Job Seekers Targeted in Water Filtration Job Scam, Part 2

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[00:00:01] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:05] Matthew Ebert: The homeowner went out to their driveway, they pulled the cans out for garbage pickup and when they opened the lid, just discovered that sort of mysterious things had been added. It wasn't their own garbage or recycling. But they were able to make out a few different names out of what appeared to be a series of shredded records, like had gone through a paper shredder. And one of the names that they recognized appeared to be Charles Fields and what appeared to be his unfolding fraud scam.

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[00:00:41] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. When we left our story, someone was selling water purification devices to hundreds of entrepreneurs around the country who never received the gadgets they bought. The seller used names like Michael Brunn and David Mueller, and he said his company was called WaterTek or Mile High H₂O, or a host of other names. But the victims had joined forces on a Facebook group and realized they had all been told the same story. And now, they've told their story to investigative journalist Lou Raguse of KARE in Minneapolis who is determined to discover the criminal's real identity. So he interviews dozens of victims, the entrepreneurs who thought they were getting in on the ground floor of a great opportunity.

[00:01:32] Lou Raguse: They thought that they would be good at it, and the whole thing was they were going to be selling a water filtration device. They would be either selling it or holding little seminars to recruit other people to sell it, teaching them how to sell it, and the catch was they needed to buy one of the units themselves in order to know how it works and be able to sell it essentially and that made sense to all of them. And the price on that was $5000 for some people, $3000 for some people; a lot of money, but also enough that it, for a lot of them they saw it as an investment that they could make in order to you know do this.

[00:02:14] Bob: So Lou convinces his news director to let him spend weeks interviewing victims from all around the country as he tries to put together who was behind the crime. One curious thing about Michael Brunn or David Mueller, or whoever he is, he doesn't really talk with his victims. Instead, he...

[00:02:34] Lou Raguse: He would send them recorded voice messages. So they'd have a bunch of questions and instead of getting on the phone with them, he would, you know, hit record on the voice memos on his phone, answer all their questions the way that he wanted to on that, and then email them the voice memo. And so that way he didn't have to answer any follow-up questions. And but and at the same time it placated people for a while.

[00:02:58] Bob: Here is what one of those voice memos sounded like courtesy of KARE.

[00:03:05] (clip) We're not like some, you know, company in a garage that just created a website and said, hey, send us money. That's, that's not what it is.

[00:03:14] Bob: Yes, there is irony in that message, but when Lou starts to listen to all these voice memos from all these victims, it's obvious they're all from the same person. But who? Well then investigative reporter Lou Raguse gets the break he needs from yet another victim, one of the few who actually got a water filtering machine.

[00:03:36] Lou Raguse: And it was like a used machine that came in the mail direct from Charles Fields from Blaine, Minnesota. And Blaine is a northern suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul. And so it's, okay, so this is a real person that mailed this thing, so we have a real guy here. I can't prove that Michael Brunn or David Mueller are real people, and then I start pulling the business documents, and Charles Fields was the incorporator on the initial businesses. Later businesses, Michael Brunn was, but there was no, I double-checked with the Secretary of State, there was no fact-checking to see that Michael Brunn was a real person. It's almost using a post, all the mailing addresses were post office boxes or just like at a, a place where you can rent a mailbox, and so there were no real addresses. And then in Colorado, they must have, so The Real H₂O claimed to be based in Colorado rather than Minnesota, or no, Mile High H₂O; that was the fourth one. So that one was supposedly based in Colorado. They must have a little bit better checks there on who's registering a business because it was Charles Fields. And so all the sudden I had the loop completed, and I was pretty certain that Charles Fields was, was posing as all these people.

[00:04:48] Bob: So Lou hunts down Charles Fields, talked to him on the phone, and with his ears still full of those voice memos, Lou is convinced he's got his man.

[00:04:59] Lou Raguse: But when I listened to the things, this Michael Brunn has a very distinct voice, baritone voice, so I called Charles Fields, and it's the exact same voice. And so all the sudden I'm thinking that this Charles Fields is this Michael Brunn. I had a couple voice samples and then when I talked to him, I'm like, yeah, this is him.

[00:05:21] Bob: But what is that like after a couple of months when you finally find a, a name and it's a person and you've got your, you've got your story. What does that feel like?

