Confronting The Shame, Success, And Stigma Of Scams
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$10 billion. That's how much money was taken from Americans in fraud schemes last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Many of those fraud schemes, specifically imposter scams, start with a phone call or a text and a made-up claim. Victims can hand over thousands of dollars and often feel ashamed about being duped by these criminals.

How do we let go of the stigma around being scammed and understand more about what happens when someone is scammed? What's being done about the increasingly elaborate ways scammers are defrauding people? I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast, where we get to the heart of the story. Stay with us. We've got a lot to get into.

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Are you interested in deep dive conversations about what's going on in Arizona? Then tune in to The Buzz every week. Our team tackles the issues that are important and brings you thoughtful conversations. Check out The Buzz from AZPM, part of the NPR network. Let's start the conversation by welcoming Michelle Singletary. She's a personal finance columnist at The Washington Post. Her seven-part series reporting on scamming is out now. Michelle, welcome back to the program.

Oh, thank you for having me. And we've already heard from many of you about your experiences with scammers. Here's Howard in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Years ago, before my grandmother passed, she received a phone call in the middle of the night on a landline saying that I was in New York and had been arrested for a DWI. Now, she went for it, but the next morning I received a call from her asking if I had got out of the jail. Sorry, I'm emotional. The thing is,

I never went to jail. I was right up the street from her, but they convinced her that if they didn't let me out, terrible things would happen to me. And so they got seven or $8,000 out of her before.

before she realized I was not even there. Power, thank you for sharing that with us. Michelle, you met a retired therapist living in Rockville, Maryland, who had her life savings scammed from her, about $600,000. Her name is Judith, and here's what she said about the first call she got from the scammer who manipulated her out of her money. The phone rang, and it was plugged into my car, so it was easy to answer. And...

It was the Rockville Police Department that came up on the screen. And then the individual asked who I was and how old was I and where did I live. And yes, you are being charged with fraudulent money laundering. And there is an active FBI case going

And they're doing the investigation. And so I'm going to be referring you over to an FBI agent. So Michelle, walk us through what happened from there. How did the scammer manipulate Judith into giving her money?

Yeah. So basically what they do is pretend to be from the government. She thought it was a legitimate FBI agent. In fact, it, they use the resume of a legitimate bonafide agent, Wayne A. Jacobs, who's now, uh, serving in the Philadelphia office. Um,

And then they told her it was a very slow bill to asking for the money. So, you know, this is criminal case. Will you be an asset? Will you help us? And, you know, Judith is this kind, you know, person who's been in like public service type jobs. So of course she's like, of

Of course, I'll help the FBI. And then after a week or two, they said, you know what? Because your Social Security number is being used and perhaps your bank accounts, we need to have you move your money to a government locker so it doesn't get tied up in the courts.

And so she's like, okay, that makes sense, right? We're going to move my money. And so they asked her to fill out a financial declaration form, which basically gave them a roadmap to all of her money. And then they slowly told her to pull it out of, in this case, it was Morgan Stanley, and then put it in four banks in Maryland.

And they did that because they know that if she took all of that money and put it in one bank and then took it right out, all kinds of alarm bells is going to go off. And so they said, you know, every couple of days, every day, pull out $10,000 to $20,000 and then bundle it up. This elaborate way to bundle it up. And we're going to send an FBI agent to you at a parking lot to give us the money that we can put in a locker.

And over weeks, the scam unfolded over about three months. They stole, as you said, almost $600,000 of her money. Wow. Was there any point at which Judith questioned the validity of these claims? Yes.

You know, no. In fact, when she first heard the agent's name, she did what she thought was due diligence. She looked up, saw on the FBI website his resume. The person recounted the resume to her. She looked up the number from the office that they were calling, legitimate number. She looked up the Rockville police number, legitimate number. What she didn't know is the scammers can spoof those numbers. So when it comes up on your phone,

It says Rockville Police Department. It says FBI. And so that's how they did it. And she never doubted it because she always thought she was working as an asset for the FBI. How did Judith describe the feeling of when there's a point at which you realize, oh, wait, this isn't real. I've been scammed. Yeah. Yeah.

It took a long time because this was such an elaborate scam. They manipulated her. She was on the phone with this fake FBI agent twice a day for three months, 9 and 6 p.m. They were in her ear. When she went to the bank, they said, keep the

phone keep your mobile phone line open so we can hear what is being told you and that's their way so that the bank said something they could then when she went to the lobby to her car they can counter whatever the bank said they know the bank system very well um

And so there was no point it was she knew. But then Morgan Stanley informed the Maryland Securities Office that they suspect something was going on. And that was like around November and January. They contacted an investigator from Maryland, contacted her because and she thought that they were working with the FBI. She says, hey, I'm so glad you contacted me. How's the

case going? And they're like, what case? What are you talking about? And she says, aren't you working with the FBI on my case? And they said, no, ma'am, this is a scam. And she, you know, was just incredulous. And he said, the investigator said, look at the email. And the email said, Wade A. Jacobs at USA.com. And he said that it would have said FBI.gov. And she says to him, how would I have known that? Hmm.

