##VIDEO ID:7VN3ro9hOFg## [Music] we need a whistle yeah or a gav a gavel yeah good morning everyone uh we're going to have to do things this morning because mics are not available so we'll try to uh do everything that we can and be as loud as we can doing it so uh this morning as as you know uh we have the FBI here and they're going to do a program and I'm going to put them on in a few minutes uh first of all I wanted to go over with the meetings that we're going to have uh in the future and for March March 4th we're going to have the presentation done by the the the uh which one did that match the senior Medicare Patrol and I believe this has been set up by uh Darlene is that is that right yes yes I believe so yeah she is bringing the people in for that and it's the senior Medicare Patrol in lifespan at April 1st that's March April 1st we'll have the Plymouth County district attorney Group which will be doing the uh first aid training now Chris uh where's Chris Chris is over there I'm going to let Chris explain a lot because there's a lot that's going to be done with this if it's possible so Chris is going to explain it Chris is from Tim Cruz's office the district attorney in Brockton so go ahead Chris I don't want to step on your toes too much cuz I know you guys probably have limited time but um just briefly we're going to do a CPR training in April and it's going to touch upon various things CPR um ad um you can't call it P anymore cuz it was trademark so it's I forget when you um stop the TR or something in the room I'm not sure what we're supposed to call it stop the leave um but the thing is we have two facilitators and there's a 10 to1 ratio so we're going to have to do a sign up we can have 20 participants who will bring in mannequins adult size and infant size uh but we can only have 20 actually practice on the manits so we will do a sign up with the COA and with Jean uh for tri out and then we can have a few observers that don't want to actually practice things so that um maybe we can have about 25 people total do you ask any questions okay Chris thank you and for the month of May uh we have a couple of things that we going to present uh but first all I'm trying to find out some I just received my fire insurance policy on my property and it's about five pages along and I looked at it I didn't understand only the first two pages so I called that we have it with a micker insurance out of Rhode Island so I call their office and they set me up with their office the way they training and we're going to try to get a makea insurance people out here for the month of May and they're going to explain fire insurance policies some are different than others depends on what you want and all but they say that there's a lot of people when they get their policies they really don't understand all there is to do and what's available and what you have and which you don't have in fact they told me that some of their men have gone to California because AA has 89 homes that are burnt out completely all of it is is fires they have this chimies up and that's it but anyway they have 87 policies on those properties so they have a lot of people out there going to find out what's going to happen so anyway that's what we're going to try to get for May so that is that and uh we can turn it over to the FBI group and uh we as I say we don't have mics available so we have to hopefully you all be able to hear us sorry Kim were you going to announce who they were it's on the paper uh go ahead go ahead um Sarah we have Sarah deir and am I say name yes yes and laille laille Sarah specially the FBI laa is forens the FBI going talk about elderly um SCS and how to avoid them y well good morning everyone thank you for having us so like uh she said my name is Sarah deair I'll give you a little bit of background about uh me and then also where our office is located so Laura and I are both employed with the FBI so we uh work out at the Lakeville office so we ever we cover everything south of Boston and the cap Island so it's a pretty big area so I've been a special agent for 21 years in Lakeville and uh started my career doing crimes against children and public corruption and have uh migrated to doing uh White Collar investigations probably for the last 10 or so years and fortunately I have Laura who's a forensic account in my in my office uh that helps me with a lot of the cases but I'll let her introduce herself as well Laura little with the FBI um I down Lakeville but I basically work with Boston division so that could be made New Hampshire Road and anything in Massachusetts and I basically work because is the financial aspect of cases with the agents but I hit everything the terrible speak up we have people that can't hear you sure okay thank you um I handle all violations and not just Financial I'm not just whiteall a crime so I work everything that has a financial Nexus so and uh throughout the presentation if you guys have questions feel free to shout them out we're pretty informal and we're lucky to have representatives from the Halifax uh police department and also the DA's office so if there's something we can't answer we'll ask pH we'll phone a friend and see if someone can help us but the reason we're here today um we're seeing an increasing amount in Elder fraud um and with computers and all the different scams that can be done um each week we're getting several calls where people are losing any anywhere from like $1,000 to millions of dollars so I think it's important that we come out and meet with the community kind of let you know some of the scams that we're seeing um in the back we have a bunch of handouts uh in regards to a lot of the scams we're seeing so if there's something that you want to get some more information about uh Feel Free at the end to go look in the back um and go from there but um this this situation isn't going to go away you know computers are here to stay um we now have cryptocurrency that we're dealing with and Bitcoin ATMs probably within a couple miles of here uh that uh bad guys are uh getting folks to enter cash into the Bitcoin ATMs and then converted into cryptocurrency and then it's gone so um we want to talk to you about all that today so today we're going to go over some statistics it's going to be shocking when you see just the um millions of dollars that is lost per year and this is just going to be us talking about the Boston division so when you think about the whole United States it's going to be uh pretty pretty big of a number um we're going to focus on why this population is targeted um who's doing it how it occurs some of the common scams like I said we'll talk about and then there's also other scams in the back that we kind of go over on those uh printouts and then um signs of financial abuse in case you see some of your friends or family members kind of potentially being uh defrauded by someone we need to uh be each other's Advocate and stand up for one another another and then what can you do um also in the back is a bunch of