“We’re Not Dealing with Your Father’s Scammers Anymore”

Scams have changed so much over the past 20 years. Scammers are no longer lone wolves, but part of organized criminal gangs that will take everything you have. They are truly ruthless financial predators.

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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 at am
Pacific time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder

(01:05):
of Rose, and her guests will provide valuable insights and
practical tips on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams.
And now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Good morning, everybody, My name is Brian Watson. I am
with Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly, and I
have the pleasure for filling in for Joyce Petrowski today.
Today's episode is called We're Not Dealing with your Father's
Scammers Anymore, and I'm going to give you a perspective
of what I've seen over the last twenty or so

(01:42):
years in the scam prevention world. I love working part
time for Rose. We have a great team, starting with Joyce.
She's very passionate about preventing everyone from getting scammed, and
our focus is on older adults. And then we also
have an amazing board of directors and an advisory committee

(02:05):
and everybody is very passionate about preventing people from getting scammed.
So today I'm going to fill in and share just
like you said, Like I said, some of the things
that I've seen over the years. So I do a
lot of presentations for Roads. I've done over seventy presentations,
and you know, scam prevention is a very heavy topic,

(02:28):
so I try to put a little levity in my presentations.
You know, I let people know it's okay to laugh
a little bit because it's a heavy topic. We talk
about people losing their life savings and it's tragic, but
we want to have a little bit of humor just
to lighten the mood. So I always show a picture

(02:49):
of me from two thousand and four. It was a
picture from a small town newspaper in California. I was
an IRS special agent at the time, and I did
a presentation to a group of four hundred people. It's
hard to believe four hundred people came to listen to
my presentation, but I did my very best to tell

(03:11):
them what I was seeing from a federal law enforcement perspective.
So two thousand and four, did this presentation, and my
mom clipped the article. You know, that's what moms do.
They clipped newspaper articles. And I actually have right here
on my wall a picture. I actually have that article
and it's a picture of me from two thousand and four.

(03:33):
And the best part is I had no gray hair,
and that always gets a laugh from my older adult audience.
And the article talked about what I talked about in
my presentation, and there were three things kind of that
stuck out. One was identity theft. Is identity theft still
a problem? Absolutely, it always will be. I talked about

(03:56):
the Nigerian email scams, you know the prints. It says
they have some money or someone that's trying to is
holding money from some corrupt government agency and they want
to give you a little bit. And then actually talked
about phishing as well, basically fake emails trying to trick
you into providing personal information. So those three scams have

(04:19):
stood the test of time. They've been around for twenty
plus years. But when I look back at that presentation
from twenty years ago, things were so much simpler. Back then.
These scammers were not very organized, and in fact, they
weren't that good. A lot of times you could spot

(04:40):
the typos, weird airs, they there were too many clues.
But let's fast forward to twenty twenty five. The scammers
we're dealing with right now are organized. A lot of
them are part of organized criminal game. They're well funded.

(05:03):
They use scripts, meaning they read, they're like actors. They
have little pieces of paper in front of them, or
they have an app on their phone where they you know,
if the potential victim says this, then you say that,
and it's just not a fair fight. That's why I
titled this We're not dealing with your father's scammers anymore.

(05:26):
They're at the next level. If you get into the
ring with these folks, it is not fair. And I
guess the best way to describe who we're dealing with
right now is these scammers are ruthless financial predators. And
I don't use that term lightly when I say predator.

(05:47):
They you know, they're not going to physically kill you,
but they will not stop until they have every penny
that they can get from you. And they just don't care.
You know, a lot of these scam are coming from
other parts of the world, and they look at US
Americans as you know, rich, lazy people sitting around doing nothing,

(06:09):
you know, and they they don't care that they're taking
everyone's life savings. And if you watched last week, you
learn the numbers are really scary. The FBI's Elder Fraud
Report for twenty twenty four was released and Choice shared
those numbers. It's only getting worse. So we're here today

(06:30):
to toughen you up, to give you some information, let
you know what's out there, and you know, we don't
want anyone to get scammed. So the other thing looking
back at twenty years, so let's go back to two
thousand and four, we didn't have these things. We did
not have cell phones, you know, or smartphones. At least

(06:52):
there were cell phones out but basically can make phone
calls and do some really low level tech. But now
we all carry smartphones in our pockets or on our
purse or on our wrist, and basically these are portals
to all of our financial information and there's a trade off.

