My Favorite Money Murder: Scams

about their money. And so we are going to share some stories. We are going to laugh with some of these people who are posting, but we also want to normalize and know that it can happen to us. And so we just need to know that what it looks like and how to how to avoid it and use these people's stories to help us, which is why they're sharing them on Reddit.

and our money. And I think one of the things I've seen so much happened for folks is this feeling of shame around it, so it's why people aren't talking about as much. So now we're just doing a public service. This is I mean, this is gonna be a somewhat fun episode, but also a very spooky episode and also

a public service episode. So first though, this episode is brought to all of us by collections sometimes cute, almost always odd, and occasionally spooky from stamps and coins to precious moments, figurines all the way to jars of hair and nail clippings. These accumulations of similar items in one place can tell us a lot about people and tell you what I'd take any of those groupings over incessant collections calls. Speaking of primetime collections, We've got a specially

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this real? Like it makes you stop for a second, Which is why when we talk about the importance of simplifying and efficiency and all these things that we talk about helping with your values based spending, and we say this goes beyond your spending, right, it goes into your life when your mind is not cluttered by a million things, when your money is organized and managed, When things like this come up, you do not so quickly react to them.

It's because of these quick reactions that we most often fall victim to scams and not fully thinking things through. And you can't blame a lot of us for doing this.

A lot of these scams prey on urgency. So it makes all of the things that we talk about on every episode of Frugal Friends we feel that much more important because when you are thinking clearly, and when you know where your money is going, when you are keeping tabs on your transactions, then you don't fall victim to scams as easily, because anybody can fall victim to them.

our money can be protective factors for us. But we do want to give some example stories, and all of these examples do represent examples of very common scams that have happened to real people, all on Reddit. And then we will wrap it up with a what are some of the key tips in how to avoid being scammed? And certainly it is listening to the entire backlog of frugal friends can be a protective measure for sure. Shameless plug.

less than a year old. I made sure that I wanted to compile stories that were current, that are current scams people are facing now within the last year, some within the last six months. So this first one is called an overpayment scam, and you may have heard about it in some iterations, but here it is. The member comes to the drive through when we're pretty busy. She wants to deposit a check for between three and four

thousand dollars. Her balance is roughly two hundred dollars or so, and I checked her recent transactions to see if a deposit like this was usual for her. It wasn't, as she hadn't had a posit of more than five hundred dollars in the last three months. I look at the check and I don't recognize the bank it's supposedly drawn from, nor do I recognize the maker. It's some generic quote

unquote advertising company. At this point, I'm following usual risk mitigation procedure in depositing the check with an extended hold on it, but I didn't immediately think it was a scam. I returned to the drive through and tell her, all right, I made the deposit for you, but it's on an extended hold because of the amount. The funds should be available within five business days. Oh no, that's a payroll. They told me to tell you. It's payroll, all right.

Red flag number one. Payroll checks have different regulations, and unless your real life employer has bounced your checks in the past, we can't place holds on them. But of course what is payroll is subject to verification. Usually it's enough to see that they've deposited checks in similar amounts from the same maker on a regular basis, which can be verified by their account history, so they're really cautious. So she goes on to say, she asks, is this

your employer? She responds, yes, it doesn't look like you've received a check from them before. Is it a new employer. Well, they're going to wrap my car for advertising and I need to wire fifteen hundred dollars of it by tomorrow so they can do the rap, so there can't be a hold on the check or I'll lose the gig. And there it is Red flag number two confirmation. I explained the scam to the member and after a bit of conversation, she was appreciative and asked for us to

reverse the deposit. So apparently this is a common scam. And if you read ways to make money posts on the Internet, like one hundred ways to Make Money car rapping, is there always in every list and car wrap scams are common, and so it even goes on to link to a FTC article on car wrap scams and having your car wrap is a legitimate kind of way to make money, but it's the reverse check overpayment where you are getting three thousand and then have to pay fifteen

hundred for the car wrap, that's the scam. So this was our first scam from our friend.

to fall for this. But they have all of that because Google has scam barriers, like if they see certain recurrent scam messaging or scripts or whatever, they'll just send it to trash, and so they try to evade that and get it into as many primary inboxes as possible on the off chance somebody will accidentally click on a link in the email and then they're taken to a phishing site.