And that's exactly right. How would she have known it? If you don't deal with the government, you don't send emails, you don't know that it's .gov, you think USA, that sounds logical. And this is what the scammers do. They do nuggets of truth here and there so that she didn't know. And that's the point at which she realized that she had been a victim of a scam. Was there any way for her to recover her funds?

almost all of it is gone. Most of it was bundled in cash. There were some cashier checks that were sent to a woman in California who, by the way, was also a scam victim. They sometimes request

recruit. Now, the scam fixers don't know that, but they recruited this woman. And so she was able to get back about $50,000. But that was because of a very quick acting detective in Montgomery County who was able to track down those checks and get that money back. But it's very unlikely that she will get any more money back. Well, I want us to go back to our inbox.

Hi, my name is Kathy. I live in Houston. I got a call from someone identifying themselves as a sheriff, letting me know that there was a warrant. There were two warrants out for my arrest, and that if I was aware that I had been called to jury duty and I did not respond, therefore two warrants had been issued for my arrest. This guy had me going. He did ask me to post bail with him, and that's when I got suspicious, and

And I hung up and I called the sheriff's office and they told me it was a scam not to pay attention. So beware. Kathy, thanks for sharing that. I mean, Michelle, as we're trying to better understand how to identify these scams, how often do scammers invoke U.S. government entities, especially law enforcement, to scam people like they did with Judith and Kathy?

Yeah, some of the top scams are investment scams like cryptocurrency and government impersonation scams is right at the top. So like there's top three and it's in the top three of scams because think about it. We have a whole population of people who are, you know, afraid of, I wouldn't say afraid of the police, but they respect, you know, when the police calls, you answer. When the police says do something, you do it. If the FBI is involved, you're like, well, this is serious. And so they know that. And oftentimes

oftentimes with Social Security, for example, Social Security Administration, our Social Security numbers, we all know we got to protect that number. So someone's calling and saying your number's been compromised, you're going to act quickly. And the thing about

The thing about this series, Jen, that is different, none of this is going to come as a surprise to people who have been listening to your program and reading the Washington Post. We've been writing about these scams, these big dollars. But what we wanted to do with this series is to focus on the victims and what happens to them. Because even as I was writing this and people were commenting, well, how come she didn't do this? Or how come she didn't notice that?

And that takes the focus off of the criminals. The victims are not responsible for being victimized. They weren't willing participants. They weren't dumb or stupid or didn't realize something. And we have to say that. We have to recognize that they are.

are victims of a crime. And in that moment, think about that. If you're in that moment and someone's saying that a police officer is coming to arrest you, your mind goes a different place all the time.

the tips and things that you think that people should do, it goes out the window because you are scared. You're being manipulated. And that's why I wanted to deconstruct this scam so that we can, first of all, change our language, right? She didn't lose the money. It was stolen. She didn't

act irresponsibly by not checking the email, you know, or something else. These scams are so sophisticated and they catch you at moments that make you vulnerable. And that's why this series is so important. I hope everybody reads every single part.

Because it will, I think, change your view of this and why it is an epidemic. And it is crucial that we help victims and we figure out how to stop these scams. How has the nature of scamming changed since you've been covering them, Michelle? Because you mentioned how sophisticated they've gotten. Yeah. You know, I've been working for the Post now. I'm not going to tell you how long. It's been a minute. It's been a minute. Yeah.

been a minute. It's been a minute. And I've been covering this all the time, right? They've become more sophisticated because there's been so much data leaks on us that when they call, they know so much about you that makes the call seem legitimate. You know, I talked to one scam victim who they knew her

bank. And sometimes they may even know how much you have in there because, you know, so much has been leaked. Our social security numbers, our home addresses, where we bank, where we work, and a lot of information we put online. For example, Wayne A. Jacobs, the real FBI agent, his information is online. They also use the ID of another retired FBI agent, and he thinks they pulled the information from his LinkedIn account, and he

in some of his titles, it had director. And so when she looked at this letter from the, the, this fake letter from the FBI, it said, it said he was a director. He was a director, but not the director of FBI. So little pieces of information, AI, they can, um, pretend they can, uh, place sounds just like your voice or your image. Um, it, the technology is so sophisticated. So between the data breaches, the technology, um,

And for example, being able to spoof telephone numbers. If you're a regular person going about your life, how would you know that they can spoof what comes up on your telephone? I know that. You know that. Because we are reporters. We're reading this all the time. I'm reporting it all the time. But if I'm a regular person, how do you know that? And that's not to say that the banks and law enforcement haven't been doing fraud prevention. But let me tell you, it's still not good enough. And we have to step it up. Well, let's go to this message we got from Miriam in Vermont.

