Episode four seventy five, Top six money making scams to look out for in twenty twenty five.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live your life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking scams that are on the rise. We listen and we don't judge because everyone is susceptible to scams.
And especially when they're getting so much more nuanced and sophisticated and looking like the real deal, it can be so so easy to fall into some sort of trap, especially if we're not on guard. I know so many people personally who have found themselves a part of a scam. It depends on how far they've gotten into it. But realizing whoe that almost got me or that did get me,
and so it doesn't discriminate anybody could fall victims. So we're going to talk about that and help you to be more equipped for kind of detecting these things and protecting yourselves. But first, this episode is brought to you by the Real Deal. We're not doing fake cheap stuff over here. No knockoffs or scams. We're talking the pure, legit, real thing, like us in the flesh doing a book signing at Tombolo Books in Saint Petersburg on January fourteenth
from seven to eight pm. It's the real deal, folks, hope to see you there. If you are in the area, if you're local or even within a short driving distance, come see us January fourteenth at seven pm at Tambolo. It'll be fun.
Yeah, head to Tombolo's website to RSVP and can't wait to see you there. So it is January, and in January a lot of people make the goal to pay off their debt. I know the first thing I did when I decided to pay off debt was figure out how can I earn more money so I can pay this debt off faster. And when you're trying to make money on the side, you can get into some dodgy places. And the dodgiest of places are the things that scam you. But they scam you off the back of something that
actually can make you money. And so that's a lot of what we are seeing in twenty twenty five for these scams that are on the rise. We went to the FTC dot gov website and looked at their past year of scam updates, specifically just for making money. We love scam, we do periodic scam.
We don't love that they happen right right right, just are obsessed.
We are learning about them.
Are obsessed with them and helping people because the more we read, the more we realize that anybody can get scammed. It is truly a you know, scammers spray and pray for you to be at the wrong place, wrong headspace, wrong time, and that's it and then they've got it. So this is definitely where a lot of people will be at the wrong place at the wrong time looking
to make money. But if you also are obsessed with scams, some of our past scam episodes, we did episode three eighty Love and Money Romance Scams with April Helm and we also did episode three point fifty my favorite money murder Scams, where we just read some of our favorite Reddit posts where scammers have murdered people's money and I believe that we should. That was a Halloween episode and I believe I want to do something like that again because Reddit never fails with the r scams. If you
are interested in learning more about scams. Are scams on Reddit? I'm sorry, that's better than Google right now.
It was a little bit of a departure from our typical episodes, but it felt so right.
Yeah, it was so good.
All right.
So let's start out with just a couple of overall tips to take with you some mindsets when you are looking for a side job or even a different job. So maybe you're trying to make more money, switching careers, industries, going back to work, whatever. So the first thing, and some of these are going to seem obvious, but it's good to be reminded it is. So.
The first one is.
Are they asking you to pay for a job?
On?
Employers, including the federal government, will never ask you to pay to get a job. Anyone who does this is a scamer. Even if they are asking you to pay for education through their company to get their job.
It's pay for the equipment. I've heard of that too, which sometimes that will happen, right if you are a if you're a barber, you're gonna have to pay for your own equipment to start at a salon. So the reason that we can fall victim to this is because it does happen for some people, or if you're kind of getting into a new field. I knew a guy who this had happened to where he was starting a remote job. He'd never worked remotely, and so they were like, you have to buy your computer, you have to do
these different things. He's like, Okay, like I've never done this before. That seems like it would make sense that I'd have to purchase my equipment to do this job. And turns out it was a scam. But yeah, you really can't fault them for that.
H what do you know about them? So search online. This is probably the most important thing you should do with any opportunity, is to search online for the name of the company plus the word scam, review complaint. Do all three of those searches to figure out if they've scammed other people.
Also, make sure that the reviews about this company this job are real. Sometimes success stories and testimonials might be too much of a glowing success story, which could be really misleading, So be wary of the ones that just look so positive, so too good to be true. Maybe even click on some of these profiles see if the people who are reviewing have ever reviewed other things. Make sure that they are legit reviewers, so do a little bit more digging.