websites that you can go to in regards to resources in case you are a victim and kind of what your next step should be all right so the elderly population so 10,000 like it says 10,000 uh people turn 65 every day that's a staggering number and it's reported that four out of 10 seniors are victimized but like we know in most crimes a lot of people are not reporting it to their local police department or the FBI because sometimes they've lost so much money that they're embarrassed there's lots of reasons people don't report things but we just know that that number is is much higher um and then by 20 30 20% of the population will be over 65 so we're talking about a big group um that uh these Bad actors are targeting um you know this is a group of people who have worked their whole Lives who have money saved up hopefully to enjoy in retirement and that's why this this group is being targeted um and then does anyone know what the internet crime complaint center is ic3 have you guys ever heard of that so the FBI um has a website it's ic3.gov and we're encouraging anyone who's a victim of any kind of scam um to submit a report through ic3.gov the reason we're doing that is because our usth attorney's office is the um prosecutorial body so they're the attorneys so anytime we have a case we present the facts to our us attorney's office and they decide if they're going to prosecute it or not uh federally we have a higher threshold of loss and there's other factors that contribute to whether the US attorney's office is going to take a case or not but sometimes if a bunch of people lost let's say $5,000 from the same bad guy if everybody is submitting these ic3 reports we can compile all those victim victims together and we can work a federal case because with all those victims we have met the threshold in the US attorney's office will be interested in pursuing it um and that way we also uh find out who the common subjects are who the Bad actors are if no one reports it uh we're not going to be able to put all those cases together and realize maybe there's a region or um a a fake business or something that is doing a lot of frud but until people report it we're not going to know so it's very important that ic3 de of reports are submitted in addition uh as we go through this a lot of these cases the money is going to go overseas so we work we have um FBI agents all over the world the difference of those agents let's say outside of the United States versus inside of the United States is they don't have policing Powers so if your money goes to Hong Kong we have agents who will communicate with the Hong Kong police force and let them know the these are victim funds we're trying to get back but it depends on the relationship that either will work with us or not but these ic3.gov reports act as the affidavit for the victim so if the victim fills it out we can just send that report to another country and it acts as the affidavit saying I'm out this money this was the scam this is how much money I'm out and um those reports it's important to put as much information in as possible possible if you were a victim and sent five wire transfers it's going to ask you to outline the bank account writing routing number and all that of where you sent the money and it takes a little bit of time to input it but it's very important to have that when we're shipping those uh reports to other countries and yes the uh total loss um in just 2023 was 3.4 billion I have a question if if you wrote out a check and it went to another country you know the fraud they change would the bank report that I me if you go to the bank and would the bank report anything or would the person that's doing it need to re it it depends sometimes it depends on the amount sometimes the banks will file sometimes they direct their customers to file it just but they would say something to the customer that the people who know about ic3 in iot 10 banking groups um they will recommend to the customer to file on ic3 yes I'd like to say something about that Carol I had a check sent in the bank sent me an email asking me if I approve this or not and I had to either say yes or no so some of the banks do do it yes well you have to be careful because sometimes the Bad actors will change the email address just a little bit to try to fool you to thinking that they are the actual um financial institution so you need to be careful and if you ever have have any questions just go down to your local bank cuz they will have the information they will be able to assist you y I think we're good and this is just going over some more stats so this is 2023 we haven't come out with the 2024 numbers yet but um just look at some of those losses it's it's wild the average dollar loss 33,000 like I said so we have people who walk in to our office on a weekly basis and come in uh to let us know about them being Vic IED and it ranges from $1,000 to about 3 weeks ago someone lost 17 million so this is a huge problem and it's all different kinds of people different frauds um that make up these numbers do the next one and just some more graphs uh complaints by individuals over 60 uh we can probably skip through those but kind of what I alluded to why are why is this demographic being targeted well like I said theyve worked their entire life They're Not Gon maybe bad guys aren't going to get anything out of targeting 20s somethings because they're just trying to scrape by to pay rent or a a car loan but this is a group uh they're accessible um just think about how trusting you are like right um you're not used to people doing bad things and trying to make money off of you so if you get a phone call from someone and uh someone say says you know your grandson got uh you know arrested and you need to send money in order to get him out of jail you might be thinking with your heart and your emotions and you might not actually think through that this could be a bad guy just trying to get your money so I think throughout this whole presentation I normally reiterate it's important to have a trusted friend right so if you have a husband or a wife or a partner or if you have a trusted friend when you get one of these emails or a telephone call and you're just sitting there thinking like is this talk to your trusted friend talk it over and if you're thinking you're not sure if it's legit maybe that's when you need to take a step back and and figure out if you should proceed with with whatever they're asking you to do yeah uh and then pose less risk to criminals there's a lot of cases where you know bad guys will call on the phone and ask you to put some a cash or something in your mailbox this population like they're not concerned about you trying to retaliate back and do anything because once again you're trusting maybe you're a little bit older maybe you have um you know um you're not able to you know go after them like a young person would so they're not concerned about you fighting back they're just trying to take advantage and a lot of these cases um these relationships