Newest Scams – Do Not Lose your Money to Thieves

Today, we'll be discussing the newest scams so you can see how to not lose your money to thieves. Hello and welcome to Money Talks. My name is Ken Wink from Summit Financial Consulting here in lovely southeastern Michigan. If you'd like more information about what you hear during our show today, please give us a call at 586-226-2100 or you can visit us on the web at summitfc.net. While you're at the website, make sure you check out that podcast page. You can subscribe on all the best podcasting sites. So you have worked so hard for your money and then you invest it and then one day you get scammed and you lost a big chunk of it or even all of it. That's a terrible scenario. Today we're gonna share the latest scams and how to avoid them so you don't accidentally lose money. These crooks, these bad guys out there are getting more and more crafty using technology to take money away from people. So just want to let our listeners and viewers know about a few of the latest and most terrible scams that are out there. Some are pretty shocking. Before we jump in, let me introduce my co-host, Tony Shore. Tony, remember that time I tricked you into rooting for the Detroit Lions? It was Lions versus Packers, of course.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You didn't have to trick me because my two favorite teams are the Minnesota Vikings, number one, and then whoever's playing the Packers. You know that. Oh, man. What a great lineup. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those are my two favorite teams. I just got back from going to a professional football game. My wife and I drove down to Chicago. and where we saw the Bears and the Vikings at Soldier Field. We were guests of a friend of mine who's a Bears fan. He invited us down and got great seats, 50-yard line, just under the awning so we didn't get rained on because it rained the whole game. Oh, my gosh. And the Vikings won, so that was great. Kind of a crap show of a game, though, because there were no touchdowns. Yeah, it was 9-3, right? 9-3, right. But I was at that game, and we had great seats. I mean, we were right there. It was so fantastic. But what's funny is walking into the stadium, everybody has to walk in together. There's thousands of people because – They funnel you. There's no parking right there. So everybody parks and rides, and then you walk through these tunnels and stuff. So everybody's together. We've got our Vikings jerseys on. But Bears fans are really nice. They were really nice to us and fun. But everybody, they start the chant. Green Bay sucks. Green Bay sucks. And everybody's chanting it. Even at the Bears game. At the Bears game. And the Bears fans are the ones that start it. And after the game, they lose. They're a little quiet. And then somebody starts the chant, Packers suck. And they all chant it together walking. Oh, my gosh. They really don't like the Packers. Man, the Packers are just catching strays at a random Bears-Vikings game. That's wild. Yeah. But they do it – I guess they do it every Bears game. The Bears, that's their main rivalry, I guess, and they really don't like the Packers and vice versa.

Oh, man. My neighbor grew up on the west side of Michigan, Jeff, and he loves the Bears. You know, his sons love the Bears. Oh, wow. He took them to – multiple games in the last year, and you know, they're they're just loving it because for a while the the Lions were doing really well and the Bears weren't doing so hot, so the kids were starting to mope around a little bit, like, oh gosh, you know, why can't we just be Lions fans like everybody else around here? Yeah. Um, but now they're they're living pretty high on the hog. But now that their quarterback's injured, now we're gonna get too off topic here. Yeah.

We're already off topic because you've got a great topic today. I mean, boy, it just seems like this topic is a hot one and it's coming up more and more. I know more and more people that have gotten tricked into scams because they're getting more and more elaborate. And every day I get text messages and phone calls that are scams and emails every day.

Yeah, I did some research with law enforcement and then also some that my actual clients have fallen for. So these are pretty sophisticated and surprisingly easy to fall for. So I'm excited to go through a few of these and let our listeners and viewers know what's going on out there. Yeah, yeah, this will be great. So where do you want to begin? So the first one is a QR code scam. So, uh, my parents are getting up there, but I feel like the no matter how old you are, now they've made it so easy on your phone to scan a QR code that Almost everybody that has a phone now knows how to scan a QR code. So what these scammers are doing is they're putting fake QR codes on top of real stickers. So whether it's a parking meter or a restaurant or a public kiosk of some kind, they'll just have like a QR code on there. And then they rebuild the website to look exactly like the legitimate website. But then when you go to enter your credit card info, they get your credit card info.

