 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech Tech Talks, which we do every few weeks with the TELUS rest of PsyPAC. And today we're going to talk about things that have popped up, if you will, after the fire in Maui. There are new scams, new, exciting, creative, and worrisome scams in Maui. So tell us what you got. Oh well. First of all, Jay, thanks for having me here and I appreciate having any opportunity to to spread the word that even though the fires are hopefully subsided, the scammers are just getting started. So in much the same way that we've all been glued to the TVs the past few weeks, watching the devastation unfold, it's also been something that the scammers have been doing. They've been watching their TVs as well and wondering about new ways to take advantage of people. And we've talked about a couple of things in the past few weeks, most notably right after the fires. There were these FEMA scams that came out. There were folks that were and unfortunately lost everything and they were getting phone calls from either some opportunist investors who were offering them as little as say $60,000 for a piece of their land to offering them an expedited method of getting their FEMA funding if they would just simply pay them a small fee of either a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. Both of these, of course, not likely legitimate, but there are these scammers and these are old hat techniques that are now being applied towards Maui victims. And the reason that they're being applied is because that they work and they wouldn't work if folks weren't unaware of them. So what we're trying to do is bring a little bit of awareness of these types of scams and how victims are being taken advantage of. Now, what I find interesting is that there's lawyers all over what happened in Maui. Lawyers filing suits to hold various organizations and individuals accountable for what happened of the blame game, if you will. But I'd like to see some lawyers chase these scoundrels. I'd like to see some government agencies chase these scoundrels. They're predatory. They need to be investigated and prosecuted wherever they are in the country. So I think that the legal establishment should go after them too. Well, these guys have been doing it a long time. They're highly organized, well-funded. They make a lot of money doing this and numerous other scams across the world. So I'm not really hopeful that this is going to go away anytime soon. But at least if we can get the word out and let folks know that there are these scammers out there, do not give information or should I say do not give any payment information to anyone who's claiming to be from a federal or state authority. So a FEMA person will not ask you for your credit card number. That's a big red flag right there. And unfortunately, we did talk about this a few weeks ago, how there was a lot of personal information being put onto Facebook. Obviously, there are folks that were looking for each other for family members, for loved ones. That information is now being harvested and being used for these scams. So just be aware, if you did put your phone number or phone numbers of your family members onto social media, there's a good chance it's been scraped and they're using that against you. Scoundrels. I can also make a little bit of a prediction in terms of what we're going to be seeing in the next weeks and months. And obviously, we have several hundred, if not over a thousand people that are still unaccounted for, we anticipate that there's going to be those impersonating private investigators who are going to say, look, if you're not getting answers about your missing loved ones, then for a fee, we'll do what we can to expedite that process or get those answers for you. And that, again, is also probably going to be fake. They're not going to be able to do anything more than you can in terms of finding out this information. Everyone is working as fast as they can, as safely as they can. But this is one of those, hopefully, once in a lifetime disasters. And the best we can do is let them do their work and have them find whatever DNA they can to help notify the families of those affected. What I find interesting is that it's not only that somebody knocks on your door, extensions still have a door, but they'll try to reach you by phone or by email or text. And that's how the impersonation is more likely done, right? Well, and that's the thing is the now service is becoming restored. Mostly cellular service, obviously critical infrastructure, wiring the ground, all that's gone, everything from power to data. And in fact, some, if we have contaminated lines, water lines in the ground, sewer lines, that kind of stuff, some of that may need to be replaced as well. So this effort could take quite a long time. And telecommunications being restored as the first step is great, but it also means that the scammers can now get in touch with the victims. And that's what we don't want to see. There's a whole sequence of things to think about here. Number one is, if you suspect, and we should talk about the points of suspicion, if you suspect there's a scammer onto you, then you're not going to give them any information at all. But what do you do? You hang up the phone or ignore the text? Or do you report that? Or do you call the police? Or do you call FEMA? Or do you call the state attorney general of the Maui prosecutor assuming the Maui prosecutor is still in business? Or do you just forget about it? What do you do? So there is a well-defined path for this. So first things first, if you find that there's a scammer on the line, hang up the phone right there. And you know what? It's okay to be rude. You can cut them off mid-sentence. Not a problem. That's okay. Next thing you want to do is call the police. Now, local police has a phone number, but you know what? If you don't know what that phone number is, no problem. Call 911 and say it's a police non-emergency. Then they'll connect you to the local police department. At that point, you can let them know, hey, I'm getting scam calls. And this is what they said. And this is the phone number that they called from. Sometimes you can't get that phone number, right? I mean, sometimes it's a phone number without a phone number. And the result there is that you don't have any information about the people who