deposit it. I called my manager over to supervise, and he agreed to open the box together. Inside were four bricks of aluminum foil, which, of course is even weirder. I asked the member what was up with that, and he said, yeah, They told me I had to ship it that way. In each brick was indeed ten thousand dollars of strapped one hundreds. While my manager and I

dual controlled the count. The member was adamant that there has to be forty thousand dollars exactly, and I kept telling him that we can only deposit what's physically here. I asked him what the story was, and he said, I got a call from the IRS saying his Social Security number has been compromised and that he needed to move all of his money into a secure wallet. The callers had asked him that his account on the credit union was told him that the account wasn't safe and

asked how much he had. He told them he had seventy thousand dollars. They said he needed to ship the money to a PO box in Ohio so the quote FBI could ensure its safety. They told him this needed to be done in cash, and he needed to wrap each bundle of bills in aluminum foil. Per quote IRS policy, that's in fact done an attempt to bypass shipping carrier scanners, which try to find these types of things and reject the packages. You're actually not allowed to ship cash for

a reason. After all, FedEx was able to catch this box of forty thousand and give it back to the bank member, but they did not catch the other box, which had thirty thousand dollars in it. He lost that money. They had a lengthy conversation about the scam, how it worked, what to look out for in the future. Wholely smokes that is a lot of money.

So it's not this may not happen continuously, but you get at a right place, right time, right where maybe you're hearing stories of banks closing, and then you get this call and and things just kind of make sense in the minute when you're not thinking clearly right.

we'll see as we keep going through more stories. They're also preying upon this sense of urgency that you have to act fast, which can also decrease our ability to think logically and clearly because we need time and space to be able to do that. So if our livelihood feels threatened and we've got entities posing as the most powerful authoritative entities, we can see how any one person could get caught up in being talked into this is what you have to do to move towards protection of

your money. And I mean, I'm so grateful that you know, he was able to keep forty thousand, but he lost thirty thousand. So hopefully we can have some takeaways from this, because I don't think there's protective factors, but I think any one of us, like you're saying, Jen, right place, right time, can become susceptible.

part time in full time jobs. So this one says I probably just lost over fifteen thousand dollars by a scam. I got hit by somebody who told me of a job under open text that makes money. For this job, you need to complete tasks, but sometimes you have to put in money. At the beginning, I put in like fifteen hundred and I actually made seven one hundred back. But then now I have over fifteen thousand in with a loan eight thousand that I took that had fifty

percent interest. Now the current task needs like seven to eighty USD to be completed. After all the money I put in, I have a couple days left. Now I'm wondering did anybody actually get scammed after completing a task or do they always raise the price until they don't have any money to spend so you can't complete the task. And I, in this case of losing all the money, do you guys have an idea what I should do or just have to move on?

For each one, there are like twenty scam ones. And so I actually was looking into one like a website that I guess sends out a newsletter that compiles these like data entry jobs, and I was like, oh my gosh, this sounds great. Let me put my email in so I can vet it before I tell our listeners about it.

And sure enough, scam. The newsletter is a scam because they just are pushing like not just like at first affiliate offers, but then actual like I looked at their trust pilot reviews and the only five star reviews were like definitely paid, and then there were a ton of one star review saying that it's just gonna take your email address and send you spam. And thankfully I use the email address that I use for spam. But you just have to be really cautious. The legit ones, you

won't have to pay for anything. So like in the past, I have paid for a Flex Jobs subscription just for like one month. That is a legit company to find remote jobs. Flex Jobs not sponsored, so I have paid for that. But then all the remote jobs on there do not require payment. So any legit online job won't require any payment to start, and it just makes me

think of MLMs. Right, any legit job won't require you to put money up front, and any legit franchise business will allow you to market in traditional marketing avenues, not just offline, like not just social media marketing.

the onboarding process. It was an online job, and so for the computer and some of the equipment and just to fill out different forms and that kind of a thing. They were asked to send money up front in the hiring and onboarding process. And I think that this was an online job, and so I think for somebody too, what could make you a little bit more susceptible to this is if you've never before worked an online job.

