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 confident 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. Let's talk about scams. It's the
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must listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves
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and their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday, eight am
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Pacific time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder
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of Rose, and her guests will provide valuable insights and
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practical tips on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams.
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And now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.
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Good morning, everybody, my name is Brian Watson, community outreach
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specialist for Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly, and
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thanks for tuning into Let's talk about scams. Joyce asked
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me to fill in today and it's my honor and
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I hope to inform and entertain you as today's discussion
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is titled Revisiting scams from twenty years ago. So many
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years ago, I attended a rotary fundraiser Rotary Club of America,
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huge service organization located all across the country. My dad
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was a rotarian, and they were having a fundraiser out
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in California up in the mountains, and they were boiling shrimp.
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It was called a shrimp feed, and so you could
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eat as much shrimp as you want and it was
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a great time. Met a lot of nice people and
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met other rotarians. And I met a rotarian from the
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Bay Area, and he happened to be a dentist, and
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I started telling him what I did for my career
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and back then, this was back in the nineties, in
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mid nineties, and I was an IRS special agent. So
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this dentist from this Rotary club invited me to speak
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at his rotary club, and I was very honored, We
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had breakfast. I spoke for about twenty minutes about kind
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of the things I did as an IRS special agent,
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but I also talked about tax scams. So it was
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the first time I kind of went out in public
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and did fraud prevention. And if you've ever been to
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a rotary club, they're great. You eat, you learn some things,
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you meet some people, and they laugh at all your jokes.
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And not that I was trying to be a comedian,
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but if you're going to have if you're going to
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do a speech, you got to have a little fun.
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So they laughed at my jokes. So this ended up
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being the starting point for my path to public speaking.
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Just to give you a numbers, how many numbers I've
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done in terms of presentations, I've done forty rotary clubs,
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so I never envisioned that. Plus I've done probably two
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hundred other presentations for a variety of different groups. And
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I've learned I enjoy warning people about scams. So I
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want to tell a story from two thousand and four.
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I was invited to give a fraud prevention presentation that
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was hosted at a local church. It was this forum
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that they do, I believe once a month where they
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get a guest speaker, and they had four hundred people there.
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And the local newspaper actually covers the topic of the
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forum and what was discussed at the forum each month.
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So my mom actually cut the article out of that newspaper.
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I have it right here on my wall. It says
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forum speaker advises how to avoid scams. I like, and
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that's such a mom thing to do, to clip the article,
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because that's what moms do. But the great thing about
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this article it has a picture of me and I
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had no gray hair. So when I do in person
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fraud prevention presentations, I like to show this picture because
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I was a naive looking thirty something year old with
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no gray hair, and it always gets a laugh from
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the audience. And the other thing that's very important about
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this article is it illustrates how much scams have changed
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over the last twenty plus years. I read the article,
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I can tell you what's in it. Three big things
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from two thousand and four as it relates to scams.
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First of all, we talked about phishing. Joyce and I
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are always talking about phishing scams. Those are unsolicited emails
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meant to trick you into thinking you're dealing with a
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government agency or a bank or some other authority and
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they get you to provide financial information or pay money.
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So that was number one phishing. The second thing I
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covered in two thousand and four was identity theft. Is
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identity theft still a problem today. Yes, you've got to
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guard your identity, but sometimes you can do everything right
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and a data breach will expose your personal information, but
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you still got to monitor your credit, just respond to
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any notices, and just be very aware and guard your information,
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especially guard your social Security number, in your date of birth, passwords,
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just that personal information. And then the last thing I
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spoke about in two thousand and four were Nigerian email scams.
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And yes, there were Nigerian email scams over twenty years ago,
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and they're going to persist because they work, They work,
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people fall for them. Just last month, my mom's neighbor
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received the Nigerian email scam and she printed it out,
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gave it to my mom. My mom gave it to me,
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you know, just so I it helps me stay aware
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on what's going on. So, yes, these Nigerian email scams
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still persist, persist. But here's the big deal. Twenty years
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ago scammers were not very organized, and frankly, they were
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not that good at what they do. Scams were not
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so prevalent. They were very very easy to identify. Times
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they were typos or grammar errors, and in most cases
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you could tell that it was written by someone who
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was probably born in another country. So scams just they existed,
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but they weren't a big deal. And also, twenty years ago,
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the financial losses related to scams were much smaller. In
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my observations, you know, scammers seem to be happy to
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get a few thousand dollars and then kind of that
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was it. It went away. So let's fast forward to
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now twenty twenty six, things have gotten much much worse.
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Most of these scams are actually operated by what we
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call transnational organized gangs. These are criminal organizations that are organized,
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they're well financed, and they're skilled at stealing money. They
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are absolutely professional. Many, if not most, of these criminal
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organizations actually operate outside the United States, which makes it
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very difficult for our government agencies to investigate them, to
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shut them down, to get money back, and most importantly,
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to prosecute them. And these organized gangs know this. And
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what also I've noticed is probably The biggest thing is
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today's scammers are ruthless financial predators. They will not stop
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until they take everything you have. Where back in the
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day scammers seem to be happy to get a few
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thousand dollars. Today I have met people that have lost
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in excess of a million dollars in a scam, and
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it's absolutely brutal. They are heartless, ruthless, brutal people, and
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they will they will take everything. It's unbelievable.
