Caregiver’s Toolbox Ep. 18: “Scams that Target Seniors”
Caregiver’s Toolbox Ep. 18 “Scams that Target Seniors” on Apple Podcasts
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Ryan McEniff:
Hello everybody and welcome to The Caregiver’s Toolbox Podcast, Tools to Help You with Everyday Caregiving. My name is Ryan McEniff, the owner of Minute Women Home Care and today we’re talking about scams that target seniors.
Hello, everybody and welcome to another episode of The Caregiver’s Toolbox, Tools for Everyday Caregiving where we give you tips, education and information on senior care topics. And today we’re going to be talking about scams. Scams that not only affect seniors but also affect basically everybody. And it’s almost a PSA to everyone from 16 years of age to 116 years of age of things to be concerned about and things to keep your eyes open with when it comes to scams and trying to scam your parents, you and your children. So I’m here with Janet. Janet, how are you?
Janet:
I’m good. I’m looking forward to this podcast because there’s a lot I don’t know.
Ryan McEniff:
How many scams have you been involved with? Have you been scammed before?
Janet:
I have not but my parents have.
Ryan McEniff:
Oh, that’s too bad.
Janet:
But it worked out in the end, so.
Ryan McEniff:
Yes. Yes, I know a couple people that have been scammed but luckily with all that … That’s why we pay such high APR rates on our credit cards-
Janet:
There you go.
Ryan McEniff:
… because there’s so many scammers out there.
Janet:
Yeah.
Ryan McEniff:
So you were saying you don’t know much about scams, so I’ll let you lead this off and you can ask me the questions.
Janet:
Okay. There’s online scamming. I know there’s something called phishing.
Ryan McEniff:
Yes.
Janet:
But I have no idea how it works.
Ryan McEniff:
So online scamming is very, very popular. Obviously it used to be mail. Phone calls are still popular and we’ll get to that. But online is where it’s at right now. And what happens is … And everybody in their head, in my mind, thinks that you think of maybe your grandparents are still in your head of what your parents are, right? But still your parents are on their phone, they probably have iPhones now. They’re probably online using the email all the time. And what happens is that these large corporations, like eBay, Amazon, Target, Walmart, those big, big corporations are always sending us emails.
Whether it’s confirmations of orders we’ve made, where our shipment is, advertisements for things we previously looked at that we might want to consider again and we get used to seeing these emails. And what happens is, these scammers, they develop for lack of a better word, themed emails to look exactly like an Amazon or a Walmart or a Target email that you get on a regular basis. The only distinction is, they’re asking you to confirm your password.
So they already know your email address and they say, “Hey Janet, we need to authenticate you, please enter your password and then we can make sure that you’re you.” And then once you enter that password, they have access to everything and they can go online, they can lock you out, they can then buy because your credit cards are associated and stored online nowadays with Amazon or these big companies and then they can spend, spend, spend and do whatever they like.
Janet:
So they’re imposters but they make it sound like they care about your privacy.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely.
Janet:
So that’s why they want your password.
Ryan McEniff:
So a story about this is, this happened to Minute Women, actually. When I first took over Minute Women back in 2011 and as you know, we were living in the 18th century, we were still using an email that was like, minutewomen@aol.com. And it was bad because it didn’t have a real domain at the end of it like it does now, so that looked unprofessional. But in addition to that, to make matters worse, AOL was such an antiquated service at that time it made us look that much older, as well, right? So, but because customers had known us for such a long time, I had kept it around and eventually I knew I was going to be switching it over to something that was a bit more professional.
Well, that day came when an employee here, not you, not me, and will remain nameless, got a phishing email and it said, “This is AOL. We need to authenticate you, please enter your password.” And that person entered the password, not realizing what it was. And immediately we got locked out of the … No, they didn’t lock us out of our email account but they deleted all of our contacts. And so we couldn’t go in and recontact everybody, letting them know that we had been essentially corrupted and that they were going to be getting fraudulent emails.
So we ended up calling everybody up in person letting them know what happened and resending emails, letting them know what had happened under a new email address. But it happened to us, so it can happen to anybody and-
Janet:
Oh, man.
Ryan McEniff:
… it was inconvenient but you know, I think people are used to … There goes my phone. But people are used to getting those emails and I think people are used to filters on their emails catching those, as well. So it all ended up good in the end but it did happen and it can happen.
