001thank you to Jack Lewis and Karen fila's office for having uh da Ryan here today to discuss um scam prevention so I'm going to turn it over to Jack um Lewis thank you so much I think I've met most of you at some point in the past uh but for those who I haven't met uh hopefully we can grab a couple minutes today uh and and chat uh if you live in Ashland I'm your State Rep if you live in Framingham there's like a 35% chance I'm your State Rep uh I will claim you regardless of where you live until you yell at me and then I'll find your actual State red uh I want to go over a couple housekeeping things before I introduce a couple of other folks we are recording today for
002waa uh the camera though is going to be focused here we want to make sure folks feel comfortable asking questions and so at the at the end of the DA's presentation if you ask a question she'll repeat it back so that you can hear it in case you didn't hear the person who asked it but so the folks at home can hear it as well uh those of us who have fallen victim to scams or fraud of one sort of variety or another uh don't always feel comfortable talking about it uh and we that's part of the reason that they're often so successful is because we don't learn from each other's uh hiccups along the way and that's one of the things the da will go over uh but we really want to make sure
003you feel comfortable sharing those stories uh but also asking the questions that are on your mind uh today we're joined by Moma from the Senate president's office office in the back there uh if you ever have any questions uh for Karen spela or her team uh Moma is often here at the senior center uh once a month uh and we have Mariana from my office who was here at the senior center four or five times a month uh on a quiet month uh often here on Mondays with me for lunch uh if you don't come every Monday for lunch it's very reasonable and we're often here uh making sure that the portions are big uh couple things uh we're talking about scams today and fraud prevention uh these aren't things that just happened to seniors
004today were of course focused on seniors uh but I could share stories with you of mistakes I have made over the years be it clicking on a link that looked real uh filling out a form online that looked real only to find out that oops wasn't real at all uh and what that is meant for myself uh having had my identity stolen just a month ago uh it had to sort of unpack all of the work behind getting your identity back and rescuing your credit score uh so nothing to be embarrassed of We All Fall for things that's why these frauds uh these scams are so successful uh so I hope we have a good conversation on that uh plug for the movie Thelma just going to say it up front before we get into
005the serious stuff has anyone seen it yet okay it is the saddest cutest movie you'll ever watch about a woman in her mid 9s who recently lost her husband and in the first couple minutes she falls uh victim to one of these fraud claim or one of these uh scam attempts and the movie then pivots to her trying to rectify the situation herself which is where the humor gets worked in uh but it's funny but it's also very very sad because we know that things like this happen every single day uh in this movie Thelma which is on Amazon Prime now uh is a true story uh with the person that it happened to but also a true story for thousands of folks here in uh the Commonwealth uh before I turn things over to
006our wonderful district attorney I want to welcome up our chief of police here in Ashland uh Chief Rossy do you want to come up for a second I know she did a wonderful presentation on fraud prevention at the new I think 55 plus neighborhood over by the Warren Center uh but locally if you haven't got to know her you definitely should uh great person just want to hand the mic over to you to welcome folks as well good morning morning just to Echo uh what representative Lewis said don't be embarrassed it happens to more people than you can even imagine I know um RDA will will explain some of the larger cases that I'm I'm thinking um but in little old Ashland um over $50,000 from one victim and not an elderly victim um just
007a couple of months ago so I mean it happens and the police department is there for you to report will come out to you you don't have to leave your house if you'd rather come and see us we have a beautiful new station you can come down um but don't hesitate a report because and again I'm sure the district attorney will will Echo this it's the only way we can really kind of track and get a handle on this stuff is if people report and we have the data and information thank you EXC well you you came to hear from our da so I'm going to welcome up District Attorney Mary and Ryan who does it all and if you haven't had a chance to get to know her definitely say hi after the the
008conversation this morning if it's unsolved murders if it's the worst crimes you can imagine if it's helping people who have experienced some of the fraud we're talking about today or if it's the growth in hate crimes uh and hate groups in our community her office covers it all uh in a way that uh I I can't even wrap my mind around so without further Ado our district attorney Mary Ryan thank thank you good morning I'm really happy to be back I haven't been here for two years but I will say I am glad to see that the treats are as good as they were two years ago I do write down where I get good treats and I tend to go back there so I've never met a cookie or a donut that I don't
