Regina Morrison Newman

The May month's Wallet Warning from The Shelby County Trustee's Office is Investment Scams with Shelby County Trustee Regina Morrison Newman on The Bev Johnson Show on WDIA Radio.

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
The show time with this talking homeaway you go, you go, so
get ready it's time of show showJohn, Well, make your day bight

(00:31):
here onug listen to what to say. You know, it's time for the
belt show, time for the show. Like let's go. We are rocking
and rolling on this hump day.Yeah. I am Wednesday, May twenty
fourth, twenty twenty three, enjoyedthis fabulous day today. As I said

(00:56):
earlier, she is back with ourmaid wallet Warning. She is our Shelby
County Trustee, Regina Morrison Newman.Good afternoon, Regina, hollollo, I'm
great. How are you good?Good? Good? You enjoining some of
the sunshine. I am. Ienjoyed the weekend I worked in the yard.
It was all good. It wasbetter than the weekend before when it

(01:19):
was ninety. Get in wallets whileit's cool. I know, I know.
We'll always glad to have you here, Regina, because you give us
great information. And this month May'sWallet Warning investment scams, yes, ma'am,
the big one, the big one, the big scam. According to

(01:40):
our partners at the Better Business Bureau, three point eight billion dollars was lost
by Americans in twenty twenty two onthis scam that's a billion with a B
three point I heard billion, billion, billion dollars and in Shelby County just
in the last six months they've hadfifty one reports for one hundred and thirty

(02:02):
thousand plus. So this is byfar the scam that's costing people the most
money, and so we wanted tobring it your attention because obviously it has
ticked up. And when we wrotethis up, we said, okay,
who remembers the song by Dire Straitscalled money for Nothing? There is no

(02:25):
money for nothing, right, andit wasn't true for Dire Straits and it's
not true now, So it's notreality when it comes to investing. So
get rich schemes are buying large scamsand the only people who get rich quick
are the ones who conviss you togive them your money. They're still doing

(02:46):
it. They're still doing it.They're still doing it. So this is
huge right now. The Federal TradeCommission has been involved and there's more than
double the loss in twenty two oftwenty twenty one, So it's a There's
a lot of things that feed intothis, and so let me just go

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over a couple of them to saynumber one. They use buzzwords and they
say things like guaranteed, which investmentopportunities are never guaranteed, or guaranteed means
it's a scam. It's an amazinginvestment opportunity. You get an out of
the blue call. They use thesewords, a call or a text or

(03:30):
an email. It says you havean amazing investment opportunity. And especially if
they say, oh, take somemoney out of your four oh one K
or your retirement fund and put itover here. Okay, delete it,
walk away, hang up, yeah, real quick, real quick. Okay.

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So if they say guaranteed, ifthey say no risk, especially no
risk with a high return, ifyou have to bring in other people to
make your investment back, that's calleda pyramid scheme. And you really don't
want to be involved in that.Um So that would be they don't call

(04:10):
them that anymore, but that's whatit is. You got to bring in
somebody else. Yeah, it's apyramid scheme. Okay, okay. And
so you may also um these things. You can get hit up on social
media, you can get hit upon an online dating app or that unexpected
text, caller email, and somecelebrities then We're gonna name a couple of

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names, Okay, Tom Brady,Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather, Mayweather excuse
me. Have been brought up oncharges or sued for being the spokespersonan for
some companies without saying they were apaid spokespersonan. So they got to be
a paid spokesperson uh huh. Andif they say that that's one of the
rules, they got to say thatthey are not that just that, uh,

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pretending like they were an investor.So especially and that happens a lot
for cryptocurrency companies yea, which isa very volatile investment at best. But
that if they're gonna be out thereout front, you know, talking for
this company, they got to saythey're a paid spokesperson okay, and they

