June 24, 2025 • 29 mins
Last week Brian Watson talked about phone scams and it is okay to hang up. Something we hear a lot is - I do not answer the phone unless I know who it is as scammers do not leave voicemails. Or do they?
We are starting to hear from people that scammers are in fact leaving voicemails now and wanting you to call back. Of course they always give you the number to call.
Tune in to learn more about how scammers have evolved with phone scams.
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.
We are starting to hear from people that scammers are in fact leaving voicemails now and wanting you to call back. Of course they always give you the number to call.
Tune in to learn more about how scammers have evolved with phone scams.
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. 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,
(01:05):
and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips
on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And
now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hi, everyone, it's good to be back.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly.
You can find more information on our website at Roseadvocacy
dot org. Scroll down to the bottom of the homepage
and you can sign up for our mailed and or
emailed newsletters that we send out monthly. And with the
emailed newsletters, every Tuesday morning at nine point fifteen, you're
(01:44):
going to get a Tuesday tip in your email inbox.
It's going to have one tip. It's going to have
a tip about a specific area, something you already are
familiar with. Then you can just bypass it. But the
part of the reason why we do it not only
to get tips out, but we do it because it's
a it's a gentle reminder to always be on the
(02:06):
lookout for scams, and getting that every week is going
to remind you every week and then at some you
know some of them you're not going to be familiar
with on these tips, and so you're going to learn
some new information that you can incorporate into your daily life.
So a couple of weeks ago, when the last time
I was on, we talked about how to tell if
(02:27):
a website was a good website or not. And since then,
I've come across another website that I just wanted to
show you really quickly, so I'm going to share my
screen here, I mean just a minute, so you all
(02:48):
should see this this and you know they can. You
can look here the biggest data, biggest database of scam.
They give you a lot of information. They have some
other educational information on scan trends, scam alerts. But what
you can do up here where it says search a website.
(03:11):
I just put in Amazon dot Com. Everybody's familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
But just for.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Searching, it's going to verify that I'm a human here.
This should only take a second. There we go verification successful.
I Uh, everybody knows it's a good website. Trust score
(03:41):
one hundred out of one hundred. The nice thing about
it is you can look at community reviews and you
can look at what does Amazon dot Com have? Why
does they have an average to good trust score? And
it's going to tell you detailed analysis if you want,
click here, it's going to have positive highlights, negative highlights.
(04:01):
But you can go up here to this trust score
where it says what is this and you can click
on that and it's going to give you.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
It's going to give you.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Information about how they do their domain trust rating to
get to their trust scores positive indicators. Scroll down, they're
going to tell you some negative indicators. Just a bunch
of different informations. So it's another way for you to
(04:34):
another avenue for you to check out a website if
you're not familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
But the.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Last week Brian Watson was here, sorry about that, and
he talked about it is okay to hang up on scammers,
and that is definitely a good thing to do. If
you do happen to answer the phone and you realize
that it's a scammer, it's not who they say they are.
(05:07):
Don't worry about being rude. I know we all, you know,
those of us that are older, we've been taught that
it's rude to hang up on people.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Don't worry about it. It's not rude.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
They're being rude to begin with, trying to trick you
and exploit your emotions to take your money. So hang
up on them. If you do engage and realize, you
know that it is and then you realize that it's
a scammer.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And I've heard.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
From people, multiple people you know, over the years, but
recently I've started hearing this again and so I started
checking it out.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Is a lot of people will say.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
We only answer, you know, the calls from people we know,
which is a good thing to do. But then it'll
be they'll say that, well, scammers don't leave voicemails. Well,
I've been hearing from quite a few people that scammers
are leaving voicemails, and especially with the advent of artificial
(06:11):
intelligence and scammers really embracing the artificial intelligence. We've talked
about that before, with like the chat GBT, you know
that can that can take out the bad grammar. So
when you're reading that email, that text message, you get
something in the mail, you know, whatever it is, and
you're like, oh, wow, you know this is unexpected. I
(06:33):
didn't know this. Oh but the grammar's really good. There's
no bad grammar, so maybe this is legit. Well, chat
GBT helps them figure out how to write in good grammar.
And then there's the you know, the the deep fakes
with the videos. You know, we've talked about that. We're
like on romance scams, they would never want to come
(06:54):
on camera before because they didn't look anything like what
their fake profile that they purporting to be in any
pictures they were sending you, they didn't look like that,
so they didn't want to come on camera. They always
had an excuse. Well, now through the artificial intelligence, they
can make that video look like whoever it is, you know,
(07:15):
look like the person in the pictures that they're sending
you or that's on their fake profile.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
But yet they're still engaging with you. It looks real.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
They're talking to you, you know, they're behind it, talking
and saying everything. So, but there's also the voice cloning,
and they only need I've heard from some people ten seconds.
