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[00:00:37] [SPEAKER_05]: In this week's news, being tech savvy doesn't protect you from scammers.
[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_05]: One tech exec lost nearly $400,000 to a home scam.
[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_05]: The FTC won a battle against the huge nationwide credit repair scam,
[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_05]: but we begin with a familiar story.
[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_05]: A city loses more than a million dollars of taxpayer money,
[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_05]: then tries to hide it from the public.
[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_05]: It happened in Blaine, Minnesota, and the scam happened the usual way.
[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_05]: The con artists tricked a city worker into sending a payment of $1.5 million
[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_05]: for ongoing construction projects, but redirected it to the con artists account.
[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_05]: When the real company called to ask about the payment,
[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_05]: the city realized it had been scammed, had to send out another payment.
[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_05]: The scam happened in 2023, but the public wasn't told.
[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_04]: In February, the feds took down a sophisticated network of alleged fraudsters operating out of Maryland.
[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_04]: The city's
[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_04]: They used fake emails to impersonate legit companies
[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_04]: as they targeted victims that included local governments.
[00:01:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Sources say that includes Blaine.
[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_04]: The city hasn't told its citizens about the loss,
[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_04]: although City Council member Lori Soroya seemed to reference it
[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_04]: while debating a raise for the city manager at a June 3 public meeting.
[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Our city lost $1.5 million.
[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_03]: People do not know this in our community,
[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_03]: and I have not been allowed to speak on this publicly,
[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_03]: but we need to be transparent.
[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_05]: Elected officials would not discuss allegations of fraudulent Medicare billing
[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_05]: or what measures were being taken to avoid future losses.
[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_05]: The issue of governments being scammed has become such a problem
[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_05]: that we'll do a deep dive into it next month.
[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_05]: Scammers are trying to deceive voters too.
[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_05]: In California, election officials are warning about text messages
[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_05]: that ask about voter registration.
[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_05]: A link is provided so the voter can check their registration status.
[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_05]: The scam involves a text message.
[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_05]: The link inside the message does not result in a positive experience.
[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_05]: It's a scam we've seen growing around the country as we head into election season.
[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_05]: Election officials will not contact residents
[00:02:49] [SPEAKER_05]: about their individual registration status.
[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_05]: That's typically done by mail.
[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_05]: Some agencies may send out informational texts or emails,
[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_05]: but it's wise not to click any links included.
[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_05]: If you have questions, call your local election office directly.
[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_05]: Credit scores are important.
[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_05]: They determine what interest rates you may pay if you can borrow money at all.
[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_05]: Because they're important, scammers want to trick you into trying to boost them.
[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_05]: The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against owners and operators
[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_05]: of a credit repair operation known as Financial Education Services.
[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_05]: The lawsuit is intended to end what the FTC says is a pyramid scheme.
[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_05]: It also calls for severe monetary penalties.
[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_05]: Our AI voice Alexis reads from the FTC statement.
[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_02]: The FTC first filed suit against the FES scheme in May 2022,
[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_02]: alleging that the company preyed on consumers with low credit scores
[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_02]: by luring them in with the false promise of an easy fix
[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_02]: and then recruiting them to join a pyramid scheme
[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_02]: selling the credit repair services to others, costing them millions of dollars.
[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_02]: The FTC's complaint charged that FES and its owners,
[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_02]: operators and associated companies deceived consumers
[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_02]: about their credit repair products and charged them upfront for the service.
[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_02]: In addition, the pyramid scheme made overinflated income claims
[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_02]: that consumers could make tens of thousands of dollars recruiting others into FES.
[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_02]: The proposed settlements in the case will lead to more than $12 million
[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_02]: being turned over to the FTC for use in providing refunds to affected consumers
[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_02]: as well as conduct prohibitions against the defendants.
[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_05]: This is Scams and Cons News.
[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_05]: Losing a loved one is bad enough,
[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_05]: but learning that the money you spent on a gravestone went to a scammer
[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_05]: just compounds a tragedy.
[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_05]: A Pennsylvania man was arrested and charged with seven counts of wire fraud,
[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_05]: fraudulent business practices and other offenses.
[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_05]: Officials say he allegedly ran a business that scammed hundreds of about $1.5 million.
[00:05:01] [SPEAKER_05]: According to the indictment,
[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_05]: the man ran the con against nearly 500 people from January 2018 through September 2023.
[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_05]: He reportedly promised to provide custom headstone and engraving services for the deceased
[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_05]: knowing he would not fulfill the contract.
[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_05]: He would often demand 100% of the cost upfront.
[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_05]: A SIM card is what makes your phone work.
[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_05]: SIM stands for Subscriber Identity Module Card.
[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_05]: It identifies your carrier and allows your phone to access cellular networks.
[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_05]: If that card is swapped, someone else becomes you
[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_05]: and they have your data, including your contacts.
[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_05]: CTV News in Canada tells how it works.