[00:05:29] Lou Raguse: It's a great feeling because it's, I'm sure it's somewhat similar to how investigators in criminal cases feel when they find the suspect so to speak. It's a little different when you're a reporter because you don't have, I couldn't pull his bank records and check all that stuff or whatever, but it seemed like you get enough corroborating details that you know you, you can put this out to the world and feel safe that you're right.

[00:05:54] Bob: In another twist, Charles Fields doesn't hang up on Lou and doesn't run from the questions, at least not right away.

[00:06:03] Lou Raguse: And at first, he was extremely friendly. He was, "Oh, I'm really happy to talk to you about this." And I was skeptical and we were recording me on the phone to show that I was calling him in case we needed to use that in the story and weren't able to use an interview. But then the message continued over to text messages, and he was just very insistent that he was going to sit down and explain this whole thing and what the issues are and everything, and then of course, we're, literally when the clock struck 3 o'clock or whatever the agreed time was, then I received a text from him saying, "You know what, I, my lawyer won't let me do it. I'm sorry. This is it. We're not coming." And it was like he strung me along far enough just like he did with all these people, I'm not going to say he, he made the story come out later than it would have otherwise, but I, it's wow, I can't believe I, any part of me thought he was going to show up here just like those people probably thought I can't believe there was any part of me that thought I was going to get my money. You can see how a convincing person can make you think so.

[00:06:57] Bob: Charles Fields strung along this investigative reporter just as he'd strung everyone else along. So Lous goes live with his story, alleging that Charles Fields is really behind the crime.

[00:07:12] (news clip) Tonight a Take Care of Your Money KARE11 investigation as Lou Raguse tells us it involves a mysterious Minnesota based company and allegations that it's been cheating people all across the country.

[00:07:25] (news clip) It all started when they spotted the job offers here on Craig's List.

[00:07:29] Bob: Immediately, an avalanche of new victims come forward so Lou has more interviews to do. But not every victim wants to talk. We mentioned last episode that victim Jay Brooks had sent $5000 to the man we now know is Charles Fields, and Fields was slowly refunding his money, $100 money orders at a time. Brooks went public anyway, but other victims were silenced by these small payouts.

[00:07:56] Lou Raguse: And then that did make some people not want to talk to me. They're like, I'm glad you're doing this story, but I'm afraid that if I talk, I'll stop getting checks, and so I can't help you. And so I, I heard from several people like that. I want to say that I talked to 20 different people from all over the country.

[00:08:12] Bob: So Lou airs a couple more stories, keeps finding out more company names, more variations on the scam, keeps directing victims to complain to law enforcement, but for a while, they're all concerned that Charles Fields might get away with it. Nothing seems to be happening on the legal front. Still, it's important the stories air.

[00:08:34] Lou Raguse: Like you want to help these people get their money back; that's the main thing. But if you can't do that, at least you're helping their voices be heard. And when it's one person in Northern California that, you know got, got ripped off of $5000, another guy in Nevada, they feel it, it's probably a lonely feeling, and it's embarrassing for people when they lose the money like this 'cause they feel like if they would have paid attention to some red flags that they wouldn't have done it. But putting them all together helped them feel I guess less fault, and being able to share their voices is really satisfying.

[00:09:09] Bob: But you know what's even more satisfying? Months go by and it seems like nothing's going to happen with all these complaints to the AG and the FBI, but then...

[00:09:19] Lou Raguse: I get a phone call or an email from somebody in Blaine who says, "Hey, that guy from your story, they're raiding his house right now." And even sends us a couple of photos that showed the agents going into the house. And so it's wow, this is really happening.

[00:09:35] Bob: This is really happening. After all those complaints to law enforcement, Facebook posts, and all Lou's stories, the authorities are raiding Charles Fields. But the emotional rollercoaster is far from over because it's now early 2020 and because of the pandemic, the investigation seems to grind to a halt.

[00:09:57] Lou Raguse: And then about a month after that, the world stopped, and it's okay, I don't know if I'm ever going to hear about this again.

[00:10:04] Bob: Okay, so that sounds like exhilaration to, to like despondency in the space of a couple of weeks.

[00:10:10] Lou Raguse: Yeah, and it was like that for many stories we were working on. It's like your professional life just, for everybody, got put on pause, but like when you're talking about ongoing stories and projects and stuff like that, it's, okay, I can't assume that I'll ever get to pick this up again.

[00:10:25] Bob: But also, somewhere inside you're thinking, he's going to get away with it.