I've heard from others fifteen to twenty seconds.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I think it's.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Somewhere in there, but it's a short amount of a
recording of someone's voice is all they need to then
manipulate that voice to say whatever the scammer wants that
voice to say. And so we equated that to like
the grandparents scams, where when they first started they had
(08:02):
no clue if you had grandkids. Well, then through a
lot of online information and a lot of hacks and
breaches of companies and getting that information on your personal information,
they're able to figure out, you know, your grandkid's names.
Well then it was like, well, yeah, they had the name,
but the voice didn't sound like my grandkids, so I
(08:23):
knew it was a scam. Well, now with this voice cloning,
that voice can sound exactly like your grandchild. But they're
also doing it to make it sound like the voice
is coming from a reputable company. Could be a company
that you've actually, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Done bit business with.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
It could be one of your utility companies, it could
be a bank, and they're making it all the more believable.
And when you don't answer the phone and it goes
to voicemail, well then they're leaving these voicemails that sound
very believable and very reputable that they are in fact
(09:05):
these companies. There was an article that I found from
the beginning of the year from Fox five in New York.
It was published on January twenty eighth, twenty twenty five.
AI voicemail scams on the rise. What you need to know,
and that's exactly what they're talking about, is how they've
(09:25):
begun using incredibly realistic sounding AI generated voices and voicemails
to conduct the schemes like offering fake loan approvals or
tax forgiveness or saying that you haven't paid your bill
or things like that.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
And the FBI estimates that.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
About twelve billion dollars is lost annually to cyber crimes
or cyber scams, I should say, and that this new
method of this AI generated voicemails is only adding in
adding to the problem. And it goes on to say,
unlike traditional phone scams that often had telltale signs like
(10:07):
accents or poor grammar, AI has enabled to has enabled
scammers to produce polished, convincing messages that are harder to
identify as fake.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
You know, so how do they get how do they
get people's voices?
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Well, if you think about it, one way is if
your voice so on your voicemail greeting, if you have
customized it and used your voice on the greed on
your voicemail greeting, well they can get it from that.
So if you have used your voice there, you might
want to seriously consider going and changing that to the
(10:43):
default message that just would normally, you know, be a
computer voice that whatever your carrier has. And I think
there's I don't know if the carrier has these things
or if it's different apps that you get where you
can make them sound like, you know, they have.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
An accent and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But anyways, just seriously consider not using your voice for
that voicemail greeting. And then, you know, there's a lot
of if you're on social media and you do a video,
you know your voice is on that video. You know,
there's just a lot of different ways if you are
you could be maybe you're doing videos for your company
(11:26):
and everything's legit and stuff, and those videos are on
the company's website, you know, the they can find those
on the company's website and stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
So you just want to be.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Careful wherever your voice is out there. But I did,
Actually I'm going to share. I'm going to pull up
a screenshot here that I took. I was on LinkedIn
the other day and this gentleman here, Thomas Lap. He's
(11:58):
a daily money money man helping you manage household finances.
One of his clients received a voicemail and it was
a scammer. And he goes on here to say that
it says, Hi, Comcast Exfinity calling. Due to continued silence,
we have removed your fifty percent discount and are preparing
(12:20):
one thousand dollars account penalty. This charge will be locked
into your next bill if you don't call back on
the number showing on your caller ID right now. And
we've talked about emotions before how scams exploit your emotions.
If you remember from a number of weeks back in
the beginning of the show, we talked about the anatomy
(12:40):
of a scam where they had the contact and so
here they contacted via phone, no one answered, so they
left a voicemail, and the second part was creating that
compelling reason to act, which is where your emotions come
into play. And so based on what they're saying in
this message, and you can scro you can look down
(13:01):
here to what Thomas has said, urgency right call back now.
Scammers don't want you to think about what you're being
told to do. And you know that is exactly correct.
Is it's urgent. Everything with scammers is urgent. They want
you to call back right now because they know if
(13:23):
they can keep the longer they keep you in this
emotional state, the more apt they are to get what
they want, which is your money. The longer time you
have thinking about this and not engaging with that scammer,
you're more apt to be go into your rational state
of mind and realize, Okay, well I don't have to
(13:47):
call back now.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Let me think about this.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Let me, you know, if I am a Comcast Exfinity customer,
let me pull out one of my previous statements from
Comcast Exfinity and let me call the customer service phone
number on that statement, or go to the website that
is listed on that statement and I can check things
out there with my account or talk to a customer
(14:12):
service person there and check things out and find out
if this is accurate or not. If you're not a
Comcast Infinity customer, well then you know right off the bat,
you know that this was that this was a scam.
But there's there's more emotions that they're exploiting here. Fear right,
they've put this account penalty in there, We've removed.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Your fifty percent discount.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Now, who wouldn't want a fifty percent discount on services
or products? I mean that's a substantial discount. We all
love to save money and get discounts where we can. Well,
adding that thousand dollars account penalty is going to instill fear.