009like so just for the future um I want to thank candy and Mary for having us back here I especially want to thank representative Lewis and the Senate President you know we can talk a lot about and people sometimes do what are people doing and what are they doing for me I can tell you you have chosen well because they are always working for you and the Partnerships that we form whether it's representative Lewis on our anti-bias anti-hate task force whether it's being at the Senate of president's Wellness Fair we are always working together because that's what you expected us to try to advance your interest and protect you and you're very very fortunate and the same is true for our law enforcement Partners you know representative Lewis mentioned some of the great things that
010we've been able to do with cold cases and investigations none of that would be possible without the support that I get from our Chiefs and our police departments I never call a chief and say I have an idea could we try this that people aren't willing to make that effort to try to help you so we are very very fortunate I know sometimes you know you get flustered about something and we can forget that but we really are in a great place and when I talk to my colleagues across the state and across the country I really see they don't have the kind of Partnerships that we do all right so I want to talk today about scams and everybody knows right I mean raise your hand if you have never gotten a scam right
011know everybody gets them you get a scam on your phone you get a scam on your on your um email they're every place somebody was nice enough to bring me today um a scam that I know some of you have seen this scam about I want to buy some gift cards for my friends and my phone doesn't seem to be working would you help me you buy it and then you know I'll come back and bring you the money well don't hold your breath but and I was laughing as I came out here today because one of the scams that's running around right now if you have a um a transponder on your car you know the mass pipe transponder there's a very profitable scam that's running around and I got it on my phone
012as I was coming out of you so you get an email and it looks very legit looks like it really came from the Mass Pike and it says on somay I don't know what it said July 31st your car triggered a transponder response of $413 you got it right and you must pay right now now my kids I my kids transponders are in my name they are constantly for some reason they can't keep their transponder Pro to the window so when I saw that on the way out here I thought like which one of them took the transponder down and it was four bucks and I thought maybe I'll pay that and then I thought no wait a minute and then I looked again and of course it's a scam so we are all vulnerable
013to that you know people say all the time how can I not be scammed in some way or I have that Overture made and you really can't if you use a transponder if you have a credit card if you buy things on online you're opening yourself up to some things and that's just real we all get those they're not particularly aimed at you they're just random but the more substantial schems I'm a little more targeted in that and what I want to talk about today is not so much what are the rules of how do I not do that I want you and the chief's going to let me do this I want you to pretend that you are a bad guy a scammer because when you understand what they're after it's much easier to
014spot the scam that's coming at you that is targeted at you so think about this people make a very good living as scammers we I spent 20 years before I became the da in the DA's office running our unit that did senior and disabled Pride we in one year had over six billion with a B dollars taken from people so that money went from people to the scammers so lots of them do very well like all of you whether you work you volunteer you're taking care of your grandchildren or somebody else what we all want every day is to get up do what we kind of have on our to-do list be left alone and not encounter too many bumps in the room right if you're going out to go grocery shopping and then you've
015got to pick up a grandchild and then you got something else to do you just want to kind of move along so do the scammers they make their money on volume when we talk about some of for instance the IRS scams they're making money because in the course of one day they might hit 75 to 150 people and if they get x amount of dollars from all those people it's 150 times whatever so they got to keep moving right it's like peace work they have to keep moving the other thing is if I walked in here and said to you I really don't know what to do I just got an email that my granddaughter's been in a terrible car accident and they need me to send $10,000 this afternoon I would venture to guess
016we got a lot of life experience in this room that every one of you would say wait a minute think that over well we have every week 40 to 50 people who give that money in that scheme I feel like I have personally told everybody in Middle sex County to avoid the grandparent scam and yet they keep giving the money and the reason is to f one is and we've all had this experience sometimes when you say something out loud you realize how ridiculous it is like just in coming in and saying you know I just got a notice that my granddaughter Julia has been in a car accident I need to go get $155,000 in cash it sounds ridiculous but if you're in your house and there's no one home and they're pressuring you
017on the phone it doesn't sound so ridiculous that's why smart accomplished people give up that money so one thing I do always ask people is you know you're here you're at the senior center you have talking to people you know the people here so your chances of being scammed just because you do that are reduced but please take what we talk about today and spread it to the community and I'm glad to have the TV here to get to because it is people who maybe because of family obligations or illness can't be out here they are much more likely to be scammed because they by themselves and that thing that somebody's saying to them doesn't sound so crazy the other thing is this there are lots of crimes that are just completely random you know
