Answer yes or no."
And he wrote back, “No.”
And she was like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And then my stomach just dropped.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:42] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
Im your host, Bob Sullivan.
20-fold in just the past couple of years.
It all starts with a text message that looks like it comes from your bank.
[00:01:38] Helen St. Pierre: Brady is one of my favorites.
He is a, a little like black-labish mix.
We have Thelma, who is completely blind.
It’s kind of like cerebral palsy for people.
And so she has all kinds of strange movements; she’s handicapped.
She’s in a wheelchair.
We’ve started her on PT and laser therapy, and she’s just the happiest little nugget.
We’ve got this very old dog, uh, very abused.
He needs a lot of medical care, but we, he’s not doing well in the shelter.
Is there anyone that might want him?"
And I immediately was just like a kneejerk reaction.
I said, “He needs to come here.”
And it, it’s given us a lot of gifts.
[00:04:23] Bob: And so it’s called Old Dogs Go to Helen.
[00:04:42] Bob: That’s all very, very beautiful.
So you have a very full house.
[00:04:47] Helen St. Pierre: Yes, we have a very full house.
It is controlled chaos.
[00:05:26] Helen St. Pierre: Not usually years.
Honestly, most of our dogs have months left.
Years is, is, is really great.
So you are living a lot of people’s dream it seems like.
I mean it’s hard enough doing it for one dog.
I can’t imagine doing it for 15.
[00:06:38] Helen St. Pierre: Yes, it’s a lot of work.
We have a routine.
We know what to do.
We pull up the pee pads that are soiled, we replace them.
The reality comes when I have to train somebody on how to do that.
Um, is it sort of like that when you’re giving out medicine in the morning?
[00:07:53] Helen St. Pierre: Uh, kind of.
So we have, kind of have to divide it up on who needs what and when.
[00:08:17] Bob: Honestly, my brain is exploding.
(laugh) Now we have to keep going down that line.
So yes, it’s quite, it’s quite a labor of love like I said.
[00:09:01] Bob: A labor of love that leads often to heartache.
We need, lose dogs all the time.
They havent gone through that.
[00:09:43] Bob: And it’s more than that.
And just having that presence they, they bring something to the table.
[00:11:21] Helen St. Pierre: Yes.
And, and it was the most beautiful thing.
[00:11:34] Helen St. Pierre: Yep.
It, they are, they are by far the best, best friends.
It, right off the bat, right?
So that’s, that’s kind of the way that we look at it too.
[00:12:29] Bob: There might be some people who don’t know this.
So um, how frequently do your dogs need medical care that costs multiple thousands of dollars?
So we just took in two dogs this week, Lambchop and Marley.
She has undergone severe cruelty.
She is almost completely bald.
She needs a full workup, skin treatment, eye treatment, ear treatment.
That kind of thing.
But one day into this well-oiled menagerie disaster strikes.
They have that whole area.
Answer yes or no."
We’ve gotten these all the time.
And he wrote back, “No.”
And it came from the B of A text, like the six-digit thing.
I’m calling you from the Fraud Department.
Are you trying to make that purchase?"
And my husband said, “No.
And he said, “Okay.
He said, “No.
We’re absolutely not trying to withdraw money from that Old Dog’s account.”
And he said, “Okay, well we’re going to need to freeze everything.
Do you have your information in front of you?”
And he said, “No, I am not the banking person.
This is my wife’s department.
You know we need to; we need to get her on the phone.”
And he said, “Okay.
Is this her number?”
Why don’t you go tell her what’s going on.”
[00:15:45] Bob: So Jake rushes through the house to give Helen the lowdown.
And I deal with them quite frequently with our nonprofit stuff and everything.
I picked it up.
He said, “Yep, this is Mark from Fraud.
I just spoke to your husband.
Do you want that?”
you know, and he said, “That’s not you?”
And I said, “Absolutely not.
just cancel everything.”
And he said, “Okay, we’re going through the process right now.
You’re going to have to stay with me on the phone.