with the Bad actors go on for years so if someone is starting to have some cognitive decline the the Bad actors are in it for the long game and maybe your health is deter deteriorating and they have already befriended you and they're getting you to do things that you normally wouldn't do so who does it uh anyone um kind of when I was alluding to the fact like kind of know the signs to look out for your friends and family members you know anyone can victimize anyone so it could be family members or friends it could be people posing as salespersons and then maybe they start talking about some kind of investment scam uh caregivers you have to be careful about um lawyers or financial advisors um so we get a lot of cases I don't know how many people have sold a home a lot of people right so we have a lot of business email compromises compromise cases where bad guy will have gotten into either your computer the attorney who's closing on your uh house their email address or someone involved in the process and they will just wait they'll realize based on the communications back and forth that a sale is about to happen um you will have been given legitimate um instructions as to where to wire funds for closing on a house bad guys will wait until you got those instructions and then they will use the bad fraudulent email that looks very similar to your closing attorneys or someone involved in the process send you an email that the um wiring instructions have changed and ultimately they'll try to get you to send the funds to a different account that's um controlled by the bad actor so like I said some of these people are in it for the long haul they may have already infiltrated an email account or a computer and they're not going to do anything right away they're waiting to see when they could get the most money or or make the most damage in the situation I have a question yes to go back to the one that they ask you to put the in your mail do they actually go to your mailbox and pick it up and how do they know when you are yes so some of them do so some of them are in you know local um but remember like these groups they have people who are on the top and then they have maybe money mules who don't really know what they're doing they're just maybe they answered an ad uh somewhere to make a little extra money and they're told another story as to why they're picking up money or something from your ma box um and that's how the organization get people to do things that way the top guys aren't going to be affected because if this money mu got caught it's they'll just get someone else but they're you know hiring people to be a part of the fraud scheme without them knowing and we've had ic3 reporting that the Bad actors will call you pretend they're your financial institution um go through somehow they have some fraud fraudulent transactions on your either your debit card or your credit card you say yes it's fraudulent they will tell you cut up the card but don't cut up the chip and then they send somebody to your house to pick up the chip then they start doing transactions on your accounts like they're they'll try and do anything and I did actually put that um Public Service Announcement in the back if anyone wants to read through the whole um scenario y so pretty much how does Elder fraud occur like any way possible it's going to be on your computer on your phone you're going to receive something in the mail uh it could be in person um so I worked a case for about eight years it was a Jamaican Lottery case and it all started with getting something in the mail saying that the person won the lottery um uh ultimately they communicated with the person for years uh in in order to get their you know millions of dollars that they won they had to send fees that there were always issues with Customs there was always a reason that they had to send additional funds and throughout the years they ended up losing like $800,000 and never got their lottery winnings like that's not how the lottery works you know you go power balls high so we go buy a ticket and we look to see if our numbers won you're not going to get something in the male about uh you know trying to join the lottery and the lottery will take the taxes you don't pay taxes on your lottery they take the money before they even give it to you but in that situation so um the victim was about 75 years old they started talking on the phone uh that person built rapport with her they started talking it went from a couple times a week to every day they knew everything about one another whatever the you know bad actor made up is his story he knew everything about the victim and she literally when we got involved and we uh started re recording those phone calls which meant she could only do those phone calls when we were around she was having withdrawal from not being able to talk to the bad guys for so long right that she could only talk to them when we were around and she was so used to talking to them every day and that's what the bad guys do they build rapport and they build trust and they're in it for the long game like you know they got several $100,000 from her so um they were probably talking to 10 other people per day but if you think about it it's a pretty good living when you have to do is talk to people and get them to send you money so we just like I said you have to be careful have that trusted friend partner whatever something comes in the mail something comes in your email um just you have to think twice about it because more often than not it's a fraud like quite frankly I don't answer my phone unless it's someone in my contacts right everything else goes to voicemail cuz there's always some kind of scam plenty of times I'll get email that looks suspicious if it's from someone I don't know or just just doesn't look right delete if it's that important I'm going to get another email or someone's going to call me or I'll find out another way so um try not to look at something and be like oh I just I'm curious to see what that is it's better just to delete it and move on because there's always someone trying to make money off of us so kind of like what I was talking about the common scams that we see are lottery or sweep State scams uh and the one I told you about went on for years and unfortunately you know that person lost their whole life savings um and really those bad guys will literally go back and take the last $100 in your bank account it got to the point where she was getting Social Security they were asking for a large amount of money she's like I only have this amount in my bank account and they're like all right we'll take that like these guys are so bad they will take your last scent they do not care and then sometimes when you run out of money they turn you into the money mule and they say well I have a friend that will help you out they're going to send money to your bank account and I need you to send the money on and they're just victimizing the individual further yeah and we try to do Outreach too just