By Billy Cunning in the Great America.
Thanks thanks forgot to get into the Springborough Panthers in the northern part of Warren County undefeated, untied, unscored on won the state soccer title and about thirty minutes Saint Ursula we'll be here to talk about their state championship. Next week is Roger Bacon, the home of the Spartans. But until then, Keith Faber is the state auditor. He's more or less announced he's going to run for Attorney General in a couple of years, maybe a year from November.
And away we go in Keith Faber. Welcome again. You're in the studio, which is quite unusual.
Love to be here till he's good to be in person.
Let's talk about fraud, because everyone I know on their cell phone gets these magnitude of calls, especially now they assume you're sixty five years old looking for Medicare and medicaid whatever it might be. And I hit all the delete and I say blocked the call, and that never works. And you got to call recently as a normal man about medicare. Explain and you're the state auditor, right, and they call you tell.
Me what happened.
Look, I get the same calls everybody else gets in my cell phone. I was getting two or three or four a day. And you know, they call and say, hey, this is Medicare open enrollment. Here's this information. They're not going to put you in a Medicare plan. They're trying to steal your information. If somebody calls you for that stuff, the best thing you can do is hang up. I like to screw with them a little bit, because if they're going to waste my time, I don't want to waste some of their time.
And so, you know, I go down the road.
Eventually they figure out that this person's not serious and they hang up on me. But I got to call literally last night driving back from Cleveland, and it was somebody purporting to be Bank of America claiming that somebody had opened or applied for a credit card in my name. And they are really good at social engineering. And this is the secret that most people don't know. If you're over thirty, all of your information is on the dark web.
So they have your name, they have your social Security number, they have your address, they have all of your information.
And so this person gave me the last four of my Social Security number and said we just want to know did you apply And I said no, well here's your confirmation number to say you didn't apply, and kept going on with a bunch of other stuff, trying to get you to talk to them, and then they're going to transfer you to another person, and that person's going to try and ask you for your information, and then they're going to try and get your SOLI Security number
or your address from you. What they're really trying to do is get you on tape saying yes to what they want to get you to do, because then they'll use that tape to lock you into things on the credit cards that the credit card companies will use, and to try and do other things. The short answer is, if you get one of those calls, if it's not from an eight hundred number, that's them, hang up on them, don't take the call.
If I get a call that says is this Bill Cunningham, I would generally say, yes, that's a problem.
It can be.
It can because they'll know who you are, Bill, and they'll even know your last four They may not know your whole SOLI Security number, but they're going to probably know your last four, particularly if they have hacked or gotten access to one of these things to where they've gotten new data and other information that look, every day, there's a new hack, there's a new data dump someplace.
And the reason I say over third is because what they're doing is going back in and hacking into a lot of the backup databases for a lot of these big credit card companies and healthcare companies and have all the things. The old backup data wasn't as secure as the new cloud data is, so the younger people's information weren't in all those old databases like yours and mine and other people who have been out there for a while.
But it's really bad, particularly for senior citizens, and we are taking steps with the Ohio Cyber Command to try and encourage people to just be your own best advocate, be vigilant. My brother was a computer professional for the Department of Defense and his father in law had passed away during COVID, and so he's been taking care of his mother in law's finances and he was literally sitting out on the lake in the pontoon boat and his mother in law calls him and says, hey, where's the
information on my brokerage account? Account number, and my brother says, okay, why do you need that? And she says, well, I'm trying to put this information. This guy called me and said he could get me a better return, and I'm trying to put all this stuff together. He said, don't touch anything. I'll be there in a half hour. I have to get off the lake. I'll be there at a half hour and we'll see what's it. But da, I don't want you touch anything. Put your phone down,
go sit on the couch. He got there, and she was literally one click away from sending all of her finance information, her passwords, and everything to a guy who pretended to be somebody who could have helped her get a better return. If somebody's calling you, somebody's communicating you to send you an email for that stuff.
Just delete it.
Unless it's somebody you know and have the ability to personally touch them, or you called them at a reputable business.
Be very very careful. Bea favor.
I get almost every day now PayPal, and I have no relationship to PayPal. I've never bought anything from PayPal. I will never buy anything Venmo. I have none of that stuff. And I'm told right now that someone is using my name and they want to confirm that I have bought an eight hundred dollars computer, a MacPro computer through PayPal.
