Hey, fam, I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the Red Table Pop podcast, all your favorite episodes from the Facebook Watch show in audio produced by Westbrook Audio and I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review on Apple podcasts. Right now, someone is trying to steal your money, your identity, your passwords. A Red Table alert. Last year, Americans lost five point eight billion dollars to scams.
How Barbara Corkrane went from shark to victim. These scammers just something so simple that I'm frankly embarrassed to talk about it. They're coming at you from everywhere. I down my dating app. He was like, I can teach you crypto and we lost everything by the end of December. No one is safe. Take a good look at Tristan. If you see him on any dating site asking for money, it's a scam. His image has been stolen. What you need to know to protect yourself, your money, your family,
hold on. If that blows your mind, Wow, this will be interesting. And this one is quite a scam. Scams and hardtopams, scam and spam like I get thousands of spam risk calls a day, like I've already had five This morning. This is scary, but it's real. Right now, someone is trying to steal your money, your identity, your passwords. No one is safe. You won't see it coming. Every time you click in the email, answer the phone, swipe on a dating app, scroll through social media, you are
at risk. So how can you protect yourself from the masterful minds of scam artists. We have the answers. Barbara Corkrane, one of our favorite savvy millionaires on Shark Tank, is the last person you think will get scammed, but it can happen to any one. Hey, Barbara, Hey, Hey, tell us what happened. Well, I run a very big business. I have all the right people around me, I have all the security measures in place, and it's these scammeras did something so simple that I'm frankly embarrassed to talk
about it. But my accountant got an email from my secretary authorizing a four hundred thousand dollar transfer of funds. I invested in a lot of property and renovate property, so it seems a normal kind of thing. The scammeras pretended to be Barbara's secretary. They sent a phony message telling her accountant to pay an invoice for bogus renovations on an investment property Barbara supposedly bought in Germany. It
wasn't out of the norm. They had changed one letter of my company's email and everybody just went through emails never noticing it. Wow corporate and corporant right ye wow, see wow, that looks really and also that odd number three thousand, seven eleven cents. I mean, who was gonna question? And a couple of days later, the money went out
a wire transfer to Germany out. It went okay. But it wasn't until my accountants sent a confirmation to my real secretary saying, hey, we're confirming this one last time, right there, boom. I learned that I was hit by a SCAMMERA wow, it was simple, it was clever. We all read our emails every day, but we don't examine our own email address. Lucky for me, there is a happy ending of the story. A big bank I have here in New York frowze the money until they discovered
the scam and they sent me the money back. You were lucky. You know what I really learned through this whole thing that scammers are not sophisticated operations is simple. Most of the scams in America happened with simple little things like that that you can identify, and so if they can fool me, they could fool anybody. Oh no, that's that's real talk right there. Yeah. Do you know what I think is very important? Almost all scams happen online,
through emails, through text things like that. My new rule within all my businesses now is you're requesting any money, I don't care how large or how small, pick up the phone and confirm it's real. And that's so easy to do right out of it. Back then, I had to be almost burned to realize it. Don't you send me any invoices. It's not gonna work. No worry about it. You do not have to worry about that at all.