This is so, so so important. I was just reading on Reddit this morning of a social media this is a survey scam specifically, but they took this girl's TikTok, who is a real influencer. They stole her video, very good quality, and they just put like a seven hundred dollars Amazon gift card over it. They sponsored the post, so this is a paid post that you would be seeing in your feed and basically saying how she does
surveys to make money. She's not talking about this company, and she's also not talking about making seven hundred dollars on a survey for this company. And so it was a scam, but they stole they stole the video so it looked legit. They also bought likes and comments, and you would have to see that. You would if you clicked on the commenters, if you clicked on the profiles of all these likes and commenters, then you can see
there's like no followers, no interaction, they're all bots. But you'd have to click through and look do your research before you figured that out. It's very easy though, to see once you click through and that leads into LAS one. What does a trusted friend or loved one think about the offer? So go and don't just take influencers' words for it, because it might not really be their words. They might it could even be AI. We'll talk about
AI later. They are doing, they're taking the likenesses of influencers or just random people and having them talk about false things. So talk to real people that you trust in real life and actually listen to their opinions.
So the first scam that we're going to talk about here is a car wrap scam. This one seemed to be on the rise in twenty twenty four, and they usually will target college students, but kind of anyone in particular who's looking to make money. They usually are going to be offering around six hundred to seven hundred dollars a week to drive around with an ad for some well known company wrapped around your car, like literally like a big billboard that your car could get wrapped in.
They're saying that. Usually it's an energy drink that they're saying, you know, wrap your car and this advertisement for this energy drink will pay you six hundred to seven hundred dollars a week. Just to drive around and basically be advertising. And the thing about this is it is a legit thing. I do know people who have done car wraps got
paid for it. It's something Eric and I had even talked about doing when we lived in our RV, was we're gonna be going on road trips, we could get our RV wrapped and practically pay for all of the renovations of our RV. We didn't end up doing that, but it's one of those things that is legit, and then people are capitalizing on that and taking your money. So here's how this scam would work. They would send
you a check for a certain amount of money. Let's say they're sending you, you know, six hundred and seven hundred dollars up front, and they're telling you to use a portion of that money to wrap your vehicle. And they of course are handling the wrapping as well. So they send you this money. It's a fake check. However,
the bank will clear the check. The banks won't usually catch fraudulent checks until days, possibly even a week after the check clear about a week, so the money is like technically somewhat accessible or at least pending in your account. And then they're saying, now you pay us, let's say four hundred dollars to wrap your vehicle. You pay them then out of your own pocket. The bank catches that
it's a fraudulent check. They reverse the transaction, So now the money's no longer there and you are out the money that you had paid back to the scammer to quote unquote wrap your car. But it never ended up happening. Plus you might end up paying a processing fee or some sort of yeah, bank fees because fraudulent.
Yeah.
In the comment, people are saying doctor Pepper is a big one that they've been trying to get. That they've been saying to get raps. F G fuel is another one. I'm seeing amounts for five thousand dollars checks, thirty two hundred dollars, fifteen hundred, and it's all like they deposit it and then one week later is when the bank finally tells them it's fake. So it's a real thing. But do not if somebody approaches you, then it is
a scam and maybe you won't fall for it. But if you have young people in your life that are in college, then make them aware of stuff like.
This, because you might be thinking well, they gave me the money, so that makes sense for me to have to pay, but it might not.
It might not be real money.
Next one, I think is one that might get a lot of people, and that's appointment setters. So there's this new trend on social media claiming that you can work from home and make big money as an appointment setter for different companies sales staff potential clients to close deals. You're typically paid an hour hourly rate, but you might earn bonuses based on the number of appointments you successfully
set if you need. So this is a real job, but it's a modestly paid job and it will be far more overinflated what you can make by these people on social media. They will say you need training that you need to pay for. That is absolutely false. If you get an appointment setter job, any training you need, your employer should offer it at no cost to you. So, again, modest income. It is something that can be done like very easily. It's if you can get it. If you
can get the work, then it's not bad. It's some good extra money. But the truth is honest. Employers will never ask you to pay to get a job, and no one can guarantee you a job. These scammers will also guarantee these jobs and they just they can't. So do your research again, check Google, company, review, company, scam company complaint, and take into consideration those things we talked about at the top of the episode.