in case you're a money mule if you're unwitting we want to stop that too because you are allowing the bad guys to receive victim funds and you're facilitating the movement so think about the things that people ask you to do and talk to your trusted friend and if it does doesn't seem right do not do it any quick like uh way to make money is probably a scam we're seeing that a lot 20s something's coming into the office and they're like well I found this ad online and they said all I had to do is receive money and send it to these different accounts and it's part of the problem yeah we're talking about official emails uh looking uh so just the look at emails If You're Expecting emails from some someone like make sure it's the ACT ual email they'll just change things by one letter um and try to make it legitimate in order for you to click on something and anytime there's you know if Microsoft calls you to tell you that there's an issue with your computer don't do it don't click on the link don't call them remember if someone's putting a telephone number in an email independent if you want to call them independently look it up somewhere else I know we don't have phone books anymore but Google it online right try to independently find what the telephone number is cuz whatever on that email is probably fra fraudulent uh and then malware like if um a lot of it goes with um emails and clicking on things uh if anyone wants to install like team viewer or some kind of application on your computer because it's going to be easier for them to help you uh navigate your computer don't do it they're going to have access to your computer after you're done with whatever problem you're fixing they're going to be able to see all the files on your computer and if you have banking uh apps or something something that could be a problem and they could take over your email address and then start sending malware to all your friends and I actually got an email the other day from one of my friends and I'm looking at it and I'm like there's no way she was up at 4:00 in the morning sending me an email so I called her I'm like hey did you send out a bunch of emails she I don't know what you're talking about I'm like go in and change your password I said you better tell everybody in case they click on something so one of the most common scams for us is the romance scam so as it it doesn't matter what age you are right everyone's looking for love well if you go online typically what'll start out you'll meet on a dating site and quickly um you'll start communicating on another platform um and within a couple weeks to a month whoever you're talking to for the ladies normally it's like some very attractive guy in the military or he works in an oil but the pictures are like oh gosh I have to continue with this right ultimately within a couple weeks they're going to be asking you for money so say they work on an oil rig oh they're stuck offshore they don't have access to their bank account and someone in the family needs money or there's going to be some urgent situation and typically that's once they start asking for money uh it's the beginning of the scam so think about that and everybody's going to have a different answer but in your life how many times have you met someone online and you haven't met in person and you would feel comfortable giving them money how many times have people you've met in person asked you for money like in my experience I haven't been asked for money a lot so now I'm meeting this person online who I all I have is a photo and they're making up this story that has urgency in it it just it doesn't make sense talk to your trusted friend or partner and say hey do you think I should do this and send money because if you don't send money maybe practice not sending money and within a couple weeks they're going to stop talking to you cuz you're not fulfilling their need of you know being able to get your money um so yeah romance scams uh typically most cases start out with that a lot of cases uh romance scams so it's the like the oil rig story or in the military and Something's Happened and they have to send money um if you're asked to send how about this how many people know about Bitcoin okay okay Bitcoin Bitcoin yeah would you guys uh do you guys have Bitcoin wallets yourselves okay so if someone asked you to uh deposit cash into a Bitcoin ATM would you do that right so if a lot of these romance scams are turning into I'm unavailable to do whatever can I get some money from you and then they're having you do you actually have the locations of them there's two to bitcoin just Googling um crypto ATMs in Halifax there's already two of them on pmth street and one of them is in the Stop and Shop so a lot of them the Bitcoin ATMs um they're going to have all these warnings because more often than not there's not a legitimate reason to use a Bitcoin ATM but the store owner whether it's a gas station or whatnot they're getting some kind of lease agreement from the owner of the Bitcoin ATM which is they're making some money off of it so they don't care what's in their facility but uh bad guys are now asking uh victims to uh put $330,000 of cash into the Bitcoin ATM they'll give them a QR code so they can send it to the um subject's wallet and then they're asking them to delete all the communications that they had back and forth so that's a red flag if you're being asked to do something you don't typically do and you don't understand just stop talk to your trusted friend your family member um or even talk to the local police like the the percentage of transactions at Bitcoin ATMs that are legitimate is very low um their service fees are about 20 to 30% so whatever is being sent the machine takes 20 to 30% right off the top right so if they're telling you it's an investment you're already losing 20 to 30% yeah and at this point a lot of towns are trying to um get ordinances in place that there's a maximum amount that can be deposited into the Bitcoin ATM because right now the sky's the limit you could put $50,000 in the in the Bitcoin ATM and it's gone um but because of the high likelihood that it's going to be fraudulent whatever is happening there uh they're working on ordinances to make the like top amount maybe $2,000 a day um that that way if you are victimized let's make it at least hurt a little bit less even though $2,000 is a lot of money it's better than $50,000 in one swoop yep so things to look out for you know if someone's talking to you online bad English grammar area eras or errors um if they're sending you like photos of passports and stuff it's it's all going to be madeup stuff um so if you want to like look to see if your potential love interest is real do independent research go online and see if you can find them somewhere else or whatever photo they send you do a reverse image search online and see if you you see it all over the place cuz bad guys are just grabbing photos that people have available online and someone who's attractive most likely right to get more