You did not. They did not. It's fake. They want you to click on it.
Once you click on it, you're giving them access to your information, and you're giving the access to your device or your computer. I got one literally yesterday claiming to be docu signed. Wanted me to click on to sign a docusigning document. I got one the other day from somebody. It's not PayPal, it's it's one of the others that they want you to click on to open up, you know,
to to challenge an account. Oftentimes I'll get something from Low's pretending to say you just want to a tragger grill, congratulations, congratulations, click here. All of that are scams. Low's not giving out tragger grills. They're not sending you on solicited emails. They're not sending you information like that. The short answer is, if it's too good to be true, it is if
you didn't do the transaction. If you I got one the other day from United Airlines saying that my ticket confirmation and here's my confirmations.
I didn't book the United Airlines ticket. You don't call and say, hey, Wayne, that's not me. I did do that. I did not.
And you know what, watching read your credit card statements, watching to read your other statements, because I mean, you can certainly do what I did with the Bank of America yesterday.
Okay.
Once I got through and hung up on the lady, and after she tried to call me back from three different exchange numbers, I called Bank America to say, as somebody filed an application in my name and their Bank America, folks, I used the number on the back of my credit card. I didn't use the number that they gave me. I used the number on the back of the credit card. Ultimately, what they did was said, no, this was a scam and you were wise to not play Heith favor.
For example, let's say you're eighteen years old and you apply to go to college. Could be xavior U c NKU, could be Toledo, and all your information is on your application online. You fill it a home addressed data, birth socis, curity number, driver's license number, all that stuff, and then the University of Toledo was hacked. Yep, and so every young person who went to Toledo, uc Ohio state their informations on the dark web. Yep, and that's what happens.
I have a close family member who had his home equity line was tied to his checking account. Someone in Illinois went in and had the name and the photo of this person and all their private information. Goes into a bank in Illinois and what draws eighteen thousand dollars from the home equity line of credit into the checking account. That quickly left the checking account right out the door.
Yep.
And fortunately it was a fraud. The bank's liable. Am I correct on that generally that's true, but it takes a while.
Ye. Well, and then you got to change everything. It depends on the bank. That's right. Identity theft is a big deal.
And you know, I come from the school that we need to have, you know, public examples of folks that are doing that, and that's one of the reasons we need a new federal government to go after some of these foreign actors that are participating in part of this. But look, it's not just it's just not individuals. We have issued in the Auditor's office now a second bulletin instructing local governments to be very weary of something called
vendor redirects. A week doesn't go by that I don't find about one h hundred and fifty thousand and one case six million dollar vendor redirects where the community thinks that they're paying ABC Paving for paving their roads, and in fact somebody has got them to send their check for ABC pavement or the direct deposit or the ACCH to some hacker or somebody else. It literally has happened to a school district just not far from here that was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this
is happening every week. And so we directed a bulletin to the fiscal officer folks to saying, look, do not ever, never, ever, ever, never ever accept a redirection instruction electronically, not over the phone, not electronically, not by email, not by snail mail. Require people to come in in person if you've got a vendor that wants you to change how you're going to pay them, and then for a secondary safety method, have them bring in the person that they're dealing with in
your governmentity. So if they're working with your street superintendents and doing pavement and Joe's Paving is the one who wants you to send their check to a different bank account. Have Joe come in and tell you that in person with driver's license. That could happen to a homeowner. Correct, absolutely, it absolutely will happen some. But we'll call you up and say, hey, Bill Cunningham, great American, we want you to send your mortgage payment to this bank at a different bank at Fifth Third.
That's happened, and if.
You sent it to the wrong place, guess what you could be out that money. Now you may or may not have inshurch coverage for it. But when that happens, do not rely on the email address or the phone number that they give you. It'll be a great looking email address, it'll look just like Fifth Thirds email edditress. Their logos are going to be the same. Don't rely on the stuff we.
Sold your loan.
So let's say, for example, I'm a fifth Third bank. YEP, I get a nice official looking in the mail and an email beginning February first, twenty twenty five, we have sold your loan to a XYZ mortgage company and this is where to send it.
Right, what do you do?