Janet:
So when something like that happens, is it like if someone loses their wallet and they have to go and replace their credit cards?
Ryan McEniff:
Oh yeah.
Janet:
I mean, these people just have this and how do you undo it? Or can you?
Ryan McEniff:
Well, I mean, you got to contact the companies, you got to redo your credit cards. And we’ve had that happen with Minute Women, where people have called us up and say, “I got to give a new credit card because somewhere along the lines of the years of using it, it got compromised.
Janet:
That’s true. Yep. Okay. Well there’s another one that I’ve heard about on the news but I really haven’t been involved in thankfully, is skimming.
Ryan McEniff:
Yes.
Janet:
And what is skimming?
Ryan McEniff:
Skimming is extraordinarily popular and it’s so popular that Wells Fargo just recently came out with cardless ATMs to try to prevent skimming. And what happens is, if you can imagine, there are two pieces to skimming when it comes to ATMs and I’m going to put an infographic up below, so you can see this on the blog. But what happens is the area where you put the credit card in, right into the ATM, there is an exact match of a mold that goes over that. And then, so when you put your credit card information in and swipe it out, it not only swipes it into the ATM but there’s also a little chip in that illegal mold that went over the ATM card reader that also reads it, as well. In addition, they then put a same exact replica over the key pad.
And unless you jiggle things, you not going to notice that it’s there. And so then it catches all your bank’s information, as well as, your pin password and then you’re compromised. So it’s tough to explain. If you Google it, you will see what these skimmers look like and then you’ll realize that anytime you put your card into an ATM, you need to jiggle everything to make sure that there isn’t a skimming device on the ATM. People that do skimming usually try to target ATMs that are not in the bank, that are not in a branch of a bank. They’re going to be going after ATMs that are outside of a bank.
You know, sometimes they have ATMs built into the wall of a sidewalk or something like that or how they have ATMs in the back of convenience stores that are nameless, they’re private ATMs that charge you a arm and a leg for their service fees. Those are the ones you really need to be concerned about but any ATM can be threatened and can be compromised. So you just need to make sure and look at that infographic in the blog because it details it a little bit better, since you can see what I’m talking about rather than me just trying to explain it.
Janet:
And I thought it was a great idea when they changed the machines just so they didn’t keep your card while you were at it.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely.
Janet:
And you got it back.
Ryan McEniff:
Absolutely.
Janet:
And someone said something about this skimming in a grocery store and you wonder, how could that happen if this people are all around? How do you change out the machine? How do they not get caught?
Ryan McEniff:
They have designed these contraptions to be easy on and easy off, inconspicuous and unless you’re really looking, you won’t notice.
Janet:
Wow. All right. Well, what about for people that aren’t necessarily using the high tech or the ATMs or whatever? What about phone calls?
Ryan McEniff:
Phone calls are still a very popular way that scams can hit the elderly and hit anyone. I personally have noticed, I’m sure on your cell phone you’ve noticed, there’s been a change in these robo calls. They used to be from blocked numbers. Then they used to be from 1-800-NUMBERS. Maybe it was the other way around. They were from 1-800-NUMBERS and they were blocked numbers. And now I’m getting robo calls from local area code numbers. Like they’ll be from a 617 or a 781.
Janet:
Yes.
Ryan McEniff:
And the way that they’re doing that is that we don’t have these here. We’re not as high class at Minute Women as probably Samsung is but you have VoIP phones. And VoIP phones are connected to the Internet and because they’re connected to the Internet and when you’re on a VoIP phone system, you can make it look like you’re calling from anywhere in the country. So for example, I have a financial advisor that does some of my millions and billions of dollars I do in stocks every single day. For my small amount of money in the stock market, he was out in Las Vegas and he called me up on my cell phone.
And it’s calling up from a 781 number while he’s able to do that because he’s on a VoIP phone system. So that’s how they’re doing that. But when they’re calling you … And the reason they’re doing that is because they have a higher success rate of people picking up the phone because they say, “Oh, it might be the florist.” Or, “It might be the gym.” Or, “A local person that needs to get in touch with …”
Janet:
Especially lonely people.
