And the scam is still happening all over the country, hurting an already vulnerable population.
[00:00:04] Georgete Papadimitrios: They pulled my transaction and had me go to the service desk.
I dont understand whats happening.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:23] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
[00:00:28] Bob: Thanksgiving is a special time for family, food, for feeling grateful.
It means a lot to today’s guest Georgete Papadimitrios for reasons we’ll get into in a moment.
Let’s meet Georgete.
As I mentioned, Thanksgiving means a lot to her.
[00:01:17] Georgete Papadimitrios: Yes, well, both of my parents are deceased.
My mom died in 2000 and my father passed away in 2017, and Im a single mom.
Im 2000 miles from family, friends, and everyone I know and love.
Here Im completely alone.
[00:02:09] Bob: What’s your favorite Thanksgiving plate?
(chuckles)
[00:02:30] Bob: Yeah, so honey-glazed ham is great.
[00:02:33] Georgete Papadimitrios: It doesn’t get its due.
[00:02:44] Bob: So you, you uh, you’re from New England.
How long have you been in Texas?
[00:02:47] Georgete Papadimitrios: Um, since 2015.
[00:02:49] Bob: And, and what brought you there?
[00:02:51] Georgete Papadimitrios: Lower rent.
[00:03:10] Georgete Papadimitrios: Yeah, my situation isn’t perfect.
[00:03:13] Bob: So no one’s is, right?
But tell, tell me what’s, what about your situation isn’t perfect?
[00:03:38] Bob: And you’ve had several heart surgeries too, right?
[00:03:56] Georgete Papadimitrios: Yeah, unfortunately.
She gets a few hundred dollars a month to buy food.
[00:04:22] Georgete Papadimitrios: It’s incredibly important.
I mean this is a matter of us eating or not.
I live on 940– I think 3 or 42 dollars a month.
So I dont have extra for food.
That is literally my lifeline.
I try not to eat a lot.
So like mostly, lunch and dinner maybe for me.
But its more about making sure they have food.
Ill go hungry, but Im not going to let them.
And that’s why what happened last year was so scary.
[00:05:23] Bob: Of course.
Yeah…
[00:05:24] Georgete Papadimitrios: And not my favorite.
Last November that was especially important because she planned to buy everything she needed for that big Thanksgiving dinner.
And I was like, “Well there shouldnt be.
And then I was like, what?
What is happening here?
So then I clicked on uh transactions, and it showed transactions that I didnt make.
So Im like, wait, what is happening?
So then Im upset.
[00:06:34] Bob: What is happening?
Her monthly benefit was loaded just two days earlier.
She checked, but the purchase just won’t go through.
[00:06:42] Georgete Papadimitrios: So I was extremely embarrassed.
They pulled my transaction and had me go to the service desk.
I dont understand whats happening.
It was just, it was just not a good time.
I dont understand this.
I felt like he was looking at me kinda funny.
I just felt very uncomfortable.
I, I ended up walking out in tears.
They’re not very pleasant.
So many that her balance is nearly zero.
The transactions all occurred out of state in Massachusetts.
It’s obvious there’s been fraud.
Her account has somehow been hacked.
But the office can’t help her right away.
Like obviously it wasn’t me.
And that means…
[00:09:18] Georgete Papadimitrios: I basically didnt have Thanksgiving dinner.
I didnt have groceries.
It wasnt as bad as it could have been, thank God.
I did everything they asked; I froze the card.
[00:10:40] Bob: Oh my God!
[00:10:41] Georgete Papadimitrios: So then I went through it all over again.
So now, we’re talking about two months in a row her food money’s been stolen.
And then theres, theres just so many concerns.
It’s a lot to carry.
[00:12:37] Bob: And it’s possible for you to’t buy anything that’s perishable really.
[00:12:54] Bob: Yeah, it’s so complicated, my God.
[00:12:56] Georgete Papadimitrios: If we run out of something, we run out of it.
[00:12:59] Bob: So this has now become Georgete’s routine.
The morning the benefits hit her card she races to the store to spend them before a criminal does.
She works for a group named Search & Care, which helps people utilize public benefit programs.
Well Millie is one of those experts, and here she is.
So there, you know my client only uses this card at one store in her neighborhood.
She’s not going anywhere.
Other workers start reporting the same thing with their clients.
But now, you know, but now I know what to do.
So I knew exactly where, where to go and, and what to do.