The next one that we're going to talk about is fake investment opportunities. This could be anything from business opportunities to investments. There's a lot of scammers out there using kind of like infusing AI into the frauds and scams that they are operating. So it could be that when you're asking, you know, you're chatting with some chatbot about a business opportunity or some sort of investing that you're not even actually talking to a real person, but they're
kind of like faking a real person. That these scammers have trained the chatbots to respond in a way that's fraudulent, misleading, giving you incorrect information, probably causing you to then invest monetarily your money and none of it is real.
So this one's a wild one, and we talked about this in our other scam episodes for Romance and My Favorite Money Murder, that they will impersonate someone you know. This will not just look like it's coming from a random ever you've never met, and they can use the AI technology. You can get on the phone with them and think it's somebody that you know that you are talking about a business opportunity with It is wild. The
favorite money murder one. They were using the AI voice to make it sound like someone you love is being held hostage and you need to send money to get them out. And that was all AI. And one of the things one of the recommendations was is hang up
and call the person who is supposedly kidnapped. But AI is getting more and more sophisticated, and so if it gives you a bad feeling, especially if it's a business investment or a stock or a crypto investment, then reach out to the person like in another way, or anybody else who may know them, or any of that to get verification.
They also recommend that if you're thinking about buying into a business opportunity, ask the seller to give you a one page disclosure document, which is required by law by legit businesses. So if the seller makes any earnings claim, they also must give you an earnings claim statement. And if they then say anything that contradicts what's written in their disclosure document or their earnings claim statement. This could
also be a sign of a shady business. So I think some of the biggest takeaways here is just even more research, not just trusting the things at face value.
The next one I think will also be huge in this community or could be, and its task scams. So they create the illusion of making money and it will always start with you getting a message. Actually I don't want to say it will always start with you getting a message, but essentially what it is in a task scam, scammers ask you to do simple, repetitive tasks, such as
liking videos or rating product images online. The supposed job is to complete tasks in an app or online platform for which you'll earn money from a quote unquote commission on each clip. But those promises are fake. They aren't real commissions. There are no commissions and nobody but the scammers make money. And the reason this really caught me is because I did something like this legitimately to make
money when we were paying off debt. I was in I think it was lion Bridge was I was evaluating search. I was a human search engine optimizer. I was looking at what I think it was for Facebook what the search was and then what the results were, and I was kind of rating what the search results were, or I was watching like videos to kind of help the algorithm make sure it was giving the best search results.
That's what I was doing. But it was for a legitimate company that I had applied for that had not reached out to me, and it was it did not feel scammy, was on the up and up, and I did make money doing that. So this is like those influencers or people it's like get paid to watch videos and just make it sound too easy.
It was not.
Complicated work, but it was still like time consuming. So it worries me so much that these tasks are so close to what actual money making like tasks could be. It's insane. So in order to amvoid these and ignore generic or unexpected get texts or What's app messages about jobs, real employers will never contact you unless you contact them first, and never pay anyone to get paid or to get a job. I never had to pay for anything, and don't trust anyone who says they'll pay you to rate
or like things. That's not what I was doing. It was not rating, I was not liking. I was helping the algorithm. I was a human brain teaching a computer algorithm, which now sounds like I'm helping our robot overlords hang over, but.
Training it in the good way, not in the fraudulent way.
Yeah, it was real funny stuff like real bizarre, real random. It was always it gave me interesting things to learn.
I think that's funny. Okay.
