[00:00:05] Nancy: I had gone to her home and saw these stacks of magazines everywhere.
There were charges from five or six different companies.
It got up to where the charges started increasing.
We have a contract.
She agreed to 10 years.
This is the kicker, she agreed to 10 years of that magazine.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:58] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
Sometimes it’s the smallest opening that lets criminals steal the biggest amounts.
[00:02:22] Penny: Probably not.
[00:02:23] Nancy: I do.
[00:02:24] Penny: You do?
[00:02:25] Bob: Okay Nancy, go ahead.
[00:02:26] Nancy: Yeah.
Penny would beat me up.
We were the only two girls.
We had two older brothers and a younger brother.
Um, and then we were in the middle there.
If I told mama, then mama beat my butt and she’d sock me again, so.
[00:02:48] Bob: She was trying to teach you not to be a complainer, right?
And as sisters, we were always close growing up.
[00:03:04] Bob: Why did you hit her, Penny?
[00:03:10] Bob: Aha!
[00:03:12] Bob: That was a long time ago.
Nancy and Penny went off to have their own lives in different states.
[00:03:37] Penny: I’m older, by three years.
and had to receive her chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
So she sold her house in North Carolina and came down to live with my husband and I.
[00:04:12] Bob: But Penny, that’s just so much to deal with all at once.
I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.
[00:04:18] Penny: It’s part of life.
[00:04:23] Penny: Yes.
Well, that’s not quite right.
Innocent schoolchildren came to the door, but they were unwittingly doing the work of predators.
Is that how this all started?
[00:04:54] Penny: Yeah, they were from the school.
I forget what it was.
So I looked at it and I said, okay.
What’s a couple of magazines, say?
I think I got Sudoku and a cat magazine, and that was fine.
[00:05:36] Nancy: This was back in 2014.
[00:06:04] Bob: But they started calling and offering you different deals, right?
Right,
[00:06:09] Penny: different deals, yeah.
[00:06:21] Bob: But, when she tried to call and cancel, things got even worse.
And I said okay that’s fine I’ll do that.
[00:07:18] Bob: So Penny would pay several hundred dollars to stop getting these magazines.
But they wouldn’t stop.
[00:07:34] Penny: And my husband being sick was in the background.
If I got home from work and the phone rang, Who’s on the phone?
I thought you talked to him yesterday.
You know, and, Hurry up, I need something, you know, that jot down thing.
Don’t get on the phone and interrupt him.
[00:08:09] Penny: I needed to get off the phone, yeah.
[00:08:11] Bob: And also, operators would bully her.
[00:08:16] Penny: They were impatient and disrespectful.
You know, you might’t do that.
You signed, you signed an agreement, or You agreed to get this magazine.
So, it was one of these things to where you had to quit answering the phone.”
[00:08:30] Bob: Would they yell at you?
And they need to get on Medicaid so they can afford the kind of care he needs.
Well, Medicaid requires a lot of forms.
And when Nancy helps Penny with the paperwork, there is a shocking discovery.
I mean, you know, her body is just going crazy.
It got up to where the charges started increasing.
How does that feel?
I mean, did you have any sense that something was wrong until this point?
I just tried to roll with the punches and, and cover what I could.
[00:12:24] Nancy: My, in my sister’s defense, it became so overwhelming to her.
She literally, Ronnie would not allow her five minutes to herself.
She had to be his constant companion and…
So she didn’t have time to figure out where their money was going.
And it was over $68,000.
[00:13:14] Bob: $68,000?
The total just hits them both between the eyes.
From $20 subscriptions to $68,000?
[00:13:23] Nancy: It just blew me away.
I understood the surroundings around her.
She worked 60 hours a week, a job she’d been at for 40 some years.
My heart broke for her, but I was angry.
[00:13:43] Penny: She was pissed.
[00:13:45] Nancy: I, I was really angry.
How could she, how could, how could anyone let somebody, these people, take this money.
Oh, it’s possible for you to’t stop it.
We’ll turn it over to collection if you stop paying.
[00:14:13] Bob: What, what, what did they mean to you?
We have a contract.
She agreed to 10 years.
This is the kicker, she agreed to 10 years of that magazine.
[00:14:29] Bob: She has agreed to 10 years of a magazine?
[00:14:33] Penny: And only one of them sent a refund.
[00:14:36] Nancy: Yeah, she got one little refund.
