We'll tell you the story of con artists who preyed on the elderly with home remodeling scams. One was brazen enough to outright tell the homeowner what needed to be done and begin work.
[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_05] This is Scams and Cons News with Jim Grinstead.
[00:00:10] [SPEAKER_11] A woman lost more than $300,000 in a computer customer service scam, and Google is trying to make life more difficult for scammers. But we begin with the story of con artists who preyed on the elderly with home remodeling scams. One was brazen enough to outright tell the homeowner what needed to be done and started the work. A pair of brothers roamed the Northwest scamming elderly folks out of millions of dollars with promises of home remodeling.
[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_04] It started as a knock at the door. He didn't ask, he just told me what I needed doing. Two men telling the victim David his roof had a hole in it and his foundation needed repair. Did they pressure you into doing a lot of this stuff? It was all pressure. David asked us not to show his face as he recounted the pushy tactics of brothers Patrick and Matthew McDonough.
[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_03] I just am surprised at myself how easy it was for them to talk me into it.
[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_04] For weeks, the McDonough's kept asking David for money.
[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_03] The excuse for the money was because they needed to get the materials.
[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_04] But instead, prosecutors say the men were cashing the checks and pocketing the money. The scheme went on for weeks until David's daughter found out.
[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_01] He goes, yeah, last check of $19,000 and the whole total amount of around $450,000. And I lost it. I mean, I had to put my phone on mute so he wouldn't hear me crying. And went to my husband and I was like, God's been completely taken advantage of. This is not right.
[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_04] Police and the FBI got involved. They clawed back around half the money that David paid and charged the McDonough's in federal court.
[00:01:48] [SPEAKER_01] No telling how many people that they would have victimized had they not been caught. There were a lot of red flags once he actually shared the story. He just had the roof redone two years ago.
[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_04] The feds connected the McDonough brothers to at least four victims in Washington and Oregon with similar stories about pushy tactics and demands for money.
[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_03] Pretty much started doing stuff before I, you know, gave permission, really.
[00:02:10] [SPEAKER_04] Phone records show the men called David constantly, always with a story about needing more. It can happen to anyone. There's now a sign on David's door with a warning saying the last solicitors who came here ended up in federal prison.
[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_11] In some states, if you're scammed, you're also screwed because banks cannot pause a transfer if they suspect a crime is being committed.
[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_02] 93 year old Laura Sinani is an FBI statistic. He's one of a hundred thousand victims over 60 who are financially scammed every year. Long story short, a con artist convinced Laura that he accidentally deposited $100,000 into his bank account. The scheme targets the elderly and it works.
[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_02] The scammer convinced him to make a series of cash withdrawals totaling $109,000 and ship it to a FedEx address in New York. How do you feel about all of this?
[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_07] I don't want to use any profane profanities, but I was very unhappy that I was stupid enough to continue until I paid back the $100,000.
[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_02] It sounds extreme, but Deborah Stokes, the executive director of Georgia's Council on Aging, says elder exploitation happens way too much. When you look at what happened here, does it just, does it make a jaw drop?
[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_09] No, no, it makes me very sad, but there are hundreds of cases like that across the county.
[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_02] It's crazy how much seniors lose $3.4 billion in 2023, and that's only what victims reported to the FBI. According to the Georgia Bankers Association, banks are required to train employees how to identify and prevent financial scams. But what about a law? In 2023, Georgia lawmakers passed the Spear Act.
[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_02] It gives the Georgia Secretary of State's office the ability to delay suspicious transactions for up to 25 days. We know it's helping. Gabe Sterler, the Secretary of State's COO, says it's been used more than 550 times since May 2023. The industry came to us and said, we need to have a structure in place to do this reporting because we can see it. But if our client is telling us to do it, we kind of have to.
[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_02] This is great. It's the kind of law meant to protect people like Loris, except in this situation, it does not. The Spear Act only applies to financial institutions that the state regulates, meaning financial advisors and stockbrokers. The law does not apply to banks. Why does it apply to financial institutions as opposed to banks?
[00:05:06] [SPEAKER_09] Can't answer that one. I wish I had the answer.
[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_02] Here's the answer in a nutshell. It doesn't apply to banks because they are regulated by the federal government.
