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, legal, counseling,
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professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services
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of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas.
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The information contained in this podcast is intended for informational
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purposes only and is not a substitute for individual professional
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legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled from vetted
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sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to safeguard the
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elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim.
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To a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the must
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listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves and
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their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday at am Pacific
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time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose,
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and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips
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on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And
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now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.
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Well, welcome back, everybody. Thank you for joining me this morning.
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I'm Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president of Rose Resources
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Outreach to safeguard the elderly. You can find more resources
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on our website at Roseadvocacy dot org. On the homepage
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at the bottom, you can sign up for our email
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and or mailed newsletter, and our social media links are
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on there, so you can follow us on our variety
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of different social media channels, and you can find all
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the past live streams and shorts on our YouTube channel.
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The link is on our homepage for that as well.
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So a couple weeks ago, we talked about the new
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FBI IC three annual report that came out specifically related
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to the elder Fraud Report and how the number of
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victims in the sixty plus age population and the number
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the amount of losses have drastically increased. And then last
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week my guest host Brian Watson talked about how scams
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have evolved over the last you know, fifteen twenty years,
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and so now today I want to talk about to
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go back to the the annual report from the FBI's
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Internet Crime Complaints Center for two thousand and twenty four.
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It highlighted in the sixty plus age population. Two scams
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in particular that represented close to half of the losses,
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and that's the investment scams and the tech support scams.
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So we're going to start with tech support fraud. And
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I've got everything up on the screen here and you
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can see this is from twenty twenty one that the
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losses amounted to three hundred and forty seven million, which
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represents one hundred and thirty seven percent increase from twenty
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and twenty. And they say most victims, almost sixty percent
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of them reported to be over sixty years of age,
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and they experienced at least sixty eight percent of the losses. Now,
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if you look at this table, look at where we
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were in two and twenty, and this is for all
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age populations, one hundred and forty six million. It's a
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lot of money compared to twenty seventeen, which was fourteen million.
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But look at twenty twenty one, it more than doubled.
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As they said, it represented one hundred and thirty seven
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percent increase. Again, all age populations up to almost three
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hundred and forty eight million dollars, and the sixty plus
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population is more than half of that dollar amount. So
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then this next slide, we get into twenty twenty two,
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and they've started the FBI started putting together the tech
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and customer support along with government personations because they have
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a tendency to kind of go together. You'll see as
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we go through this, we're going to talk about how
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scams have evolved over the years, and you'll see where
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the scammers are incorporating government personation into their tech support scam.
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So they started reporting them together. But you can see
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here the tech and customer support there was, and again
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this is all age populations over thirty two thousand reported
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victims losing over eight hundred and six million dollars. It's
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one hundred and thirty two percent increase. But if you
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look at this and then look at this this graph
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here for the let's see the over sixty population represented
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sixty nine percent. That's this dark blue here. They lost
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over seven hundred and twenty four million to these scams,
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more than victims of all other age groups combined. And
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victims over sixty have lost their life savings, their homes,
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and all the way to even losing their lives. And
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it's devastating, and there have been reported that some have
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actually committed suicides. So this is not just devastating financially.
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These scams have a devastating effect psychologically, socially, emotionally, they
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have a lot more drastic effects. Financial is a huge impact,
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but these other ones are just as big as well.
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And look here, call centers overwhelmingly target the elderly with
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devastating effects. Almost half the victims report to be over
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sixty forty six percent and experienced sixty nine percent of
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the losses, as we said, over seven hundred and twenty
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four million. And this is interesting, and this is in
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twenty twenty two. They said that based on the reports
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that the scams primarily emanate from call centers in South Asia,
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mainly India, and so the FBI in response to that,
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the Department of Justice and the FBI have started collaborating
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with law enforcement of India to try to combat these
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cyber enabled financial crimes and these call center frauds. Now,
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let's look at twenty twenty three. Now, remember the tech
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and customer support eight hundred and six million. It went
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up one hundred and thirty two percent. Look at where
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we're at for twenty twenty three was nine hundred and
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twenty four million. And you look over here at the trend,
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it shows that it went up fifteen percent. Fifteen percent. Again,
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that's all age populations, and you might look at that
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and go, well, that's not really a big increase. Well,
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fifteen percent might not be a big increase from the
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previous year, but nine hundred and twenty four million dollars,
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as we said on the previous screen, represents people's life savings.
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They lose their homes and sometimes they even lose their lives.
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So this is devastating. And again call centers overwhelmingly target
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older adults. Almost half the complaints forty percent. Yes, it's
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down a little bit from twenty twenty two, which was
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I think forty six percent, but forty percent is still
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a lot that needs to be zero. And they experience
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fifty eight percent of the losses over seven hundred and
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seventy million just to the sixty plus population, and if
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we go back to twenty twenty two, it was over
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seven hundred and twenty four million, So those numbers are
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increasing and this people are losing their lives as a
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result of this. Now, let's look at some I found
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a handful of public service announcements that the FBI has
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put out over the last looks like nine years. So
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this first one came out on tech support scams on
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June second, twenty sixteen. And when the FBI puts these
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public service announcements out, it's because they're seeing an increase
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in these types of scams, increase in the victims. Maybe
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they're the scammers are changing up their techniques and they're
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starting to see new techniques. And you're going to see
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that as we go through these FBI public service announcements
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over the next nine years that I have up on
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this screen for tech support, you're going to see just
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how these scams have evolved over the years, like what
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Brian was talking about last week. So this one relates
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to the subject claims to be an employee of a
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major computer software or security company offering technical support to
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the victim. Right, that's pretty much how they came out.
