Speaker 1: Episode three point fifty my favorite money murder scams.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to
Speaker 2: save money, embrace simplicity, and live your life. Here your
Speaker 2: hosts Jen and Jill.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen,
Speaker 1: my name is Jill. And if you are listening to
Speaker 1: this episode on all hallo z Eve, Happy Halloween.
Speaker 3: Hey, it's spooky season. It's the culmination of all things
Speaker 3: spooky and scams.
Speaker 1: It is the culmination of spooky season. And so today
Speaker 1: we have a special for you, a listener special, and
Speaker 1: it is all about money scams. Money scams from real people,
Speaker 1: and we're going to read them for you and then
Speaker 1: we are going to help you know how to identify
Speaker 1: these scams so that you don't fall victim. Because scams
Speaker 1: are always evolving and they are always getting better at
Speaker 1: tricking people with common sense, people that care about their money.
Speaker 1: They prey on who they're going after, people who care
Speaker 1: about their money. And so we are going to share
Speaker 1: some stories. We are going to laugh with some of
Speaker 1: these people who are posting, but we also want to
Speaker 1: normalize and know that it can happen to us. And
Speaker 1: so we just need to know that what it looks
Speaker 1: like and how to how to avoid it and use
Speaker 1: these people's stories to help us, which is why they're
Speaker 1: sharing them on Reddit.
Speaker 3: This was just going to be a fun Halloween episode,
Speaker 3: and then we thought of scams, and then as we
Speaker 3: read through them, realized how common they are, and as
Speaker 3: personally I was reading through these example stories, it came
Speaker 3: to mind my remembrance that in literally the past three months,
Speaker 3: people I know have fallen victim to at least three
Speaker 3: of these scams. So it's happening all around us. People
Speaker 3: are getting more savvy with their scams, which means we
Speaker 3: have to become more savvy in our protection of ourselves
Speaker 3: and our money. And I think one of the things
Speaker 3: I've seen so much happened for folks is this feeling
Speaker 3: of shame around it, so it's why people aren't talking
Speaker 3: about as much. So now we're just doing a public service.
Speaker 3: This is I mean, this is gonna be a somewhat
Speaker 3: fun episode, but also a very spooky episode and also
Speaker 3: a public service episode. So first though, this episode is
Speaker 3: brought to all of us by collections sometimes cute, almost
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Speaker 1: Collect it and we promise to never send you money
Speaker 1: via email nor ask for a portion of it back.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a promise, yikes, that you can count on. So, yes,
Speaker 1: this is our fun episode turned actually a public service announcement,
Speaker 1: I think. So we have personally seen people victimized by scams.
Speaker 1: We have personally received scam emails, scam text messages, all
Speaker 1: kinds of things, and they make us go wait is
Speaker 1: this real? Like it makes you stop for a second,
Speaker 1: Which is why when we talk about the importance of
Speaker 1: simplifying and efficiency and all these things that we talk
Speaker 1: about helping with your values based spending, and we say
Speaker 1: this goes beyond your spending, right, it goes into your
Speaker 1: life when your mind is not cluttered by a million things,
Speaker 1: when your money is organized and managed, When things like
Speaker 1: this come up, you do not so quickly react to them.
Speaker 1: It's because of these quick reactions that we most often
Speaker 1: fall victim to scams and not fully thinking things through.
Speaker 1: And you can't blame a lot of us for doing this.
Speaker 1: A lot of these scams prey on urgency. So it
Speaker 1: makes all of the things that we talk about on
Speaker 1: every episode of Frugal Friends we feel that much more
Speaker 1: important because when you are thinking clearly, and when you
Speaker 1: know where your money is going, when you are keeping
Speaker 1: tabs on your transactions, then you don't fall victim to
Speaker 1: scams as easily, because anybody can fall victim to them.
Speaker 3: I hadn't thought about it in this way in particular,
Speaker 3: until we're taking a deeper dive into scams and how
Speaker 3: common they are and how they are tricking not just
Speaker 3: older people at home who don't have much of a
Speaker 3: knowledge of how the internet works. I mean it's everybody,
Speaker 3: all ages. And you know, we're not saying that, oh,
Speaker 3: you'll never be victim, but like you're saying, Jen, not
Speaker 3: as easily. And some of these pieces of just managing
Speaker 3: our money can be protective factors for us. But we
Speaker 3: do want to give some example stories, and all of
Speaker 3: these examples do represent examples of very common scams that
Speaker 3: have happened to real people, all on Reddit. And then
Speaker 3: we will wrap it up with a what are some
Speaker 3: of the key tips in how to avoid being scammed?
Speaker 3: And certainly it is listening to the entire backlog of
Speaker 3: frugal friends can be a protective measure for sure. Shameless plug.
Speaker 1: Yes, So we will get into our first story from Reddit,
Speaker 1: and this is a bank teller who has shared several
Speaker 1: stories on this one thread, but we're going to just
Speaker 1: share two of them with you. And she says she
Speaker 1: has worked at a credit union for a few years
Speaker 1: and these are real scams that she has encountered. And
Speaker 1: all of these posts, I'll just say up front, are
Speaker 1: less than a year old. I made sure that I
Speaker 1: wanted to compile stories that were current, that are current
Speaker 1: scams people are facing now within the last year, some
Speaker 1: within the last six months. So this first one is
Speaker 1: called an overpayment scam, and you may have heard about
Speaker 1: it in some iterations, but here it is. The member
Speaker 1: comes to the drive through when we're pretty busy. She
Speaker 1: wants to deposit a check for between three and four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Her balance is roughly two hundred dollars or so,
Speaker 1: and I checked her recent transactions to see if a
Speaker 1: deposit like this was usual for her. It wasn't, as
Speaker 1: she hadn't had a posit of more than five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars in the last three months. I look at the
Speaker 1: check and I don't recognize the bank it's supposedly drawn from,
Speaker 1: nor do I recognize the maker. It's some generic quote
Speaker 1: unquote advertising company. At this point, I'm following usual risk
Speaker 1: mitigation procedure in depositing the check with an extended hold
Speaker 1: on it, but I didn't immediately think it was a scam.
Speaker 1: I returned to the drive through and tell her, all right,
Speaker 1: I made the deposit for you, but it's on an
Speaker 1: extended hold because of the amount. The funds should be
Speaker 1: available within five business days. Oh no, that's a payroll.
Speaker 1: They told me to tell you. It's payroll, all right.
Speaker 1: Red flag number one. Payroll checks have different regulations, and
Speaker 1: unless your real life employer has bounced your checks in
Speaker 1: the past, we can't place holds on them. But of
Speaker 1: course what is payroll is subject to verification. Usually it's
Speaker 1: enough to see that they've deposited checks in similar amounts
Speaker 1: from the same maker on a regular basis, which can
Speaker 1: be verified by their account history, so they're really cautious.