The last one for me on here is post office jobs, and I found this one so interesting. But also I feel like I've also seen these as well, like specifically looking for a postal job. And maybe part of it is because there is, at least for me, this idea that that's a good job, like they make good wages, you've got good pension like, and they're hard to come by, like they don't often there's not a lot of turnover within postal work. So this is just my impression of
these types of jobs. So maybe that's in part why this particular type of job is so useful for scamming. But essentially they are the scammers would be reaching out as if they are the usps. They will post an ad or a listing maybe to your email, and it will link to a website that looks like a real USPS website has the logo, it has everything, but it's
actually a copy. And so when you're on this kind of fake website, everything is created by the scammers, and they may ask you for a registration fee, your application or employment package fee, or a fee to apply, or a fee to take the Postal Service exam. The pattern here is that they're asking you to pay in order to get this job. And so the takeaway here is that it is free to apply for jobs. You should not have to pay an application fee to apply for jobs,
and to go to the true legitimate websites. I think being wary of any link that is sent to you through a text, through an email on social media, instead going to the website itself, rather than taking the link that someone is just sending you, because even though it looks legit, it might not be. It could just be a very very good copy.
I'd like to give an honorable Do I still have one left?
Yeah?
Do we do six? Okay?
I want to say I have an honorable mention after this? Okay, okay, but my last one, this is another one I did while I was paying off debt.
I've done this one too.
Mystery shopping So mystery shopping is where companies will send mystery shoppers into stores, into restaurants to try products or services, like to see how the service is by the weight staff, how the food is in restaurants, all kinds of just get the overall customer experience. I did a couple movie ones where I had to go to the bar and see if I was id'd, and one time I was not. I know, I Oh gosh. I felt so bad. I
was like, no, I'm going to get you fired. I'm so sad, but I got to see a free movie and get.
A free drink. Nice.
So while some mystery shopping jobs are legitimate, there is best Mark, Coil. Those are only two come coming off the top of my head. I was working with like four or five at a time. They specialize in different things. Like Coil is just hospitality, so it's restaurants and hotel stays, but you really got to you got to do a lot with them in order to get a hotel stay. Best Mark is like oil changes, like a lot of going to car dealerships and test driving cars, all kinds.
Of things but which are legit.
Right, But no mystery shop being company will ever send you a check and say deposit it to buy gift cards. That is not a mystery shopping job that you will ever see. Uh, And so they want you to send them like the numbers on the back of the gift cards and then they say you get the money, but they're taking it all. So no mystery shopping job will ever ask you.
They will.
And see this is where it gets dicey. You do have to pay for your meal or your product during the mystery shop, Yeah, and then they reimburse you and pay you usually on top of it. So it is buying a gift card could seem like an actual thing that you would have to do as a mystery shopper, but that is not something they're ever going to that particular thing going to ask you to buy. They don't ask you to buy something specific. Like if you go in you order to a restaurant, you order whatever food
you want. They'll say order two entrees and two drinks, but you get whatever you want like in those categories. Same like if you go into Target, you buy, like buy a beauty product, They're not going to tell you exactly like what to buy. So they're not going to tell you to buy a specific thing that's a sign of a scam.
Yeah.
That was the thing with mystery like the legit mystery shopping that I didn't love is that you had to pay it all out of pocket and then it took like three months to get reimbursed. So that was just too long a time for me when I'm in the midst of debt payoff.
Mystery shopping is not a way to like really make money for us. It was a way to get out of the house and do things without spend, like without dipping into our budget. That's what we used it for. So we didn't do a lot of I still get emails from these companies right now. They have one where they are doing they're helping a company do like a total like restock of their changing their branding and so
they're taking everything out and putting everything back in. So that's something you like people can get paid to help with right now. So we didn't do stuff like that. We just did like the restaurants, the movie theaters, just the fun stuff that we could get out of the house, have a date night and have it covered. But I would have to spend like an hour hour and have after writing a report, I would have to take pictures during it, so like it wasn't something we did often.
It did not seem glamorous, right, So if it seems too good to be true with mystery shopping, it absolutely is.
I think the gift cards, the gift card thing is one of those red flag pieces, like if someone's asking you to get gift cards, that should raise some alarm bells that ooh, this might be a scam. This is probably a scam. Okay, what's your honorable mention?