(05:17):
didn't necessarily investor make money. Souh, don't accept we have tips,
we always have okay, Yeah,okay, don't accept unsolicited offers, delete,
walk away, hang up, okay. Be very wary of those buzzwords,
guaranteed, no risk, those thingslike that, and reject a high

(05:41):
pressure pitch. Financial advisors real onesare highly regulated. They're on the Securities
Exchange Commission. You can look upany complaints on them. You can go
see their records. They have tohave licenses and tests and continuing education.
I know this because my husbands inthis business and so reject a high pressure

(06:02):
pitch because they start to the scammerswill plant an image in your head of
what life's going to be like whenyou're rich. Don't believe it. They'll
say this is a once in alifetime offer and it'll be over tomorrow.
It won't be. It will belegitimate investments. Let you take the time

(06:23):
to do your research before committing anymoney. And next tip, do your
own research. So if someone triesto get you involved in a company,
you can look on line on Googlefor the that company's name or that invest
company or that investor and say scams, reviews, complaints, and find out

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what other people have had the experienceof with that particular investment. So do
your own research. Check out theperson offering it to you, search online,
see what comes up. And iftwenty other people said, oh I
lost all my money, hang up, delete, walk away, okay,
and so um. Don't believe anypromises that you'll make money or earn guaranteed

(07:13):
returns. And anybody who promises youlots of money with guaranteed and little to
no risk is a scammer. UM, Real investment advisors don't do that.
UM. Don't be swayed by acelebritory. Hello. Okay, yeah,
most of it may not be true. They're very rarely investors. Almost all

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of them are compensated and not apart of what you're trying to get your
money into. Do check for registrationswith appropriate agencies. So, UM,
the investment industries regulated, the financeindustries regulated. If they are not registered
with the Securities and Exchange Commission,that would be sec online or other investment

(08:00):
industry regulars regulators. UM, youyou should be wary of putting your And
so those are your tips for investmentscams. And so hopefully nobody has hit
you up with these and and hopefullyand and I think one of the things
that you said, Regina, alwaysis always is to do your own research.

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And a lot of times people arelazy, they want to do it,
and they they see this like,well I can make this amount of
money. M yep, yeah,and you don't check in to see if
it's real or not. And thenyou've lost your money and you say,
well, now that I've been scammed. Let me go on Google and see
if that anybody else was and findout it was all there for you to
see to start with, Right,been there done that on a purchase something

(08:48):
with a company I didn't know,So don't do that kind of thing.
And um, but but just realizethat that the celebrity spokespersons are something questionable,
the um, the words they use, and you have to do it
today. And here's what your life'sgoing to look like when you've made all
this money and you don't have todo it today. Um. Uh,

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you can track your own stocks,you can look at your own investment opportunities.
If you want to get into cryptocurrency, you can look it up yourself.
There's a bazilion stories on the webof of how that works. But
um, it's it's this is justa biggie because once you give the person
your money, they are gone.Yeah, yeah, they are gone.

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And it's not like you used acredit card and your your bank will help
you get the scam back. No, no, you gave it to them.
You probably signed paperwork, it's justgone. Yeah. Well I'm sorry,
it wasn't as guaranteed as I thought, Right, okay. One of
the things that you also said isreject the high pressure yes pitch. And

(09:56):
a lot of times, Reginia,a lot of our seniors, they'll get
these calls and I don't know ifthey're afraid to hang up or they think
somebody's gonna do something, so they'relistening to them. They are, and
then next thing you know, they'llprobably say okay, yes, or they've
given up credit card number or something. My mother is one of those people.
If someone calls her on the phoneand puts pressure on her, she

(10:18):
gets nervous about it, and soshe would probably do that yes, yeah,
And so it's it's difficult to sometimessay no, but watch out for
your seniors. So this is whatwe need to do. Watch out for
your seniors, especially if they're stillhandling their own accounts and their own retirement
funds and whatever. They need allthat money and they can't afford to lose

