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MSNBC's Richard Lui Fights for His Dad

The Luis' story is about more than being scammed, it's about a family's dedication.

spinner image graphic of Richard Lui and his father
AARP

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MSNBC anchor Richard Lui commutes from New York to San Francisco to help care for his father. Stephen Lui, who spent his career as a pastor and social worker, is now retired and suffers from dementia. After Stephen responds to mail from scammers, they begin bombarding him with hundreds of calls asking for money for fake charities and lotteries. But the Luis’ story is about more than being scammed, it’s about Richard and his family’s dedication to caring for Stephen.

spinner image Quote graphic from the perfect scam podcast
Full Transcript

[00:00:01] Will Johnson: This week on AARP - The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:03] Richard Lui: For these groups to go after this generation, this, this age group were the ones that trusted everybody. They thought of the goodness of people. My anger is that they're going after these folks. We should be taking care of these people.

[00:00:20] Will Johnson: Welcome back to AARP - The Perfect Scam, I'm your host Will Johnson. I'm here with my cohost, as always, the AARP Fraud Watch Network Ambassador, Frank Abagnale. Frank, thanks for being here.

[00:00:30] Frank Abagnale: Thanks Will.

[00:00:30] Will Johnson: And this week we have a, a heart wrenching story but we'll get into, but before we do that, I want to ask you briefly, this idea that we've touched on where people who are falling into a scam, sending money in, it's almost like an addiction it sounds like from some people, almost like gambling or other types of addictions where maybe it's some degree of excitement or connection, what have you.

[00:00:55] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, I think it can become that, that you start to believe in whatever it is that you're sending money in or you believe there's going to be some return promised you made by the people who are soliciting you. Or sometimes you just believe it's a legitimate charity and you think this is a good charity I'd like to give money to, but it's just people using that charity's name with a PO Box and not the actual charity even if it's using a real charity's name. So some, there's many motivations to why people would send money, and sometimes they're looking for something in return, sometimes they think they're doing good with it, but it turns out that they're being scammed.

[00:01:33] Will Johnson: Let's get into today's story. We're going to hear from MSNBC anchor Richard Lui and the story of his father.

[00:01:39] Richard Lui: And a very good evening to you. I'm Richard Lui, live at MSNBC headquarters with breaking news that we've been following all day here on MSNBC...

[00:01:46] Will Johnson: Richard Lui has been a news anchor at MSNBC for 8 years. He lives and works in New York, but much of his time is spent back and forth to San Francisco where he grew up and his parents still live. His 86-year-old father's Alzheimer's diagnosis has turned Lui's story into one of a caregiver. Is it fair to say that attending to aging parents in San Francisco is not always easy from that far away?

[00:02:08] Richard Lui: Oh no, not easy at all. Uh, I, I do it probably about half a million miles a year now. Um, I think that's like 40 or 50 times around the earth every, every year.

[00:02:21] (music segue)

[00:02:22] Will Johnson: Lui's father Steven was born in San Francisco. His mother came to the United States as a child. They met when he was a young pastor in Sacramento. Eventually he became a social worker and she was a school teacher. So your father was in, in good health more or less throughout your life. And your mother?

[00:02:40] Richard Lui: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:41] Will Johnson: Richard, along the way your father experienced cognitive decline and was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's, correct?

[00:02:47] Richard Lui: That's correct, yeah.

[00:02:49] Will Johnson: Tell me about that experience for you, him, and your family.

[00:02:52] Richard Lui: You know, uh, the, the, I think the moment where we knew it wasn't Dad just being a little goofy, um, a little freak out because he never was necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed, that was my mom, um, and he, his sister, he grew up in a family of 13, 12 siblings I should say, he was like the youngest son. I think he was number 8 overall, but the youngest in, in the brood, um, my aunt, Aunt Fannie, came over and said, "Richard, I'm worried," and it's during our normal, our annual Christmas gathering, uh where we have like 90 Lui's gathering.

[00:03:33] Will Johnson: I imagine.

