Years later, he receives a call from someone claiming to be from thesheriffs office.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:32] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
It’s really easy to find personal information about anyone and everyone these days.
You’ve probably heard a lot about data breaches at big companies.
I mean if you’ve never googled yourself, you should probably do that right now.
And one of those sources can be Uncle Sam.
In fact, he’s even written a book called The Cybersecurity Primer.
[00:01:37] Victor Font: I was an EMT.
I was part of the New Jersey paramedical pilot program.
So I did my volunteer time in Union City Volunteer Ambulance Corps.
[00:02:09] Bob: What attracted you to doing this?
[00:02:11] Victor Font: I’ve always had an interest in medicine.
I had to drop out of college and go to work to take care of my family.
[00:02:41] Victor Font: Exactly.
It’s quite a calling.
They rush out whenever anyone needs help in urgencies.
They work under tremendous pressure, and they often do it with little or no sleep.
[00:02:59] Victor Font: Well, back then, we were part of the pilot program.
There weren’t a lot of medics.
I had two fulltime jobs.
[00:03:25] Bob: When did you sleep?
[00:03:36] Victor Font: Basically.
So it, it’s just one of those things.
It, you know, but I was young.
I had a lot of energy, and uh, it worked.
[00:03:53] Bob: So you might already tell Victor is a caring person.
He’s also a man who takes his obligations seriously.
He has a special needs brother who until recently lived with his family.
And our story begins on a very difficult day for Victor.
Not long after his family realized they just couldn’t care for his brother at home any longer.
[00:04:17] Victor Font: This has to do with my brother.
He’s 1012 years younger than me.
We had to put him into a group home.
We put him in a group home and the only available bed in North Carolina was in Charlotte.
Victor had to spend endless hours on the phone with the Social Security Administration.
Red tape is bad enough, but red tape on top of heartache is just the worst.
Now the problem with that is that I was a representative payee since 1995.
That award program didn’t start until the year 2000.
So there’s no such letter for me.
And the bank wouldn’t buy it.
So I decided to chill out a little bit.
I sat down in my living room.
[00:06:53] Bob: And arrest warrant?
That doesn’t make any sense.
[00:06:58] Victor Font: Now I didn’t believe him at all at first.
I don’t understand that.
And he said, “I need you to confirm the email address.”
I said, “Yeah.
Now why do you want to know that for?”
I shouldn’t have said, yes, that that was my email address.
He said, “Well look at your email.”
And I open my email, and I see a warrant sent to me.
[00:07:25] Bob: Victor scans the pdf attachment in his email.
His eyes glaze over the two-page document.
[00:07:39] Victor Font: I’m saying, “What is this about?”
And he starts talking to me that this was my PPP loan utility was flagged as fraudulent.
The federal government is looking for recovery and asking the local sheriffs' departments to handle the warrants.
The warrant was supposably an arrest warrant for failure to appear in court.
And I said, “I have, I have no, no knowledge.
I was never subpoenaed to go to court,” and so on and so forth.
He says, “Well, look at the warrant.”
And I’m reading it and, and it sure says that and, and signed by a judge.
At that point I, I said, “I have no idea what this is about.
What are you talking about?”
[00:08:20] Bob: What are you talking about?
Before we go on, let me remind you what those were.
During COVID, the federal government instituted several programs to protect individuals and small businesses who lost their income.
That is what they were referring to.
[00:09:45] Victor Font: That’s what they were going after.
But the man on the other end of the phone insists he is under arrest for fraud.
Victor just has to pay back the loan right now.
[00:11:03] Bob: Victor is feeling totally overwhelmed.
[00:11:20] Victor Font: I worked closely with EMS.
And you know what, I believe him.
I think he was telling me the truth about that.
And then I said, “How many people are on the phone with your right now?
Are you tracking on the phone?”
He said, “We have 16 people online with us right now.”
[00:12:29] Bob: Oh my God.
[00:12:30] Bob: So he asks the sergeant, what does he have to do.
