WEBVTT
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This program is designed to provide general information with regards
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to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
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the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
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are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
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legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
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the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
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suggested ideas. The information contained in this podcast is intended
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for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for
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individual professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled
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from vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to
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safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall
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victim to a scam.
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Let's talk about scams. It's the must listen show for
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anyone who wants to protect themselves and their loved ones
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from scams. Every Tuesday am Pacific time on K four
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HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her guests
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will provide valuable insights and practical tips on how to
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recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now here is
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your host, Joyce Petrowski.
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Welcome back everyone, I'm Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president
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of Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly. You can
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find more resources on our website at Roseadvocacy dot org.
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You can find our social media links and also sign
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up for our emailed and mailed newsletters down at the
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bottom of the homepage. Last week, we talked about a
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public service announcement from the FBI that scammers were impersonating
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the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is a division of
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the FBI, And today I want to talk about the
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twenty twenty four Internet Crime Complaint Center's report, annual report
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that they do every year. The twenty twenty four came
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out late last week and it's got a lot of
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information about the scams and the victims that reported during
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twenty twenty four.
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Now, if you remember.
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What we talked about last week, the Internet Crime Complaint Center,
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you can find these reports. I So that's I as
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an Indigo c as in KAT the number three dot gov.
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This is where you can also report crimes scams. Whether
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you've lost money or not, you can still report it.
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And this department of the FBI is a data collection
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and they collect all this information and then they disseminated
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out to the appropriate law enforcement wherever the crime has
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taken place. So, getting back to the twenty twenty four
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I see three annual report. I'm going to put up
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on a script on the screen here one called complaints
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filed by individual sixty plus And if you can see that,
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so and this is just in the year of twenty
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twenty four, and just for the sixty year old and
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older age population, and this is all throughout the United States,
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there was over one hundred and forty seven thousand complaints.
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And of those complaints or of those complaints, they lost
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a combined total of four point eight eight five billion
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in losses.
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That's b as in boy billion.
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Now in twenty twenty three, and you can see from
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the graph below. The graph below goes all the way
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from twenty eighteen through twenty twenty four. So in twenty
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twenty three the complaints were just over one hundred and
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one thousand, and they went all the way up to
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just over one hundred and forty seven thousand in one year.
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That's a forty six percent increase. And the losses in
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twenty and twenty three they were around three point four billion,
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and they're up to four point eighty eight five billion,
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just shy of five billion dollars. That's a forty three
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percent increase in losses from twenty twenty three to twenty
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twenty four. Now, of those one hundred and forty seven
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thousand complaints, there were seventy five hundred that lost more
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than one hundred thousand dollars in the scam that they
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were reporting, And if we want to average all of
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this out, the average loss was eighty three thousand dollars.
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So this is this is just crazy. This is going
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way up, and we need to really take a hard
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look at at prevention tools and at ROSE, we firmly
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believe that the best prevention is education.
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Its awareness.
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It's education, and then it's knowing how to protect yourself
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and then knowing that it's okay to talk about scams.
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Whether you've received something and you've fallen victim or you
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haven't fallen victim, it's good to talk about it because
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it makes your family and friends more aware of what's
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going on. But it also helps everyone involved keep scam
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prevention top of mind. So if we break that down,
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we're going to go to another chart called three year comparison.
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The sixty year old population complaint losses. So this is
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where they compare from twenty twenty two, twenty three, and
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twenty four based on the type of crime that was committed.
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And I've highlighted some numbers here. So the investment scam
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was by far the one in this age population where
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the most money was lost. In twenty four it was
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one point eight billion dollars and that is almost doubled
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from twenty twenty two. It was nine hundred and ninety
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thousand in twenty and twenty two. Now, those are investment schemes.
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So we've talked about pig butchering before, where you know,
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the scammer establishes the relationship but then gets you to
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invest in crypto and you think you're getting all you're
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making all of this money, and you're not because when
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you want to go take it out, it's not there
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and the scammer's not there. So there's a lot of
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lot of dollars in this age population loss to investment scams.
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And you can see the other dollar amounts for all
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the other ones. There's you know, confidence in romance fraud
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was about three hundred and ninety thousand. Government impersonation was
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just over two hundred two hundred I should say two
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hundred billion. The Romance and confidence fraud was just under
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three hundred and ninety billion. What are some other ones
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on here? Personal data breach two hundred and fifty four billion.
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But if you look down towards the bottom, there's tech support.
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And in twenty and twenty two those losses were five
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hundred and just shy of five hundred and eighty six billion,
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and all the way up to twenty and twenty four
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it reaches nine hundred and eighty two billion dollars.
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So between the investment and.
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The tech support, we're looking at two what is this?
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I'm doing the math in my head, so two point
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eight just over two point eight billion dollars?
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Or was it am I adding?
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Yeah, over two point eight billion dollars just in those
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two scams alone. And so we've talked about the tech
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support before as well. You know, when that first came out,
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everybody realized that it was the pop up on your
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device that talked about you have a virus.
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And call us and we can help you get this
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off your device.
