Watch out for gold bar scams

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.

1:19 Good morning, everybody, my name is Brian Watson, community outreach specialist for Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly. And I am obviously not Joyce, but I do have I've had the privilege of filling in for Joyce for the last three weeks. She will be back next week. So thank you Joyce for entrusting me to provide valuable information to our viewers. So today's subject is watch out for gold Bar Scams. And it's a scam that has been going around the country and sometimes it's hard to believe. It sometimes seems a little preposterous, but that's that's the way all scams are. You know, if when you're able to step back, it seems kind of unbelievable, unbelievable, but if you're in the moment, I totally understand how these scammers are able to fool people and trick them. They are professionals and we are not. We're just people trying to live our lives and these scammers are coming after us.

2:22 So what is the Goldbar scam? This is sort of how it works. Like most scams, there's all kinds of variations, but let me give you one. You get a call from someone claiming to be from the government, typically the FBI, but it could be another agency. It could be from a bank, could be from their fraud team, and they are calling with a sense of urgency. They say that your money's at risk and you need to withdraw immediately, convert it into gold bars and turn it over for safe keeping, almost like an escrow or you know, put your money, you know, have these goal bars, will hold on to them until everything is settled out. So before we get into the nuts and bolts of the gold bar scam, I like to talk about the anatomy of a scam infographic that we have at rows. It is a really good way just to see how most scams, not all of them, follow the same basic pattern. So, first of all, scammers have to start the process of a scam, so they initiate contact, and it's typically unexpected.

3:34 It's out of the blue. It could be by a phone call, it could be email, text message, social media, so wide variety of ways that they're going to initiate contact. But always you're not you're really never waiting for it. It's you're unexpected, you're not some you know, most of the time, you're not prepared. Then the scammers want to create a compelling reason to act. They want you to put you in a fragile or frazzled emotional state. They want you to make a bad decision. They want you to feel pressure, they want your heart rate to go up. They're going to take you to a not a good place.

4:17 The most common area they try to do is take advantage of your fear. In this case with this will bar scam, your money's at risk. They want to override your rational thinking process. They want you to make a poor, hurried decision. And then lastly, scammers want money. They're going to ask for some sort of payment. They always request payment. They don't do this for free, they don't do it for fun. They do it to make money. So what are they asked for? Cryptocurrency, gift cards, peer to peer payments like Venmozelle or PayPal. Sometimes even wire transfers not super common, but in this case it's gold and that's why the scam at times is hard to believe. So again we're going to get to the gold bar scam.

5:07 And then the fourth component that most scams have, not all of them, is urgency and on our anatomy of a scam infographic right in the middle is a red urgency circle. You know, for example, the jury scam. They you'll get a call from someone claiming to be from the sheriff's department. They say you failed to show up for jury duty. There's a warrant out for arrest. You're scared you're going to go to jail. They ask for money, and the urgency factor there is they keep you on the phone until you make until you turn that payment over. They never let you think about it overnight or get back to them or ask someone else. That's why urgency. Now, some scams don't have that urgency component. The one that comes to mind right away from is romance scams. Another topic for another day. But the romance scam is a long play scam. Doesn't fit neatly into our anatomy of a scam, but it just shows all scams are different.

6:11 So all right, let's get back to the goldbar scams. It's also called the phantom hacker scam. You can look it up on any search engine. Because the scammers create a fake, invisible, phantom cyber attack to trick victims into thinking their assets are in danger. That's one of the ways, like I said, all these scams how slight variation where the scammers try a different angle. Now, these scams are getting increasingly widespread, costing victims millions of dollars nationwides. And like I said, these scammers often pretend to be government officials or tech support from one of these high tech companies, and the common denominator is your bank account is at risk.

7:00 And then what they do is they, as part of their scheme, they pressure victims to liquidate their savings into physical gold bars, and then these gold bars are picked up by couriers, these fake couriers, but they're real. They show up at your house, but most of the time they're not even they don't even know what's going on. The scammers intentionally keep them out of the loop. All the couriers do is they get a text message to go move something. They don't even know necessarily who they're dealing with. So if they get caught, they don't have information they can you know, these scammers can cut them off.

7:41 And these scammers actually instruct victims to use a secret courier code to identify the courier when they're picking up the gold and that gives it an air of legitimacy and kind of makes it seem all official. You know, what they actually do I've heard is they'll just take the serial number off a dollar bill, you know, just to come up with a string of letters and numbers. So why gold, That's the question with this gold bar scam. You know, gold is expensive and heavy, and you think it's bulk key. But here's why. And the more you think about it actually makes a lot of sense. Gold is very valuable. It's actually easy to transport and pretty much untraceable. You know, asking for gold allows scammers to steal, steal someone's life savings, and it doesn't leave a paper trail like a wire transfer or a check, and it doesn't leave a digital trail like cryptocurrency does, because even if you buy bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, there is a paper a digital trail that law enforcement can follow. So I was recently interviewed by a TV reporter in Phoenix to get my insight on one of these gold bar scams.