Speaker 1: So she goes on to say, she asks, is this
Speaker 1: your employer? She responds, yes, it doesn't look like you've
Speaker 1: received a check from them before. Is it a new employer. Well,
Speaker 1: they're going to wrap my car for advertising and I
Speaker 1: need to wire fifteen hundred dollars of it by tomorrow
Speaker 1: so they can do the rap, so there can't be
Speaker 1: a hold on the check or I'll lose the gig.
Speaker 1: And there it is Red flag number two confirmation. I
Speaker 1: explained the scam to the member and after a bit
Speaker 1: of conversation, she was appreciative and asked for us to
Speaker 1: reverse the deposit. So apparently this is a common scam.
Speaker 1: And if you read ways to make money posts on
Speaker 1: the Internet, like one hundred ways to Make Money car rapping,
Speaker 1: is there always in every list and car wrap scams
Speaker 1: are common, and so it even goes on to link
Speaker 1: to a FTC article on car wrap scams and having
Speaker 1: your car wrap is a legitimate kind of way to
Speaker 1: make money, but it's the reverse check overpayment where you
Speaker 1: are getting three thousand and then have to pay fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred for the car wrap, that's the scam. So this
Speaker 1: was our first scam from our friend.
Speaker 3: And I imagine the reason for that is the money
Speaker 3: isn't good, right, The check would indeed bounce, but they're
Speaker 3: trying to leverage payroll laws to allow the check not
Speaker 3: to bounce. But then in reality that fifteen hundred dollars
Speaker 3: would have just come out of her own account and
Speaker 3: actually she would have overdrawn her account.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a testament to these scams getting more refined,
Speaker 1: right because they know that they can place a hold
Speaker 1: on a regular check. But they told her to say
Speaker 1: it's payroll because that can't be held. So they'll tell
Speaker 1: you exactly what to say. Like these email scams that
Speaker 1: I was reading, I wonder why when we get these
Speaker 1: email scams, why they have so many letters and numbers
Speaker 1: and words and they look like gibberish, And who's going
Speaker 1: to fall for this. But they have all of that
Speaker 1: because Google has scam barriers, like if they see certain
Speaker 1: recurrent scam messaging or scripts or whatever, they'll just send
Speaker 1: it to trash, and so they try to evade that
Speaker 1: and get it into as many primary inboxes as possible
Speaker 1: on the off chance somebody will accidentally click on a
Speaker 1: link in the email and then they're taken to a
Speaker 1: phishing site.
Speaker 3: Oh so wild. Okay, So this next story comes from
Speaker 3: the same person on Reddit who's a bank teller. This
Speaker 3: one's about social Security number being compromised. So the person says,
Speaker 3: a middle aged man came up to my teller window
Speaker 3: and handed me a large, taped up FedEx box and
Speaker 3: said I need to deposit this. That's weird and also
Speaker 3: potentially dangerous. So I immediately asked him what was it
Speaker 3: and told him to open it himself. He refused and
Speaker 3: just said it's forty thousand dollars. I just need to
Speaker 3: deposit it. I called my manager over to supervise, and
Speaker 3: he agreed to open the box together. Inside were four
Speaker 3: bricks of aluminum foil, which, of course is even weirder.
Speaker 3: I asked the member what was up with that, and
Speaker 3: he said, yeah, They told me I had to ship
Speaker 3: it that way. In each brick was indeed ten thousand
Speaker 3: dollars of strapped one hundreds. While my manager and I
Speaker 3: dual controlled the count. The member was adamant that there
Speaker 3: has to be forty thousand dollars exactly, and I kept
Speaker 3: telling him that we can only deposit what's physically here.
Speaker 3: I asked him what the story was, and he said,
Speaker 3: I got a call from the IRS saying his Social
Speaker 3: Security number has been compromised and that he needed to
Speaker 3: move all of his money into a secure wallet. The
Speaker 3: callers had asked him that his account on the credit
Speaker 3: union was told him that the account wasn't safe and
Speaker 3: asked how much he had. He told them he had
Speaker 3: seventy thousand dollars. They said he needed to ship the
Speaker 3: money to a PO box in Ohio so the quote
Speaker 3: FBI could ensure its safety. They told him this needed
Speaker 3: to be done in cash, and he needed to wrap
Speaker 3: each bundle of bills in aluminum foil. Per quote IRS policy,
Speaker 3: that's in fact done an attempt to bypass shipping carrier scanners,
Speaker 3: which try to find these types of things and reject
Speaker 3: the packages. You're actually not allowed to ship cash for
Speaker 3: a reason. After all, FedEx was able to catch this
Speaker 3: box of forty thousand and give it back to the
Speaker 3: bank member, but they did not catch the other box,
Speaker 3: which had thirty thousand dollars in it. He lost that money.
Speaker 3: They had a lengthy conversation about the scam, how it worked,
Speaker 3: what to look out for in the future. Wholely smokes
Speaker 3: that is a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this I think was an yeah, a middle
Speaker 1: aged man, so this wasn't like an older man, and
Speaker 1: it's somebody who cared about their Social Security number and
Speaker 1: somebody who I mean praying on someone who may not
Speaker 1: trust banks per se, especially after we just heard all
Speaker 1: those stories of Silicone Bank failing and then all these
Speaker 1: other banks were, you know, up in arms about potentially failing.
Speaker 1: So it's not this may not happen continuously, but you
Speaker 1: get at a right place, right time, right where maybe
Speaker 1: you're hearing stories of banks closing, and then you get
Speaker 1: this call and and things just kind of make sense
Speaker 1: in the minute when you're not thinking clearly right.
Speaker 3: Well, And I think especially what stands out to me
Speaker 3: with this one is posing as an entity that has
Speaker 3: a lot of power and authority and taking advantage of
Speaker 3: that and leveraging I mean, for any of us, if
Speaker 3: we get a call from the IRS, it's prob immediately
Speaker 3: going to send us into some degree of hypervigilance, which
Speaker 3: can decrease our ability to think clearly and logically. And
Speaker 3: we'll see as we keep going through more stories. They're
Speaker 3: also preying upon this sense of urgency that you have
Speaker 3: to act fast, which can also decrease our ability to
Speaker 3: think logically and clearly because we need time and space
Speaker 3: to be able to do that. So if our livelihood
Speaker 3: feels threatened and we've got entities posing as the most
Speaker 3: powerful authoritative entities, we can see how any one person
Speaker 3: could get caught up in being talked into this is
Speaker 3: what you have to do to move towards protection of
Speaker 3: your money. And I mean, I'm so grateful that you know,
Speaker 3: he was able to keep forty thousand, but he lost
Speaker 3: thirty thousand. So hopefully we can have some takeaways from this,
Speaker 3: because I don't think there's protective factors, but I think
Speaker 3: any one of us, like you're saying, Jen, right place,
Speaker 3: right time, can become susceptible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this next one, so all the rest of
Speaker 1: these are from the actual people who either got scammed
Speaker 1: or their friend or family member was scammed. So this
Speaker 1: one is a job scammed. So it's similar to the
Speaker 1: overpayment car wrap, but these are for actual jobs. So
Speaker 1: people just like you and me just trying to make
Speaker 1: some work, not you know, getting text messages saying like
Speaker 1: oh make money fast or you know, but actual, honest,
Speaker 1: part time in full time jobs. So this one says
Speaker 1: I probably just lost over fifteen thousand dollars by a scam.