My honorable mention is MLMs because they do fit several places on our list of money making scams.
They did come up quite a bit.
If you were to google money making scams, you are going to see MLMs on nearly every list.
So, and my girlipops, if you are buying from your friend's MLM, you are perpetuating the problem. You are part of the problem, even if you're not joining one and participating. If you are buying from one, sensy, I can't have bought well. A lot of them have changed to affiliate models in twenty twenty four, so that is something to be aware of. Some of your least favorite MLMs are no longer MLMs, like Saint Arbond Body which was Beach Body are no longer MLMs.
Oh that's good.
Yeah, So let's just I mean, be aware that you have to pay for this business opportunity and then you have to pay monthly for either website fees or product minimums. If you're not selling your minimum and you want to you know, maintain in the company, then you have to buy product. That is that's a scam. You're you know, there is, there is not And according to the I think it was the the FTC. Some part is in order to avoid legal action, they actually consider like the
person at the top, and they're downline. They're downline. You know, boss babes are legally considered customers. So you're not to your upline, you're not a boss babe, you are their customer. Yeah, yeah, you're and not supporting that's in the contracts.
You're not supporting small business owners. And when most of the money is made off of recruiting others who have to buy their own inventory, research shows the people at the bottom are not making any money. It's the top one percent that's actually making money. But yet all these promises of if you work harder, you hustle harder, you get more people in your downline, then you'll you'll do it.
You'll finally get there, you'll finally arrive, and it just doesn't get there because really the population there's not enough people for you once you're at level six, seven, eight for you to actually make any money.
That's just statistics and.
Mass MLMs are declining, They declined greatly. The ones that still are multi level are just are dropping. I love to watch Cci Suarez and Hannah Alonso just like totally go in like nerd out on these things. I think our biggest issue right now is that we do still see buying from your friend's MLM is supporting small business
and really you are supporting scammers. So that I think that's why I wanted to give it an honorable mention, because it is not a scam on the rise, but we could still be contributing to it by purchasing these products, so be aware.
Yeah, and that's not to be like rude to the friends who are involved in this, but I think that there can be some education and information that happens to kind of help people have legitimate paying jobs because I think the desire is real, right, Like we find ourselves in these any of these scams that we've listed off out of in some circumstances, desperation for I need to be able to pay my bills, I need to be
able to earn a little bit more income. I want to, you know, to keep living in this house, but the cost of living keeps rising.
So what do I do?
And I think that that urgency, that desperation can make us even more vulnerable to some of these things that are like, oh man, that wouldn't require a ton of time. I can make a lot of money, and oftentimes it's just it's too good to be true.
I think honestly, it comes back to that I deserve mentality, Like they will get you with. You deserve to be a business owner, You deserve time, flexibility, And you're like, okay, yes I deserve this, But we're thinking too, who's small is the problem? Yes you deserve it, but you deserve more and you can do better. But we just don't think that we deserve that level that we are truly
capable and deserving of. Like we're talking now about like how do we invest in businesses in our local community, like not just to like build up our local community, but to also make money and like honor this desire in ourselves to be business owners, to be our own boss. And there are a lot of ways that you can be a business owner of a legitimate business with not
hundreds and thousands of dollars of capital. And there's just it's who you surround yourself to figure out, Like are you surrounding yourself with internet and social media influencer scammers who are trying to lead you down the quote unquote passive income scam path or like legitimate like business owners who have experience and can mentor you.
Do you know what else we deserve And every single episode is.
Really the biggest and the best, and it has inspired me to be greater.
The Bill of the week, that's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week.
Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams.
Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week.
Hi Jen, Hi Jill. This is Michelle from southern Orange County, California. My bill of the week this week is our new refrigerator bill. Our fridge went out Labor Day weekend, and I saw on the friend letter that there's usually appliant sales during Labor Day weekend. But luckily, even before then, my husband, his name's Jeff, he actually looked into how
to maybe fix the fridge. First. When that wasn't going to work out, we went to the home depot and we got a fridge, and it was a little bit above our budget, but he decided to ask if they could do anything about that, and they did, and they gave him a huge discount on top of the Labor Day sale, so that was awesome. And then when they delivered the fridge the next weekend, we were able to get even more of a discount because there was a small damage. And he just called the person up and said, hey,
this is what happened. The delivery people said this amount, and the person was like, oh, okay, well let me give you an extra hundred dollars off. So our bill went like four thousand down to like twenty two hundred. So that's my bill of the week. Thank you bye.