I would first of all verify with who you got the loan through if you went to the loan broker at fifth third, I would call that person or call fifth Third themselves and verify from fifth third what you're supposed to do, and then get that in writing f fifth third. Make sure that it's actually fifth third you're talking about. But use the information in your files, use the address, the telephone number on that information, or even go find the fifth third information on your own, as
long as you're at a verifiable website. But the other thing, when somebody sends you an email, here's a trick that even the hackers are getting good at trying to spoof. If you hover over the from address and the name, if it says Bill Cunningham, and you'll hover it over and it says from you know, great American one two three at gmail dot com, it's probably not Bill Cunningham. Okay, you're going to have to look at those addresses to see who it's actually from.
Well, his life's so complicated, hey, you And if you're an older, if you're in your sixties, r seventies and eighties, and I've had fraud alerts from people I know that they have to someone's going to come by to pick up ten thousand dollars in cash. The Venmo account was wrongly credited and you've got to pay the money back
otherwise it's a legal matter. And this older woman who didn't have a Venmo account, but they cent her an indication that she has a Venmo account that had twenty thousand dollars put into it, and she had to give back ten thousand dollars in cash because they don't want to go through any and a person literally showed up at her house to collect ten thousand dollars in cash and the older woman had it ready to go.
Yeah. Yeah, Well, we saw this up in Clark County, Springfield a lot long ago that an older gentleman was being pestered by a guy telling him that he was going to send an Uber driver over to pick up some money and that his grandkids needed to get out of jail. And he came out and actually shot the Uber driver. They saw it as a scam and the reality the Uber driver had nothing to do with it.
He was just doing a pickup.
Those are the kind of things we need to track down and find the people, and look, law enforcement has a role in that, but it's a bigger picture.
Than just one one mistake.
You're one of the men or women on the state Reapportionment Board. It's the governor. I think we vote for that person. You do the auditor, which is you, Keith Faber, We vote for that press correct, Secretary of State. We actually vote for that person, and the legislature picks two in the House Democrat Republican, two in the Senate Democrat Republican. You're sitting on the board which is ruled quote unconstitutional by an activist Supreme Court justice who's fortunately retired. You
have to get back together sometime soon. What's going to happen next on the Reapportionment Board of which you're still a member. Well, I was actually the last chairman when we did legislative maps and got a seven zero bipartisan vote. So the legislative maps are in place for ten years. And we did that.
The current Supreme Court, the allied liberal organizations that sued us not once but seven times, dismissed their lawsuit with regard to the legislative map. So that case is over. We now have the congressional maps that we have to draw, and the congressional maps are going to have to get drawn by the legislature.
They have the first crack at it.
Hopefully they get it done because frankly, as a member of the Redistricting Commission, I.
Don't want to deal with this issue anymore. I'm done.
Okay, you to hear you haven't lived until Mark Elias and air Colder have sued you, not once, but seven times. But if they can't get it done, they can't get it done in the way the constitution requires. It will come back to the Redistricting Commission. Hopefully this time I won't be chairman. Somebody else will get selected. But if they you know what you have to serve. But you've had enough. I've been there, done that, and literally have the T shirt. So I want to make sure if
they pick somebody else, we will participate. We will draw constitutional maps for me what I've always believed the best way to draw districts are to draw districts that are compact and keep communities together where you can, so you have a right to be represented by somebody who shares your thoughts, your ideas, and your values. If you look at the red blue map in Ohio, you'll know this that people in Ohio tend to live around people who
think and vote like them. And when you want to get into this concept of proportionality and dicing and splicing and moving districts all over to get a political result, that's called gerimandering. I will not do that. I believe the current constitution prohibits that, and we will draw maps that keep communities together that are as compact as possible.
And ultimately that means that if you're in Hamilton County, the odd you're probably gonna be voting for somebody who shares Hamilton County's value.
Landsman.
If you're in Butler, Claremont, or Warren County, the odds are you're going to be voting for somebody who shares Boby ask this question these values, my friends in Warren County, we're lumped in with most of Hamilton County, and Warren County is not happy with the liberal Democrat named Greg Lansman representing them in the Congress. What do you say to the good residents of Warren County to vote seventy percent for Republicans and they can't oust Greg Lansman because
most of the votes in Hamlety County. Why did you hook Warren County with Hamilton County well again that map was actually drawn by the legend. Well, we extra participated in it, but the concept was to hit this proportionality guide and the proportionally guide that Marin O'Connor was trying to force down our throats where you have a roughly, you know, fifty four to forty six distribution around Ohio. I don't think proportionality is a mandate in the constitution.
