 Good morning everyone. Thank you very much for coming to our first ever school for seniors. This is a partnership with Lakeland University as well as Sheboygan senior community. Welcome, we're very excited to have you. So this is the first of a seven month series that will be every second Thursday from 10 to 11 aside from the February. But we do have a schedule of events for the entire series in front of you. It's my pleasure to introduce to you Susan Bach. She is the regional director of the better business bureau in Wisconsin and we're very excited for her presentation going all over scams and how to be a better protected consumer. So without further ado I'm going to pass it on to Susan. And once again thank you for being here. We're very we're very pleased to have you. Well thank you very much Dana for the invitation and also to Josh for the invitation from Lakeland University. My name is Susan Bach. I'm the Northeast Wisconsin Regional Director for the Better Business Bureau as Dana mentioned. Just a quick show of hands how many people have heard of the Better Business Bureau before. Awesome. Okay I'd like to hear that and how many of you have ever used our services before? Okay well we'll talk a little bit just to give you a little bit of background about who we are. Despite the fact that we have the word bureau in our name we're not a government agency or a law enforcement agency in fact we're a nonprofit organization and we've been around for a long time. We started back in 1912. Back in 1912 that was the era of the original Ponzi Schemer was back then the snake oil salesman of the day and this is actually an advertisement from that era. I know it's really hard to read so I apologize for that but basically it's selling sanitized tapeworms as a way to banish fat. So that's a real ad and as you can see there was very little government regulation of businesses and especially the advertising industry and businesses could say pretty much anything that they wanted and nobody was really watching over them and as a result there was really very little trust in businesses. The Federal Trade Commission really wasn't as we know it today and a group of advertising executives got together and they said stuff like this is really bad for our industry. It's making the good guys look bad you know these bad guys make everybody look bad so we should really do something about that. We should create standards and you know addressing things like truthfulness in advertising and then we can tell consumers you know this company either meets our standards or doesn't meet our standards so that was pretty much the genesis of the Better Business Bureau and we've been around now for 107 years and we're in every state in the country every province in Canada and also one office in Mexico. So today here are some of our core services. We have business and charity profiles so as a consumer you can come to the Better Business Bureau either give us a call or go to our website and if you're researching a company or a charity we can tell you a little of what we like to call pre-purchase research on that company. How long they've been in business who owns the company where they're located if they have any licensing issues that we're aware of that would be noted in their profile if there's been any legal or government action that we're aware of it would also tell you how many complaints that company has and how they've resolved those complaints and then we also issue a rating A plus through F so that makes it easy for you to compare apples to apples and then we also do the same for charities so if you get a solicitation from a charity and you want to make sure that your money is going to be well spent you can come to the Better Business Bureau and see if that charity meets our standards for charity accountability so those are different standards than what we have for businesses but we have 20 standards of charity accountability so for example one of those standards is you know at least 65 percent a minimum of 65 percent of all the money collected must go directly towards the mission and no more than 35 percent can go for things like overhead expenses salaries fundraising expenses things like that so that's just an example of one of our charity standards. We have a dispute resolution service so if you're having trouble with a company and they don't seem to be very responsive to you you can file a complaint through the Better Business Bureau there's a very good chance that they'll be more responsive to us we have about a 90 percent response rate with businesses because they know I think that if they don't respond that will negatively affect the rating that we give them we still do advertising reviews so we're out in the marketplace looking at newspaper radio television websites digital advertising for things like you know the best selection in the valley the lowest prices in the valley something is guaranteed and that was really one of the reasons that the whole Better Business Bureau was started so if you see an ad that you think is questionable you can certainly share it with the Better Business Bureau and we will reach out to that company and ask them to substantiate that claim and if they can't substantiate it we'll ask them to remove it and if they don't remove it then again that will have a negative impact on the rating that we give them we do investigate bad businesses we can't arrest anybody or you know go in and shut a company down like people would like us to but we do regularly forward cases to local law enforcement agencies the department of justice and we upload all of our complaint data every night to the federal trade commission so and then of course we create standards for good ethical businesses so if it's our accreditation program is what we call it and what that means is if somebody joins our accreditation program we'll do a very thorough background check on them criminal civil bankruptcy filing sex offender registry we'll make sure that they have all the proper licensing that they're supposed to have that there's been no complaint outstanding complaint issues with the Better Business Bureau and those are things that we check regularly so once they are accepted into our accreditation program they're allowed to use our Better Business Bureau seal so that way when you see a business using that seal you know that it has been thoroughly a thorough background check has been done on them by us so and if at any time you have any questions feel free to to raise a hand so we're here today to talk about scams targeting seniors and this is a graphic from the federal trade commission so I apologize if it's a little hard to read but I'll explain it these columns over here represent age groups so the youngest age group is on your far left it represents people 19 and under and then it goes up every decade until the far right here it's