Speaker 1: I got hit by somebody who told me of a
Speaker 1: job under open text that makes money. For this job,
Speaker 1: you need to complete tasks, but sometimes you have to
Speaker 1: put in money. At the beginning, I put in like
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred and I actually made seven one hundred back.
Speaker 1: But then now I have over fifteen thousand in with
Speaker 1: a loan eight thousand that I took that had fifty
Speaker 1: percent interest. Now the current task needs like seven to
Speaker 1: eighty USD to be completed. After all the money I
Speaker 1: put in, I have a couple days left. Now I'm
Speaker 1: wondering did anybody actually get scammed after completing a task
Speaker 1: or do they always raise the price until they don't
Speaker 1: have any money to spend so you can't complete the task.
Speaker 1: And I, in this case of losing all the money,
Speaker 1: do you guys have an idea what I should do
Speaker 1: or just have to move on?
Speaker 3: Edit?
Speaker 1: Thanks for the supportive comments and for the advice. I
Speaker 1: will not send them any extra money. So we're always
Speaker 1: especially on the debt free journey or just trying to
Speaker 1: maybe like say for a house, or trying to get
Speaker 1: our finances, trying to get ahead in this economy right
Speaker 1: looking for online jobs, and there are for sure legitimate
Speaker 1: ones out there happen lion Bridge. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of like actual reputable data entry easy part time jobs.
Speaker 1: For each one, there are like twenty scam ones. And
Speaker 1: so I actually was looking into one like a website
Speaker 1: that I guess sends out a newsletter that compiles these
Speaker 1: like data entry jobs, and I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this sounds great. Let me put my email in so
Speaker 1: I can vet it before I tell our listeners about it.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, scam. The newsletter is a scam because
Speaker 1: they just are pushing like not just like at first
Speaker 1: affiliate offers, but then actual like I looked at their
Speaker 1: trust pilot reviews and the only five star reviews were
Speaker 1: like definitely paid, and then there were a ton of
Speaker 1: one star review saying that it's just gonna take your
Speaker 1: email address and send you spam. And thankfully I use
Speaker 1: the email address that I use for spam. But you
Speaker 1: just have to be really cautious. The legit ones, you
Speaker 1: won't have to pay for anything. So like in the past,
Speaker 1: I have paid for a Flex Jobs subscription just for
Speaker 1: like one month. That is a legit company to find
Speaker 1: remote jobs. Flex Jobs not sponsored, so I have paid
Speaker 1: for that. But then all the remote jobs on there
Speaker 1: do not require payment. So any legit online job won't
Speaker 1: require any payment to start, and it just makes me
Speaker 1: think of MLMs. Right, any legit job won't require you
Speaker 1: to put money up front, and any legit franchise business
Speaker 1: will allow you to market in traditional marketing avenues, not
Speaker 1: just offline, like not just social media marketing.
Speaker 3: Right, there is such a thing as needing to put
Speaker 3: money in to start a business or to start a franchise.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you've given some helpful caveats to what makes
Speaker 3: it actually revenue incurring versus not. I will also affirm
Speaker 3: this one with a job interview scam. This is one
Speaker 3: of the ones that I was saying I know someone
Speaker 3: personally who this has happened to, and in their particular case,
Speaker 3: it was that they needed to put money out for
Speaker 3: the onboarding process. It was an online job, and so
Speaker 3: for the computer and some of the equipment and just
Speaker 3: to fill out different forms and that kind of a thing.
Speaker 3: They were asked to send money up front in the
Speaker 3: hiring and onboarding process. And I think that this was
Speaker 3: an online job, and so I think for somebody too,
Speaker 3: what could make you a little bit more susceptible to
Speaker 3: this is if you've never before worked an online job.
Speaker 3: I think, not quite knowing the landscape, not quite having
Speaker 3: the knowledge of I'm used to going into a brick
Speaker 3: and mortar building. I hear of a lot of people
Speaker 3: who are working online. This must be what they do.
Speaker 3: You know, it's probably pretty typical that I'm going to
Speaker 3: have to send them a few thousand dollars just to
Speaker 3: get me set up in their system, and then I'm
Speaker 3: going to start earning xyz amount of money. And of
Speaker 3: course when we're starting jobs, a lot of us are
Speaker 3: familiar with we giving our social Security number. I remember
Speaker 3: there was a legit job I had where they wanted
Speaker 3: to know medical information about me, and that's a whole
Speaker 3: other story. But we're used to giving information in this
Speaker 3: job hiring process, and so I think sometimes on our
Speaker 3: own understanding the line between what's normal what's not normal,
Speaker 3: can we can again find ourselves falling prey, falling victim
Speaker 3: to these things. But again, one of the very kind
Speaker 3: of base level things that should raise a red flag
Speaker 3: is you shouldn't have to pay money for the job
Speaker 3: that somebody is hiring you to be paid for and
Speaker 3: be able to create a pause and ask yourself more questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I have heard in doing research that they
Speaker 1: will do actual video interviews too, so like some of
Speaker 1: them will do chat interviews, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: red flag. But somebody's doing a video interview of you,
Speaker 1: you don't think that that's a red flag. That's an
Speaker 1: actual normal way to get interviewed. But they said some
Speaker 1: of the tells on that was that might be dark
Speaker 1: so that you can't like fully make out their face.
Speaker 1: They'll make like an excuse for that They're English, might
Speaker 1: not be great, so which you know, you might not
Speaker 1: know if it's an international job that you're working remote for,
Speaker 1: you won't really think twice like there are legit international
Speaker 1: companies that hire in the US, like I worked for
Speaker 1: a really great Israeli company for writing or freelance writing,
Speaker 1: and it was very legit. So there are just some tells.
Speaker 1: So if it feels scammy, then double check. That's what
Speaker 1: we're saying.
Speaker 3: This next story comes again from Reddit, and this is
Speaker 3: a person sharing their own story about their dad that's
Speaker 3: titled dad got scammed by phone call out of ninety
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars. So they say, I tried posting this previously,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't laughed to defoul language.
Speaker 1: So here we go.
Speaker 3: I have calmed down. Let's try again. On Saturday, my
Speaker 3: seventy five year old father received a phone call from
Speaker 3: someone purporting to be his grandson, my sister's son who
Speaker 3: was about to start college. Let's call the grandson Jack.
Speaker 3: Jack said he is in jail and has a broken
Speaker 3: nose and is bleeding and needs ninety five hundred dollars
Speaker 3: to pay a lawyer or he'll be there for three days.
