He would text me and say, “You’ve left town.
Where are you going?
What are you doing?”
That sounds so creepy.
[00:00:27] Susan Bivins: I was so afraid.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:33] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
Well today’s guest lived out that dream a few years ago.
Even better, she moved to be near her son and his growing family.
She wanted them to be a bike ride away, not a plane ride away.
Let’s meet Susan.
[00:01:40] Bob: So I have spent a lot of time in Missoula actually.
[00:01:43] Susan Bivins: Oh, yeah, it’s beautiful.
[00:01:52] Susan Bivins: Yeah.
So you see the sign.
[00:02:04] Bob: But you’re a peaceful distance from civilization.
[00:02:06] Susan Bivins: It is beautiful here.
[00:02:21] Susan Bivins: Yes, we do.
But she wasn’t alone.
[00:03:12] Bob: Yeah, that sounds like a very fair exchange.
We’ll make you a grandma, but you have to move nearby.
[00:03:22] Susan Bivins: That, that was a win-win for me.
[00:03:32] Bob: And what kind of nursing did you do?
So I bought that and, and enjoyed living there until I had to move.
[00:04:05] Bob: Until I had to move.
And that’s our story today.
So called Amazon, went through the whole process with them.
Her cellphone ring indicates the call is from Amazon.
[00:05:43] Bob: Fraud?
Susan is frustrated but glad that it seems like Amazon is on top of it.
So she waits on the line to speak to someone from the Fraud Detection Agency.
[00:05:56] Susan Bivins: She transferred me.
[00:06:35] Bob: Randall sure seems to be taking this case of fraud very seriously.
[00:06:40] Susan Bivins: Randall had a very, I would say a British accent.
He was clear, he was pleasant.
I said, “How do I know I’m talking to an agent?”
[00:07:51] Bob: But he was investigating you.
[00:07:53] Susan Bivins: He was investigating me.
[00:07:54] Bob: How did that feel?
[00:07:56] Susan Bivins: That, very scary.
So I was terrified.
And he said, “Don’t tell anybody,” and so I did not tell anybody.
[00:08:21] Bob: Already, Randall seems to know an awful lot about her.
[00:08:25] Susan Bivins: He gave me my Social Security number and my date of birth.
He had that information.
And he said, “Your Social Security number is blah-blah-blah, your date of birth is blah-blah-blah.
You used to live in California.”
He knew where I lived in California.
He knew all of that.
[00:08:40] Bob: Wow.
We need to keep track of you, he tells her.
Where are you going?
What are you doing?”
[00:09:20] Susan Bivins: And knew when I left town.
[00:09:34] Bob: That sounds so creepy.
[00:09:36] Susan Bivins: Oh, it was.
I was part of a, I have a quilting business, and which he knew about.
So I mean it was so terrifying to have him constantly watching me and knowing what was happening.
[00:10:08] Bob: I mean that just sounds like it would make you insane.
[00:10:11] Susan Bivins: It, I was, I was, and I was so afraid.
[00:10:14] Bob: So this kind of daily monitoring goes on for three weeks.
Remember, Susan was told she can’t tell anyone about what’s going on.
[00:10:24] Bob: Wow.
It sounds like torture.
[00:10:39] Susan Bivins: Right, yeah, I was having to constantly pretend.
She’s no longer a suspect.
But there’s still a problem.
Criminals are still accessing her financial accounts, and Randall switches from Susan’s investigator to her protector.
That’s what he kept saying.
“We have to protect you from these culprits because they have all this information.”
[00:11:18] Bob: Right now you’re, now you’re a team.
What was your weather?
[00:11:45] Bob: So Randall comes to Susan with a plan.
She has to move all her savings into accounts that the culprits can’t access.
And carefully follows Randall’s instructions, removing money from her savings account, from her retirement account.
Meanwhile, Randall says the investigation is making headway.
It’s a dizzying time.
And so I texted Randall, and I said, “I think that this is a fraud.
You’re scamming me.
And he immediately called me, and he said, “Fine.
You’re calling a federal go–, a agent a liar?”
And of course, then that scares the bejeebies out of ya.
[00:14:10] Bob: He said it was a crime to accuse him of, of being fraudulent.
[00:14:14] Susan Bivins: Yeah, yeah.
So then I backed off and went, okay.
And he said, and then he’s, he turned really nice.
“I’m just trying to protect you.
I want to see your money protected from these culprits that have all this information about you.”
[00:15:00] Susan Bivins: Right.
No, the retirement money was wire transferred into a, an account.
[00:15:06] Bob: Oh, I see.
So how, how many of these transfers in total do you think took place?
So $5,000 increments, so it was, you know, $40,000 altogether, plus the retirement.
So you know we’re looking at $240,000 um, money total.
But there’s a delay.
[00:16:20] Bob: But now the timing is bad for Susan.
She has a long planned trip coming up with family.
And that is making things even more complicated.
“Oh yeah, we’ll get it to you, we’ll get it to you.”
[00:16:49] Bob: But that doesn’t happen.
[00:17:30] Susan Bivins: Yeah.
And I had not authorized that.
I texted Randall right away and said, “$4600 has been removed out of my checking account.
Did you do this?”
And he said immediately, “No, we don’t have access to your checking account.
We would have never done that.
The culprits have gotten into your account, and this is why we were trying to protect you.”
And at that point I had $200 in my checking account.
[00:18:26] Bob: Oh my God.
[00:18:27] Susan Bivins: I know.
Now I, I mean no money.
So they covered that.
I was filling out all of the forms and reporting this to law enforcement.
And he kept wanting to know what was the investigation?
What was the bank doing?
Were they finding out anything?
[00:20:32] Bob: How long did you keep communicating with the criminal?
And I am making arrangements.