[00:12:34] Victor Font: So first they wanted $11,500.
I said, “There’s no way I can come up with that money.”
And I said, “Okay, that’s reasonable.”
[00:12:54] Bob: Victor gets in his car and follows their instructions very carefully.
[00:12:59] Bob: So you, you paid 5500.
How, how did they, how did you make payment?
[00:13:12] Bob: And, and you did that before the close of business that day.
[00:13:15] Victor Font: Yes.
In particular, don’t tell the bank.
You’re going to have to go pay the rest of it.”
And it was a nightmare.
[00:14:07] Bob: Oh goodness.
[00:14:09] Bob: He’s told the court doesn’t accept the combination of the two payments.
At this point, it’s after 5, banks are closed.
He says, “Go home, keep in mind you’re still under arrest.
Do not get stopped by the police because you will spend the night in jail.
We’ll resolve this in the morning.”
[00:14:45] Bob: We’ll resolve it in the morning.
And he’s also got just a bad sinus headache.
[00:15:00] Bob: I mean how did you sleep that night?
What did you feel like?
[00:15:03] Victor Font: Anxious.
I had very little time to work.
It was, things were just starting to turn around and starting to look good again.
We were starting to get a little bit of cash flow back in.
I, I couldn’t.
And that, that’s been a big setback.
He plans to get that refund check and make the lump sum payment and put all this behind him.
And I said, look, this stuff, let me go to the court.
And I got up early.
I was at the court at 8:30.
And trying to get into a federal court these days is a TSA nightmare anyway.
It’s, it’s the same kind of thing.
But we do get checks here on occasion."
And I said, “Well I’m supposed to have a check here.”
“Well maybe it just hasn’t been delivered yet.”
[00:16:58] Bob: No check.
Hmm, Victor thinks that supervisor on the phone certainly sounded confident.
But something about the court clerk’s voice makes him wonder.
So he asks…
[00:17:10] Victor Font: “Can you yo check something for me?
Can you kindly check my name to see if it’s in the court docket?”
I was never, my name has never appeared on the federal court docket.
[00:17:22] Bob: Never on the docket?
[00:17:27] Victor Font: And I started laughing.
I had no other response, I started laughing.
[00:17:31] Bob: Laughing instead of crying because Victor has realized the whole thing is a lie.
But the information the caller had was so real; he knew everything about the PPP loan.
Well, Victor learns, he isn’t alone.
So it was, in my mind, a relatively new scam in Raleigh.
The court clerk gives Victor some advice on what to do next.
And she said, “Just go ask for this person.
She’ll tell you exactly what you oughta do.”
I, I mean I was dumbfounded, especially I had done so many online cybersecurity webcasts and podcasts.
Crooks don’t even have to go to the Dark Web.
And there were hundreds and hundreds of them.
It’s all online.
US government publishes this stuff.
Does that sound right?
[00:20:42] Victor Font: That’s right.
Does that all sound right?
[00:20:49] Victor Font: Yep.
[00:20:50] Bob: Yeah, wow, that’s remarkable.
[00:20:56] Victor Font: No.
I had no idea.
And, and that was a shock.
I can’t do anything about recovering that money.
[00:21:28] Bob: And you were anxious to talk with us which I’m very grateful for.
[00:21:32] Victor Font: Why?
And it just got me angry that the most vulnerable are the ones that are being targeted.
I just want people to know that these people are so professional.
Well, these criminals are as fulltime professions.
The police are not going to tell you over the phone that there’s a warrant.
If it’s true, they will deliver it to your home.
They will subpoena you.
You get anyone identifying themselves as a police officer on the phone, just hang up.
And then I’d get another call from a neighbor that he had gotten out again.
He’d just walk around looking for another way to get out of the yard.
And that’s a lot what these criminals are like.
[00:24:08] Victor Font: That’s exactly what they’re like.
They just want to hurt people.
And they have no remorse, they have no conscience.
[00:24:23] Victor Font: Yes.
