though, that I had been scammed with employment; even with all the signs were there from the start: the low pay, even less for the first few days, no health insurance or other benefits, deducted for federal holidays (even though the job post showed PTO)—to now unqualified for unemployment insurance. I see clearly now that everything had been deliberate. I had taken screenshots of the ledger of every single day I was employed that totaled $100k+ in sales in 5.5 months; I also documented each online review that acknowledged and praised my services, along with the text messages sent to the office iPhone thanking me for my services. Sixteen in total.
Once again, everything happened all at once. The criminals’ characteristic piggybacking—I was fired from my job, my current roommate gave notice that she’s moving out a month earlier than her six month sublease agreement, a NYS Taxation notice for $1484.75 that I owe in state taxes that was mailed Nov 23rd. All right before the holidays.
The day before I checked my mailbox was Dec 4th when an unknown male murdered at point blank United Healthcare’s CEO outside a hotel in midtown Manhattan. An area that’s heavily equipped with surveillance cameras. NYT reported the murderer appeared to have known which door his victim was to enter the hotel that he arrived to the spot 10 minutes before waiting for him. Once his victim walked by, the murderer shot him in the back multiple times. That immediately grabbed my attention. What else grabbed my attention was the torrent of “rage and glee” online that followed the murder as one NYT Opinion columnist put it. I believe that the “rage and glee” is yet another glimpse of just how much fraud has impacted the lives of the American public. I know my UHC insurance from 2021—2022 was influenced by the same criminals who influence my monthly service bills, online subscriptions and accounts with ConEd, Amazon, Apple, TMobile, Chase, Verizon, Instagram, Google, Netflix, Pinterest, Seamless, and any online order. I’m convinced the rage and glee expressed by the public over a brazen murder of a health insurance executive, whose parent company is valued at $300 billion, is linked to the fraudulent influence of hijacked critical infrastructures that I’ve been whistleblowing since first realizing my fraudulent ConEd bills were linked to a stranger who has been terrorizing me on my devices since spring 2022. Among many of the stranger’s tactics was to make fraudulent purchases on my PayPal to Chewy and Spokeo at wee hours of the morning. He had made his presence known because of a self-imposed competition he felt towards another person using spyware on me, a white male from Texas, who I had once met over ten years ago and who had been following me on my Instagram all that time. It took the pandemic lockdown in 2021 for me to finally confront bureaucratic documents to my adoption in 1986 and my time as a ward of the court when I was a teenager who had voluntarily signed myself into state custody as a runaway from the abusive adoptive couple. It had left me glazed with shock; and I felt compelled to share my discovery on my Instagram. Ever since then, I noticed my devices acting strangely and ascertained that the male from Texas was using spyware on me. Coming out that I had been a foundling, child abuse survivor of a broken adoption of the unregulated international adoption industry, runaway, foster kid… to now a marginalized adult seems to have given license to exploit vulnerabilities that I didn’t at all realize when I shared who I am.
With all this said—I need help. I’m on compromised devices influenced by a criminal organization who are in collusion with transnational criminal organization. They have destroyed my life because I figured out their fraud and calling it out online, using the very platform they use to commit their massive fraud that appears to have been going on for several years. I’d like to survive this hellish nightmare that’s been my life since the pandemic lockdown, though I believe I’ve been a victim years before then. I’d like to live. All of my life has felt like a fight, but now it has become a full blown battle. Please do whatever is in your power. I have five police reports: 11412438, 2022 (Harassment); 114000871, 2023 (Aggravated Harassment); 114008247, 2024 (Harassment); 114003850, 2024 (Harassment); and 1144550, 2025 (Aggravated Harassment). On 04-29-24, I went to the FBI Building in downtown Manhattan to make in-person IC3 complaint. I was not given a report number.