Speaker 3: He told my dad to go to the bank, take
Speaker 3: out cash, come back home and a driver will pick
Speaker 3: it up. He did that, but my dad is old
Speaker 3: and my brother lives with them. My brother an adult,
Speaker 3: an adjunct professor at an accredited university, albeit he is
Speaker 3: heavily on mental health medication recreational cannabis, drove my dad
Speaker 3: to the bank, let him take out the cash, and
Speaker 3: let him give it to the scammer. At no point
Speaker 3: did either of them call me or any other sane
Speaker 3: member of our family. Anyway, my dad called the scammer back.
Speaker 3: They sent a lift driver. However, the first driver apparently
Speaker 3: refused the pickup. They sent another driver who accepted the
Speaker 3: envelope of cash and drove away. Then my dad called
Speaker 3: me and told me what happened and realized he'd been scammed.
Speaker 3: I lost my mind. I literally just worked with a
Speaker 3: government agency about informing consumers about scams. I had just
Speaker 3: told him what to do if this exact situation happened.
Speaker 3: I told him someone would call him saying they were
Speaker 3: his grandson, they were in jail, they needed money immediately,
Speaker 3: and he had forgotten. Anyway, I understand that they preyed
Speaker 3: on my dad and used his fear to reduce his faculties,
Speaker 3: so he didn't question this. But my brother I still
Speaker 3: haven't spoken to him about this because I'm so angry.
Speaker 3: How could he have let this happen. And again, you
Speaker 3: and I Jen talked about this story before we hopped
Speaker 3: on the ability even of utilizing AI for this type
Speaker 3: of scam in that people can look at your Facebook
Speaker 3: profile and see are you away, are you out of town,
Speaker 3: which could lead your family members to be more likely
Speaker 3: to believe that maybe something like this is happening. You're
Speaker 3: either in jail or maybe sometimes the scammers will lead
Speaker 3: you to believe that a family member has been taken hostage.
Speaker 3: So again, these situations that are kind of ramping up
Speaker 3: urgency over a loved one, someone that you care about,
Speaker 3: and a lot of times praying on the elderly community
Speaker 3: with a grandson or granddaughter. They're either in jail or
Speaker 3: they're being held hostage and they need this amount of
Speaker 3: money immediately in order to get them out of whatever
Speaker 3: situation they're in, and sometimes even being able to find
Speaker 3: recordings of their voice and morph them into whatever they
Speaker 3: wanted to say, so it could even sound like it
Speaker 3: is your grandson, your granddaughter calling and not the scammer
Speaker 3: themselves calling. So I think one of the key takeaways
Speaker 3: in that is, like this example gave calling the actual
Speaker 3: person so you can be led to believe. No, they're
Speaker 3: in jail, they're out on vacation, they're being held hostage.
Speaker 3: I can't talk to them, but taking a pause and
Speaker 3: actually calling their number yourself to be sure was it
Speaker 3: actually them who called me can be step one.
Speaker 1: I was on YouTube yesterday like all day watching videos
Speaker 1: about scams, and so I wanted to see how common
Speaker 1: it was, and so I even found the CNN story.
Speaker 1: It's so it's not a bail story, but it's fake
Speaker 1: kidnapping where they take either sounds from the voicemail or
Speaker 1: from social media and they can use AI to make
Speaker 1: it say whatever they want. Right, we know this now
Speaker 1: we're living in the age of AI. And they look
Speaker 1: at social media also to see who's out of town.
Speaker 1: So this mom got a phone call and she was
Speaker 1: worried because her daughter was out of town training for
Speaker 1: ski race. And so she answers this call from her daughter.
Speaker 1: Because scammers can use other people's numbers from their own phone.
Speaker 1: It's called I think porting, and so it looked like
Speaker 1: it was coming from her daughter, right, it wasn't coming
Speaker 1: from a fake number. And she greeted it, and she
Speaker 1: was greeted by yelling and sobbing said, Mom, I messed up,
Speaker 1: screamed the girl's voice, and Mom was like, what did
Speaker 1: you do? What happened? And she said the voice sounded
Speaker 1: just like breeze, the inflection, everything, And then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I heard a man say, lay down, put
Speaker 1: your head back, and she's thinking her daughter's being gurneied
Speaker 1: off the mountain because she's training for ski And then
Speaker 1: they said, listen here, I have your daughter. You call
Speaker 1: the police, you call anybody. I'm gonna pop her something
Speaker 1: so full of drugs. I'm gonna have my way with her,
Speaker 1: then drop her off in Mexico. You're never gonna see
Speaker 1: her again. So I'm just reading it to say like,
Speaker 1: this is kind of the script they'll use. But after
Speaker 1: a chaotic, rapid fire series of events that included a
Speaker 1: one million dollar ransom demand, a nine to one to
Speaker 1: one call in a frantic effort to reach Brianna, the
Speaker 1: kidnapping was exposed as a scam. So the first thing
Speaker 1: you should do is find another phone to call that
Speaker 1: person's phone number, because they will be very adamant about
Speaker 1: you not getting off line because they know if you
Speaker 1: call that number, they're gonna pick up or they could
Speaker 1: pick up, but they choose people who are out of
Speaker 1: town or doing something specific so that there's less likely
Speaker 1: a chance they will pick up. You know, brie was
Speaker 1: probably really actually on the mountain skiing, so it's very
Speaker 1: unlikely she would pick up. But Brianna did call her
Speaker 1: mother back and she said she didn't know what the
Speaker 1: fuss was about. Everything was fine, but that was artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: like for better or for worse. We did an episode
Speaker 1: on how great AI can be for helping you. But
Speaker 1: these are some of just the downsides that people will use.
Speaker 1: And the article, she says Americans lost two point six
Speaker 1: billion dollars in twenty twenty two from imposter scams. So
Speaker 1: this is two point six billion is huge and it's
Speaker 1: not just a niche part of Americans that you can
Speaker 1: write off as dumb or something. This is two point
Speaker 1: six billion. It's affecting everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got one final story that I do want
Speaker 3: to share because this is another example of something that
Speaker 3: just happened in the last few months to someone that
Speaker 3: I know, and it's a cancel subscription scam. This person
Speaker 3: shared I had gotten an email from people posing as
Speaker 3: geek Squad talking about how I needed to cancel a subscription,
Speaker 3: and I thought it was legit because they had the
Speaker 3: name and the amount of money that the subscription costs.