[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_09] We talked to the Securities and Exchange Commission about how do we address elder exploitation at the bank level. And we didn't get any traction. Not yet anyway. And maybe we're not asking the right questions.
[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_05] It is a tragic fact that these criminals wreak havoc and can drive individuals to premature death or even suicide.
[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_02] In September, the U.S. Senate and Banking Finance Committee listened to senior advocates share horror stories. It happened around the same time Congress proposed the Protecting Consumers from Payment Scams Act. But banking trade groups already opposed the bill because it puts liability on the banks. Do you feel like your bank should have done something?
[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_07] Well, they should have recognized that I was doing very unusual financial drawings.
[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_02] Where does that leave Loris? Well, police got FedEx to intercept one of the shipments he sent for $37,000. But he lost $72,000. The family lawyer told the bank to give it back. But that is a matter for the court. Family lawyer brought up another Georgia law that does require banks to call the police and the state's Division of Aging Services if they suspect a scam.
[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_02] But United Community Lawyers' bank said it did not have reasonable cause to believe that he was being exploited.
[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_11] In a recent scam targeting Yavapi County, Arizona residents, scammers managed to steal approximately $100,000 over a single weekend. The Yavapi County Sheriff's Office reported that at least four citizens fell victim to the sophisticated banking scam between January 25th and 26th of this year. The scammers, posing as bank security officers, contacted victims claiming their accounts had been compromised.
[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_11] They convinced the victims to withdraw their money and transferred to a supposedly new secure account which was actually controlled by the scammers. The average loss was $25,000 per victim and victims' ages were between the 40s and the 70s. The scammers preferred a cash handover, but were also happy to accept Bitcoin transfers and new bank card accounts.
[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_11] In one case, the victim handed over cash to a scammer who came directly to their home. Another potential victim was saved by an alert bank teller who recognized the scam. This is Scams and Cons News.
[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_11] An elderly Connecticut woman has recovered $328,000 after falling victim to a computer support scam in February of 2024. The scammers, posing as Microsoft customer support, tricked the woman into transferring approximately $550,000 in two wire transfers.
[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_11] Thanks to the swift action by the victim and her family, one transfer of $221,000 was reversed by the bank within two days. Homeland Security investigations traced and seized the remaining funds. The U.S. Attorney's Office filed a civil asset forfeiture action to secure the money and worked with the Department of Justice's money laundering and asset recovery section to return it.
[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_11] On February 4th, the office initiated the return of $328,573 to the victim. Acting U.S. Attorney Mark Silverman emphasized the importance of using all available tools to mitigate financial losses from scams and praised the victim for reporting the crime quickly.
[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_11] HSI Special Agent Michael Kroll highlighted that such prompt action reporting is rare, but crucial for recovering funds in cybercrime cases. Authorities urge anyone targeted by similar scams to immediately contact their bank, law enforcement, and file a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center. Most of us are good, and if we're asked for help, we're inclined to do so.
[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_11] Goldie Murray responded with kindness, and within moments, he lost nearly $6,000.
[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_08] These three guys were just standing there like, hey, we're looking for donations. Our five-year-old brother got shot and killed in a gun violence accident in the car this last weekend. We're just trying to bury him.
[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_10] He says they grabbed the card, tapped it to their phone to make what he thought was a $20 donation.
[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_08] I was probably like 20 feet away from them walking back home when my phone went off and Discover was trying to call me. It was like fraud alert. Two different lines of $3,000, $3,000, so like $6,000. Taken out of your account. Is this fraud? I said, yes, this is fraud. So I was able to stop one of them, but for some reason the other one went through.
[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_10] Afraid to confront them, he called his credit card company and filed a police report. But now, a month later, he's still on the hook for $3,000.
[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_08] No one has reached out from the police department to confirm any of this, to follow up on any of this. Nobody from Discover has answered any more questions. When I call back and I'm like, hey, what's the status? We're still investigating. We'll call you if we need you.
[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_12] So this is kind of a con man scenario.
[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_10] Peter Tapling is a digital payments expert. He'll lay out how this type of tap and pay scheme works. But first, take a look at just how many fraud cases are being reported to Chicago police. In the last 12 months, there have been more than 5,400 police reports linked to deceptive practice or fraud. Not all tap and pay, of course, but nearly half of them involve a credit card. And arrests rarely happen.