[00:03:34] Richard Lui: So my Aunt Fannie comes over, says, "Richard, can we talk outside?" You know, we're all having a good time, then she gets serious and she said, "I'm, I'm worried about your dad." And Aunt Fannie and my dad were close. Um, and she says, "He's forgetting his siblings' names." And so she was concerned, that's when I knew we should shift gears, right? Move from first to second gear, whatever gear we were in, we told him, he went in, the strange thing about the stereotype of this guy, my dad, being a man, was that he said, "Okay, sure, I'll go in and, and you know get tested." As opposed to the, what are you talking about? I'm fine. Um, and I've spoken with many folks out there who have, who encounter that, and so he went in, he got the diagnosis, and they said, "Well, it's dementia, potentially, and we'll keep on monitoring." And that was how we found out. Um, and we'd go back to the neurologist, uh year after year, and probably within 2015, '16 is when things started to accelerate to a point that it would surprise, for instance, his doctor.

[00:04:43] (music segue)

[00:04:47] Will Johnson: After that initial diagnosis and follow-up visits, Steven Lui continued to decline as the disease took over. He moved into the first floor of their San Francisco rowhouse and eventually into a skilled nursing facility. It was there that Richard, his mother, and his siblings rarely left his side, spending 16 hours a day at one time making sure they were present for every meal and feeding.

[00:05:10] Richard Lui: So the commitment by the family in both the sibling set as well as my mother, has been significant and I think really inspiring to see how, see how they've all you know stepped up to, to sacrifice time.

[00:05:27] Will Johnson: To hear about this is heartbreaking. It's hard to digest. On top of it and along the way your father is scammed. For someone who is older and retired, you know it's sort of the last people we want to hear about being scammed. In this case, couple it with cognitive decline and it takes on sort of an added level of evil.

[00:05:46] Richard Lui: It does. It really does, and it is angering. It is, if there is a group of people I would like to well, do stuff that I wouldn't do to other people, uh no matter how much I dislike them, for these groups to go after this generation, this age group, this, this age group were the ones that trusted everybody. They thought of the goodness of people. That's their generation. They tried to make, they tried to do something good. Not that our later generation was like, you and me are not good people, if you know what I mean, but they, they do represent that idea of a greatest generation. That idea of we work really hard and we do good things and that makes this a good place to live, this country, right? And we go out and we try to bring our values to the world to say that's what we do. And we don't expect that you would ever [00:06:46] say thank you. No, that's not why we do this. And then for these groups to go after them, and take advantage of that trust? Right? So when my father would come to me in the beginning of the scamming, it would be, "Richard, here's this pile," and by the way, I'm holding a figurative pile in my hand, right that's about four inches.

[00:07:08] Will Johnson: And Richard, let me ask where he was in terms of Alzheimer's diagnosis?

[00:07:12] Richard Lui: Oh, this is in terms of Alzheimer's, maybe year one, which means you know a level of 1 or 2, which means that you and I could have a full conversation with him and everything would be fine, right?

[00:07:26] Will Johnson: So relatively early on after...

[00:07:28] Richard Lui: Yeah, early. Right. But this group coming after somebody who is still fully functioning, and I don't believe it was Alzheimer's related in terms of why he was doing this. This is more generational. Um, he would say, "Richard, why wouldn't I be winning a million dollars if I sent them in a check for a dollar? Why wouldn't I do that, right, cause they're not going to lie. Why, it says right here in black and white." I was like, "No, um, times have changed. Um, just cause if they're in black and white does not mean that this is real." "But, but it looks, look at this! No, why would they want to try to take advantage of me like that? No." "They are really trying to do that to you."

[00:08:11] Will Johnson: And this was in a stack of mail he was bringing with different offers from various different groups?

[00:08:14] Richard Lui: That's right, that's right. Different groups, and I'd go and I'd say, "Dad, throw them all out. It's garbage." Of course he did not listen.

[00:08:23] Will Johnson: And so he replied to some of these?

[00:08:26] Richard Lui: Yes. He would.

[00:08:28] Will Johnson: Sending in money and hoping to reap the rewards.

[00:08:30] Richard Lui: So yeah, and there were several types of scams. Um, he would either send in a dollar or two or five in cash, or he would write a check. Now the checks became problematic because they then had account information, right? And then they had a signature. Uh, they had addresses. And uh, were able to set up recurring deductions from his checking account. And so, the bank called and said, “Hey, you’ve got some strange deductions coming out of your account.” And my mom goes, “What do you mean strange deductions?”

[00:09:16] Will Johnson: And did she have a, did they have a joint account or were they, did she have access to his account?