[00:10:28] Lou Raguse: Yeah, exactly. And that, the people thought so too. The victims, they, they thought, man, this guy is so slick, he's going to weasel his way out of this one too.

[00:10:38] Bob: But Charles Fields wasn't going to weasel his way out of it. Justice can come slowly, but this time a federal prosecutor named Matthew Ebert in Minneapolis is on the case, and it is complicated.

[00:10:53] Matthew Ebert: There were certain levels of obfuscation about exactly what the business was. And to be clear, for much of this the name Charles Fields was not prominent in the operation of his different fraudulent...

[00:11:10] Bob: Yeah, that's not the first name that crossed your desk.

[00:11:13] Matthew Ebert: Exactly. And so it, yes, we eventually connected the dots and realized that all of these disparate strands really connected back to one person, to one fraudster, and that was Charles Fields. That was not, that was far from apparent at the beginning. It can take many months, because you are trying to gather far flung financial records, and that means you're serving a subpoena on a bank depending upon volume of records and how many accounts you're looking at, and the size of the bank, if it's a behemoth national or international bank; it can take many months just to get those records in the door, and then once you do, you may realize that there's two or three other avenues you then need to pursue as you build additional financial records.

[00:12:04] Bob: But eventually, prosecutors make their way through this mountain of paperwork.

[00:12:10] Matthew Ebert: No, at a minimum, for about a half decade period of 2015 to 2020, Charles Fields, we learned in the investigation simply morphed his fraud scheme through a series of different successive company names. One of which was HomeSoft Systems Incorporated followed by WaterTek Marketing Corporation, a Water Innovations Group, another one called Mile High H₂O Corporation which purported to operate from Colorado, and I think a final one that he was in the midst of trying to launch was called The New H₂O. But even though the names of these entities would change regardless of the particular iteration, there was one obvious constant to all of Charles Fields's businesses, which is that fundamentally they were a scam to trick people into turning over their money.

[00:13:14] Bob: Part of the reason Charles Fields went through so many names was to run away from a growing bad reputation.

[00:13:22] Matthew Ebert: Charles Fields would simply shut one down, so to speak, shutter it, and then relaunch it with a different name was simply self-preservation. He needed to keep the fraud going, and at a certain point the names of his businesses would become sullied online and rightfully so because of consumers who have these terrible experiences and were vocal about it. So rather than meaningfully making them whole or addressing or respond to their needs, he just simply stopped doing business as that name and then repackaged it as something else all the while concealing his involvement throughout all of these scams.

[00:14:09] Bob: And in fact, as Matthew works to build his case, after that initial raid on Charles Fields at his home, well Charles goes to these amazing steps to conceal his criminal behavior. This is a story you've just got to hear to believe.

[00:14:24] Matthew Ebert: A random concerned citizen contacted a local police department. And the purpose of that call is that the homeowner went out to the base of their driveway, they pulled the cans out I think for garbage pickup the following morning, and they walked out just to add more to their can, and when they opened the lid, just discovered that sort of mysterious things had been added. It wasn't their own garbage or recycling. But they were able to make out a few different names out of what appeared to be a series of shredded records, like had gone through a paper shredder. And one of the names that they recognized appeared to be Charles Fields. And that person went inside, did an internet search, and it quickly tied back to a local news profile that was being done by a journalist here name Lou Raguse, where he was focusing in on Charles Fields and what appeared to be his unfolding fraud scam. So having heard that name appeared in shredded documents in their garbage, that person to their great credit contacted the local police. The local police in turn connected it to the pending investigation I was working on with the FBI, when I asked the FBI to take custody of the shredded documents, and we sent it to a specialized forensics lab at Quantico, Virginia, where the FBI has a unit dedicated to the task of trying to stitch back together shredded documents.

[00:16:07] Bob: The unshredding unit, oh my god!

[00:16:08] Matthew Ebert: I know. I, I will confess, I did not know that was a tool we had in our toolkit, but I was amazed that they were able to piece back together really some important pieces of evidence that one of which was a, a victim check, another was corporate registration documents where Charles Fields was using one of the fake alias names to create a new company. There was even a Minnesota identification, like a driver's license with his photo, a fake license that had been shredded and it was using yet another one of the fake alias names that he was hiding behind. And then just for good measure, I asked the lab at Quantico to test the shredded documents for fingerprints, and sure enough, we found Charles Fields's fingerprints on the documents.