are trying to scam you. I suppose what you could do is, what was your name again? Where are you calling from? Spell out the name of your organization for me. What is your phone? What is your email? Lots of questions. But if you ask a lot of questions like that, the likelihood is the fellow is going to hang up on you. Exactly. So, you know, well, it doesn't really help. And not to mention, whatever they give you is going to be fake anyway. But having some of that caller ID information that really does help, there have been some recent changes in the way that voiceover IP carriers transmit phone calls over the internet that allows for these kind of number spoofing instances to kind of be cut down. They can stop some of them. Local numbers are also, you're going to see a local number on your phone. There's no more of this 1-800 or caller ID blocked, that kind of stuff. It's going to be local numbers. And so those local numbers can be tied to at least an account. Even if the account is fake, then at least there's something they can do to shut it down and kind of slow down the process a little bit. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. You know, in the past, I made that exact kind of analysis myself where the number was a local number. However, I gave it some credence. Now I find that a lot of scam and spam calls are 808 numbers. I find that very interesting that they managed to get by that part of the, what do you want to call it, suspicious suspicious elements here. Can you talk about the suspicious elements? So here I am, and I get a call or an email or a text. How paranoid should I be and what should dip me off? Well, in general, I mean, let's just be practical here. Unless you're waiting for a phone call from someone and you recognize the phone number, probably not really worth it to pick it up anyway, right? You can leave a voicemail message. And if you're like me and don't like voicemail, you can fill up your voicemail message, your voicemail account, and then on your greeting, let people know to text you. And that's sometimes a good way to kind of filter out those that really want to reach you and which ones don't. In terms of how this all works, voice over IP carriers can take a, you know, you can buy an 808 number for just, you know, maybe a couple dollars and pay per minute to, you know, make calls over that phone number. And the company that is selling that phone number is responsible for the activity on that phone number. And so that's why that's why I say if you report that phone number to the police and they can contact the appropriate carrier and ask that that number be shut down or that account be blocked because it is being used for fraudulent purposes for scamming. And obviously this is not the first time that, you know, HPD has done this. So now, PD is also very, very capable of doing these kind of activities. So suppose I'm slightly lax, you know, and they get, they get in on me and they get some information about me in the scam before I realize, you know, that it's a scammer. What's my exposure? Should I be worried? Am I going to lose my house and car, my sacred fortune and sacred honor? Or is it small potatoes? Well, it really depends. I mean, if you're someone, you know, is rich and famous like yourself, then you have more to worry about. Thank you for that. But, you know, if you're the average kind of person, then you're probably not going to be as much, they're not going to put as much resources into trying to get that kind of stuff out of you. Just know that there's a good chance that a lot of your personally identifiable information or your PII is floating around out there on the dark web anyway from all the different data breaches that have occurred over the past 10 years. So what they're looking for is the quick and easy buck. And it's strictly a numbers game. So if they're able to, you know, make a thousand phone calls and have two people fall for it, that's a pretty good day for them, for that bad boy. And, you know, that criminal could make, you know, hundreds or maybe a few thousand dollars off of those two individuals who get scammed over the course of the day. So it is 100% a numbers game and it is 100% smash and grab. How easily can they get the money out of them? This is why things like gift cards are a big red flag. If you ever hear anything, the word gift card, that's a stop right there. In fact, I was listening to a podcast that's pretty interesting with some cybersecurity guys and they were saying, you know what, if we just put a hiatus on all gift cards across the entire globe for two years, it probably cut out 98% of all the scammers out there because that's the method of moving money that's easy that anyone has access to. It's a lot easier than crypto, but it's also a giant red flag, like who needs gift cards, you know, right? I'm sure I'm going to get hate mail from the gift card Association of America, but we don't need any more gift cards. It's fine, you know. What about crypto? I mean, if somebody says, look, you know, we could move this a lot faster and provide you with huge benefits, but we need you to send us some crypto. Is that a tip off? It's also a tip off. That's the same thing. But, you know, in order for you to get crypto, sometimes you need a crypto ATM, as far as I know, there are none on Maui. So it'd be pretty difficult for someone to try to do an exchange that way. But, you know, gift cards are available at every long and safe way. You know, we were doing an event for like, it was actually for Maui Chamber of Commerce and we were talking about these kind of scams and it was really funny because as someone was watching, this lady was watching our presentation, this was during COVID, her mom runs quickly behind her, out the door, running out the door and said, Mom, Mom, Mom, where are you going? Still watching our webinar, right? Oh, I have to run too long. I have to get some gift cards because I just got a call from the FBI and they said that they're going to come and arrest me unless I pay them what I own in taxes and these gift cards. Oh, wow. We're literally talking at the same time. And so you can't make this stuff up. It still happens. And these are smart people. This is not, you know, it's just, you know, we're trusting a society here in Hawaii. We try to do what we can to help each other. We respect authority. And because of