Yeah. Yep. I've seen that happen. In fact, you know, especially in big cities, you know, we were just in Chicago. I saw posters up that had QR codes like enter here or purchase this. And you see these ads, you know, sometimes in restrooms or gas stations like enter the, you know, purchase here or whatever. And the QR code, I noticed there's a sticker and I've noticed it like when people put stickers over it. And so it's fake. So the posters are real. The billboards are things are real. But sometimes they hijack the QR code by putting a fake one over the top. That is and that's relatively new. I think that's just in the last year or so that I've seen that start to happen.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So the next one is somebody sends you money on Venmo accidentally. So it could be a stranger. 99% of the time it's going to be a stranger that you just get this notification like, oh, I've gotten sent money. And then they ask you to send the money back. But when they send the money the first time, they cancel the transaction. So when you send them the money back, they just keep it. So long story short, if somebody sends you money through a Venmo or a PayPal and they ask you to send the money back, Don't do it. It's a scam.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. And I don't wait. If somebody wants to send me money, great. And I'll wait for it to show up. Then I'll transfer it into another account. And then I will talk to them.

Yeah. Or give them a money order or something.

Yeah, exactly. Or just keep their money. As soon as you lose. Right. But they don't lose. They just cancel it before you get to that point. So QR code scams, the Venmo scam, that's a relatively new one. I haven't had someone try that with me yet. But boy, there's so much. It just seems like every day there's something new.

Yes. Yeah, this one happened to a client of ours. Next one, so they just Google searched a Charles Schwab website. So, you know, they're thinking that the first thing or the second thing on Google is going to be legitimate. It wasn't. It was a scammer who had created a website that looked just like Charles Schwab, but there was like one letter, one number off. So when they went to this website, It said, you know, your username and password isn't working. So they had a phone number, a 1-800 number to call there. He called the 1-800 number and they're like, okay, you know what, what's your username? Let's type in your username and password. Long story short, they had taken his username and password and then they logged into his account while they were talking on the phone and they immediately went and wired the money out of his account. Oh, so they were only able to get the cash out because it takes a day or two for the securities to sell. And he already started to sort of sniff it like the hair on the back of his neck started standing up. So he, you know, immediately changed his username and password, but they were already in. The good news is he called us immediately. We were able to reverse the wire, which. You know, took some work and some law enforcement down in South America, believe it or not. But we were able to get the whole thing reversed and he got his money back. But still. Oh, wow.

He's fortunate because typically you can't. Typically, once they get your money, it's gone. I mean, yeah.

Typically there's nothing you can do in that instance. So yeah. Yeah, it can it can be, uh, it can be tough. So yeah, you wouldn't think, like, Google searching a big website like Charles Schwab, but you got to be careful. Actually, my mom just called me last night, and she's like, Ken, I'm trying to get into my Gmail, and, uh, you know, this isn't working. And same kind of thing, she Google searched Gmail and she clicked on the wrong link, and it was not the Gmail website.

I've done that. I clicked on a link. You know what I did? I almost got scammed. I clicked on, I searched chat GPT because I'm like, oh, I want to enter something into chat GPT and I don't have the app on my computer. I just Google chat GPT because I couldn't remember the link. the URL. Well, the first thing that comes up, the first thing I clicked on it and it said chat GPT. So I clicked on it and then it said, it said, you know, you need to create an account to use chat GPT. There's no cost, but you have to create an account. So I start filling out the information like, oh yeah, they need my email address. A lot of sites to use that you have to have a login at least. So I start creating the login and I type in my name and a password. And then it asked me for security. And then it got to, it needed my social security number. And then I look and down, it's okay, mother's maiden name, social security. I'm like, no, this is not right. And then I searched it again and looked and said, oh, yeah, that's some other site. That's not even, yeah, not legit or something else. Yeah. See, when you search for something, you have to be really, really careful. Now, even just in a Google search, you can't trust. You got to really look at the URL and, you know, the actual web address specifically, you know what it is. Yeah. And ChatGPT isn't ChatGPT.com. It's something else. Throws you for a loop.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, the next one is, let's say you're online on social media, you're on Facebook, and somebody messages you. And this happens to a lot of guys where a very pretty lady, you know, Similar to their age, maybe a little bit younger, we'll start sending them messages. But they talk all the time. They'll actually talk on the phone. They'll text all the time. They'll message all the time. When you look at the social media, it'll look like the person is wealthy. And then they start suggesting, you know what, you should invest in crypto. Yeah. And, you know, they open up, they follow the carefully written instructions that they receive, they invest in crypto, and then the crypto starts going up in value. And they're like, gosh, you should put more money into this. You know, we're really making a lot of money on this. So this is all a scam. It's a fake crypto website. Eventually the investor will inevitably say, hey, I need to make a withdrawal. And then all of a sudden they cut you off. They don't call, they don't text, you know, they just take all the money and run.