Absolutely do not answer your phone if they’re not in your contact list.
Send it to voicemail.
If it’s important enough for them to talk to you, they’ll leave you a message.
[00:24:35] Bob: As taxpayers, we want government records to be open for inspection.
But open government rules are often intentioned with the needs with private citizens to maintain their privacy.
Public PPP records gave criminals fodder to attack Victor.
Criminals use public records to attack the vulnerable in other ways too.
There are disclaimers, but the disclaimers are not necessarily shared as well.
Property tax records, for example.
What does that feel like?
[00:26:57] Jessica Tunon: That’s a great question.
It feels as if there’s no protection.
I asked her to talk about what it was like to get that information removed.
And then to actually contact them personally to find out, okay, why is that information shared?
And is there an opportunity for me to unshare that?
And if there, I can unshare that, what do I need to do?
Like were you successful at any of this?
[00:28:07] Jessica Tunon: Yes, I was actually.
[00:28:09] Bob: Real estate transaction information is public too.
This is something many homebuyers come to learn the hard way.
And they’re shared between different entities.
Um, but that’s a very low-level risk.
There are, there are greater risks.
Can, can you help, help us understand what those greater risks might be?
[00:29:43] Jessica Tunon: That is very true.
Can you talk to me about those efforts?
[00:30:20] Jessica Tunon: Yes.
[00:31:04] Bob: Did you reach out to government agencies as well?
[00:31:06] Jessica Tunon: I did.
I reached out to many agencies not realizing that government itself also shared my information.
[00:31:33] Bob: This all sounds so exhausting.
[00:31:35] Jessica Tunon: It has been very exhausting.
[00:32:06] Bob: It certainly doesn’t sound fair that you have to do all this work.
You didn’t ask for any of this.
[00:32:41] Jessica Tunon: Yes.
[00:32:42] Bob: But Jessica didn’t just complain.
[00:32:58] Jessica Tunon: Yeah, that was actually one of the success stories.
[00:33:54] Bob: I think you are understating your role in this just a little bit.
[00:34:07] Jessica Tunon: Yes.
I was one of many.
I, I did testify for that, yes.
[00:34:12] Bob: What is an Address Confidentiality Program?
It must have felt great when Washington DC did this.
[00:35:05] Jessica Tunon: Oh my goodness.
Can I tell you how happy?
(laugh)
[00:35:07] Bob: Yes, yo tell me how happy.
It’s a really hard process and something hard, you know, difficult to even go through.
[00:36:24] Bob: Doesn’t of states now offer Address Confidentiality Programs.
you might search on the internet for the best way to sign up.
[00:37:57] Jessica Tunon: Yes, yes.
Can you tell me what you mean by an opportunity to unshare?
The extent of how long it takes, that I don’t know.
[00:39:44] Bob: Ah interesting.
[00:40:10] Bob: But citizens can request that other government agencies unshare their information.
[00:40:45] Bob: It doesn’t sound easy though.
[00:40:46] Jessica Tunon: Oh, nothing’s easy, no.
[00:41:05] Bob: That sounds frustrating.
But there’s one click that someone might do and that information’s being shared again.
[00:41:34] Bob: God.
So…
[00:41:35] Jessica Tunon: Which has happened.
We, everyone is human, and there is no real law to protect you.
Well what would you say to that person so that they could keep all these other concerns in mind?
[00:42:35] Jessica Tunon: I put that on the webpage the first thing I would write.
How I can be like her?
What would you suggest to them?
[00:42:58] Jessica Tunon: First, find out where your information is at.
[00:43:20] Bob: It becomes kind of a part-time hobby, doesn’t it?
[00:43:23] Jessica Tunon: It did.
[00:43:45] Jessica Tunon: Every time.
[00:43:46] Bob: Every time.
[00:43:46] Bob: Every time.
And that’s why, unfortunately, we all have to take our own privacy seriously.
All have to fight for it on a regular basis.
Search for yourself online.
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.
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.