I think, not quite knowing the landscape, not quite having the knowledge of I'm used to going into a brick and mortar building. I hear of a lot of people who are working online. This must be what they do. You know, it's probably pretty typical that I'm going to have to send them a few thousand dollars just to get me set up in their system, and then I'm going to start earning xyz amount of money. And of course when we're starting jobs, a lot of us are

familiar with we giving our social Security number. I remember there was a legit job I had where they wanted to know medical information about me, and that's a whole other story. But we're used to giving information in this job hiring process, and so I think sometimes on our own understanding the line between what's normal what's not normal, can we can again find ourselves falling prey, falling victim

to these things. But again, one of the very kind of base level things that should raise a red flag is you shouldn't have to pay money for the job that somebody is hiring you to be paid for and be able to create a pause and ask yourself more questions.

They'll make like an excuse for that They're English, might not be great, so which you know, you might not know if it's an international job that you're working remote for, you won't really think twice like there are legit international companies that hire in the US, like I worked for a really great Israeli company for writing or freelance writing, and it was very legit. So there are just some tells. So if it feels scammy, then double check. That's what we're saying.

and my brother lives with them. My brother an adult, an adjunct professor at an accredited university, albeit he is heavily on mental health medication recreational cannabis, drove my dad to the bank, let him take out the cash, and let him give it to the scammer. At no point did either of them call me or any other sane member of our family. Anyway, my dad called the scammer back. They sent a lift driver. However, the first driver apparently

refused the pickup. They sent another driver who accepted the envelope of cash and drove away. Then my dad called me and told me what happened and realized he'd been scammed. I lost my mind. I literally just worked with a government agency about informing consumers about scams. I had just told him what to do if this exact situation happened. I told him someone would call him saying they were his grandson, they were in jail, they needed money immediately,

and he had forgotten. Anyway, I understand that they preyed on my dad and used his fear to reduce his faculties, so he didn't question this. But my brother I still haven't spoken to him about this because I'm so angry.

How could he have let this happen. And again, you and I Jen talked about this story before we hopped on the ability even of utilizing AI for this type of scam in that people can look at your Facebook profile and see are you away, are you out of town, which could lead your family members to be more likely to believe that maybe something like this is happening. You're either in jail or maybe sometimes the scammers will lead you to believe that a family member has been taken hostage.

So again, these situations that are kind of ramping up urgency over a loved one, someone that you care about, and a lot of times praying on the elderly community

with a grandson or granddaughter. They're either in jail or they're being held hostage and they need this amount of money immediately in order to get them out of whatever situation they're in, and sometimes even being able to find recordings of their voice and morph them into whatever they wanted to say, so it could even sound like it is your grandson, your granddaughter calling and not the scammer

themselves calling. So I think one of the key takeaways in that is, like this example gave calling the actual person so you can be led to believe. No, they're in jail, they're out on vacation, they're being held hostage. I can't talk to them, but taking a pause and actually calling their number yourself to be sure was it actually them who called me can be step one.

So this mom got a phone call and she was worried because her daughter was out of town training for ski race. And so she answers this call from her daughter. Because scammers can use other people's numbers from their own phone. It's called I think porting, and so it looked like it was coming from her daughter, right, it wasn't coming from a fake number. And she greeted it, and she was greeted by yelling and sobbing said, Mom, I messed up, screamed the girl's voice, and Mom was like, what did

you do? What happened? And she said the voice sounded just like breeze, the inflection, everything, And then all of a sudden, I heard a man say, lay down, put your head back, and she's thinking her daughter's being gurneied off the mountain because she's training for ski And then they said, listen here, I have your daughter. You call the police, you call anybody. I'm gonna pop her something so full of drugs. I'm gonna have my way with her, then drop her off in Mexico. You're never gonna see

her again. So I'm just reading it to say like, this is kind of the script they'll use. But after a chaotic, rapid fire series of events that included a one million dollar ransom demand, a nine to one to one call in a frantic effort to reach Brianna, the