(10:39):
it. And sometimes the scammers willsay anything. Yeah. The scammers will
say anything, Oh. They'll eventell them you've already invested in this before.
They may not remember. Yeah.And I go back when your earlier
statement, when you were talking thatthe Federal Trade Commissioner says, last year,

(11:05):
Americans lost three point eight billion,and so you think about are we
that guttable or are we just moneyhungry or I don't know, you think,
Regina, I think I think allof the Okay, because that was
twice as much as the year before. Yeah, so that is a ton
of money. And maybe with someof the stimulus money, people had a

(11:26):
little extra. Maybe that's part ofit. Um, But for goodness sake,
don't pull out of your retirement,your pension to do something speculative when
when you're getting a good return onwhat you got and you need that money
later, right, and then ifyou do that, you're going to be
penalized. Yes, true, Okay, that's true. Yeah, you're not
rolling back over in the four ohone k, You're rolling into a speculative

(11:50):
investment, right. Yeah, theirs will get you the things that I've
been asked the question, I'm sureyou have too. And it says Regina
talks about these wallet warnings. Ilove it. And why did because there
are a lot of scams that theTrustees Office decided to do that to let
people know about the scams. Regina, Well, we did a couple of

(12:13):
things so we opened We got agrant and we opened the Greater Memphis Financial
Empowerment Center. And the grant wasfrom Cities for Financial Empowerment CFE, and
that that's out of New York andthey help cities all over the country with
building financial empowerment centers so that peoplecan get on firm ground, help repair

(12:35):
their credit for free, help themgenerate a budget and savings and get their
credit score up, and maybe buya house, whatever it is that they
need to do. And that's whatwe have with the Greater Memphis Financial Empowerment
Center. It's been opened three yearsand the clients have eliminated over three million

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dollars in non mortgage debt. That'sin Shelby County. And these are rich
clients. This is the average middleaged black woman renting and that's that's who
our client is. They are notmaking a lone of money, about thirty
five thousand on average. And sowhen we did so well with that grant,

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and Nashville's done even better because they'vehad there's about ten years and so
we've helped almost two thousand people sofar. And it's free. Did I
say free free? No, youdidn't. That's good free Greater Memphis Financial
Empowerment SYNERGYMFEC dot org call and makingan appointment if you need some help.
You don't have to pay someone tohelp you with your credit now you don't.

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This is a government service. It'sUnited Way agency. It's tied into
all the other United Way agencies.Is sponsored by you know, and I
know, the Women's Foundation of GreaterMemphis and the Trustees Office. So this
is this is a safe thing.It's a good thing. And we have
four trained, certified confidential counselors.And I tell everybody it's not like workshop.

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It's not a seminar. It islike weight watchers. So you get
a counselor there one on one withyou. You can talk to them several
times a week, you can talkto them once a month. You can
come see them whatever you need foras long as you need it. So
if you were a client a coupleof years ago and then you need to
come back. So when we didwell with that, the Cities for Financial

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Empowerment says, well, we havethis new grant and it's consumer financial protection
and Shelby County really needs it becauseyour people are hit upon more than anybody
else. In the country when itcomes to being scammed, especially the elderly
population, the immigrant population, andso we are and we have discovered those
numbers have just been outrageous that weget what half of the scams on a

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particular item are here in Shelby Countyin the whole country. So we kick
this off the ground about two yearsago. And you can go to our
website and see every wallet warning sofar. Yeah, and uh so that's
Shelby can Trustee dot com. Andthey're on the about us page while at
warnings and um we we here uphere here with BEV once a month,

(15:13):
see you on the radio, yeah, and um uh and I and I
and I love it because I seeRegina with their Channel three. I love
because you're trying to get the wordout with my boyfriend Alex Cob, the
spiffy dresser. Yeah. Yeah,but I got a new young lady with
him now I call you, Yeah, you know, new to me.

