April 29, 2025 • 34 mins
The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center 2024 annual report is out. The statistics are not good and going in the wrong direction. Losses increased by 33% in the United States and 43% increase in losses with the 60+ year old population.
Tune in while Joyce reviews the report as it relates to the 60+ year old population in the United States and Arizona.
Let’s Talk About Scams is broadcast live Tuesdays at 8AM PT on K4HD Radio - Hollywood Talk Radio (www.k4hd.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Let’s Talk About Scams TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Let’s Talk About Scams Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Disclaimer: 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, R.O.S.E. Resources / Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim to a scam.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/let-s-talk-about-scams--6483699/support.
Tune in while Joyce reviews the report as it relates to the 60+ year old population in the United States and Arizona.
Let’s Talk About Scams is broadcast live Tuesdays at 8AM PT on K4HD Radio - Hollywood Talk Radio (www.k4hd.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Let’s Talk About Scams TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Let’s Talk About Scams Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Disclaimer: 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, R.O.S.E. Resources / Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim to a scam.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/let-s-talk-about-scams--6483699/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
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
(00:22):
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
(00:44):
safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall
victim to a scam.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
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
(01:11):
recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now here is
your host, Joyce Petrowski.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Welcome back everyone, I'm Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president
of Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly. You can
find more resources on our website at Roseadvocacy dot org.
You can find our social media links and also sign
up for our emailed and mailed newsletters down at the
bottom of the homepage. Last week, we talked about a
(01:44):
public service announcement from the FBI that scammers were impersonating
the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is a division of
the FBI, And today I want to talk about the
twenty twenty four Internet Crime Complaint Center's report, annual report
(02:07):
that they do every year. The twenty twenty four came
out late last week and it's got a lot of
information about the scams and the victims that reported during
twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Now, if you remember.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
What we talked about last week, the Internet Crime Complaint Center,
you can find these reports. I So that's I as
an Indigo c as in KAT the number three dot gov.
This is where you can also report crimes scams. Whether
you've lost money or not, you can still report it.
(02:44):
And this department of the FBI is a data collection
and they collect all this information and then they disseminated
out to the appropriate law enforcement wherever the crime has
taken place. So, getting back to the twenty twenty four
I see three annual report. I'm going to put up
(03:05):
on a script on the screen here one called complaints
filed by individual sixty plus And if you can see that,
so and this is just in the year of twenty
twenty four, and just for the sixty year old and
older age population, and this is all throughout the United States,
(03:26):
there was over one hundred and forty seven thousand complaints.
And of those complaints or of those complaints, they lost
a combined total of four point eight eight five billion
in losses.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
That's b as in boy billion.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Now in twenty twenty three, and you can see from
the graph below. The graph below goes all the way
from twenty eighteen through twenty twenty four. So in twenty
twenty three the complaints were just over one hundred and
one thousand, and they went all the way up to
(04:06):
just over one hundred and forty seven thousand in one year.
That's a forty six percent increase. And the losses in
twenty and twenty three they were around three point four billion,
and they're up to four point eighty eight five billion,
just shy of five billion dollars. That's a forty three
(04:29):
percent increase in losses from twenty twenty three to twenty
twenty four. Now, of those one hundred and forty seven
thousand complaints, there were seventy five hundred that lost more
than one hundred thousand dollars in the scam that they
were reporting, And if we want to average all of
(04:51):
this out, the average loss was eighty three thousand dollars.
So this is this is just crazy. This is going
way up, and we need to really take a hard
look at at prevention tools and at ROSE, we firmly
(05:17):
believe that the best prevention is education.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Its awareness.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
It's education, and then it's knowing how to protect yourself
and then knowing that it's okay to talk about scams.
Whether you've received something and you've fallen victim or you
haven't fallen victim, it's good to talk about it because
it makes your family and friends more aware of what's
going on. But it also helps everyone involved keep scam
(05:49):
prevention top of mind. So if we break that down,
we're going to go to another chart called three year comparison.
The sixty year old population complaint losses. So this is
where they compare from twenty twenty two, twenty three, and
(06:09):
twenty four based on the type of crime that was committed.
And I've highlighted some numbers here. So the investment scam
was by far the one in this age population where
the most money was lost. In twenty four it was
one point eight billion dollars and that is almost doubled
(06:33):
from twenty twenty two. It was nine hundred and ninety
thousand in twenty and twenty two. Now, those are investment schemes.
So we've talked about pig butchering before, where you know,
the scammer establishes the relationship but then gets you to
invest in crypto and you think you're getting all you're
(06:55):
making all of this money, and you're not because when
you want to go take it out, it's not there
and the scammer's not there. So there's a lot of
lot of dollars in this age population loss to investment scams.
And you can see the other dollar amounts for all
the other ones. There's you know, confidence in romance fraud
was about three hundred and ninety thousand. Government impersonation was
(07:19):
just over two hundred two hundred I should say two
hundred billion. The Romance and confidence fraud was just under
three hundred and ninety billion. What are some other ones
on here? Personal data breach two hundred and fifty four billion.
But if you look down towards the bottom, there's tech support.
(07:42):
And in twenty and twenty two those losses were five
hundred and just shy of five hundred and eighty six billion,
and all the way up to twenty and twenty four
it reaches nine hundred and eighty two billion dollars.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
So between the investment and.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
The tech support, we're looking at two what is this?