kidnapping was exposed as a scam. So the first thing you should do is find another phone to call that person's phone number, because they will be very adamant about you not getting off line because they know if you call that number, they're gonna pick up or they could pick up, but they choose people who are out of town or doing something specific so that there's less likely a chance they will pick up. You know, brie was probably really actually on the mountain skiing, so it's very

unlikely she would pick up. But Brianna did call her mother back and she said she didn't know what the fuss was about. Everything was fine, but that was artificial intelligence, like for better or for worse. We did an episode on how great AI can be for helping you. But these are some of just the downsides that people will use. And the article, she says Americans lost two point six

billion dollars in twenty twenty two from imposter scams. So this is two point six billion is huge and it's not just a niche part of Americans that you can write off as dumb or something. This is two point six billion. It's affecting everyone.

I should have looked more closely or called my dad, but I wanted to handle it like an adult on my own. I thought it would be easy enough, so I call them up. So they do the standard talking on the phone with the guy even downloaded one of those apps that lets people control their mouse from wherever, so they're on her computer controlling the mouse. I've had that happen with people working on my computer before, a

lot of us have. Yeah, I should have listened to my bad feeling, but I'm pretty much paranoid anxious, so I just talk up my bad feeling to my brain, just being like that. So what happened next felt so dumb, where they take me to a server where I had to type in the amount of money out of my checking account or something so that they ended up sending me two thousand dollars. And then she freaked out because I got a text on my phone and everything about

and I start having an anxiety attack. But the person I was talking to on the phone was taking advantage of me, playing nice, just telling me to take an uber, go to Walmart, get two Apple cards and put five hundred dollars on them to give them the money back. Again, I should have seen the red flag, but I was so anxious. I wasn't thinking right. I thought I was going to go to jail. I did what they asked

me to. I was on the phone with them the whole time that they gave me the number, only to find out that they were lying to me the whole time. Told me not to tell my bank or my family about it, and of course I did. I called my dad, which led me to locking me out of my bank account and try to claim fraud. So all of this. In the end, they ended up losing one thousand dollars.

But I've heard of this exact scam, whether it's posing as geek Squad or some antivirus software that's just hey, your renewal is coming up, and if you want to cancel it, click this link. And then it's somehow you end up being on the phone with what you believe are their customer service representatives, and through the exchange they kind of claim to say that they're having issues in being able to process the cancelation. It must be you not being able to click the right buttons on your computer.

So let me just take over your computer screen and see what's up, which for many of us we've done that. I remember even in college with just it. At college they were able to easily take over my server and help me kind of clear my cash and get me

up and running again. So that is something that I think a lot of us have experienced someone being able to take over your computer and in that process being like, okay, well you have to type in the amount of money that we owe you back, and then they say, oh, you typed in too many zeros, so now you've refunded yourself more than the amount that you should have been refunded. So now you owe us that money back, and who

knows what amount it's going to be. For her, it was two thousand, for someone else it was up to ten thousand dollars, and so that can kind of get you into a panic of now I owe you this money back, And for my friend, the person on the other end was getting pretty irate with them of how could you make such a mistake. You've now cost us

all this money. You immediately need to get to the bank and refund us this money and it needs to happen within twenty four hours, so there's that urgency thing, and then of course the other red flags of don't tell your bank about this, don't tell a family member, just tell your bank that you're wiring a friend. So there's a lot of language that they try to give you which should be a red flag. If they're telling you specifics of the wording that you need to be using,

that's a red flag. But again, three of these scams have happened to friends of mine in the last few months, so it's real, it's out there, it's happened in the regular folks. Beware.

your money back on these types of things. But again, this is something people who are aware of their finances will open these emails because they'll be like, hey, this is a renewal for a subscription I do or do not have, especially if I don't have it. I don't want to be charged. I don't want to be scammed. So I don't want to pay for a subscription that is not mine. So I'm going to take, you know, the necessary moves to not pay for it. And if you just pause before you do this, read these emails.

I know we don't want to read all of these subscription emails, all of these emails that are so standard issue that we just become kind of mind numb to them and we just do the actions without reading the terms and conditions. But a big tell is when you read these, like especially this one, it's got a lot of typos, and they're not all so clear, Like subscription is misspelled once it's such spencryption right, but it's it's spelled correctly everywhere else. So there will be a typo.

