Hospice Fraud and Couriers being used by Scammers to Collect Cash

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 competent 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. 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. Hi, I'm David saying active, mentally, thing chess. Those are all the very important things.

1:25 I'm seventy two, but I'm going to cheap on learning. I'm going to keep on moving. I'm gonna keep on living my life. Healthcare for David's next move. Learn more at Archwell health dot com. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president of Rose Resources Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly. You can find more information on our website at Roseadvocacy dot org. And you can find all of our social media links on there as well. And don't forget, you're gonna want to hit subscribe to this radio show so you get notified of all of the upcoming episodes. I want to thank our twelve Health. They're our sponsor for the month of June and July, and you saw their short video on there. And I've had the privilege of touring quite a few R twelve offices here in and around the Phoenix area, and I have to tell you, I'm very impressed with how they've laid out their offices, how they've taken into consideration all kinds of maybe anxiety inducing things that older adults might have going into a doctor's office. They can remote in family members that want to be a part of the person's healthcare plan, and they're just phenomenal. There's ten of them in Maricopa County, all around East and West Valley and some central locations.

2:55 I would highly suggest if you're on Medicare in your look, looking for a primary care physician or looking to change, go in and take a tour of one of their offices and sit down and talk to them about what all they have to offer for you. So today we're going to talk about a couple public service announcements from the FBI. The first one is on It's titled Emerging Hospice Fraud targeting Medicare recipients. I'm going to share my screen here so I can pull up the so I can pull up the actual here it is. It came out at the beginning of this month, on June third. Now, hospice fraud has been in the news a lot lately with some hospice locations offices that are fraudulently billing. They have a location an address, but it's not really a hospice place. So let's go down through what this is.

4:08 What the FBI is warning us about there's an emerging hospice fraud scheme that targets vulnerable Medicare recipients who are not need of hospice services. So scammers are enrolling Medicare patients and hospice care for services they don't need or services that are not even provided. Enrollment can also incur without the patient's knowledge if it's a scammer. Most of the times that's what's going on, So it allows the scammers to build Medicare for a patient that's not present in the hospice facility. Some scammers use door to door solicitation tactics. We talk a little bit about door to door salespeople in our fraud awareness program, and they might also offer some free home services such as house clean or meal delivery, which are conditional upon using a specific hospice So you just want to be really careful somebody just showing up out of the blue, door to door and trying to get you to sign up for some hospice services that you might not need or want, and offering some free services as an enticement to get you to sign up for it. So here's some of the recent schemes that the FBI has seen so enrolling Medicare recipients in hospice care despite the patients having no terminal illness or no chronic condition, in Rolling patients in hospice

5:42 care without their knowledge. Hospice providers billing Medicare without the beneficiary's knowledge, so without the patient's knowledge, for services that were not provided. There's also recruiters out there paying bonuses for enrolling a specific number of patients in hospice falsifying their scammers are also falsifying diagnosis paperwork for hospice care and pressuring patients to sign up for hospice care when they don't need it. This is that high pressure tactics. What they said above about enticing you with some in home cleaning or meal delivery or some other service that you might maybe you're looking for someone to do some cleaning around the house, or maybe you're looking for a meal delivery service, but just because someone shows up and they're offering hospice services. First of all, the door to door you know, I know a lot of older adults and this is the way I grew up as well.

6:45 We were taught to answer the door and not shut the door on someone. You're very polite, but just you know what, peek out the window and if you see somebody that you don't recognize, you know, just don't answer the door. Or if you're not expecting anybody, you don't have to answer the door. You know, either just let them ring the bell and just to ignore it, or knock on the door and ignore it. But if you do happen to open the door and you think about it after you open the door, don't be afraid to just say no, thank you, goodbye and close the door. That way, you can be polite. You said no, thank you, say goodbye, and close the door and lock the door.