It's a power, Like Thomas said here, it's a powerful emotion.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Humans want to.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Avoid fear, and a lot of us, older adults, you know,
we've been we we pay our bills on time. We
don't like to we don't like to have outstanding items
out there. We want to keep things current and we
want to keep things in good standing. So we would
be more apt to want to engage with this and
(15:23):
due to exploiting your your emotion of fear and wanting
to make sure that your account stays in good standing.
A third one he recognizes here anxiety, It says due
to continued silence. So did you, as Thomas said here,
did you do something wrong? Should you have should you
(15:47):
have picked up the phone and answered the phone call?
Was that the correct thing to do? So there's you know,
there's fears here, there's anxiety, there's urgency, all kinds of things,
all kinds of emotions that they're trying to get you
to call them right now to get this taken care of. Okay,
(16:10):
So just remember that we had those three tips right
be aware of your emotions, which is great, but when
you're in that emotional state, it's very difficult to be
aware of your emotions. So always have that trusted friend
that you can talk to about anything, because a lot
(16:34):
of times you hear yourself talk about the situation out loud,
and you get out of that emotional state and you
all of a sudden go, okay, wait, I figured this out.
This doesn't make any sense. I've got it.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Or maybe you're still in that emotional state.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Maybe you're still exhibiting some fear or some anxiety in
this instance, and it's going to take your friend in
their rational state to talk to you about it, ask
you questions, get you to understand that this is really
a scam, or get you to say, hey, you know,
let's pull out one of your Comcast expanity statements that
you have, or if you keep them all online, you know,
(17:10):
pull it up. If you have an online account set
up with them, log into your online account the way
you normally would, and let's look at our Let's look
at the account and see what's going on. And if
we still have questions like okay, well maybe it hasn't post.
The penalty hasn't posted yet, So let's find the customer
service number on the online account and call them and
(17:34):
find out what's going on. Your trusted person's going to
be able to help you do that and doing those things,
finding the verified customer service number, logging onto your online
account the way you normally would, getting onto the company's
verified website. That is your way to verify the situation,
the voicemail, all of that stuff, the phone number to
(17:57):
verify it before you can even be in to trust
that that message was actually true.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
There is Let me get to another item here. Hang
on a second.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
I did some searching on voicemail scams just on Google,
and I came across Better Business Bureau, which I think
a lot of people know about the Better Business Bureau,
but they have what's called a scam tracker, and I
just went in since i'm it automatically came up Chandler Arizona,
which is by me. You can put in really you know,
(18:40):
any city and state you want in here, or you
could have it look up all of the United States.
But I went into this all fields here and I
just typed in voicemails because it's already a scam tracker,
so I didn't need to put scams in. But I
just typed in voicemails and you'll.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
See here.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
There's over fifteen hundred search results related to voicemails and scams,
and so the latest one was just I believe today's
the twenty fourth. It was yesterday. So they receive and
this is where people they either do it online or
(19:21):
they call in and report whether they've lost money or not.
They've reported that they've received something that they feel as
a scam. And this one in particular, you know several
calls from a private number stating there's a claim against
me and ready to be filed through my county, and
then they needed to call this number. And they have
called my parents several times and have left voicemails stating
(19:43):
they will send someone to my home to schedule a
court date. Now that's that can be scary. You know,
when you to make you want to call that number
because you don't want just anybody coming by your home
and the court date. You know a lot of people
they I don't want to go to court. Another one
(20:04):
labeled fishing. This location was in New York, but she
sent me an email which got forward into compliance. She
left me voicemails.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Again.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
That was on June twentieth. Another one on June twentieth,
I had two voicemails from somebody claiming to be James
Anderson stating he was from Easy Money and I need
to contact them in regards to a loan.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
He had my full name and last.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Ford digits of my sole security number. Here's another one
on June seventeenth. They've called from several numbers and they
leave several voicemails to this and they go on to
tell you the details of what's in the voicemails, you know,
clearing out people's personal information that you can just see here.
(20:52):
How many come up current once. This is just in
the last week, last couple of weeks this month in June.
There's another one on June thirteenth, voicemails left for family
and contact person stating looking to serve legal documents. Here's
a debt collections Harvey and Harvey Law Firm. Have no
idea if that is even a valid law firm. If
(21:15):
it is, then the scammers are impersonating that law firm.
So they said, they call continuously about a fraudulent person.
They make it as though this person is missing important
dates such as court being served. If you call, they
behave ridiculously, which let me know they're not a lawyer's office.
