$1 Million Theft: Tech Scam Leaves Teacher Shaken

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

[00:00:04] Joyce: I have never heard anybody so loud and angry and calling me all kinds of names. He said, "Where are you right now?" And he said, "I know where you are. You're sitting in front of a bank.” And he said, “You are so stupid. We have been doing this so long and you were so close to having all of your money. Now the Federal Reserve is done with you. You have lost everything.”

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[00:00:35] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan.

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[00:00:40] [Beeping Sound]

[00:00:44] Bob: Well that sounded pretty awful, right? I bet if we let that noise play out just a little longer, you'd do just about anything to stop it. And that's how many tech support scams start; by blaring an insufferable sound, fraying your nerves, and then taking advantage of the vulnerability that follows. But today's guest had so many other factors which laid the groundwork for her vulnerability that it really seems unfair. A retired teacher who still works with special needs kids, recently divorced after a long marriage, facing a cancer scare, and often at her 96-year-old mom's house taking care of her. Ultimately, criminals took advantage of all these factors and stole $1 million from Joyce. What does Stop, Drop, and Roll have to do with any of this? Well stories like these are a big part of the reason that AARP has invested a lot of time, research and funding into a new campaign designed to help people fight against scams like these. The good guys needs something as loud as that screeching noise which begins those tech support scams, and AARP has settled on a concept called Pause, Reflect, and Protect. We'll get to that in a moment. But now, I want to take you back to that terrible morning when Joyce's computer made that terrible sound.

[00:02:09] [Beeping sound]

[00:02:11] Joyce: Yeah, I was getting on the computer and all of the sudden a blaring sound came on, wouldn't stop. My laptop was flashing, and I just saw, they gave me a number to call that said, "Call this number." So I did.

[00:02:30] Bob: We're only using Joyce's first name to protect her identity.

[00:02:34] Joyce: So it was a really high-pitched buzzing sound. Like an alarm going off.

[00:02:41] Bob: Like one of those annoying fire alarms or something like that?

[00:02:43] Joyce: Yes. Yeah, about, and about as loud as that. And it wouldn't stop, and I, again, I was so upset. I could not turn it off. I didn't have, know how to turn down my sound, nothing. And finally the person on the other end just screamed at me. Touch this button or whatever. I, and I did, and it went away. But they were still there.

[00:03:10] Bob: So now that infernal noise is gone, but Joyce finds herself on the phone with someone who says they can help her figure out what happened.

[00:03:20] Bob: And this, this number that you called, did it say who you were calling or did that person say who they were?

[00:03:25] Joyce: I believe, I thought I was calling Microsoft, that's what came up on the screen. Someone answered, started saying that something was wrong with my computer and that they were going to help me.

[00:03:42] Bob: Joyce sure needs help. Suddenly her computer won't do anything, so she follows his instructions and quickly things go from bad to worse.

[00:03:54] Joyce: So they put some software in place and traced where things were coming from, and it would pop up on my screen saying Russia, saying China, all these different places, and they were telling me that these countries had infected my machine and that all of my money was subject to them taking it. And that they needed to do something quickly or I would lose everything.

[00:04:25] Bob: There's a whole bunch of things happening to her at once. Russia, China, what are you thinking when it says Russia or China?

[00:04:30] Joyce: I'm scared to death. I have no idea. I just recently was divorced. I was married for 30 years. So I was all by myself. I now have myself and my dog, and I didn't know what to do. So I was following their instructions and the sounds continued to go on. And it was nerve-wracking.

[00:04:56] Bob: All the more nerve-wracking because she's got to get to mom's house. Mom is 96 and Joyce really needs to be there.

[00:05:05] Joyce: So again, they just start talking about all of the accounts that I have are in jeopardy of being hacked. And that I need to do something quickly. They're going to work on my computer to make sure that it's safe, and just to leave the computer on. And they'll be working on that. But I need to really start thinking about what I wanted to do with my money. And so I left, they let me leave the house. I didn't, I was going to my mother's, so I went to my mom's and she's 96. I am her caregiver. So I was taking care of her and I got a phone call saying again that I needed to contact my bank and I needed to do it right away so that things would be safe. Again, they're pushing me and saying you need to do this right away. You need to do it right now. And I was in shock.

[00:06:12] Bob: In shock. Warned her money could all be stolen. She has to act fast. She has to call the expert they provided to her, but...

[00:06:22] Joyce: I couldn't find the number to call. I was trying to look it up on my phone while I was talking to them. I couldn't do it. So again, they pretty, he got really upset with me and just said, "Oh for God's sakes, I'll just give you the number." And so he connected me to a number. And when the person answered...

[00:06:47] Bob: And, and you're, you're at your mom's house at this point?

[00:06:48] Joyce: Yes.

[00:06:50] Bob: I'm guessing you had, you went to a different room or something to have this private conversation?

[00:06:54] Joyce: Yes, I'm in the kitchen, she's in the living room. I'm freaking out.

[00:06:59] Bob: Finally she connects with the person who is supposed to help her fix all this. He says his name is David Johnson. Joyce's phone tells her that he works at Zion's Bank, that's her bank. David Johnson repeats that Joyce's accounts are at risk, says he'll have to call back the next day with some options, but in the meantime, she isn't supposed to tell a soul.