I think compactness. I think keeping districts that are keep community cities, counties and townships together where you can, it's the priority. And if you're drawing districts like that, look, you're going to have more Republican seats than Democrats in the state that Donald Trump just won by twelve points.
So in the next event, you're going to do it again sometime next year.
Not to be this year.
It'll probably be the well, you're right, next year year, hext year, I'm forgetting where we are in the calendar.
We got Christmas yet.
And then you'll be sued again by Mark Elias and by Eric Holder. I assume you'll be sued no matter what.
Well maybe maybe not.
The big difference is we now have a constitutional Supreme Court, We have a Supreme Court. Remember last time, they could have continued their lawsuits on both of these maps, and they dismissed both of them. I look, if they sue us this time and we violate Articles two, three, four, five, or seven of the Constitution, we should be sued. If we don't violate those, and it's only proportionality they want to sue us. One God bless you. I think the Court's going to follow the Constitution.
Lastly, there was this floating idea of a grossly expanding the House of Representatives from ninety nine to like a one hundred and fifty. As an American, I don't want one hundred and fifty. We have enough government. I worry about the one hundred and fifty ninety nine House and thirty three Sentate.
It's enough for me. Where do you stand on that? If anything?
Look, I served in the legislature, I was former Senate president, I served in the House. It is it is much easier to herd cats in thirty three than it is ninety nine. It will be almost impossible to herd cats at one hundred and fifty. And so you add that, it just makes it more difficult to get things done,
more difficult to have an input. Yeah, smaller districts mean it's going to be easier to elect somebody from your neighborhood of your community, particularly when you've got bigger rural areas. But in the end, I don't hear rural areas complaining about their legislators. What I hear is suburban and urban people complaining that they want more Democrats because the legislature doesn't share their statewide perspective. Really, Ohio is well represented
in the mix of the legislature. Is Ohio a sixty five percent Republican state? Probably not, but we're certainly not a fifty four percent Republican state. And as you go through this mix, I think the current legislature can do what you do. But here's the key. We elect people to represent us. If you don't vote, I vote for you, that's right. If you don't like your representative.
Vote for you. Then I'll say to favor, don't know what he's doing.
But if the other way was that this board of experts would get together, I don't vote for to draw the lines, and I have no say on what they do, and they can pay themselves for what they want, and I got no I want to have a say right or wrong.
It was literally one of the worst ideas. And you've seen the places that this has happened. It comes for a political outcome. You can't take politics out of a political process. Drawing legislative lines is inherently political. And what every time they've tried to do this effectively, what they do is figure out a way to exercise their political
bias into the lines. The best solution in this area is to have districts that are compact and that allow people to be represented by people who are local and share their thoughts and their values and there.
That makes no sense at all. That's just crazy. I'm crazy. Keith Favor, State Auditors soon to be State Attorney General. Thanks for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show in person. By the way, you're here anytime you exist. Last give me one capsule on an email, a text or a phone call that you don't you recognize and who is that? And they want information?
What do you do? Hang up?
Delete because they want to use your voice. They want to use your voice, they want to capture your information. And they they're really good at what's called social engineering, where they pretend to get you convinced that they are somebody who they are not. Do not fall for it. Look, we have to be right one hundred percent of the time. The hackers, the scammers only have to be write once. The other thing is, and we didn't talk about this, and I'm not paid by these folks, and I don't
care who you use. But it's not a bad idea to get it any theft protection.
If you third bank for five bucks a month, if you have the ability to get it, get it, because when it happens, it is a pain in the butt to I know a lot of this stuff, and they'll help you do it.
The other thing is, if you think somebody's slides or cheating with your state information, call the state Auditor's Office one eight sixty six FRONTO h R, Ohio auditor dot gov. I have now put nearly one hundred and thirty people in prison for lines, stealing and cheating with your tax dollars.
Keith Favor, godspeed, thank you, thank you. Let's continue with more. Bill Cunningham News Radio seven hundred Wow.