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A Hiker’s Trail of Lies: Part 2

Jeff spent decades preying on the kindness of the outdoors community, but now his lies are finally catching with him.

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Jeff has lived for decades as a couch-surfing con man preying on the kindness of the outdoors community. He spins tales of hikes he’s never completed and exploits the sympathy of his marks with sad stories of his past to rip them off. Now Jeff’s lies are finally catching up with him. After stealing a car and credit cards, the con man has turned fugitive with the police hot on his trail.

TIPS:  If you think you’ve been a victim of a scam or would like to report fraud call The Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360Anyone can become the victim of a scam, it’s important to be vigilant and know your vulnerabilities. For instance, if you are looking for a job you are more vulnerable to a work-at-home scam.

[00:00:00] Will Johnson: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam and part 2 of our Thru-Hiker Scam story. This week we pick up with con man turned fugitive, Jeff Caldwell. If you haven't listened to part 1, now is a great time to do that.

[00:00:12] Melissa Trent: I feel sorry for Jeff. Something happened to him that, that made him take this path.

[00:00:16] Brendan Borrell: You look through their history of emotional violence that they've inflicted on people and the hurt that they've caused, like I would never trust this person.

[00:00:28] Will Johnson: For AARP - The Perfect Scam Podcast, I'm your host, Will Johnson joined once again by my cohost, The AARP Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale. Frank, thanks for being here.

[00:00:37] Frank Abagnale: Hi, Will, great to be with you.

[00:00:38] Will Johnson: We're picking up this week on a story we started last week, the saga, if you will, of Jeff Caldwell, an outdoor guy, a mountain man, and a con artist who had a long history of pretending to be someone he's not, taking advantage of women along the way, and in this story, taking his victim's car and credit cards. As we ended up last week, that woman, Melissa Trent, is thinking about taking matters into her own hands. If you come across somebody on a dating site you like, not you, but somebody, one of our listeners, um, and you're interested in them and maybe want to get together with them, I mean, can you do background checks on, so what are the services that are out there that you're aware of that people can, I mean obviously you can Google somebody.

[00:01:21] Frank Abagnale: Yes. There's nothing you can't find out today about someone. That's what I mean, the resources that are available at someone's fingertips today and all of the services that are available to do background checks on individuals, this is why I'm very surprised when I get a lot of emails from young ladies that say to me, "I was dating..."

[00:01:38] Will Johnson: Or men.

[00:01:38] Frank Abagnale: Men, or that were dating these people for six months to find out they were married. So you know, you then say to them, "Well, during the six months, did you ever go to their apartment?" "Well, no." "Did you ever call their home phone?" "No." "Did you ever call them at work?" "Well, no, it was just their cell phone." Those things should raise again, red flags where it would be very simple to go find out, do they really work here? Are they really who they say they are? Did they really graduate from this university, whatever it is, the story they gave you? And again, there's nothing wrong with being skeptical. It's, it's actually an asset, you know, someone who's skeptical is simply making sure that they're doing the right thing and they're dealing with the right people. There's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather deal with someone in business who's a little bit skeptical than somebody who just takes everything they hear with a grain of salt and go forward.

[00:02:26] Will Johnson: So we don't necessarily need to hire a private investigator if we're interested in dating somebody, but you can look them up.

[00:02:31] Frank Abagnale: You can look them up and find out a lot about anybody very quickly.

[00:02:34] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:02:35] Will Johnson: All right, let's find out what happens with Jeff Caldwell and Melissa Trent as he was on the run in her car with her credit cards. Writer Brendan Borrell working on his next story for Outside Online has gotten in touch with Jeff and is exchanging messages with him.

[00:02:50] Will Johnson: So that must have been a little bizarre speaking to like a fugitive, somebody on the run.

[00:02:54] Brendan Borrell: Yeah, definitely it, it raised some ethical questions for me, for sure, because he was, he was asking for things, and it was, I think sort of we drew the line with, you know, we can pay to communicate with this, with this person but we can't help him stay on the run and that, you know, at some point he, he had asked me, "Oh can you, you know, I'm going to turn myself into my parole officer, I promise. Can you just pay for me to have a, a good hotel room tonight?" And I said, "I can't do that." And um, the cops actually call him while he was driving Melissa's car and they...

[00:03:26] Will Johnson: And he picks up.