They lied about having caller ID. You know this person
(21:39):
actually did call back and engaged so and if you
click over here on this air, on this arrow here,
it'll it'll give you the rest of the information that
was in Cedar Hill, Texas. Here's a phishing Venmo scam,
you know, getting several calls from unknown numbers leaving voicemails
pretending to be Venmo. They say someone's trying to change
(22:01):
my password and asked me to press one. If it
wasn't me, this person said, I've not asked to change
the password, but instead of pressing one, they contacted Venmo
and Venmo said no one has attempted to change the
password in her or in their account. It seems like
the scammers are looking for me to do so over
(22:22):
a call and learn my password that way, and that's
exactly that is very possible. They might also be asking
for other information, but this person did. This was their
way of verifying. They did not press one like the voice,
you know, the voicemail, or call the number back. If
(22:44):
they engaged with the call pressing one, they went and
contacted Venmo directly, which that's their way to verify whether
someone is actually trying to change the password to their account.
Here's one where they ordered a knee grace through a
website and completed the order using PayPal. Let's see, showed
(23:07):
two other items that they didn't order. This is one.
Maybe that was it said. I think the consumer left
the voicemail. It wasn't necessarily a scammer calling them lending
tree imposter. This one, they got a text message for
a five thousand dollars loan with a monthly payment during
(23:29):
that conversation, so they engaged with the text message. They
asked for the routing number and account number and the
username and password to the bank account. So there's a
lot of If you look at here, looks like there's
about eight to ten on this page and we're only
(23:51):
back to May thirtieth, and look how many pages there are,
one hundred and fifty one pages of all these different
complaints filed with a Better Business. Here's one receiving voicemails
from somebody claiming to be Brian Baker stating they're trying
to reach this person's mother. This was in Washington, so
(24:11):
this is all over the United States. Let me see,
here's one from ETNA. Their scammer made several phone calls
and left several voicemails claiming to be from ETNA, and
they list the person's whole name and the voicemail, And
(24:32):
that person works for a university system that did switch
to using ETNA for insurance the past year. So that
could be very believable when you get that voicemail because
they did use ETNA. But it looks like this person
either went directly through their company or contacted ETNA, probably
(24:53):
with the phone number that's on their insurance card to
check things out here, left a voice mail to call
this number to avoid legal action, debt collections. They just
the reasons run the gamut. But just know scammers are
(25:13):
leaving voicemails. I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing here,
so just know that scammers are leaving voicemails.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Again. This is the way they evolve.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
They evolve their tactics, their techniques. They might evolve techniques
with a particular scam to catch people off guard. They
might take some tactics from one scam and tactics from
another scam, mesh them together and come up with a
whole new scam. They are constantly evolving what they're doing,
(25:52):
they are making and we've talked about this recently in
the last month when the statistics came out from the
FBI's ICEE three report for twenty twenty four. They are
making billions and billions of dollars every year on these scams,
and that's just what's reported. So they are constantly evolving.
(26:14):
They're perfecting their techniques to keep everybody on their toes.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
So don't assume.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
That because they left a voice because you have a voicemail,
that it is accurate that it is from the actual
company or person that the voicemail is purporting to be from.
You still need to check things out. Remember that verify
before you can trust. Call the person with their verified
(26:44):
phone number. Call the company with a verified phone number,
log onto the company's your account with that company the
way you normally would go on to the company's verified website.
Check things out for yourself, and do not just all
the phone number that's in the call history from the
voicemail or any phone number or information that is given
(27:07):
in the voicemail before you engage. Check things out. Verify, Verify, verify.
This is all used to protect yourself. So that's all
I have for today. It's a short one today, but
very important information. Thank you Thomas for posting that on LinkedIn.
(27:29):
We don't see and we don't know everything that's out there,
and so we like to hear from you guys, whether
we get an email, whether we see it on social media.
You know, you tag us on social media, comment on
one of our posts about a situation that you might
have encountered. We love to hear that information because we liked.
We then take that information and we get it out
(27:52):
to people, whether we do it on this radio show,
we do it on social media, we do it in
the newsletters or a comp nation, or all of the above.
We have a lot of different avenues to get information
out and we want to hear from you your experiences
with the scams, whether you have lost money or not
(28:14):
engaged with the scammer or not. We want to hear
what you guys are getting so we can stay abreast
as to what's going on out there and not have
to wait maybe six months twelve months down the road
for somebody to be reporting on it, or to get
a public service announcement from a government agency, or to
(28:34):
see it in the statistics. So let us know our information.
You know, our website is Rosadvocacy dot org. We've got
to contact us form on there down at the bottom
and again down scroll down to the bottom of the homepage,
you can sign up for our mailed and or emailed
newsletter that we send out monthly. And with the emailed
newsletter you will get what we call a Tip Tuesday
(28:57):
every Tuesday morning at nine to fifty tea Arizona time.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
It'll go out. It kind of mirrors.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
What you also you see those Tip Tuesdays on Facebook
and LinkedIn and Instagram as well. And don't forget to
subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can find all of
our past episodes on our YouTube channel at Roseadvocacy.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
And tune in every week you don't.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Want to miss an episode of Let's Talk About Scams
where we share a lot of valuable information.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Well, that's all the knowledge for this episode. June in
every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHD Radio
at KFOURHD dot com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge.