Ryan McEniff:
Exactly. So what you’re going to find also is with these phone calls, there are going to be demands from the IRS for payment immediately. And sometimes the payment they want is absolutely ridiculous and I don’t even mean the amount of money. The way in which they want money, they want you to buy iTunes gift cards or they want you to go out and buy … “Janet, you owe the IRS a thousand dollars. I need you to get a thousand dollars in Amazon gift cards.” Well, last time I checked, the IRS was not interested in Amazon gift cards. They want cold, hard cash to keep the country running.
Janet:
Yeah.
Ryan McEniff:
But people fall for it. And these scams are designed to put a lot of pressure very quickly that you are in big trouble. And the only way to get out of trouble right now is to pay this money and send this out immediately. Another way that they do it is, they will, instead of demanding that they’re IRS, that they are a part of law enforcement in some way. And your loved one, your grandchild, is in grave danger and has been arrested or is injured and money needs to be sent to him immediately. And so that is another way that emotion takes over then, being rational and saying, “Well, maybe I should just call my grandson first to make sure he’s okay before I send $5,000 to this guy that called me up over the phone.” So that’s another way that-
Janet:
When you’re scared, you’re not always rational. And you think, “Oh my gosh, I must do this.”
Ryan McEniff:
Oh my gosh, we got to do this. And they play and they pull on those heart strings and those fears that something’s wrong and, “Oh my God, there must be some mistake. Billy can’t spend the night in jail.” Or, “Oh my God, they’re going to kick him out of the hospital unless we give him money.” Or something along those lines. So you have to watch out for that. And then the final one with those phone calls is, you may have won something. You may have won something, we need your information to deposit your winnings into a bank account number. Give us your routing number and your checking number and we’ll be able to handle all of that.
Or give us your credit card information or debit card information and pay us a thousand dollars, so we can send this information to you that you won or whatever type of scam it is that you’ve won something and you got to give us money. Give us a little money first and then you’re going to get a lot of money later. That’s usually how those things work out. I just need you to send me $500 and then they’ve got you hooked because then 500 turns another phone call that’s, “Well, we have problems. We need another $1,500 before we can send it out.”
And then you read about these things and it’s happened on emails, as well, where people believe that they’ve gotten this email from somebody that has millions of dollars available but they just need a little bit more money to make it available and to bring it in the United States. Or they pull on the heartstrings of lonely guys that a woman needs help or something along those lines. And tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear from people’s bank accounts. And they go broke doing this, thinking that the other person on the end of that phone or that email is there to help them and is going to be able to, in the process, financially give money back to the senior or this person getting scammed.
Janet:
Yeah. It’s just unconscionable. And you know myself, whenever I get a call, as soon as I hear, “You have been selected,” that’s my point to hang up.
Ryan McEniff:
Yes.
Janet:
I can say, I do know that about an IRS scam that was going on in my hometown. In fact, my parents even got the call and my father called the police and found that it was so systematic that the good part about some technologies is the police did a reverse 911 to the community, telling everyone that if the IRS asks for anything, hang up because the IRS will never contact you by phone.
Ryan McEniff:
Exactly.
Janet:
So, but most people don’t know that and I didn’t know that either that they deliberately … If you get a call, it is not the IRS.
Ryan McEniff:
No, it’s not from the IRS. And I have friends in local law enforcement and they’ve had this happen in small towns. And people come in saying, “I got scammed out of $10,000. What are you going to do about it?” And there’s nothing I can do about it. This guy’s either out of our jurisdiction or even worse, it’s out of our country. And you’re probably not getting that money back. You’re not, probably, you’re not getting that money back and just don’t do it again because there’s not much of a recourse that they can do.
So just be wary of that. And so have the conversation with not only your parents and your grandparents but with your significant other and your children, to be wary of all these things that are going on to prevent from being scammed.
Janet:
It’s not just burner phones on NCIS that we have to worry about, huh?
Ryan McEniff:
Apparently not. Well, thank you very much for listening. This episode of the Caregiver’s Toolbox, Tools for Everyday Caregiving. Our episodes come out every Tuesday, so you can expect that and have yourselves a great rest of the week. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to The Caregiver’s Toolbox Podcast, which is brought to you by Minute Women Home Care Services located in Lexington, Massachusetts. Call us at 1-844-BESTCARE if you have caregiving questions or needs. For comments regarding the podcast, find us on Twitter. Our handle is @mwhomecare. Thanks again and we look forward to hearing from you.