[00:07:23] Joyce: Yes. They said, "There could be someone in Zion's that is doing this, and we're trying to catch them, and so you cannot tell anyone. And as long as you don't tell anyone, everything's going to be okay." They said, "The Federal Reserve, no matter what happens, as long as you don't tell anyone, they will restore all your money if this goes sideways."

[00:07:48] Bob: Joyce can't even tell her mom who can tell something's going on from the other room.

[00:07:54] Bob: You had to just make up some explanation or something?

[00:07:56] Joyce: Yeah, like I said, I had been going through a divorce, so I just made an excuse about that. He's calling, he's not happy, whatever.

[00:08:08] Bob: And so then the next day, David Johnson does call. He tells Joyce she's going to have to move all her money into new accounts out of the reach of these criminals.

[00:08:19] Joyce: And he says, "Okay, we have a couple of different ways that we can handle this. We can start by Bitcoining it. We'll take different amounts of money out of your account and we'll put it into Bitcoin, and then the Federal Reserve will turn that back over and put it in an account for you. We'll set up the Bitcoin in your name, you can get it anytime." I'm just so scared to death that I don't know what to do. And he said, "We can start with Bitcoin, so I need you to go to your bank and take out $5000 and when you get it, you need to call me and I'll tell you what to do next."

[00:09:05] Bob: First, Joyce has to get cash from her bank account. David Johnson reassures her he'll be with her every step of the way.

[00:09:14] Joyce: Off I go to the bank, and he said, "They're going to ask you if you're doing this under duress, or if someone is asking you for money. And you need to tell them no, because the Federal Reserve is listening in, and again, you're not to tell anyone. Just make sure that you don't say anything about that. If you just make up an excuse if they ask."

[00:09:40] Bob: So she gets the $5000 and then she's told go straight home and await further instruction.

[00:09:47] Joyce: And I came back; I waited for the phone call. The other part was that he did not want me leaving my house. I had to be at my house all the time, and I explain to him, "Wait a minute, I am a caregiver to my 96-year-old mother, that's not going to work for me." And he said, "Okay. You can go there, but those are the only places you can go."

[00:10:15] Bob: She's not home long before she gets another call.

[00:10:19] Joyce: But he calls and says, "Okay, we need to find a place that has a Bitcoin machine." I did not know what that was. I had no idea. So he, he started looking up places that were close to me and would give me an address to go to. And I remember the first address that I went to was a gas station, and it was probably 5 miles from my house. And I walk in; he's on the phone with me. I have my iPods in, and he's talking to me the whole time. He's telling me what to do. Obviously, he and I had set up an account for me so that I put in all of the information that he told me, and we get into my account and he says, "Okay, start putting in the dollar bills." And I'm like, "What? I don't understand." And there's a little slot, like in the grocery store when you put your money in those self-checkouts, and I started putting the money in.

[00:11:33] Bob: So Joyce stands there at this gas station crypto ATM and just starts feeding money into it.

[00:11:40] Joyce: He didn't tell me what denominations to get, so they gave me 50s, they, it took forever.

[00:11:49] Bob: Remember, Joyce is in full-on panic mode now, but someone comes up to her at one point with a surprising message.

[00:11:57] Joyce: And I remember a girl coming up to me and saying, "This is a scam, you shouldn't do it." I just said, "You know what, you just need to leave me alone. I know what I'm doing." Just, you know...

[00:12:07] Bob: Wow.

[00:12:08] Joyce: That...

[00:12:08] Bob: Just a random stranger walked up and said that?

[00:12:10] Joyce: Yes. (sigh) And I'm like, no, I know what I'm doing. He's in my head saying, "Don't tell her anything." Oh... and I'm just putting my money in the machine. And it probably took me about an hour. And I'm just thinking, oh my hell, what else can go wrong? Just let me out of this. So it finally ends. He gets off the phone. I leave. I'm a nervous wreck. I don't know what I'm doing. I drive home. I try and get myself together, go to my mom's, take care of her.

[00:12:54] Bob: But that first dark encounter with a crypto ATM, well she has to do that again, and again.

[00:13:02] Joyce: And that happened probably three times. And after the third time, and we would go to a different ATM, whatever, Bitcoin place each time. And they're the scuzziest places in the world. And I'm just, I'm thinking to myself, I don't believe I'm doing this. I don't know what I'm doing. But he is constantly telling me, you know what, this is going to save all of your money. Don't worry about it. Everything's going to be okay. So I continue.

[00:13:42] Bob: But after that third Bitcoin experience, things change.

[00:13:47] Joyce: He calls me and says, "Well there's a problem with the Bitcoin. It's, they're not letting it go through. And so the Federal Reserve wants to try something else. And the next thing that we need to try is gold." So, I, I'm again crazy at this point.

[00:14:13] Bob: Not only does she have to start doing transfers using gold now, but she has to dig into all her life savings.

[00:14:21] Joyce: And he said, "You need to transfer all of your retirement funds, your 401s, whatever you have," and they knew what I had. I don't know how they knew, but they could name off the places that I had money in.

[00:14:41] Bob: Hmm.

[00:14:42] Joyce: And they said, "You need to get a hold of them immediately and liquidate. Just put it and send it to your bank." (sigh) So I did. And I asked him about taxes, that scares me to death, right.

[00:14:59] Bob: Yeah, of course.