(07:15):
You know, we can get everything we want right here,
but we have to be careful because now everywhere we go,
someone could be sending us a phishing email or sending
us doing smishing, sending something versus via text message. And
then nowadays there's so many more ways that criminals can

(07:37):
get money from us. We have cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and other cryptos,
We have zel, we have PayPal, we have wire transfers
that are really easy, and the prepaid cards, so the
criminals have much more options, and a lot of times
they want to use a method that we're not used

(07:59):
to me personally, I don't own any cryptocurrency, but they
might convince us that you need to pay that jury
failure to show up for jury duty via a bitcoin
ATM and a lot of people are like, I haven't
never done that. I'm not familiar with that, so they
take advantage of that uncertainty. And then fast forward twenty

(08:21):
years to twenty twenty five. Everything now requires a username
and a password everything. I mean, there's very few things
you can do now just on paper anymore, and that's tough.
So we have an aging population that did not grow
up with technology combined with everything requires technology, and it's

(08:46):
absolutely a perfect situation for the criminals. Just to give
you an example, my mom recently moved to Arizona, and
we had to change all her accounts, you know, and
things like social Security and medicare things like that, and
everything requires a password and you have to log in

(09:07):
and you got to update it and this and that.
It's so complicated right now, and I really feel for
people who didn't grow up with technology. And so it's
a perfect situation for the criminals. And then the one
thing that we're very proud of at Rose is Bill
on our advisory committee created something called the Anatomy of

(09:29):
a Scam, And I know Joyce is highlighted it many times,
but it never hurts just to quickly review it. Most scams,
not all of them, but most scams follow a three
part process. So the scammers will contact you out of
the blue, and that's typically via text or email or

(09:53):
social media, you know, things like Facebook, Messenger or words
with friends or things like that, and they are not
calling to say hi. You know what do scammers want
to do. They want to give you a compelling reason
to act. They want you to make a bad, rushed decision.
So they'll tell you things like your bank account's been compromised,

(10:15):
or there's fraud associated with your Social Security account, or
your grandchild's in jail. Or they may come at a
different angle. They may say you've won a prize, you've
won the lottery, you've won the publishers clearing house sweepstakes.
But whatever method they use, they want you to not
be thinking clearly. They want to either to panic or

(10:38):
get excited emotions. They pray on your emotions. And then
scammers will always ask for payment, because that's what scammers do.
Scammers want money, Okay, so they're going to request payment.
So back in the olden days, it was checks and catch.
Things move real slow with that way. Now they have
real high speed things. We have the cryptocur and see,

(11:00):
we have the bitcoin, we have Zell PayPal, we have
wire transfers, prepaid cards, and I mean the scammers will
tell you to, you know, go get Google play cards
or Apple iTunes things or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
And then always with scammers, the urgency is their overarching theme.
When a scammer calls you up or messages you and
says you forgot to show up for jury duty, you
owe money, go down to the store by a prepaid card.
They keep you on the phone. Okay, that's how That's

(11:40):
how these scams work is urgency. They never ever say,
you know what, this is a big decision. Why don't
you think about it over the weekend and get back
to me on Monday and we'll talk, or you know,
talk to your attorney or your accountant or a good friend. No, no, no, no,
no no. They never do that. They're gonna Urgency is

(12:04):
their thing. So just remember scammers, they will lie to
you and take your money. That's even the most simplest thing.
If we were to do a two part anatomy of
a scam, that might be the other one. They're gonna
lie to you and take your money, and they will
take everything. Like I said at the beginning of today's podcast,
they are ruthless financial predators. They will take everything you have.