[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_07]: There are a bunch of different ways to describe it.
[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_07]: SIM swapping is one of them.
[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_07]: SIM jacking, SIM splitting, cell phone porting, port out scam.
[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_07]: Multiple terms, but really one sort of type of attack.
[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_07]: Essentially what happens is cyber criminals, they cyber stalk you.
[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_07]: They gather information, publicly available information
[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_07]: that either you have shared on social media or on other sources
[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_07]: or they'll grab it from, they might send you a phishing email message
[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_07]: which is designed to get you to share even more personal information.
[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_07]: And once they've built up enough personal data on you
[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_07]: they'll then actually physically go to your wireless carrier, your phone store
[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_07]: and they will try to impersonate you
[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_07]: because of course they have all this information on you.
[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_07]: And they will ask to move your SIM card, your number over to another SIM card
[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_07]: which essentially allows them to control your phone.
[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_07]: Now, once they've achieved that, when someone calls your number
[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_07]: they're not going to reach you, your phone's going to be dead.
[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_07]: They'll reach them.
[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_07]: So they can use the phone now, your phone number
[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_07]: to log into all of your different accounts.
[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_07]: Your email, your financial institution, your bank, your payments, information
[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_07]: your credit card, whatever it is.
[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_07]: And then they can change the passwords and sign in as you.
[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_07]: That's what makes this attack so devastating is
[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_07]: it doesn't just target one account.
[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_07]: It targets all of them and it routes through your phone
[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_07]: which increasingly really is the key to your digital kingdom.
[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_07]: Everything that we do when it comes to cybersecurity goes through your phone.
[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_07]: If they can hijack that from you, they've achieved a pretty significant victory
[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_07]: which is incredibly difficult to come back from.
[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_07]: You now have to restore every single account that's been compromised.
[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_07]: It's called port protection.
[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_07]: And so all you have to do is ask your wireless carrier to activate it on your account
[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_07]: which is fairly easy.
[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_07]: And that, it raises the bar, makes it even harder for a stranger to try to pretend to be you.
[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_07]: The problem here of course is even though port protection's available to all of us
[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_07]: and it is free, it's not turned on by default.
[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_07]: We have to know to use it.
[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_07]: So consider this our call.
[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_07]: Call your wireless carrier now.
[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_07]: Ask to have that activated on your device.
[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_05]: If you had a 10-year-old daughter with brain cancer
[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_05]: it's likely you'd do whatever it takes to improve her life
[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_05]: including getting Taylor Swift tickets.
[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_05]: But you'd be devastated to learn that you paid a lot for those tickets
[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_05]: but had been scammed.
[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_05]: Fox 5 in Atlanta explains what happened.
[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_08]: Program director at iHeart 105.3, Otis Mayer, sent this story to Swift's record company
[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_08]: to make this moment happen.
[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_06]: It hit me in some special way that I was like, I know I've got to do something.
[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_06]: We want to send you and your mom to go to New Orleans
[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_06]: to see Taylor Swift on the Eris Tour.
[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_08]: Tickets, hotel, flights, all paid for.
[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_08]: Mr. Price, just what this 10-year-old fighter needs to keep pressing on.
[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_05]: Not every scam story has a bad ending.
[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_05]: It seems like a nifty idea for a scam and it is.
[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_05]: We've talked about it before.
[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_05]: Con artists are leaving fake parking tickets on cars
[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_05]: that include a QR code that can be used for payment.
[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_05]: Alhambra, California police say fake tickets were placed on at least five vehicles.
[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_05]: The sham citations claim that residents had not moved their vehicles
[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_05]: for scheduled street sweeping,
[00:09:05] [SPEAKER_05]: which immediately raised red flags for those familiar with the local parking schedule.
[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_05]: One fake citation was even left on a car parked in a resident's driveway.
[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_05]: In Alhambra, a legitimate citation is either a two-sided piece of paper
[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_05]: with instructions on how to pay the fine
[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_05]: or a yellow ticket in an envelope.
[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_05]: Neither includes a QR code to make payments.
[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_05]: Interpol says a commodity firm based in Singapore
[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_05]: filed a police report saying they had fallen victim
[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_05]: to a business email compromise scam.
[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_05]: Like the city of Blaine we talked about at the beginning of the news,
[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_05]: a scanner obtained access or impersonated a business email account
[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_05]: to deceive employees into transferring money to their bank account.
[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_05]: The email came from a fraudulent account
[00:09:51] [SPEAKER_05]: spelled slightly differently from the supplier's official email address.
[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_05]: The company didn't catch on and sent $42.3 million to the fake supplier.
[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_05]: The crime surfaced when the vendor asked about the payment.
[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_05]: Sound familiar?
[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_05]: Interpol and other law enforcement authorities were able to recover $39 million
[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_05]: from the fake supplier's bank account,
[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_05]: seven people were arrested,
[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_05]: and an additional $2 million was recovered.
[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_05]: This is Scams & Cons News.