7:30 So here's some tips the FBI has in this public service announcement. Never give out Medicare or other insurance information to anyone who's not your doctor. Never accept incentives like gift cards or money in return for hospice services, and be wary of too good to be true offers. So use Medicare's Hospice Compare site to look up provider ratings and avoid providers with low star ratings. And always review your explaination of benefits that you get in your Medicare summary notices for unknown providers and services. So we talk about this in our in our presentation that it is always good to review your explanation of benefits. We've talked to some people that have found services that were build on their Medicare account that they never received, so and it's good to report it. You can report it at the ic three dot gov, which is the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, but the better place, in my opinion, to report it is to report it through Medicare. You can always call Medicare at one eight hundred Medicare the phone numbers right there on the screen one eight hundred sixty three, three four, two two seven. Always report it directly to Medicare because you want to get those charges off of your Medicare account. You don't want those charges

9:01 affecting any sort of benefits that you might be entitled to or any sort of maybe new policies that come out that you might be entitled to if it weren't for those fraudulent charges. So always look at those when you get them, make sure they're accurate. And we actually we have another tip is that we really highly suggest to people when whether they're just starting out on Medicare or maybe they're already on Medicare, but they don't have a Medicare agent. Is to find a trustworthy, reputable Medicare agent and work through them. They are not going to charge you for their services. They are required every year to take classes and trainings to learn about all the changes that are occurring that year and any new programs and policies that are coming out. So then they're going to be the best person that is going to be able to help you navigate the Medicare system and determine which policies work best for your situation. You might have a friend, a family member, you might hear somebody talk about it. You might hear something advertised on the TV or the radio or whatever, you know, talking about this new Medicare policy or a certain policy that's had some changes to it with Medicare, and you know you're being told that this is going to work for you, or someone's telling you I changed and it's really saved me a lot of money. You know you should change too.

10:34 Just always work through your Medicare agent. Because your Medicare agent knows your history, knows your medical conditions, your diagnoses, knows the prescriptions that you're on. And just because one plan is good for one person, doesn't necessarily mean it's good for another person because everybody's medical diagnoses, prescriptions, personal situation is different. So get that there are a ton of Medicare agents around. You can go on to medicares or that was Medicare's hospice compare site, but if they have that on there, I would believe and I'm pretty certain that Medicare also has where you could look up a specific Medicare provider on there on their website. But talk to your trusted friends and family members and find out who they use as an agent, that they trust them and they've had good results with them. The best thing to is on referral basis and then talk to that person to see that Medicare agent to see what they can do for you, how they can help you navigate the whole system. Yes, you can do it on your own. You can go to the Medicare website every year and look at the updates, the changes, the new plans, all of that stuff. But that's going to take a lot of time time, and you're going to have to be able to understand everything that they're talking about within

12:06 the policies and look at the fine print and look at the little nuances, and there's probably going to be some medical jargon in there and all of that stuff. So in my opinion, it's just best to use some trusted professional that is in that field that is required to learn and know about all of the updates that changes, the new policies. Now, Medicare has extremely strict rules on what these agents can and can't do, so unless you have asked an agent or filled out a little form saying please contact me this fall when regarding annual enrollment, I want to talk to you some more about it.

12:54 They're not allowed to just contact you out of the blue and start talking to you. So, but unfortunately, scammers, some aggressive Medicare agents that aren't necessarily in it for the right reasons, they might start calling you. And maybe it's towards the end of June already, maybe you're already getting phone calls. But annual enrollment starts October fifteenth and runs through December seventh, and so I believe Medicare agents are allowed starting October first to be able to talk to you about anything new with the upcoming changes and new plans. So as the months go on here, you're going to see an uptick in people trying to get a hold of you via the mail. You might see some increased commercials on the TV or the radio shows and phone calls trying to get you to switch to a Medicare plan that just might not be the best for you. So have that Medicare agent that's going to be your go to person, just like a go to tech support person to help you navigate your devices and apps and software and all of that. Have a go to Medicare person that you can talk to about any of that stuff, and always review your explanation of benefits when you get them in the mail to make sure those charges are yours. All right, I am going to go to the next one. This one is let's see

14:30 if this one was on June fifteenth, so just about a week ago, titled scammers use couriers to collect cash and cryptocurrency investment scams. We've heard about cryptocurrency scams for a long time. Cryptocurrency, that mode of payment has been very, very popular with the scammers. We've even talked Don here about those cryptocurrency ATM machines. About the new law that was put in to affect last September twenty sixth of twenty twenty five here in Arizona that had the Cryptocurrency ATM operators had to They're required to do a lot more and put account numbers on your receipts, provide you a receipt, have a lot more warning signs. You can just google the new Cryptocurrency ATM kiosk Law in Arizona and you're going to get a lot of information on it, so you can look at all the details. But one of the things it also does is for the person that is going there and putting money into the machine, they're going to get a receipt. And if you have your receipt or receipts, if you've done it multiple transactions and you have all your receipts and you realize within thirty days of that transaction that it was a scam, you need to take your receipts and go report it to the Attorney general and the police. You're going to get your reports. You're going to then contact the Cryptocurrency