Speaker 3: I should have looked more closely or called my dad,
Speaker 3: but I wanted to handle it like an adult on
Speaker 3: my own. I thought it would be easy enough, so
Speaker 3: I call them up. So they do the standard talking
Speaker 3: on the phone with the guy even downloaded one of
Speaker 3: those apps that lets people control their mouse from wherever,
Speaker 3: so they're on her computer controlling the mouse. I've had
Speaker 3: that happen with people working on my computer before, a
Speaker 3: lot of us have. Yeah, I should have listened to
Speaker 3: my bad feeling, but I'm pretty much paranoid anxious, so
Speaker 3: I just talk up my bad feeling to my brain,
Speaker 3: just being like that. So what happened next felt so dumb,
Speaker 3: where they take me to a server where I had
Speaker 3: to type in the amount of money out of my
Speaker 3: checking account or something so that they ended up sending
Speaker 3: me two thousand dollars. And then she freaked out because
Speaker 3: I got a text on my phone and everything about
Speaker 3: and I start having an anxiety attack. But the person
Speaker 3: I was talking to on the phone was taking advantage
Speaker 3: of me, playing nice, just telling me to take an uber,
Speaker 3: go to Walmart, get two Apple cards and put five
Speaker 3: hundred dollars on them to give them the money back. Again,
Speaker 3: I should have seen the red flag, but I was
Speaker 3: so anxious. I wasn't thinking right. I thought I was
Speaker 3: going to go to jail. I did what they asked
Speaker 3: me to. I was on the phone with them the
Speaker 3: whole time that they gave me the number, only to
Speaker 3: find out that they were lying to me the whole time.
Speaker 3: Told me not to tell my bank or my family
Speaker 3: about it, and of course I did. I called my dad,
Speaker 3: which led me to locking me out of my bank
Speaker 3: account and try to claim fraud. So all of this.
Speaker 3: In the end, they ended up losing one thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: But I've heard of this exact scam, whether it's posing
Speaker 3: as geek Squad or some antivirus software that's just hey,
Speaker 3: your renewal is coming up, and if you want to
Speaker 3: cancel it, click this link. And then it's somehow you
Speaker 3: end up being on the phone with what you believe
Speaker 3: are their customer service representatives, and through the exchange they
Speaker 3: kind of claim to say that they're having issues in
Speaker 3: being able to process the cancelation. It must be you
Speaker 3: not being able to click the right buttons on your computer.
Speaker 3: So let me just take over your computer screen and
Speaker 3: see what's up, which for many of us we've done that.
Speaker 3: I remember even in college with just it. At college
Speaker 3: they were able to easily take over my server and
Speaker 3: help me kind of clear my cash and get me
Speaker 3: up and running again. So that is something that I
Speaker 3: think a lot of us have experienced someone being able
Speaker 3: to take over your computer and in that process being like, okay,
Speaker 3: well you have to type in the amount of money
Speaker 3: that we owe you back, and then they say, oh,
Speaker 3: you typed in too many zeros, so now you've refunded
Speaker 3: yourself more than the amount that you should have been refunded.
Speaker 3: So now you owe us that money back, and who
Speaker 3: knows what amount it's going to be. For her, it
Speaker 3: was two thousand, for someone else it was up to
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars, and so that can kind of get
Speaker 3: you into a panic of now I owe you this
Speaker 3: money back, And for my friend, the person on the
Speaker 3: other end was getting pretty irate with them of how
Speaker 3: could you make such a mistake. You've now cost us
Speaker 3: all this money. You immediately need to get to the
Speaker 3: bank and refund us this money and it needs to
Speaker 3: happen within twenty four hours, so there's that urgency thing,
Speaker 3: and then of course the other red flags of don't
Speaker 3: tell your bank about this, don't tell a family member,
Speaker 3: just tell your bank that you're wiring a friend. So
Speaker 3: there's a lot of language that they try to give
Speaker 3: you which should be a red flag. If they're telling
Speaker 3: you specifics of the wording that you need to be using,
Speaker 3: that's a red flag. But again, three of these scams
Speaker 3: have happened to friends of mine in the last few months,
Speaker 3: so it's real, it's out there, it's happened in the
Speaker 3: regular folks. Beware.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the comments under it immediately are like be aware.
Speaker 1: You may now get people messaging you telling you they
Speaker 1: can get your money back, which is called a recovery scam,
Speaker 1: which is also known as a refund scam, and they
Speaker 1: target people who have already fallen for a scam, and
Speaker 1: it may be the actual scammer contacting you or advertising
Speaker 1: their services to get your money back from a scam.
Speaker 1: It's just another scam. So unfortunately, no one can get
Speaker 1: your money back on these types of things. But again,
Speaker 1: this is something people who are aware of their finances
Speaker 1: will open these emails because they'll be like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is a renewal for a subscription I do or do
Speaker 1: not have, especially if I don't have it. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be charged. I don't want to be scammed.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to pay for a subscription that
Speaker 1: is not mine. So I'm going to take, you know,
Speaker 1: the necessary moves to not pay for it. And if
Speaker 1: you just pause before you do this, read these emails.
Speaker 1: I know we don't want to read all of these
Speaker 1: subscription emails, all of these emails that are so standard
Speaker 1: issue that we just become kind of mind numb to
Speaker 1: them and we just do the actions without reading the
Speaker 1: terms and conditions. But a big tell is when you
Speaker 1: read these, like especially this one, it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of typos, and they're not all so clear, Like subscription
Speaker 1: is misspelled once it's such spencryption right, but it's it's
Speaker 1: spelled correctly everywhere else. So there will be a typo.
Speaker 1: In a normal setting, there will be no typos. People
Speaker 1: get paid so much money to make sure that their
Speaker 1: copy is edited and you will see just a little
Speaker 1: bit of a weird email address. So if you go
Speaker 1: look at the center, so ups email scams are really
Speaker 1: popular right now, and the email will be the series
Speaker 1: of numbers in letters so long that you won't be
Speaker 1: able to see the at right, and so it'll be
Speaker 1: these the series of numbers and letters at something dot
Speaker 1: ups dot com, So they'll actually be able to get
Speaker 1: through email verification because the ending is ups dot com,
Speaker 1: but it's something dot ups dot com, so it will
Speaker 1: look like, you know, you've got a package delivered or
Speaker 1: something you need to pay to pick it up, or
Speaker 1: something that is a really popular scam going on right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's another reason why it behooves you to either
Speaker 1: keep a spending plan or do a ninety day transaction
Speaker 1: inventory if you haven't done one in the past year,
Speaker 1: so that you can see what's going on, what subscriptions
Speaker 1: you have, and how much they cost when they're up
Speaker 1: for renewal, stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So this final we do want to spend a little
Speaker 3: bit of time on this final article that comes from
Speaker 3: the Better Business Bureau, and it just gives us ten
Speaker 3: ways to avoid scams. We're not going to go into
Speaker 3: much depth on them. You can get the link in
Speaker 3: our show notes. But first of all, never send money
Speaker 3: via gift card or wire transfer to someone you have
Speaker 3: never met face to face. Just never, ever, ever, ever, ever,
Speaker 3: should there be a reason that you're sending money via
Speaker 3: gift card or wire transfer to someone you haven't met.
Speaker 3: That should just be a big red flag. Even if
Speaker 3: you're feeling a sense of urgency, press pause, ask yourself quiets.
Speaker 3: Avoid clicking on links or opening attachments in unsolicited email.