[00:17:02] Bob: That is a crazy story. Was this a close-by neighbor, or did he drive miles and miles to dump these shredded documents in someone's recycling?

[00:17:09] Matthew Ebert: He drove miles and miles. By my memory, this was like over 12 or 15 miles away from his home, and I think he, but all indications are he simply picked just a random stranger, saw a can, thought he was miles and miles from his home, and it would never get connected back to him but...

[00:17:29] Bob: He picked the wrong random stranger.

[00:17:30] Matthew Ebert: He picked the wrong random stranger and the wrong, I think as a federal law enforcement agency, he picked the one that is able to stitch back together shredded evidence.

[00:17:39] Bob: That is crazy. Wow.

[00:17:40] Matthew Ebert: So again, credit the smart thinking and spirit of people that didn't look the other way and did the right thing by notifying authorities.

[00:17:51] Bob: In the end, law enforcement tracks down a remarkable trail of victims.

[00:17:58] Matthew Ebert: Part of our important task in looking into all this was trying to identify as many people as possible going back roughly a half decade who we think may have been victimized. And so we were sending out questionnaires all across the country to people asking them to provide us with details of what happened, to answer questions, to provide evidence. So we were able to piece together what we believe was the universe of people that he was communicating with because we got a search warrant to read his emails.

[00:18:37] Bob: Eventually, Charles Fields is indicted nearly four years after Lou Raguse's first story. The government alleges that Fields stole from about 250 people more than $600,000.

[00:18:52] Matthew Ebert: It's a lot of victims, and it's even, it's really even more than the $600,000, because close to a million is what the victimized contractors paid in, and then in the course of him giving either partial refunds or to some people, complete refunds, some of which would have inevitably been refunded by other victims essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul, that's what reduced it a bit to that 600,000 figure.

[00:19:28] Bob: Lou gets the news of the indictment while he's working on another story.

[00:19:35] Lou Raguse: It was like I was sitting in the news vehicle working on a different story, and this press release comes out and then I'd read the first line and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is it. They charged him. And so I emailed the station right away. I'm like, "Hey, before we do anything on this, you have to know the story behind this." And, and it was, it was a culmination of the WaterTek investigation. But it was, he had nearly 200 victims and stole $600,000. So it was much bigger than even I knew.

[00:20:02] Bob: Lou attends every court hearing, still looking for that interview. Repeatedly, Charles ducks him.

[00:20:11] Lou Raguse: I've known for waiting for the people and getting in front of them with a camera and asking them questions as they're coming out, and he was really trying to be slippery, and he, at one hearing, he even pretended like he was going to talk to me, and he says, "As long as you let my family leave without putting them on camera." And I'm like, "That's fine. This isn't about them." Let them all slip out, and then he hurried ahead of me and made it out so that I couldn't get a shot of his face. That's how it went at one, so I wasn't going to let that happen again.

[00:20:45] Bob: But in July 2024, Charles Fields finally pleads guilty, even that is a spectacle.

[00:20:53] Lou Raguse: One hundred percent. If you heard his, his tearful speech to the judge, you would think he was the most sorry person that's ever committed a crime.

[00:21:01] Bob: And Lou finally gets that interview at the sentencing, sort of.

[00:21:09] Lou Raguse: But finally, I think it was after his guilty plea was when, I'm like I'm not letting you leave here without getting on camera. And he tried to walk out and he tried to duke left and duke right, but I was in front of him asking him questions his whole way. You can even see my official news cameraman in the background because I, even Charles Fields got ahead of him, but I wasn't letting him get in front of me.

[00:21:31] Bob: Yeah, so what did he say?

[00:21:33] Lou Raguse: Didn't answer. Didn't open his mouth.

[00:21:35] Bob: Did you have any kind of a meaningful look in the eye, or anything?

[00:21:38] Lou Raguse: Yep. Finally, when he was being sentenced, the last thing, he came up to me and again, take everything with a grain of salt, and I don't know how genuine it is, he came and shook my hand. He said, "You've, you've, I should apologize. I, maybe I should have taken you up on that offer to do that interview initially. Obviously, I wasn't happy that you did the stories, but nothing you said was inaccurate." And then that was it. That was my last interaction with him.

[00:22:02] Bob: Have you ever had a perp say something like that to you before?

[00:22:05] Lou Raguse: I probably have, to be honest. There's just so many over the last 20 years. He is, and in my gut, I'm thinking, okay, he's saying this so that I'm nicer to him on this story. Like that, that's where my mind went as soon as he said that.