I'm doing the math in my head, so two point
eight just over two point eight billion dollars?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Or was it am I adding?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, over two point eight billion dollars just in those
two scams alone. And so we've talked about the tech
support before as well. You know, when that first came out,
everybody realized that it was the pop up on your
device that talked about you have a virus.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
And call us and we can help you get this
off your device.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Well, you know, scammers, as they do, they evolve and
they go to then impersonating you might get an email
from a scammer, but they're impersonating some larger tech support
company like Microsoft or McAfee or the Geek Squad or
something like that, and they might be talking to you
(09:09):
about a subscription, or they could be saying that they've
noticed some unusual activity or that you could have some malware,
you know, whatever.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
They've upped their game, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
But then a few years back, the FBI had put
out a public service announcement because they were seeing such
an uptick in a different a different tech support which
is where they would get a hold of you again,
impersonating you know, McAfee, Microsoft, one of these larger, more
well known tech support companies, and say that you were
(09:40):
owed a refund on a subscription. And if you had
happened to have a subscription with whoever they were impersonating it,
it made it all the more believable.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
And they would get you to.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Allow them access to your computer and they would go
in and put it, you know, put it in your account.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
I'm saying that in.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Quotes because they would show that it's going into your account.
But then lo and behold, they put too many zeros
in there. To the left of the decimal point, and
then it went into this whole thing about how they're
going to get in so much trouble they might get fired,
and so you had to go get the money and
send it back, and then a couple days later you
(10:23):
found out that money was never in your account to
begin with, and so you were out all of that money.
So the tech support's been going on for a long time.
It's been one in the top three with this age population,
and it still is. The romance scams used to be
in the top three years ago, but they've come down some.
They're still out there, but they've come down. But this
(10:43):
investment one, if you can see down all the way
down at the bottom of the table, the cryptocurrency, there
was two point eight billion dollars loss to cryptocurrency. That
was the that was the medium that the scammer used
in order to get your money. So and it was
(11:04):
you know, whether it was investing in what you thought
was legitimate cryptocurrency or some other scam where they would
have you actually go to a cryptocurrency ATM machine and
put your money in there. So now I want to
take those numbers and I want to break them down
to the state of Arizona because that's where Rose operates
(11:27):
right now, and we want to see what this looks like.
So the next chart I want to show is the
overall state statistics, the counts by state from complaints filed
by individuals. So once again Arizona is in the top ten.
This is not a statistic that we want to be
(11:47):
in the top ten and we want to be down
and actually it shows there's fifty seven of them here,
so we want to be number fifty seven. Anyways, we're
number four again. This you guys remember from twenty twenty
three there were just over fifty five hundred complaints filed. Again,
same age population sixty year old and older. Well, in
(12:10):
twenty four there was just under sixty seven hundred complaints filed.
California was number one, Florida's number two, Texas is number three.
I will say we usually do run behind those three.
They usually are the top three. But you know, Pennsylvania
(12:31):
and New York they're down there. I would have expected
New York to be a little bit higher. But good
for them that they're, you know, number six, but Arizona
number seven. No, we are number seven, number four. We
need to really really work hard and we need to
bring this victim count down a lot, and again, scam
(12:53):
prevention through education is really the best way that Rose
believes in order to start making a dent in these numbers.
So let's see how much money those sixty six hundred
and eighty three victims loss. The overall state statistics with
the losses by state is the next chart I'm going
(13:15):
to show. And that one we are number six. You
can see California's number one, Texas, Florida, and they're New York.
So New York was it was interesting. New York was
number six in number of victims, but they are number
four in number of losses, where Arizona was number four
(13:40):
in number of victims, and we are Arizona is number
six in amount of losses one hundred and ninety million dollars. Now,
if you remember when we've talked about this before, in
twenty twenty, the sixty plus residents of Arizona that reported
(14:04):
they were a victim, it was twenty seven million dollars,
and then it went to fifty four million in twenty
twenty one, then eighty three million in twenty twenty two,
one hundred and twenty eight million in twenty and twenty three.
Now we're up to one hundred and ninety million dollars
that was reported lost.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
This is.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
People's life savings, and you know, whatever the scam is,
it's devastating. The scammers exploit their victims emotions and get
them to make rash decisions based on emotions, because we
know that if we were making a decision based on
(14:48):
rational thought, there's a very good chance we would not
have done what the scammer had asked us to do.
So scammers are getting much much better, and they're going
to continue to get better because you can see the
amount of money that they are making. Just to give
(15:12):
you an idea for all age populations that reported they
were a victim in twenty twenty four, I believe the
total losses were sixteen point six billion dollars, up from
about twelve and a half billion.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
I believe it wasn't twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
So.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Lots of money out there. These scammers are making billions
and billions, if not close to trillions of dollars. They
are going to just continue to evolve their techniques, perfect
their techniques. They're changing and adapting to all this new
technology that's coming out right. We've talked about artificial intelligence.
(15:55):
They have figured out how to use it to their
advantage with the using the generative text like chat GBT
to create their emails, to create their letters.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
And yes, they.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Will still send stuff in the mail, not as much
as they used to, but they still do. And so
the bad grammar part of it, you really can't look
for that anymore.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
But they also use the deep fakes with the videos.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Where in the romance scam they wouldn't come on camera
because they knew what they look like wasn't like the
pictures that they'd been sending you, so they wouldn't come
on camera. Well, now they can make that. They can
make it seem like you are actually talking to the
person in the pictures when it's really them behind it.