Speaker 3: So again, back to that canceling subscription scam, The main
Speaker 3: issue that happened was that they clicked on the link
Speaker 3: in the email that was sent to them, rather than
Speaker 3: going to their email subscription. So just believing that the
Speaker 3: email came from geek Squad rather than going to their
Speaker 3: geek Squad subscription. So okay, you get an email, go
Speaker 3: to your actual or call your bank rather than going
Speaker 3: through whatever text or email is sent to you. And
Speaker 3: the links that are given there go to how you
Speaker 3: know you access your bank, how you know you access
Speaker 3: your subscriptions. Don't ever go through the text message link
Speaker 3: or the email link.
Speaker 1: Even I think this one is the easiest one to
Speaker 1: fall for, because again, we don't fully read emails and
Speaker 1: if it is something we already subscribe to or we
Speaker 1: know we don't subscribe to. We want to get in
Speaker 1: there and we want to fix the situation as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible. We don't fully read or we just skim,
Speaker 1: and we don't see these little minor grammatical errors, and
Speaker 1: it's too late. Once you've already clicked the link, you've
Speaker 1: already got the malware. And especially with attachments, because these
Speaker 1: companies will send your invoics in an attachment sometimes and
Speaker 1: once you click it and then it's already downloaded, then
Speaker 1: it's too late. And so that's why taking a pause
Speaker 1: and then always going in if it's something you do
Speaker 1: subscribe to, always go in via the front door, which
Speaker 1: is the actual website itself. Don't ever go in through
Speaker 1: the side door. And then if it's something you don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to, then going immediately to your credit card through
Speaker 1: the front door and seeing if it's something that you
Speaker 1: have been charged for previously and take that up with
Speaker 1: your credit card issuer or your debit card issuer, and
Speaker 1: then again go through the front door to the come
Speaker 1: beany that is quote unquote going to be charging you.
Speaker 3: Don't believe everything you see. Double check your online purchases
Speaker 3: before checking out. Use extreme caution, when dealing with anyone
Speaker 3: you meet online. Never share personal identifiable information, resist the
Speaker 3: pressure to act immediately, use secure and traceable transactions, so
Speaker 3: that means not paying for things by wire transfer, prepaid,
Speaker 3: money card, gift card, other non traditional payment methods, or
Speaker 3: even saying no to cash only, high pressure sales tactics, deals,
Speaker 3: and whenever possible, work with local businesses, and just be
Speaker 3: cautious with what you share on social media.
Speaker 1: I think I will be a little bit more cautious
Speaker 1: on social media after reading all of this. And we
Speaker 1: didn't even go into romance scams. There are so many
Speaker 1: romance scams. It actually has its own subjects.
Speaker 3: That'll be our Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: Yes, let us know if you want our Valentine's Day
Speaker 1: episode to be romance scams, because it has its own subreddit.
Speaker 1: This is our scams, and there's an our romance scams
Speaker 1: in and of itself.
Speaker 3: Jen and I are finding our Frugal Friends spinoff podcast.
Speaker 1: Yes, scam sisters, like they build your trust and then
Speaker 1: we'll tell you about investment opportunities. You know, when they
Speaker 1: lose money, they'll call and cry when you lose money,
Speaker 1: like they'll console you, like they are so elaborate, and
Speaker 1: they seem so real and they spend what seems like
Speaker 1: too much time investing in you to be fake. But
Speaker 1: AI people there are so many like automated inputs that
Speaker 1: they can put in and just like feed back to you.
Speaker 1: And they can be up all night because they're probably
Speaker 1: in a different time zone all day all night. What
Speaker 1: have you so, man romance scams, you know the red flags.
Speaker 1: I think the things that we really want to get
Speaker 1: across to you is how important it is to be
Speaker 1: organized with your money and know that no problem is
Speaker 1: so dire that it requires you to pay for it immediately.
Speaker 1: Like we talk about emergency funds and what is an emergency,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we'll say medical things might be an emergency.
Speaker 1: In reality, you have three to six months before you
Speaker 1: need to pay that medical bill. They won't even send
Speaker 1: it to you for a month. Right You might have
Speaker 1: a co payment at the urgent care clinic for twenty
Speaker 1: bucks one hundred bucks. But even emergency crisis, emergency medical events,
Speaker 1: you don't have to necessarily take from your emergency fund.
Speaker 1: There are very few things that require you having to
Speaker 1: immediately put out cash for I think maybe the biggest
Speaker 1: one would be your car breaks down and you need
Speaker 1: to put out cash to fix that, or you're air
Speaker 1: conditioning something that you need a service done quickly.
Speaker 3: But thankfully that's in real life. That's a tangible thing
Speaker 3: that's happening, not online.
Speaker 1: So like all of these things that we feel are urgent,
Speaker 1: all of these things that we feel are important, just
Speaker 1: regularly reevaluating these things in our life can really put
Speaker 1: that into perspective. So when something like this comes up,
Speaker 1: you don't feel as pressured, right, So I think that's
Speaker 1: the biggest thing that we want to emphasize. And then
Speaker 1: also maybe being more careful with what you put on
Speaker 1: social media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know what, you don't have to be
Speaker 3: careful with.
Speaker 1: Oh and it's always coming at you best.
Speaker 3: You can put this on the internet and we're gonna
Speaker 3: love it.
Speaker 1: It's the week scam aedih.
Speaker 4: That's right. It's time for the best minute of your
Speaker 4: entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name
Speaker 4: is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your
Speaker 4: car died and you're happy to not have to pay
Speaker 4: that bill anymore. Dust bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this
Speaker 4: is the bills of the week.
Speaker 5: Hey, jan and Jill I have a spooky story of
Speaker 5: the charges that we got that were a little in
Speaker 5: the fairies, so I just wanted everybody to be paying
Speaker 5: attention to their money. We had a Walmart dot Com
Speaker 5: order to show up at our house one day and
Speaker 5: delivery it was a box of tissues, and we had
Speaker 5: about a fourteen dollars charge charged to our bank account
Speaker 5: for this Walmart dot Com purchase. Neither my husband or
Speaker 5: I had made a purchase, and on my Walmart dot
Speaker 5: Com account there was no purchase made, so I thought
Speaker 5: this was weird. Two days later we had it happened
Speaker 5: again where a bottle of vegetable oil showed up from
Speaker 5: Walmart dot Com, another ten to fifteen dollars charge on
Speaker 5: our account, so we knew something was called Walmart. Talked
Speaker 5: to the customer service department and they said it was
Speaker 5: on my account with my name, but the email address
Speaker 5: was just a bunch of jumble of letters and number,
Speaker 5: you know, like a spam type account. And the debit
Speaker 5: card used was my husband's, which I didn't even have
Speaker 5: on my account, so something had happened where we'd been spammed.
Speaker 5: Somehow his card was compromised. So luckily Walmart was really helpful.
Speaker 5: They reversed the charges and we called our bank, deleted
Speaker 5: his debit card, got a new debit card number, and
Speaker 5: everything worked out. But you know, it's just petty spooky
Speaker 5: to know that there's people out there trying to scam
Speaker 5: you and take too money, and that just makes us
Speaker 5: all have to be a little bit more aware and
Speaker 5: pay attention to our account. Thanks guy.