[00:22:17] Bob: He's working an angle always, right?

[00:22:18] Lou Raguse: I think so. Always.

[00:22:20] Bob: Charles Fields is sentenced to 4.5 years in prison where he seems to still be working on an angle.

[00:22:28] Lou Raguse: Even now he's in a federal prison in Minnesota, and he's been filing uh letters to the court recently asking for a compassionate early release because he says he has alcoholism and he is not getting the treatment in prison that he was promised as part of his, his sentencing deal. And he, and he also blames alcoholism for a lot of uh the crimes that he committed. Is he really? I don't know. But I have to say that it's hard to take anything he says at face value.

[00:22:59] Bob: Prosecutor Ebert cautions about that too.

[00:23:03] Bob: At his sentencing, he suggested that this was originally a legitimate business and that things just went very sideways. Do you want to comment on that?

[00:23:12] Matthew Ebert: I mean that very similar and constant refrain that I hear from fraud defendants that I have prosecuted over the last 17 years, and whether that's true or not doesn't change the fact that in this case the clear established record is that starting roughly a half decade ago, Charles Fields clearly crossed over an important line and knew that he was crossing over that important line which was that he had no ability to fulfill the claims and the promises that he was making to people. To be clear, the lies that he was telling to people and that he knew full well that he was telling an avalanche of untruthful information for no other purpose but to line his own pocket.

[00:24:10] Bob: The crucial part of getting Charles Fields behind bars was the avalanche of victims who filed all those complaints and just wouldn't let it go.

[00:24:20] Matthew Ebert: In my view, the success of this investigation and shutting it down and ultimately having there be a substantial sentence imposed, I credit to a number of things. I credit the work of investigators, federal law enforcement agents. I credit other actors involved including things like the Better Business Bureau, really helpful and thorough local investigative news reporting here in the Twin Cities. But most fundamentally, I credit the perseverance of all of these dozens of victims, over 250, from all walks of life who persevered through all this, were rightfully vocal about what happened, and were very effective at banding together at important times and making their voices known so that something could be done about it. So I absolutely credit the victims for all that they did to put this on the radar screen at the correct places.

[00:25:35] Bob: So the judge sentenced him to 4½ years in prison. What do you think of the sentence?

[00:25:39] Matthew Ebert: I think that, I think that is a, an important sentence here. There are several factors that go into a--, arriving at an important sentence for any judge in federal court including whether or not the person has criminal history, a life of crime, things like that. Also, depending on which path they might have taken in responding to a criminal case. For example, was it fought so to speak tooth and nail all the way to a jury trial? Here Mr. Fields, to his credit, did ultimately resolve the case somewhat quickly after the charges were filed and although it is cold comfort and too late for so many victims, did ultimately, I think, accept responsibility, however late and unsatisfactory that, that is for many of the victims.

[00:26:36] Bob: There are many things that make this story unique.

[00:26:41] Lou Raguse: This guy didn't fit what I would say is like the stereotypical scam artist mold or stereotype. He was like a suburban dad with a family that was essentially trying to keep up with the Joneses. They had a nice big house like all their neighbors but they rented it, they didn't own it. And they would go to the health club and all these different things, and he, maybe he did want to start out with a legitimate business and it turned into a scam like you said, but this one was just different for many different reasons.

[00:27:13] Bob: One big reason, he knew how to say all the right things even to experienced investors.

[00:27:21] Lou Raguse: Really the two elements that really drew the people in was the guaranteed salary, the 90-day money-back guarantee, and so it's okay, I'll pay this $5000 and if it's BS, I have 90 days to send it back and get my money back. But the 90-day money-back guarantee was something that was not honored, and then the guaranteed salaries never arrived. And so like the two things that you think are the safety rails were not really there. It was a lie.

[00:27:48] Bob: Yeah, and the word guarantee there just wasn't real. But it sounded like they couldn't lose.

[00:27:53] Lou Raguse: He used, he used lots of buzz words like that. He, he said the money will go into escrow, and it's okay, what does that even mean? Because he has a bank, an escrow bank account? He did not. Your money's sitting in an escrow account. Okay, that makes you feel safe, it's another safety rail that isn't really there. And here's the thing, these are smart people. Like, like a lot of these people were very successful in business, and they have a knack for sales. So then when they see the thing, and a lot of them are hustlers, make some money here, make some money there, say yeah, I can get in front of a group of people and teach them how to sell these machines, and you're going to give me a guaranteed salary to do that, that's easy.