And do you know we still have magazines piling in this house every week?
And some of them won’t stop until 2030.
[00:14:48] Bob: Until 2030?
Penny is very sick.
[00:15:17] Bob: You probably wondered, thought nobody would care, right?
[00:15:20] Nancy: Exactly.
And so we just thought that this is just what my sister’s story was.
Is that she was part of this scam and that was the end of it.
We’d never thought about prosecuting, because we didn’t have these people.
[00:15:52] Penny: Yeah, I got it twice.
And I thought, this is a scam.
[00:16:06] Bob: Sure, yeah.
[00:16:07] Penny: So I put the letter away.
And another week or so, or a month, I got another letter.
So, Nancy and I talked about it, and we, uh, called them up.
And Nancy talked to them and told them, you know, we’ve got all this information.
If you’re interested in it, we can send it to you.
They ran a telemarketing call center in suburban Minneapolis.
Some of them are being charged by a dozen or more companies each month.
And that caught my eye immediately and led to us digging a little deeper into the investigation.
[00:17:51] Bob: Your Magazine Service.
That’s a vague sounding name.
But, it had a purpose.
Do I have that right?
[00:18:35] Joe Thompson: That’s right.
[00:18:36] Bob: That spiderwebs into just a massive crime.
[00:18:39] Joe Thompson: That’s absolutely right.
[00:18:42] Bob: Staggering in part because so many of the victims are like Penny.
A lot of these people were on fixed incomes.
They were quite elderly and they did not have much running, many expenses.
So you’d see credit card statements that were essentially all charges from magazine companies.
[00:19:31] Joe Thompson: That’s right.
The reality was they were just getting scammed all over again.
[00:20:23] Bob: Call, they were badgered, right?
[00:20:24] Joe Thompson: Absolutely.
They were very, very aggressive.
Some of the calls were very aggressive, threatening legal action.
[00:20:40] Bob: She’s going to get magazines until the day she dies?
[00:20:55] Bob: I’m guessing you had never spoken to the FBI before, right?
[00:20:58] Nancy: No, never.
But I worked for an attorney for 20 years, so I really wasn’t intimidated about it.
It actually was a breath of fresh air that somebody was doing something about this.
So, they pull that out for the phone call.
[00:21:28] Bob: That’s just unbelievable.
How did it feel that your anger now had a purpose?
[00:21:41] Penny: It felt good.
[00:21:42] Nancy: Wonderful.
[00:21:49] Bob: So Penny and Nancy are both anxious to testify against their tormentors.
But there’s a hitch.
The trial will be in Minneapolis.
And remember, they are in Georgia.
[00:22:03] Nancy: Penny has kidney failure.
[00:22:13] Bob: Okay, got it.
[00:22:14] Nancy: Because it would not be safe for her on an airplane.
[00:22:17] Bob: Sure.
[00:22:17] Nancy: So, how, what’s the other way we could get to Minnesota?
And I said, well, I’m not going to drive.
You know, that’s a long, hard trip from Georgia to Minnesota.
They said, well, what’s the only other way?
I said, well, we can’t go by bus.
So, train is the only other way.
Then it became an adventure.
[00:22:37] Bob: So the two sisters pile onto the train.
Well, four trains, actually, to head to federal court in Minnesota.
[00:22:45] Nancy: Well, it was 48 hours up there.
We drove to Atlanta, which is a couple of hours from our home.
We boarded the train in, in Atlanta.
[00:23:08] Bob: So you were very close.
[00:23:24] Bob: Nice.
[00:23:41] Bob: Oh boy (laughs).
We fell in love with train travel, or I did, anyway.
The food was exquisite.
Even the microwave food, they served up and down going the other direction.
It’s very good food.
But the chef prepared meal, the food was just exquisite.
[00:24:20] Bob: That’s fantastic.
[00:24:25] Bob: That’s, that’s the empire builder train, right?
[00:24:27] Penny: Yes
[00:24:27] Nancy: Yes.
[00:24:28] Bob: Yeah, I know all the train names.
[00:24:38] Nancy: No, we did not.
[00:24:40] Bob: But the next day.
It is time to testify.
[00:25:07] Bob: And then you got called up to testify.
You had a swear, right?
[00:25:11] Penny: Yeah.
[00:25:12] Bob: There were three defendants.
Were they all sitting there in a courtroom with you, Penny?