people who are age 80 and over this yellow line up here represents the percentage of people in that age group who have been who have lost money to a scam so it's at the highest for our younger people 46 percent of people under the age of 20 have lost money to a scammer now the good news is that that yellow line goes down remarkably as we get older so as we get older we get wiser for sure because only 13 percent of people age 80 and over have lost money to a scammer that's the good news the bad news is that these green or blue bars represent the amount of money that they lost so the average median loss for people under the age of 20 was only 188 dollars every time they lost money to a scammer but as you see it keeps going up every decade so people who are age 80 and over the median loss last year was 1700 dollars from a scammer so that's definitely something that we want to change and I know education is key to that so let's talk a little bit about some common scams that target seniors first of all door-to-door sellers especially in the summertime we get a lot of complaints and inquiries about people selling something door-to-door could be somebody offering to repave your driveway a handyman service they might say I see that you have a couple of loose shingles on your roof I can fix that for you and then also the traditional vacuum cleaners magazine sellers people selling meat door-to-door landscape contractors was a big one home security systems and also another class of contractors that we like to call storm chasers and storm chasers are really people who watch the news and they'll see that oh there was a big windstorm in Wisconsin or a tornado so they'll say let's grab a group buddies and go be roofers for the week so they'll jump in a van they'll maybe stay in a motel a local motel and they'll go door-to-door to neighborhoods trying to get some work to repair your roof maybe it's roofers it could be you know firewater damaged people but usually they're from out of state so they're probably not licensed to do business here in Wisconsin they're probably not qualified and we always have a hard time you know inevitably in the spring when that you discover a problem with their workmanship they're hard to find so beware of these common sales tactics that I have leftover material this is your lucky day I was just doing the driveway down the street and I have a little leftover material so this is your lucky day if you agree now I can give you a great price on repaving your driveway the price is good for today only they're not going to give you time to think about it or do a little research on the company the the thing to realize about that is that professional contractors professional concrete or asphalt companies they know exactly how much asphalt it takes to do a job so they're really not going to have leftover materials because that would be foolish right that's not very good business sense so that is is really just a ploy to get you to jump on that deal and then we also have people younger people who might go door to door selling magazines something like that saying if I sell you a magazine or books or whatever the case may be something for your children or your grandchildren you can help me win a scholarship but the problem with that is that the magazines don't show up or there's a problem with it so and again it's very hard to figure out you know where the company is located that that person represents so you'll always want to if somebody knocks on your door looking for work you'll always want to make sure that they have the proper license they should depending on the municipality where you live they should need a seller's permit to go door to door but depending on the work that they do they might need something like a dwelling contractor license or a dwelling contractor qualifier license so you'll want to make sure that they do have the valid license and that they also have a local address so ask for a business card something like that so in case you do need to contact them later you'd be able to reach them and don't fall for those you know you you need to make a decision now that's exactly the time that you want to walk away and do a little research on the company you can always check with the better business bureau all of those services that we talked about in the slide beforehand they're all free for consumers so there's really no reason why you wouldn't you know just do a little research five minutes worth of research up front could save you lots of money or a heartache on the back end so and just you know as a reminder that when we hear about door to door sellers when we get complaints it's always about the products or the workmanship was inferior so just be very little very careful about door to door sellers another common scam that we hear about that targets seniors are funeral scams so there's a story about a woman a widower in Wapaka who she lost her husband and it was about a week after the funeral she got a phone call and it was you know hello Mrs Smith this is you know Joe Jones from the you know life insurance company and when your husband was working at you know the ABC company he took out a life insurance policy because he wanted to protect you and your children Susie and Timmy and but unfortunately when he was sick he fell behind on the payments so if you could just catch up on those premiums six months worth of premiums we'd be happy to give you a fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy and of course it was all a lie everything he needed to know to perpetrate the scam was stuff he found in the obituary so where he worked the name of his wife the name of his children so if you know of anybody who is in this situation please you know they're very vulnerable at this time make sure you just kind of watch over them also happened in Manitowoc so let's see the story is from February 2017 so you know of course it's a very vulnerable time and we know that scammers they just have no conscience they don't care you know if it's a bad terrible awful time for somebody they just want your money so okay travel scams so is anybody here a member of a travel club or do you own a timeshare of any kind you own a timeshare okay um everything formerly yeah that's funny because every time I ask that question it's like timeshare uh everybody has trouble getting rid of their timeshares am I right yes and they're expensive there's monthly maintenance fees etc so there's a whole group of scammers who will reach out to people who own timeshares and say we have a guaranteed buyer for you all you need to do is pay some money up front for closing costs or fees or processing fees and it's all a scam so you know it's not that every company who does timeshare resellers are scammers but you need to know the difference so that's why we always want to make sure that people check out those companies first um