Whoa yes. Yeah. So in the front letter every month, we're talking about we don't just talk about freebies, but also like when the best sales are because we know, like we can be tricked by sales, right, Sometimes sales are like, oh, it's one of a kind, but it never is. But if there truly is like a best sale, time,
we're gonna tell you about it. Like appliances. I went into home deep BOMs, like, when are the best sales and dude, was like Fourth of July and Labor Day sometimes Black Friday, Yeah, and those are the three best ones.
Yeah.
Yeah, we just got appliances as well with Black Friday, and it was a legit deal and the deal did legitimately end.
Now they're back up to full price.
So yeah, Sometimes, especially if you're in the market for these things, it's good to know when you can be purchasing these things and then be preparing for it. So great tips here, congratulations and also well done even negotiating
further for a discount. Sometimes we can assume that these big box stores like home Depot are not going to be able to offer us further deals and discounts, but you just never know what other deals could possibly be happening, whether or not they're trying to offload certain products from the floor.
Who knows.
And then yes, when the item is delivered if there are small minor damages that could also lead to a discount, So well done. This is an extreme drop in price, and yet you still have a new fridge.
That's so exciting.
If you all listening have a bill you want to submit, if it's about negotiating, timing the sales, getting new appliances, trying to repair your stuff first.
Yes, as we glossed over that one, but well done, then call it in.
Leave us the bill. We we just love.
Hearing from you and all of your creative ideas about Bill Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash Bill. We can't wait to hear it. And now it's time for the lightning round you.
All Right, a time you suspected you were being scammed online, Oh my gosh, survey scams, Like it's normal for a survey, you do the onboarding and it's normal to not get picked for the actual paid survey. But like, because of that, I did several like survey scams that didn't get I'd like never gave anybody, Like I never got any money sent to me or deposited any money, or like took it too far. But it was just annoying when you're like, ugh, I just wasted my time and this is a scam.
Like I don't don't get scammed in the end, but like just the waste of time figuring out it's a scam.
Yeah.
Now I don't do any surveys anymore.
Because it's just too much work to figure out is this even legitim.
Yeah, whether it's legit or not not worth it.
I mean, I think I'm getting scammed.
People are trying to scam me daily, whether it's in my email or a text message. I will often get text messages. I think just this week I got one from you well claiming to be ups that my package can't be delivered information from me. But if you look at who is it coming from, like usually it'll be some random email.
Oh my gosh, I got on yesterday. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna read it after.
We'll go for it. You kind of now.
So it's from an email address, it's an imassage. It says Hi, I'm Emily with Robert half and we have remote online part time slash full time jobs. Your background and resume have caught the attention of several online recruiters, so we'd like to offer you a job. You can do from home in your free time. This job is easy and has no time constraints. Daily pay ranges from two hundred to five thousand and is paid on the
same day. Join us and be part of America's booming job market and start a career you can be proud of Requirements twenty two plus. If interested, please contact on us on WhatsApp. That has a phone number and it's from an email address, that's an app. It's Sharon Hinton vs MM two five three one at gmail dot com.
So there you go.
I got this yesterday, yeah, and forgot about that.
Those are the main things that stand out to me.
And that is a random email address, like it's not even a domain of some legitimate business.
Now anything that's at Gmail, at yah, who at something?
Well, and just all those random numbers and everything. And then let's communicate on WhatsApp. That's another one. I mean, WhatsApp is a legit app, and I do communicate with friends on there, But people offering legitimate jobs and income, they're not trying to communicate with you on WhatsApp.
That's not where they're going. And so mine too will be.