9:02 And let me just tell you what had happened recently in Phoenix. The FBI arrested a suspected scammer at Sky Harper Airport in Phoenix, and he was trying to board a flight back to Florida. According to the documents, this man was involved in an elaborate phantom hacker scam that targeted a seventy eight year old Phoenix woman out of one hundreds of thousands of dollars. The woman was close close to handing over another six hundred thousand dollars when she contacted law enforcement. The scammer in her case convinced the woman that he was calling from the US Attorney's office and his scam. He said she was the victim of identity theft connected to an ongoing federal investigation into child pornography. You know that scary stuff. And he said, ma'am, the federal government is going to protect your money while this whole investigation goes down. So you kind of see how these scams work. This lady's at home, she gets a phone call. Authority is the US Attorney's office. The compelling reason to act is your money's been connected to some child pornography investigation, which we don't even use that term anymore. It's we really use the c SAM techno terminology.

10:31 In her case, she trusts this person. She doesn't she wants to follow the rules. She doesn't want to be involved in any sort of illegal activities. She you know, she complied. So the victim's first transaction with the scammers was a twenty four thousand dollars wire and she was told to withdraw the money from her bank account and purchase the gold for safekeeping. She did. She actually purchased almost or one hundred thousand dollars of gold, and she handed it over to the courier that came to her house. But of course scammers don't stop there with the almost four hundred thousand dollars. They're never done. They will take every penny you have. I always tell people the scammers of today are ruthless financial predators. They're not happy with a small amount of money, or a media amount or a large amount. They want every single penny you have.

11:28 So they told her to cash out her retirement plan. So think about that. She's got a roth ira or a pension, or a TSP or a four to one K, six hundred thousand dollars that she's worked her entire life to earn and put away, and they wanted her to convert that into gold. She agreed initially, but then something happened. We don't know, something made her suspicious and she reported to the FBI. So I applaud her for that. It takes a lot of courage and I'm so happy that this something happened. I don't know all the details, but something happened, and she knew it was suspicious. She called the FBI absolute right thing to do. So FBI agents were at her home when the courier showed up to pick up the next six hundred thousand dollars, and we found out that this career he was only going to be paid five thousand dollars to pick up the next box of gold. So the courier is just like a gopher.

12:36 He's just upon in the scheme that the scammers are using. And according to the court documents, this career began communicating with his handler about a month before and they were discussing him doing jobs in Florida, Illinois, and in this case Arizona. So the FBI Good News was able to arrest this career because people ask me that all the time when we do our presentations, are you ever successful? Do you ever get the bad guys? And the question is sometimes sometimes the government, federal law enforcement, local law enforcement, just has to get lucky. But in this case, the lady that had lost some money already did the absolute right thing and she contacted the FBI. She obviously contacted them through a legit number, found them, tracked them down, and they showed up. So bravo to the FBI. And so the thing about this gold bar scam, as scary as it sounds, the one good thing about it is the gold actually needs to be picked up. You know, with cryptocurrency scams, the pig butchering anytimes scammers convinced people to put money into a cryptocurrency ATM. A lot of these scammers are overseas. They never have to set foot in the United States or even use a career. But

14:07 with the gold bar scam, you need a person to physically pick up that box of gold. And that's what I told the reporter in this TV story. The encouraging thing about this gold bar scam is people have to be in the United States and it actually gives law enforcement a chance. So in this case, the FBI was lying in wait, they were at the house, the person showed up and they were able to intervene. And you know what, you know, the reason why these particular scams work is scammers prey on the honesty and trust and authority that all of us have. You know what it's you try to do the right thing. You're raised well, you know, my parents raised me to respect authority, respect law enforcement, respect my school teachers. And unfortunately that can come back and bite us. That's why we have to have a health level of skepticism. And so enough horror stories about that victim in Phoenix area. How to protect yourself, loved ones and yourself, your friends and your loved ones.

15:14 Let's talk some nuts and bolts, some common sense ways to protect yourself. Number one, no legitimate, no government agency or bank is going to ask for money via or ask for payments for a gold bar scam. That it just does not happen. There is no There are no government agencies local, federal, there are no banks, no anything like that. They're never going to ask for gold bars. That is a complete scam. That's a huge red flag. If you get a call from someone claiming to be the FBI or another government, a government agency, or a financial institution or a technology a company, tell them that you will call them back on a verified number. And I know this is hard to do because they will tell you if you get off this line, you've lost all chance of retrieving your money, or they'll have some excuse where they will not let you get off the phone.