[00:28:29] Bob: Plenty of folks credit Lou’s reporting with the prosecutions. He wouldn't go that far actually.

[00:28:36] Lou Raguse: I think that sometimes they do prosecute after a new story comes out, but it's not just because of like public pressure, I think it's because a lot of that early time-consuming work is done. Like all these victims are presented to them. At that point all they need to do is a couple search warrants or administrative subpoenas, get his bank records, see where this money's coming in, circle back to these victims and interview them, and then you have your case. And white-collar cases are so time-consuming, but if there is a news story where a reporter has done a lot of this time-consuming work at the beginning, it's a lot easier for the Feds to handle, and so it is a legitimate case.

[00:29:13] Bob: Sure. Yeah. That makes good sense. But nevertheless, it, congratulations on getting a criminal put behind bars. I think that's great.

[00:29:20] Lou Raguse: Yeah, thank you.

[00:29:22] Bob: The victims I spoke to all believe they had done that kind of due diligence and still were victimized. Jerry Cibley, we met him in Part 1 of this story, he now lives in Florida, well he thinks of himself as an experienced investor and someone well-versed in the world of scams.

[00:29:38] Bob: This story is wild to me because 99 out of 100 of these fall apart 10 seconds into an email exchange, right?

[00:29:46] Jerry Cibley: No, this guy was amazing. Absolutely amazing. He gave me some references. He gave me some YouTube videos that I could look at. He gave me a website and Bob, it all looked real. And I have been involved with people trying to scam me for years. I know them all. I didn't realize that I had relatives in England that had left me millions of dollars. I didn't know that I was connected with Nigeria. I didn't know that the IRS took payments via Walmart gift cards. I was very comfortable in the arena and I felt absolute certainty that I could not be scammed.

[00:30:31] Bob: But...

[00:30:33] Jerry Cibley: I was scammed, Bob.

[00:30:35] Bob: But here's the thing. When you're in business you do have to take risks and do you have to make some leaps of faith.

[00:30:43] Jerry Cibley: In order to be successful in a business, you have to spend money to make money, and there are certain inherent risks associated with being a business person, whether it be buying advertising or changing marketing, or something in that direction, there's money to be spent and sometimes you're successful, and sometimes you're not successful, but that goes along with being your own boss. I've been my own boss most of my life, and I like it. And I'm willing to take risks. I don't gamble, I don't go to Vegas and play the tables, but I will gamble on a business venture.

[00:31:21] Bob: And there are things that sound good but turn out to be real.

[00:31:24] Jerry Cibley: Well, absolutely. And as I said, this was a, a very unique concept of marketing, and I think it could have been successful. But instead of moving forward with it, they just took the money and ran.

[00:31:40] Bob: Jay Brooks who lives in Napa, California, we also met him in Part 1; you might remember he had a successful long career in the mobile phone business but says he was forced to retire at age 65. Well that's why he was looking at nontraditional business opportunities.

[00:31:58] Bob: It's hard to get a job in your 60s, right? People do, age discrimination is a real thing, and so you start to...

[00:32:03] Jay Brooks: Oh yeah.

[00:32:04] Bob: ...expand what you would consider, right?

[00:32:05] Jay Brooks: Well I had a killer resume, and I get hit on it all the time, but once they get my resume, even though there's no dates on it, they figure it out. This guy's old. (laughs) He's been around a long time. Done a lot.

[00:32:22] Bob: It's great and I really appreciate you speaking to us about this. What is it that you hope people who listen to your story might learn from it or might understand about a business like this?

[00:32:32] Jay Brooks: Number one, never invest in a business unless, unless you absolutely know. Let me put it this way, never invest in a business unless you're willing to take the risk, okay? Even a bonafide business that you know has a million positive reviews. You've got to be willing to take the risk.

[00:32:58] Bob: Yeah, and you might lose money.

[00:33:00] Jay Brooks: And you might lose money, exactly.

[00:33:04] Bob: Risk taking is okay, but only if you're in a position to lose all that you're risking.

[00:33:11] Bob: What is it you want people to hear most from you if, as they listen to your story?