16:02 ATM owner, provide them with the reports, and then they will they're supposed to refund your money. We had a guest on our show a few weeks ago that Gail that talked about how she got nine two hundred and sixty dollars returned to her. She realized it within thirty days and file she had five all five of her receipts filed. The reports, talked to the cryptocurrency ATM owner, and within a couple of days she had a check in the mail. So just keep that in the back of your mind. I'm seeing more and more states that are completely banning these cryptocurrency ATMs. I have not heard that Arizona has done that. I'm hoping down the road that they're going to look to put even tighter restrictions on this law. Because one of the things the law provided was if you were a first time user, you could only put a max of two thousand dollars in, and then once you were considered a reoccurring user, you could put up to ten thousand dollars or ten thousand, five hundred in And it was something like if you've used it, maybe on your fourth time, you were considered reoccurring.

17:14 But this when Gail she told us about her incident. When she went, it was her first time, and so the scammers found a way around it right away. They sent her the barcode for the first time use she put two thousand in. Then they immediately sent her a new barcode. She put another two thousand, So it took you know, forty five minutes or whatever to do all the five transactions. But they kept her on the phone, they kept talking to her. They kept her, you know, fearful and scared, so she wasn't thinking rationally. She was thinking out of that emotion, which kept her there feeding the machine full of money. So, yes, new safeguards are good, and new technology is good, but scammers figure out how to get around them, and then they use that social engineering to bypass that technology and to bypass those safeguards.

18:03 So kind of got off on a little tangent there, But let's get back to this public service announcement. So the FBI is warning us about scammers instructing victims, and it's usually been senior citizens to participate in cash pickups purportedly to protect funds purchased through the scammers cryptocurrency investment platforms. Which. At that point they're continued to deceptively appear legitimate to the victims. So this looks like it starts with the cryptocurrency investment platform, which is going to be part of the pig butchering scam if you've heard of that, which is a fake investment. But they scammers go to great lengths to make fake investment statements, a fake portal that makes it all look legitimate. I talked to somebody in the last month that ended up losing a really big chunk of money to one of these scams. They actually put their whole nest egg into a quote unquote in cryptocurrency investment platform, and the scammers were a very elaborate to make it all look real and legitimate. So then the scammers arranged for couriers to meet the victims in person to retrieve the cash for the fraudulent investments. So in person cash collection via couriers is a method utilized

19:36 across many scams. You probably remember we talked here probably maybe last summer about the gold bar scams where they were instructing people to meet couriers because I believe the reason for this one was there was fraud with your bank account. You're on the vergil losing all your money. You need to take it out and meet a courier, and and it was going to be in gold bars and then you would get it back after all the fraud was gone in your account was safe again. So they impersonate law enforcement. They could be a grandparent scam, the tech support. You know, we talked about the gold bar scam. A lot of different scams could use couriers.

20:23 So here's an example of how this is used by scammers in a cryptocurrency investment fraud. So the first step is the victims are encouraged to invest in cryptocurrency. You see the three circles there. They approach victims, build trust, introduce the crypto investment scheme, and then steal the funds. So the scammers entice the communication with the potential victims by posing as persons seeking business or romantic relationships. Right a lot of times through online social media. They might find start messaging you on social media and then immediately want to take it to a more safer texting platform, the encrypted platforms out there. But they've they're purporting to be a professional cryptocurrency investment expert or maybe you know they've been investing, you know, in cryptocurrency and made really great returns and they really think this is something that you could really make great returns on, you know, after they've built that friendship or sometimes that romantic relationship with you.

21:36 So they get you to invest, and they want you to download a specific crypto trading application and you go in and create your investment accounts. So this is where they've come up with those fake investment portals. You have an account, you set it up so you're getting ready to invest, and then you're encouraged to begin investing by sending wire transfers to various domestic and sometimes international bank accounts which you believe are the deposit accounts for the investment platforms you're transferring the money into. Buy this crypto investment.