and then with travel and vacation clubs there was a big company in appleton actually who sold um memberships in a vacation club but the complaints that we heard about after the fact were that the dates and the locations that those people wanted were never available um that the accommodations they thought they were getting four star but it was really more like a two star resort um and that really joining this vacation club wasn't any um more reasonable or less expensive than if they had just booked those vacations by themselves so um again be very careful um if anyone uses the word guaranteed that should cause a little red flag to go off um because you know you want to see proof of that first um any questions about that it would be nice to go on a vacation sometime this year it looks like we're gonna have a a long cold winter so um another scam that targets seniors are really everybody are telemarketing scams am i right does everybody know what a robo call is yes this is probably the number one complaint that i hear about when i do talks they just want those darn robo calls to stop um and robo calls are really any call where you pick up the phone and it's a computer generated voice on the other end and they could be trying to get you to lower your interest rate and your credit card or maybe it's um a service warranty contract on your automobile is about to expire those are some common ones um but what you should know is that um all robo calls with a few exceptions are illegal so anytime you pick up the phone and there's a computer generated voice on the other end of the line you know it's somebody operating illegally and so the best thing to do is just hang up now the exceptions to those telemarketing rules are um charity and political parties are allowed to robo call you unfortunately i'm sorry about that um if any if you if it's a company where you have a previous relationship with them so um your pharmacy is um allowed to robo call you to let you know that your prescription is ready to be picked up that's okay or if they're not selling you anything if it's just for information purposes only um so my school district could call me robo call me and let me know that school's been canceled because of the weather all of those are okay um permitted under the law anything else is not okay and what you should know too is that sometimes the purpose of those robo calls is to dial random numbers and then see who picks up and if they do pick up it makes a good lead for another telemarketer and so they will sell for people who pick up they will sell your number uh to another telemarketer so if you listen to the call and it says something like press one to be removed from our call list press two to speak to an operator and you start pressing numbers and it never goes anywhere it never does anything that's because they're just trying to weed out what numbers are legitimate who is willing to stay on the phone long enough to listen to the instructions who follows instructions um by pressing any number you tell them all of that you tell them that they've reached a legitimate working number that you've told them that you're willing to listen to instructions you've told them what time is a good time to call you so do not follow those instructions don't start pressing any numbers just hang up um and then is everybody here on the do not call list okay that is free also it used to be that you had to re-enroll I think every couple of years but now they're permanent so that's the good news the bad news is that the do not call list doesn't work for everybody okay um scammers don't scrub their telemarketing lists um under the do not call list so that they can legally call you because they don't care so it's not going to stop those scammers from calling you but um registering your phone on the do not call list will stop legitimate telemarketers from calling you um and that is the phone number um or you can go online do not call dot gov and then if all of those doesn't help um lower the amount of telemarketing calls that you get you can also get something called nomo robo um so a couple of years ago the federal trade commission said this is the number one complaint that consumers tell us about these telemarketing calls so they went out to the private sector and they said who can help us solve this problem and the winner of that contest was somebody who invented software called nomo robo um so it's basically a call filtering feature um if you have a digital phone line let's say it's a part of a package that you have with charter um AT&T uver something like that if it's a digital phone line you can activate nomo robo and it will when a call comes in it will filter um it will go through this filter to see if that call is a known telemarketer or scammer and if it is it will disconnect the call so nomo robo is free um for homeland lines um if you want to add it to your cell phone i think there is a nominal charge every month um but it is great i have um i have this on my phone so how it works is you know the phone will ring once and then it'll be and then it'll disconnect and if that happens i know okay i don't have to jump up from the tv or the dining room table and go and answer the phone it must have been a a scammer or a telemarketer and nomo robo caught it for me so thank you nomo robo now does anybody here have like the traditional analog telephone on their landlines you do okay so unfortunately nomo robo isn't going to work for you uh however you could buy a call blocking device um at radioshack or best buy something like that and um if a number repeatedly calls you the same time i always it's the same number um you can add that number to your call blocking and then it it will not connect the call for you uh so the problem is though that scammers always change their number right but um i think call blocking devices they can hold like a thousand phone numbers or something like that so um or you could just um get caller id or an answering machine and screen your phone calls before um you you pick up the phone does anybody do that at at your house i know i do but a word of caution because um if you're just simply relying on caller id um know that scammers can use what's called a spoofing device and they can trick your caller id to display anything that you want so they could trick your caller id to say that it's your bank calling or the irs um right so that's that's why they do it they pick a number that they know is going to be a local exchange um they can program any number in that they want you know yes and that happens too i i hear that all the time that my own phone number was calling me so did you answer the phone and that's and that's why they do it because people are would be curious enough to say you know who is you know who can this be my own phone number is calling me and that's why they do it because that will pique somebody's