Tom Mosley:

I want you to use your money in retirement, not lose it. So today I’m going to talk about scams and I’m going to bring up, if you’ll stay with me, you’ll hear close to the end, some of the most sneaky, provocative scams that are out there that really catch a lot of people, and so stick with us.

I recently attended one of my twice a year, two days where I spend with Ed Slott on tax training, and we spent about four hours talking about scams and all the scams that are coming at people who have money, who have IRAs, 401(k)s, any money in the bank account or anything, people trying to get you to lose your money by giving it to them. Very, very sneaky things. What’s caused all of this? Well, number one, who’s the target? Number one, the target is anybody who was born in 1959 or this side of 1959. It’s all been facilitated a lot by the electronics and all of the things that are involved with what you might’ve heard, might not know much about or you might know a lot about: AI, artificial intelligence.

They’re actually able to take, like I’m looking into the camera right now, they’re actually able to take a picture of you either on your computer or in some way, or listen to your voice over a period of time like this recording of my voice. And they’re able to make an avatar of you and then they can pump into the computer anything they want, the Gettysburg Address, anything, and they can make your voice be saying that on a phone call or more importantly, one of your relatives or somebody on a phone call. That’s how intricate these scams are.

Let’s talk about how these scams are going to come to you. A lot of them are going to come to you by way of a phone call. So when you get a phone call, if you look at your phone or you can look at caller ID and you see a number you don’t recognize, I really recommend you don’t answer the phone. Here’s why. If it’s somebody that knows you, then either you recognize the number, go ahead and pick up, or if it’s a number you don’t recognize, if it’s somebody that knows you, they’re going to leave you a message and then you can pick up the message and call them right back. Hey, that’s the way most teenagers do phones anyway. But if you get a phone call and they get you on the phone call and they start asking you questions, hello, and they’ll tell you different things and they’ll … Be careful of saying the word yes because what they have done in some of the scams is they’ve recorded your voice over the phone saying yes, and then they put a whole new question to it.

They say, “Do you want to buy this?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to use your checking account?”

“Yes.”

And over the phone, never give out information to an incoming phone call that you don’t really know the source of that phone call, like they’ll begin to wear you down, they’ll talk about a product or something. It’ll be a very inexpensive price and they’ll hit you with, “Hey, what’s your address? What’s your social security number?” Things that you should not be giving out to strangers over the phone. So most of them come by phone calls.

The other way they come is by the internet. If you’re on the internet a lot, they’ll hit you with emails. We’ve gotten emails here in the office. My staff has gotten emails recently from me supposedly asking for them to send me a gift card electronically. Be careful doing any of those things. Most of them come by phone or over the internet.

Let’s talk about the most popular scams that are out there. The most popular scam is, “Hello, I’m from the IRS and you owe us money.” First of all, the IRS never calls you to tell you that. They will send you a letter. And if you don’t respond, they’ll send you another letter and another letter and then finally a bill. So don’t worry about not responding to a phone call. It’s a scam. They’re trying to get information out of you to send them $7,000 or $6,000 or some amount of money. The IRS will never call you.

The second big scam that they have is they’ll come back and they’ll say, “Hey, you missed jury duty and you’re going to be arrested. But the way you can avoid that is if you’ll go to the supermarket and you will buy 2 $500 gift certificates. Oh, don’t buy them for $500, buy them for $490.” Because that goes under the radar of most people that are out there. And so you send them $980 to get you off of jury duty, and it’s a total scam. A total scam because eventually they’ll get around, they’ll say, “Well, you don’t really have to bring it to us or mail it to us. You can just read the number off the back of the card.” That is just flat giving the money. So don’t fall for the IRS scam, the jury duty scam.

The third-biggest scam is they take the voicemail of a relative and they can take and make through AI, an avatar voicemail, and they can make it sound like that relative is calling and asking you for money and needs you to send X amount of dollars to this address or X amount of dollars, get a gift certificate. Don’t say anything to the rest of our relatives about it. And they can make the voice sound exactly like your relative, if for any way, by any or any reason they’ve got a voice of your relative on the phone.

What’s the fourth-biggest scam? I don’t know. That’s the next scam. The way terrorists operate, and these are electronic terrorists or telephonic terrorist is what they are. They’re trying to steal money from people and who knows what their next scam is, but just be careful of giving out any information that’s private information to an incoming phone call or an incoming email, even if it sounds like the right person. Hang up and say, “I know my nephew’s number, I know my grandson’s number. I will call them” and they’ll go ballistic. “No, no, no, no, don’t call them. Don’t call them.” Because it is a scam in most cases.

So to wrap this up, I’m going to give you four solid things you can build into your life to help you make sure you never get scammed. Notice I didn’t say, I promise you won’t get scammed because they’re getting better and better and better. But these will help you immensely learn to not get scammed.

Number one, never give out over the phone or over the internet to an unknown named source, your money or your information. Don’t give them your checking account, your credit card. Don’t give them your social security number, your date of birth, all cardinal things. Don’t give that information out to anyone unless you know exactly who it is.

Number two, with your relatives, have a code word. The next time you’re together with them, say, “Look, if you ever call me on the phone because there’s so many scams out there, I’ve got a code word with you and I’m going to ask you for the code word. Just remember the code word is bookey-bookey.” Some kind of crazy term, some kind of family term that only insiders might know or some kind of term you’ve made up. That way when you get on the phone and they say it’s a relative, you can say, “Well, what’s our code word?”

“Oh, what do you mean code work?” A scammer is not going to know that, but the relative is going to know that code work.

Number three, have another adult to run every decision that you do make when it comes to spending money, giving money, passing money over the internet, giving out your credit card. Have another adult you run things by. A lot of the scams that we’ve run into as an office have been, “Don’t tell my husband, don’t tell my kids.” If there’s some kind of situation like that, that automatically raises a red flag because that’s what scammers try to build into their little process. They’ll be like, “Oh, you can’t tell anybody about this. They don’t want you to know about this. Your relative doesn’t want you to know.” Don’t trust that. That is a sure sign of scams.

And number four, be open. If somebody says, “Mom, dad, I think you’re getting scams. Let’s check it out.” Because one of the things that we talked about in Indianapolis with Ed Slott is not only do people get to the point when we are older, we forget a few more things than we forgot at a certain time. But we get more entrenched and adamant that we’re right. Okay, not you, but the general person that’s out there who’s in their 60s and 70s gets more adamant that they’re right. So if some of your relatives or somebody says, “Hey, we need to check this out to see if this is a scam,” don’t be adamant that it’s not, because obviously the scams are believable or nobody would be doing them. So don’t get so entrenched that you’re not open to investigating to see if you’ve been scammed or you haven’t been scammed.

Hey, if you’ve found value in what you’ve heard today, come back next week for more tips and knowledge on finances and retirement. Each week, if you’ll give me 8 to 10 minutes, I’ll do my best to increase your financial knowledge and, in this case, keep your financial assets intact.