that, these kind of things happen. Well, it's about desperate people. But I suggest to you that, A, there's not really a lot of investigation going on. You can't really nail them. Your lawyer can't nail them. They may be here or anywhere in the world with an 808 number. And it's going to take, let me add this, it's going to take a long time before Maui is recovered and rebuilt and reestablished. And then the telecommunications right now, but it's a long way to go before people get back in any kind of normality. And what I'm suggesting to you is that these scammers are going to be with us for a while. They're not leaving. And as Maui redevelops itself, there'll be more creative opportunities for them as time goes by. Am I right? Yep, absolutely. And in the same vein, if nothing would have happened on Maui, they'd still be with us. They'd still be trying to attack those of us who are on the other islands. So the Maui is just an example of a disaster that they can wave around. They're going to have a higher success rate when there's emotions involved, when there's, people aren't thinking logically or they're thinking emotionally. And whenever emotion gets involved, folks who are smart and well qualified will lose their shirts. A perfect example, I recently read about an AI researcher who writes and trains AI and has done so for over 10 years. And he got duped by an AI chatbot who he thought was a real romantic partner that was interested in him. But in truth, for six months or more, he was just chatting with a chatbot that had someone kind of loosely watching it just to make sure it wouldn't say anything that would tip him off. And he ended up going to jail because he accidentally became involved in some drug crime or something. They got him to move drugs across the border. And that's how they caught him. So these kind of stories happen to the most smartest, most qualified people. And it's all because of their emotion gets involved in front of their mind. Going through that whole thing about people who are desperate and emotionally stressed and like, climate change is not over. And neither are wildfires. Neither are climate change extreme storms. And Hawaii as other places will see a continuation of these existential threats. And that means that not only will these scammers be looking for you in the model, the context of a Maui wildfire, but in every context where the community is disrupted because of a climate change incident episode. So it sounds to me like this is going to continue. And the question I would put to you, Attila, is how can we protect ourselves against the next storm? There will be one, the next fire, the next flood, and so forth. How can we protect ourselves from the scammers who come along with the episode? It's the same story as today, right? Got to keep your head on your shoulders, use common sense, look out for red flags, look out for things that are pushing you towards action urgently, that kind of stuff. That is the big red flags for you. And like you said, this is not our first climate event. It won't be the last. We saw the same thing in the wake of the Haiti earthquakes. We saw the same thing in the wake of Katrina. And that was a long time ago in terms of climate science. But these cyber criminals are going to keep on coming. I think it's really good to focus on what we can do to rebuild. You know, folks are still going to want to be looking for jobs. And from an employer standpoint, there's all these, that's the flip side of it, right? So the scammers are after those victims that have lost everything and they want to try to squeeze them that way. But you know, what if someone's out looking for a job, they update the LinkedIn profile and they start to become solicited by a company offering them a work from home opportunity? All they need to do is pay a few thousand dollars to get started with their program to get the necessary materials that they need to work from home. You know, booklets and, you know, they'll send them wires and a small desk or something. That's also a scam. And guess what? Never comes in the mail. Anything. And in the meanwhile, those folks that are looking for these jobs are requested to give out all their private information, right? Social security number, bank writing information, all that stuff. So that's another way where they can take advantage of those trying to rebuild their lives after such a disaster. From an employer's perspective, there are also scams coming in from that direction. North Korea was famous for adopting a, you know, the personas of other like highly qualified people and then requesting interviews and pretending to be that highly qualified person so that they could then either do espionage by gaining access to the critical resources of that company, or by, you know, finding another way to siphon more money or hold or extort that company by just getting any sort of access that an employee might and thus destroying that company in the process. So the LinkedIn is one gateway to those that are trying to rebuild their lives as well as employers who are trying to, you know, build their own companies and they're getting, you know, compromised in the process. Yeah, you know, that's an interesting oblique on all of this. It could be targeted. It's not just somebody that was on Maui might have lost his home, might have lost members of his family and is distraught and desperate. It could be a targeted victim, the owner of a company, maybe a company that does business with the federal government, a company that has a problem in recouping its staff. Its staff is gone and it's got to find new staff. But, you know, the notion would be is that just because this scam, it seems to be a broad-based, you know, scam against an indistinguishable population. It could be targeted against you because you hold information that this guy wants, maybe for espionage. That's different. Well, all I know is that, you know, it is unfortunate, but most of these cases that, you know, we read about after the fact, for everyone that is reported, there's a hundred that don't, that don't make their way up to the news. So, you know, we're trying to get the word out. So, those that are being targeted by phone calls, text messages, or anything that's requesting a sense of urgency, anything where they're asking for money for a service and exchange for a service, those are most likely