And then THEDEO of the audio they need and I'm
(16:45):
not exactly sure how much, but I think it's around
fifteen twenty second audio recording of someone's voice and they
can get all the different fluctuations in the voice to
then turn around and make that voice say what they
wanted to say. So you get a call. And with
the Grandparents scam, remember when they first started that, they
(17:07):
didn't even know if you had grandchildren. Well, then they
were able to figure that out through a variety of
different tools online and then what your grandkid's names were.
But then a lot of people would say, well, I
knew it wasn't my grandchild because it wasn't their voice. Well,
now with this AI voice recording, the voice sounds like
(17:28):
your grandchild, which makes it even more difficult to decipher
what's going on and get you into that emotional state
of fear for your grandchild that you want to do
whatever's possible as quick as possible to help them out
without stopping to think. So you can see from all
this money that they're making that they aren't going to stop.
(17:50):
They're going to keep perfecting. So this scam prevention through
education program that Rose has is of the utmost importance.
And it's not just having it won. It needs to
be at a minimum once a year. You know, some
places might want to have it twice a year, but
a minimum of once a year. And then we have
(18:10):
a wide variety of ways that you can keep up
to date on things through social media, through newsletters, through
this radio show, lots of different ways. So one of
the things they put in this annual report is the
cryptocurrency fraud for twenty twenty four and I wanted to
(18:33):
share this this this page with you guys, and this
is for these statistics are for all of the age populations.
You can see the different age ranges. In the middle
there under complaints referencing cryptocurrency. And this is going to
be when somebody files a complaint and they said they
(18:56):
have either invested in cryptocurrency or they paid in cryptocurrency.
The crime involves cryptocurrency somehow.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
So at the.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Top there was just under one hundred and fifty thousand
complaints totally nine point three billion in losses, so that
was a sixty six percent increase in losses from twenty
twenty three. And the largest age group for these losses
(19:30):
the sixty plus population. If you look at that table,
you know the the under twenty was seven million. Then
we get up to the twenty to twenty nine is
three hundred and seventy million. Thirty to thirty nine, it
gets a little higher at just over a billion forty
to age forty to forty nine is about half of
(19:54):
what the sixty plus population, and then age fifty to
fifty nine is a little lower than the forties, just
over or just under one point two million, but the
sixty plus population two point eight million dollars in cryptocurrency.
And you can look at the graph below, so the
(20:15):
red bars vertical bars are the amount of losses and
you can see the look at how little those how
small those red bars are in twenty seventeen, which is
the first one, eighteen nineteen twenty, then it starts to
creep up in twenty one. It pretty much doubles in
twenty two, goes up a little bit more in twenty three,
(20:38):
and now look at this big jump in twenty twenty
four and then the it looks green on the screen,
but the line and that's the amount of the number
of complaints. So again it's shot up from twenty seventeen
to eighteen, and then it kind of mad steady from
(21:01):
eighteen to nineteen to twenty to twenty one, and then
it starts going up again in twenty two and twenty
three it goes up a little bit, but then it
shoots way up for twenty twenty four. So this is
a cryptocurrency is has really come into play as a
way that scammers want their money. And my understanding is
(21:25):
with cryptocurrency is that when it first came out, it
was pretty much anonymous, hence why the scammers liked it
won they could get their money quickly, But then they
also it was anonymous, so it made made it really
difficult for law enforcement to try to find them. But
my understanding is over these recent years is that with
(21:48):
new technology available that law enforcement is able to that
these crypto wallets are not as anonymous as they were,
and law enforcement has better tools available to them to
be able to find the criminals behind these crypto wallets.
So just big thing to remember with cryptocurrency. If anybody
(22:10):
asks you to pay in cryptocurrency, the answer is no.
The only way you should be putting money through cryptocurrency
is if you are in fact investing in cryptocurrency. But
then you want to make sure that you have researched
the cryptocurrency, you are comfortable with it, you know the
(22:34):
risk involved, and that if you are going through a broker,
you are using a reputable broker, and you are using
a reputable cryptocurrency fund. I know they have a lot
of different types. I don't even want to begin. I
don't even know Bitcoin is one that I know it
(22:55):
comes to mind, but I know there's a ton of
other ones. So you really have to do your research,
and you really have to be working with reputable cryptocurrency
funds and reputable people in the cryptocurrency world.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
But if somebody is asking for.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Payment for something in cryptocurrency, no, the hair on the
back of your neck should be going up.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
That's a scam.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
So another table that the IC three put in was
Cryptocurrency in Fraud trends to kind of see the different
types of scams that are prevalent with cryptocurrency, and one
is cryptocurrency currency investment. We talked about a couple slides
(23:43):
ago about how the investment fraud was as far as
the number of law the amount of losses was the
number one with the sixty plus population. Well, if you
look at this cryptocurrency investment schemes, the over sixty was
one point six billion dollars out of that two point
(24:04):
eight that we talked about on the on the page before.
So in the end, the FBI has actually put out
a warning because they've seen spikes in these cryptocurrency investment schemes.
One of them, which is the pig butchering one that
we talked about just a little bit ago. Another one
(24:26):
is the cryptocurrency ATMs in Kiosks. Now we've talked about
that as well, where the scammer wants you to, you know,
send the money via these cryptocurrency ATMs. There was the
sixty plus population there were They lost over one hundred
and seven million dollars with that, and again there's a
(24:48):
warning down there, The FBI warns of fraudulent schemes leveraging
cryptocurrency ATMs or QR codes to facilitate payments. So breaking
that down even farther, the crime types most associated with
cryptoatm use tech support. Now, that was the second most
(25:10):
losses in the sixty plus population a couple of slides ago,
So there was over one hundred and seven million dollars
in tech support that was paid through a cryptocurrency ATM.