16:12 But you need to end the call, and you don't let them call the number because the scammers know about this. So what you need to do is you need to hang up the phone and call from a verified number. For instance, if it was my bank, I would pull out my ATM card, I would flip it over and I would call the customer service number on the back. If I needed to call the FBI, I would hang up. I would go online FBI dot gov. I'd find the page for contacts, and I would contact the local office. The scammers know that we're telling people to do this, so what do they do. They'll say, oh, we'll call it for you. Play your ATM card out, give us the number. Oh, we'll call it for you, and they'll actually call your bank and you can hear where the call go through online. But at the very last minute they will switch lines and have you talk to a scammer.

17:08 So do never, never, never let them make that phone call. So in this scenario today that I shared, the scammers were pretending to be from the United States Attorney's Office. It's basically the prosecutor's office for the federal government. You can go directly to their website. There's US attorney's offices all over the country. You go to their website, you find the number to contact them. That's what that's what we need to do if this happens. And then obvious stuff. Never hand over your assets to a stranger, even if it's a courier with a code and they have the right code. I know it might seem obvious, but I have to mention it. Do not hand it over to strangers.

17:54 And then take a break. The best way to see they have you on a path to just financial destruction. You need to get off that path. Because I've talked to so many people. When they've had a chance to step away from what's going on where they're under pressure, they can collect their wits, they can think clearly. So take a break. When I say take a break, that means hanging up the phone, That means turning your computer off, going to bed, going for a walk, go out to dinner, talk to somebody, just separate yourself from what's going on. I know that sounds easy, but I do recognize it's very hard to do when they're the scammers are trained to keep you on the phone and not let you hang up. And always remember time is our friend. Scammers do not want you to have time to think. Always be wary if anyone says you have to act quickly.

18:55 We never have to act quickly. The only time you have to act quickly is if you're else is on fire and you need to get out. Okay, you know. Two and a half years ago I met with my friend's father who lost fifteen thousand dollars in the grandparent scam, and it was very interesting. He told me after he had wired fifteen thousand dollars to what he thought was an attorney who was going to keep his granddaughter out of jail. As soon as he hung up, he said, Brian, I knew I'd been had as soon as I hung up the phone. Why, Because his blood pressure went down, his heart rate went down, breathing got under control, his mind was clear. He realized, oh they got me. Why.

19:46 He's a smart man, but the scammers had him on that emotional rollercoaster, and as soon as he was able to end that call and make that payment, he knew he'd been had, and then everyone needs a phone friend. I've talked about this all the time, and I know I keep repeating myself, but if you used to watch that show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire with Regis Philbin, if you didn't know the answer, you had three options. You could pull the audience. You know, they would eliminate two of the wrong answers. I'm sorry, you pull the audience and they would vote for the best answer. The second one was fifty to fifty, they would remove two bad answers, so it came down to a fifty to fifty guest. But the best option on Who Wants to be a Millionaire was having your smartest friend on the line ready to help you answer that question. Everyone needs a phone a friend. Right now, ask yourself, who is my phone a friend? Is it my son, my daughter, my neighbor, my cousin, my attorney, Hey, it could be the local police department. Everyone needs a phone a friend.

20:58 Trust me, every police detective I've ever spoken to said they would gladly take a phone call from someone who's unsure about something because that'll take ten minutes as opposed to days or weeks of investigating a fraud case. So everyone needs a phone or friend, all right, And remember I always close by asking you to sign up for our email list. It's free. All you need to do is go to Roseadvocacy dot org. On the bottom of our homepage is a blue button. It says sign up for our mailing list our email list. All we ask for is your name and your email. If you like it, share it with your friends. If you don't like the quality information we're providing you, you can unsubscribe. We won't be offended, but I promise you this is valuable information.

21:49 We send out at the beginning of the month, and then we send up a little short email every Tuesday as well, which is a little quick tip because we always got to skip keep scam prevention. Somewhere in the back of our mind, it's we've got to be practice and be ready for when that call comes and ready to identify it. So thank you all for watching and listening this week. I really enjoy the opportunity to share this information. I love the people that I work with at Rose. Our team is an amazing group of people with good hearts and good intentions, and our goal is to prevent people from losing their hard earned money, So see you all next week. Joyce will be back here.

22:30 Have a great day. Well that's all the knowledge for this episode Julian every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHD Radio at KFORHD 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.