[00:03:27] Brendan Borrell: He tells them, "I'm going to bring the car home in a couple days."

[00:03:28] Will Johnson: Oh my gosh.

[00:03:29] Brendan Borrell: And at this point they're not really willing to, you know, go after him too far, it's, it's, you know, it's only been 24 hours and so they give it a little more time, but then eventually, you know, a warrant is out for his arrest, and he just, you know he's gone AWOL and he refuses to come back. And he keeps telling Melissa, "I'm going to come back, I promise," and um, you know he doesn't cut ties with her, but you know for a month he was just hanging out in Colorado, not that far.

[00:03:55] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:03:57] Will Johnson: Brendan's not the only one communicating with Jeff. So is Melissa, but her strategy is to reel him in and hopefully get her car back and Jeff behind bars.

[00:04:07] Will Johnson: Did you eventually message or talk to him again as he was driving around in your car?

[00:04:12] Melissa Trent: Yes. We stayed in contact for about two weeks.

[00:04:15] Will Johnson: Wow. And what was that like? I mean here's someone who has completely ripped you off, stolen your money, stolen your car, and you're still communicating.

[00:04:25] Melissa Trent: Yes. I was trying, he thought that the police were not going to do anything, because the police had basically told him, you know, we know you didn't steal her car, just bring it back, and then the police never contacted him again. And so his thinking was, you know, they, they, they haven't, they don't consider the car stolen, and so he felt like he still had leverage over me.

[00:04:44] Will Johnson: So you wanted to make it seem like things could be okay, just bring back the car.

[00:04:48] Melissa Trent: Yes.

[00:04:48] Will Johnson: That you, that there wasn't a warrant, that everything was, you know you could, you could, like you could work it out?

[00:04:53] Melissa Trent: Yes, exactly, and he kind of, I think on sometimes he would believe me, but he just wasn't sure, and he kept telling me, send me money. He kept saying that he was out of gas, and that he just needed me to wire him like $50 so that he could get gas and bring me the car.

[00:05:07] Will Johnson: And did you do that?

[00:05:08] Melissa Trent: And I kept... no. I kept saying I'm not sending you any money, um, tell me where you are and I'll come get the car. And he was like, no, I don't believe that you're going to come alone, I need to bring the car to you so that I could make sure everything is cool before we do the exchange. And so we were just, you know, I told him, that's not going to happen, you know, I'm not sending you anymore money. And so, he would get frustrated with me, and he would go like, you know, several days without contacting me, and then he would message again.

[00:05:36] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:05:40] Melissa Trent: It all came to a head like almost exactly two weeks after he had stolen the car. Um, I agreed to wire him money, and he said, "You have to send it Western Union, you can't send it MoneyGram." And I said, "Why?" He was like, "Just do what I say. You have to send it Western Union." And so I got the idea that I would tell him that I had sent it Walmart to Walmart, because if I sent it Walmart to Walmart you have to go to a Walmart to pick it up. So I had myself and two other people stake out at different Walmarts, and um, when I told him that I had sent it Walmart to Walmart, he said, "Okay, well I'm about two hours away, so I've got to get there." So we waited. And right, I had been there for about two hours and my phone was running out of battery, and I couldn't let it run out of battery cause I had to be able to communicate with the other people at the other Walmarts, so I ran back to my house to get my charger, and while I was there, Jeff messaged me and said, "I'm at Walmart, but I gotta go to another one because this one's um, their, their machine is down for money." And I called the Walmart that I had been at, and their machine was down.

[00:06:50] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:06:51] Will Johnson: Had, were you, did you tell the police, obviously this is sort of like your own vigilante justice. Had you, were you scared, were you worried? Did you think about what you would say if you saw him?

[00:06:58] Melissa Trent: No, I was, I mean I didn't tell the police. We were going , what we were going to do was if we saw the car we were going to block the car in with our vehicle, and then, and then call the police and have them come and arrest Jeff. That was the plan. He slipped through because you know he was at the Walmart that I was at, and then he went to another Walmart, and but it wasn't any of the Walmarts that we were stationed at, and he rea--, the guy told him, this is a fake number, this isn't even a real receipt, and Jeff blew up. And that's when I admitted to him, you know, I am not, I was like, he was like, "You never sent me money." And I was like, "You're right I never sent you money. I'll never send you another dime." And it kind of came to a head. He realized then that the whole time we had been talking, I had never intended to um, you know, to get back together with him or make things right or anything. And that was the last time we ever talked was that day.