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Yeah, but uh yeah. Sowe're on Live at nine and we're on
BEV and we're on ship Washington onWL Okay, yeah. Good. And
because people need to know and andand I've gotten emails regime. I want
to tell you this that people whowho email me say they thank thank me,
and but thank you for letting usknow the scams that are out there

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right now. That's what we tryto do, is hit on what's happening
right now, Suddenly happened or what'sgone up, or we're getting more calls
about this, And so we getcalls amazingly enough at the office. You
know, my my Molly, whois the head of this organization, the
head of our community programs, andshe gets calls from all over the country

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because somebody looked up something about Medicareadvantage and found our article and came and
wanted to talk about it. Andso we've had calls from everywhere, and
they're out there on the websites,you know, on Google, as they
say, on the interwebs and sowith people and you know, have a
question or just send it a littlethank you about thanks for doing this.

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But we also want to move pastthis. We want to help you be
able to know that things are saferfor you and work with our local legislators
and our state legislators on some lawsthat may protect us better. And so
that's kind of our next phase.Do that and then eventually move into what

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we're trying to do, which ishelp people get their money back. Yes.
Yeah, and so our goal atthe trustees office is to safeguard the
county's money. We handle three anda half billion dollars, so if we
can safeguard the county's money, wecan definitely hopefully give you a tip to
help sew safeguard yours. That's whatwe're doing. I love it, I

(17:25):
love it, I love it.Thank you for doing that, because I've
learned some new scams and I knewsome old but I've learned some new things
as well. They all come backup eventually, but then there's a new
wet there's a new twist on them. Yeah. And we know Regina and
when we were shut down when doingthe pandemic. There are a lot of
scams out there. There are alot of scams, there will be.

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There are people when the when thestudent loan issue came out and like scams
were online within hours. Yes,and so they're very creative people. Someone
ought to hire all of them andgive them legitimate work. Yeah. They
are really good at what they doin coming up with scams and finding ways
to get your money, your IDs, your soul security number and figure out

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how to rip people off. THO, yeah, we want to avoid it.
Well, thank you for giving usthe great information. And as always,
because we're talking investment scams, andagain, as Regina say, you
can always go on their website andlook at all the other scams and read
about the investment scams. But asalways, Regina have to ask you.
We have to keep folks, howare we doing the taxes? Everybody?

(18:33):
I have to ask you that we'regonna somebody's listening that, oh I forgot
to pay my taxes. If youforgot to pay your taxes, get online,
shall we County Trustee dot com?Or go to pay at nine oh
one mobile app and or drop itin the mail because right now interest is
running, so you really need toget that payment out your door before the

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end of the month or interest comesback to you on June first. But
no, ninety seven percent of countypeople have already paid their taxes for the
year, so we're in good shape. But I did want to talk to
folks about tax relief. It's veryimportant, okay. And those of you
who are on property tax relief forShelby County, you know it's a state

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program. It's handled by a trusteeand for low income seniors, low income
disabled folks, and disabled veterans.It the state paced party your taxes.
This is a good thing, andlast year that amount was up to about
two hundred and fifty dollars. Butfor the past two years I had worked

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with the mayor, Mayor Harris andthe County Commission and for the last two
years the county matched that money.So it was very beneficial. We have
about eighty five hundred people on thisprogram, and that meant that five hundred
dollars of their taxes was getting takencare of good or more because veterans get

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a little more. But for thisyear, it is not in the proposed
budget and that budget is not yetfinal. Okay, So the mayor proposed
a budget to the county Commission andthe tax relief matching is not there.
But the County Commission meets again totalk about the budget and make amendments on

(20:21):
May thirty first. So if thatmoney for the county match for property tax
relief has been helping you and hasbeen helping you stay in your house,
I highly encourage you to call yourcounty commissioner or show up at County commission
on May thirty first, early inthe morning, and they meet all day

(20:45):
on May thirty first, it's committeeday. And but there they are.
You're there, you're elected representatives.They're there to listen to you, and
hopefully they will because I know thateighty five hundred people need this money,
and it's very important to helping peoplestay in their house. So not just
the people on property tax relief.Okay, you have a neighbor who's been

(21:07):
on property tax relief and getting thismoney and staying in their house. You
don't want to render instead of yourneighbor. So it's helpful to stabilizing our
communities in my mind, and Ithink it's very important and important enough to
say, please call your county commissioner. I can't vote. I don't get
to vote on the budget. Itjust happens. So so let me ask.