curiosity or that's why um they pick a local exchange um so that they think that you know the odds of somebody picking up that call would be better so um so you can't necessarily trust your caller id and especially you know um if your caller id says you know it's the bank or something you want to pick up the call find pick up the call but know that you can't necessarily trust your caller id so don't ever give out any kind of personal information um they have really no control over it i mean there's no way that they can stop that it's just yeah i think that they're they're choosing numbers um that you know look like legitimate numbers too so um again just to trick you into to picking up the call so like every year the appleton post crescent calls me and says would you like to renew your newspaper subscription and i say yes i would but my personal policy is never to give out my credit card information over the phone unless i make the call so i'm gonna go to my bill i'm not gonna go to the number that's on my caller id and call them back i'm gonna go to my bill look for the customer service number and say you know if i call this number can i can i reach you yes okay then i will i'll hang up the phone i'll go to my bill call the customer service number and then i'm happy to give them my credit card number over the phone so um just because i i just don't trust caller id excuse me but if you call um you call you call the number and they answer but it's somebody in the india or the philippines or something can you trust that so it's it's the legitimate customer service number it was on the back of your bill so that just means that that company has i understand that but i'm not sure i want to talk to them yeah i mean if there's another way that you can pay your bill maybe mail in a check something like that isn't there a a law or something that if you call and you get someone in a foreign country and you i thought you could tell them that you wanted to speak to somebody in the united states can you do that i i'm not sure about that i think that it is a law that they have to speak english yeah okay so the people in india speak perfect english i can't understand what they say yeah you're right it's a big problem a lot of people have that problem i don't know what the answer is unfortunately so all good questions um so another scam that targets people seniors are those oh i have a question when you get a phone call and you don't recognize the phone number do you just not answer it or i don't i don't i let my answering machine pick it up if they you know if it is a legitimate person who needs to talk to me i think they'll leave a message if it's not you know i don't answer yeah don't call back because you're inquiring or curious as to who called right but it's that complicated though there's so many people with the cell phones yeah that you don't know you know the person but you don't know there's a cell phone number well that's happened to us too yes but wouldn't that person leave a message oh sure yeah they may or may not but then it's their responsibility to call back and if they don't call back then you wouldn't know that it's not a good number or yeah and we've had a lot of people say you know i missed the call but i could see the call displayed on my answering machine so i called them back and it wasn't a working number so again that tells me that they're using a spoofing device to display any number they want on your answering machine so it wasn't a legitimate company you know that's not very transparent person works like that yeah that personality is it the money i think is it good money for them it's i'm i don't know but i would imagine that it's very lucrative um there are call centers overseas where this is a full-time job for people unfortunately and i think india is the largest population of english-speaking company people outside of the united states and i think it is because a lot of people used to outsource their um it and customer service to india and so a lot of the scammers seem to come from that country because they speak english they're very tech savvy um and it's a poor country and they need that's their way of making a living unfortunately two things um back about a year and a half two years ago i was so fed up with the calls that i was getting and i called us later and i said what is going on and they said anytime you're not using your cell phone anybody can go in and they can pick up your number and they can make calls using your number and i have received calls from people locally that called to say did you call me and they had gotten a robo call and that robo call was using my number and they said well we're going to block your number because of this fine so did you ever see those numbers on your bill that you were legitimately placing those calls were they actually calling from your number or was somebody just spoofing i don't know my phone is provided by my son so okay i suspect i suspect that they were spoofing your phone number so it wasn't really i mean obviously it wasn't coming from you but i don't think they had control of your phone to place the call i think that they were just using a spoofing device to make it seem like it was your phone number making the call so then people call back and say i missed a call from you and you're like i didn't call you is that what happened yeah yeah yeah i mean there are there are scams called port out scams where somebody can call us cellular and say i lost my phone um can you you know can you transfer that phone number to a new cell phone for me that's called a port out scam and so then somebody really does have control of your phone number but if you were able to use your your phone um then i don't think that that's what happened to you and wait now until december is it december 12th when our medicare can't change our supplements all that stuff yeah the calls are atrocious there's there have been days that i've got over 20 calls yes really and i don't answer any call unless i know who is calling and that they're in my phone i don't have a landline anymore but i have really restricted and i don't pick up that phone i'm down before five a day now yeah that's unfortunate and i hear that problem all the time and this time of year um mid october to early part of december medicare open enrollment actually you know we hear a lot of scammers reaching out to seniors you know try our prescription drug plan try this try that but if they ever ask you for um any you know personal information your medicare number your social security number some we've heard of scams where we owe you a refund this is medicare calling and we owe you a refund yeah right so but people have fallen for that and it just seems that this time of year those kind of scams ramp up so we'll talk a little bit more but that scam tracker brochure that i gave you um that is a good place