Now they also have extortion and an investment and government
and personation in there as well, but by far tech
support is the largest. And then down at the bottom
(25:34):
they have the extortion and sextortion by age group and
basically that's malicious actors manipulating photos and videos to create
explicit content content and sexual or let me start that over.
Malicious actors manipulating photos and videos to create explicit content
(25:57):
and sextortion schemes there is for the over sixty it
was the out of all the age groups lost the
most money with that's over seven hundred and twenty four
million dollars. So wide variety of crimes and where cryptocurrency
was the median in order to pay pay money over.
(26:20):
So that's that's what I'm Those are the IC three
schedules that I wanted to go over with you today.
If you want to look at the whole report, it's
all one report this year. There is no separate elder
fraud report. It's at I isn't as an igloo c
as in KAT the number three dot gov and just
(26:41):
click on two thousand reports in twenty twenty four and
it'll take you right to the report. But there isn't
a public service announcement that the FBI had put out
on August second of twenty twenty four. I know it's
like nine months old almost yeah, it's about nine months old,
(27:02):
but I still wanted to bring it to everybody's attention
because and it's a safety concern related to recent trends
in financial institution customer fraud scheme. So scammers are impersonating
bank representatives to fraudulently obtain bank cards with the chips.
(27:23):
So remember when we all first started with credit cards
and debit cards, it was just the magnetic strip on
the back that you swiped, and then they were more
because that was not encrypted. They got more secure and
the cards have those little chips in them. This is
what this PSA is about those bank cards with those chips.
(27:45):
So the safety concern here is that the impersonators, which
are the scammers that are impersonating the bank representatives, are
hiring accomplices to come to the customer's home. So I'm
going to give you a little bit of background on
how the scheme works. So the bank customers are contacted
(28:06):
by phone from a number that caller ID indicates is
from their bank. So it's going to come across and
say you know that the scammers can make.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
It say whatever bank they want.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
That's going to come across, and then the scammer's going
to ask about recent transactions, which will lead the customer
to believe that there's fraudulent activity on their account because
they're just going to make up a bunch, you know,
different activity and you're going to be like, no, that
wasn't me, that's that's fraud. No, that wasn't me, right,
And so then the scammer advises the bank customers to
(28:41):
cut up their bank card, but are instructed to leave
the chip intact because it needs to come back to
the bank, So don't cut the part of the cart
up where the chip is. And then the scammer arranges
for an accomplice, but they are also allegedly from the bank.
(29:05):
They're posing as a bank employee to pick up the
bank card with the chip intact from the customer's residence.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
And if.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
The scammers do not have the customer's pin number for
their card, they will use social engineering techniques to obtain
this from the customer. We've talked a lot about social
engineering techniques. Right. They'll say they need to verify you
know that it's you they're talking to before they can
give any information out.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
And so.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
We need the pin on your card, right, kind of
like a two factor authentication, but it's your pin number
on the card. That's just one way that they could
try to get the pin number from you. But they're
very clever and crafty, so they'll have a variety of
different reasons that they'll give you. So then It's been
(30:04):
reported that if the customer has not already done so,
the accomplice that comes to the house to pick the
card up will assist the customer by cutting the card
and leaving the chip intact before they take the card
and the chip with them. Now, once the scammers have
(30:24):
this chip, that's all they need is the chip and
the pin number. They can steal funds from the customer
from the customer's bank account. So it does say in
this public service announcement that the impersonator. It's unknown how
the impersonators were obtaining personal information, bank account information, names, addresses,
(30:45):
all that, and it's believed at the time of August
of twenty four that no specific age demographics are being targeted.
So I thought this was just really important to get
that out there. Just know that if you get a
call or get any communication purporting to be from your bank,
(31:09):
you don't rely on any information that's given to you,
whether it's a text, a phone call, an email, something
in the mail. You call the banks, your bank's verified
phone number, or you actually go down to a banking
branch and talk to somebody about it. That's your way
to verify whether this information is accurate. Or not, and
(31:36):
just be very careful somebody wanting you to cut up
your card and then having somebody come pick it up
saying that the bank needs it because they have that
chip information and they have your pin number, they have
access to your account.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
And so that's another thing.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
If you end up getting a new say you get
a new debit card or you get a new bank
card in your cutting years up to throw away, make
sure you destroy the chip part in the card as well.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
You can.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
I'm sure you can always just take it to the
bank itself and they will destroy it, but you can
cut it up yourself.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
Or there's if you have a shredder.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
There's a lot of shredders now that have a specific
slot where you can put cards in there and it
shreds the cards. But you want to make sure that
chip part of the card is destroyed. So that's all
I have for you today. Remember, if you want to
go look at the whole ice three twenty twenty four report,
you go to I so I as an indigo, C
(32:43):
isn't KAT three dot gov and go under I think
it's under like public reports and then annual report for
twenty twenty four. I also found this public service announcement
on their website as well. You could just search for
you know, public service FBI public service announcements and you'll
(33:05):
be able to find it. Next week, I'm going to
be off, but a guest host, Brian Watson, our community
outreach specialist, will be We'll be here hosting next Tuesday,
and he's going to be talking about how scams have
evolved back from you know, twenty twenty or so years ago,
(33:26):
how they started, and how they how they've evolved over
the years. So it's going to be a great show.
