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[00:00:27] This is Scams and Cons News with Jim Grinstead.
[00:00:30] In this week's news, an East Tennessee woman stops a scam by people posing as representatives of publishers' clearinghouse
[00:00:41] and a Wisconsin woman was paid taxes on $200,000 she lost to a scammer.
[00:00:47] Federal law once protected such victims from taxes.
[00:00:50] It was cut.
[00:00:52] But we begin with a Toronto man who encountered a scammer that left him physically broken and unable to walk.
[00:00:59] A man in Toronto gets into a cab and gives his debit card to the driver.
[00:01:04] The driver gives a card back, but it didn't belong to his would-be passenger.
[00:01:09] I just leaned into the car with my phone and I just showed him.
[00:01:13] I'm like, this is my card number.
[00:01:15] And as soon as I did that, he didn't look at me.
[00:01:18] He just pressed the gas right away.
[00:01:21] I was in a coma for like two weeks.
[00:01:23] Both my legs were severely fractured.
[00:01:28] It's like coming back from the dead.
[00:01:30] It's a growing scam in Toronto, according to Global News.
[00:01:34] Toronto police say fraudsters have cost numerous victims more than $40,000 in just the last seven months.
[00:01:41] The scam works when a person pretending to be a customer says they need a card to pay the cabbie and offers the person cash to cover the transaction.
[00:01:51] The nice person hands over the card and is given back a different card.
[00:01:56] That original card is copied and now scammers have access to the bank account.
[00:02:01] It took months for the victim to be able to walk again.
[00:02:04] Destroyed me, I swear it destroyed me.
[00:02:06] I'd rather be dead than alive sometimes.
[00:02:09] Yet another local government has been caught up in a cyber scam.
[00:02:13] In this case, it was Madison County, Mississippi.
[00:02:16] The method was a familiar one.
[00:02:19] A vendor that appeared to be legitimate convinced the county to send payments to a different bank account than it previously used.
[00:02:26] The new account belonged to the scammers, and it was eventually filled with $2.7 million.
[00:02:33] Police are working to find the scammers who posed as a construction company.
[00:02:37] The county sent three payments to the bogus account beginning in February for $128 million.
[00:02:44] A second payment for $1 million was made March 5th, and a final payment for $1.5 million was made March 12th.
[00:02:52] The payments were made based on legitimate invoices, but while the URL for the invoices came from a dot com, address and payment approval forms were sent to a dot US address.
[00:03:04] The matter is now in the hands of the Secret Service.
[00:03:07] It's another cash-for-gold scam.
[00:03:10] This one cost a 64-year-old Washington, D.C. woman $800,000.
[00:03:16] The incident took place at Leisure World, an active adult community in Maryland, where the woman thought she was helping federal authorities.
[00:03:24] NBC4 in Washington spoke with Montgomery County State's attorney John McCarthy.
[00:03:30] This woman lived in Leisure World.
[00:03:33] This man was operating in Leisure World.
[00:03:35] He was conducting his business in parking lots adjacent to Leisure World.
[00:03:40] The victim described wiring nearly $800,000 in cash to a gold bullion company after a phone call from someone identifying himself as a federal investigator.
[00:03:50] The man said it would help protect her from a ring of dangerous identity thieves.
[00:03:55] On two separate occasions at parking lots near Leisure World, she turned the gold bars over to a supposed federal government courier.
[00:04:03] After a relative helped her realize she'd been scammed, investigators from the Financial Crimes Unit stepped in and set up another handoff.
[00:04:12] This time it was for $376,000 in gold bars.
[00:04:16] Detective Petty says when this man, Wen Wee Son of Lake Arbor, California, showed up in the parking lot to collect it Monday,
[00:04:23] the person who handed it over was actually a police officer disguised as the victim.
[00:04:28] The scam of a pretend law enforcement officer asking for help and for the victim to provide money has been around for a while,
[00:04:35] but the gold transfer is a relatively new twist.
[00:04:39] In another scam involving a law enforcement officer, Peepfull and Rockland got a letter from what appeared to be the U.S. Postal Service asking for help with a survey.
[00:04:49] It said the person would remain anonymous, but for helping out they would receive a survey package and certified check for $4,680.50, according to the Rockland Daily.