And I thought for a minute, is he really truthful?
I mean is someone going to come with a check for this amount of money?
So I called the FBI office to ask them, what should I do?
And then I blocked it and haven’t had any con–, any contact with him since.
So…
[00:21:58] Bob: I’m glad you got to have your say.
“We don’t have the resources.”
[00:23:01] Bob: That’s just so frustrating to hear.
[00:23:03] Susan Bivins: I know, it really is.
I just have my Social Security income.
There’s no other money.
And I have no savings.
And I knew my house payment was more than what I could make.
And I wanted to do it at one time.
I didn’t want to have to tell, you know, four different stories.
And right away she said, “Are you okay?”
thinking there was something medically wrong with me.
So anyway, she set it up.
I got them all on the phone and shared my story.
And my sister tends to be a little bit more that way.
I’m the trusting one of the family.
I believe everybody and I, you know, I’m the caretaker.
I’m the oldest.
And there wasn’t any of that.
They were all so supporting.
And I said, “Yeah.
It was, it was really hard.”
We will take care of you.
[00:25:50] Susan Bivins: I went from a over 2,000 sq.
ft. house to a 500 sq.
I, you know, made good Social Security from being an RN all those years.
And so I’m managing, but I had trips that I still wanted to travel and do.
And that I’ve had to reduce those.
But you know, I’m, I’m living, I’m, I’m healthy.
That’s part of her recovery, she says.
[00:28:01] Bob: Another benefit of giving talks, Susan is reminded that she’s not alone.
[00:28:08] Bob: What kind of reactions do you get from people when you give these talks?
None of them, they all start with my, my situation was nothing like what you went through.
I know my grandson’s not in Mexico or just things like that.
[00:30:11] Austin Knudsen: Well the immediate reaction is anger, right.
[00:31:46] Austin Knudsen: Well, it’s difficult just legally from the state standpoint.
That’s assuming you know who the person is.
And that really is the, the crux of the dif–, of, of the difficulty here.
We don’t know who this person is.
He provided a name, clearly not his actual name.
Very likely this was a, a person not even located within the United States.
We see a lot of these scams come from international sources.
So that’s why we’re talking with the FBI, right.
“There is nothing we can do.
You voluntarily sent the money, so there’s no crime,” that kind of thing.
So I asked the Attorney General what could be done to improve the victim experience.
We don’t, we dont do that here.
I, I had a very small rural sheriff’s office that I, that I worked with.
I mean they; they don’t have a ton of resources.
I, I guarantee they do not have any kind of computer forensic division.
It’s, it’s a matter of resources for a lot of those small agencies.
You know like we, it’s, it’s not 1992 anymore.
You know our state population is increasing.
We are seeing increased crime.
We’re, we’re seeing more of this.
Something, something along the lines of, well you know, you sent them money.
There’s no crime here, that sort of thing.
[00:35:45] Austin Knudsen: Yeah, I don’t know that we definitely can.
And, and we definitely should and, and, and we are taking some steps toward that.
We’ve actually put them, put that, we call that DCI here in Montana.
I mean it, it, this isn’t a victimless crime.
I mean this, this is theft.
This is theft, this is fraud.
Those are crimes in Montana, and they need to be treated as such.
A lot of people, for good reason, reasons I understand, want to retire to Montana.
I mean we’re, we’re an aging state.
So yeah, I think we’re going to keep seeing more of this.
It’s going to keep becoming a bigger and bigger issue.
Let’s face it, there is an epidemic of scams.
And the whole point of this podcast is to get people to take these crimes more seriously.
That’s also the driving force behind all the work Kathy Stokes does at AARP.
And my team and I, run a program called the AARP Fraud Watch online grid.
[00:38:34] Bob: And what is the Fraud Watch data pipe?
We also provide support to victims and their families through various offerings as well.
Furious because it’s not unusual.
And the FBI wouldn’t even help her.
They wouldn’t even give her the time of day.
How common is that?
[00:39:56] Kathy Stokes: All too common.
They understand that fraud is a crime, and they’ll take the report.
[00:40:42] Kathy Stokes: Exactly.
[00:40:47] Kathy Stokes: Absolutely.
[00:40:48] Bob: How common, how common is that?
Never even entered my mind because we don’t talk about it that way.
You know, call a lawyer.
[00:41:35] Bob: Changing that requires a mental shift on behalf of many people.
Law enforcement, victims, family and friends.
We cannot blame people for, for experiencing a crime that you could’t even see is a crime.
[00:43:40] Bob: Wow.
[00:43:41] Kathy Stokes: We know that that’s the tip of the iceberg.
At least one state official told her that.
[00:44:15] Bob: That’s almost astonishing to hear.
Can you say that again?
[00:44:30] Bob: There’s just too much murder going on.
We can’t deal with it anymore.
[00:44:32] Kathy Stokes: Right.
[00:44:33] Bob: Oh my goodness.
[00:44:34] Kathy Stokes: Take the cop off the street.
Why do humans have this seemingly pre-wired urge to blame victims?
And we don’t believe it’s ever going to happen to us.
Every victim that becomes a victim never believes it’s going to happen to them.
We believe that it always happens to somebody else, it will never happen to us.
[00:45:48] Kathy Stokes: We don’t take take fraud seriously.
That we see, for example, human trafficking of, of exploited children.
Have them create the investigative package to pass off to federal law enforcement.
We have to do something meaningful as a society.
It starts with thinking about fraud differently, understanding that it is not the victim’s fault.
It does not mean there’s something wrong with that person.
If it’s an older adult, it does not suggest cognitive decline.
[00:48:43] Bob: We have to take meaningful action to put an end to it.
For The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch web connection Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
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.
One day, Susan notices some unusual charges from her Amazon account.