018you you park your car somewhere and your car gets broken into that's kind of random you know your car gets hit in a parking lot it's usually kind of random most of these skins that yield some good money or as I always say if you're a robber you go where the money is and the reality is even if you don't feel rich people who are older have more money and that's where they're going so you are being targeted in that piece and the other thing is and what we see in the big scams that are successful if I called you up and said we have your grandson who's been hurt in an accident and you only have granddaughters you're going to say click we're going to be done right that doesn't happen because they all
019start with a little piece of truth and the question is and I'll give you the example and you can all become bad guys and I guarantee you if you do this someplace you will see how they do it you take little pieces of truth and you weave them together and suddenly you've got the person believing what you're saying so let's back up a little bit the first thing this gamer wants to do is they want you to do everything fast anybody who tells you something has to be done fast 99.9% chance that is a scale if the deal is only open today if your social security check isn't going to come if you don't respond in the next 12 hours you don't even have to read the rest I'm telling you that's a scam because
020what they're trying to do is Take Your Eye Off the Ball you're going to get so flustered I'm going on vacation I have to be able to use my credit card I I need to do whatever I need to do we had a a person who worked in our office somebody who did a lot of this work with me and one day he got a call from his mother who was very intelligent very active totally had a son who talked about scams all the time and she said I need to go to the bank I'm getting $5,000 and he said what are you doing with $5,000 and she said I missed jury duty they told me I have to pay $5,000 I'm putting it outside because your aunt and uncle are coming for the wedding
021this weekend and I can't have a constable here all right she just got completely caught up her brother and sister-in-law were coming for a family wedding they told her if we don't get the money by one BL or something a constable will be at your door she just got all distracted instead of saying does that make any sense that they would charge me $5,000 because I didn't go to jury duty and the way we're going to collect it is put it in a box on the front steps right that is now don't laugh do not left you whatever your political persuasion is we might have lots of things going on in this country but I guarantee you that the United States government is not running on Apple gift cards and yet I have 32 cases
022where people got a notice that they had not properly paid their income tax and they had to go get Apple gift cards and people went and got them right it's kind of funny but they got so flustered of what was going to happen okay I only owe you $700 okay I'll go get $700 in Apple gift cards or my other personal favorite you get a call from um Social Security supposedly now if you've ever tried to talk to Social Security or the IRS they do not have telephones that is a fact right you cannot communicate with them without without writing letters so what is the what are the odds that you are the person they called to ask for those gift cards and yet people give those gift cards all right and if somebody calls
023you and says I'm calling from Social Security give me your Social Security number aren't you kind of worried it is like we literally have every single day somebody calls and says this is you know whatever MNT trust your bank what's your account number well if you don't know my account number I'm a little concerned so but people just give that back so that's one thing anybody who's trying to rush you or extract that information really quickly just set in your own mind ahead of time I'm not answering those questions I'm not getting involved in that and the same is true when you had one out here in Ashland with you know where at that time of year we were're going to start seeing contractors showing up that are going to scam you I can clean
024your gutters so you won't have a nice Dam I can clip the trees so they don't fall down in the snowstorm all of that well you have all entered into contracts you've all bought a car you bought a house you bought some major thing that started with you thinking I need this my budget is X these are the things I want and you moved that forward because when you bought that car or that house and you signed that's a contract you agree to pay they agree to do well the contract to repave your driveway or clean the chimney or do whatever is no less a contract you should be making it on the front porch you shouldn't be making it in the driveway when they tell you I was just up the street and I've
025got extra asphalt I've got extra shingles I've got extra whatever right if you said to yourself I'm never doing that contracts are things I do reflecting on them sitting by myself reading the paperwork you won't get caught up in it because people like the people with green Paving and construction out here who gave all that money people not only lose the money but you might have seen Channel 5 did a story on one of our cases a woman was living with her adult disabled son she needed to put in a ramp in the back she had a ramp in the front she didn't have one in the back her driveway was in the back miraculously somebody showed up one day and said I have extra material I can put in the ramp well one thing