[00:33:15] Jerry Cibley: I think the most important thing is to, if you think you've vetted somebody, do it again. Bounce it off a few other people that have understanding, and I will say, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. And I'm not making excuses for any of us that got conned and scammed, but it was a brilliant scheme. It was wonderful. But I will share that if you get emails from somebody, I recently got an email from a company and but they were using a Gmail address. Okay, General Motors doesn't use a Gmail address. Walmart doesn't use a Gmail address and PayPal does not use a Gmail address, so do not give out any information like account numbers. Anybody calling you asking for an account number, they're not legitimate.

[00:34:13] Bob: What do you think people who are listening should learn from this story?

[00:34:18] Matthew Ebert: I think they should learn, they should learn about trusting their instincts. If something sounds too good to be true, it likely is that old adage I think will never lose its salience. I think that while the advent of social media and the internet has many downsides that we can all think of in our own lives, there are some advantages. One of which would be if consumers out there learn of something like this and they want to try to research it, want to gain an understanding of it, if it is too good to be true they can turn to resources online, including resources through whether it's the AARP or Better Business Bureau chapters throughout the country, to try to verify whether or not the business opportunity or whatever the offering is, whether or not it is too good to be true. Whether it is a scam. And so I would certainly caution people to do their homework and look into it, but sometimes that's just not enough. Even though people follow their instincts and things sound too good to be true, that's not enough to surmount a fraudulent pitch and a fraudulent scam that is pitch perfect at sounding legitimate and ensnaring people. And in large measure, that's what Charles Fields did here. So I would further advise listeners to do what many of the victims here did after they realize that they had fallen prey to this scam which is they reached out, whether it's through advocacy organizations, trying to contact law enforcement, and ultimately, I think, that's what carried the day in enabling law enforcement federally for us to connect the dots to identify the perpetrator of this scheme and to cut the scam off at the knees.

[00:36:27] Bob: Okay, so people who watch this arc of this whole story, what do you want them to learn from it?

[00:36:35] Lou Raguse: It, just like a lot of scam stories, it goes back to if it's too good to be true, it probably is. And I think one thing that people could learn is that if you are thinking about an opportunity like this, run it past people that are completely unconnected, and just get their take on it. Because I think a lot of times people want to believe that it's true, and even if they were sharing it with friends or family members, they might leave out certain red flags because they don't want to hear, they don't want it to be poo-poohed by other people. They want to believe that it's going to be real, and then in hindsight, obviously, all these things were red flags that I think other people would point out to them. And so that's, once all these people were in this Facebook group sharing stories, every single one of them was like, oh my gosh, of course. If I, if I only would have been open about all this stuff right from the beginning, of course. And I think that people with that mindset they, they can see worst case scenario here, I'm out, I don't know, a thousand dollars. Like it might be worth a thousand-dollar risk in order to make many thousand dollars if this thing is real. And I think people like that do take those chances. But then it ended up being worse than he was expected, and then for people that just are much worse off financially to start with, it's much, much worse.

[00:37:53] Bob: I, I think that's a, a real important distinction to make. Gambling can be fun too, right, if you can lose the money. But as an entrepreneur, we ask people to make leaps of faith all the time, and it's funny, of course, if it sounds too good to be true, it might not be true. But then also in the history of tech investing, there's been lots of things that sounded too good to be true that turned out to be true, and so I don't know, I hate all these things that put it on the consumers. This guy was just a criminal and so what can you do?

[00:38:19] Lou Raguse: Exactly.

[00:38:22] Bob: I think that's really good advice. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for the, all the work that you do. It's so important that journalists like you stick to it, so keep at it.

[00:38:30] Lou Raguse: Thank you, and thanks for highlighting this case, because it was, it wasn't like the biggest story in Minnesota or anything like that, but it affected so many people and it was a lot of work to get on the air.

[00:38:40] Bob: And you got the result.

[00:38:42] Lou Raguse: Absolutely.

[00:38:43] Bob: For The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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[00:38:48] Bob: If you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, you're not alone. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next. To learn more about the Fraud Watch Network volunteers and the fraud survivors they've helped, check out the new video series, Fraud Wars, on AARP's YouTube channel. Our email address at The Perfect Scam is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, and we want to hear from you. If you've been the victim of a scam or you know someone who has, and you'd like us to tell their story, write to us. That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org. Thank you to our team of scambusters; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; Researcher, Becky Dodson; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; and our Audio Engineer and Sound Designer, Julio Gonzalez. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For AARP's The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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