[00:07:48] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:07:50] Will Johnson: But finally on July 1st, 2017, Melissa and Brendan get the news that the police have found Jeff in South Dakota.

[00:07:57] Brendan Borrell: Coming out of a bar one, one evening, um, a little bit drunk, he said he crashed in the car, he crashed out in the car. He had seen some cops and he was like, oh, you know, he crashed out in his car cause he didn't want to get caught drunk driving, but then the next day when he went in for a coffee, uh, they, they had run his license plate and they, they fingered him.

[00:08:15] Melissa Trent: As soon as he got out, he told them the truth. The car was stolen and who he was, and that he told them that he was glad that it was over.

[00:08:23] Will Johnson: And he is arrested and eventually brought back to Colorado Springs?

[00:08:28] Melissa Trent: Yes, he stayed in South Dakota for about three weeks until they could get him back to Colorado Springs.

[00:08:33] Will Johnson: And you got your car back, I assume?

[00:08:35] Melissa Trent: Yes. It was in bad shape. Um, he had gone on a craft beer tour around Colorado, and I had actually made a fake profile on the dating site that we met, so I had kind of been in contact with him through that fake profile.

[00:08:52] Will Johnson: For yourself.

[00:08:52] Melissa Trent: He thought he was talking to another girl.

[00:08:54] Will Johnson: Oh my goodness. So you, okay, all right. And uh just to see if you could attract his attention or...

[00:09:01] Melissa Trent: I wanted to see where he was. If he was in the Springs, I wanted, or if he was in Colorado, I wanted to set up a date with him and then it would be me.

[00:09:08] Will Johnson: So you set up a fake profile and then contacted him on the dating site and said, "Hey, I'd like to meet you?"

[00:09:13] Melissa Trent: Yes, exactly.

[00:09:14] Will Johnson: And he responded to that?

[00:09:16] Melissa Trent: He did, he responded, and we chatted and he would tell me, like oh, I'm in Cortez, Colorado, and he told me, "I'm going on a beer fest."

[00:09:23] Will Johnson: And that was true? He was really, he went on a craft beer tour?

[00:09:28] Melissa Trent: He, yes, that's what he called it, and when I got my car back, there were stickers from every single craft beer place that he had visited around the state.

[00:09:37] Will Johnson: One thing you can do when you're on the run is go visit craft breweries.

[00:09:41] Melissa Trent: Yes, exactly.

[00:09:43] Will Johnson: Oh my goodness. Well, and there's plenty of those in Colorado, there's a lot of good craft beer, right?

[00:09:46] Melissa Trent: Yes. Yes we have, it's a big thing here in Colorado.

[00:09:48] Will Johnson: Right, right, right.

[00:09:50] Melissa Trent: And the car was, I mean he had literally lived in the car, and he kind of had it separated into sections. The front was where he had all of his personal papers, um, everything, like birth certificates, um, court documents, everything. Um, and then he also had like his toiletries up there. We also found an empty condom wrapper, that was yucky, um, and then the middle section, the back seat, that was where he slept. He had like foam laid out and he had sleeping bags and pillows, and then in the trunk, that's where he had um, his camping gear, there was robbing food, pots and pans, that kind of stuff in the trunk of the car.

 [00:10:36] Will Johnson: There's sort of a, a sense of um, why did he do all this because, I mean to me, I had that question. Obviously he was able to get a little cash from you, but that wasn't going to go a long way. He now had a, a car to get around in, but he wasn't, it wasn't like he was driving far away. He could have almost like stayed in your house for a few more nights.

[00:10:55] Melissa Trent: I think that he was just tired. He felt like he was never going to be able to get ahead, nobody was ever going to give him a decent job, and that he was tired, and he kept saying, you know conning people and lying is no life. I hate living this way. And I think that he really wanted to get arrested on purpose because you have, you know, you have everything taken care of. You've got room and board and meals and, you know, you're not, you know everybody in, in jail is bad, so you're not like the bad guy. That's what I think. That's the only thing I can figure, but he figured he would have, you know, a really good summer before that happens.

[00:11:27] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:11:33] Brendan Borrell: You know he can go through the motions of, of being a person or being in a relationship but he, you know, he's missing some, some deep way of making a connection with people and, and he seems to um, freak out whenever he gets too close to somebody honestly.