[00:15:00] Joyce: I'm like, "What do I do when I'm filling out these papers, 'cause it says, do I want the taxes withheld?" He said, "It really doesn't matter because you remember the Federal Reserve's going to give you everything back as long as you follow what we're telling you." (sigh) So I do it. And I liquidate everything. And it's over a million dollars.

[00:15:25] Bob: It's over a million dollars.

[00:15:30] Joyce: And then they start with the gold. And they call me and say, "Okay, we're going to change your money into gold and someone from the Federal Reserve will come to your house and pick it up and safeguard it until we are sure that all your accounts are safe and then we'll make new accounts for you and we'll put it all back." He had me go to JD Bullion, and I was to order some gold. And this whole time, he has put something on my machine called Desktop I think, where he can take control of my computer because at this point, I am a nervous wreck. I can barely type in the places that he wants me to go. He basically takes over. Once I get to the site, he says, "Okay, we're buying gold. This is what we're going to buy." And he would just click on it. And it would come to three hundred to four thousand dollars in gold at one time.

[00:16:45] Bob: Wow.

[00:16:47] Joyce: And he would say you need to do this and then you go and get a wire transfer. And you transfer the money to JD Bullion. And again, "They're going to call you because this is a large amount, and they're going to ask you the same questions that the bank asked you and you just need to tell them, I'm just diversifying, whatever you want to tell them, you just tell them no, no one is telling you what to do."

[00:17:21] Bob: So she orders the gold, then she's told how to handle it.

[00:17:26] Joyce: I was told to open it, put it out on the counter of, some counter or flat surface, however you want to say it. Take a picture of it and send it to him. Take a picture of the receipt that was inside the box showing what we bought, and every time that happened I would need to do that same process; take a picture, send it to him, take a picture of the receipt, send it to him all the while thinking this is going to the Federal Reserve. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Everything is fine. So I would go to the bank, I would get a wire transfer to them. And in three to four days the gold would arrive. Within those two and three days, he was calling me every day, once in the morning before I went to work out, once at night just checking on me, seeing how I was doing. I thought, well this guy's really nice, anyway. Again, I could not go anywhere. I wasn't sure when the gold would come, and it came by FedEx. So I would get an email that said it will be between this and this time. And I would have to stay home.

[00:18:52] Bob: And then eventually, someone would show up at her house and pick up the gold again and again.

[00:19:01] Bob: So did you just have to continually call in sick to work for this?

[00:19:03] Joyce: Well he actually was a little nicer the other times. He made sure that nothing came on the day that I had to work. So again, he let me go to work, go to my mom's.

[00:19:17] Bob: I'm just trying to imagine what was it like when you went to work those days but you had all this going on in the back of your mind?

[00:19:23] Joyce: It was very hard. But when the kids came in, I could focus on something different. And taking care of my mom now when I focus on that and know that she might not have that much time left, and I need to be present with her and stay in the moment and not dwell in what's happened to me, that also helps. And carving out a little bit of time daily to work on it and then put it aside and say, I need to put it back in the box for now and try to live my life.

[00:20:04] Bob: Meanwhile, outside the stress of following his instructions, the calls from David Johnson sometimes have a lighter side.

[00:20:13] Joyce: He would call randomly like he was my friend. We would talk about my mom and how it was hard taking care of her at 96 and you know that I had gotten a divorce after 30 years, and he was always listening. So he worked his way into a friendship with me.

[00:20:36] Bob: Which is all the more important because while these gold purchases are happening, Joyce has another frightening moment.

[00:20:44] Joyce: Yeah, I was, my doctor was concerned that I could have cancer. So along with all of this, I was going in for procedures, and because my mother is 96, I didn't want to tell her about my problems because I knew that she would worry and that would not be good for her. So I never told her. But I would go in and have different procedures and things that they would check out, and that lasted a month, and finally it came back that no, I was cancer-free, and that was good.

[00:21:36] Bob: Wonderful. Yeah, yeah.

[00:21:38] Joyce: So but at the same time, my friend, would call and tell how worried he was for me, and he would be there for me, and if I needed something.

[00:21:53] Bob: Right about then, someone else drops into Joyce's life with another message that Joyce isn't quite ready to hear.

[00:22:02] Joyce: So one day I got a phone call from a man that said that Dave was a scam artist, and that I needed to help them put him in jail. And I needed to tell them his name. And I said, "Absolutely not. I'm not going to do that." He said, "You're losing everything. He's not the guy you think he is. So you need to stop." And they hung up. So again, I try and call Dave, and there's no answer. And in that moment, I'm like, [bleep] I've got to get to the bank. I need to move all my money. I make it to the bank. I go in the bank and I move everything to a new account. And I come back out. I've moved everything.

[00:23:07] Bob: But David Johnson gets wind of what's happening. He eventually does call and...

[00:23:14] Joyce: I have never heard anybody so loud and angry, and calling me all kinds of names and how stupid and idiotical I am, and I'm a dumbass, and I'm this, and I'm that. The FBI--, he said, "Where are you right now?" And I said, and he said, "I know where you are. You're sitting in front of a bank." And I lost it. And he said, "You are so stupid. We have been doing this so long and you were so close to having all of your money. Now the Federal Reserve is done with you. You have lost everything. Everything." And I was bawling my eyes out. I did not know what to do. I begged and pleaded that he help me with the Federal Reserve and tell them that I had made a mistake, tell them I would do anything if they would just help me. And so he said, "I'll work on it and see what's going on." And he hung up on me. And he let me go for a day wondering what was happening. And he called me back and said, "I've been on the phone for hours and hours trying to get this back for you. You cannot do this again. You have got to follow through with what we came up with."

