Weve talked a lot about scams but not big news breaches.
Frank discusses major online breaches, Equifax, checking your credit scores, and monitoring your kids' credit/identity.
TIPS:Monitor your credit and check it regularly.
Some states charge a fee to freeze or unfreeze your credit.
Parents and grandparents need to be concerned about childrens credit to check that its not being misused.
Con-artists are more interested in stealing and selling a childs identity than an adults.
When your having technical issues with your system, use a trusted IT person, not an online service.
Technology makes it easy to scam people, no personal connection.
Dont trust popups on your rig, solicited calls.
Call regular household named companies like Best Buy for computer support.
The rise and fall of a call centeremployee.
[00:00:16] HOST: Yourphone rings.
You don’t recognize the number or maybe you think you do.
You pickup, and before you know it, they’ve got you.
You’ve said too much, or sharedwhat you know you shouldn’t share.
But who are they?
Who are these peopleshamelessly calling your number and requesting private information?
What tricksdo they use to steal your money?
For The Perfect Scam, I’m your host, Will Johnson.
I’dlike to introduce once again, my cohost and AARP’s Fraud Watch NetworkAmbassador, Frank Abagnale.
Frank, welcome back.
[00:00:48] FrankAbagnale: Thanks, Will, good to be here.
Let’s touch on that before we get totoday’s story.
[00:01:00] FrankAbagnale: Alright.
[00:01:25] HOST: So,those are the actual agencies that are reporting on the breaches.
In my career, I’ve worked a lot of these breaches goingback to TJMaxx about 15 years ago.
Hackers really don’tcause breaches, people do.
That has a veryshort shelf life.
So you have to get rid of that right away.
I’d wait till the year wasover.
Is there anything I can do about that in themeantime?
Those are the only two things you might do.
Youcan freeze your credit, but again, that varies from state to state.
But that becomes a big deterrentto people, so people don’t do it.
The truth of the matter is, I didn’t give Equifax permissionto have my data.
So, we really need to have.
[00:04:15] HOST: It’s ascam.
I like itbecause I can then go check my own credit.
So, they’ll let me know as well.
[00:05:06] FrankAbagnale: Right.
This is…
[00:05:08] HOST:Nothing else, right?
You know, and what value is it tome?
So, identity thieves have come to learn that the best identity to steal arechildren.
That’s the best identity to steal.
[00:05:30] HOST: That’sawful.
You’d be much better off with a 14-year-oldwho’s in junior high school and has nothing.
Andso I can use that credit, resell that credit.
I don’t remember.
[00:06:03] FrankAbagnale: No, what happens here is this.
[00:06:24] HOST: Andbuild up good credit for that person.
[00:06:27] FrankAbagnale: Yes.
[00:06:44] HOST: That’sreally creepy.
Theytell me that I’ve already had a student loan and defaulted.
I’ve never even gota, I just got out of high school.
Well someone got that loan in their name andthen defaulted on that loan.
[00:07:41] FrankAbagnale: And that’s what happens.
[00:08:07] HOST: Butmost of the time we don’t even know.
[00:08:09] FrankAbagnale: Right.
[00:08:09] HOST: Or wecan’t find out.
[00:08:10] FrankAbagnale: Right.
He started working at a call center in Florida inMarch of 2013.
He saw the job posted online and based on sales experience, hewas immediately interested.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:08:36] Dan: Mybackground has always essentially been sales.
You know easiest sales you could imagine.
Nooutbounds, no cold calls, you know, it was, so that was kind of the draw.
And the first couple of tables were called the bonepickers.
Their job was to pick the meat off the bone.
Essentially try and getas much money that we couldn’t get from you at the beginning.
I didn’t go in, again, knowingthat it was a scam.
You know, they did not present it that way.
[00:10:58] HOST: As Danmentions, they were all inbound sales calls.
In other words, he didn’t have topick up the phone and make cold calls.
Dan would then basically have a go at upsell the callerswith more products and services.
[00:13:26] HOST: So,Dan jumped into the job.
As he explains it, the calls were more of lessconstantly coming in, day or night.
[00:13:32] Dan: Thecompany itself was a 24-hour company.
[00:15:04] Dan: Withoutquestion, the scare tactic that worked best was the error log.
And then the price wasactually whatever it was that we could make it.
I doknow for a fact that there were people that I sold that never got anythingdone.
[00:16:37] HOST: So,along the way, Dan realized what he’d gotten himself into.
As he explains it,it’s not how it started.
I don’t think without question that what we were doing wasabsolutely a scam to people.
As much as they could get out of people.
[00:18:23] Dan: Therereally was no maximum that we could put in place.
[00:18:36] HOST: Andtargeting older people was definitely a sales strategy.
Ultimately it was the signal for him to get out.
[00:18:58] Dan: Theincident that happened is something that I probably will end up rememberingforever.
Let me go through everything.
So, I told her no problem.
Why are you calling my mother?
And you could tell that she wasquite distraught.
How many people did I talk to you knowdid I potentially remove this money from their rent checks?
Did I remove fromtheir grocery bills?
Did I remove from their car payments?
Dan has this piece of advice for anyone needing help withtheir computer.
[00:22:31] HOST: AndI’m back with AARP Fraud Watch web connection Ambassador Frank Abagnale.
Frank, thisis an interesting story.
[00:23:00] FrankAbagnale: Yeah, I think so.
So someone working there would assume that that’s what itdoes.
I’m justselling the technology.
The minute he walked in the house,there were UPS boxes everywhere.
I mean it looked like a warehouse, and hesaid, none of them are open.
He said to his mother, “What is this?
[00:25:10] HOST: Fartoo easy.
[00:26:08] HOST: Tomanipulate the screen.
[00:26:46] FrankAbagnale: That’s how they’re kind of set up.
There are people who ex–, areexperts in certain areas.
There was no one that you could trust and confide in.
You knew youwere constantly running and you got tired of looking over your shoulder all thetime.
I mean these other…
[00:28:36] FrankAbagnale: They’re the real crooks.
And this iswhat we do.
We don’t really fulfill these things, we don’t do this.
What are their feelings?
You know, youdon’t know anything about them.
[00:29:42] HOST: Thisshow has made me think about that a lot.
That’s a criminal, but the guy at the call center, maybenot so much.
Even though they’re both stealing money.