[00:25:15] Penny: Yes, they were.
Them and their attorneys.
[00:25:19] Bob: Did you look at them while you were testifying?
[00:25:21] Penny: Yes, I did.
[00:25:23] Bob: What did you think?
[00:25:24] Penny: One was a real kind of a sarcastic, I-could-do-no-wrong jot down person.
[00:25:36] Bob: So she tells her story.
About how $20 subscriptions led to $68,000 in bills.
About the harassment, the struggles at home.
[00:25:50] Penny: I felt good.
You know, they can be smug right now, but they’re going to get theirs.
I mean, what made you think they were smug?
[00:26:01] Penny: One of them was smirking.
One of them was sitting up front, stared at the.
[00:26:16] Bob: Then it’s time for Nancy to testify.
She had to wait outside the courtroom while Penny testified.
[00:26:29] Nancy: Yes, we did.
[00:26:31] Bob: Did you smile at each other?
[00:26:35] Bob: Yes, of course, of course.
Yeah, but at least you, you knew she was okay.
Cause I would be nervous, you know, I mean, right?
[00:26:44] Nancy: Yeah, it was.
[00:27:15] Bob: You couldn’t hear Penny’s testimony, right?
[00:27:17] Nancy: No, I could not.
I didn’t hear anything Penny said.
Um, and they asked me the same thing, how I came about coming up with this information.
[00:27:27] Bob: But Nancy tells the jury pretty much exactly what Penny did.
[00:27:41] Joe Thompson: I mean, it was so sad.
Not only that this had happened, to someone of her age, but that it came to this.
Can you help people understand how amazing a moment that is?
And we saw that again and again in this case.
[00:29:00] Bob: Do you remember how the room reacted to Penny’s testimony by any chance?
You know, why do I care about $3,000, even if the victim lost $3,000?
Having people like Penny, witnesses get up on the stand and explain the cost of the crime.
How they felt violated and victimized, how they didn’t, many of them didn’t feel safe.
[00:30:05] Bob: Mugging them over the phone.
I really appreciate that phrase because that’s what it is, right?
[00:30:10] Joe Thompson: Absolutely.
That’s 100 percent what it is.
And when you talk to the victims, you understood that.
They felt violated after they got off the phone with these people.
[00:30:19] Bob: As the trial goes on, several other victims testify too.
[00:30:23] Joe Thompson: There was a woman named Phyllis Schreier.
Peter Brogan is another victim.
He got charged over $70,000.
He lived in Philadelphia.
[00:31:39] Nancy: you might’t stop the bleed.
48 hours again, you’re home.
What did it feel like to come home after all that?
[00:31:51] Penny: It was a relief.
[00:32:09] Bob: In the end, about 60 defendants were charged in the case.
Or what, how did you find out?
[00:32:37] Nancy: Yes.
Well, we got a text or a message, uh, an email from the team.
And the sentencing still hasn’t taken place.
[00:32:56] Nancy: It was kind of a given.
It was a relief, but we expected them to be found guilty.
I didn’t with all the testimony.
That really wasn’t the thing that they were found guilty.
[00:33:08] Bob: But after all that, the case isn’t really finished, Joe says.
[00:33:13] Joe Thompson: You know, we ended up charging 64 people.
[00:33:29] Bob: So this case still goes on?
[00:33:41] Joe Thompson:: That’s right.
[00:33:42] Bob: 20 years is enough for several careers for most people.
How does something like that happen?
[00:33:53] Joe Thompson: Well, it’s interesting.
You know, they did have legal issues.
Usually consumer protection cases like this are investigated and handled by state attorney general’s offices.
And that’s what happened here.
[00:35:00] Bob: Seems like you’re not quite satisfied yet that justice has really been done.
It’s supposed to provide relief.
And my sister doesn’t have any relief.
We’re still getting the magazines.
[00:35:29] Bob: And how would $68,000 change Penny’s life right now?
That’s the security, that’s the security they took away from her.
It was the security of her, of being a senior citizen.
My sister worked very hard her whole life.
She worked, she worked in a factory that made gas pumps.
She was there for 40, how long, Penny?
[00:36:04] Penny: 37 years.
[00:36:06] Nancy: Yeah And, you know, there were lots of overtime.
But, I didn’t know that the financial things.
And I think that’s amazing.
And so, I had more knowledge towards the legal side of it than Penny did.
And I understood there was a way to stop these people from taking your money.