Speaker 3: This is so wild that we're talking scams and here
Speaker 3: we go with a spooky scam story and we just
Speaker 3: said send in your spooky stories. That's now also doubling
Speaker 3: as the bill of the week. Yeah, and yours being
Speaker 3: a scam is so dead on. What a wild experience,
Speaker 3: because it's not This is a little bit more of
Speaker 3: a your card was compromised than you necessarily kind of
Speaker 3: not being aware of what's happening around you. It actually
Speaker 3: sounds like your awareness of your Walmart account, what's showing
Speaker 3: up at your door, the charges and transactions that are happening,
Speaker 3: and then knowing where to go to rectify it. I mean,
Speaker 3: you handled it flawlessly. But for the untrained person who's like,
Speaker 3: well I am getting these things to my Dora, I
Speaker 3: actually did get a box tissues and some oil. Oh
Speaker 3: okay whatever, or if you're just not looking at your transactions,
Speaker 3: you could easily miss a fourteen dollars charge, here, a
Speaker 3: twenty dollars charge, but being able to see it, see
Speaker 3: that the wrong card is being charged and rectify it.
Speaker 3: I mean, well done. But yeah, this is wild and
Speaker 3: also a little yeah, definitely scary. It's showing up at
Speaker 3: your door. Not only do they have your card, they
Speaker 3: have your address.
Speaker 1: And this is something that scammers will do is they'll
Speaker 1: do small charges and if you are unaware of a
Speaker 1: few small charges, then they'll go for the big one.
Speaker 1: So this is something to be aware. Do not just
Speaker 1: write off. If you don't recognize a transaction in your
Speaker 1: transaction history, don't write it off and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I probably made that here or there. Look into it,
Speaker 1: figure it out, look at the date, the time, where
Speaker 1: were you, what happened, and get to the bottom of
Speaker 1: every transaction. That's why it behooves you to either do
Speaker 1: daily or weekly transaction inventories if you can so, and
Speaker 1: at least monthly. Honestly, I don't keep a budget, but
Speaker 1: every month I will go into our account and in
Speaker 1: power and make sure that I'm not being scammed. Really,
Speaker 1: my biggest concern is does anybody have my money? And
Speaker 1: that's one of the benefits of travel hacking and using
Speaker 1: new credit cards is that I only ever use a
Speaker 1: credit card for six months and then I lock it
Speaker 1: and so I'm using new numbers quite frequently. So you
Speaker 1: don't have to do that. In order to use new numbers.
Speaker 1: You can cycle through the cards that you have that
Speaker 1: don't have annual fees and lock down others. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is my basic and I'll share something in the lightning
Speaker 1: round that's quite funny that as a result of my
Speaker 1: last transaction inventory.
Speaker 3: Well, before we get to that, if you want to
Speaker 3: submit your bill of the week, if it has something
Speaker 3: to do just spooky stuff showing up at your door,
Speaker 3: or romance scams or a bill you don't mind paying,
Speaker 3: or your name is Bill and you just happen to
Speaker 3: be here and you feel like calling us up. We're
Speaker 3: ready Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Bill. Please leave
Speaker 3: us your bill and now it's time for learning around.
Speaker 1: So what is the weirdest, most insane, creepiest story involving
Speaker 1: money or scams? Okay, so this one happened to me
Speaker 1: actually yesterday I was doing relevant my ninety day transaction
Speaker 1: history for the year. Because I don't do it every
Speaker 1: ninety days. It does help you to do it every.
Speaker 3: Ninety days you were doing the entire year.
Speaker 1: No, I was just doing ninety days, but I only
Speaker 1: do it once a year.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 1: So I happened to be doing that yesterday and I
Speaker 1: went in and saw a Spotify charge. And so if
Speaker 1: you are on the friend letter Frugal Friends podcast dot
Speaker 1: com slash friend letter, then we told you about getting
Speaker 1: Spotify a three month premium trial for free, so we
Speaker 1: gave you the link to do that, and I tried
Speaker 1: it first, make sure it was a little digit make
Speaker 1: sure it wasn't a scam. So I signed up, but
Speaker 1: apparently I had accidentally signed up with a different account first,
Speaker 1: an account I didn't realize I had that was connected
Speaker 1: to my Facebook. And then I couldn't get the premium
Speaker 1: account for some reason. So I tried a different email address.
Speaker 1: I thought. I tried on my original account, right, like
Speaker 1: my original premium account that I've had for ten years,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't work. So I tried a new one.
Speaker 1: Lo and behold, I was not trying on my original account.
Speaker 1: I was trying on a different account that was connected
Speaker 1: to my Facebook. I didn't realize you could have two
Speaker 1: Spotify accounts with one email address. So I'm over here
Speaker 1: with my premium trial for free. It's work and it's driving.
Speaker 1: And then I get charged for Spotify and I was like,
Speaker 1: hold up, I don't even have credit card information on
Speaker 1: file with either of my Spotify accounts. And I was like,
Speaker 1: this is a scam. Somebody has hacked me. And so
Speaker 1: then I get in chat with Spotify and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you did it with your email attached to your Facebook
Speaker 1: and then you also have this account that has a username,
Speaker 1: and then you also have this account that you're using.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't have three accounts, I have
Speaker 1: two accounts, and lo and behold, Travis is actually he
Speaker 1: uses my Spotify and I thought he was using my
Speaker 1: username Spotify. He was using the Spotify attached to my
Speaker 1: Facebook account and so he's had premium for the last
Speaker 1: two months. He didn't ask questions why he just used it,
Speaker 1: and I'm being charged and so like I go to
Speaker 1: Chase and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Spotify can't do this. Reverse these charges. They did and
Speaker 1: I go to Spotify. No no, no, no, no, no no. You
Speaker 1: can't have two accounts with one email address. Delete the
Speaker 1: Facebook account, delete that one. It's not a thing that
Speaker 1: you can do. I'm not gonna be charged for this
Speaker 1: because I didn't even know this account existed. So I
Speaker 1: did get my money back, but I thought it was
Speaker 1: a scam, but really it was me scamming me. If
Speaker 1: that makes sense.
Speaker 3: We won't scam you, We'll only scam ourselves. That link
Speaker 3: is still.
Speaker 1: Right, No, the hot for the three month free premium
Speaker 1: trial that was legit, Like I'm still using it. So
Speaker 1: I was really like convinced. I was holding Atlas and
Speaker 1: I gave them to Travis. I was like, hold my baby,
Speaker 1: and I'm like in on chat with Chase and with
Speaker 1: Spotify trying to figure this out. And we did, and
Speaker 1: I'm getting a new card.
Speaker 3: Oh well done. And see what happens when you look
Speaker 3: through your transactions. So my story involves me years ago
Speaker 3: when I was in a place of desperation for money,
Speaker 3: really I needed work, and I saw this sign that
Speaker 3: was advertising what I thought said eighteen dollars an hour,
Speaker 3: which we're talking about eight to ten years ago. So
Speaker 3: eighteen dollars an hour was like the equivalent of fifty
Speaker 3: two dollars an hour today.