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They could be pretending to be support for cable and
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internet companies, maybe offering assistance with digital cable boxes and connections,
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modems rous routers. The company. They're claiming the company has
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received notifications of errors, viruses, security issues from the victims
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internet connection and they're also claiming to work on behalf
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of government agencies to resolve computer viruses and threats from
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possible foreign countries or terrorist organizations. So how does this
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scam work here? So the initial contact occurs by different methods.
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So one telephone, can they call your landline, Yes, they
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could call your landline. But nowadays almost everyone has smartphones,
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which are your mobile computers that you carry around with you,
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and yes they're a huge convenience to have, but they
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also can pose threats if not protected appropriately. So it's
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what they say here. The victims receive a cold call
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from someone who claims that the victim's computer is sending
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error messages and viruses were detected. They get a pop
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up message, right, The victims receive I think we a
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lot of us have seen those on screen pop up
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messages claiming viruses are attacking the device and here's a
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phone number to call and receive assistance. Sometimes they could
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have a locked screen on the device. This is what's
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called blue screen of Death or BSoD. Victims report receiving
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a freezing locks frozen lock screen with a phone number
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and instructions to contact a phony tech support company, and
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some victims even reported being redirected to alternate websites. And
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then the blue screen of death occurred, and that they
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said they've noticed particularly noticed when the victim was assessing
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social media or financial websites. And sometimes those pop up
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messages or lock screens are accompanied by a recorded verbal message. Now,
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wouldn't that be scary? Right? Your your computer screen locks,
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and all of a sudden, this voice comes out saying
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that you know you called this phone number for assistance.
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You're already fearful that you're going to lose everything that's
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on your device, and it could be sensitive documents on
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your device. You know, it could be you know, you
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might have had your bank account open, or it could
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be putting a virus on there that's going to watch
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every keystroke that you make, so then they have access
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to whatever accounts you log into a lot of different things.
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And so you're already in that emotional state of being scared,
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and now this voice comes on there and it freaks
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you out even more, and so it's going to want
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to make you call that number without thinking, because you
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just want this to stop and you want to get
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your computer and you're in your data to be safe.
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And then the DEVOCE so if the once you've engaged
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and called that number. If the device is mobile a tablet, smartphone,
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the subject often instructs, or it should say, the scammer
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instructs the victim to connect the device to a computer
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to be fixed, and then once the once the scammer
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is remotely connected to the device. They claim to have
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found multiple viruses malware scareware that can be removed for
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a fee. There's always fees involved, and they'll get it
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via a personal debit or credit card, an electronic check,
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a wire transfer. They're going to want you to do
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a prepaid card. Back in twenty sixteen, they saw a
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few instances where the victim paid by personal check. I
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think that's pretty much gone by the wayside because of
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all the access we have to instantly transfer money. I
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think those personal checks now are taken over with those
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peer to peer apps. You know, why send a check
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when you can have somebody just do Venmo or zell
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or PayPal and have it sent directly to the scammer.
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And they've noticed back then that there are some variations
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and trends with this. They saw an increase of this
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when this scam occurs where the scammer contacts the victim
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offering a refund for tech support services previously rendered because
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the company was closed. We still see that today. I
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haven't really heard too much that they've used the company
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as closed, But what I've heard more of is that
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they're using the scenario of your O to refund on
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a previous subscription. And so you know, that's where they
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pretend to be those more well known, reputable companies, you know,
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like Microsoft and McAfee and all of those ones that
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have been around for a long time, and you very
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well could have had a subscription with one of those companies.
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I know a lady that this happened to it. They
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just hit her at the right time because she did
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have a subscription to the company. They were impersonating that
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she had closed the previous year, and so she thought
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it was legitimate and went through the whole channel, and
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so you know, they what they do is they convince
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the victim to let them have access to their device,
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but then they log onto their bank account pros the refund,
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and then the scammer has control of the victim's device
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and the bank account, and so then the scammer appears
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to have mistakenly refunded too much money to the victim's
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account and requests that the victim will wire the difference
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back to the impersonated company, which is really the scammer.
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But really what happened was is that they saw where
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the scammer was actually just transferring funds between the victim's
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own accounts, like maybe going from a savings to a checking,
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or a retirement account to a checking or how you know,
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whatever accounts were involved there to make it appear as
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if those funds were deposited, and then the victim wires
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the money back, not finding out till later that those
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funds actually came from one of their own accounts, So
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and that refunding and wiring can happen multiple times in
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which the victim then loses thousands of dollars. And then
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the last part of it is they've also noticed where
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the victims have reported that the scammers are becoming hostile, abusive,
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foul language and threats when being challenged by the victims.
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And I think we're seeing a lot more of that now.
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I see a lot of things on social media where
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people in fact, I just saw one yesterday from a
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friend where he explained that someone called him saying that
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someone has taken over as Microsoft. I think it was
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his Microsoft account, and they needed him to do put
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this code in his computer and he was like, well,
242
00:16:39.720 --> 00:16:43.440
I don't really want to do that, and the person
243
00:16:43.480 --> 00:16:46.759
on the other end said, go blank yourself. You can