[00:11:14] [SPEAKER_10] In fact, in the last year, of the 5,400 reports, just 30 have seen arrests. That's half a percent of what's being reported to Chicago police.
[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_12] Finding the bad guy is difficult. It's not that people are lazy. It's just that the data points are so scattered that for any one party to pick up the mantle and say, I'm going to attack this problem, particularly when the dollar amounts are small or relatively small, it's just not worth it.
[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_10] So what do you do? So what do you do? Tapling says the tap and pay schemes are nothing new. You think you're charging one amount to your credit card, but the merchant charges another.
[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_12] What's new to people, perhaps, is this idea that somebody can pull up their phone and say, hey, tap to the back of my phone and we're going to accept a payment. People should treat their electronic payments mechanisms the way they would treat cash. If you would not hand $100 to this person, don't hand them your card.
[00:12:09] [SPEAKER_10] He says it's on you, the consumer, to verify those amounts and never just hand over your credit card.
[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_12] If they say, give me your card and let me scan it, say, I'm going to hold on to my card. Bring the device close to me so that I can see the details of the transaction.
[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_08] It's horrible because they're making people that honestly ask for help that really do need help. They're making them look bad. And then they're taking advantage of people that have empathy.
[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_10] Goldie continues to take up the issue with his credit card company with a $3,000 charge still not clear. He says it's been a struggle to get answers, but no matter the outcome, he's not changing his tune on Hyde Park or his neighbors.
[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_08] Never feel silly for being kind.
[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_11] Google is hardening its defenses against one of the more sophisticated attacks it's seen. AI narrator Chris explains.
[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_00] A sophisticated phone scam targeting Google users has raised alarms after nearly compromising a tech-savvy business founder. Hack Club founder Zach Latta reports receiving a call from what appeared to be Google's official support number, with scammers posing as Google Workspace team members. The scammers claimed to detect suspicious login activity and requested a password reset.
[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_00] What made this attack particularly convincing was their ability to send emails from legitimate Google domains and their knowledge of two-factor authentication processes. The scammers exploited a vulnerability in Google's workspace system, creating accounts using Google's g.co subdomain without verification. Google has since suspended the account responsible and says this isn't yet a widespread issue.
[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_00] Security experts warn that Google never initiates calls about password resets or account issues. This incident follows similar sophisticated attacks targeting both Google and Apple users, highlighting the growing need for stronger security measures like pass keys.
[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_11] A couple went on a violent crime esprit that might have lasted longer had they not taken time out to get married. They are in custody now on charges that they spent a year allegedly committed crimes across two counties. A federal grand jury came back with a 12-count indictment charging the crew of three and connecting them to at least a dozen armed robberies at smoke shops, donut shops, and convenience stores in Los Angeles County.
[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_06] They say it was 23-year-old Ronnie Tucker's job to collect the cash, while he and 36-year-old Antonio Lamar Bland of North Hollywood robbed store employees, pointing guns and wearing hoodies and masks. They say in most of the robberies, Bland's new wife, Abigail Luckey, was the getaway driver in her white Chevy Cruze.
[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_06] After robbing five stores in Tustin, North Hollywood, Burbank, Torrance, and Van Nuys, prosecutors say Bland and Luckey took a road trip to Las Vegas, where the couple got married. Just two days later, they say the newlyweds were back with Tucker in Southern California, where in three hours they robbed three stores in Burbank, Torrance, and Long Beach. The crew's luck ran out on Valentine's Day last year, when prosecutors say they attempted to rob a donut shop in Downey.
[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_06] The federal complaint describes how a store employee grabbed his own weapon and fired off at least one shot at the robbers. They took off, but investigators had been surveilling them. They were arrested later that night. All three are in federal custody. They've got a trial date for May 6th. If convicted, they face 20 years in federal prison.
[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_11] Yeah, I know it's not a scam story, but it really was just too good to pass up. In Georgia and many other states, you can look up where an inmate is housed. Scammers are using that information to impersonate bond companies and offer to bond the inmates into the family's care. They may also pretend to be from the sheriff's office or some other agency or court. Officials say to get the information about the agency they called them, such as its name, address, and phone number,
[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_11] then check those for the sheriff's office before paying any money. This is Scams and Cons News.