The one that I got this week was about a package that they needed more information from me in order to deliver my package. And so it's the time of year right, like we're recording this in December, So people they're just they're spraying and pray in like you said already, they're expecting that you probably do have a package arriving. You're not sure from who is it UPS? USPS? Is it FedEx? Yeah, you have a USPS. Parcel's just showing me a number. It's not a US number. Yeah, it's
a plus sixty three numbers. That's not US. Which there you go, and then yeah, there's just so many things that are not legit in it. But if you're not you know it totally aware of that, what that scam would be is trying to get your personal information and maybe even your credit card because this is going to charge you in order to.
Receive the package.
I also am a part of so I'm an adjunct professor as one of my side hustles, and so I'm on the university's email kind of domain, and I will get all of the emails that will also get sent out to the students.
And there are weekly.
Scams being sent to these college students about jobs remote work that could pay them like thirty to forty five dollars an hour, and even me as an adjunct faculty member, I'm like, this is a great deal.
I mean, if you quickly know, like this is not legitimate.
But yeah, when they are offering something that is so far and above and beyond what you think that job should be paid.
It's probably not legit.
Which thinks would be awesome to work five five hours a week and get paid tons and tons of money. But that's the thing I think these scammers are praying
upon people in vulnerable situations. The look the ones looking for extra work without a lot of time involvement, flexibility, high hourly earning, so college students and moms and people who just people paying off more money, people who want to pay off debt and get their financial life right like you guys, So definitely be aware and thank you so much for listening.
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Grugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.
Oh it stinks to have to be so on guard. I think to need to be so cynical. It feels like when it comes to protecting yourself against scams, to just constantly be vigilant.
But that is the world we're live in, I know.
I just I want to, like, I want to believe that when you know, this person is telling me your Amazon account was logged into in Mumbai, India, if it's not from you, please verify your account in this secure link below and with letters and numbers in a short link. And I just want to believe that somebody's helping me out right, and not just like this is just a picture of everybody's account is getting logged in, specifically from Mumbai, India.
Well, and there's so many actions that we're used to taking that are necessary, like you know, when I am trying to log into my Gmail account on my phone and then they're like log into your email and verify that it's you, And so these are actions that we're accustomed to, and then they can kind of become wrote like, oh, yeah, my accounts are constantly trying to be hacked, and I know that I'm constantly also needing to approve or deny
certain things that Sometimes it's like, okay, you get this text, it's like, oh no, that's not me, let me deny this. But it's actually the scammer who's trying to get you to log on to deny this thing and praying upon our habits, even the good habits that we have, of protecting ourselves. So it's just so overwhelming.
Here's the scammiest thing I got. Let me read it to you.
Ho ho ho Kai.
It's Santa. I couldn't wait to say hi this Christmas season. I didn't sign up for no text from no Santa.
Are you sure guess what?
Kai? For the first time in years, there's a new baby reindeer at the north pole. That's cute thing, cute, actual cute.
You must have signed up one time for like texts from Santa for your son.
And then at the last one it was four days of text. Was text on four different days in a row, like four days in a row. It's been so much fun texting you, Kai, tell a parent I sent a gift to their Gmail email. Check the junk folder too.
Ho ho ho.
I never checked the junk folder. I never checked.
Well, now you're going to yeah, I.
Just assumed it was a scam, you know, well, it probably how they know it was my Gmail, right, Like.
How do they know your son's name?
Right?
I think it was my mom.
I did it, and.
I can't find anything from Santa on that day. Zoom. Yeah, I don't know.
I just gotta tell never friend asking me about this. This might be research we do after we hang up here, but this friend is asking. They came ac us this webinar about how to earn money using Amazon's free audible app. Now I got to look into this and figure out.
I don't know.
Is this a scam? But already it sounds too good to be true? Yep, well, sounds good good to be true?
It is.
I think the takeaway is just like hang out with real people in person.
Yes, that's it.
It's like to hang out with us at Tumblow Bookstore in Saint Petersburg on January fourteenth at seven pm.
That'll be real, that won't be a scam, And I'll.
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