[00:11:48] Will Johnson: Along the way did you end up feeling some, some empathy for this individual?

[00:11:51] Brendan Borrell: You know I was, I was warned about this. I, I talked to um, uh sort of an expert in, in con artistry, and uh I mean it's, that this is, this is their deal. This is how they work is eliciting sympathy and eliciting empathy, and it's like you talk to the person and yes, you feel sorry for their predicament, but then when you, you look through their history of emotional um, violence that they've inflicted on people and the hurt that they've caused, and the fact that it's something that's been repeated year after year after year for 20 years, like when they say, you know, I'm going to turn over a new leaf, I'm, you know, this is, this is a, a new starting point. I'm going to, I'm not going to do this anymore, you, like I don't feel any sense, like I would never trust this person.

[00:12:41] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:12:42] Will Johnson: As I hear this story and we talk about it more, you get the sense that you don't know what his motivation is or what's driving him or bringing him down or what kind of past he's had, but there's an unhinged nature to a lot of what he's doing.

[00:12:57] Melissa Trent: Yes. Exactly. I mean really the only thing that I know about his past is what Brendan dug up and put in the article.

[00:13:04] Will Johnson: Will: When you got your car back and it's, and it's in that condition and you, and he had been pretty aggressive and he had stolen money from you, after all that, uh, I can't imagine you had any good feelings, or not good feelings, but any sort of sense of forgiveness or empathy for this guy. What were you, what were you feeling?

[00:13:21] Melissa Trent: I was very, very angry.

[00:13:23] Will Johnson: Jeff lied to you, took advantage of your relationship, stole your car, your credit card. It sounds like an emotional roller coaster for anyone. As you look back on the experience with a bit of distance now, what are your feelings about Jeff and what happened? Is it harder for you to trust people in general or meet new people?

[00:13:40] Melissa Trent: It is harder to trust people, but I'm not sure that that's a bad thing. Obviously I was too trusting and I should have never put myself or my kids in that situation to begin with that early on. So I've learned a lot from it. And really, I feel sorry for Jeff. I, you know, I, I think, I believe that there's good and bad in everybody. And something happened to him that, that made him take this path.

[00:14:08] Will Johnson: Jeff was sentenced in June of this year. He plea-bargained and is now living in a halfway house in Colorado. His sentence is for six years.

[00:14:17] Will Johnson: What would you say to Jeff? He's a, he's a, I mean there's lots of words that I imagine could be used by you or other victims to describe him, but is there anything you could, you would say to him if you saw him today?

[00:14:31] Melissa Trent: I mean, one of my best friends, we talk about this all the time, like I would say to him that had he just been honest with me from the beginning, I'm a very openminded person, and had he been honest with me about his past and been honest about, you know, the life that he was living, I probably would have, you know done anything to help him and save him from that life and turn it around. And, you know, he didn't have to do what he did. It, you know, it certainly did not have to come to that at all.

[00:15:05] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:15:05] Will Johnson: Brendan Borrell sees Jeff as someone who took advantage of a community where people are likely to help out a stranger. But Jeff's crimes were always relatively minor. The question for him remains, why lead such a life for so little payoff?

[00:15:18] Brendan Borrell: I mean the thing about the, the outdoor community especially is there is this um, you know, sense of kindness and, you know, people who are traveling, it's like, you know, you want to help somebody out that you see on the street and it's, you know, Caldwell, you know, began where, you know, he, he was looking for, you know, he was looking for relationships and he was looking just for food, and uh this became a, a strategy for him that, that somehow worked, and he never really went beyond that. He never went beyond just the, the quid pro quo of what can you do for me? I'll be nice to you if you give me something. You know the actual things that he was convicted of were never, you know, more than a few hundred dollars. The, the biggest uh, theft was, you know, charging $800 on someone's credit card at a, at an outdoor gear store, um, and certainly there was, there was more than that, but he never really like fully took advantage of people. He just would always take enough to survive or what he needed for the next couple weeks, um, which was, which was, which was interesting to me.

[00:16:24] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:16:27] Will Johnson: And I'm back with Frank Abagnale. Frank, uh, Melissa mentions at one point in this story, I'll go back to the beginning of this uh, this episode, and she mentions blocking his car in potentially, and calling the police after. I wouldn't recommend anybody necessarily do that. She was going to drastic steps at this point to find her car and maybe get her credit cards back.