In a normal setting, there will be no typos. People get paid so much money to make sure that their copy is edited and you will see just a little

bit of a weird email address. So if you go look at the center, so ups email scams are really popular right now, and the email will be the series of numbers in letters so long that you won't be able to see the at right, and so it'll be these the series of numbers and letters at something dot ups dot com, So they'll actually be able to get through email verification because the ending is ups dot com, but it's something dot ups dot com, so it will

look like, you know, you've got a package delivered or something you need to pay to pick it up, or something that is a really popular scam going on right now.

never met face to face. Just never, ever, ever, ever, ever, should there be a reason that you're sending money via gift card or wire transfer to someone you haven't met. That should just be a big red flag. Even if you're feeling a sense of urgency, press pause, ask yourself quiets. Avoid clicking on links or opening attachments in unsolicited email.

So again, back to that canceling subscription scam, The main issue that happened was that they clicked on the link in the email that was sent to them, rather than going to their email subscription. So just believing that the email came from geek Squad rather than going to their geek Squad subscription. So okay, you get an email, go to your actual or call your bank rather than going

through whatever text or email is sent to you. And the links that are given there go to how you know you access your bank, how you know you access your subscriptions. Don't ever go through the text message link or the email link.

already got the malware. And especially with attachments, because these companies will send your invoics in an attachment sometimes and once you click it and then it's already downloaded, then it's too late. And so that's why taking a pause and then always going in if it's something you do subscribe to, always go in via the front door, which is the actual website itself. Don't ever go in through

the side door. And then if it's something you don't subscribe to, then going immediately to your credit card through the front door and seeing if it's something that you have been charged for previously and take that up with your credit card issuer or your debit card issuer, and then again go through the front door to the come beany that is quote unquote going to be charging you.

you meet online. Never share personal identifiable information, resist the pressure to act immediately, use secure and traceable transactions, so that means not paying for things by wire transfer, prepaid, money card, gift card, other non traditional payment methods, or even saying no to cash only, high pressure sales tactics, deals, and whenever possible, work with local businesses, and just be cautious with what you share on social media.

in a different time zone all day all night. What have you so, man romance scams, you know the red flags. I think the things that we really want to get across to you is how important it is to be organized with your money and know that no problem is so dire that it requires you to pay for it immediately. Like we talk about emergency funds and what is an emergency, and sometimes we'll say medical things might be an emergency. In reality, you have three to six months before you

need to pay that medical bill. They won't even send it to you for a month. Right You might have a co payment at the urgent care clinic for twenty bucks one hundred bucks. But even emergency crisis, emergency medical events, you don't have to necessarily take from your emergency fund.

There are very few things that require you having to immediately put out cash for I think maybe the biggest one would be your car breaks down and you need to put out cash to fix that, or you're air conditioning something that you need a service done quickly.

this was weird. Two days later we had it happened again where a bottle of vegetable oil showed up from Walmart dot Com, another ten to fifteen dollars charge on our account, so we knew something was called Walmart. Talked to the customer service department and they said it was on my account with my name, but the email address was just a bunch of jumble of letters and number,

you know, like a spam type account. And the debit card used was my husband's, which I didn't even have on my account, so something had happened where we'd been spammed. Somehow his card was compromised. So luckily Walmart was really helpful. They reversed the charges and we called our bank, deleted his debit card, got a new debit card number, and

everything worked out. But you know, it's just petty spooky to know that there's people out there trying to scam you and take too money, and that just makes us all have to be a little bit more aware and pay attention to our account. Thanks guy.

not being aware of what's happening around you. It actually sounds like your awareness of your Walmart account, what's showing up at your door, the charges and transactions that are happening, and then knowing where to go to rectify it. I mean, you handled it flawlessly. But for the untrained person who's like, well I am getting these things to my Dora, I

actually did get a box tissues and some oil. Oh okay whatever, or if you're just not looking at your transactions, you could easily miss a fourteen dollars charge, here, a twenty dollars charge, but being able to see it, see that the wrong card is being charged and rectify it. I mean, well done. But yeah, this is wild and also a little yeah, definitely scary. It's showing up at your door. Not only do they have your card, they have your address.

