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 to
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a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the must listen
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show for anyone who wants to protect themselves and their
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loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday am Pacific time on
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K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and
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her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips on
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how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now
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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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I am obviously not Joyce, but I do have I've
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had the privilege of filling in for Joyce for the
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last three weeks. She will be back next week. So
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thank you Joyce for entrusting me to provide valuable information
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to our viewers. So today's subject is watch out for
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gold Bar Scams. And it's a scam that has been
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going around the country and sometimes it's hard to believe.
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It sometimes seems a little preposterous, but that's that's the
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way all scams are. You know, if when you're able
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to step back, it seems kind of unbelievable, unbelievable, but
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if you're in the moment, I totally understand how these
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scammers are able to fool people and trick them. They
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are professionals and we are not. We're just people trying
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to live our lives and these scammers are coming after us.
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So what is the Goldbar scam? This is sort of
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how it works. Like most scams, there's all kinds of variations,
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but let me give you one. You get a call
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from someone claiming to be from the government, typically the FBI,
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but it could be another agency. It could be from
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a bank, could be from their fraud team, and they
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are calling with a sense of urgency. They say that
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your money's at risk and you need to withdraw immediately,
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convert it into gold bars and turn it over for
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safe keeping, almost like an escrow or you know, put
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your money, you know, have these goal bars, will hold
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on to them until everything is settled out. So before
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we get into the nuts and bolts of the gold
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bar scam, I like to talk about the anatomy of
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a scam infographic that we have at rows. It is
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a really good way just to see how most scams,
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not all of them, follow the same basic pattern. So,
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first of all, scammers have to start the process of
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a scam, so they initiate contact, and it's typically unexpected.
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It's out of the blue. It could be by a
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phone call, it could be email, text message, social media,
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so wide variety of ways that they're going to initiate contact.
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But always you're not you're really never waiting for it.
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It's you're unexpected, you're not some you know, most of
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the time, you're not prepared. Then the scammers want to
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create a compelling reason to act. They want you to
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put you in a fragile or frazzled emotional state. They
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want you to make a bad decision. They want you
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to feel pressure, they want your heart rate to go up.
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They're going to take you to a not a good place.
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The most common area they try to do is take
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advantage of your fear. In this case with this will
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bar scam, your money's at risk. They want to override
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your rational thinking process. They want you to make a poor,
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hurried decision. And then lastly, scammers want money. They're going
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to ask for some sort of payment. They always request payment.
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They don't do this for free, they don't do it
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for fun. They do it to make money. So what
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are they asked for? Cryptocurrency, gift cards, peer to peer
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payments like Venmozelle or PayPal. Sometimes even wire transfers not
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super common, but in this case it's gold and that's
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why the scam at times is hard to believe. So
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again we're going to get to the gold bar scam.
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And then the fourth component that most scams have, not
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all of them, is urgency and on our anatomy of
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a scam infographic right in the middle is a red
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urgency circle. You know, for example, the jury scam. They
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you'll get a call from someone claiming to be from
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the sheriff's department. They say you failed to show up
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for jury duty. There's a warrant out for arrest. You're
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scared you're going to go to jail. They ask for money,
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and the urgency factor there is they keep you on
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the phone until you make until you turn that payment over.
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They never let you think about it overnight or get
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back to them or ask someone else. That's why urgency. Now,
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some scams don't have that urgency component. The one that
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comes to mind right away from is romance scams. Another
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topic for another day. But the romance scam is a
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long play scam. Doesn't fit neatly into our anatomy of
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a scam, but it just shows all scams are different.
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So all right, let's get back to the goldbar scams.
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It's also called the phantom hacker scam. You can look
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it up on any search engine. Because the scammers create
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a fake, invisible, phantom cyber attack to trick victims into
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thinking their assets are in danger. That's one of the ways,
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like I said, all these scams how slight variation where
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the scammers try a different angle. Now, these scams are
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getting increasingly widespread, costing victims millions of dollars nationwides. And
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like I said, these scammers often pretend to be government
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officials or tech support from one of these high tech companies,
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and the common denominator is your bank account is at risk.
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And then what they do is they, as part of
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their scheme, they pressure victims to liquidate their savings into
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physical gold bars, and then these gold bars are picked
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up by couriers, these fake couriers, but they're real. They
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show up at your house, but most of the time
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they're not even they don't even know what's going on.
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The scammers intentionally keep them out of the loop. All
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the couriers do is they get a text message to
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go move something. They don't even know necessarily who they're
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dealing with. So if they get caught, they don't have
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information they can you know, these scammers can cut them off.
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And these scammers actually instruct victims to use a secret
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courier code to identify the courier when they're picking up
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the gold and that gives it an air of legitimacy
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and kind of makes it seem all official. You know,
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what they actually do I've heard is they'll just take
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the serial number off a dollar bill, you know, just
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to come up with a string of letters and numbers.
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So why gold, That's the question with this gold bar scam.