[00:09:22] Richard Lui: Right, so they had a joint account and he had a separate account. And the separate account was because my mom said, eh, you need your fun money, that’s your account. Alright. But they called the house and my dad’s like, what do you mean? Handed it over to my mom cause my dad was never quite that good with numbers. Um, and she says, “What? “And so the bank says, we’re going to allow you to keep the account, um, but you only can have a limit of 50 bucks or whatever it was, and if we see any more of this activity set, we’re going to have to shut it down. So my, that’s after, that’s $2000 later.

[00:09:58] Will Johnson: Holy cow. So, scammers had already taken whatever information they needed to start siphoning money out of your father’s account.

[00:10:05] Richard Lui: That’s right.

[00:10:06] Will Johnson: And luckily the bank got in touch with you and stopped it.

[00:10:08] Richard Lui: That, well, that’s right, they did. Uh, and then...

[00:10:12] Will Johnson: Or in touch with your mom.

[00:10:13] Richard Lui: In touch of, they called the house, you know, and my dad’s going, I don’t know what, how am I being scammed? What’s going on? So my mom took the horns and got it done, um, and then the bank said, if this happens again we’re shutting it down. So again, within a year they shut it down, cause my dad continued to do it. He, he just loved it. Like he’s always loved mail. He’s always loved getting these things, and Reader’s Digest and he’d order all these little knick knacks that were looked great in pictures but then you got it and it wasn’t anything like the picture.

[00:10:43] Will Johnson: Oh, he was like the perfect target then, on top of, on top of being elderly and maybe a little forgetful...

[00:10:44] Richard Lui: Oh yeah.

[00:10:47] Richard Lui: And trustworthy, but that, that is, that is what happened. They even went to the police station, um, with one of the stacks. And my mom thought, okay, this will prove to him this is not good stuff. Right? We’re going to file a report. So they went down to the local police station, walk in there, the officer who is very kind said, “Mr. and Mrs. Lui, I, I, you can’t do anything because you’re not forced to do this. Right? You were willingly sending in money, because you trusted them.” And they still filed the report, but um, but the officer said, “I know, I know you don’t want to hear that. But my mom is going through the same thing and we couldn’t do anything and I’m a police officer.” So, that, that was, it was important to do but it does not result in anything.

[00:11:41] Will Johnson: So your father is getting mail, your mom goes to the police station, but...

[00:11:46] Richard Lui: With my dad, with my dad.

[00:11:48] Will Johnson: With your dad. Are you still getting the sense though that he has not learned his lesson or doesn’t want to?

[00:11:52] Richard Lui: She was trying to say, look, see Steven? This is bad stuff. See? We’re at the police station, okay? Um, he’s going, oh... so what he does is, he starts to access money from the joint account. And he’s writing checks to himself to get his monthly allowance, and still spending some of it, uh on these one or two dollar scams, the cash ones, and then the calls start to come in.

[00:12:16] Will Johnson: You know, it’s hard enough for you and me to be on top of this stuff. You think about someone like our father being older and dealing with cognitive decline and it’s no wonder that they’ve become victims to scams like these.

[00:12:28] Richard Lui: Yeah. And it’s, it pisses me off. My anger is that they’re going after these folks. We should be taking care of these people. They’re, they built the stuff that we’re taking advantage of today, all of them, all of them, each and every one of our, of our great senior citizen Americans have spent a lot of years making it better for us. You and me, and you’re going to go do this? Oh no. I’m not going to stand for that. I, I, that’s why when, uh you reached out, I was like, oh yeah, I’ll talk about this. Absolutely.

[00:13:01] Will Johnson: The conversation is so important because it’s not happening in a lot of families and a lot of communities and so if we can simply talk about the fact that we’re all getting older, and scammers aren’t going anywhere, those are two separate conversations, but they’re closely entwined and it seems like the more we talk about it, the more awareness is out there, the more comfortable we can be talking about it, the less shame there is surrounding it as well, and embarrassment.

[00:13:26] Richard Lui: Yeah, um, I don’t think my dad was very ashamed. My mom probably... yeah, probably from my mom, you know, but it’s not like, you know, uh like she was like, you know saying everybody needs to hear about this, but she knows now, in fact I called her right before I got to sit down with you, Will, and I said, “So are we done with this Mom? Did we get it done?”

[00:13:49] (music segue)

[00:13:50] Will Johnson: Richard’s mom eventually writes the scammers back and the letters slow down. They hang up the phone, the calls stop, and as Richard’s father got worse, he was no longer responding to mail or sending in checks. How much money do you think your father spent over time?