We close your accounts.
You know, you don’t have to keep letting them have it.
Let them turn it over to collections or whatever they threaten.
And that’s what we told them.
Do what you want to do.
You’re not getting any more of my sister’s money.
And that’s the end of it.
[00:37:20] Bob: How do you feel today about all this?
We’ve got a neighbor that takes them.
[00:37:48] Bob: There were a couple of good things that have come from this experience.
For one, Penny and Nancy have fallen in love with train travel.
[00:38:02] Penny: Most definitely.
[00:38:03] Bob: In what way?
You wanted to do your own thing, pop in thing.
[00:38:31] Bob: And you’ve got the option to take train rides with.
[00:38:32] Penny: Yes.
And it’s possible for you to take train rides.
[00:38:34] Nancy: Cares enough for the hard stuff.
[00:38:37] Penny: Yeah.
[00:38:43] Nancy: We are too.
[00:38:44] Penny: Yes.
[00:39:01] Penny: I’d say beware.
There’s a lot of wolves out there in sheep’s clothing.
It makes you feel guilty for not wanting to help the kids because they need help.
That’s, we’re teaching responsibility by fundraising and doing things and you feel like.
[00:39:36] Bob: So Nancy, go ahead.
What is it you want people to learn?
You have to look into things.
I don’t want people to be taken advantage of.
They have to learn to stand up for themselves.
And the key is to check their bank accounts every month.
Go over those statements every month.
You have to be vigilant to guard your own money.
Guard what you’re doing.
You’ve earned that you’ve worked so hard for your whole life.
[00:40:47] Nancy: Exactly.
Because that’s what it was.
It was like a blood loss.
[00:41:02] Penny: Other than, uh, if you want to help kids, buy doughnuts.
Remember, there were a staggering 150,000 victims.
And without many of those reports, well, there wouldn’t really have been a case.
[00:41:26] Joe Thompson: We rely on people.
With elderly, fraud against elderly victims, it’s especially important.
Often we don’t hear about those types of crimes or it’s hard to.
And with consumer protection crimes as well, we are looking for crimes.
And when we see reports against companies, we notice.
And to the extent it is being investigated, you’re more likely to be identified as a victim.
Who’s entitled to restitution to the extent there’s any funds available.
Magazine crimes, subscriptions, whatnot.
It sounds like something that maybe had its heyday in the 70s.
It’s still going on.
So these kinds of magazine subscription scams are still happening, right?
Charges on your bank account or your credit card that are a surprise.
I wrote a book about this grey area and called itGotcha Capitalism.
[00:43:31] Joe Thompson: Oh, I think that’s absolutely right.
They aren’t necessarily out and out lying to someone.
It’s just a bad deal.
This case involving the magazine fraud scheme, that clearly had crossed the line into black and white fraud.
[00:44:20] Bob: I’m so glad you said that.
I’m telling you this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it’s actually not.
It, in my mind, it crosses over when you are telling black and white outright lies.
I’m not, you’re not exaggerating, you’re not puffing, you’re lying.
[00:45:12] Bob: I have a special place in my heart for the word puffery.
Can you define it for people?
[00:45:16] Joe Thompson: Oh boy.
I guess it’s just a sales version of saying exaggerating.
Cars, used car salesman.
Uh, I think a new car salesman, salesperson, right?
It’s a nebulous thing.
[00:45:53] Bob: Puffery is legal, right?
[00:45:54] Joe Thompson: Puffery is legal.
You, you want to be aware.
If you’re a consumer, you want to be on the lookout for it.
[00:46:19] Joe Thompson: That’s right.
[00:46:20] Bob: Okay, so what is it you want people to learn from this story?
When in doubt, reach out.
It doesn’t take much.
There’s no cost.
We want to hear about these things.
They rely on people not wanting to deal with the problem and just turning away from it.
And so it’s not just you, it’s others.
And if, when people reach out, we can do something about it.
[00:47:24] Bob: I mean, 150,000 people, that’s an astonishing number.
That’s like, like an entire Minnesota Twins series worth of fans.
[00:47:31] Joe Thompson: Absolutely.
The numbers are staggering.
[00:47:34] Bob: I know it’s annoying to check those bank statements.
I know it’s annoying to call and cancel, to sign in and file those complaints.
But, this is the world we live in today.
Justice requires it, and so does your bank account.
For The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
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.
