Don’t respond to random text messages

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services of confident professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. The information contained in this podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individual professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled from vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim to a scam.

0:50 Let's talk about scams. It's the must listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves and their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday am Pacific time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski. Good morning, My name is Brian Watson. I'm a community outreach specialist for Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly, and welcome to let's talk about scams. I am filling in for Joyce this weekend. Next it's my pleasure and privilege and Joyce will be back in a couple of weeks.

1:41 But in the meantime, I get the camera and the mic and I get to share some hopefully really good advice that you can share with others. So today's topic is don't respond to random text messages and we have to break the habit of being nice because the scammers are trying to trick us, and a lot of times they will make their initial intro through a text message. We always talk about something called the anatomy of a scam, where most scams have three phases, and the first one is contact out of the blue, and text message is one of the ways that scammers can get to us.

2:26 I was at a presentation yesterday and someone asked me, well, where do they get these numbers? And I say, they're out there. You just they can just use an auto dialer. That's the old way, but the new technology is they'll just pick the next number they're going to contact every one of us at some point, because these aren't secret numbers, you know, they go from zero zero's to nines, and they're eventually going to contact all of us. So I'm going to recall a story that happened to me a couple of weeks ago, and I'm sharing it because it's a great example of how I was even targeted by a scammer. So I received a text message on my cell phone. It was a number that was not in my contact list. I later looked up. It was a Connecticut area code, and all it was was a picture of a cute little dog, a puppy. It was a Samoy, It one of those white fluffy dogs. And it came in on my text message. Came in my phone as a text message, no words whatsoever, just a picture of a dog. So what would you do, Well, the scammers want you to respond. So I knew immediately it was a scam because this is what I do part time.

3:50 And I'll tell you why I knew it was a scam. So I decided to respond to the text because I knew it would be a good learning experience. It also helps me. It gave me an idea for an article for the newspaper. I write for the Green Valley News. So on my phone I just replied back, who is this? And immediately I got a text back and it said this was Annie. Don't you remember me? You gave me this dog and then I brought it to your fifty fifth birthday party. And so typically this is where a normal person would say, oh, I'm sorry, you have the wrong person. I didn't give you that dog. I don't know who you must be thinking of someone else. And then at that point the scammer will profusely apologize and say, oh, I'm so sorry I typed in the number wrong or I picked the wrong person. But then they will start a conversation with you, Oh, well do you like dogs? Oh?

4:54 Or where do you live? And they start giving you all kinds of attention, and if you have some free time and you're nice, maybe a little bored, you start engaging with someone because it's kind of fun. So in this case, I didn't want this to go on forever, but I at least wanted to show that it was a scam. So I played dumb and I just said, you know what, I know a lot of Annie's. Maybe if you send me a photo, it'll jog my memory. So at this point in this whole scheme, I was willing to bet my left ear or my right ear, or an eyebrow that the picture I got was going to be from an attractive young Asian woman. And sure enough I got both my ears. That is exactly what I got. I was texted a picture of a young, attractive Asian woman. Now, these unsolicited text messages is one of the methods that scammers used to start conversations with potential victims. I could have played this out for weeks and at some point my new friend Annie would have mentioned HER's success in investing in cryptocurrency, maybe Bitcoin, one of the or one of the other cryptocurrencies, and invite me to participate. So this scam is called pig butchering.

6:24 Joyce and I have talked about pig butchering quite a bit. We've had guests coming on talking about pig butchering. Basically, pig butchering is tricking people, targeting people, tricking them into investing in cryptocurrency, but they're really not investing in cryptocurrency. It's just a complete scam and they will take all your money. So going back to my story with Annie. We went back and forth, where do you live? You know, I didn't I didn't recognize that area code, and then there was a pause, like you know, a delay, and then she reintroduced herself as Rose, which is I think what happened is this scammer was interacting with way too many people and forgot that he or she had used the name Annie. So at that point I was like, Rose, I thought I was talking to my friend Annie. But anyways, sometimes these scammers can't keep their story straight. I also found the name Rose very ironic because that is the name of our nonprofit. So I basically ended the text conversation.

7:35 I didn't want this thing to go on forever because I didn't want to get text messages at weird hours, and I basically said, when you're going to ask me invest in crypto? I know this is a scam. I hope you're not one of these victims trapped in a compound in Southeast Asia. If you need help getting out, you know, we can reach out to people who do this for a living. You know, I don't know anybody personally that does it, but I have friends of friends who work for nonprofits that help extricate people from these horrible scam compounds where they're forced to work. So scammer moved on. I'm sure it will start texting other people.

8:19 So there's numerous variations of this text message. In my case, I received a picture of a dog. I've heard of times where people will receive a picture of a bottle of wine and the person on the other end of the text will say, hey, did you get the bottle of wine I sent you? And then you know, you'll say sorry, you got the wrong number, and it starts the process. Or hey, Bob, are we still on coffee? Or are we still on to have coffee tomorrow morning at seven am? You know? And then a nice person will say, you know, no, that's you got the wrong number. For most of us, our good nature causes us to help out the person sending the text. If you do that, you are a good person. You are raised well, you have manners. But here's the deal. The scammers are taking advantage of your good heart, your good manners, just the fact that you're a decent human being. But I'm telling you you do not have to respond to this random message.