026led to another and I need money up front to go buy some nails and a hammer or whatever and the next thing you know she had given $122,000 he disappeared he came back in the afternoon he started ripping the old deck off because he was not actually a contractor he did an incredible amount of damage to her house so if you drive by her house now she has a door that goes to nowhere because her back door has nowhere to go because there's no deck he tore down the old deck he didn't re build the deck he's got her $112,000 and she's got some serious Foundation damage from where he pulled the deck off because he didn't know what he was doing so if you set in your own mind I never make a contract
027at the door except maybe Girl Scout bookies you shouldn't be buying anything that cost you more there you shouldn't be letting somebody else begin the process of a sale if you were perfectly fine with your driveway last week your driveway can wait until you decide you want to move forward with it so those are two kinds of scams now let's talk about some of the information piece and I spent years trying to figure out why it was we might all get the mass pipe scan I never once in 20 years had somebody tell me they got the grand SCH or some of those other things to send money who did not have money we all know people that if their grandchild really was in trouble they could not put together a hundred bucks they just
028couldn't they don't get called so how do and remember that works for the scammer because if he's calling people who don't have a hundred bucks he's not hitting his quot of the day so how do they figure out who are the targets and this is my own Theory but it fits every box I think that it comes from medical facilities hospitals Labs whatever and think about this I work at one of those medical facilities whatever it is you're a patient a podiatrist anybody you're a patient suppose I'm the person who just works has access to the files what do I know about you first of all I certainly know your address so if I'm from Ashlin maybe I know that's a really nice street if you live in that neighborhood you probably can put together
029a little bit of money and if I don't live there and have that I do what and if you've never done this it really is terrifying go on Google and Google Earth your own house right and it is so good you can see I did my house the other day I could see the bags of mulch in the back of my house all right so I number one know what kind of a place you live in I know what kind of cars are in your driveway I know how well maintained or not maintained your house is so maybe you're moving into my target non-target category what else do I know I know what your occupation was so maybe you owned a pretty successful business that I recognize you're going in the Target pile or some
030of the scamers favorites maybe you were a public school teacher and you might not have a million dollars sitting around but you are what they call a renewable resource because you get a pension every single month you have they can come back back and back and back to hit you so maybe you're going to my target pip I also know what kind of insurance you have are you a Medicare only patient or do you have one of those nice supplemental plans that are a little bit expensive you have the tough supplemental plan you're going in my target pile because I may not be perfect but I can develop a pretty good sense of who might be responsive and able to give me some money because remember my only interest in all of you is can
031I get money from you on this game all right so now I've picked out the 18 people that are going to be my targets now I have to have a little nugget to lure you in because remember if you don't have a grandson you've hung up on me so how do I do that one place is Facebook nothing good happens on Facebook all right people say the chief knows this people had their house broken into I didn't tell anybody I was going to be away this weekend you look on Facebook here we go well guess what the bad guys look on Facebook too okay and when your granddaughter got into that college she'd been waiting for and the day came where they all wore those sweatshirts that say which college they're going to and we
032all posted the pictures well now I know you have a granddaughter and she's at Notre okay now let's go back to that medical facility and this is the part where I really want you to be a detective and figure this out I guarantee you you go to a medical appointment or a hospital and you sit around in the lobby or something for half an hour you will have a basket full of information because what happens you go to the doctor you come out doctor says I want to see you in 3 weeks you come out and you're talking to the person at the desk and they say you know how September 16th on I can't do September 16th my niece Julia's getting married in Georgia and we're all going okay well she heard it and
033so did all of us over here all right and I say all the time I am a total failure at this my father had 12 grandchildren he was very proud of if you sat beside my father at the blood lab for five minutes five minutes you knew all 12 their first names where they went to school and what sport they play I still have people who come up and ask me about my daughter's rowing team that I've never seen before all right and helpfully he would do it in his Irish whisper so in case those of you in the back didn't here you got it too all right but the next time you go to one of those places we all chat we talk about being careful about our personal information it isn't just your
034bank account you security number there's nothing wrong with chatting about I'm going to my granddaughter's baseball game this afternoon it doesn't have to be my granddaughter Elizabeth who plays for the high school team because when you get that call that says that she was hurt driving down the road to the high school all of a sudden you can't even think you're so frightened and money is going out the door so think hard about what you should share with people because we very often put ourselves in situations where we have no idea that people are just kind of gathering up that information and again as I said just listen the next time and see how much you learn and how you could weaponize that little piece of information somebody calls me and mentions my kids I'm