[00:24:36] Bob: And he was doing you a favor.

[00:24:37] Joyce: He was doing me a favor. That he was putting his job on the line and I never once questioned that.

[00:24:50] Bob: So Joyce goes ahead with the last gold purchase and transfer.

[00:24:54] Joyce: So that happened over a period of, started in March and I think the last gold was delivered the end of May. And still, I'm, I'm okay with that because I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. The Federal Reserve's covering me. It's coming up Zion's Bank. Every time I thought of something, he always had an answer. There was always an excuse of how this was happening and why. So I just did what I was told.

[00:25:32] Bob: But when the last of Joyce's money has been liquidated, turned into gold, and handed over, David Johnson makes a brand-new request that triggers something different in Joyce.

[00:25:45] Joyce: Then I receive a phone call, probably the end of May, saying "Okay, we got everything from you. Now we need to get your mom's money." Because I was attached to my mom's account. And I said, "No. That is not going to happen." He said, "It really has to. It'll be okay. We'll, it'll be little, it'll just be Bitcoin again." And I, again, after all of this, I went to the bank the last time and thank God, they refused. They said, "You cannot have any more money. You'll have to figure something out." So I left and I called the number for Dave, and never received a call back. It was probably 7 or 8 days later I got a call, and it came up, David Johnson. And I answered and I let him have it with every swear word I could think of, how dare you do this to me, whatever, and hung up. And that was the last time that I have ever heard from him.

[00:27:22] Bob: So somewhere between you go to the bank to ask for a small amount of your mom's money, they say no, and a week later when you let him have it, somewhere in there you decided this is wrong, this is a crime. Can you talk about that moment and how it came to be and how it felt?

[00:27:39] Joyce: So it was when they would not let me have the money. I came out of the bank. I tried calling. He wasn't picking up, and I just, it was like a brick hit me and I said some naughty word. I said, oh dammit.

[00:28:04] Bob: But can you try to explain to somebody how that feels?

[00:28:06] Joyce: It's like a huge sucker punch to the gut. All of the air goes out of you and you cannot believe that this has happened to you. I am a very educated person. I had a master's. I, all of those things that I thought made me smart didn't help me at all. I thought I knew people better. No. These guys are cunning, they're master manipulators, and the entire time they manipulated me. And every time I would get close to figuring it out, they would flip on another huge noise blaster. I just, I... can we stop for a minute?

[00:29:03] Bob: Yeah, absolutely. Take your time.

[00:29:07] Bob: Joyce slowly comes to understand that criminals have stolen pretty much every dollar she's worked to save her entire life. For people who don't know what that feels like, I think there are a lot of people who do unfortunately, but there's this new work, precarity that's going around in economic circles meaning you're one illness away from a real disaster, and that hovers over you every...

[00:29:31] Joyce: Yeah, because before this I knew I was going to be okay. I could pay for whatever happened to me, right? I had this money. I, I was fine being on my own. I didn't have to worry about any of that because I had all of this back, to back me up. And now I have literally, there's nothing in save--, I don't save. I just have to make sure that I'm smart about what I do from now on and that I stay healthy and hopefully nothing else comes up in the near future.

[00:30:07] Bob: And even worse, she has a really large debt.

[00:30:12] Joyce: Yeah, I think the next hurdle that I now have is that the Internal Revenue Service is after me for the money that I did not get but that I need to pay taxes on. So currently, I owe $125,000 to the IRS.

[00:30:38] Bob: Oh my God.

[00:30:40] Joyce: I owe over $12,000 to the State of Utah in taxes. And if I have to pay back that whole $125,000, I don't have anything backing me. So if something bad happens to me, again, I'm divorced, I'm by myself. I don't have kids. If another health scare comes up or whatever, I don't have savings to support me, and that's going to make it ten times worse if I have to pay all of that back.

[00:31:16] Bob: She goes to law enforcement with her story but doesn't leave any of those interactions with much hope. She's still trying to figure out what she'll do about the federal taxes she owes, but she says the State of Utah has already begun garnishing her checking account.

[00:31:34] Joyce: Yeah, hopefully I can broker a deal with them to pay what I owe. I’ve never ever not paid my taxes. This is killing me also. I have started working on this the day that I left the FBI office because I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn't know how bad. Hopefully, I will get a meeting with them and pay the taxes that I would have owed and move forward from there.

[00:32:03] Bob: Joyce is left with a lot of haunting questions about all that happened to her, but she's working to rebuild her life.

[00:32:11] Joyce: Why couldn't I just stick with my gut at that time? And these are questions that I have to live with every single day. I ask myself, who was I for those three months because that's not who I am. I worked really hard; I worked sometimes two and three jobs so that I would have a retirement. And in one fell swoop I let some man take it from me. And I gave it over willingly because I thought I was doing the right thing.

[00:32:58] Bob: Do you have any idea who that person was who called you?

[00:33:02] Joyce: No. No, and now as I look back, I believe that they were all in cahoots. And that they were, I don't know what they were doing. I don't know if that was a real person.

[00:33:17] Bob: One theory would be that was another scammer with a conscience who suddenly wanted to alert you, but another theory would be that was all part of the ruse, right?

[00:33:26] Joyce: Yeah.