9:25 You won't get in trouble from your parents or your grandparents just ignore it, delete it, don't engage. Now. I engaged because I knew what it was and I wanted to have a story to tell. And it was a learning experience for me because eventually, let's say you do engage with this scammer, it's going to be a daily text, it could be an hourly text. It could be back and forth, going real really quick. And then you know, at some point, you know, they'll figure out what you like. Are you into animals? Are you into food? Are you into travel? Sports? And these scammers will mirror you, and they literally will have a script that they can use in front of them on a computer screen or even on paper, where if their potential victim is into say fine dining, they will have things to ask. They'll show pictures, you know, if you're into travel, Eventually this personal show themselves at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, or at Big Ben in London or somewhere in New York City. And then it'll it'll obviously ask the beg the question how can you afford to do this much traveling? And the scammer will say, well, have you ever considered cryptocurrency? It's been really good for me. I have a family member

10:56 who's an expert at it and has made millions of dollars in crypto currency. Why don't we start small, you know, maybe invest one thousand dollars and let's see how that goes. And then they'll give you the fake portal that shows up on your computer screen, and of course it makes money, so you get excited because we all want to make money. And then at some point they will let you take a small refund or you know, a withdrawal of some of your investment, maybe even all of it. It's done intentionally to let you think that it's liquid and fully refundable, but in the meantime, there is no investment. They're not putting the money in cryptocurrency. They just take the money and using it themselves, and then they get you to invest more, like everything you have. I mean, I've met people.

11:50 I met someone who's lost over seven hundred thousand dollars in a pig butchering scheme, and it was a very very smart person. So that's what's so they do. Now. The FBI's elder Fraud Report was recently released, and these are the numbers from twenty twenty five, and you can go online and find the FBI Elder Fraud Report. You can find it at IC three dot gov or you could just any search engine type in FBI Elder Fraud Report twenty twenty five. I have it. I've reviewed part of it, and I wanted to share some things as it relates to pig butchering and these random text messages.

12:35 Seventy two thousand complaints were filed related to investment scams. The only things that had more complaints were phishing, the fank emails, and extortion. But here's the deal. Pig butchering investment fraud came in as the number one reported loss in the FBI's twenty two twenty five Elder Fraud Report. The dollar amount of reported loss is eight point six billion, and that's billion with a bee like boy, not million, but billion. And here's the crazy part. Most experts will tell you that only six to ten percent of these frauds are actually reported, so that number is unbelievably high and it is crazy. So if you receive a text message from an unknown number, we at Rose recommend that you don't respond to it. Don't do what I did today.

13:40 I was having fun. If you want to watch people messing with scammers. You can go on YouTube and look at people that mess with scammers. They're professionals, they're really good with technology. We're recommending the general public don't do this because you don't know what information these people have on you. If they've contacted you before, they're very sophisticated. Don't mess with these people. But here's the key. Delete the text, ignore the text, whatever you have to do. And there's no reason to be polite. These scammers are lying to and going to steal from you, so we have no obligation to be polite or nice to them.

14:20 They want to steal your life savings, So save yourself some time and financial ruin by immediately deleting the text. And I know, and it's just good practice, you know. You know the story I like to tell. I did a fraud prevention presentation with the bank manager in the town I live in, and she met a lady who, in her case, received a phone call and the lady knew something was not right, she knew it was a scam, but she stayed on the phone, she didn't hang up, and my friend, who's the bank manager, politely asked her, well, why didn't you just hang up the phone. I mean, you knew it was a scam, like, there's no reason to stay on the phone. And she said, well, I don't want to hang up because that would be rude. Okay.

15:19 So and I respect that. I respect the fact that she was raised well and she has good manners, and I wish everybody had as good as manners as this lady does. But these scammers are going to lie and steal from you. You have no obligation to be nice. If you are on the phone with someone, I am giving you permission to lie to them and have an answer already in place. You know, I have company over right now. I'm making dinner. I got food in the oven, I got something on the stovetop. My dog needs to go outside. We want you to take a break. And what they're trying to do because the scammers are social manipulators, they are are going to make you go into a place where you make a bad decision. So I mentioned the anatomy of a scam early on contact out of the blue, in this case a text message, you know, and then the compelling reason to act is wow, you have the potential of getting extremely wealthy. And then of course they always ask for money. That's the third part.

16:25 And then you know, for most scams they've used urgency, but when it comes to pig butchering, it's a long play scam. They can develop this scheme over weeks or even months. They want to build that trust and they want to kind of control you. They want to mirror you and have you invest small eventually have you invest everything you have. So they invest a lot of time in no pun intended, they do invest a lot of time in into you to try to get the big kill. Because with pig butchering, they're not trying to make one thousand dollars, they're not trying to make ten thousand dollars.

17:07 They want to make one hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars or even more. So please please please sign up for our monthly email. We have a lot of subscribers to our monthly email. At the beginning of the month, it comes out with all the latest tips, latest scams, ways you can partner with us, just some videos, some cool articles, and then on Tuesday mornings, Joyce sends out a little mini version of our newsletter. It's called the Tip Tuesday and it's usually just one small thing that you can read quickly, because here's the deal of folks.

17:48 The scammers are coming after every one of us. They came after me, they're coming after you, They're coming after your family members. And we have to be mentally prepared to delete that email, lead that text message, hang up that phone call. You are in control. Live with a healthy amount of skepticism. We trust people, but it needs to be verified. And if you do get it, you know, if you do get a phone call or an email, you know, contact the company from a verified number. But that's that's the biggest thing in the world. Don't respond to random text messages you have no obligation to. All Right, that is all I have for today. I really appreciate everyone out there listening to me. Please share this link with someone you know. It could save them their life savings.

18:39 We'll see you next Tuesday morning. Thank you very much. Well, that's all the knowledge for this episode. Juni in every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHD Radio at kfoorahd dot com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge. So you have the power to make scam protection. You're healthy, habit and until then feel free to reach out to Joyce and let's talk about scams.