[00:05:01] The multiple recipients of the letter were told the money would cover the survey costs of $4,000, a bonus of $500, and miscellaneous expenses of $130.50 and the cashier's check purchase of $50.
[00:05:16] They were also given instructions on how to use the money once the check was deposited.
[00:05:21] It's not clear whether anyone in the New York State community responded, but officials said the letter was written in poor English so that may have been a tip off.
[00:05:30] This is Scams and Cons News.
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[00:07:17] An East Tennessee woman was able to stop a scam.
[00:07:20] She got a phone call from someone who said they were from the publisher's clearinghouse,
[00:07:25] Notifying her that she'd won $5.7 million, a red truck, and would receive $500 every other month.
[00:07:33] She thought it might be a scam, but the caller was convincing.
[00:07:37] The phone call was transferred to a woman who took over the scam.
[00:07:41] WETE TV reported that the scammer told the potential victim to drive to her bank and withdraw $920.
[00:07:50] She asked what the $20 were for and the scammer told her it was for gift cards she needed to buy.
[00:07:56] The woman went to the bank and the scammer stayed on the phone with her the entire time, as it turned out the entire time meant the entire day.
[00:08:05] She bought the cards and the scammer asked her to provide the numbers on the back of the card.
[00:08:10] That's when the woman got wise.
[00:08:12] Her husband was following the drama and he went back to the store where the card was purchased and asked if the card had any value.
[00:08:19] The store told her it was empty, but there were pending transactions.
[00:08:23] The gift card company was called and the transactions were cancelled.
[00:08:28] The call was traced back to Jamaica.
[00:08:30] It's worth knowing that publishers clearinghouse never calls its winners, nor do they ask for money.
[00:08:36] If you win, the prize patrol shows up at your house and that's when you find out you're a winner.
[00:08:44] Someone wants to sell your house and that may be okay, but you haven't put it on the market.
[00:08:50] It may be one of those companies that offers you cash for your house as is or it could be a scammer trying to steal your house.
[00:08:58] Local four in Detroit said Daryl Sherman's late mother-in-law, Marjorie Taylor, and her late husband bought the house in 1970.
[00:09:08] When Marjorie Taylor died in 2010, the house was left to her family.
[00:09:13] Last year a renter was living in the house when Daryl started getting the strange phone calls and text messages.
[00:09:20] The messages were from a woman who claimed his house was actually hers.
[00:09:24] This is not a new scam.
[00:09:26] People have suddenly gotten a knock on the door and been told you don't own the house.
[00:09:33] That is Gilbert Borman, Daryl's attorney.
[00:09:36] Somebody concocted a fraudulent deed and recorded it and now they're trying to evict the actual owner.
[00:09:44] Okay, let's take a closer look at this deed for Daryl Sherman's house.
[00:09:48] It's called a quitclaim deed.
[00:09:49] You can see in 2010, the same year Marjorie Taylor died, you can see her signature right there, she gave all of her rights away to the home.
[00:09:57] Legal ownership for $30,000.
[00:10:00] You can see here the deed was drafted and notarized, and right here the notary stamped the deed and wrote that her commission expires in 2015.
[00:10:09] But there's a glaring problem here.
[00:10:11] We check with the state that notary's commission expired in 2006.
[00:10:15] They should not have been stamping any papers in 2010.
[00:10:21] Now the county keeps track of the 900,000 plus properties in the county.
[00:10:25] But here's the problem.
[00:10:26] Sometimes people file fake deeds or dirty deeds.
[00:10:30] It's such a common problem that one time someone actually tried to file one of those fake deeds with one of the clerks and the clerk actually owned the home.
[00:10:37] And the attendant taking the document said, okay, I'll be right with you.
[00:10:42] Walked 10 feet away and came and said, Kasha, is this guy buying your house from you?
[00:10:49] Is that your signature?
[00:10:51] Said, that is my house. That's my address.
[00:10:53] That's not my signature.
[00:10:55] Bernie Youngblood is in charge of the Wayne County property deeds database.
[00:10:59] Youngblood says dirty deeds are a problem in every county in the country.
[00:11:03] But in Wayne County, one city has been especially targeted.
[00:11:06] I think the majority, if we were to take a look, has all been in Detroit.
[00:11:12] Darrell had to hire the attorney to straighten it all out, and that cost him around $20,000.
[00:11:18] On top of that, the redder damaged the house and he believes the redder may have been involved with the scam.