[00:14:04] Richard Lui: Oh, it’s a...

[00:14:06] Will Johnson: Or not spent, but how much do you think they siphoned out of his account?

[00:14:09] Richard Lui: Right, right, right. I’d say, you know, we’re talking about 2 to 3 thousand.

[00:14:13] Will Johnson: Okay.

[00:14:14] Richard Lui: Thousands, and two to three thousand is a lot for these folks.

[00:14:17] Will Johnson: Yes.

[00:14:18] Richard Lui: Not only in real, real terms, but also in from their frame of mind, right? This is a time where a nickel was a nickel. Right, and a dime was a dime. For us it’s just a dime.

[00:14:32] Will Johnson: So I want to come back now to caregiving, but also talk about, this has sort become, for us as we talk to you, a dual focus story. Our show is about scams, but as we have made very clear, it’s often tied closely to getting older and dementia in some cases, and now it’s part of your story with your father.

[00:12:16] Richard Lui: It is a big part of my story.

[00:14:54] Will Johnson: Why has it been so important for you or your mom or your sibling to be there as one of those, for one of those two feedings every day?

[00:15:02] Richard Lui: You know, cause he would do the same. And he had.

[00:15:06] Will Johnson: So you’re there doing what your father would do for you, and it sounds like your family, everyone’s doing that.

[00:15:13] Richard Lui: Yep, absolutely.

[00:15:14] (music segue)

[00:15:16] Will Johnson: Richard Lui has made caregiving a cause. He’s out there today making sure we are talking about it, celebrating it, making sure that caregivers are getting the care they need. And in, in the process of making uh, this an issue that people are talking about, what are you doing either within your career our outside of it including doing things like talking to us to get the message out and talk about caregiving?

[00:15:40] Richard Lui: Well there’s, a, a bunch of things, um, but one is just talking about it openly. Um, sharing the pain actually is important for, for I realize not only for myself, but also for others. Um, and um, talking about the story and to the extent that me and my family um, are willing to, to care for him. And I think you know, everybody’s going to do it differently, but just do something, right? Um, and I think that just talking about it in that sort of simple way helps others to embrace the difficulty and the potential joy, the happiness too, like we, we laugh a lot with my dad, still, and I think the other thing that can be done is joining caregiving groups. Now, you know I, the Alzheimer’s organization, I’m one of their celebrity champions talking about this stuff, and [00:16:40] as I go to their conferences around the country, um, and speak or be part of it, you can’t even imagine the energy that is brought to bear. And it is belly laughs, and it is on the floor crying ranges, and it is a way that I think people come together and realize and find their subgroups of caregivers and caregiving, and, and what is unique to you, you find is not so unique. And but it’s empowering.

[00:17:15] (music segue)

[00:17:18] Richard Lui: It’s an honor to be a caregiver, and don’t forget that. It’s not a burden alone as some might say. It is all said, and I’m not at the end of the journey, certainly, and we’re, we’ve gone through some difficult stages, but it is a true honor to be a caregiver.

[00:17:40] (music segue)

[00:17:43] Will Johnson: And I’m back with the AARP Fraud Watch Network Ambassador, Frank Abagnale. Frank, this story is about fraud and scams, but it’s also about the decline of Richard’s father and how someone with Alzheimer’s is so susceptible to something like this. Eventually it got to the point where he wasn’t even really doing mail as Richard Lui points out, but maybe even before it got really bad, and in some cases, people don’t necessarily even recall that they sent in a check already that week, and they might send in one every day.

[00:18:13] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, and this is kind of a little change cause in a way it’s kind of a nice story that this is back to what we’ve discussed before, that Richard Lui is looking out for his dad, just like his dad looked out for Richard when he was a young, a young man, and so again, this is a perfect example of being in, involved in your parent’s life, knowing that your parent, your father has Alzheimer’s and is slowly losing their memory to make sure that no one’s taking advantage of them. So Richard was there to try to consult his dad and explain to his dad that these things aren’t what they say they are and it’s unfortunate that this is not back in 1950 or 1940. This is today, and there are people out there that want to take your money away from you. So I think it’s kind of a nice story that Richard is showing you that you have to take interest in your parents and be involved in their life to make sure that they’re not taken disadvantage of.

[00:19:03] Will Johnson: But how do scammers go about finding someone who’s older?

[00:19:07] Frank Abagnale: You know, it used to be that if you were listed in the white pages, the regular phone book.