So you have the power to make scam protection your
healthy habit and until then, feel free to reach out
to Joyce and Let's Talk about Scams
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. 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,
(01:05):
and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips
on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And
now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hi, everyone, it's good to be back.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly.
You can find more information on our website at Roseadvocacy
dot org. Scroll down to the bottom of the homepage
and you can sign up for our mailed and or
emailed newsletters that we send out monthly. And with the
emailed newsletters, every Tuesday morning at nine point fifteen, you're
(01:44):
going to get a Tuesday tip in your email inbox.
It's going to have one tip. It's going to have
a tip about a specific area, something you already are
familiar with. Then you can just bypass it. But the
part of the reason why we do it not only
to get tips out, but we do it because it's
a it's a gentle reminder to always be on the
(02:06):
lookout for scams, and getting that every week is going
to remind you every week and then at some you
know some of them you're not going to be familiar
with on these tips, and so you're going to learn
some new information that you can incorporate into your daily life.
So a couple of weeks ago, when the last time
I was on, we talked about how to tell if
(02:27):
a website was a good website or not. And since then,
I've come across another website that I just wanted to
show you really quickly, so I'm going to share my
screen here, I mean just a minute, so you all
(02:48):
should see this this and you know they can. You
can look here the biggest data, biggest database of scam.
They give you a lot of information. They have some
other educational information on scan trends, scam alerts. But what
you can do up here where it says search a website.
(03:11):
I just put in Amazon dot Com. Everybody's familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
But just for.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Searching, it's going to verify that I'm a human here.
This should only take a second. There we go verification successful.
I Uh, everybody knows it's a good website. Trust score
(03:41):
one hundred out of one hundred. The nice thing about
it is you can look at community reviews and you
can look at what does Amazon dot Com have? Why
does they have an average to good trust score? And
it's going to tell you detailed analysis if you want,
click here, it's going to have positive highlights, negative highlights.
(04:01):
But you can go up here to this trust score
where it says what is this and you can click
on that and it's going to give you.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
It's going to give you.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Information about how they do their domain trust rating to
get to their trust scores positive indicators. Scroll down, they're
going to tell you some negative indicators. Just a bunch
of different informations. So it's another way for you to
(04:34):
another avenue for you to check out a website if
you're not familiar with it.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
But the.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Last week Brian Watson was here, sorry about that, and
he talked about it is okay to hang up on scammers,
and that is definitely a good thing to do. If
you do happen to answer the phone and you realize
that it's a scammer, it's not who they say they are.
(05:07):
Don't worry about being rude. I know we all, you know,
those of us that are older, we've been taught that
it's rude to hang up on people.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Don't worry about it. It's not rude.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
They're being rude to begin with, trying to trick you
and exploit your emotions to take your money. So hang
up on them. If you do engage and realize, you
know that it is and then you realize that it's
a scammer.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And I've heard.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
From people, multiple people you know, over the years, but
recently I've started hearing this again and so I started
checking it out.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Is a lot of people will say.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
We only answer, you know, the calls from people we know,
which is a good thing to do. But then it'll
be they'll say that, well, scammers don't leave voicemails. Well,
I've been hearing from quite a few people that scammers
are leaving voicemails, and especially with the advent of artificial
(06:11):
intelligence and scammers really embracing the artificial intelligence. We've talked
about that before, with like the chat GBT, you know
that can that can take out the bad grammar. So
when you're reading that email, that text message, you get
something in the mail, you know, whatever it is, and
you're like, oh, wow, you know this is unexpected. I
(06:33):
didn't know this. Oh but the grammar's really good. There's
no bad grammar, so maybe this is legit. Well, chat
GBT helps them figure out how to write in good grammar.
And then there's the you know, the the deep fakes
with the videos. You know, we've talked about that. We're
like on romance scams, they would never want to come
(06:54):
on camera before because they didn't look anything like what
their fake profile that they purporting to be in any
pictures they were sending you, they didn't look like that,
so they didn't want to come on camera. They always
had an excuse. Well, now through the artificial intelligence, they
can make that video look like whoever it is, you know,
(07:15):
look like the person in the pictures that they're sending
you or that's on their fake profile.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
But yet they're still engaging with you. It looks real.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
They're talking to you, you know, they're behind it, talking
and saying everything. So, but there's also the voice cloning,
and they only need I've heard from some people ten seconds.
I've heard from others fifteen to twenty seconds.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I think it's.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Somewhere in there, but it's a short amount of a
recording of someone's voice is all they need to then
manipulate that voice to say whatever the scammer wants that
voice to say. And so we equated that to like
the grandparents scams, where when they first started they had
(08:02):
no clue if you had grandkids. Well, then through a
lot of online information and a lot of hacks and
breaches of companies and getting that information on your personal information,
they're able to figure out, you know, your grandkid's names.
