So, and they know if an area’s getting hot, they’ll leave pretty quickly.
[00:00:17] Michelle: Welcome back to AARP’s The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Michelle Kosinski.
That sinking feeling, the inconvenience, and feeling violated.
But first, let’s say hello to another dogged crime fighter, Fraud Expert, Frank Abagnale.
And Frank, we want to hear about what you’ve been working on too.
What’s new in your world?
[00:01:13] Frank Abagnale: Well, thanks for having me, Michelle.
So I’m always busy.
So education is, is very, very important.
[00:02:39] Michelle: And what scams should we be looking out for right now?
Anything in particular that has peaked your interest?
[00:03:04] Michelle: Ah.
Those are the things we’ll be seeing a lot of in, unfortunately in 2020.
[00:03:36] Michelle: There’s, there’s never a shortage.
[00:03:38] Frank Abagnale: No.
[00:03:39] Michelle: Thanks so much, Frank.
[00:03:40] Frank Abagnale: Thank you.
[00:03:41] Michelle: So now to our scam.
[00:04:46] Michelle: Oh, so when you see this, what goes through your mind?
So that took me a couple of hours.
[00:05:35] Michelle: Oh God.
[00:05:35] Kathy Wade: It was like a major pain in the butt.
One key had a little tag on it that said ATM.
[00:05:51] Michelle: They must have thought…jackpot!
[00:05:53] Kathy Wade: Yeah, right, like if only.
But at any rate, so we canceled everything, and we moved on.
[00:06:00] Michelle: But of course, that is not nearly the end of it.
[00:06:27] Kathy Wade: No, it, it didn’t.
[00:06:52] Michelle: Wow.
So then you think it’s over, right.
[00:07:19] Michelle: But it’s still not the end of it.
And I was like, what could be wrong with his card?
So I tried my card, and my card got denied.
So I’m like, “I have not cashed any checks.”
My husband works here, he’s a Vice President of this bank.
We are not trying to rip you off, you know, like why would I do that?
[00:08:55] Michelle: You must have been worried.
What do you think?
But this is not any run of the mill scheme.
So they got about just a little less than $3000 out of the bank.
[00:10:24] Michelle: A very bold and creepy scam.
[00:10:52] Michelle: …of somebody else which then causes more headaches for Kathy.
[00:10:55] Kathy Wade: But it still took us a while to get everything established.
[00:11:02] Kathy Wade: All your, all your bill pay stuff had to be redone.
[00:11:15] Michelle: Now remember, these crooks still have her driver’s license.
And then I had to go in and get a whole new driver’s license.
[00:11:35] Michelle: She freezes her credit and thinks she’s fixed the problem for good.
And that’s probably one more reason she’s so good at it.
But that somebody else is also a victim.
So they like to make it as complicated as possible.
[00:12:57] Michelle: Det.
Lopez starts talking to police in surrounding areas, and pieces start coming together.
They go to multiple counties because they know this slows down the police when there are multiple jurisdictions involved.
They break into cars all over the place, stealing women’s purses.
Exactly what happened in Kathy Wade’s case.
[00:13:45] Michelle: Oh, this is so interesting.
[00:13:58] Crystal Lopez: Right.
They’ve perfected their craft, absolutely.
We’ll cash this check for you."
I was gone for less than two minutes, and my, all my stuff is gone.
What do they want?
Are they, they looking to break into my home?
[00:15:15] Michelle: Right.
[00:15:16] Crystal Lopez: They don’t know who they’re looking for.
More than a dozen of them in a federal case.
There’s even now an FBI taskforce dedicated to the Felony Lane Gang cases.
One of my cases went all the way to Washington State.
So they have that buffer.
[00:16:49] Michelle: Are they young?
[00:17:18] Michelle: Any connection to cartels or anything bigger and scarier like that?
I’ve had several suspects be connected to like drug kingpin activity.
[00:17:44] Michelle: Gosh, yeah.
They’ll dump it into a girlfriend’s account, their sister’s account.
It’s usually a whole family affair.
‘Cause when you look at their property, no one owns a house in their name.
It’s, their mom owns three houses.
[00:18:05] Michelle: Oh, this is interesting.
[00:18:07] Crystal Lopez: Yeah, so they, they know the game.
They know what they’re doing.
[00:18:10] Michelle: It gives me the creeps.
[00:18:11] Crystal Lopez: Yeah.
[00:18:12] Michelle: Okay, who do you think masterminded this?
Does anybody know who the like, genius was that came up with this?
And they all know each other, ‘cause I’ve had them cross paths before.
[00:18:51] Michelle: Just kind of from the criminal connection?
[00:18:54] Crystal Lopez: Right, yep.
[00:19:08] Crystal Lopez: And…
[00:19:08] Michelle: See the world.
So, and they know if an area’s getting hot, they’ll leave pretty quickly.
[00:19:44] Michelle: They’re looking for targets with money, of course.
At one point, these guys netted $100,000 in a month, just in Maryland.
[00:20:00] Michelle: How much money did these people take total?
Or what are we talking here?
[00:20:05] Crystal Lopez: Well, well it’s like in the millions.
And like our indictment was around a million dollars.
And that was taking the lower end of, of the losses.
[00:20:41] Crystal Lopez: Right.
And a lot of people keep spare keys in their car, you know, in their purse.
So my victims were terrified.
[00:20:48] Michelle: I would be.
[00:20:48] Crystal Lopez: Yeah, and I, I, I understood.