[00:19:11] Will Johnson: I remember those, yes. I don’t know if kids will, but...

[00:19:13] Frank Abagnale: And it was just no, but it was a regular phone book, so I looked up your name, Will Johnson, and I looked it up and all it told me is Will Johnson, this address, and the phone number. But because we live in a too much information world now, I had the internet. So if I go to white pages on the internet and I look up Will Johnson who lives maybe in Virginia, and I basically came across his name, it tells me how old Will is. So it tells me Will’s 80 years old, Will’s 70 years old, Will’s just 28, so all I have to do is go down and stop, I’ll check off this guy, he’s 86, I’ll check off this woman, she’s 92, and so again, this is the pro--, the problems with living in a too much information world, and the fact that the internet and you can get this information so easily.

[00:19:56] Will Johnson: They can just sort all those names out and choose all the ones that are 70 plus.

[00:19:59] Frank Abagnale: Yeah. Targets.

[00:20:01] Will Johnson: I feel a little more incognito because of my name, say than yours. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but...

[00:20:07] Frank Abagnale: No, that’s good, cause there aren’t a lot of Abagnales.

[00:20:10] Will Johnson: No, there’s probably very few.

[00:20:11] Frank Abagnale: And if there are, they’re related to me, so in the case of having Johnson, that’s a good thing.

[00:20:16] Will Johnson: So we’ve talked a little bit also previously, but before Richard’s story that the idea of not engaging, and eventually the scam calls died off because they stopped picking up the phone. I was interested also that his mother wrote the scammers back, or at least wrote back to letters that were coming in and said, please stop. It seemed to work.

[00:20:34] Frank Abagnale: Sometimes they’re very bad people, and sometimes they’re just people uh that are posing as a charity or something, and they don’t want to cause any hassles for them, so once you start writing them a letter they think, well the next step these people will go to the police, so they just go on to the next person. I mean and move on, cause you’re, you’re basically drawing attention to what they’re doing. So you know, I think that’s all that was. It was a good thing the wife did it, but that’s pretty much what happened. They probably moved on, because they were drawing attention to themselves.

[00:21:06] Will Johnson: Do you hear stories about, it must be harder for legitimate charities to request money from people these days.

[00:21:11] Frank Abagnale: It is. And people are very suspicious that they are who they say they are, even when you get all these law enforcement associations, you know, chiefs of police, the local police ball, the policeman’s ball, all of that, you have to say, is this really them or somebody just sent these letters out? And again, it’s so easy to make something look so legitimate with all the graphic material that you can do on a computer, you can put all the logos and all the information on, things I didn’t have 50 years ago, uh you can simply do today and make it look so legitimate and people will say, oh, this must be from this, this group or this organization. But that’s why it’s always important to go online and check if that is in fact the group. It’s the contact number there, you call up, say, did you send me this solicitation?

[00:21:54] Will Johnson: You mentioned tools that you didn’t have 50 years ago. You just had to go to France and borrow a giant printing press, right, and pretend to be from Boeing.

[00:22:03] Frank Abagnale: Yes, but even when I used to make up you know, for me to make up a college transcript or whatever I did, I usually had to sit there and paste, cut and paste the logo out and paste it on something and then cut something else out and paste it on something, and then I’d make a copy of it. You can never see the original because you’d know it was all pasted up. But I could run it on a Xerox machine and it looked like a legitimate copy and a legitimate letterhead and everything else, but today I could literally sit in front of a computer and just move that four-color logo to the letterhead and get it done in a minute. Yeah.

[00:22:35] Will Johnson: You’re not jealous of scammers today though.

[00:22:37] Frank Abagnale: No, just want to know where they were 50 years ago when I needed them.

[00:22:41] Will Johnson: Not to make light, or to uh, well not to make light of what you were doing, but there must have been some satisfaction in getting these things all done just perfectly and right that you could look at a check or a diploma or whatever it was and say...

[00:22:54] Frank Abagnale: It was a little bit artistic that went into it. You’d go and tell yourself, wow, this is very creative. I can’t believe I got this to look this good.

[00:23:01] Will Johnson: Right. Frank’s been working with the FBI for over 40 years now, so all that’s behind him. You don’t have to do that stuff anymore.

[00:23:08] (music segue)

[00:23:10] Will Johnson: Alright, up next on The Perfect Scam, we would like to welcome back Jen Beam. She manages the Fraud Watch Network Facebook page, Jen, how are you?