22:18 Excuse me, your provided access to the website showing you know, fake returns on your investment. They're usually really high high returns, which is going to want to entice you to invest even more to make even more money. So then the second step is scammers direct victims to obtain and send cash, So financial institutions made to deny suspicious funds transfers by victims, so scammers inform victims in person cash pickups are required to continue investing with the fraudulent investment firm or to pay a purported fines if you want to draw withdraw your investment. So This is something where you know, as I've often said in our presentations, you know, bank employees and banks are getting more and more trained on red flags to look out for, how these cryptocurrency investment schemes work, what to look out for in wire transfers. And so this is a way that scammers figured out how to get around it. If they see that these wire transfers are being blocked, is that they'll just get the have a courier come and pick up the cash to continue to invest in this fraudulent investment. Or sometimes something comes

23:49 up and you're like, I need to withdraw some of the money. Well, they might have fines or fees or whatever it is to withdraw the money. So in order for you to withdraw fifty thousand dollars, you need to give us, you know, five thousand dollars or something like that in fees or fines or whatever it is. So they could, you know, have somebody come and pick up cash. Step three. Scammers use couriers to retrieve cash from the victims. So once the victims obtain the cash and inform the scammer that they have the funds, the scammer sends couriers to retrieve the cash at the victims' homes or have them meet at a public location. So sometimes they'll have a meet like right in a bank parking lot. You go in, you get the cash, then you meet them in the parking lot or some other public place. So then scammers are going to provide the person with a US dollar bill, serial number or another form of code or password. When the courier arrives, they show the victim the dollar bill or provide the agreed upon password to authenticate the courier's affiliation with the scammer. So once the cash pickup occurs and the courier departs, victims can see an increase in the deposits in their virtual wallet, which

25:21 is where the cryptocurrency is held, is in a wallet displayed in their account. So they give the money over to the courier. They pull up their investment account and they're like, oh, the money's there. Okay, the good this is this? You know this worked, but then you go in to try to take the money out and at least maybe your profits. They begin to loop over by forcing the victim to pay fraudulent taxes and penalties, again using couriers for cash pickups. And this just you can see how this just keeps going in a circle in a circle, and before you know it, your nest egg, your money's gone. And this is what happened to this person that I talked to. They were trying to say, unless you pay this money today, you can't have access to your investment and we're going to shut down your account.

26:15 You can't access it and all of that. And I think what this scammer had said to this person that I talked to recently was that if you don't pay these fees, we're going to take all your money and give it. And it was to some national or global charity that they talked about. But the person was like, I don't have any more money. If you want me to pay these fees, I have to be able to access my money to get it to pay the fees. And so it just it becomes extreme. You lose your money. It's frustrating, the whole going in circles with this, and it creates a lot of anxiety and then into depression and anger and stuff like that, because then you know that you've been a victim of this type of fraud.

27:07 So here's some tips. The FBI has has for us. Let's protect our personal information. You know, don't disclose your home address or agree to meet with unknown people to deliver cash or other valuables as part of an investment activity. Even if you invest with you know, legitimate investment companies, everything's done via transfer. Do not continue with unsolicited communications with any unknown person. Be suspicious of unsolicited communications and contact with strangers that love bombing, you know, that's that social manipulation. Especially people that have lost their spouses. They're at a higher risk for this because there's so much public information and obituaries and all that. Do not click on unsolicited to pop up messages if you happen to only do that, or you think you might have. This is where your tech support trusted tech support person is going to help you prior to investing. If you're thinking about investing in any cryptocurrency platform, do your research. Talk to your regular trusted investment advisor. They might not invest in cryptocurrency, but I bet you they know a legitimate, trustworthy crypto investor that you could talk to to do some research on it and also report it if you need help filling out your form. If you're over sixty years old and you need help filling out the IC three complaint form, you can contact the Department of Justice

28:37 Elder Justice Hotline. The numbers right here one eight, three, three fraud eleven. So just be very careful with this and only invest with your trusted investment advisor and always, always, always do your research. And those investments that someone's trying to get you to invest in that says, oh my gosh, look how much money I made. You're gonna make all this money too good to be true, So be very very careful. That is all I have for today. Let me stop sharing here, all right. So next week I think we're going to go over a couple more FBI public service announcements, and don't forget. Get on our website at Roseadvocacy dot org. You'll find all our social media links up there, and you can visit our Let's Talk about Scams website to find all the past episodes. You can go on our YouTube channel, which the link is at the top of our website and you can find all the past episodes and the shorts and subscribe to the YouTube channel. We're trying to grow our subscribers there.

29:55 And don't forget you get a chance you're in and around Maricopa County. Check out one of those artual health locations and talk to someone there, take a tour, see what they can do to help you. All Right, thank you, and I'll see you guys next week. Well that's all the knowledge for this episode. Tune in every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHD Radio at KFOURHD dot com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge. So you have the power to make scam protection your healthy habit and until then, feel free to reach out to Joyce and let's talk about scams.