035frantic immediately like something's happened they mention my kid's first name or what kind of a car that's all I can think think about are they okay what's going on and the ne that is how smart sophisticated people hand over 70 or $80,000 when I was here two years ago there was a woman sitting at the table up in the front she and her husband had just given over $40,000 to one of these skins they just and you know because it just feeds on itself first it's you know there's been an accident they need to pay some hospital bill okay you send that money now they need a lawyer and sometimes they H the phone to the police officer you have no idea who you're talking to the person says this is the chief oh okay
036I guess I have to find out what the charges are you have no idea who you're talking to so that's a big piece of how you protect yourself from some of these things you do it slowly you have rules that you already have in place so when somebody catches you off guard about buying something you think yep I don't this is a contract I don't do contract out here and protect that personal information and if you really employ those three things you will because the unfortunate thing remember what I said in the beginning the scammer wants to hit the next person so if you're asking questions or you're saying too much they're going on to the next person they're not going to linger with you because tick tick time is money and that brings me
037this is probably the most useful piece you get out of this whole thing everybody always says you know I get so many phon calls they get phone calls all the time and you can sign up you know we used to all sign up for those do not call lists and whatever which that person didn't call you but the next person called you but this one thing does reduce your calls if I am a company or a scammer that wants to call people I buy a list of phone numbers right and when I buy that list of phone numbers I'm just kind of making up the money say they cost a nickel a piece right I get numbers it cost me a dollar for that sheet now some of those numbers aren't going to be active
038they're not going to be any good so I wasted my nickel on those all right but if they they call you and you answer the phone they now know that that phone is associated with a live person your number just became worth a quarter and your number is going to get sold every place so if you never answer you know let the M let it go to the machine just let it go you will actually see a reduction in your calls because they don't know whether anybody ever monitors that machine and also again in keeping with your personal information I call people sometimes and it's like you know this is Mary Jim and I and the dog Tinkerbell you don't need all that that's information I now have about you that you don't know I
039have so when I call you and tell you Tinkerbell got run over you're you're frightened so you should have a very generic message you know you've reached 781 whatever the number is please leave a message so if you never answer your call I again I am a failure in this because I am married to the most polite man in America he can't bear to hear the phone ring he answers the phone and then he refuses to hang up on people so I'm doing that and he's saying no we don't need our chimney clean no we don't have a chimney no no he's going on and on right it's just painful I'm like put the M down but we get called all the time because they know this nice man is going to talk to him
040and they figure at some point maybe he's going to give in and buy something so do not engage that's another critical piece that will reduce your calls it also reduces the chances of you getting kind of sucked into something else now the other piece I want to talk about for a minute and this this is harder to talk about but it is by far the way that people lose the most money you know we all worry about these random scammers and they're out there and you can fall prey to them and you can lose a lot of money but people across the board lose much more money to their family or a trusted friend much much more and we don't want to ever think about that because that's just hard and it happens primarily through
041two ways one of which is unique to Massachusetts Massachusetts is one of only two states that allows you to have a joint bank account all right so you can have a bank account with your name and somebody else's now lots of people who are married have a joint bank account and whoever Works puts their checks in there and they pay bills out of there right and the concept which is easy is it doesn't matter where that money comes from it's both of our money right it legally belongs to both of us whether somebody stays at home and they don't put a paycheck in or whatever it's all the same the same is true if you add somebody else to that account so you have you lose your spouse and you decide to put your daughter
042in the bank account all right or you didn't have a spouse but you've now decided to put your niece on the bank account your niece or your daughter never puts one penny into that bank account they're an adult they're living their own life they don't put any money in that bank account you have the proceeds from the sale of your house insurance policies your pension you have everything in there when you did that presumably you considered your niece or your daughter somebody you could trust and at some point spoken or unspoken the idea was that your niece or your daughter would step up if you needed it and spend your money to take care of you you end up in the hospital they'll pay the bill God forbid you pass away they'll pay the funeral