[00:16:23] Bob: Not only is fraud happening with multiple clients, there’s a pattern.
And they were within minutes of each other.
And that was the other thing.
None of these clients that, that this happened to, their cards never left their hands, right?
They, their cards were not lost, they weren’t giving their pin numbers to, to anyone.
[00:17:55] Bob: Yeah.
[00:17:57] Bob: And it’s still happening.
The day after she called, all of her benefits were gone.
She, she never got a chance to go, to go shopping.
[00:18:42] Bob: Oh my God, wow.
You know without these benefits, they don’t eat, right?
[00:20:32] Bob: Sure, sure.
They can’t go to Instacart and have them deliver their, their groceries for them.
They just, they don’t have that, that kind of money.
It’s really too, it’s too much.
I’m getting choked up, sorry.
[00:21:18] Bob: No, don’t be sorry.
It’s, it sounds, I mean you’ve already got so much else to deal with.
This just seems like…
[00:21:22] Georgete Papadimitrios: It’s embarrassing.
[00:21:24] Bob: You shouldn’t be embarrassed.
And Im like, yeah, but I dont have a choice.
[00:22:11] Georgete Papadimitrios: Judgment, yes.
[00:22:12] Bob: Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:20] Georgete Papadimitrios: Well I worry.
I know in the last few months Ive had a serious uptick in dangerous arrhythmia called sustained VTAC.
Its just, Im already under a tremendous amount of stress being a single mother of two little kids.
[00:22:32] Bob: Yeah, of course.
I can’t imagine that it’s not impacting your heart.
[00:22:45] Georgete Papadimitrios: Yeah, it’s not easy uh being under this amount of stress.
Well whatever it is, it’s happening all over the country.
Here’s Celia Cole, CEO of Feeding Texas, which is the state association of food banks.
Um, I think the first time it was reported in Texas was in February of 2022.
Instead, criminals are spending it all at places like bodegas in New York City.
[00:26:05] Bob: And counting on it to eat.
[00:26:07] Celia Cole: Right, exactly.
The chip cards are pretty secure, the mag stripe only cards, not so much.
Well SNAP cards still use just those old magnetic stripes.
So criminals can feast on them.
And so the, the question now is how quickly can states basically adopt that new technology.
It’s not like you could’t flip a switch, right?
It’s not a mandatory thing.
But the technology, the technological fix is, is there, it’s available.
Is that sentiment, is there any truth to that sentiment?
So and that was obviously happened way after everyone else was already using you know, plastic.
[00:29:59] Celia Cole: Yeah, I, I mean I would be.
And I think, you know, I mean obviously SNAP serves a, a really diverse population.
They’re definitely not adequate.
And so there’s usually a surge of people using their SNAP benefits at the beginning of the month.
So you know it’s definitely, it impacts the industry as well.
[00:31:45] Bob: Of course, a whole month’s worth of food, yeah.
[00:32:57] Bob: I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this.
The only thing they could suggest was go to a food pantry.
Theres only, I believe, one in my county, and its once a month.
And theyll tell you, well youre out of, youre in a different county.
[00:33:36] Bob: Oh boy.
[00:33:36] Georgete Papadimitrios: So their only suggestion was go to a food pantry.
[00:33:59] Bob: Yeah, and boxes and cans, right?
[00:34:01] Georgete Papadimitrios: Yes.
There has got to be a better way.
So then that money is just lost to them forever.
Don’t like write down their pin or anywhere else, and never share the card.
So it’s important that people act quickly.
There is a form that they will need to fill out in the office.
[00:36:50] Bob: Can I interrupt you for a second?
[00:36:50] Celia Cole: Sure.
[00:36:51] Bob: Because I think within 30 days is a really important piece of information.
[00:36:53] Celia Cole: Yes.
[00:36:59] Celia Cole: Yes.
It’s just something to keep in mind.
I mean how do you do that?
You know, how do you sleep at night?
How do you, how do you live with yourself?
I just don’t understand that.
You’re not getting food stamps.
So why are you stealing from the people that can afford it the least?
I mean it’s horrible, it’s just horrible.
[00:40:31] Bob: Millie says victims don’t have to take care of this problem alone.
They can’t read the statements because they print them out so tiny, right?
So they need to save that money so they don’t even get a statement anymore.
You know so we become that set of eyes.
[00:41:41] Millie Gonzalez: Right.
For The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch web link Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