Yeah. Yeah. That's it's not good. That's terrible. So I've seen that one. The romance scams out there. I know a guy, older guy, a friend of a friend that just really got caught up in that and believed it. And he wouldn't believe other people tried to tell him what was going on.

And you know, he's older, he didn't understand. Yeah, it was not a good situation. So yeah, the crypto situation is the latest version of a classic scam, and in that romance scam, because yeah, that's, we had a client that, uh, was dating a farmer, and then the farmer needed money to keep his farm alive, and she just kept giving him more and more and more money, and then, uh, eventually he just stopped Responding to her calls and messages because he had, you know, she was out of money and now going to find the next the next person to scam, unfortunately. Crazy.

That's nuts. I really don't understand. I can't believe how elaborate some of these are and how real they are. I think for our listeners and viewers out there, Ken, they shouldn't feel bad like, oh, man, I think I've got scammed. I think I made a mistake. And then they don't want to tell anybody because they're embarrassed. But you know what? It happens to the best of us. I mean, look at me with that chat GPT. And by the way, it's openai.com is the actual web address is openai.com. Yeah. Something with the words chat GPT in it. It's like chat.openai.com. But I got suckered in. Anybody can because they're so convincing up to a point. But if you start to feel uneasy, like, I wonder if this is legit, that question in the back of your mind, stop what you're doing. Yeah.

Right, and and tell someone, right? I mean, that's huge. If you feel you're being scammed, tell somebody, talk to, call, uh, you know, call Summit Financial Consulting or talk to a friend, right? Yeah. All the time we have clients reach out to us and say, is this legitimate? You have to have somebody that you trust that you can contact, whether it's your financial advisor, uh, your tax person, uh, maybe, uh, you younger person who's really up on technology or if you know an IT guy or somebody who's good in tech, like just run it by them.

And after the fact, even if you think, well, I already made the mistake, what can I do? Talk to somebody about it. You know, talk to law enforcement. Like you said, you had someone that got their money back. They were actually able to get their money back. So that can happen. But you got to let people know. That's for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. Next one I would call investment group scam. So we had somebody that reached out and they said, you know, I'm a surgeon. I'm in a group chat that's full of colleagues that are all surgeons. And one of them has a friend that's a broker and they're recommending that we all buy the same stock that has a lower price. So if a stock has a price below $5, it's generally considered what we call a penny stock. So even though it's not actually trading for pennies, if it's below $5, it's just considered a low price stock and able to be manipulated. So everybody's getting into it and they're making a fortune in this stock. So they keep putting money in, keep putting money in. What they don't realize is this conversation and this all buying at the same time, they're manipulating the market and they don't even know it. So everyone's saying, hey, let's throw more money at this. Let's throw more money at this. Let's try and get the price up. So here's the bad news. In the worst case scenario, you could go to jail for 20 years in prison for this. So manipulating the stock price. And then sometimes that broker who is recommending it, they're not actually a broker and they pull all their money out. And that makes the price of the stock fall through the floor. Cause once it starts to fall, then everybody starts panicking and they all get out and then it's just, you know, so.

I wasn't familiar with that. So that's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. If if someone's telling you to buy some obscure stock or crypto, don't beware. There's a really good chance it's a scam and somebody has ulterior motives. And, you know, going to prison isn't cool. So we want to try to avoid that, manipulating the stock market.

Yeah, well, yeah, obviously. That's not good at all. And people do go to the jail all the time. And it doesn't matter who you are. Look at Martha Stewart or, you know, if even a hint of insider trading. I mean, unless you're in the government.