Speaker 1: It's still good today.
Speaker 3: That sounded really nice. So I go to this open interview,
Speaker 3: and I really wish I had immediately walked out, but
Speaker 3: I didn't because the part of me that didn't want
Speaker 3: to be embarrassed or unkind kept me there. But I
Speaker 3: basically walked into an empty room in kind of like
Speaker 3: a corporate complex, only pretty run down. The room had
Speaker 3: literally a whiteboard and a desk and a bunch of
Speaker 3: folding chairs mismatched folding chairs, and about ten to twelve
Speaker 3: other people trickle in, and I then sat there along
Speaker 3: with everybody else for at least two hours, where it
Speaker 3: wasn't really an interview. It was more of a pep
Speaker 3: talk of this guy trying to train us in selling electricity.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't eighteen dollars an hour. It was eighteen
Speaker 3: dollars per base appointment, meaning that let's even say you
Speaker 3: make four appointments in a day, you're only going to
Speaker 3: get paid for your first appointment eighteen dollars, and then
Speaker 3: you're making whatever amount of money after that, which I
Speaker 3: can guarantee you is zero amount of money. After that,
Speaker 3: and as it was becoming clearer and clearer to me
Speaker 3: and I knew I'm not going to do this, I
Speaker 3: still could not bring myself to get up and leave
Speaker 3: the room in front of everybody. One other brave person did.
Speaker 3: There was one person who sat there for maybe forty
Speaker 3: five minutes, and he was like, all right, I'm out,
Speaker 3: And then the guy tried to use alpha male techniques
Speaker 3: on him, like, well, where are you going, dude? You
Speaker 3: want to say goodbye to look such an amazing opportunity.
Speaker 3: You don't have what it takes. Oh, Jen, it was wild.
Speaker 3: I did not remember that until this lightning round, but
Speaker 3: it was the weirdest experience and job interview I used
Speaker 3: that firm loose leigh. Oh my goodness, but yeah, I
Speaker 3: was wild that happened, and I wasted two hours of
Speaker 3: my life where I needed money. I wanted to be
Speaker 3: making eighteen dollars an hour, and instead I spent two
Speaker 3: hours learning about how there wasn't an opportunity to make
Speaker 3: eighteen dollars an hour. And here I was. I mean,
Speaker 3: I at that point had my bachelor's degree, Like, I
Speaker 3: don't know why, I felt like I needed to go
Speaker 3: be pedaling something well really, because Social Work at the
Speaker 3: time wasn't paying me eighteen dollars an hour, so it's like,
Speaker 3: whatever else can I find all podcast and make three
Speaker 3: dollars an hour?
Speaker 1: Amen? Amen? Yeah, it's happened to all of us in
Speaker 1: some capacity, So thank you so much for listening. I
Speaker 1: hope this episode has helped you and possibly a family
Speaker 1: or friend member, family member or friend to identify something,
Speaker 1: or hopefully you can help a family member friend identify something.
Speaker 1: And if you want more tips and ways to save
Speaker 1: money and keep more of your money when you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be parting with it, The Friend Letter goes out three
Speaker 1: times a week. We send out freebie saving tips, life
Speaker 1: hacks to help you save money.
Speaker 5: Literally.
Speaker 1: The last like last week's Friday email, Jill wrote and
Speaker 1: we immediately got two emails back saying like, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. It was exactly what I needed to hear
Speaker 1: and it was so helpful and you know, not the
Speaker 1: kind of financial advice that I have heard, but it's
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Speaker 3: And Jen writes good stuff too, don't you worry.
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Speaker 1: Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: read you this. It didn't make it into the episode,
Speaker 1: but it's the best thing I read on Reddit okay.
Speaker 1: It's from our scams. It's from Reddit okay, and the
Speaker 1: title which caused me to click on it says husband
Speaker 1: in romance scam. Help right right? Oh, it gets better,
Speaker 1: It gets it was great, then it gets better.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: So this person says, my husband is seventy and not
Speaker 1: very intelligent. He has been in a romance scam since
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, and this is from this year. I
Speaker 1: have a ton of evidence, our three adult children and
Speaker 1: I have tried to tell him he's in a scam,
Speaker 1: but he won't believe it. He says, we just don't understand.
Speaker 1: I put in a complaint with the FBI. My local
Speaker 1: police department was useless. Does anyone have any suggestions he's
Speaker 1: sending so much money. Our mortgage is behind, his truck
Speaker 1: payment is behind. Other bills are also behind. I am
Speaker 1: beyond stress because he refuses to listen. If anyone has ideas,
Speaker 1: please post.
Speaker 3: What is the scam? What's he doing? He's just sending
Speaker 3: money to somebody else.
Speaker 1: That's the romance scam. Is they ask for money, they
Speaker 1: build up a rapport with you, get you to trust them.
Speaker 1: Apparently he's been in this relationship for two years at least,
Speaker 1: and this person just asks for amounts of money and
Speaker 1: they say they can Also.
Speaker 3: There's so many things wrong with what's happening.
Speaker 1: They can also ask you to launder money for them.
Speaker 1: So I read another reddit where this woman who's mother
Speaker 1: or mother in law's living with them, and she says,
Speaker 1: this mother is involved in a romance scam where they
Speaker 1: are sending her packages and checks and then having her
Speaker 1: send them other places or deposit them places. And she
Speaker 1: just doesn't believe anybody telling her that she's in a
Speaker 1: scam because she's in a relationship with this person.
Speaker 3: Lure you in a scam, You're you're an illegal activity?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, so that's what romance scams. Man, they are
Speaker 1: a different level.
Speaker 3: Love can cause us to do all sorts of things.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, this is our longest episode ever, Jen,
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I'm so sorry, but not sorry.
Speaker 1: Her husband is in a romance scam and she's not
Speaker 1: asking how to leave him. She's asking I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do.
Speaker 3: That's so it's so concerning, and she really does need
Speaker 3: to move to protect herself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, God, I mean that was what all of the
Speaker 1: commenters are saying, like God bless him, that she just
Speaker 1: needs to get an attorney. But somebody says, to be honest,
Speaker 1: you should consider a divorce, oh.
Speaker 3: Or at least some how separating finances and getting help.
Speaker 3: There's a lot going on there. Man. I'm really feeling
Speaker 3: a second spinoff podcast because we enjoy this far too much.
Speaker 3: It's like the financial version of Catfish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she says that they do have separate accounts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if the mortgage that's shared is not being paid,
Speaker 3: if she happens to be anywhere attarteys, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is what happens. This is why every
Speaker 1: woman needs their own retirement account and savings account for
Speaker 1: stuff like this. And best case scenario, it's just more
Speaker 1: money you both have in retirement. But worst case scenario,
Speaker 1: it's because your husband is in a romance. Skin