[00:16:49] Frank Abagnale: I would say that she did the right thing in trying to track her car down, but once she found her car, that's where she should have called the police and let them handle it. You don't want to start getting yourself in a situation because someone like this sometimes could turn out to be also someone that's violent, so you, you let the, let law enforcement handle that. So I would have pulled up, saw the car across the street, notified the police, kept my eye on it in case he came out, but I wouldn't have tried to block him in and do that cause you never know what someone might do.

[00:17:17] Will Johnson: When he's on the run in Melissa's car, the writer, Brendan Borrell uh begins texting, uh with, with Jeff Caldwell and communicating uh that way. Um, and, and it's a really fascinating dynamic. I was kind of reminded of, of you being on the run and Carl Hanratty, not his real name, but in the movie, and having a relationship with the person who's running after you. The writer wasn't trying to track down Jeff, in some ways he was, but he was more approaching it as a journalist. But there was this odd relationship.

[00:17:50] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, and I think uh, I think Jeff, Jeff kind of uh, was, his ego, he liked the fact that this writer was uh asking him questions and following up with what he was doing. I think that was just feeding his ego, so he didn't look at him as a threat or worrying that he was going to track him down or, or arrest him.

[00:18:10] Will Johnson: He eventually talks about going on a, when he's off in her car, he doesn't talk about it, Melissa explains that he went on a brewery tour too, so there is some uh, whether it's ego or psychology there that just seems, as you said, sort of going day to day, maybe not...

[00:18:26] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, and again, that's all it is. I mean this is somebody who's living this out day to day and always thinking about what am I going to do the next day? But by the same token, while all this is going on they're living their life and going out. They like touring breweries, so he went to look at breweries. I mean...

[00:18:40] Will Johnson: Life is normal.

[00:18:41] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, life is normal to them, and they're just going on and they'll need money again, they'll try to figure out how the next scam to get that money.

[00:18:47] Will Johnson: I want to thank Brendan Borrell uh writing, in this case, for Outside Online magazine, also Melissa Trent telling us the story of Jeff Caldwell. Thanks to you, Frank Abagnale.

[00:18:56] Frank Abagnale: Thank you.

[00:18:56] MUSIC SEGUE

[00:18:59] Will Johnson: Alright, well up next we are joined by Kathy Stokes. She heads up The Fraud Watch Network here at AARP. Nice to see you.

[00:19:05] Kathy Stokes: Thanks for having me, Will.

[00:19:06] Will Johnson: All right, so Kathy, uh tell us what we've got going on? There's a, a current scam involving the AARP and we hate to hear that.

[00:19:13] Kathy Stokes: Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:13] Will Johnson: We don't like it at all.

[00:19:14] Kathy Stokes: No, we don't like it at all, and we found out quickly and we're trying to communicate it to as many people as we can, but there are scammers out there and they're either using telephone or email, and they're contacting people saying that they have won the AARP Sweepstakes and all they have to do is send some money in so that they can claim their prize.

[00:19:32] Will Johnson: All right, classic.

[00:19:33] Kathy Stokes: Classic.

[00:19:34] Will Johnson: A bunch of red flags.

[00:19:35] Kathy Stokes: A bunch of red flags.

[00:19:36] Will Johnson: And it's a, so they, they've won money, and it, you said it's a phone call.

[00:19:39] Kathy Stokes: It's a phone call, it can be an email as well.

[00:19:42] Will Johnson: Okay. So tell us more. How much have they won, supposedly?

[00:19:45] Kathy Stokes: In the case of the one that I have from one of our um, members, she actually sent it to us, that her letter was saying that she won 4.3 million dollars, and it came with...

[00:19:57] Will Johnson: That is not a small amount of money.

[00:19:58] Kathy Stokes: It came with a, our AARP logo on it, it has a federal reserve system logo on it, and it had all kinds of uh pieces attached to it. One was from Bank of America, um, and it looks like the other one has a, has a BBB seal on it. Um, it makes sure to tell the person that the total cash prize of 9.8 million dollars was shared among three lucky winners. Um, and for security reasons, this is really important, you're advised to keep your winning information confidential until your claim is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize.