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You know, gold is expensive and heavy, and you think
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it's bulk key. But here's why. And the more you
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think about it actually makes a lot of sense. Gold
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is very valuable. It's actually easy to transport and pretty
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much untraceable. You know, asking for gold allows scammers to steal,
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steal someone's life savings, and it doesn't leave a paper
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trail like a wire transfer or a check, and it
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doesn't leave a digital trail like cryptocurrency does, because even
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if you buy bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, there is a
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paper a digital trail that law enforcement can follow. So
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I was recently interviewed by a TV reporter in Phoenix
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to get my insight on one of these gold bar scams.
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And let me just tell you what had happened recently
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in Phoenix. The FBI arrested a suspected scammer at Sky
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Harper Airport in Phoenix, and he was trying to board
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a flight back to Florida. According to the documents, this
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man was involved in an elaborate phantom hacker scam that
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targeted a seventy eight year old Phoenix woman out of
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one hundreds of thousands of dollars. The woman was close
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close to handing over another six hundred thousand dollars when
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she contacted law enforcement. The scammer in her case convinced
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the woman that he was calling from the US Attorney's
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office and his scam. He said she was the victim
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of identity theft connected to an ongoing federal investigation into
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child pornography. You know that scary stuff. And he said, ma'am,
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the federal government is going to protect your money while
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this whole investigation goes down. So you kind of see
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how these scams work. This lady's at home, she gets
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a phone call. Authority is the US Attorney's office. The
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compelling reason to act is your money's been connected to
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some child pornography investigation, which we don't even use that
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term anymore. It's we really use the c SAM techno terminology.
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In her case, she trusts this person. She doesn't she
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wants to follow the rules. She doesn't want to be
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involved in any sort of illegal activities. She you know,
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she complied. So the victim's first transaction with the scammers
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was a twenty four thousand dollars wire and she was
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told to withdraw the money from her bank account and
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purchase the gold for safekeeping. She did. She actually purchased
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almost or one hundred thousand dollars of gold, and she
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handed it over to the courier that came to her house.
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But of course scammers don't stop there with the almost
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four hundred thousand dollars. They're never done. They will take
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every penny you have. I always tell people the scammers
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of today are ruthless financial predators. They're not happy with
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a small amount of money, or a media amount or
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a large amount. They want every single penny you have.
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So they told her to cash out her retirement plan.
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So think about that. She's got a roth ira or
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a pension, or a TSP or a four to one K,
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six hundred thousand dollars that she's worked her entire life
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to earn and put away, and they wanted her to
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convert that into gold. She agreed initially, but then something happened.
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We don't know, something made her suspicious and she reported
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to the FBI. So I applaud her for that. It
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takes a lot of courage and I'm so happy that
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this something happened. I don't know all the details, but
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something happened, and she knew it was suspicious. She called
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the FBI absolute right thing to do. So FBI agents
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were at her home when the courier showed up to
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pick up the next six hundred thousand dollars, and we
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found out that this career he was only going to
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be paid five thousand dollars to pick up the next
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box of gold. So the courier is just like a gopher.
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He's just upon in the scheme that the scammers are using.
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And according to the court documents, this career began communicating
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with his handler about a month before and they were
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discussing him doing jobs in Florida, Illinois, and in this
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case Arizona. So the FBI Good News was able to
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arrest this career because people ask me that all the
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time when we do our presentations, are you ever successful?
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Do you ever get the bad guys? And the question
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is sometimes sometimes the government, federal law enforcement, local law enforcement,
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just has to get lucky. But in this case, the
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lady that had lost some money already did the absolute
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right thing and she contacted the FBI. She obviously contacted
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them through a legit number, found them, tracked them down,
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and they showed up. So bravo to the FBI. And
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so the thing about this gold bar scam, as scary
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as it sounds, the one good thing about it is
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the gold actually needs to be picked up. You know,
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with cryptocurrency scams, the pig butchering anytimes scammers convinced people
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to put money into a cryptocurrency ATM. A lot of
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these scammers are overseas. They never have to set foot
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in the United States or even use a career. But
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with the gold bar scam, you need a person to
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physically pick up that box of gold. And that's what
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I told the reporter in this TV story. The encouraging
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thing about this gold bar scam is people have to
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be in the United States and it actually gives law
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enforcement a chance. So in this case, the FBI was
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lying in wait, they were at the house, the person
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showed up and they were able to intervene. And you
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know what, you know, the reason why these particular scams
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work is scammers prey on the honesty and trust and
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authority that all of us have. You know what it's
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you try to do the right thing. You're raised well,
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you know, my parents raised me to respect authority, respect
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law enforcement, respect my school teachers. And unfortunately that can
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come back and bite us. That's why we have to
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have a health level of skepticism. And so enough horror
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stories about that victim in Phoenix area. How to protect yourself,
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loved ones and yourself, your friends and your loved ones.
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Let's talk some nuts and bolts, some common sense ways
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to protect yourself. Number one, no legitimate, no government agency
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or bank is going to ask for money via or
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ask for payments for a gold bar scam. That it
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just does not happen. There is no There are no
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government agencies local, federal, there are no banks, no anything
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like that. They're never going to ask for gold bars.
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That is a complete scam. That's a huge red flag.
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If you get a call from someone claiming to be
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the FBI or another government, a government agency, or a
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financial institution or a technology a company, tell them that
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you will call them back on a verified number. And