every transaction. That's why it behooves you to either do daily or weekly transaction inventories if you can so, and at least monthly. Honestly, I don't keep a budget, but every month I will go into our account and in power and make sure that I'm not being scammed. Really, my biggest concern is does anybody have my money? And that's one of the benefits of travel hacking and using new credit cards is that I only ever use a credit card for six months and then I lock it

and so I'm using new numbers quite frequently. So you don't have to do that. In order to use new numbers. You can cycle through the cards that you have that don't have annual fees and lock down others. Yeah, it is my basic and I'll share something in the lightning round that's quite funny that as a result of my last transaction inventory.

sure it wasn't a scam. So I signed up, but apparently I had accidentally signed up with a different account first, an account I didn't realize I had that was connected to my Facebook. And then I couldn't get the premium account for some reason. So I tried a different email address. I thought. I tried on my original account, right, like my original premium account that I've had for ten years, and it wouldn't work. So I tried a new one. Lo and behold, I was not trying on my original account.

I was trying on a different account that was connected to my Facebook. I didn't realize you could have two Spotify accounts with one email address. So I'm over here with my premium trial for free. It's work and it's driving. And then I get charged for Spotify and I was like, hold up, I don't even have credit card information on file with either of my Spotify accounts. And I was like,

this is a scam. Somebody has hacked me. And so then I get in chat with Spotify and they're like, yeah, you did it with your email attached to your Facebook and then you also have this account that has a username, and then you also have this account that you're using. And I'm like, I don't have three accounts, I have two accounts, and lo and behold, Travis is actually he uses my Spotify and I thought he was using my

username Spotify. He was using the Spotify attached to my Facebook account and so he's had premium for the last two months. He didn't ask questions why he just used it, and I'm being charged and so like I go to Chase and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Spotify can't do this. Reverse these charges. They did and I go to Spotify. No no, no, no, no, no no. You can't have two accounts with one email address. Delete the Facebook account, delete that one. It's not a thing that

you can do. I'm not gonna be charged for this because I didn't even know this account existed. So I did get my money back, but I thought it was a scam, but really it was me scamming me. If that makes sense.

a corporate complex, only pretty run down. The room had literally a whiteboard and a desk and a bunch of folding chairs mismatched folding chairs, and about ten to twelve other people trickle in, and I then sat there along with everybody else for at least two hours, where it wasn't really an interview. It was more of a pep talk of this guy trying to train us in selling electricity.

And it wasn't eighteen dollars an hour. It was eighteen dollars per base appointment, meaning that let's even say you make four appointments in a day, you're only going to get paid for your first appointment eighteen dollars, and then you're making whatever amount of money after that, which I can guarantee you is zero amount of money. After that, and as it was becoming clearer and clearer to me and I knew I'm not going to do this, I still could not bring myself to get up and leave

the room in front of everybody. One other brave person did. There was one person who sat there for maybe forty five minutes, and he was like, all right, I'm out, And then the guy tried to use alpha male techniques on him, like, well, where are you going, dude? You want to say goodbye to look such an amazing opportunity. You don't have what it takes. Oh, Jen, it was wild. I did not remember that until this lightning round, but it was the weirdest experience and job interview I used

that firm loose leigh. Oh my goodness, but yeah, I was wild that happened, and I wasted two hours of my life where I needed money. I wanted to be making eighteen dollars an hour, and instead I spent two hours learning about how there wasn't an opportunity to make

eighteen dollars an hour. And here I was. I mean, I at that point had my bachelor's degree, Like, I don't know why, I felt like I needed to go be pedaling something well really, because Social Work at the time wasn't paying me eighteen dollars an hour, so it's like, whatever else can I find all podcast and make three dollars an hour?

times a week. We send out freebie saving tips, life hacks to help you save money.

in romance scam. Help right right? Oh, it gets better, It gets it was great, then it gets better.

payment is behind. Other bills are also behind. I am beyond stress because he refuses to listen. If anyone has ideas, please post.