Make sure you tune in and listen to him next Tuesday,
and don't forget you can find more resources our social
media links and also sign up for our newsletters at
the bottom of the homepage. We send one in the
mail and we do one via email. Thank you for
(33:47):
joining me today.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Well that's all the knowledge for this episode. Juni in
every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on kfour HG
Radio at KFOURHD dot com as joy 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
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
(00:22):
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
(00:44):
safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall
victim to a scam.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
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
(01:11):
recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now here is
your host, Joyce Petrowski.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Welcome back everyone, I'm Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president
of Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly. You can
find more resources on our website at Roseadvocacy dot org.
You can find our social media links and also sign
up for our emailed and mailed newsletters down at the
bottom of the homepage. Last week, we talked about a
(01:44):
public service announcement from the FBI that scammers were impersonating
the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is a division of
the FBI, And today I want to talk about the
twenty twenty four Internet Crime Complaint Center's report, annual report
(02:07):
that they do every year. The twenty twenty four came
out late last week and it's got a lot of
information about the scams and the victims that reported during
twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Now, if you remember.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
What we talked about last week, the Internet Crime Complaint Center,
you can find these reports. I So that's I as
an Indigo c as in KAT the number three dot gov.
This is where you can also report crimes scams. Whether
you've lost money or not, you can still report it.
(02:44):
And this department of the FBI is a data collection
and they collect all this information and then they disseminated
out to the appropriate law enforcement wherever the crime has
taken place. So, getting back to the twenty twenty four
I see three annual report. I'm going to put up
(03:05):
on a script on the screen here one called complaints
filed by individual sixty plus And if you can see that,
so and this is just in the year of twenty
twenty four, and just for the sixty year old and
older age population, and this is all throughout the United States,
(03:26):
there was over one hundred and forty seven thousand complaints.
And of those complaints or of those complaints, they lost
a combined total of four point eight eight five billion
in losses.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
That's b as in boy billion.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Now in twenty twenty three, and you can see from
the graph below. The graph below goes all the way
from twenty eighteen through twenty twenty four. So in twenty
twenty three the complaints were just over one hundred and
one thousand, and they went all the way up to
(04:06):
just over one hundred and forty seven thousand in one year.
That's a forty six percent increase. And the losses in
twenty and twenty three they were around three point four billion,
and they're up to four point eighty eight five billion,
just shy of five billion dollars. That's a forty three
(04:29):
percent increase in losses from twenty twenty three to twenty
twenty four. Now, of those one hundred and forty seven
thousand complaints, there were seventy five hundred that lost more
than one hundred thousand dollars in the scam that they
were reporting, And if we want to average all of
(04:51):
this out, the average loss was eighty three thousand dollars.
So this is this is just crazy. This is going
way up, and we need to really take a hard
look at at prevention tools and at ROSE, we firmly
(05:17):
believe that the best prevention is education.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Its awareness.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
It's education, and then it's knowing how to protect yourself
and then knowing that it's okay to talk about scams.
Whether you've received something and you've fallen victim or you
haven't fallen victim, it's good to talk about it because
it makes your family and friends more aware of what's
going on. But it also helps everyone involved keep scam
(05:49):
prevention top of mind. So if we break that down,
we're going to go to another chart called three year comparison.
The sixty year old population complaint losses. So this is
where they compare from twenty twenty two, twenty three, and
(06:09):
twenty four based on the type of crime that was committed.
And I've highlighted some numbers here. So the investment scam
was by far the one in this age population where
the most money was lost. In twenty four it was
one point eight billion dollars and that is almost doubled
(06:33):
from twenty twenty two. It was nine hundred and ninety
thousand in twenty and twenty two. Now, those are investment schemes.
So we've talked about pig butchering before, where you know,
the scammer establishes the relationship but then gets you to
invest in crypto and you think you're getting all you're
(06:55):
making all of this money, and you're not because when
you want to go take it out, it's not there
and the scammer's not there. So there's a lot of
lot of dollars in this age population loss to investment scams.
And you can see the other dollar amounts for all
the other ones. There's you know, confidence in romance fraud
was about three hundred and ninety thousand. Government impersonation was
(07:19):
just over two hundred two hundred I should say two
hundred billion. The Romance and confidence fraud was just under
three hundred and ninety billion. What are some other ones
on here? Personal data breach two hundred and fifty four billion.
But if you look down towards the bottom, there's tech support.
(07:42):
And in twenty and twenty two those losses were five
hundred and just shy of five hundred and eighty six billion,
and all the way up to twenty and twenty four
it reaches nine hundred and eighty two billion dollars.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
So between the investment and.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
The tech support, we're looking at two what is this?
I'm doing the math in my head, so two point
eight just over two point eight billion dollars?