(21:32):
So, if it doesn't go throughthe budget, will the tax relief
program in no, ma'am. Thestate part will still be there, okay,
but instead of having five hundred dollarsor more for the coming year,
it will only be two fifty becauseit'll be this or not the county's part.
Gotcha? I'm gonna keep pushing it. I'm gonna talk to them.
Yes, I'm gonna get in lineto speak on the thirty first. But

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y'all, you elected your county commissioners. Please call them, uh not your
city council people, county commission countycommissioners, county commissioners and so. Um.
I could probably run down a listof name, but I'll leave out
somebody. Yeah. I can't everget all thirteen the first time, I
know. So. Um, butit is important and it's important to our

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neighborhoods, and it's important to ourseniors, and important to our disabled and
our veterans. So they deserve it. Yeah, they've worked hard for it.
Yeah. Um. And uh,our neighborhoods need to be stable by
having people stay in their houses.Yeah. So, Regina, it's someone's
listening and has heard this for thefirst time in saying I didn't know they
had a tax relief for seniors.I mean because somebody will say that,

(22:45):
and they they will email me.What does she say? I can get
I can guess my poverty tax relieveright. If you get a tax bill,
you got an insert in there.Okay. And last year I wrote
in big letters. Open this,yes, yes, thank you for saying
this. Don't just throw it out. It's not advertising. This has property
tax relief information, has property taxfreeze for our seniors. It has the

(23:08):
wheel tax rebate for our seniors,and it has how they get on quarterly
pay. So there's a lot ofinformation in there about benefits that are run
through our office that we can helpyou with. And I have a nice
staff of people who are very patient. And if you don't remember about your
tax bill and your tax brochure yougot last summer, you'll be getting another

(23:30):
one. Okay, come then,did July or beginning of August for twenty
twenty three? Okay, But rightnow, check on our website if you
have never heard of tax relief andfind out what it says under the Senior
tad. Okay, so it tellsyou all about what the requirements are and
how to do it. We aren'ttaking applications right now. Those will come

(23:51):
in the new new budget either,but that budget is going to get voted
on really soon and so it isimportant. But in the meanwhile, so
you can look on the website soyou will have the information and know that
what you can get for you know, text to help you pay your taxes?
Right? Yes? I love that. Yes that good. Always good

(24:14):
information, Regina, Thank you?Any other last things you want to say
today? Enjoy the sunshine, enjoythe sunshine. Listen to Beth. Yeah,
but do you sit outside and listento Beth? Yeah? But also
remember what Regina said on all thesewallet warnings and this month investment scams.

(24:36):
Investment scams. Keep your money inyour pocket. Please, you're talking to
the round in your maddress. Nowin your maddress. Go to a bank.
Yeah. Yeah, but everything y'allis on the Shelby County Trustee website.
They didn't get all this information.It is and all reports. If
you're really interested in how much revenuethe county brings in, yeah, that's

(24:56):
what we have there. Sounds good. I love a Regina looking forward to
next month's wallet warning. I can'twait. I can't wait, Sister,
Regina Morrison Newman, our Shelby CountyTrustee. Always you bring us good information.
Thank you so much. Thank youare quite welcome. I'm happy to
be here every month. I'm happyto have you. Be careful out their

(25:19):
sister going back downtown when we comeback, bunch you Jack with Me Bev
Johnson on The Beb Johnson Show onlyon w d I A. Ladies and

(25:40):
gentlemen, you're listening to the Queenof Talk, Beb Johnson on w d
I A.