people interested and using them as their profile photos and Halifax and DA's office anytime you want to jump in feel free we have seen more and more Bitcoin SC cryptocurrencies we've had a few in county and then they um directed The individuals to go out of County to deposit the money so I thought that was interesting when you just brought the town ordinances we'll just send them to a different town if they don't have one if they get sa enough yeah and lots and lots of romance SCS so Connecticut is doing a good job at getting the the ordinances in place or just talking to um owners of uh stores and trying to convince them not to allow the Bitcoin ATMs in so now Springfield Massachusetts is having a huge problem so it's all sliding as these towns become you know more conscious of what's going on the you know the the Bitcoin ATMs are just kind of moving uh and then these are other scams uh customer service support like if you are not having an issue with your computer and all of a sudden you get an email that you are like talk to a family member or friend that understands computers um they're just trying to get you alerted that there's a problem and have you click on something that's going to install something on your computer or talk you into sending them money um the fraud departments at Banks they pretend they're with the fraud department and we have had victims call us because they moved all their money out of the bank and gave it to the fraud STP for safekeeping because they were part of the you know this the whole scenario of trying to get the bad guys in the bank and we're like no that's not real I mean if the bank ever contacts you just go to your local branch it's just so much easier they'll already know if there's an issue they'll be able to help you yep uh and I think we talked about business email compromises that's you know uh another example is if you have a business say I have a garbage business and I already have a point of contact I have to um pay a recycler $20,000 a week in order to take uh my recycling we have it set up we have the bank account set up every week I'm sending $20,000 you have Fred who you work with at the recycling company you you spoken with them on the phone you have a good relationship always send him wire the money $20,000 a week all of a sudden you get an email that there was an issue with Fred and now the money needs to be reverted anytime you have a routine process set up that someone contacts you that there's a deviation and the money needs to be sent somewhere else you need to pick up the phone and verify because it most likely is someone has is either in someone's uh email account or their computer and they're trying to divert funds to them instead of the legitimate person so we just have to be Savvy just because you know if you have something that's always gone a certain way anytime things change pick up the phone and call the number you know not the number that the individual is giving you yeah and then we have been seeing some real estate scams so if you have your um mostly it's empty land and let me know if you guys have had this um so it's paid off it's an empty part parcel um people will try to resell it and um do quick claim deeds putting someone else's name on the deed so this is important that we have title insurance and other things um but we've had cases where people like what are you talking about this is my property I saw someone trying to sell it and negotiate you know a sale of that and they're like it's not for sale I own it so uh just every now and again you know I guess look to see um based on your property if anyone has put in a quick claim deed on it and then gold bars do you anything to say about gold bars or government impersonating scams the IRS or FBI for the most part we're not going to call you um we're going to come to your house I might call you to set up an interview if you're a victim I don't want to just knock on your door but the reason we want to meet you in person is cu I want to show you my credentials um give you time to call the FBI office in Chelsea to ask if I'm a legitimate person we want you to be able to do your checks and balances we're not going to call you on the phone um we're not going to call and say we have an arrest warrant for you and the only way out of it is if you pay us we are not going to do that we don't ask for money no ever no and then the grandparent scam kind of alluding to grandchild being arrested and it's always urgency there's always something horrible that happened and there's urgency and the only way out of it is for you to pay anytime there's urgency take a step back why you call your grand grandson or granddaughter and see if they're all right because if you just say hey let me get my thoughts together for a second and you make the call I bet you're going to find out they're just doing their thing living life and they're not in any trouble but bad guys trying to create that chaos yeah just to add on with that these people will become very very forceful over the phone calls they'll tester they'll call call five times in a row they'll call days in a row we've had uh victims come into the police station where they put us on phone with them threatening they're going to arrest us because we're on the phone um for the uh victims they just they just don't stop so if you do get any type of those phone calls or anything else and you think that it maybe real just you just stop by the police department when they're calling we can even just pick up the phone when they're calling and uh just let you know whether it's real or if it is a scam most likely more than not they are always usually scams yep and we've had a lot of cases where families have realized that their loved ones maybe are involved in a scam and the loved one doesn't want to believe in it so the kids or other family members are trying to get involved the kids will take away maybe dad's phone because he's already lost a couple hundred, well inevitably bad guys have dropped off phones and mailboxes for victims and found alternate ways to communicate with them whether it's a fake Piza pizza delivery they'll come deliver pizza and be like hey Frank here's your phone uh call the number that's listed in it you know for whatever in order to keep the fraud scheme going so like this is like we would go to work like we go to work you know day in and day out this is their job this is what they're good at they're either at a call center calling people every day in order to try to make their money or they're out just victimizing people so the more people they can get you know as possible victims if they lose one or two it's no big deal cuz they've already spoken or you know laid the trap for 10 others so we just have to once again have your trusted friend look look out for one another things that are too good to be true or just don't seem right talk to someone about it I know the banks have reported that sometimes individuals come in to make withdrawals and they're on the phone and the tellers will put up