We love you on Shark Tank, you fierce one. Thank you, thank you for just giving us those tips today, and we're glad that your story had a happy ending. Yes, thank you. Wow. Yeah, that's wild. So Nikki scam turned into a family nightmare, and here's her story. After the devastating loss of her mother, twenty five year old Nicki Hutchinson sold their house and split the money with her dad,
Melvin two hundred and eighty thousand dollars each. Ready for a fresh start, Nikki signed up for a dating app and was thrilled when she made a connection. For more than a month, she messaged with someone who said their name was How. They bonded over their Asian heritage and even discovered they were from the same small town in China. Weeks into their relationship, how told Nikki he wanted to teach her how to invest in cryptocurrency, and suggested she
used the funds from her mom's house. Nikki's skepticism turned into belief when a tiny first investment started to grow. She began to invest more, eventually convincing her father to do the same. When their account balance showed more than one point two million dollars, Nicki and Melvin thought it was time to cash out. They had no idea what they were about to uncover. Wow, yeah, it's it's a crazy story. It is. Yeah, I met this person in
early November and we lost everything by the end of December. Well, how much had you invested by that? We invested all the house money that we had two teach. Yeah, it was everything, we had everything. Oh my god. Yeah, it was just so fast. I downlard dating app. My goal was to like just meet people and potentially make connections and stuff. Were you able to talk to him on
the phone or actually meet him in person. So I actually did meet the Sky on FaceTime and it was the craziest thing because when he started talking, he was like, I can teach you crypto and stuff, and I was like, that sounds great. Cryptocurrency is digital money that is not regulated like a typical bank. To buy cryptocurrency, you sign up for an account on a crypto website also called the plat form and transfer money from your bank. When you want to cash out, the crypto has converted to
real money and sent back to your bank. Wow. So I thought he was going to teach me about crypto and actually show his face and teach me his tricks and stuff. But when I actually face timed him, it was his eyeball, Like it wasn't even his face. And I know, like, right then and there that should have been a huge red flague. But yes, a minute which you said all you saw was his eye. Yeah, I'm telling you, it was literally so close I want to
face And so at the time it didn't register. It more so felt like he was telling me I'm super shy, super nervous, introvert, so I was giving him the benefited. So that conversation lasted ten seconds. It was super short. He cut me off. He's text me immiately, you're so beautiful, like I can't wait to teach you crypto. And I was like, that was weird. I didn't see anything romantic with him, and I voiced that. But that being said, I was like, I would be happy to be a friend.
But you know, even though it wasn't a romantic relationship, we were texting every day. He would ask me, how are you having a good day? Just developing. I thought was a kinship and he took advantage of that. When you first gave him money, What was the situation around that. He sent me the link to start crypto dot com, which is a legitimate site, and so then from there he sent me another link which would be the fake platform,
and he said start small. I think I put in a thousand dollars he recommended and said that's a lot, and he's like, well, this is an investment. So he kind of grooined me to use the legit platform. So I did crypto dot com and then transfer that money to this fake platform. Yeah, so that's where they get you. He was telling me when to buy and sell and I'm like, how do you know to buy and sell this much? And he'd be like, I'll teach you that in the future. So he never really taught me anything.
He just taught me how to put money into this platform, right, so how to move it around. Exactly when you saw that you were getting a profit? Was that when you brought your dad in? Yeah? So she started investing more and more money, and she would show me the profits. I was going like, wow, are you serious? Now she's making eighty thou dollars a week and it's like, you know, is this how wealthy people stay wealthy? They make good
investments and they get good returns. Eventually I said, okay, Nikki, I'll get in with you. I mean this, this looks like it's making money. Everything looks good. What is so interesting about this platform? They would show profits, but they would as just show negatives to make it seem legit when you're dying and selling, so it wasn't all positive. And how did you find out that it was fraud? My dad and I go signe once we hit a million, Ude withdrawal, and so I said, my scammer, I don't
know how to withdraw Will you help me? It's like, of course, but you need to pay your taxes first, and these taxes were over three D sixty dollars. You have to pay the I R S before we can release your money. Yeah. The more she pressed to get the money, two more angry he got. Don't you trust me anymore? You know we don't have the money we pay you. You've gotten all of our money. Well, you got fifteen days to pay it or we freeze your account. So they try to make you panic. They want you
to sell things, borrow money from your parents. You know, do you have a four oh one K you can cash in? Wow? But prior to that, when I first got that initial like you gotta pay taxes, I was like in a panic mode and I was just like, I don't know why I'm going to tell my father. He just retired, so I ruined his nest egg And
it's it gets emotional to think about. We were driving back to Nashville December the fourteen to go see my parents for Christmas, and she was quiet the whole trip, and when we got to the hotel she just broke down and just was just uncontrollably crying, and I was like, what is wrong, and she's just Dad, I think I've lost our money, We've been scammed. And all I could do was hug her and tell her it was going to be okay, that we'd get through it. So that
was probably the worst Christmas. We had no money, we couldn't bite each other presents. We just went to the store and bought something to eat and came back and cooked it and said a prayer together and ate and that was our Christmas. I'm so sorry. So by the end of the night, she said, I'm going to make this right, and she's been on the crusade ever since to make people aware that these snakes are out there, and she's so angry that people take advantage of people
like that. You know, we went to local law enforcement and they didn't have the means to help, so they blew us off. When we sold the house, my dad wanted to have an RV. Luckily I paid cash for that before all that started, or we would have been homeless. Do you guys live in the r V together? Yea full time. If you can imagine living in a four hundred square foot house on wheels. But we have each other. I have a set income, she works, she gets an income.