[00:23:17] Jen Beam: Hi, Will, I’m good. How are you?

[00:23:19] Will Johnson: I’m good. It’s that time of year when a lot of us are making vacation plans or have made vacation plans and are hitting the road in one way or another. And believe it or not, there are scams attached to vacation plans. That feels like almost one that’s been around for quite a while, but they’re thinking about new ways to trick us all, all the time.

[00:23:40] Jen Beam: Yeah, cause they think there’s new ways to book travel now, right? And there’s lots of, you know, different sites like Air BnB and Home Away, plus of course, Craig’s List, so there’s different areas that they have definitely gotten into. And these scams target people like me who book last minute vacations.

[00:21:45] Will Johnson: Okay. So you go on like Craig’s List or Air BnB or something like that to book a place to stay?

[00:24:05] Jen Beam: Yeah, you finally get everything worked out and you’re like, hey, do you want to try to get away this weekend? Let’s see what’s out there, and you go and uh look around and you find a great deal and usually you’ll see the description that says, hey we got a last minute cancellation so we’re going to offer this half off this week, or definitely too good to be true prices and attached to just gloriously beautiful pictures, you know, like right on the beach, right on the lake. You um, you know Craig’s List, it’ll be an email usually. They’re not going to ask you to give them a call. So it’s a lot easier to scam someone when you don’t actually speak to them over the phone. So oftentimes you reach out, they say, oh yeah, it’s a deal, and wire me half the money or give me a credit card, just put down the deposit and then you show up and it’s just not there. There’s no vacation home on the beach.

[00:25:01] Will Johnson: Oh no, so you get there and uh it’s just not happening.

[00:25:04] Jen Beam: It’s not happening.

[00:25:05] Will Johnson: Alright, so if you’re booking a vacation online and you’re going through like a shared housing websites that we’ve talked about a little bit or other organizations, you still have to be careful. I mean obviously they put a lot in place to safeguard people, but it’s not always 100% safe.

[00:25:20] Jen Beam: That’s right. I mean there are unscrupulous people everywhere. So you have to do your research, and so even if you’re looking last minute, really be careful. And one of the easiest things you can do is um, do a reverse image search on the images, and oftentimes you’ll find them. Scammers may be devious, but sometimes they’re lazy. The other thing you can do is if there’s a direct address, um, punch that into you know a map, a map app and see, see what comes up. And you really want to talk to someone on the phone. So if you’re um, dealing with a last minute deal, don’t just communicate by text or email, you really want to speak to a person.

[00:26:03] Will Johnson: Jen mentions a reverse image search. You can easily do that by just right clicking on an image and clicking on Google Image Search and find more examples of where this property might actually be listed on the web. Alright, Jen Beam, thanks again. Jen Beam manages the Fraud Watch Network Facebook page. Alright, I’d like to thank so much Richard Lui, MSNBC news anchor Richard Lui who told us all about his father and what he went through and all that he’s doing for caregiving and in making that a real cause. And I want to thank my cohost, the AARP Fraud Watch Network Ambassador, Frank Abagnale once again for joining us. Thanks, Frank.

[00:26:38] Frank Abagnale: Will, it was great to be here.

[00:26:40] Will Johnson: If you’d like to get more information about caregiving and more resources about caregiving, you can visit AARP.org/caregiving. And for more resources on how to protect yourself or a loved one from becoming a victim of a scam, visit AARP’s Fraud Watch Network website, AARP.org/fraudwatchnetwork. Thanks to the team here at AARP, Julie Getz and Brook Ellis, and sound engineers Julio Gonzales and Steve Bartlett. For AARP - The Perfect Scam. I’m Will Johnson.

[00:27:08] (music segue)

END OF TRANSCRIPT

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.

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How to Listen and Subscribe to The Perfect Scam

  1. Open the Podcasts app, search for the show title and select it from the list of results.
  2. Once on the show page, click the "Subscribe" button to have new episodes sent to your phone or tablet for free.
  3. Click the name of an episode from the list below to listen.
  1. Open the Google Play Music app, search for the show title and select it from the list of results.
  2. Once on the show page, click the "Subscribe" button to have new episodes sent to your phone or tablet for free.
  3. Click the name of an episode from the list below to listen.
  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"

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Have you seen this scam?

  • Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360 or report it with the AARP Scam Tracking Map.  
  • Get Watchdog Alerts for tips on avoiding such scams.