Well then it was like, well, yeah, they had the name,
but the voice didn't sound like my grandkids, so I
(08:23):
knew it was a scam. Well, now with this voice cloning,
that voice can sound exactly like your grandchild. But they're
also doing it to make it sound like the voice
is coming from a reputable company. Could be a company
that you've actually, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Done bit business with.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
It could be one of your utility companies, it could
be a bank, and they're making it all the more believable.
And when you don't answer the phone and it goes
to voicemail, well then they're leaving these voicemails that sound
very believable and very reputable that they are in fact
(09:05):
these companies. There was an article that I found from
the beginning of the year from Fox five in New York.
It was published on January twenty eighth, twenty twenty five.
AI voicemail scams on the rise. What you need to know,
and that's exactly what they're talking about, is how they've
(09:25):
begun using incredibly realistic sounding AI generated voices and voicemails
to conduct the schemes like offering fake loan approvals or
tax forgiveness or saying that you haven't paid your bill
or things like that.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
And the FBI estimates that.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
About twelve billion dollars is lost annually to cyber crimes
or cyber scams, I should say, and that this new
method of this AI generated voicemails is only adding in
adding to the problem. And it goes on to say,
unlike traditional phone scams that often had telltale signs like
(10:07):
accents or poor grammar, AI has enabled to has enabled
scammers to produce polished, convincing messages that are harder to
identify as fake.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
You know, so how do they get how do they
get people's voices?
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Well, if you think about it, one way is if
your voice so on your voicemail greeting, if you have
customized it and used your voice on the greed on
your voicemail greeting, well they can get it from that.
So if you have used your voice there, you might
want to seriously consider going and changing that to the
(10:43):
default message that just would normally, you know, be a
computer voice that whatever your carrier has. And I think
there's I don't know if the carrier has these things
or if it's different apps that you get where you
can make them sound like, you know, they have.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
An accent and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
But anyways, just seriously consider not using your voice for
that voicemail greeting. And then, you know, there's a lot
of if you're on social media and you do a video,
you know your voice is on that video. You know,
there's just a lot of different ways if you are
you could be maybe you're doing videos for your company
(11:26):
and everything's legit and stuff, and those videos are on
the company's website, you know, the they can find those
on the company's website and stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
So you just want to be.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Careful wherever your voice is out there. But I did,
Actually I'm going to share. I'm going to pull up
a screenshot here that I took. I was on LinkedIn
the other day and this gentleman here, Thomas Lap. He's
(11:58):
a daily money money man helping you manage household finances.
One of his clients received a voicemail and it was
a scammer. And he goes on here to say that
it says, Hi, Comcast Exfinity calling. Due to continued silence,
we have removed your fifty percent discount and are preparing
(12:20):
one thousand dollars account penalty. This charge will be locked
into your next bill if you don't call back on
the number showing on your caller ID right now. And
we've talked about emotions before how scams exploit your emotions.
If you remember from a number of weeks back in
the beginning of the show, we talked about the anatomy
(12:40):
of a scam where they had the contact and so
here they contacted via phone, no one answered, so they
left a voicemail, and the second part was creating that
compelling reason to act, which is where your emotions come
into play. And so based on what they're saying in
this message, and you can scro you can look down
(13:01):
here to what Thomas has said, urgency right call back now.
Scammers don't want you to think about what you're being
told to do. And you know that is exactly correct.
Is it's urgent. Everything with scammers is urgent. They want
you to call back right now because they know if
(13:23):
they can keep the longer they keep you in this
emotional state, the more apt they are to get what
they want, which is your money. The longer time you
have thinking about this and not engaging with that scammer,
you're more apt to be go into your rational state
of mind and realize, Okay, well I don't have to
(13:47):
call back now.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Let me think about this.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Let me, you know, if I am a Comcast Exfinity customer,
let me pull out one of my previous statements from
Comcast Exfinity and let me call the customer service phone
number on that statement, or go to the website that
is listed on that statement and I can check things
out there with my account or talk to a customer
(14:12):
service person there and check things out and find out
if this is accurate or not. If you're not a
Comcast Infinity customer, well then you know right off the bat,
you know that this was that this was a scam.
But there's there's more emotions that they're exploiting here. Fear right,
they've put this account penalty in there, We've removed.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Your fifty percent discount.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Now, who wouldn't want a fifty percent discount on services
or products? I mean that's a substantial discount. We all
love to save money and get discounts where we can. Well,
adding that thousand dollars account penalty is going to instill fear.
It's a power, Like Thomas said here, it's a powerful emotion.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Humans want to.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Avoid fear, and a lot of us, older adults, you know,
we've been we we pay our bills on time. We
don't like to we don't like to have outstanding items
out there. We want to keep things current and we
want to keep things in good standing. So we would
be more apt to want to engage with this and
(15:23):
due to exploiting your your emotion of fear and wanting
to make sure that your account stays in good standing.