043home that's kind of the idea of doing that you go to Florida for 3 months they'll take care of getting the driveway shoveled and they'll write a check for the guy who does that right legally they have no obligation to do that and every penny of that money belongs to them so if your daughter cleans six as happens very often clean $600,000 out of that bank account not only will you not be getting it back but we the police and I cannot even charge them because the money was legally theirs you you can't steal your own money all right so and what happens and this is just a Repeat Performance they were very trustworthy when you put them in charge Life Changes they have a bad divorce they have a child who has an issue
044they lose their job I could I could write this story as could the chief I really was just short on the mortgage this month I knew mom wouldn't mind if I paid the mortgage I was going to put it back money has never ever gone back and then you know they're short next month and now there's a divorce and they just keep eating away at the money or sometimes more callously I thought Mom might end up in a nursing home and I didn't want the money to go to the nursing home that's what I call these self-help inheritance but you're not finished with it but they've inherited all right and I used to wonder we get these so often I used to wonder how is it that somebody has $600,000 disappear over eight months and
045they don't notice it and then I discovered see I just lived to develop these experiences my father at some point got sick and he was coming to stay at my house and I wanted to have his mail sent to my house US mail right we all know the US mail you're not supposed to put stuff in people's mail boxes and it's sacred and all of that and my father was too ill to come to the hospital and say he wanted his mail I mean to the post office and say he wanted his mail to go to my house so I had a note from him I had my passport I had his driver's license my driver's license I had a whole pile of documents and I went to the post office and I approached the
046man and I told my whole story and he handed me a little postcard and he said just fill this up so I went over and you fill out his name and where he lived the mail should be sent to my address and then in print that was about that big I signed at the bottom that I wasn't doing that for anything illegal while scammers lie and all of a sudden po his mail came to my house all right not hard they required nothing from him and what we discovered is that is how people do it so maybe you have a home health a all right home health aid you give them your credit card sometimes and it's a debit card and they're debiting your account 100 bucks a week well in the meantime they're having
047your bank statement sent to their house so you're not you know I don't sit down every month and say gee did I get every bank statement that I'm supposed to get and when you transfer somebody's mail it's only their first class mail so you're still getting the junk the magazines whatever so it's not like the mailman stops coming right so you you know we all get less mail than we used to so you will still go out every day and there'll be magazines and all that kind of stuff in your mailbox your bank statement won't be there it's one reason to think about doing online banking it's one reason to be much more concerned about I'm supposed to get four bank statements every month did I actually get them because that is how it happens
048over a long period of time and you just didn't notice it so that joint bank account is not what you think it is and again I you know I am the success story of not telling my own family I have 12 very elderly aunts every one of them has a joint bank account with me on I could be a rich woman they are convinced that I am to take the money pay the funeral home do whatever they refuse to be moved off that it is incredi dangerous the other thing in the way that people do it is you know when you go to the hospital we all know you sign a healthare pracy and all of that while many of them evolved to being a power of attorney as well there is nothing more dangerous
049in this world than a power of attorney because when you sign that form I have legally cloned myself if I give you my power of attorney you are now me anything I would do with my property you can do so we repeatedly have people who owned their house for 30 years mortgage is long paid they suddenly get a notice that the mortgage is overdue they think is that funny and they go to the bank and find that their son has put $150,000 mortgage on the house because they gave him a power of attorney right and my this is my personal favorite sometimes somebody gives their power of attorney to their son well now the daughter's annoyed that her brother has the power of attorney so they give her one too because you can have as
050many as you want but now you've doubled yourself so now she thinks he's stealing she's stealing you're getting cleaned out on both ends if you want to give somebody that power if you are worried that something would happen for instance I'm going in to have a hip replaced I'm going to be in re have for 3 months I I won't be able to get to the bank you should then have a power of attorney that is crafted to do what you want it should be a power of attorney that goes from December 1st to March 1st and it should have a limit of $2,000 if you go to Florida and you would like your daughter to be able to pay the plumber if the pipe scree is up here well $2 or $3,000 might be
051all you need to authorize her to use you don't need to let her have your whole estate because by far that is where people use the lose the most money because you give people access to everything you have and you really have no remedy because they are acting legally the same is true with I mentioned before you give somebody your debit card you know it's the middle of the winter your nice nextto neighbor says they'll pick up something for you at the grocery store you give them the credit card they come back they give you back the credit card you think all good well all you need to do is have those numbers and they're ordering online to $99,000 worth of stuff they wrote down what your number is they wrote down that little CVC