We pay the bills together. I have this saying that these people are cyber rapist. They not only rape you of your money, your innocence, your trust, your future. And when you finally figure it out and you confront them on it, they laugh at you as they hit the delete button and they go on to somebody else. They're criminals. Yeah, it's just it's horrible. I don't know what the answer is, other than don't let your financial fantasies overrule your common sense.
Once I figured out that I wasn't going to get our money back, it's gone. I, being the man, want to take care of my family and everything. I crumbled. I don't grow a beard. I was trying to grow a mask to hide behind, and I just spun into this dark hole. I started drinking. I even had a conversation with her. I said, Nikki, if something happens to me, here's what you need to do here, so you need
to call. And for a month I just drink, and finally one day I woke up in the middle of the night and I said, I'm not gonna let her lose two parents. Next morning, I stopped drinking. Uh, and it was hard. Once I fully forgive myself. This beard will come off and I'll be a new person. I'll be I'll be a new person. Yeah, I'm not there yet. Yeah, but each day it gets better. Yeah, you can break my bank account, but you're not going to break my family.
There you go. It's beautiful that you both have each other through this. Thank you both. Nikki, you had such great intentions. Yeah. I did. I I really thought I was helping. And that's why I couldn't get mad at her. She didn't steal the money from our family. She tried to make it better. Your goodness and your kindness was exploited. Thank you. I appreciate just getting to talk to you, lovely ladies. Thank you. I like your red table. Thank you that I may have to rethink it that beer
totally so. Eva A. Lesquez is the CEO of the Identity Resource Center and has critical information to keep us safe from scammers. Welcome. I'm so glad to be here. Yeah, we definitely need you here. Thank you. Can you explain this crypto scam business? I can absolutely explain the crypto scam. But there is so much more to this. If you look at the anatomy of a scam, there are some commonalities with all scams, not just crypto but all of them,
and that's trust, urgency, and confusion. They will build trust with you, sometimes they'll try to borrow trust, maybe a trusted brand, maybe it's the government that's reaching out to you. Confusion of process. I've heard cryptocurrency investments can be very lucrative, but I don't really know anything about it. But it can also be confusion. Um with a lot of the pandemic relief who had all these grant scams, and oh, you can get money this way, and the government is
going to be here to help you. And then of course that sense of urgency. Yeah, if you don't do this now, you're going to miss out. If you don't do this now, we might come and arrestue. If you don't pay these taxes, now, we're going to Yeah, this is the I R. S. Yes, we've had a few of those people saying that they're calling from the border and we have someone here with your name. If you're gonna come down here and give us X amount of dollars and we're gonna have to come arrest you. It's like,
I mean, it's crazy. It's been the most craziest things building that sense of urgency and fear. Yes, but you're right in borrow trust, like we're from the immigration office. People being out of the country and I'm stuck here and I need help getting back. But people's emails will get hacked, so you're thinking you're getting it from someone that you know. I just got one of those prominent friend of mine. They said they couldn't get to money.
Could I go and get this money? Not called her assistant and of course they were like, her email have been hacked. You actually just practice the first rule of scam prevention, which is go to the source. If you didn't initiate the contact. And I don't care if it's coming by email, by phone, text message, by social media, direct message by carrier pigeon, I don't care what the method is. You need to go directly to the source and verify in your research. Are there networks where they're
grooming scammeras how to be scammers? Absolutely, the fraud ecosystem is vast. There are websites and the dark web that you go, oh, I need a list of valid emails to send my phishing attempts to I need credit card numbers so that I can go commit fraud. You can buy it in packages. They will give you a refund if you bought fifty credit card packages and ten didn't work. It is that elaborate. Yes, now we look at cryptocurrency
as a fraud payment tool. In the losses were about a hundred and twenty four million that were reported to the Federal Trade Commission. Hold on, if that blows your mind. Seven hundred and fifty million one that's crazy. Wow. All right, So Tristan King says being a victim of a scam is ruining his life. What's happening to him is more common than you think. This is Tristan King. He's a U S Marine, online fitness coach and father of two
living in California. But for the past two years, stolen images of him have been used on dating apps in social media to scam millions from unsuspecting victims. He's been known as Samuel Pete, Axel, Jake, and dozens of other names. His pictures are on websites all over the world, breaking hearts and destroying lies of hundreds of total strangers. That's horrible. Wow, Hey Tristan, good afternoon, ladies. How y'all doing. We're good, We're good. First, let me just say that I'm so
sorry that this has been happening. What is going on? They're essentially making people fall in love with fake met They're getting people out of a lot of money just using my images. So how did you find out that this was happening? So I just started getting messages on my social media. People will reach out to me and be like, hey, did you know that your images are being used? And I started getting hundreds of messages a day.