Not cancel the accounts, cancel your cards.
And I said, “Yes, that’s fine.”
We rely on completely on donations for function.
And I said, “Absolutely not.”
He said, “Okay.”
He said, “Okay, great.
Can you also log onto your account?”
I said, “Absolutely.
I’ll log on now.”
And he said, “Okay, can you see your Old Dogs Go to Helen savings account?”
And I said, “Yes, I can see that.”
He said, “Okay.
I want you to look at where I’m putting it.”
He said, “Go to transfers.”
I said, “Absolutely.”
I clicked on transfers.
It’s a, an advance safety account.”
And I said, “Yes, that’s great.”
I said, “Can I just, before I do this, can I talk to somebody?
Do you have a supervisor that I can talk to, because I’m just really stressed out.”
And he said, “Absolutely.
c’mon hold, let me get my supervisor on for you.”
The hold music was the same old music I always listen to.
Another guy comes on the phone.
I did not, he didn’t give me his name, but I didn’t ask for it.
And he said, “Yep.
This, I’m the supervisor here at the Fraud Department.
This is the way that we handle these kinds of things at this point.
And I said, “Great.
He said, “Can you read that six-digit code back to me?”
I said, “Yep, here’s the code.”
He said, “Refresh it.
Can you see that that transfer has been made?”
I said, “Yes, it looks like it’s, it’s, it’s gone.”
I couldn’t see it in the account.
And he said, “Thank you very much.
Do you have any questions?”
And I said, “No, that sounds great.
Thank you so much.”
I mean I was like, Bob, I was so grateful, right?
Because I was like, thank you, you’ve just saved me from losing all that money.
[00:19:44] Bob: Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:45] Helen St. Pierre: Um, my husband was there the whole time.
Oh, thank God, they saved us.”
Like wow, that was great.
[00:19:56] Bob: But Helen goes to bed that night not feeling completely settled.
They’ve canceled the credit, uh the, the card charge, in in Georgia.
[00:21:00] Bob: A little bit panicky.
And it isn’t long before that panicky feeling turns into real panic.
And I was like, “Well this is weird.”
And she was like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And then my stomach just it, it like dropped.
You know because she said, “Oh no, this um, this might be a scam.”
[00:21:32] Bob: This might be a scam.
This was a scam.
We can’t help you.”
[00:22:03] Bob: “We can’t help you,” she remembers being told.
I went in, in-person, thank God they were open and the, the in-person people were fantastic.
They actually started the report.
I called the Concord Police Department, ‘cause my bank was in Concord.
I filed a police report, I filed an FBI report.
The bank submitted everything to show, we showed them the text message.
You could still see all of it.
So they’re not required by law to provide a refund of the stolen money.
We’ve done stories about this before, particularly around common Zelle scams.
Like that’s, so that was…
[00:24:53] Bob: This was an authorized transfer.
[00:24:56] Helen St. Pierre: Exactly.
[00:25:05] Helen St. Pierre: Yes.
What’s your name?”
And he said, “Okay, I’m going to send you a six-digit pin.”
And they submitted an appeal.
That took 40 days only for them to then deny it again.
I re–, just last week got another denial.
[00:26:48] Bob: Those first fraudulent texts, they seemed so real.
[00:27:48] Helen St. Pierre: Yes.
[beep], which is his Bank of America debit card.
[00:27:57] Helen St. Pierre: Yes.
And it came through as a Bank of America text.
[00:28:07] Helen St. Pierre: They knew my number.
They said, “Okay, is your wife Helen Elizabeth?”
You know and they this…
[00:28:11] Bob: Okay, so there’s thing two.
They knew enough, at least a few digits of your debit card.
[00:28:24] Bob: Sure.
“Why would he or she respond that way?”
Let’s take you back to the morning that first scam text arrived.
We were just sort of functioning.
And so yeah, it, it, you’re completely and totally right.
Like you know a 20-minute call has now depreciated our availability to do XYZ.
[00:30:22] Bob: Let me ask this que– question.
How many dogs are you petting during a phone call like this?