052code on the back and they're ordering like crazy you gave it to them so the bank is going to give you a very hard time about the fact that you authorize the use of that c make sure you're looking if you have somebody who's doing that for you make sure you are and nobody wants to do this but pay attention look at the receipts we just had a woman who lost over $35,000 she had a person working in her home doing Li housekeeping errands whatever her daughter who lived in DC kept a pretty good eye on what was going on and every month she would look at the charges and you know was Stop and Shop Dunkin Donuts whatever well what she wasn't doing is thinking hm Stop and Shop $700 my mother lives alone
053that's a lot of food and what was happening is every time she went for bread milk orange juice she withdrew a couple hundred bucks but it came out as stop and Chop look in a quick glance it looked pretty legitimate so I know I've scared you all to death now but don't just think about The Strangers think about the people close to you as as well because that is much more of a trap and much more difficult because even when we do catch them and even if it's actually illegal and we can prosecute it people do not raise their hand because they want to testify against their daughter or their son or send their grandchild's father to jail so many many times we have no way to hold them accountable for what's happened all right
054so I talked for a long time I'm happy to take some questions yeah attorney mention that are there different kinds for example I've heard heard lawyers durable so the question is are there different kinds of Power of power of attorney including durable Powers of Attorney yes there are and you know we all got in this habit you could go to Staples and buy a book and it has power of attorney you rip it out and fill it out I have a a rule which is you get what you pay for it's unlikely that got to be tailored to your situation so it is something that if you want to do it you should go to an attorney you should tell them you know what do you want to accomplish that's the plan when when I'm
055sick or when I'm no longer here what would I want to have happen the other thing is a power of attorney expires when somebody dies so very often the way we find out there's been something up with the power of attorney is somebody is getting to their last days and the power of attorneys are falling over themselves at the bank taking money up because their Authority ends at the moment that person passes away so there are lots of different C it's like accounts it's possible to have bank accounts that you share with somebody that have to be used for your benefit it is not the traditional joint account so you you should explore those options anybody else question yeah I unfortunately in December was hacked by PayPal two people came on and they told me
056they were helped me they were from PayPal that I was getting ready to be hacked and they were actually the hackers two weeks ago I was hacked again my question is once you're hack what can you do to your computer or your phone to make sure they're not there anymore so you should really shut everything that which is people don't want to do that because it's a nuisance so they think like okay maybe I'll just shut this down or I'll shut that down you should shut down your accounts you should close your accounts you should move the money to another account you should take your computer actually to a reputable place like you know one of the um geek yeah The Geek Squad yeah one of those kind of people take it do online and
057have them physically like clean the computer you know be careful about what you lose and so it's it's a problem people try to do it's much like the power of attorney sometimes people try to do it on the cheap and cross their fingers hoping it won't continue and it really does as you know as representative Le said like when your identity goes or they're in there you just have to close everything out and clean it out does it does it help to have something like n or not the jury is out on that um those can also be scams not Orton itself but there are we have lots of people who pay that you know get the notice you are about to be you know infiltrated with the virus pay us 90 bucks that's a
058scam I think you can be prudent and careful and protect yourself I mean people sometimes feel better paying for that I think that's a jump ball okay okay yeah somebody has a question yeah do you ever catch the scammers so the question is do we ever catch the scammers yes we sometimes do um and when we do we are often successful because in order to catch them we've had to do such a long investigation so they get convicted um I feel very strongly about these cases so we ask pretty substantial sentences judges don't always agree with us because there are often people who have not been caught before the biggest harm is we never get the money back because you know by the time we've chased them they literally we have sometimes caught the people
059who put the money in an envelope and mail it somewhere else so people's that's what I think is the status people's whole retirement their whole future that they thought was going to be very comfortable is change because we're just not getting that money back yeah can you track the phone number down where they're located where they can come in and get them so the question is can we track the numbers you know usually they're burner phones they're those phones you just buy you pay for two hours or whatever it's not like your Verizon phone where you have an account or something like that so they're clever they are clever and they're able to sort of send things you know by email or whatever through 10 different stations and we end up you know somewhere in