[00:33:27] Bob: And you don't know, you don't have a guess to which one it was.

[00:33:29] Joyce: No. I, I don't trust myself anymore. I would like to believe that it was someone trying to help me, but then I have to take on that knowledge that I didn't help myself, and I could have. So there's another mistake that I made. So I, my decision making is not good anymore. I don't make decisions, and every decision scares the hell out of me.

[00:34:02] Bob: I'm so sorry, but and that is what they robbed of you more than anything.

[00:34:06] Joyce: Yes. Yeah. And again, hindsight's 20/20. But I no longer believe anyone. I have a very small circle of people and the only people that know are my brother and my sister.

[00:34:33] Bob: Are they close by?

[00:34:35] Joyce: Um, my brother lives in Idaho. My sister is close. But that I did not want to continue to live. And that was scary to me. But the flip side of having nothing to support me, I am retired. I do have a pension and that is going to save me. I, I, I will not be able to do what I wanted to do in retirement, what I thought I was going to do, travel, go all different kind of places, but I am surviving.

[00:35:25] Bob: But that kind of emotional betrayal can be as painful as...

[00:35:28] Joyce: Yeah.

[00:35:29] Bob: A million dollars, right?

[00:35:31] Joyce: Yeah. And I think that's probably been one of the hardest things. Like I said of trusting again is that I'm not willing to do that again. And I don't answer my phone. If someone wants to get ahold of me, they need to leave a voicemail and then I check them. But to live my life always trying to figure out what's going to happen next and who is going to want something from me and me not being savvy enough to figure it out, I just live in a little box, so that I don't have that temptation again, which sometimes is lonely.

[00:36:17] Bob: I'm sure it's more than lonely.

[00:36:19] Joyce: And I just want to make sure that this never ever happens to others. I know that's a pipe dream, but everything I have done since then, I have gotten ahold of AARP; they have been awesome. I've gone to their fraud seminars. And I'm just learning how to be by myself and be okay with that.

[00:36:49] Bob: First of all, you're more than surviving. You're doing some very important work here. And you probably can't see it quite so clearly at the moment, but I promise you that's true.

[00:36:59] Bob: She works out nearly every day. She's a voracious gardener and walks her dog a lot.

[00:37:05] Joyce: Anything to get those endorphins going that say I'm, I'm okay.

[00:37:10] Bob: It's good to get... what's your dog's name?

[00:37:11] Joyce: Karma (laughs)

[00:37:14] Bob: Karma. (laughs)

[00:37:16] Joyce: She's actually, I know, actually a rescue. And she's a, yeah, she's a rescue chihuahua.

[00:37:24] Bob: So no energy at all.

[00:37:25] Joyce: Oh none, yeah. Yeah, she keeps me going.

[00:37:29] Bob: And I hope once in a while gives good advice.

[00:37:31] Joyce: Oh yeah, yeah, she snuggles really well.

[00:37:35] Bob: So Joyce says she's doing okay most days. Her students provide a healthy distraction too.

[00:37:43] Bob: So you told me that you were working one day a week as a special ed assistant basically at a school, right?

[00:37:49] Joyce: Well, yes. So I am a retired special education teacher and so one day a week I go teach math to some hooligans that have been kicked out of school for being bad and need their math services for special education.

[00:38:06] Bob: Okay, first of all, the calling to be, I come from a family of teachers, so the calling to be a teacher, how, how long were you a teacher?

[00:38:14] Joyce: Uh, 33 years.

[00:38:15] Bob: Yeah, so that's an amazing body of work. Being a special ed teacher is a whole other layer of calling. How did you find the strength to do that for 33 years.

[00:38:27] Joyce: Yeah, I also have cerebral palsy. My schooling was not easy. Kids are really cruel. They make fun of you, like all those kind of things, and so again, my mission was to make sure that those students who had disabilities had someone standing up for them that would fight for them. And so that's why I chose special education.

[00:38:57] Bob: So for 33 years plus, you've been fighting for people who start behind the starting line in life, and yet when you had your moment, it really didn't seem like anybody was fighting for you.

[00:39:11] Joyce: Right.

[00:39:11] Bob: I'm so sorry.

[00:39:12] Joyce: It still doesn't, yeah. And but I'm going to work through it. I, I am going to make it through. I don't know how unscathed or scathed that I'm going to be (chuckles), but I'm going to make it.

[00:39:28] Bob: For starters, those hooligans they need you.

[00:39:30] Joyce: (laughs) Yeah.

[00:39:33] Bob: A really key element of this story is the panic that that blaring noise instilled in her, and also the panic that man who supposedly worked at Zion's Bank instilled in her. Joyce really wants people to understand that part of her story.

[00:39:48] Joyce: I'm just working really hard not to blame myself and just to move forward and again, say, yeah, I was a victim. These guys are master manipulators. They have a PhD in it. I could never have outrun them. But I can do something now.

[00:40:12] Bob: AARP has programs designed to help victims like Joyce. She's been through a few of them.

[00:40:19] Joyce: When I sat in that presentation, everything they said happened to me. Everything. I made it through the entire presentation and had to go in the bathroom and have a nice huge cry, but I just thought, we just need to get this information out there. I wish I would have known that, obviously, it's always hindsight's 20/20, but every single thing they brought up happened to me; the quickness, the loud noises, the, all of those kind of things to set you off your game, happened to me. If they are trying to push you fast, if you have to do something quickly, don't do it. That is the number one thing. Just say I need time or whatever and wait it out because it's not true.