a sign saying are you on the phone with someone who's directing you to do this and there have been times that the customer has said yes and the manager came over she's like hang up the phone this is a scam don't withdraw the money don't send the money they will try anything they can to get you to continue to send the money they'll tell you what to say they'll tell you how to answer the questions when the bank says well you never take out $220,000 in cash why do you need this money they will prep the individual and it's just it's sad the bank does try to help they are aware of these situations but sometimes the customers are just saying no we're going to do this and then eventually they come to us or they come to you and say we've been defrauded yep so this is 2023 losses over 60 I mean the if you just look at all those different kinds of scams so the investment scams it's a big one um the business email compromises the becc love scams are huge just going down that list these are all the different ways that people are taking taking money from us and a lot of them are outside the United States and they do that because it's far far away how they're going to have layers of protection all these money mules helping them so it's much harder for us to find them and if they're in a country that doesn't work with us then you know once it goes to those countries it's hard to get any of the funds back or frozen but we did have um we had a victim come in investment fraud and we were able to get all the information give the information to um India and India looked at it and they shut down a call center and actually arrested people and I think that was last year was that last year yeah so we do try to do the best we can but we don't want to get to that point right the important part is so if you lose money if you lose a big amount of money um call us immediately go to the local police go to ic3 call the FBI immediately cuz time is not on our side if it's a wire transfer there's a very short period of time that we have to get those funds back if you've been sending checks that's going to be a little bit more difficult uh but time is of the essence so you kind of have to put whatever you're feeling if you're feeling embarrassed or frustrated with yourself just remember these bad guys this is their full-time job is to build rapport with people and to defraud you like so they're going to have been doing this for years and they are awesome at it so don't feel bad but it's important to let us know immediately so we can try to get your money back cuz these loss numbers are just going to keep going up they go up every year yeah all right so this is just for Boston uh just it it's staggering numbers like look at those totals it's wild yeah investment 33 million yeah all right so these are some complications um you know a lot of the time the bad guys will try to build that Rapport and build that trust with victims and try to cut you off from your family memb so like I keep saying that the trusted friend or partner that it's good to bounce ideas off bad guys do not want you to have those conversations because they don't want you to think twice about what's happening they want to be your trusted friend so they can be telling telling you yes this is a great idea to invest all your money in here um so just think about that who have you built those relationships with over the year the guy that you met on on Plenty of Fish and you spoke to for a month or your daughter who's been with you your entire life um they're going to try to like push you to you know end relationships with people because it's not in their best interest so just think about that um physical emotional suffering uh you know I had a lottery case where the gentleman um uh sent about a million dollars over a long period of time ended up losing his business and he was too ashamed to tell his wife so what does he do he brings his wife into my office and says I want to introduce you to to my wife can you tell her what's happening and then he left the room and I was like okay that's not the right thing to do it's you know he was afraid that it was he would be on the couch for a long time which probably so but you know if you're a victim of something and the longer it goes on you I can understand that you're upset and embarrassed that you got to that position but once again these this is what they do this is what the bad guys do this is their full-time job they're great at it and that's why you see those numbers of losses cuz you're not the only one a lot of people become victims but it's important that we just help each other out and talk about it yep so in that case that gentleman he he had to go back to work after he retired he lost his business so you know that's what these cases do they ruin relationships uh they cause you know retirement to be different than what you thought it was going to be um and it's just it's not good so these are just some of the signs of abuse um to look out for your friends uh neighbors whatnot unpaid bills um you know lots of mail you know the banks are good at identifying the customers that typically you know don't do large deposit or large withdrawals and they do talk to customers but if a customer is saying like this is what I want to do the banks really can't do anything um but they they will ask so think about that if a banking professional is asking you questions about a transaction maybe you should not do that transaction and think about it and talk to your trusted friend or loved one because if it's raising red flags for a banking professional we should think twice about it um and then just unusual Friends new names on accounts you know if all of a sudden the guy you met on Plenty of Fish wants to be on your bank account probably a red flag you need to slow the roll maybe you should meet him in person before you do that um but and also a lot of the lottery victims the phone like will go to um speak to victims and uh most of most of the time they're pretty hesitant to acknowledge themselves as a victim but their home phone is just ringing off the hook and that's a good indicator it's the bad guy because he wants to make sure that they're having that daily conversation and most likely that victim was supposed to send money or accept money on their behalf to send it somewhere else so um if if friends or family members are all of a sudden changing you know beneficiaries that's that's a red flag um or home is in disrepair we just have to look out for one another as we age you know things change but yep all right so let's see if this plays so this is the former director of the FBI and CIA and he's going to talk about scamming if we can get this to I get more calls anticipate and this one ound I had won something congratulations and so forth hour about it is about 70 I 72 million 72 72 million you're the first place and the reason why the reason why I expected you to give because I do some some of your background check I don't know that you was you was a judge you was a lawyer you was a the US