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Well, you know, scammers, as they do, they evolve and
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they go to then impersonating you might get an email
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from a scammer, but they're impersonating some larger tech support
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company like Microsoft or McAfee or the Geek Squad or
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something like that, and they might be talking to you
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about a subscription, or they could be saying that they've
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noticed some unusual activity or that you could have some malware,
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you know, whatever.
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They've upped their game, you know.
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But then a few years back, the FBI had put
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out a public service announcement because they were seeing such
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an uptick in a different a different tech support which
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is where they would get a hold of you again,
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impersonating you know, McAfee, Microsoft, one of these larger, more
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well known tech support companies, and say that you were
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owed a refund on a subscription. And if you had
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happened to have a subscription with whoever they were impersonating it,
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it made it all the more believable.
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And they would get you to.
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Allow them access to your computer and they would go
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in and put it, you know, put it in your account.
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I'm saying that in.
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Quotes because they would show that it's going into your account.
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But then lo and behold, they put too many zeros
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in there. To the left of the decimal point, and
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then it went into this whole thing about how they're
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going to get in so much trouble they might get fired,
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and so you had to go get the money and
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send it back, and then a couple days later you
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found out that money was never in your account to
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begin with, and so you were out all of that money.
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So the tech support's been going on for a long time.
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It's been one in the top three with this age population,
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and it still is. The romance scams used to be
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in the top three years ago, but they've come down some.
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They're still out there, but they've come down. But this
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investment one, if you can see down all the way
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down at the bottom of the table, the cryptocurrency, there
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was two point eight billion dollars loss to cryptocurrency. That
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was the that was the medium that the scammer used
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in order to get your money. So and it was
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you know, whether it was investing in what you thought
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was legitimate cryptocurrency or some other scam where they would
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have you actually go to a cryptocurrency ATM machine and
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put your money in there. So now I want to
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take those numbers and I want to break them down
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to the state of Arizona because that's where Rose operates
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right now, and we want to see what this looks like.
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So the next chart I want to show is the
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overall state statistics, the counts by state from complaints filed
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by individuals. So once again Arizona is in the top ten.
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This is not a statistic that we want to be
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in the top ten and we want to be down
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and actually it shows there's fifty seven of them here,
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so we want to be number fifty seven. Anyways, we're
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number four again. This you guys remember from twenty twenty
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three there were just over fifty five hundred complaints filed. Again,
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same age population sixty year old and older. Well, in
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twenty four there was just under sixty seven hundred complaints filed.
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California was number one, Florida's number two, Texas is number three.
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I will say we usually do run behind those three.
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They usually are the top three. But you know, Pennsylvania
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and New York they're down there. I would have expected
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New York to be a little bit higher. But good
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for them that they're, you know, number six, but Arizona
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number seven. No, we are number seven, number four. We
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need to really really work hard and we need to
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bring this victim count down a lot, and again, scam
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prevention through education is really the best way that Rose
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believes in order to start making a dent in these numbers.
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So let's see how much money those sixty six hundred
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and eighty three victims loss. The overall state statistics with
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the losses by state is the next chart I'm going
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to show. And that one we are number six. You
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can see California's number one, Texas, Florida, and they're New York.
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So New York was it was interesting. New York was
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number six in number of victims, but they are number
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four in number of losses, where Arizona was number four
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in number of victims, and we are Arizona is number
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six in amount of losses one hundred and ninety million dollars. Now,
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if you remember when we've talked about this before, in
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twenty twenty, the sixty plus residents of Arizona that reported
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they were a victim, it was twenty seven million dollars,
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and then it went to fifty four million in twenty
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twenty one, then eighty three million in twenty twenty two,
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one hundred and twenty eight million in twenty and twenty three.
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Now we're up to one hundred and ninety million dollars
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that was reported lost.
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This is.
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People's life savings, and you know, whatever the scam is,
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it's devastating. The scammers exploit their victims emotions and get
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them to make rash decisions based on emotions, because we
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know that if we were making a decision based on
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rational thought, there's a very good chance we would not
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have done what the scammer had asked us to do.
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So scammers are getting much much better, and they're going
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to continue to get better because you can see the
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amount of money that they are making. Just to give
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you an idea for all age populations that reported they
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were a victim in twenty twenty four, I believe the
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total losses were sixteen point six billion dollars, up from
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about twelve and a half billion.
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I believe it wasn't twenty twenty three.
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So.
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Lots of money out there. These scammers are making billions
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and billions, if not close to trillions of dollars. They
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are going to just continue to evolve their techniques, perfect
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their techniques. They're changing and adapting to all this new
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technology that's coming out right. We've talked about artificial intelligence.
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They have figured out how to use it to their
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advantage with the using the generative text like chat GBT
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to create their emails, to create their letters.
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And yes, they.
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Will still send stuff in the mail, not as much
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as they used to, but they still do. And so
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the bad grammar part of it, you really can't look
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for that anymore.
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But they also use the deep fakes with the videos.
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Where in the romance scam they wouldn't come on camera
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because they knew what they look like wasn't like the