[00:41:13] Bob: Joyce's story is so painful. And as I mentioned at the beginning, it all began with a disorienting noise and pressure. Lots and lots of pressure. So as I also mentioned at the beginning of this episode, what does Stop, Drop, and Roll have to do with any of this? Specifically, how might it help stop crimes like this? Well we have a very special guest with us today to talk about that. She's AARP's Kathy Stokes. You've heard her voice on the podcast before. She's Senior Director of Fraud Prevention Programs for AARP, that includes The Fraud Watch Network which The Perfect Scam is a part of.

[00:41:52] Bob: Now I know people listen to this every week and they hear me talk about The Fraud Watch Network, but just in case they don't know, what is The Fraud Watch Network?

[00:41:58] Kathy Stokes: So this is AARP's nationwide social mission program to educate consumers, mostly older adults, but it really applies to everybody, about the significant financial risk they face because of the crisis of fraud we find ourselves in, and we also have a component that is focused on supporting victims, helping people if they're not sure of whether something that they're confronting or confronted with is a scam, and we also seek systemic change, and I think that's one of the things we're going to talk about today.

[00:42:33] Bob: Before we get to AARP's new initiative, I wanted to hear from Kathy about tech support scams and Joyce's situation.

[00:42:43] Kathy Stokes: Yeah, the tech support scam has really changed, evolved over the last five years or so where it may have been something as simple as a pop-up that says you have a horrible problem, call this number, and the worst that may have happened is you'd sign up for tech support for $30 a month for the next year, but now it has become very complex and it turns into taking over accounts or being told that your accounts are being hacked; I'm talking about financial accounts and that involves probably somebody from the federal government, somebody from your bank making sure that you understand that you need to move your money to keep it safe. And what's really important for people to understand is that it works because the criminals know how to get our brains to bypass logic, something they've been doing forever, and they're just exceedingly good at it now because of the technology to scale and to perfect the scam.

[00:43:51] Bob: Whenever I hear about one of these crimes, the first thing that someone tells me is it begins with this blaring, awful noise that's like disturbing so much. In the first few moments, they're just disoriented. Why is that so effective?

[00:44:06] Kathy Stokes: The brain has been functioning the same way for about, what is it, 300,000 years now, where if you are facing an imminent threat and there's a highly emotional reaction that you're having, your brain says, this is an urgent matter, bypass logic and go to action. And the action is in the emotional part of our brain and the academics actually have a term for it; it's called the amygdala hijack. So that sound is immediately the thing that they're trying to do is establish fear and heightened emotion and that is what sets them up for the win in the scam.

[00:44:48] Bob: So you hear this noise. You'll do anything to get rid of the noise. Your emotions go to 11 and then... and then you're very vulnerable, right?

[00:44:55] Kathy Stokes: Absolutely. You don't know how to shut it off and so you call that number and that person who's getting that, that sound away is all of a sudden, a hero, right?

[00:45:07] Bob: Oh sure.

[00:45:07] Kathy Stokes: Yeah, and so it ends up playing out that this person is going to help you with this, what seemed like a smaller problem which is now a very big problem and they'll, and you'll, you're going to do anything because you're now in that no logic emotional state that you just need to fix the problem.

[00:45:24] Bob: And I also think there's something so all-consuming about losing internet access today, about your computer being broken, or about losing your phone. Remember the panic you felt the last time you couldn't find your phone even for just a few minutes? That's the kind of emotional hijacking these criminals trade in.

[00:45:43] Bob: We forget how much rely on these things. But someone is now telling, you can't use your laptop and all of a sudden, immediately, disaster. You can't pay your bills; you can't contact your kids. It's, and that's another thing that sends you right to 11, isn't it?

[00:45:57] Kathy Stokes: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's that, the emotion is so high because we're connected to our devices.

[00:46:03] Bob: It's almost like someone lops off an arm or a limb or something like that.

[00:46:09] Bob: I'd like to think my calm, reassuring voice can help people like you avoid this kind of emotional manipulation, hopefully it helps a little, but we know criminals have these powerful tools at their disposal. And so AARP has invested a lot of time and energy to find broader ways to help consumers combat these crimes and Kathy is here to explain a big new initiative.

[00:46:34] Bob: So we were just talking about this emotional heightened reaction and how that sets the stage for crime. I know that you, in particular, and AARP, has a new campaign designed to help people who get into that emotional state. Let's talk about how that came about. So what's it called?

[00:46:49] Kathy Stokes: We call it Pause. Reflect. Protect, and what we're trying to do with this is come up with what is that trigger that can yield an immediate response, and we really base it on that concept that when we were all in, what was it, maybe 2nd grade here in the states, we learned what to do in the event of a fire. Do you remember learning that?

[00:47:14] Bob: I sure do.

[00:47:16] Kathy Stokes: What was it?