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You know.
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The scams they use to are the ones Joyce and
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I talk about on a regular basis, the phishing emails,
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the smishing text tech support scams, pig butchering, and of
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course the old classic phone scams. And the big thing
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with the scammers of today versus the scammers of twenty
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years ago, they are using scripts like they're either typed
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out or on a computer screen, and they're basically playing
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the role of someone else, and they will find what
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you're interested in, whether it's travel or sports or animals
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or whatever it is, food, you know, wine, and they'll
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tweak the script and they'll follow the script so they
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know how to get you. And the thing with these
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scripts is they're constantly changing them when something works, they
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use it. When a certain thing on a script doesn't
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seem to gain any traction with the victim, they won't
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use it. And then these days scammers demand payment through cryptocurrency.
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The most common, the most used cryptocurrency is bitcoin. They
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like to use wire transfer, they like to use the
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peer to peer transfers, that's the Venmo in the Zell
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And they also like the prepaid cards. And if you
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think about it, twenty years ago, we didn't have cryptocurrency,
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we didn't have zell, Venmo, PayPal or things like that.
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And then to top it off, we had cell phones
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twenty years ago, but we didn't have smartphones. Now pretty
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much everybody has a smartphone now, all ages. And when
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you carry this thing around, you're basically carrying around the
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equivalent of a portal that can get access to all
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of your financial information. And then today it seems like
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everything we're expected to do has to be online. You know,
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the days of just getting something in the mail, paying
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a check and sending it back. It's tough. I know this,
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like dealing with doctor's offices for myself, for my mom.
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Every time you go to a new doctor, you've got
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to create a you get access to the portal, you
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have to have a username and a password, so you
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might have dozens of user names and passwords, and they
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make you change them all the time. You're getting inundated
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with emails. It's a perfect scenario for scammers to get us,
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and it's absolutely tough in terms of scams. We are
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dealing with a national crisis. I'm not being dramatic. I'm
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basing this on what I see on a daily basis.
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I constantly am reading articles about people getting scammed. I'm
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meeting people they get scammed. I'm meeting people that tell
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me their relatives or friends have been scammed. Everybody has
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a scam story. Hoping it doesn't happen to you, your
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family member, friends, her neighbors is not a fraud prevention plan.
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We have to be mentally prepared to expect scams to
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come our way, whether it's from phone calls, text messages,
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or emails. You know, Joyce and I have shared the
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example of a lady that got scammed. It was a
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phone scam and the caller claimed to be from her bank,
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and you know, the caller ID I'm pretty sure had
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the name of her bank pop up. I don't know
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if it was luck or if it was planned. It
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doesn't matter. The caller on the other end of the
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line said, ma'am, we've identified an insider at your at
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our bank. I'm with this security department. You need to
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listen to me carefully, do exactly what I say, or
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you're going to lose your money. And in this scam,
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this fake security department employee convinced her to withdraw most
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of her money and deposit it into a cryptocurrency ATM
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using a QR code that they provided. And it was
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absolutely horrible scam. And I've spoken to this lady and
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she's a very smart lady and just feels horrible about it.
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So in a situation like that, what you need to
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do is hang up the phone. Okay, So that means
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see what you tell the scammera is. I appreciate you
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reaching out to me. This is very important. I'm listening
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to what you have to say, but I'm going to
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make sure this is legitimate. You hang up the phone,
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then you get your wallet out and you find your
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debit card or your ATM card, call the customer service
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number on the back, and then you ask to be
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transferred to the security department. If it's legitimate, you've verified
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it and saved yourself a lot of time. But most
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likely it was a scam, and they'll say there's nothing
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wrong with your account. So the reason I bring this
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up today is just last week I met somebody who's
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a gentleman who knows a lot about scam prevention, and
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he shared a variation of that story. Because the criminals
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know that all of us in the fraud prevention world
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are telling people to hang up and call a verified number.
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So this is the new twist that the scammers are doing.
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When they do that, they say, all right, let's call
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your bank. Let's call the bank number together. So while
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they have you on the phone, the two of you
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are on the phone, they actually ask for your verified number.
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Pretty smart, huh. So they have you flip out your card,
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open your card, slip it over, and they dial the
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number and they actually get the voicemail for your bank,
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and then right at the last minute, they switch lines
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and add a scammer. It's extremely ingenious. So you think
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you're doing the right thing, you think you're calling your
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bank directly, but they're just getting you transferred to one
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of their fellow scammers. So that's why with this particular
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bank scam, the phone scam, hang up the phone and
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you dial the number. Okay, it's these scammers are just unbelievable.
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So I wanted to share that little story. So when
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it comes to scam prevention, you got to educate yourself.
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You've got to stay current with the latest trends and
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tactics that the scammers are using. We want everybody to
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sign up for our monthly email. It doesn't cost any money.
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Joyce sends it out usually at the beginning of the month.
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It has all the latest scams we're seeing. We include
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some articles, maybe some short videos, some links that you
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can do. It's worth spending, you know, fifteen or twenty minutes,
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maybe even ten minutes is all it will take just
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to read everything and read the articles. It's an investment
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in your future. It's a way to secure your money.
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And then we want you to share this email with