I’m like, “Yeah, no, no, no, it’s fine.
It’s just Wesley.”
The medical bills for the hospice dogs sure haven’t stopped.
[00:31:20] Helen St. Pierre: Um, you just, you just feel sick, you know.
Because you think was that I dumb?
And that was the worst feeling the way that I was treated by Bank of America when this happened.
I mean this was your one-month emergency fund and it was just suddenly gone, right?
And so it’s, it’s major consequence.
But that really drained a lot of our, you know, local community reach for that.
[00:33:50] Helen St. Pierre: Exactly.
Especially in a, in a short period of time.
There are some rescues that do that, but we’re not a huge facility or shelter.
Like we, we’re a small privately done, you know, family that’s doing this.
So it’s, it’s not easy to access that stuff.
[00:34:24] Helen St. Pierre: Yes.
“This crime is skyrocketing,” says the Federal Trade Commission.
The agency recently issued a report about it.
Reports about fake text message, text messages impersonating banks have been up nearly 20-fold since 2019.
[00:35:51] Bob: I mean 20-fold!
[00:35:59] Sophia Siddiqui: Yes, it’s very interesting.
That just seems like a next-level horrible kind of crime to me.
[00:36:26] Sophia Siddiqui: Oh, I mean this was a, this was a horrible story.
It, there obviously, this non-profit takes care of senior dogs in hospice.
These have increased quite a bit.
[00:38:10] Sophia Siddiqui: Yes, exactly.
[00:38:12] Bob: There is something else very worrisome about bank copycat frauds.
They are very, very profitable for criminals.
So the median losses can get very high.
[00:39:02] Bob: The crime is successful because the text messages seem so real.
Have these crimes become more sophisticated lately?
So they were sort of skilled in the trade so to speak.
So yes, it can be really confusing for consumers.
That’s, that just shows it must be very effective, right?
[00:40:19] Sophia Siddiqui.
Pierre: Yes, definitely.
You know, that’s why consumers are reporting losing a lot of money to imposter scams.
[00:40:26] Bob: So how can you protect yourself from bank copycat fraud?
[00:40:31] Sophia Siddiqui: You should never trust the caller ID.
[00:41:16] Bob: What should banks be doing about this kind of crime?
And they’re engaging in consumer education.
What should cellphone companies do about bank copycat fraud?
[00:41:51] Sophia Siddiqui: Well, cellphone providers, that’s interesting.
We have filed a lot of actions in federal court.
We’ve been going after telemarketers as well as VoIP providers who carry the calls to reduce these.
And I think that cellphone providers have done some things.
Um, I, I don’t get those kinds of warning on text messages.
Is that the kind of thing that people are working on?
[00:43:31] Bob: I sure hope so.
We checked right before publishing this episode and she’s still dealing with the mess made by her criminal.
They’re just sitting there frozen because of going through this.
And so my main issue is, if I continue to fight this, I can’t access.
[00:44:25] Bob: And here comes a bit of irony.
Extra security measures make it much harder for Helen to move money between her accounts now.
[00:44:44] Bob: Oh my God!
[00:44:45] Helen St. Pierre: I, exactly, right.
It’s been a complete and total nightmare.
[00:44:55] Bob: What has Helen learned from this experience?
What is it you really want people to know?
And so do not trust anything digitally anymore.
Even the phone calls, like just don’t trust anything.
Hang up, call them back.
I certainly have learned that now.
[00:47:09] And it’s smart to think about scams before one lands at your door.
Before it happens to you, ask your bank what their protocol looks like.
Ask them straight up.
What was that going to look like for me?
Are you going to immediately credit me those funds back while you work on an investigation?
Like how does that look?"
Because you know those are things that again, I just, I wouldn’t ask that.
[00:48:14] Bob: Banks should be human-friendly.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch internet 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.
They rely on donations to pay for the dogs medical and comfort care until they pass on.
While Helen thought she was averting a crisis, she was actually the victim of a sophisticatedbank impersonation fraud.