[00:47:16] Bob: Drop and Roll

[00:47:17] Joyce: Stop, Drop, and Roll. So we've been looking for a Stop, Drop, and Roll for, for fraud. And a couple of years ago we did some deep research to try to get to what that might be. And we talked with academics and linguists and advertising professionals and law enforcement and fraud victims to really just get a sense from every possible corner what could this look like? And it was hard. Fire's a strong trigger, it's not hard to imagine that you know it works, because you know, you're catching fire or something is catching fire, and so you immediately do what you were trained to do. So what we did come up with is that there's not just like one element, but there are three. And if we can train brains that these three things together equals the trigger, we can also then train the, the response, the safe response which we call an active pause. And so those three things are, it's typically a communication that you didn't expect. So totally out of the blue puts you immediately into a heightened state of emotion and contains urgency. Those three things are probably common to 90% of all scams that hit us. So if we can train those three things as the trigger, then we can also educate people on how to take what we call an active pause.

[00:48:46] Bob: So now before we get to the solutions, I think this point is really important. We can do episodes of The Perfect Scam every week about the newest flavor of a crime so people recognize, oh yeah, I know the 3 a.m. call from my grandson is probably a fraud, but the stories keep changing. And so we need to do something better than just tell people watch out for the grandparent scam. Can you explain that?

[00:49:09] Kathy Stokes: Yeah. If you add it all up, and I'll take a stab, there's probably 80 active specific types of scams happening right now, and with each scam, there are probably let's say 10 red flags that we could, we try to tell people about. All the sudden now, you have to know about 800 red flags, and it's exhausting as a person in this sort of the education space. It is exhausting to, to communicate this. It's doubly exhausting for a consumer who's just going to throw up their hands and go, I can't do anything with this. So those, the tactics, the red flags, they're all still important and they have a very important place in education and the larger response to fraud, but we've got to take that up to a higher level so that we don't have to try to remember 800 things.

[00:50:02] Bob: Yeah, that's a striking way to put it; 80 different active scams, each with 10 signals, 800 things, at least we have lots of episodes to do on The Perfect Scam, but that's, we've got to do better than that. Okay, so what is the better that, that we're doing here that you guys have come up with, a better way to think about this?

[00:50:20] Kathy Stokes: So we call it an active pause, and the active word is very important because a lot of people have always said, just stop. Hang up the phone. Don't talk to them. That, that's not very helpful. What we need to teach people to do is to take an intentional step back so that you're able to slow the roll, think about what you might know about this situation; have you read about something? Has somebody told you about this? Does it make sense that Mikey says he's in California when he lives in New England and he was just over for dinner three days ago? That allows you to attach logic to it and then that, in essence, is going to protect you, protect your assets and have you disengage with the scammer.

[00:51:10] Bob: Now the active pause is a fascinating concept to me, and it comes from fields like, like aviation for example. Can you explain how it's used in these critical fields?

[00:51:18] Kathy Stokes: Yeah, absolutely. It's taught broadly and I can even say in the aviation industry, my son is a newly minted pilot and the two most important moments for him as a pilot is taking off and landing. And they are trained, they call it something different, but they are trained to take that active pause, step back, assess everything, now the checklist and make sure everything's in place to be able to safely fly the plane and land the plane. You also see it in emergency medicine. They're trained to not just jump out of the ambulance and run to the first person and start CPR when that person may not even be having a heart attack. They pause and they assess the larger situation and determine what to do. And then we also see it in military operations. So our idea is if we can teach that in specific jobs, then we can teach it to the broader community, and it's helpful not just in fraud situations.

[00:52:17] Bob: Okay, so let's talk about how you came up with Pause. Reflect. and Protect. You talked to a whole bunch of people, right? What kind of groups did you talk to?

[00:52:24] Kathy Stokes: So had this really incredible organization that we worked with, Heart & Mind Strategies, and they have a really cool platform that they're able to bring hundreds and hundreds of people together from all around the world, and have a structured conversation that allows people to do lots of inputs as we're all on this thing live and then it whittles things down to get to the, what you're trying to get to, what that element is. And it we, one of the people that I remember engaging with was a woman who I met on a flight back to DC from somewhere, and she was a linguistic professor at Georgetown University, and I was telling her about this. And she said, "I need to be involved in this." So we ended up inviting her and some of her staff, some of her students even. We, we talked to victims themselves to make sure that what we're saying made sense in their unique situations. Law enforcement, other people in, in consumer education. We talked to advertising execs, marketing execs, to come at this with what I would say is an evidence-based approach.

[00:53:41] Bob: So I asked Kathy to deploy Pause. Reflect. and Protect in a scam scenario.

[00:53:48] Kathy Stokes: Think about the grandparent scam. I'm sure you guys have had plenty of episodes involving that and you think of, it's 3 o'clock in the morning, Grandma's phone rings, and the voice on the other end says, "Grandma, it's me, I'm in really bad trouble. I really need your help." So there's the out of the blue heightened emotional state, "Oh my God, Mikey, what is wrong?" "I had a DUI and I hit somebody and they were pregnant and they're probably going to lose the pregnancy and Grandma, I'm in so much trouble. Please, you just need to help me. I'm just going to put you on the phone with my lawyer." And Grandma's thinking, oh my God, Mikey is in so much trouble and he's relying on me. I'm the one that can save him, and that's the classic example of the out of the blue and the emotion and the urgency.

[00:54:38] Bob: To really drive this point home for consumers, AARP is running a national TV ad campaign using a different scenario, maybe you've seen it. As you listen to this ad, think about what you would do.

[00:54:53] AD clip: (phone rings) Hello?

            Hi there, this is Regional Power and Utility. We're calling you about an outstanding balance.

            I thought I paid that.

            You're scheduled for immediate shutoff unless it's resolved today.