yes right there um it's bbb.org which is our website and then slash scam tracker if you want to report calls like that um we'll just take some basic information from you and then we'll take your zip code and we'll plot all of those reports on a map so that you can go in as a consumer and say what's happening in my neighborhood um what's happening in my zip code is it a drive door by door door door to door salesperson or maybe it's a round of telemarketers maybe somebody calling from the local um phone exchange something like that so that's a really good um it's called a crowdsourcing website where you can post information about what's happening to you to warn your neighbors so i think we'll talk a little change i think you're too young but when we were little we'd call grocery stores and ask do you have king elvard and a camp you know we did innocent things like that harmless this is yeah getting we out absolutely absolutely it's definitely not a bunch of kids having fun it's people trying to make some money for sure okay uh moving on we have scams we get a lot of complaints about people who are enrolling in those free trial offers so maybe you're watching an infomercial late at night or something and you see oh that looks like um great anti-aging cream or teeth whitener something like that um and the commercial says oh you know i have nothing to lose there's no risk so sure i'll give it a try no problem the problem is that you can't read the fine print you know either it flashes on the screen for very short amount of time and tiny tiny small print or um you know they just don't give that to that information to you over the phone but they'll always ask for your credit card number so that you can pay for shipping and handling right um the problem is when as soon as you give that you're agreeing to be in some sort of monthly buying club so they're going to start sending you shipments of that whitening teeth whitening cream or whatever the case may be every month until you cancel and they might say in their infomercial you know you have 20 days to cancel um so there's really no risk to you but usually that 20 days starts as soon as you hang up the phone so if your whitening cream doesn't arrive until day 21 uh too bad so sad you miss the the uh free return period and then also they'll charge you for returns of course because those aren't going to be free and they might even tack on a restocking fee so um be very careful when it says it's a free product you know it's one of those too good to be true kind of things um but that's that's pretty much the MO of what happens to people when they sign up for those free trial offers grandparent scam um now if this has happened to you or somebody you know you're not alone um but a grandparent scam is really some people might call it like a relative in trouble kind of scam but basically what happens is the phone rings and uh grandma picks up the phone hi grandma it's me your favorite grandson and grandma kind of fills in the blanks for them joey is that you yes yes it's me joey and joey goes on to explain that he was in a foreign country maybe mexico for spring break or canada for a fishing trip something like that and something terrible happened the story kind of varies they're they're creative maybe they were in a car accident and somebody was hurt maybe they got arrested you know they they were they bummed a ride from a stranger and there was straight there was drugs found in the car i've i've heard them all they're very creative but the bottom line is that they need grandma to send money as soon as possible um so um grandma you know grandma's been around the block she's no dummy she'll start to ask questions right john joey it doesn't sound like you well i broke my nose in the car accident and that's why i'm talking a little funny or they'll be crying something like that um so that it's really hard for grandma to even tell is this a boy calling me is it a girl calling me i can't even tell um they're very persuasive like we said this is their job if they had a legitimate sales job um they'd probably be masterful at it um because for every over every objection that grandma has they're able to come up with some believable plausible story to overcome that objection um we had one person um one couple over on the western part of the state i think it was in saint croix county um she got this phone call it was on thanksgiving um she went to walmart on thanksgiving and wired some money because she thought her grandson was in trouble and as soon as they know that they have somebody on the line um they'll keep going back and back and back they'll find more reasons um why they grandma needs to send more money so you know i they won't let me out of jail until i post bond okay they won't give me my car back or you know until i fix the car that hit me okay uh there's lawyer fees they won't let me leave until i pay the lawyer fee it just goes on and on and on until grandma kind of wisens up so this couple went back to walmart on thanksgiving four different times and they lost more than three thousand dollars so again scammers they have no conscience they don't care that they're toying with your emotions they don't care that they're ruining a family holiday um they just want your money so and social media um that make all of those things people that put stories on social media it just adds fuel to the fire it makes stories like that more plausible um you know if depending on your grandchild children's privacy settings some stranger may be very able to find out that jimmy really is in mexico on spring break or um if they wish grandma happy birthday now they have grandma's name um so be very careful about what people put on social media yes sir uh just to elaborate a little bit on that we were victims of that about a couple years ago what the thing that i want to mention is uh my wife took the call grandma and the grandson that was calling his name was quinn and he's at one of the uw schools and grandma swears that that voice was quinn it was his voice and it wasn't uh somebody like you say crying or very emotional so uh because later on i talked to him when he actually got out of class but the scammers said he was in jail for drugs in a car with not his drugs excuse me but you know well he was well it was a long story but anyway he ended up in jail i even talked to the jailer pretty well because of the scam but i never sent any money but the thing is after i managed to get a hold of him the voices were exactly the same really oh yeah yeah yeah and so um it was funny because i at first i talked to him when he was in jail and then i talked to him when he was out of class and it was the same voice so uh yeah it was a very frightening experience and the thing is i was alone uh in four of my years and uh they even told me that they would come to the house and pick up the money and i was