060Middle Europe can you track the phon where they buy it sometimes sometimes we are sometimes successful at getting like a video at a store where they bought the phone like Walmart yeah sometimes yeah yeah so I got a call one time presenting his Microsoft and their goal was to get me to allow them to take control over my computer and just let them get in and then they would have access to my computer and I said to the guy you should be ashamed and I think he was from India and he said Well ma'am if you can give me an honest P for an honest so the question was about you get that call from Microsoft we actually um you know and they are actually the hacker we actually just had a woman who was
061on looking at her daughter's wedding pictures that just had a family wedding she's looking at the pictures she suddenly gets this alert that says you know you have 7 Seconds remember it's a rush and if you don't you're going to lose everything she's taking the wedding pictures she started throwing money at that um you know when they come on even if especially if you didn't initiate the call and they start saying I'm doing everything with you hit keystroke hit whatever if you think about your computer as having a wall around it they are punching holes in that wall and then all of a sudden you will see stuff has gone out of your bank accounts stuff is gone from wherever because you let them penetrate that wall yeah could you talk a little more about
062why it's legal for people to buy information that is going to allow them to access this kind of stuff like what is the what's behind that so the question is why is it legal to buy information and that they can use illegally like the telephone numbers right all right but you also have you know I don't know some charity they want to make calls they want to solicit calls I mean you do get some calls that are from a legitimate charity the way they do that is they buy the phone numbers I mean nobody sits with a phone book anymore and looks it up they buy that list of phone numbers you know even if you don't buy it I am not terribly computer literate and I am always shocked at what I can find
063online how quickly I can get people's phone numbers or things like that if you go on true search.com you get everything get the email you get the phone number you get the relatives you get everything yep yeah and that stuff is just out you know that's what I mean like at some level there's things you can't worry about if I really wanted to find out where you lived or what your phone number is I could figure that out but that's not really how people lose the big sums of money it's these other things and that you can take steps to protect yourself about yeah one other question about the yeah I I've discovered that if you pick up the phone and you don't say anything a lot of these calls are voice activ and just
064put it down now once I picked up the phone I know that active phone yes even though I haven't said even though you haven't said anything they know the Signal's been disrupted okay so lots of people do that people pick it up and they press the button you know and now they think well I didn't answer it but they know that the phone was interrupted so your number still becomes more Val they know there's a living human being attached to that number yeah sometimes I get and it and it's number I but other are you supposed to pick it UPN no the question is are you supposed to pick up your phone if it says SPM or you don't recognize the number so I don't know if you've ever had this experience I have had
065my cell phone with me not been home had my cell phone and my home phone number calls my phone all right so I see my own number I know there's nobody at home but my it appears that my house is calling my phone all right for $1 199.99 you can go online and buy um a device that will let you be any number you want so often what the scammers will do for instance especially if you're not picking up other things this happens to me all the time I will get a a call from a number that looks like a number in my town all right and I'm thinking like is that the hairdresser is that the cleaners where I drop something off it's a sort of familiar number that they have been able to
066access what my number is or numbers I call and they've come they spoofed me with a number that looks like that and their hope is that I will think oh yeah that might be the dentist and I'll pick it up you probably all have that experience you pick up a number you think you recognize it and then it's somebody else they capitalized on what you seems familiar to you I've been called on my own phone number yeah yeah that's what I mean like yeah so you see that and of course you're you're kind of confused and you pick remember every time they confuse you they take your eye off the ball so just remember that piece and the other part is if you get a call like you get that call that says I'm your
067bank please give me your bank account number or something right so people often are wise enough to think I don't want to do that so they hang up and they call back that number and of course the bad guy picks up the phone and says MN bank so if you are concerned like maybe that really was my bank go find your bank number go get your statement or go online or something don't ever call back the number that they get lots of times people when I was laughing about the social security things people will say well the call was from Washington so I thought it really was Social Security it's like no that was the 1999 spoofer and they made themselves have a Washington number so just be careful about recalling that all right well
068thank you thanks for having me thank you again to representative Lewis the Senate President and Co