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Or was it am I adding?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah, over two point eight billion dollars just in those
two scams alone. And so we've talked about the tech
support before as well. You know, when that first came out,
everybody realized that it was the pop up on your
device that talked about you have a virus.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
And call us and we can help you get this
off your device.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Well, you know, scammers, as they do, they evolve and
they go to then impersonating you might get an email
from a scammer, but they're impersonating some larger tech support
company like Microsoft or McAfee or the Geek Squad or
something like that, and they might be talking to you
(09:09):
about a subscription, or they could be saying that they've
noticed some unusual activity or that you could have some malware,
you know, whatever.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
They've upped their game, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
But then a few years back, the FBI had put
out a public service announcement because they were seeing such
an uptick in a different a different tech support which
is where they would get a hold of you again,
impersonating you know, McAfee, Microsoft, one of these larger, more
well known tech support companies, and say that you were
(09:40):
owed a refund on a subscription. And if you had
happened to have a subscription with whoever they were impersonating it,
it made it all the more believable.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
And they would get you to.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Allow them access to your computer and they would go
in and put it, you know, put it in your account.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
I'm saying that in.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Quotes because they would show that it's going into your account.
But then lo and behold, they put too many zeros
in there. To the left of the decimal point, and
then it went into this whole thing about how they're
going to get in so much trouble they might get fired,
and so you had to go get the money and
send it back, and then a couple days later you
(10:23):
found out that money was never in your account to
begin with, and so you were out all of that money.
So the tech support's been going on for a long time.
It's been one in the top three with this age population,
and it still is. The romance scams used to be
in the top three years ago, but they've come down some.
They're still out there, but they've come down. But this
(10:43):
investment one, if you can see down all the way
down at the bottom of the table, the cryptocurrency, there
was two point eight billion dollars loss to cryptocurrency. That
was the that was the medium that the scammer used
in order to get your money. So and it was
(11:04):
you know, whether it was investing in what you thought
was legitimate cryptocurrency or some other scam where they would
have you actually go to a cryptocurrency ATM machine and
put your money in there. So now I want to
take those numbers and I want to break them down
to the state of Arizona because that's where Rose operates
(11:27):
right now, and we want to see what this looks like.
So the next chart I want to show is the
overall state statistics, the counts by state from complaints filed
by individuals. So once again Arizona is in the top ten.
This is not a statistic that we want to be
(11:47):
in the top ten and we want to be down
and actually it shows there's fifty seven of them here,
so we want to be number fifty seven. Anyways, we're
number four again. This you guys remember from twenty twenty
three there were just over fifty five hundred complaints filed. Again,
same age population sixty year old and older. Well, in
(12:10):
twenty four there was just under sixty seven hundred complaints filed.
California was number one, Florida's number two, Texas is number three.
I will say we usually do run behind those three.
They usually are the top three. But you know, Pennsylvania
(12:31):
and New York they're down there. I would have expected
New York to be a little bit higher. But good
for them that they're, you know, number six, but Arizona
number seven. No, we are number seven, number four. We
need to really really work hard and we need to
bring this victim count down a lot, and again, scam
(12:53):
prevention through education is really the best way that Rose
believes in order to start making a dent in these numbers.
So let's see how much money those sixty six hundred
and eighty three victims loss. The overall state statistics with
the losses by state is the next chart I'm going
(13:15):
to show. And that one we are number six. You
can see California's number one, Texas, Florida, and they're New York.
So New York was it was interesting. New York was
number six in number of victims, but they are number
four in number of losses, where Arizona was number four
(13:40):
in number of victims, and we are Arizona is number
six in amount of losses one hundred and ninety million dollars. Now,
if you remember when we've talked about this before, in
twenty twenty, the sixty plus residents of Arizona that reported
(14:04):
they were a victim, it was twenty seven million dollars,
and then it went to fifty four million in twenty
twenty one, then eighty three million in twenty twenty two,
one hundred and twenty eight million in twenty and twenty three.
Now we're up to one hundred and ninety million dollars
that was reported lost.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
This is.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
People's life savings, and you know, whatever the scam is,
it's devastating. The scammers exploit their victims emotions and get
them to make rash decisions based on emotions, because we
know that if we were making a decision based on
(14:48):
rational thought, there's a very good chance we would not
have done what the scammer had asked us to do.
So scammers are getting much much better, and they're going
to continue to get better because you can see the
amount of money that they are making. Just to give
(15:12):
you an idea for all age populations that reported they
were a victim in twenty twenty four, I believe the
total losses were sixteen point six billion dollars, up from
about twelve and a half billion.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
I believe it wasn't twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
So.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Lots of money out there. These scammers are making billions
and billions, if not close to trillions of dollars. They
are going to just continue to evolve their techniques, perfect
their techniques. They're changing and adapting to all this new
technology that's coming out right. We've talked about artificial intelligence.
(15:55):
They have figured out how to use it to their
advantage with the using the generative text like chat GBT
to create their emails, to create their letters.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
And yes, they.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Will still send stuff in the mail, not as much
as they used to, but they still do. And so
the bad grammar part of it, you really can't look
for that anymore.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
But they also use the deep fakes with the videos.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Where in the romance scam they wouldn't come on camera
because they knew what they look like wasn't like the
pictures that they'd been sending you, so they wouldn't come
on camera. Well, now they can make that. They can
make it seem like you are actually talking to the
person in the pictures when it's really them behind it.
And then THEDEO of the audio they need and I'm
(16:45):
not exactly sure how much, but I think it's around
fifteen twenty second audio recording of someone's voice and they
can get all the different fluctuations in the voice to
then turn around and make that voice say what they
wanted to say. So you get a call. And with
the Grandparents scam, remember when they first started that, they
(17:07):
didn't even know if you had grandchildren. Well, then they
were able to figure that out through a variety of
different tools online and then what your grandkid's names were.