            But I can help you make a payment right now.

            Not today. Nice try.

            Spot the red flags so you can protect yourself from fraud with the AARP Fraud Watch Network.

[00:55:23] Bob: Can you talk about how that commercial came about and what happens in the commercial and why it's a great, in 30 seconds you've taught people Pause. Reflect. and Protect.

[00:55:31] Kathy Stokes: And that was a, the first Fraud Watch Network brand ad that AARP has ever put out that they did that haven't, hadn't focused on fraud prior to that, and it was only supposed to have a small run last June, and it's still in market.

[00:55:47] Bob: That's great.

[00:55:47] Kathy Stokes: Yeah. And we have ad agencies that are just tremendously smart about this stuff, and we went through a lot of different scenarios but then decided on the utility scam call because we thought that we could get the message out pretty cleanly with that one, and we could have gone in different directions, it could have been like a scary call, like a super scary call, but we also don't want to associate all of this with fear because we have the power to protect ourselves. So to have sort of a light touch also we have found in education tends to work a lot better than being fear-based.

[00:56:26] Bob: That's actually a really interesting point. So when I think of this commercial, there, there is a phone call that appears to be from your local utility and, in fact, the phone, the victim in the commercial, their phone shows the call's from the utility company, 'cause it's a spoofed call, and then that person says you owe a bill that's unpaid, and there is a veiled threat to cut off the power, right?

[00:56:46] Kathy Stokes: Right.

[00:56:48] Bob: But I, the point you're making is it's not pay now or else we're cutting your power off or we're arresting you. It's just, oh, you can deal with this right now. Why don't you just pay this bill, otherwise maybe you won't be able to use your electricity. So that's enough, I think, to get people into a heightened emotional state but yet not too much that it's overwhelming for a viewer.

[00:57:05] Kathy Stokes: Exactly. Exactly. For Pause, the reflection was, wait a minute, I paid that bill.

[00:57:12] Bob: Okay, so are there more ads in the work? Are there more white papers in the work? What's coming next with this campaign?

[00:57:19] Kathy Stokes: So what we'd really like to do is broaden adoption of Pause. Reflect. Protect. beyond AARP. We have a great brand and we have a decent budget, but we can't put out a public service campaign ourselves. And so we are in the process of building a web page where other organizations can learn how to adopt Pause. Reflect. Protect. in their educational outreach so that we have that sort of forced multiplier effect. We're really excited about it.

[00:57:57] Bob: Excited about it because, well as I'm sure you know, many, many folks are working very hard to fight scams, but right now the fight isn't going so well. The scale globalized. Crimes is hard to fathom.

[00:58:13] Kathy Stokes: This has always been a difficult challenge to talk about how much fraud is out there because it relies on people reporting to the police or reporting to the Federal Trade Commission or any of a dozen other places to report, so there is a vast amount of underreporting. And in the last three years, the Federal Trade Commission has produced reports to account for that underreporting. They believe that only 2% of people who are victims of a financial crime and the loss is under $1000 report, 2%. If it's over $1000, they think it's 6.7%. So at the beginning of each year the FTC looks back on the prior year and they come up with an estimate of losses and in 2024 that estimate was $12.8 billion which is, you know, you're gob smacked; $12.8 billion leaving our economy? But then in December this year, they applied that underreporting and came up with a staggering number of $196 billion of which 81 billion is being stolen from our nation's older adults. $196 billion, and how can you even fathom what that is? I looked it up. I looked at the Fortune 500 list, and if a company had that in revenue, it would be Fortune 17.

[00:59:42] Bob: Wow. We're talking almost the size of Google or Apple.

[00:59:47] Kathy Stokes: Absolutely. And I think that you could break it down to how many hundreds of millions of dollars that is every day, and it's not just disappearing. That money is cycling into all of the horrible things around us. It's drug trafficking, it's human trafficking. It's terrorism. It's nation-state actors that are trying to cause havoc in, in the US and Europe and elsewhere.

[01:00:15] Bob: We did a story about a scam that funded North Korea's missile program, for example.

[01:00:21] Kathy Stokes: Yeah.

[01:00:21] Bob: So this is a, the, everybody needs to pay attention because even if it's, even if it's not you or someone you love directly, it's affecting your life for sure at this scale.

[01:00:30] Kathy Stokes: Absolutely. I don't think, let me put it this way, everybody knows somebody; if it wasn't themselves, somebody in their family or a friend who has experienced fraud.

[01:00:40] Bob: Of course, for the problem this big, it's going to take time.

[01:00:45] Bob: I'm sure Stop, Drop, and Roll probably took a decade before it fell trippingly off my tongue, but now here it is many years later where I, right, it pops out of my head. So you're hoping the same kind of thing happens with Pause. Reflect. Protect.

[01:00:57] Kathy Stokes: Precisely, Bob. And I, every time I talk about it, I do a lot of public speaking, I will say, hey, do you remember what we learned when we were in elementary school about what to do if there's a fire? And inevitably people are shaking their heads and somebody says, Stop, Drop, and Roll. And that's the proof point. It's like, Stop, Drop, and Roll, that's what we need for fraud.

[01:01:20] Bob: Pause. Reflect. Protect. AARP wants people to think of those three words, that short phrase every time there's an interaction which doesn't feel quite right. Just another tool in the toolbox to help you protect yourself and the people you love. For The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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[01:01:49] 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. 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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