[00:11:25] This is Scam's...
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[00:11:56] In New York City, police organized a manhunt for a squatter who may have killed a woman in her mother's apartment.
[00:12:08] CBS New York has more information.
[00:12:11] Fetels was murdered. Her body found stuffed in a duffel bag in the front closet of an apartment on the 19th floor of this building on 31st Street.
[00:12:20] Super Jean Pompeii let concerned family members into the apartment on March 14th after they couldn't reach her.
[00:12:41] The medical examiner ruled Vitell's death a homicide, blunt force trauma of the head.
[00:12:47] Police sources say they've identified two people they believe beat her to death.
[00:12:52] These sources say they were not known to Vitell's but may have been squatting in the apartment before she started either moving herself or someone else in.
[00:13:01] The two suspects are seen on video stealing Vitell's car from the street out front and fleeing.
[00:13:06] The car, police sources say, was later involved in an accident in Pennsylvania.
[00:13:10] The two squatters were later arrested in York, Pennsylvania by members of the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force.
[00:13:18] In these days of fake phone calls claiming a relative has been arrested and needs bail money, a new type of scam is taking place.
[00:13:26] The Daily Record in Dunn, North Carolina says scammers have contacted family members to inform them that their jailed relative can be released early if the offender is fitted with an ankle monitor.
[00:13:37] That ankle monitor comes with a fee to the North Carolina Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission.
[00:13:44] That's not how it works. Families cannot pay for an inmate's early release, but scammers are happy to take their money if they don't know that.
[00:13:53] United Healthcare Group was hacked earlier this year.
[00:13:57] Its healthcare division is the largest billing and payment system for medical claims in the United States.
[00:14:03] All that data flooding onto the market makes patients ripe for scams.
[00:14:08] The Minnesota Hospital Association is asking people to keep an eye out for scammers.
[00:14:13] These scammers may be fraudulently posing as a hospital, clinic or pharmacy and asking for credit card, bank or other financial information.
[00:14:21] Your hospital will not call or email you to ask for a credit card number.
[00:14:26] If someone out of the blue calls and asks for your credit card number, social security number or any other personal information, it's a good idea to refuse.
[00:14:35] Then call the company directly after you look up their official number and find out what's happening.
[00:14:41] Lastly, a Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin woman was scammed.
[00:14:45] She then found out she'd have to pay taxes on her $200,000 loss.
[00:14:50] Those taxes include $15,000 to the U.S. government because she dipped into her IRA for some of the money.
[00:14:58] The remainder, $7,500, was supposed to go to Wisconsin.
[00:15:03] Scammers posing as law enforcement officials convinced her to buy gift cards.
[00:15:08] She says scammers falsified government documents, badges and bank deposit records to earn her trust.
[00:15:14] They claimed to work for Wells Fargo and the Federal Trade Commission and told the woman her identity had been stolen.
[00:15:21] It didn't used to be this way.
[00:15:23] The federal government allowed people to deduct losses for scams, but that was revoked in 2017 as part of a tax cut bill.
[00:15:31] Wisconsin doesn't have loss protections.
[00:15:35] She still has her house, but that disqualifies her from assistance programs because of her net worth.
[00:15:42] This is Scams and Cons News.
[00:15:46] Scams and Cons is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network.
[00:15:56] Hi, I'm Sean McCabe.
[00:15:57] And I'm Carrie McCabe.
[00:15:58] We are, well, married, obviously, but we're also obsessed with the darker side of things.
[00:16:04] True crime stories, alien abductions, poltergeists.
[00:16:08] If it leaves you scratching your head and keeping those lights on at night, we want to hear about it.
[00:16:12] That's why we host the podcast Ain't It Scary with Sean and Carrie.
[00:16:16] Every week we bring our listeners a true story guaranteed to send chills down your spine,
[00:16:21] from history's most brutal serial killers to the mystery of spontaneous human combustion.
[00:16:26] Yep, lots of these stories leave unanswered questions behind,
[00:16:29] and you'll get to poke through the rubble of the evidence with a hardened skeptic and...
[00:16:33] Someone whose mind is more open to fun.
[00:16:36] Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.
[00:16:38] You can find Ain't It Scary with Sean and Carrie wherever you get your podcasts,
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[00:16:45] Come play with us.