Yeah, then it's fine.

A senator or, you know, unless you're part of the national federal government, then they do insider trading on a daily basis and don't go to prison. But the rest of us can. Not to get. I'm just I'm kind of razzing. Kind of not. I mean, you're 100 percent telling the truth. So there's that. There is that. OK, so investment group. OK, what's the last one?

Last one I wanted to cover is a grandparent scam. So a grandparent will get a call from a person with a younger sounding voice and they say, oh, grandma, please don't tell my parents, but I'm in trouble. I got into a car accident and it's my fault and I'm in jail. You know, can you please send me money? to this number or to this address or made out to this. The key there is sometimes grandparents are harder of hearing and if somebody's panicked and saying, please, please, please help, help, help, but please don't tell my parents, obviously they're saying don't tell my parents because it is a scam and it's not that person's grandchild. But yeah, these scammers will try any way to get money out of people and playing on their fear and emotions. And you got to act fast. You got to act fast. I'm in big trouble. Sometimes people don't stop and think about it and they just do what they're told. In a similar situation, I had a client who... I got contacted by someone who said they were a friend of the family and they were about to lose their house. And, you know, just here comes the story. But they asked her to go deposit money through Bitcoin like there's a Bitcoin ATM. It's just a mile from your house. Deposit five hundred dollars into this ATM and type in these coordinates and that'll help save me. You know, anything involving big cam Bitcoin, anything involving you got to act fast, anything involving don't tell my parents like that should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

And the first thing you should do is call the parents or, you know, yeah, talk for sure. I mean, that's definitely definitely call the parents immediately. Whatever they tell you not to do, you should do. And you're not going to. That's the safest thing to do. Or just hang up and call the phone number of your grandson or person that's calling.

Exactly. Yeah. If somebody is telling you to act fast, act slow and think about it. If somebody is telling you don't call your parents, call the parents. There's a really good chance that a scam is happening because that that's not the way people normally talk.

You know, right. Right. No, it isn't. Well, these are all really important to understand. And I'm glad the awareness is really why you did the show today, isn't it? To help people become aware of these so they can avoid them because it costs people. I forget what the stat is, but billions of dollars in U.S. dollars are stolen every year by scammers. I mean, it's in the billions. It's crazy. Yeah.

Well, we did a show like this. It's probably been a year or two, but I want to do the show periodically just to update people on the latest and greatest scams. But I remember you had recommended the movie, I think it was The Beekeeper.

Yep, The Beekeeper.

Yeah, I did. Jason Statham, maybe? Statham, yeah. Yeah, and he had his revenge on the evildoers who are orchestrating all these scams. And that was... That was something.

I love that, yeah. It felt good watching it. I mean, I don't know how realistic it was, but it was so fantastic to see the scammers get their just deserves, right? Yep, absolutely. Well, hey, great show, Ken. I'm glad we revisited this. This is kind of a once a year reminder, right?

Absolutely.

We'll probably do this show again in a year and there'll be new scams. I mean, we talked about at least three that we didn't even touch on before. So it constantly evolves, especially now with AI. Great show today. But again, one more time before we go, let our listeners and viewers out there know how they can get a hold of you if they have questions about this or want to get a financial plan in place, an investment plan or a retirement income plan in place.

Yeah, we'd love to help you figure out at what year you can retire at, when you should turn on your Social Security. Once you're retired, how much can you spend on vacations and gifting to kids or grandkids? Can you help with your grandkids education or 529? What order should you take money out of? Should you take it out of the bank? Should you take it out of IRAs and 401(k)s? Should you take it out of Ross? We'll help you figure all this out in a tax efficient manner, leaning on our big team and our referrals. So give us a call 586-226-2100 or visit us on the web summitfc.net for a no cost, no obligation meeting or phone call.

Sounds great. Thank you so much, Ken. Listeners and viewers, thanks for tuning in. That does it for today's episode of Money Talks with Summit Financial Consulting LLC and our host, the man himself, Ken Wink. Thank you for joining us for Money Talks. Don't head into retirement without a strategy that addresses both income and taxes. For more information, please contact Ken Wink at Summit Financial, working with people you trust. Call 586-226-2100 or visit summitfc.net.