[00:21:10] Michelle: Yeah.
You know, and I totally get it.
You know, those are their favorite fishing spots.
[00:22:05] Michelle: A simple crime with a sprawling, complex criminal online grid behind it.
[00:22:10] Michelle: How many perpetrators do you think are connected to this across the country?
[00:22:38] Michelle: So interesting.
Um, are you still seeing cases in this area?
[00:22:43] Crystal Lopez: Not so much in Maryland, knock on wood.
[00:22:46] Michelle: You busted them, girl!
[00:22:47] Crystal Lopez: I know, I know.
[00:22:48] Michelle: You took them down.
Or just stay out, you know, out of my jurisdiction.
[00:23:04] Michelle: So you warned them, too.
And I think right now Virginia and Pennsylvania’s getting hit pretty hard.
[00:23:14] Michelle: Do they feel any guilt over this when you talk to the perpetrators directly?
[00:23:19] Crystal Lopez: Oh no.
They always act like, oh, I didn’t know, or this was my first time.
I’m like, uh-huh.
[00:23:30] Crystal Lopez: It is.
It is, but because it’s ever evolving, I know they’ll be back.
I just have to, be like stay on top of it.
[00:23:37] Michelle: I love how you do this behind the scenes.
[00:23:52] Crystal Lopez: Yeah.
[00:23:53] Michelle: So I commend you.
[00:23:54] Crystal Lopez: Thank you, I appreciate it.
[00:23:54] Michelle: You’re amazing.
[00:23:55] Crystal Lopez: Thank you.
I was very, very pregnant during a good portion of the investigation.
[00:24:05] Michelle: This is like a movie.
[00:24:05] Crystal Lopez: Yeah, it’s pretty cool, right?
[00:24:19] Michelle: I can’t even imagine.
[00:24:23]: Michelle: I don’t want to see you on my territory again.
[00:24:26] Crystal Lopez: Exactly.
[00:24:26] Michelle: It’s just like busting bad guys left and right.
[00:24:28] Crystal Lopez: Yeah.
[00:24:29] Michelle: With like an infant.
[00:24:30] Crystal Lopez: Yeah, like infant on my hip.
[00:24:31] Michelle: In a sling.
[00:24:33] Crystal Lopez: (giggle) My breast pump in the back seat.
[00:24:35] Michelle: Listen you.
[00:24:36] Crystal Lopez: Yeah, don’t, don’t do this every again.
That’s how you get the information.
That was a fun car ride.
[00:25:13] Crystal Lopez: The females are usually like prostitutes or drug addicts, or both.
And that’s how they kind of control them.
[00:25:35] Michelle: To leave Florida, see beautiful Baltimore, Maryland.
[00:25:38] Crystal Lopez: Right.
[00:25:39] Michelle: Did you do any sting operations?
Like with a purse in a car?
[00:25:49] Michelle: Yeah.
[00:25:50] Crystal Lopez: With items in it; never took the bait.
[00:25:52] Michelle: Yeah, same here.
We could not get people to steal that car to save our lives.
We left it running…
[00:26:03] Crystal Lopez: Yeah.
[00:26:03] Michelle: With the keys in the ignition.
Nobody, nobody around that car, and nobody would touch that car.
[00:26:08] Crystal Lopez: Yeah, they’re like no, I know what that is.
[00:26:10] Michelle: How, how do they know?
[00:26:24] Michelle: Was this one of your toughest cases?
[00:26:25] Crystal Lopez: It was.
Well it’s like a huge web.
[00:26:48] Crystal Lopez: Yeah.
[00:26:48] Michelle: Like respect.
It, they are smart.
[00:26:58] Michelle: Well, congratulations, ‘cause you were smarter.
[00:27:00] Crystal Lopez: Thank you.
[00:27:01] Michelle: Cleaning up the streets.
[00:27:02] Crystal Lopez: Yep.
[00:27:06] Kathy Wade: Years later, it still affects my life.
Like I’ll be smart, I’ll, I’ll check that nobody can see it.
Um, I had done it hundreds of times, hundreds of times.
[00:27:31] Michelle: Right.
[00:27:32] Kathy Wade: I, let me just say I haven’t done it since then.
[00:27:45] Michelle: You must have felt like, ah… they got them.
[00:27:48] Kathy Wade: Yeah, I was.
I was very happy about that.
[00:27:51] Michelle: Would you ever have thought that this was such a sophisticated scam?
[00:27:56] Kathy Wade: No.
And they say, “No.”
[00:28:56] Michelle: Oh wow.
Let’s talk to Frank Abagnale again about this.
[00:29:37] Michelle: So, Frank, this turned out to be something much more elaborate.
[00:29:40] Frank Abagnale: Absolutely.
Uh, for example, people think of their deposit slip as a worthless piece of paper.
Sometimes they write grocery lists on the back of them and then leave it in the grocery cart.
Uh, that scam goes on all the time.
[00:30:50] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, absolutely, both business and consumer.
So I remind people…
[00:30:54] Michelle: Why is that would you say?
There are a lot of companies that, that still write a lot of checks.
If you notify the bank within those 30 days, you have no liability for any forged checks.
The problem is that many people don’t reconcile their bank account anymore.
I don’t need to check it.
And that’s too late to get and recover your money from the bank.
So the key there is to remember that you should reconcile.
That is very important.
[00:34:28] Michelle: Exactly.
All right, well thanks so much, Frank.
[00:34:31] Frank Abagnale: Thank you.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Michelle Kosinski.
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