scammers. And for those that are trying to rebuild their lives, and if there are opportunities online that recruiters maybe reach out to them, there are scams in that direction as well. You should always research the company itself, make sure that it is a valid organization. Unfortunately, moneymills are recruited in this manner. Are you familiar with moneymills? Can we talk about that? Tell me. So, let's pretend that a business is packed, right? And ransomware is deployed, which locks up all their computers and says, hey, you need to pay us in crypto in order for this to occur, or there's a check scam, or there's any numerous ways. The money doesn't go from point A to point B directly. It goes through series of moneymills. And those moneymills each take a portion of those funds, and it goes from one bank account to the next to the next. We've seen this firsthand from invoice scams. So, this has happened in about three or four different companies just recently where they access the email of the president or CEO, and they generate a fictitious invoice and say, hey, look, I'd like you to pay this invoice, wire this money to this bank account. Wonderful, right? Simple, easy, but it's wrong. And that money goes to one bank account, which then instantly jumps to another bank account and jumps and jumps and jumps. And that can go up to 24 to 50 different bank accounts before it finally ends up in its final destination, which can be in any number of bad places. Now, each of those jumps along the chain requires a moneymill. And those moneymills are often by unsuspecting victims of those who are duped into having a work from home job. In the past, when law enforcement has gone to those people and said, hey, look, you are a moneymill, they are completely bewildered. They've been fooled into believing that they're doing a legitimate job. They're being paid for just moving money from point A to point B. They don't ask a lot of questions. And oftentimes, they're unwitting victims in this whole network of evil. So in that same vein, like you don't want to become that person yourself. So be careful of these kind of too good to be true types of things, because it's going to come back to bite you. And I'm sure they're going to target Malwy victims. Sure. Who are desperate? One other thing comes out of that is if a guy says to me, look, I'll get you a job, or I'll get you an employee, or I'll get you some federal benefits or get you FEMA benefits, but you have to give me a couple of thousand dollars. And you could say, I'm just testing on this, you could say, sure, you want my credit card? Let me give you my credit card number. Let me give you all that you need to take this out of my credit card. Once he uses that information to take it out of the credit card, we have a handle on him, don't we? Because now we know who drew the money out of the credit card account. It's not so simple as gift cards or cryptocurrency, because there's a paper trail with a credit card, right? Yes, which is why they usually don't ask for that. Okay. Well, then that's a way to test the situation where you say to him, okay, sure, let me give you my credit card information. And then if he box, you know you have a point of suspicion. The best thing to do is make sure if you are on Maui and you are a victim, that you work with local, on-premise physical resources that are there, and the Red Cross and numerous other nonprofits are out there, Maui United Way, they are all there with the most current up-to-date resources on how to solve these kind of problems. And just know that you're not alone. On the outer islands, we are doing what we can to try to help. And the same comes from every other part of the world. So I don't believe that the scammers are going to win against this one, because there's so much public support and help and assistance that just accept it and try to work personally. And I do know that there's a little bit of you know, a bit of pride about you know, being able to do this on your own. But in the same vein, you're not alone. And if you let others help you, you can pay it forward once you get back on your feet. Yeah, well, one thing that strikes me is, you know, in a recovery situation such as on Maui, where people are all struggling to get back to some normal life. And that includes the agencies, it includes the police and the county, it includes, you know, public officials from one side to the other. So if you or me, we should call them and say, look, I have a very suspicious situation in here, I'd like to report it to you and see if you can do anything about catching the bugger. They may, well, I can imagine this, they may well say, hey, look, we're busy, we really can't address this right now. So what happens when you reach that kind of lack of response? Well, in the end, you know, all of this is on you. But in the same way, you know, there are some, there are some resources out there. Now, what, you know, if you guys run into a dead end, you know, feel free to reach out, maybe we can help out with something. Our phone number is always available, it's a local number, 808-861-9595. But, you know, I think, Jay, you know, one thing that you and I can do, and maybe spread the word on this one, is to encourage tourism back to Maui. Most of the island is open. Yes, West Maui has its own challenges, but the island does depend heavily on tourism. And, you know, the airfares are pretty low. We've got some tickets just today and, you know, we go there to help clients that are, that we have on Maui. And, you know, they're very affordable and, you know, the hotels are open and the restaurants are open. And, you know, I encourage folks to go visit and help support that economy. Yeah, and more than that, so we learned a lot about, you know, preventing the damage that we experienced in the wildfire and subsequent climate change kinds of events. And we have to use those lessons and we have to rebuild smarter. And one of the ways to rebuild smarter is to rebuild smarter where you can be aware of these scams, both in times of stress and in the normal times. And so we need to learn at every level when we rebuild. Well, you're right, Jay. Hopefully we can rebuild, you know, rebuild quickly. There you go. Tell us a rest, SIPAC, helping in the rebuild. Thank you so much, Attila, for joining us today. Appreciate it, Jay. Stay safe out there. Aloha.