(12:27):
So how do you protect yourself? Well, number one, you
don't have to be nice. I'm giving you permission to
lie to the scammers. I call it a white life.
Just say, you know, if you're in a situation where
you're on the phone or someone's texting you and you
don't like the way it's going, you can hang up. Okay,

(12:49):
you don't have to be nice. And one of the
fraud prevention presentations I did recently, I did the presentation
with my friend Laura, who works at a local bank,
and she tells the story of a lady who is
being scammed over the phone. And the lady knew she
was being scammed, but she refused to hang up the phone.

(13:13):
Why because she told Laura, well, I didn't want to
be rude. Okay. So this lady was raised very well,
be nice to people on the phone, don't hang up,
don't be rude, but ended up costing her money. So
toughen yourself up. That means you're allowed to say no,

(13:35):
you're allowed to hang up, you're allowed to delete. Because
the advice that I want to send you home today
is is a few things. Okay, Time is your friend.
That means never feel rushed. Okay. Just the other day,
my mom had to pop up on her computer that
said she had viruses, and my mom paused. She didn't react.

(14:01):
She walked away from her computer and she called me
and she told me what was going on. And that's
the key. She had a phone a friend. I am
my mom's phone a friend. If you ever watched the
show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire with Regis Philbin,
if you didn't know the answer, there were several ways
you could get help. One was pulling the audience, one

(14:25):
was doing the fifty to fifty where they got rid
of two of the wrong answers. But my favorite one
by far was having a phone a friend. So let
me ask everyone out there it's watching and listening today,
if you were not sure about something on your computer
or your phone, who would you call? You know, probably

(14:45):
a family member, a friend, a neighbor, call the police
department if you have to, But time as your friend.
Don't react, get some help, okay. And then some other
advice we always are pushing is sign up for our
monthly email. You just go to Roseadvocacy dot org. It's
scrolling at the bottom of the page. And all we

(15:08):
ask for is your name, first and last name, and
your email address, and we'll send you a monthly email,
and then we also send you a little a tip
on Tuesday mornings. That one's a little bit shorter. And
then if you like these monthly emails and the little
tips on Tuesdays, share with your friends. Okay, And if

(15:28):
you don't like our emails, if you don't think they're
worth your time, to read them once a week, just unsubscribed.
We won't have our feelings hurt. But we know we
are providing good information. Share this with your friends and family,
especially someone who lives alone, especially someone who is real
apt to answer the phone, or you know, just falls

(15:49):
for things or might be a little lonely. You know,
at Rose, we don't want anyone to be scammed. It
just it breaks my heart whenever I do a presentation
and someone walks up to me and tells me how
they've been scammed, and it just it's so frustrating. It's
it makes me angry and it makes me sad all
at the same time. You know, I've learned. I've been

(16:12):
doing fraud prevention for about thirty years now, and what
I've learned is we are never going to get rid
of these scammers. It's just too profitable. We are so outnumbered,
you know, especially law enforcement, so outnumbered because it's so profitable.
But we can dry up the pool of potential victims.

(16:34):
And then the last thing I'd ask everyone out there
to do. If you watch today's podcast, and this is nice,
nice and short. We're keeping it at twenty minutes today,
share this link. Send it to your friends, say here's
some common sense tips to just let them realize how
good these scammers are and that you don't want to

(16:56):
get into the ring with them, because these we're not
dealing with your father, your scammers anymore. Please share this link.
All right, that's all I have today. Joyce will be beat.
We'll be back next week and she's going to share
a new topic and then I'll be back later this
summer with some new ideas and ways that you can

(17:17):
protect yourself. So thank you for watching, thank you for
listening today, and we'll see you next week. Thank you
very much.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Well, that's all the knowledge for this episode. Julian 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.