fearful that they were going to come to the house and then what what i do i mean i didn't have an alarm system but it was very very frightening so every time i do these presentations somebody has a story like that so you're definitely not alone i mean i don't blame people i if my child or grandchild was in a foreign country in a jail i probably you know would do anything i could to help them so um and you know it's a it's a very they tug on your emotions and what grandparent doesn't want to be able to help their their children so we had a session with you in nina last May and someone said the same thing i could have sworn it was my grandson on this now you're exactly like this man who's at the post office ready to mail $2,000 and then he said well i've been able to try my grandson at work but of course he's in jail right now but i mean his grandson was at work and he's a retired lawyer he's not somebody that you would think would be tricked easily yes one piece of advice that we are after was when somebody calls and it sounds like quinn again and you and the scam is being set up you should say to him well quinn what's the name of your what's the name of your dog or something yeah start asking him some questions yeah something that obviously a scammer can't pick up from just right information right but yeah it was they had her turbo convinced that uh that was quinn and uh well i started calling and his parents started calling and yes amazing don't tell anybody quinn don't don't don't tell anybody don't tell anybody that i called yes don't tell don't call me get $10,000 they always say that they always say don't tell my mom and dad they're gonna kill me or whatever i know actually like another variation of this particular scam is um somebody was calling pretending to be a grandson that was overseas in the military i want to come home and surprise mom and dad so grandma can you give me airfare to get home well can you imagine why wouldn't the military pay for you to come home but um it was a believable story for sure so yeah very very unfortunate and thank you for sharing that i'm glad you didn't lose any money um if you had a landline phone or on this number so um i would use the other phone call my daughter and say where is michelle right if you didn't know mm-hmm so let's talk about imposter scams and those are really anytime somebody calls you pretending to be somebody that they're not um and so we've had instances where people called pretending to be the irs um you owe back taxes we're gonna come and arrest you or um this is microsoft tech support we can tell from our computers over at microsoft headquarters that you have a virus okay that's totally not possible or this is the fbi um we know you've been looking at pornography on your computer and we're going to come to your workplace and arrest you unless you pay up right now medicare we've talked a little bit about that or then this is a scam that targets uh businesses too that this is um the utility company calling and you're behind unpaying your um your energy bill and we're gonna turn off your power in four hours if you don't give us some money right now so in all of these cases you know the irs isn't going to call you and let you know for the first time that you owe them money um they have a formal process it's a um starts with a letter in the mail um but they're certainly not going to demand that you pay them right there and usually it's something like we want you to buy a an itunes gift card or a target gift card or a google play card why would the irs accept payment for your taxes with a gift card like that um i got a call sitting at my desk at the better business bureau saying that it was microsoft calling and that they could tell that i had a virus on my computer and that's just not possible nobody can do that but in those cases has anybody gotten that phone call yeah so what they what they do is they have you go to a website and then you enter this code and what you're basically doing is handing over control of your computer to this person on the other end of the phone and so you can see what they're doing and it may look like they're adding virus protection or removing a virus or something but they could just as likely be adding yeah be adding a virus to your computer yeah yeah and every year they call her and she she practically falls for it every year and i don't do that oh i hate to hear that and there's a new kind of new twist on this old scam and that is you uh purchased virus protection from us and we owe you a refund so we're gonna give us your bank account number and we'll give you a refund that's a common one too so all of these um imposter scams they kind of get introduced to you because of some kind of email that you might receive or a phone call or even a pop-up on your computer like um oh my gosh i you know my computer's frozen i can't do anything unless i call this number um you can you could be able to save you know to unfreeze your computer i would just unplug my computer from the internet and take it to a local repair shop but if you have a if you have a windows computer control alt delete we'll get you the task manager anybody familiar with that and then you can start shutting down programs so again these imposters they spoof phone numbers so it looks like that's the irs calling don't click on any kind of pop-ups or links inside of an email because really that's how you open the back door to viruses um it may lead you know to some website that says oh darn it your um your acrobat adobe acrobat reader is out of date so you're gonna have to update your software before you can look at that um or open that page and that's where you're granting permission for them to add a virus to your computer so watch out for that um red flags you know your radar antenna should be going off if anybody ever asks you to wire money or to purchase one of those prepaid debit cards go to your local Walgreens and buy a visa gift card or a green dot money pack card um because as soon as you call them back and give them the account numbers on that card the money is gone um that's why scammers prefer those types of payment methods because they're irreversible um you know it used to be mail me a check um but people started stopping payment on those checks and credit card companies you could dispute the charge on your credit card so now they like to go to those prepaid debit cards or wire transfer because it's irreversible so and then um romance scams so we hear a lot of seniors fall for victims of romance scams too so it may be on one of those dating websites like match.com something like that um the the key to spotting a romance scam is that um first of all they want to get you to start corresponding off of that website so give me your email address or your your phone number and we can start text messaging because they know that those websites like