A third one he recognizes here anxiety, It says due
to continued silence. So did you, as Thomas said here,
did you do something wrong? Should you have should you
(15:47):
have picked up the phone and answered the phone call?
Was that the correct thing to do? So there's you know,
there's fears here, there's anxiety, there's urgency, all kinds of things,
all kinds of emotions that they're trying to get you
to call them right now to get this taken care of. Okay,
(16:10):
So just remember that we had those three tips right
be aware of your emotions, which is great, but when
you're in that emotional state, it's very difficult to be
aware of your emotions. So always have that trusted friend
that you can talk to about anything, because a lot
(16:34):
of times you hear yourself talk about the situation out loud,
and you get out of that emotional state and you
all of a sudden go, okay, wait, I figured this out.
This doesn't make any sense. I've got it.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Or maybe you're still in that emotional state.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Maybe you're still exhibiting some fear or some anxiety in
this instance, and it's going to take your friend in
their rational state to talk to you about it, ask
you questions, get you to understand that this is really
a scam, or get you to say, hey, you know,
let's pull out one of your Comcast expanity statements that
you have, or if you keep them all online, you know,
(17:10):
pull it up. If you have an online account set
up with them, log into your online account the way
you normally would, and let's look at our Let's look
at the account and see what's going on. And if
we still have questions like okay, well maybe it hasn't post.
The penalty hasn't posted yet, So let's find the customer
service number on the online account and call them and
(17:34):
find out what's going on. Your trusted person's going to
be able to help you do that and doing those things,
finding the verified customer service number, logging onto your online
account the way you normally would, getting onto the company's
verified website. That is your way to verify the situation,
the voicemail, all of that stuff, the phone number to
(17:57):
verify it before you can even be in to trust
that that message was actually true.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
There is Let me get to another item here. Hang
on a second.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
I did some searching on voicemail scams just on Google,
and I came across Better Business Bureau, which I think
a lot of people know about the Better Business Bureau,
but they have what's called a scam tracker, and I
just went in since i'm it automatically came up Chandler Arizona,
which is by me. You can put in really you know,
(18:40):
any city and state you want in here, or you
could have it look up all of the United States.
But I went into this all fields here and I
just typed in voicemails because it's already a scam tracker,
so I didn't need to put scams in. But I
just typed in voicemails and you'll.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
See here.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
There's over fifteen hundred search results related to voicemails and scams,
and so the latest one was just I believe today's
the twenty fourth. It was yesterday. So they receive and
this is where people they either do it online or
(19:21):
they call in and report whether they've lost money or not.
They've reported that they've received something that they feel as
a scam. And this one in particular, you know several
calls from a private number stating there's a claim against
me and ready to be filed through my county, and
then they needed to call this number. And they have
called my parents several times and have left voicemails stating
(19:43):
they will send someone to my home to schedule a
court date. Now that's that can be scary. You know,
when you to make you want to call that number
because you don't want just anybody coming by your home
and the court date. You know a lot of people
they I don't want to go to court. Another one
(20:04):
labeled fishing. This location was in New York, but she
sent me an email which got forward into compliance. She
left me voicemails.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Again.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
That was on June twentieth. Another one on June twentieth,
I had two voicemails from somebody claiming to be James
Anderson stating he was from Easy Money and I need
to contact them in regards to a loan.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
He had my full name and last.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Ford digits of my sole security number. Here's another one
on June seventeenth. They've called from several numbers and they
leave several voicemails to this and they go on to
tell you the details of what's in the voicemails, you know,
clearing out people's personal information that you can just see here.
(20:52):
How many come up current once. This is just in
the last week, last couple of weeks this month in June.
There's another one on June thirteenth, voicemails left for family
and contact person stating looking to serve legal documents. Here's
a debt collections Harvey and Harvey Law Firm. Have no
idea if that is even a valid law firm. If
(21:15):
it is, then the scammers are impersonating that law firm.
So they said, they call continuously about a fraudulent person.
They make it as though this person is missing important
dates such as court being served. If you call, they
behave ridiculously, which let me know they're not a lawyer's office.
They lied about having caller ID. You know this person
(21:39):
actually did call back and engaged so and if you
click over here on this air, on this arrow here,
it'll it'll give you the rest of the information that
was in Cedar Hill, Texas. Here's a phishing Venmo scam,
you know, getting several calls from unknown numbers leaving voicemails
pretending to be Venmo. They say someone's trying to change
(22:01):
my password and asked me to press one. If it
wasn't me, this person said, I've not asked to change
the password, but instead of pressing one, they contacted Venmo
and Venmo said no one has attempted to change the
password in her or in their account. It seems like
the scammers are looking for me to do so over
(22:22):
a call and learn my password that way, and that's
exactly that is very possible. They might also be asking
for other information, but this person did. This was their
way of verifying. They did not press one like the voice,
you know, the voicemail, or call the number back. If
(22:44):
they engaged with the call pressing one, they went and
contacted Venmo directly, which that's their way to verify whether
someone is actually trying to change the password to their account.