But then a lot of people would say, well, I
knew it wasn't my grandchild because it wasn't their voice. Well,
now with this AI voice recording, the voice sounds like
(17:28):
your grandchild, which makes it even more difficult to decipher
what's going on and get you into that emotional state
of fear for your grandchild that you want to do
whatever's possible as quick as possible to help them out
without stopping to think. So you can see from all
this money that they're making that they aren't going to stop.
(17:50):
They're going to keep perfecting. So this scam prevention through
education program that Rose has is of the utmost importance.
And it's not just having it won. It needs to
be at a minimum once a year. You know, some
places might want to have it twice a year, but
a minimum of once a year. And then we have
(18:10):
a wide variety of ways that you can keep up
to date on things through social media, through newsletters, through
this radio show, lots of different ways. So one of
the things they put in this annual report is the
cryptocurrency fraud for twenty twenty four and I wanted to
(18:33):
share this this this page with you guys, and this
is for these statistics are for all of the age populations.
You can see the different age ranges. In the middle
there under complaints referencing cryptocurrency. And this is going to
be when somebody files a complaint and they said they
(18:56):
have either invested in cryptocurrency or they paid in cryptocurrency.
The crime involves cryptocurrency somehow.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
So at the.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Top there was just under one hundred and fifty thousand
complaints totally nine point three billion in losses, so that
was a sixty six percent increase in losses from twenty
twenty three. And the largest age group for these losses
(19:30):
the sixty plus population. If you look at that table,
you know the the under twenty was seven million. Then
we get up to the twenty to twenty nine is
three hundred and seventy million. Thirty to thirty nine, it
gets a little higher at just over a billion forty
to age forty to forty nine is about half of
(19:54):
what the sixty plus population, and then age fifty to
fifty nine is a little lower than the forties, just
over or just under one point two million, but the
sixty plus population two point eight million dollars in cryptocurrency.
And you can look at the graph below, so the
(20:15):
red bars vertical bars are the amount of losses and
you can see the look at how little those how
small those red bars are in twenty seventeen, which is
the first one, eighteen nineteen twenty, then it starts to
creep up in twenty one. It pretty much doubles in
twenty two, goes up a little bit more in twenty three,
(20:38):
and now look at this big jump in twenty twenty
four and then the it looks green on the screen,
but the line and that's the amount of the number
of complaints. So again it's shot up from twenty seventeen
to eighteen, and then it kind of mad steady from
(21:01):
eighteen to nineteen to twenty to twenty one, and then
it starts going up again in twenty two and twenty
three it goes up a little bit, but then it
shoots way up for twenty twenty four. So this is
a cryptocurrency is has really come into play as a
way that scammers want their money. And my understanding is
(21:25):
with cryptocurrency is that when it first came out, it
was pretty much anonymous, hence why the scammers liked it
won they could get their money quickly, But then they
also it was anonymous, so it made made it really
difficult for law enforcement to try to find them. But
my understanding is over these recent years is that with
(21:48):
new technology available that law enforcement is able to that
these crypto wallets are not as anonymous as they were,
and law enforcement has better tools available to them to
be able to find the criminals behind these crypto wallets.
So just big thing to remember with cryptocurrency. If anybody
(22:10):
asks you to pay in cryptocurrency, the answer is no.
The only way you should be putting money through cryptocurrency
is if you are in fact investing in cryptocurrency. But
then you want to make sure that you have researched
the cryptocurrency, you are comfortable with it, you know the
(22:34):
risk involved, and that if you are going through a broker,
you are using a reputable broker, and you are using
a reputable cryptocurrency fund. I know they have a lot
of different types. I don't even want to begin. I
don't even know Bitcoin is one that I know it
(22:55):
comes to mind, but I know there's a ton of
other ones. So you really have to do your research,
and you really have to be working with reputable cryptocurrency
funds and reputable people in the cryptocurrency world.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
But if somebody is asking for.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Payment for something in cryptocurrency, no, the hair on the
back of your neck should be going up.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
That's a scam.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
So another table that the IC three put in was
Cryptocurrency in Fraud trends to kind of see the different
types of scams that are prevalent with cryptocurrency, and one
is cryptocurrency currency investment. We talked about a couple slides
(23:43):
ago about how the investment fraud was as far as
the number of law the amount of losses was the
number one with the sixty plus population. Well, if you
look at this cryptocurrency investment schemes, the over sixty was
one point six billion dollars out of that two point
(24:04):
eight that we talked about on the on the page before.
So in the end, the FBI has actually put out
a warning because they've seen spikes in these cryptocurrency investment schemes.
One of them, which is the pig butchering one that
we talked about just a little bit ago. Another one
(24:26):
is the cryptocurrency ATMs in Kiosks. Now we've talked about
that as well, where the scammer wants you to, you know,
send the money via these cryptocurrency ATMs. There was the
sixty plus population there were They lost over one hundred
and seven million dollars with that, and again there's a
(24:48):
warning down there, The FBI warns of fraudulent schemes leveraging
cryptocurrency ATMs or QR codes to facilitate payments. So breaking
that down even farther, the crime types most associated with
cryptoatm use tech support. Now, that was the second most
(25:10):
losses in the sixty plus population a couple of slides ago,
So there was over one hundred and seven million dollars
in tech support that was paid through a cryptocurrency ATM.
Now they also have extortion and an investment and government
and personation in there as well, but by far tech
support is the largest. And then down at the bottom
(25:34):
they have the extortion and sextortion by age group and
basically that's malicious actors manipulating photos and videos to create
explicit content content and sexual or let me start that over.