match.com are looking for scammers like that so they want to they want to fly under the radar so they want to get you off of that website and then they always have some kind of reason why they can never meet you in person um a car broke down um you know my dog's in the hospital uh whatever the case may be and then they're gonna hit you up for money so um and if they discover that oh this person doesn't have any money then they're gonna um they're gonna ask you for something else do you mind if I ship a couple of packages to you and then could you do me a favor and ship those overseas so now what you're gonna do instead of getting money from you um you're gonna be what we call a money mule for them so you're gonna start collecting stolen merchandise and shipping them overseas for them so that's what happens in romance scams they also try and frame you on facebook yeah yeah you know really i'm sorry for that um it's you know has anybody ever gotten a friend request on facebook from somebody who's already their friend yeah and that's a very common scam too because you know you can steal you can create whatever name you want facebook isn't verifying that if susan bach creates a facebook page that it's really susan bach um and they can they can add any picture they want they can grab a picture from your legitimate facebook profile and then just start friending all of your friends and then of course there will be some kind of request for money hey i'm overseas i lost my passport could just send me some money i actually have had a friend who's stable oh really oh okay small world um imposter scams again um they were the number one reported scam at the federal trade commission in 2018 median dollar loss was 500 and i mentioned this because if you haven't gotten the call from the social security administration yet you will um um and that because that is the latest and greatest scam um and they're gonna claim that there's your social security number has been associated with some kind of criminal activity um so they're gonna deactivate your social security number unless you pay them some money um so i just wanted to mention that because it's kind of the hot scam going around and that would be terrible right if our social security numbers were deactivated um and also let's talk a little bit about charity scams um we always see a rise in these types of scams um after some kind of manmade or natural disaster uh it could be you know weather related um hurricane Katrina it could be um some kind of mass shooting we knew that um right after the shootings at virginia tech university that was several years ago um people started purchasing domain names like within hours um that all had some sort of um keywords related to the virginia tech shooting or massacre and what they were going to do with those maybe some of them had legitimate means but we do know that often you know people will use keywords and technology to get money for themselves they see it as an opportunity to make money um after 9 11 um somebody created a website that looked exactly like the red cross american red cross and they is it's very easy to steal and copy excuse me logos um they had a domain name that was very similar to the red cross and they started funneling donations that were meant for um 9 11 victims to to themselves so that's why we always ask check them out before you um give i know this time of year everybody's kind of thinking about giving to their favorite charity so we just ask that you check them out bbb.org um where our affiliate is called the wise giving alliance and you can also go to give.org again this is free information and you can find out a lot of things about you know the expenses of that charity how they use their money um governance etc and then whenever you get a phone call you'll always want to ask the person or the organization on the other end of the phone are you a professional fundraiser this happens a lot unfortunately with police and firefighter organizations um either they're actually hiring police and firefighter um fundraisers because they just don't have the personnel to do it themselves or it's an organization that is using um a name like that to gain money for themselves so ask if it's a professional fundraiser um professional fundraisers can take almost 90 of your donation and it's perfectly legal so if you really want to support a local charity um you know don't send money to a professional fundraiser maybe just go go in person and hand them a check would be much better so any any questions again about that okay let's talk a little bit about the Equifax data breach i know i'm running short on time anybody affected by the Equifax data breach okay a lot of people were we'll just skip to the chase and say everybody should have a credit freeze on their credit report um it used to be something that would cost you ten dollars per credit bureau there are three credit bureaus what a what a credit freeze is is um you know if i were to take out a new line of credit i would fill out an application um and that creditor would contact the credit bureaus to see if i was a good risk they want to they would want to access my credit file but if i had a credit freeze on my credit file no creditor would be able to access my credit report so the new application would be denied so if somebody had my social security number and they tried to open up a new line of credit in my name because i have a credit freeze on my account they wouldn't be able to do that so all you really need to do and i think there's information about how to contact those bureaus in this um just go to all of the credit bureaus and um ask for a credit freeze on your account it's very easy to do you just set up a keyword or a password and then if you ever do want to go take out a legitimate you know line of credit let's say you're going to go buy a new car or something you can go to the website unfreeze your credit and then have it um set to refreeze like in an hour or at the end of the day whatever you want so um i highly highly recommend that we all get credit freeze that will save us um from ever you know being at least a victim of financial identity theft um and um even for young people you can implement credit freezes for younger people um younger people under the age of 18 are actually prime targets for identity thieves because they know that it will be years before the crime is discovered so um get a credit freeze they are free and they're easy to freeze and unfreeze investment scams uh the financial industry regulatory authority says the um most likely victim of an investment scam like a Ponzi scheme is somebody who is a male white highly educated um they're the people who are thinking that they might be a little behind on their investments or retirement funds so they're willing to take more risk um so these are the um risk factors in investment scams if you have