I've had women reach out to me and tell me that they sent tens of thousands of dollars with promises that I'm going to come home to them, meet their family, and we're gonna start a life together, just really tugging on their heartstrings. How do I tell them I have no idea who you are. I've tried to, you know, respond to these people, try to help them that hey, this is not me that you're talking to. But it doesn't stop. It's driving me crazy. It's getting out of control.
It's terrible. So it's kind of like a mixture of a catfish and the am situation. Yeah, he's a victim, and then you have the individuals thinking they're in relationships. We have this chain of victimization. Christen, how has this affected your life? I've had women call me, you know, hysterical um saying that they're in love with me. How much money they've lost? He as they got ahold of
my contact information. That's gotten to the point where they've reached out to my family loved ones telling them that a your son or husband is asking for money. So they're literally targeting my family at this point. But knowing that because of my images, this is happening to innocent people that truly just want to find love or just build a connection. It really breaks my heart. So what can he do? Unfortunately, there's not a lot that can be done because it's static data and it's being recycled
over and over and over. But when you become aware that there's another profile, report it and saying this is not me. I did not give permission on fourately, since it's so prolific, becomes a full time job. Well, listen to everybody, take a good look at Tristan if you see him on any dating site. Okay, asking for money. It's a scam. His image has been stolen. Okay, I really appreciate that, yes, And I'm wishing you the best around this. Man. I'm hoping that at some point there's
some laws and your accountability. Wishing you the best with everything, Thank you, thank you. You know, I just feel like, you know, I feel like we just do whatever they want to do and there's no consequences. I get so many emails almost daily, more than one email from like a fake papers to borrow and Apple, you know, we're freezing your account, we need you to update your information,
all of that nonsense. But I always look at where the email is coming from because it usually just looks crazy, a whole bunch of different numbers and letters, and it just like that part doesn't look legit. Like the body of the email will look legitimate. I mean, it will have the logo and all of that, but some of these are so polished and sophisticated you you just can't tell, which is why we just go to the source in
whatever way you normally interact with them. So if it's if it's a bank, do you logging on the mobile app? And I think that really important. And if it's a different kind of relating. That should be a red flag. But definitely don't you call the number that in the email Dad on shore. So we have some actual examples. So this is a T and T. You are one of the five thousand affected customers. Yeah, providing you with a free gifts would have been nice if they spelled
temporary correctly. Kind of a dead giveaway exactly. Yeah, I get those all the time. A free message, December bill is paid. Thanks, here's a little bit for you. Enjoy your Amazon you get ready to lock your Amazon account? Go here. I'll need to be behind nothing. No way. Yeah, go get into the app and look at the message center and see if customer service is trying to get in touch with you. Nine million times out of a hundred million, they're not. You're fine, fine, All right. Let's
go through the most popular scams by generation. Let's start with the elderly. What we're seeing with a lot of seniors are tech support scams and then romance scams. Losing hundreds of millions of dollars to romance scams. Wow, what about gen xers? Most of us are still working full time. We have families that were raising and a lot of us also have older parents, older parents, and we're to that we're helping to take care of, so we are distracted.
They're going to get you with an investment scan because it's personal to you. Yeah, what about the gens ears, willows, age Crypto and the payment apps because you know their new their edgy cash app, venmo Um and in particular, social media account takeover. Yeah, we have taken thousands of calls from people who have had their social media accounts taken over and people wanting you to pay them to get it back and make hostage videos. They don't get
it back. So we're just telling everybody, don't make those videos. Don't Totally. That was a lot. Yeah, but that was good. That was we needed to We needed to hear that. Thank you so much. This was deeply so much. I learned so much. Thank you now that I've sufficient scared everybody, but we have to be paying attention side. Yeah, the family fly any way too long. They can feel you. I can tell this for it's gonna be a news who got a magazine because they're sitting right by me.
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