Navy all security and the B team and all of those stuff I do your backround [Music] check in this particular case um I think my wife heard me having a conversation and she was protesting in her own freet way my playing around with somebody like that stre along so we had to send $50,000 in order to get to 72 million I don't know how the conversation turned sour but it did and at that point he shift of [Music] Gears began to threaten her hey I right you know what I'm to do I won't P you back I'm going to see you I'm going to your H I'm going to take your find because you exuse he doesn't what matter so listen I'm not giving you any more war I'm just going to set up my time and listen anytime you put back your H yourself in Washington DC you'll be Ked look your home you see you leave place where your at you leave a very picture and the moment you AR I'm with a Chun your hand I'm going to bur you I I and as time went along I learned how uh significant the victimization of older people was and that were in me I was older myself enough to know to be sympathetic with how older people without my maybe background experience might react to situation [Music] the average older person is not doesn't get caught in mind where they the the the screws are turning on them they think something good is happening they want to believe it they find out it's not going to happen they paid so often paid some money in order to get something that that was explained was needed in order to go take the next step to get bigger sums of money coming their way [Music] older people like to think they're still valuable for one reason or another regardless of what they've done it was a game whatever whatever it was they were able to um be convinced that they were about to get something good to show they were still in the [Music] money so the bad guy ended up being uh uh arrested and ultimately uh sentenced to 2 and a half years in that case so we got one more a romance scam clip was there more along lines of a courtship or was there more along lines of a friendship I think there was you know there were quite a fews but there were a lot the conversations were sometimes kind of oh I have to go uh and you would hear noise in the background like he's talking to somebody else [Music] I did I guess always sort of have a little thought that there was maybe something WR with [Music] this he C but he St this she said could make a [Music] would be you know something that I do for [Music] my that came and show [Music] I don't think that I ever [Applause] [Applause] sto so think about that she said it was smaller amounts over a period of time so these scammers are in it for the long haul so maybe a thousand here a thousand there that's still a lot of money but it's not it doesn't hurt as much as a million right off the bat right so there's all these excuses of why the scammer needs money and they're trying they're building this relationship with this person and they're trying to be kind and help and then over time when you add up all that money $1.1 million it's wild and it's just maybe they're talking every day but it's a short text or a short call cuz the scammer just wants to make sure you're still on the hook and you're building that relationship and moving towards getting what they want which is your money I've gone through financials for one victim and he said I didn't really send that much the family is the one that alerted us and I went through the financials and I said do you realize you sent over $100,000 he was shocked and it was over a few years period like he didn't realize he was sending that that much money because it was short amount small amounts here and there over a few years cuz we're not all friends of accountant that have spreadsheets for everything Laura has a spreadsheet for everything I like my spre if we were then we would know right all right so what can we do so we need to be our own best Advocate we need to safeguard against you know anyone getting access to our F Financial information or you know computers make sure like let's focus on computers if you're not the most computer savvy person there has to be someone in your family or friend group that is make sure you are up to date on your anti virus software um and maware protection you don't want to download anything that you don't know what it is um or install anything that you don't know what it is um change your passwords make sure your passwords have uppercase lowercase special characters numbers don't make them the same thing you know if your dog is Fluffy don't have fluffy be your password for anything because once you start talking to the bad guy and they find out that fluffy is your favorite you know being they're going to be like I met fluffy in the password somehow so we just have to be careful about that uh when like when you're on the phone it's up to you but I think not answering calls that from people AR who aren't in your contacts that might be the way to go nowadays cuz if people are you know fast talkers and are really good at building report they can probably convince you to do anything um if they catch you in the right mood right maybe you're feeling down because something happened and they catch you in that vulnerable moment and they're smooth talkers we don't want that to be the case uh verify companies so if an agency calls you or a company calls you just don't take their word for it what their number is or where they're located independently trust but verify independently um get information online or another means don't just uh believe whatever someone uh sends you and don't send money to someone you don't personally know um we see a lot of cases this started you know a while back bad guys would have um people buy um gift cards and provide the gift card numbers over the phone and then it would be MoneyGram or Western Union transfers and then eventually the bad guys would get blocked it just there's normally a range of things that um they can get victims to purchase purch and easily give numbers to over the phone and then they have access to those those gift cards or uh I guess we had a store actually called the lake Val office one day and said I have this elderly couple here and they're buying $5,000 worth of Apple gift cards could you talk to them we're like sure uh why are you purchasing these well someone called really please don't don't purchase the gift cards do not give the information this is probably a scam go to your local police department and discuss it with them do not purchase anything Y and another thing to consider is maybe uh looking at your credit report yearly or freezing your credit if you don't think you need to get a new line of credit just because with our personal identifying information being everywhere you never know when you've been a victim of some kind of hacking um so it's important to know that people aren't opening lines of credit like credit cards in your name so that that could be another thing um you know contact your bank and credit card companies uh you can double check