a high tolerance for high risk investments if you only rely on friends family co-workers for advice instead of actually going to see to check out the company to see if the broker is licensed etc um if you are willing to go to those free seminars you know we'll buy you dinner we'll buy you lunch all you need to do is listen to our presentation um that makes you three times more likely to become a victim of um an investment scam fyi um if you don't check the background 70 to 80 percent of victims don't check the backgrounds of their brokers etc um that makes you vulnerable as well and if you're not able to spot those common persuasion tactics that scammers use that also makes you vulnerable to investment scams and those are things like um falling for people who say you can double your money you know in um 90 days that's what Charles Ponzi did um he didn't have a real company he just started you know for every one investor um that he got he had to get two more within 90 days right so um you're guaranteed to get 100 percent of your money back or whatever the case may be um we would call that phantom riches that's just too good to be true because it's the stock market right there are no guarantees um you have to make sure that you check out your brokers you know some brokers will say I won this award or I won that award you want to make sure that they're licensed um don't fall for those common ploys like everybody's doing it um so and so at your church and your alumni association and um whatever they're doing it so you should too um the the free lunch reciprocity this is a very um interesting fact you know um if I give you something like I buy you a free lunch you're more inclined to feel obligated to buy something from me it's just a known fact that's people feel that way and that's why people give out free items because they know that oh he's a nice guy oh he bought me lunch I should reciprocate some way so don't fall for that and then um they also always create some sort of urgency or scarcity like you know we're only accepting 10 people etc etc so don't fall for those as well I'm trying to blow past these because I want to be careful of your time so what can we do to protect ourselves we've talked about a lot of these make sure you're registered with the do not call registry consider activating nomo robo um all you need to do is call charter this is how I activated nomo robo I called uh charter and I said I want that call blocking feature or nomo robo on my um on my line and sure no problem it was just a matter of uh flipping a switch so to speak I think there's a website nomorobo.com that will actually give you instructions on how to do that screen your calls um get a refusal script so that my refusal script was um I never you know give out my personal information unless I make the phone call but you know sometimes if you if you feel like you have a problem saying no to charities or volunteer organizations just get your own refusal script you know I'm sorry I only support charities that are aligned with my church or you know I only support veterans organizations whatever the case may be having that you know planned refusal script ahead of time will save you a lot of heartache and as a rule of thumb you know let's let's agree never to give any kind of personal or financial information unless we initiate the phone call right because we can't trust our caller ID that it's really our bank calling let's use secure payment methods um so red flag if anybody ever asks us to wire them money or buy one of those reloadable debit cards the best method of payment the one with the most built-in consumer protections is your credit card not your debit card not a prepaid debit card not cash if you purchase something with your credit card and it turns out to be you know broken or not as advertised or it never shows up at all maybe you're buying something online you can dispute those charges with your credit card company so I have you know I some people say I never put anything on a credit card you know I always carry cash with me you know when I'm Christmas shopping that seems kind of dangerous too so your credit card has the most consumer protections let's safeguard you know your social security number your Medicare number most identity theft happens from somebody that the victim knows a neighbor a relative a contractor some somebody came into your house and stole checkbooks or whatever consider a credit freeze always check out companies beforehand with the better business bureau and then we talked a little bit about scam tracker so if you want to help share the information with your neighbors be sure to report scams at scam tracker or check out what's happening in your neighborhood actually we see a lot of media people will check that out and go oh I want to talk to that person what happened that that's a good story what I want to talk to that person so it's really a great great device and other resources and these are all on your PowerPoint that I handed out let's get a report a free annual credit report that's really the only website where you can go and check your credit report for free you're entitled to a free credit report once from every credit bureau once every year if you're having a problem you can file a complaint with the better business bureau but you can also go to our state's department of agriculture trading consumer protection Medicare if you want to opt out of those pre-screened credit or insurance offers that arrive in your mail those always make me nervous because I think somebody could just steal them out of my mailbox and start opening up a line of a credit card for under my name if you want to reduce your amount of junk mail you can go to the direct marketing association and this is my very favorite website it is the better business bureau uses this all the time it's a circuit court access so we are in Wisconsin are very lucky we can search openly any kind of criminal civil family court case just go to that website you can check by name you can check by company name so if you want to check out your granddaughter's new boyfriend that would be the place to do it I'm not saying I've done that but I might have done that before so and that is me in my contact information so if you have any future questions you can certainly give me a call actually that phone number will get you to the better business bureau's main office in Milwaukee but if you if you would like a business card for me and my direct phone number I'm happy to give that out as well but does anybody have any questions any other sketchy suspicious phone calls you've received or mailings anything like that and then we've kind of talked about a lot already but okay well thank you so much for coming I really appreciate it and again if there's anything that you need from the BBB or any questions you might have please feel free to give us a call