Malicious actors manipulating photos and videos to create explicit content
(25:57):
and sextortion schemes there is for the over sixty it
was the out of all the age groups lost the
most money with that's over seven hundred and twenty four
million dollars. So wide variety of crimes and where cryptocurrency
was the median in order to pay pay money over.
(26:20):
So that's that's what I'm Those are the IC three
schedules that I wanted to go over with you today.
If you want to look at the whole report, it's
all one report this year. There is no separate elder
fraud report. It's at I isn't as an igloo c
as in KAT the number three dot gov and just
(26:41):
click on two thousand reports in twenty twenty four and
it'll take you right to the report. But there isn't
a public service announcement that the FBI had put out
on August second of twenty twenty four. I know it's
like nine months old almost yeah, it's about nine months old,
(27:02):
but I still wanted to bring it to everybody's attention
because and it's a safety concern related to recent trends
in financial institution customer fraud scheme. So scammers are impersonating
bank representatives to fraudulently obtain bank cards with the chips.
(27:23):
So remember when we all first started with credit cards
and debit cards, it was just the magnetic strip on
the back that you swiped, and then they were more
because that was not encrypted. They got more secure and
the cards have those little chips in them. This is
what this PSA is about those bank cards with those chips.
(27:45):
So the safety concern here is that the impersonators, which
are the scammers that are impersonating the bank representatives, are
hiring accomplices to come to the customer's home. So I'm
going to give you a little bit of background on
how the scheme works. So the bank customers are contacted
(28:06):
by phone from a number that caller ID indicates is
from their bank. So it's going to come across and
say you know that the scammers can make.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
It say whatever bank they want.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
That's going to come across, and then the scammer's going
to ask about recent transactions, which will lead the customer
to believe that there's fraudulent activity on their account because
they're just going to make up a bunch, you know,
different activity and you're going to be like, no, that
wasn't me, that's that's fraud. No, that wasn't me, right,
And so then the scammer advises the bank customers to
(28:41):
cut up their bank card, but are instructed to leave
the chip intact because it needs to come back to
the bank, So don't cut the part of the cart
up where the chip is. And then the scammer arranges
for an accomplice, but they are also allegedly from the bank.
(29:05):
They're posing as a bank employee to pick up the
bank card with the chip intact from the customer's residence.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
And if.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
The scammers do not have the customer's pin number for
their card, they will use social engineering techniques to obtain
this from the customer. We've talked a lot about social
engineering techniques. Right. They'll say they need to verify you
know that it's you they're talking to before they can
give any information out.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
And so.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
We need the pin on your card, right, kind of
like a two factor authentication, but it's your pin number
on the card. That's just one way that they could
try to get the pin number from you. But they're
very clever and crafty, so they'll have a variety of
different reasons that they'll give you. So then It's been
(30:04):
reported that if the customer has not already done so,
the accomplice that comes to the house to pick the
card up will assist the customer by cutting the card
and leaving the chip intact before they take the card
and the chip with them. Now, once the scammers have
(30:24):
this chip, that's all they need is the chip and
the pin number. They can steal funds from the customer
from the customer's bank account. So it does say in
this public service announcement that the impersonator. It's unknown how
the impersonators were obtaining personal information, bank account information, names, addresses,
(30:45):
all that, and it's believed at the time of August
of twenty four that no specific age demographics are being targeted.
So I thought this was just really important to get
that out there. Just know that if you get a
call or get any communication purporting to be from your bank,
(31:09):
you don't rely on any information that's given to you,
whether it's a text, a phone call, an email, something
in the mail. You call the banks, your bank's verified
phone number, or you actually go down to a banking
branch and talk to somebody about it. That's your way
to verify whether this information is accurate. Or not, and
(31:36):
just be very careful somebody wanting you to cut up
your card and then having somebody come pick it up
saying that the bank needs it because they have that
chip information and they have your pin number, they have
access to your account.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
And so that's another thing.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
If you end up getting a new say you get
a new debit card or you get a new bank
card in your cutting years up to throw away, make
sure you destroy the chip part in the card as well.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
You can.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
I'm sure you can always just take it to the
bank itself and they will destroy it, but you can
cut it up yourself.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
Or there's if you have a shredder.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
There's a lot of shredders now that have a specific
slot where you can put cards in there and it
shreds the cards. But you want to make sure that
chip part of the card is destroyed. So that's all
I have for you today. Remember, if you want to
go look at the whole ice three twenty twenty four report,
you go to I so I as an indigo, C
(32:43):
isn't KAT three dot gov and go under I think
it's under like public reports and then annual report for
twenty twenty four. I also found this public service announcement
on their website as well. You could just search for
you know, public service FBI public service announcements and you'll
(33:05):
be able to find it. Next week, I'm going to
be off, but a guest host, Brian Watson, our community
outreach specialist, will be We'll be here hosting next Tuesday,
and he's going to be talking about how scams have
evolved back from you know, twenty twenty or so years ago,
(33:26):
how they started, and how they how they've evolved over
the years. So it's going to be a great show.
Make sure you tune in and listen to him next Tuesday,
and don't forget you can find more resources our social
media links and also sign up for our newsletters at
the bottom of the homepage. We send one in the
mail and we do one via email. Thank you for
(33:47):
joining me today.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Well that's all the knowledge for this episode. Juni in
every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on kfour HG
Radio at KFOURHD dot com as joy 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
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com