Here's one where they ordered a knee grace through a
website and completed the order using PayPal. Let's see, showed
(23:07):
two other items that they didn't order. This is one.
Maybe that was it said. I think the consumer left
the voicemail. It wasn't necessarily a scammer calling them lending
tree imposter. This one, they got a text message for
a five thousand dollars loan with a monthly payment during
(23:29):
that conversation, so they engaged with the text message. They
asked for the routing number and account number and the
username and password to the bank account. So there's a
lot of If you look at here, looks like there's
about eight to ten on this page and we're only
(23:51):
back to May thirtieth, and look how many pages there are,
one hundred and fifty one pages of all these different
complaints filed with a Better Business. Here's one receiving voicemails
from somebody claiming to be Brian Baker stating they're trying
to reach this person's mother. This was in Washington, so
(24:11):
this is all over the United States. Let me see,
here's one from ETNA. Their scammer made several phone calls
and left several voicemails claiming to be from ETNA, and
they list the person's whole name and the voicemail, And
(24:32):
that person works for a university system that did switch
to using ETNA for insurance the past year. So that
could be very believable when you get that voicemail because
they did use ETNA. But it looks like this person
either went directly through their company or contacted ETNA, probably
(24:53):
with the phone number that's on their insurance card to
check things out here, left a voice mail to call
this number to avoid legal action, debt collections. They just
the reasons run the gamut. But just know scammers are
(25:13):
leaving voicemails. I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing here,
so just know that scammers are leaving voicemails.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Again. This is the way they evolve.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
They evolve their tactics, their techniques. They might evolve techniques
with a particular scam to catch people off guard. They
might take some tactics from one scam and tactics from
another scam, mesh them together and come up with a
whole new scam. They are constantly evolving what they're doing,
(25:52):
they are making and we've talked about this recently in
the last month when the statistics came out from the
FBI's ICEE three report for twenty twenty four. They are
making billions and billions of dollars every year on these scams,
and that's just what's reported. So they are constantly evolving.
(26:14):
They're perfecting their techniques to keep everybody on their toes.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
So don't assume.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
That because they left a voice because you have a voicemail,
that it is accurate that it is from the actual
company or person that the voicemail is purporting to be from.
You still need to check things out. Remember that verify
before you can trust. Call the person with their verified
(26:44):
phone number. Call the company with a verified phone number,
log onto the company's your account with that company the
way you normally would go on to the company's verified website.
Check things out for yourself, and do not just all
the phone number that's in the call history from the
voicemail or any phone number or information that is given
(27:07):
in the voicemail before you engage. Check things out. Verify, Verify, verify.
This is all used to protect yourself. So that's all
I have for today. It's a short one today, but
very important information. Thank you Thomas for posting that on LinkedIn.
(27:29):
We don't see and we don't know everything that's out there,
and so we like to hear from you guys, whether
we get an email, whether we see it on social media.
You know, you tag us on social media, comment on
one of our posts about a situation that you might
have encountered. We love to hear that information because we liked.
We then take that information and we get it out
(27:52):
to people, whether we do it on this radio show,
we do it on social media, we do it in
the newsletters or a comp nation, or all of the above.
We have a lot of different avenues to get information
out and we want to hear from you your experiences
with the scams, whether you have lost money or not
(28:14):
engaged with the scammer or not. We want to hear
what you guys are getting so we can stay abreast
as to what's going on out there and not have
to wait maybe six months twelve months down the road
for somebody to be reporting on it, or to get
a public service announcement from a government agency, or to
(28:34):
see it in the statistics. So let us know our information.
You know, our website is Rosadvocacy dot org. We've got
to contact us form on there down at the bottom
and again down scroll down to the bottom of the homepage,
you can sign up for our mailed and or emailed
newsletter that we send out monthly. And with the emailed
newsletter you will get what we call a Tip Tuesday
(28:57):
every Tuesday morning at nine to fifty tea Arizona time.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
It'll go out. It kind of mirrors.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
What you also you see those Tip Tuesdays on Facebook
and LinkedIn and Instagram as well. And don't forget to
subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can find all of
our past episodes on our YouTube channel at Roseadvocacy.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
And tune in every week you don't.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Want to miss an episode of Let's Talk About Scams
where we share a lot of valuable information.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Well, that's all the knowledge for this episode. June in
every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHD Radio
at KFOURHD dot com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge.
So you have the power to make scam protection your
healthy habit and until then, feel free to reach out
to Joyce and Let's Talk about Scams
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