just to make sure that they're you're aware of all the accounts in your name um it goes back to a trusted family member right um you can have them on the accounts but once again like make sure it's someone you trust not someone who's trying you think has nefarious reasons for trying to get on an account um you can place fraud alerts if you think that there there's an issue with your credit uh the three uh credit card or the um companies um and yeah it like the important thing is let's not go It Alone we can have a friend family member someone that we bounce those ideas off of um or it's walking into your local police department or calling us we'd rather have you ask before you do something than to do something and now we're trying to uh trace the money to see if we can try to get it back you can ask questions like a group like this and meet with people and say hey can I bounce something off of you no and then so reporting stuff always go to your local police department um you can report it to us um uh in the back there's some websites the ic3.gov is a great way anytime it has to do with money to do those reports cuz like I said it'll compile smaller um transactions in in in order to get the threshold up so maybe we can work the case to the US attorney's office if not we're going to using those ic3.gov um filings uh when your money goes overseas so it's important that it's you and not the bank or someone else because it's the Affidavit of the victim that will allow us to use that as your affidavit and not have to do another interview in order to get uh that information to uh law enforcement in other countries so these are uh I have a print out in the back of these these are some of the websites that we are talking about uh that you can get more information and in the back um those are just um information about all different kinds of scams so if you're interested on any of them definitely uh look in the back but what kind of questions do you guys have um I had something um come up on my computer and it said that um my information was in the black web so I went to um the three different credit you know experien the bureaus y right I don't know I didn't really know how to get rid of it so I did put a freeze on one of them but I could get a freeze on the other twoo so it was very confusing how to handle that if you have it frozen on one it's important I mean you can freeze it on the others but it should still freeze um where did you um where were you at when you got the information saying was it an email or no it wasn't an email it was um let me think it came up on my computer under um under your your your um think I should have wrot it down was it a popup or uh no it was I was checking out my computer the the security the safety checking out to see if it was um secure and everything and then it said that my information was on the black web so I went to my different credit reports okay and I was able to freeze one I couldn't get on this okay well I would just monitor it you know you can get a free report per year but if it's frozen on one it should it should be Frozen um but they typically tell you to do all three just to make sure right yeah I would just watch your credit card statements your bank statements and see if you said on the news that many people's information is out there on the black web yeah Security numbers and everything's out there yeah we've been hacked so many times there's been platforms that have all of our information that yes you just have to be your own Advocate and make sure you look at your finances and monitor it and see if there's anything strange going on that's what I do I put tabs on my credit card and my bank account yeah that that sounds like you're doing the right stuff yep any other questions what um what are the fraud schemes that you guys are seeing most in Halifax um over the past year we've seen the whole game we've seen people come in with the romance schemes we've had uh individuals uh sending cash in magazines so cash is tough to trace right so that's why the bad guys want you to send cash cuz once it's gone like it's not like you're taking photos of what you're doing and catching the bad guy picking it up um usually no one's going to ask you to send a significant amount of cash in magazines to some place that you have no idea right where it's going to right like think of in your life have you ever legitimately been asked to put cash in a magazine that's what you have to take a step back when bad guys are trying to get you to do something they're going to have that urgency of some kind of scenario but does this make sense what I'm doing in a actual legitimate financial transaction when would it make sense for me to put cash in a magazine or when would it make sense for me to send cash in the mail um but talk to your friend your trusted friend or you know it's important we just look out for each other anything else anything you want to add from DA's office the only other thing we've seen upake of are contractor scam so someone might come and say oh you need to pay me 20 grand um to do your roof I need 10 grand up front they give the cash and then the contractors in the win we have successfully right now with a few prosecutions we've um been able to find them because they hit up multiple homes but sometimes as you guys know once they're gone they're gone they're Cas inform are they asking only for cash as the down payment or like can you give a check as well um I think the last one we had was Cash I'm not sure about all of them but it's been cash yeah was sign remember like checks are going to be easier for us to trace like cash is difficult right how do we prove that you gave cash to someone at least a check will be able to trace where it went from there was it deposited somewhere was it cash somewhere um so that's why I suggest you make do du diligence check you know get referals from your friends make their license insur have a contract you know things of that nature yeah and then also we've had just a few of celebity romance SC so they're posing as celebrity and they'll send the individual up what they call like a proof of identity so they're making little license photos say no what this is really me and it's like from like Illinois but from the celebrity picture um so it's hard some contacts that their L really communicating with this person right yep we had a um a victim who was going to sell their house for a celebrity and then they would announce their big romance once the house was sold and the scammer had all the money thank goodness the Realtors you know called the police and said I think there's something going on here and they were able to the the family members were able to stop it so just look after each other right let's talk about what's going on in life let's not be afraid to you know talk about things if you're in the middle of something you know it's important that we just stop the victimization and see if we can work together to find the bad guy any other questions thank you everyone [Applause] [Music]