[00:20:41] Will Johnson: Now I'm, I am surprised, I have to say, by the amount of money that they're offering, because you hear about sweepstakes, but that's just a, a huge sum.

[00:20:48] Kathy Stokes: We actually um, foiled one recently.

[00:20:51] Will Johnson: Wow. Do tell.

[00:20:52] Kathy Stokes: We had a, our Connecticut state office has The AARP Fraud Watch Network activities going strong there, and they have a relationship with a regional bank, and they went into the bank to do a presentation about how to prevent becoming a victim of scams, and the teller that was in the, in the bank that day was listening as she was doing her work, and it caught her ear and maybe 15 minutes after that presentation, a man comes up with a letter that he had received that was a Publisher's Clearing House that he had won millions of dollars and all he needed was to deposit this check for $9,437 that would cover the costs and the fees associated with it...

[00:21:33] Will Johnson: To get his stuff.

[00:21:34] Kathy Stokes: To get his prize. And she said, "I think that's a scam." And she started talking about what she had heard in the presentation, and he absolutely refused. He said, "Nope, this is my money." She had to get a manager involved. It took them about a half an hour, but they finally convinced him that it was a scam.

[00:21:50] Will Johnson: The frontlines, that's where it happens.

[00:21:52] Kathy Stokes: The frontlines.

[00:21:52] Will Johnson: And she heard it from an AARP seminar, in the bank.

[00:21:54] Kathy Stokes: In the bank.

[00:21:55] Will Johnson: And as you know, we did a whole episode about a fake Publisher's Clearinghouse letter.

[00:21:58] Kathy Stokes: Yeah.

[00:21:59] Will Johnson: And as we know, they will not send a letter asking you to send in money to claim your prize.

[00:22:03] Kathy Stokes: Yes, that is a BIG red flag.

[00:22:05] Will Johnson: All right. So we digress. Back to the sweepstakes, AARP is not running any sweepstakes.

[00:22:11] Kathy Stokes: Well, AARP does run sweepstakes. But we do it in a much different way. Um, we will never tell you you've won a sweepstakes if you've never entered an AARP sweepstakes. If you have entered one and won, you will notified. You will have a specific person to follow-up with to uh to claim your prize.

[00:22:29] Will Johnson: Okay. So it could happen that you win some money through an AARP sweepstakes, but you will not get a call or an email or rather a letter out of the blue saying you've won a bunch of money and you need to send in money.

[00:22:39] Kathy Stokes: Right, and we'll never ask you to keep it confidential.

[00:22:42] Will Johnson: Right. Another red flag.

[00:22:43] Kathy Stokes: Yeah.

[00:22:43] Will Johnson: All right.

[00:22:44] Kathy Stokes: We actually heard from some colleagues over at the National Consumers League that they're being used this way, too. And so they're trying to communicate to their folks. We're trying to communicate to ours, and trying jointly to, to get the word out and maybe because the IRS Tax Scam is really being tamped down, people are getting more and more aware of that, that that's kind of a, a lost cause right now, and so they're looking for other ways to um, authenticate what they're doing, so they're looking at public interest groups.

[00:23:14] Will Johnson: Well yeah, they do move on to the...

[00:23:16] Kathy Stokes: Yeah they do move on.

[00:23:16] Will Johnson: All right, well really important that you mention this one. Thanks for bringing it to our attention and please keep us posted on anything else you might hear about.

[00:23:18] Kathy Stokes: Right.

[00:23:23] Will Johnson: All right, Kathy Stokes with The Fraud Watch Network here at AARP.

[00:23:28] Will Johnson: And a reminder to our listeners; for more information and resources on how to protect yourself from becoming a victim of a scam, visit AARP's Fraud Watch Network website, AARP.org/fraudwatchnetwork. Thanks to my team of scam busters; Julie Getz and Brook Ellis, and audio engineer, Steve Bartlett, and audio mastering done by Julio Gonzales. For AARP - The Perfect Scam, I'm Will Johnson.

END OF TRANSCRIPT

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  3. Click the name of an episode from the list below to listen.

About the Fraud Watch Network

  1. To play podcasts on your Amazon Echo smart speaker, ask the following: "Alexa, ask TuneIn to play The Perfect Scam podcast" OR "Alexa, play The Perfect Scam podcast on TuneIn"
  2. To play podcasts on your Google Home smart speaker, ask the following: "Hey Google, Play The Perfect Scam podcast"