I was the victim of a scammer telling me that my social security number had been used to open several bank accounts, totally millions of dollars, and that I owed all this money or I was going to be arrested. And of course, this does not sound plausible. It sounds crazy, right? And I did originally suspect something. However...

At the time, my son was in active heroin addiction and had perpetrated fraud upon me and my family, sadly. And so I assumed this was yet one more example of him doing illegal activities to support his habit. So I was in my bank parking lot, and then I cracked the key to find out that it was a scam when I asked somebody from the local police department to call me. And I got this woman with an Irish accent, and I knew nobody in my small village had an Irish accent.

So I was able to get out of it without having given any money. But it was horrible. I was shaking. I was crying. Thanks for that message. I want to focus in on two pieces that we can kind of glean from that message. One is the use of emotional manipulation. And then also this situation where victims of these scams enter what we call the ether. But let's start with the emotional manipulation piece of this.

It's so key because we are wired as humans to, it's like fight or flight. So if someone says you're in danger, you're going to fight or you're flying away. Right. And they know that they have become so sophisticated and understanding our psychology. And so it's,

in a more calm time you think well wait a minute but two things are going on with her they were threatening her with arrest and she had already been dealing with a relative who was in some sort of crisis and so you put those two together and then reason goes out the window because you are just so you know it's it's just it's so hard to process all the stuff going on

You know, I wrote a column about my own sister who was almost scammed in a social security scam and she called me up and she said, Michelle, they're coming to arrest me at my job. And you know, right away I did what a lot of people did. I said, oh, that's crazy girl. Come on. But then she was crying and she was scared and she was like, I can't lose my job. And so I took a breath and I said, put me on with you. And she patched me into the scammer and I started to ask questions and

And just very calmly, well, she needs an attorney. Okay, no problem. We'll get her an attorney. Oh, no, no, she doesn't need an attorney. And as I asked questions, my sister got more emboldened. And she was like, why do you need to know my information? And so you see, because...

I had to introduce calmness into the conversation. Otherwise, she would have been a victim. And that's what I'm saying. That's what happens. And that's why they tell you not to tell anybody. Every single victim has told me that the scammer consistently always

always said, don't tell anybody. Don't tell your husband. Don't tell anybody because they know that if somebody else comes into that ether, that's what you're talking about because they create this other world for you. If somebody else comes in there, it could break you out of the ether. So isolation as a tactic.

Fairley shares this. This conversation is timely for me. I have been Googling just this issue all morning. I received a voicemail from someone saying they were with the sheriff's office telling me that there was a federal case against me and that their voicemail served as notification of it. I now see it's a scam. But talk about getting your heart rate up. Thanks for sharing that with us.

Coming up after a quick break, what the government can and can't do when it comes to helping people who've had their money stolen in scams. That's just a hack. What's good, y'all? It's Gene Demby from Code Switch. On Code Switch, we are deeply curious about race and identity and the way it shows up in the news headlines or in our personal lives. With the wide range of voices in front of and behind the mic, we see how race shows up all over the place.

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Let's get back to the conversation with this message we got from one of you. I got a very plausible sounding call from what truly sounded like my son.

if he was in distress, saying that he'd borrowed a friend's car, had had a crash, and that the other driver was pregnant. He gave me the name of the supposed public defender, who I called, talked to, and ultimately provided with many thousands of dollars because I thought I was saving my son from being imprisoned. Anyway, it was a horrible, horrible experience. I

There were so many red flags, and I didn't notice any of them because I was so, so focused on being quick and effective in helping my child. And that's how they get you. Thanks for that message. Now, Michelle, earlier we talked about Judith. She lost $600,000 to scammers, and she's going to be taxed $180,000 in state and federal taxes. Why do fraud victims end up needing to pay taxes on the money that was stolen from them?

So many fraud victims are in the senior population, people who have amassed retirement money, and it's tax-advantaged retirement money. So when they pull this money out under the manipulation of the scammer, that generates a tax bill because that becomes part of their income. So just like you've got 401K, you pull money out, you're taxed on it. And so the law says when you pull it out, those distributions, you're taxed on it.

But here's the problem. They don't have that money. It was stolen from them. And before the 2017 tax legislation, they could write off that theft on their tax return. But as the Republicans were trying to fund that 2017 bill, they cut that deduction out and it has left so many folks having to pay a tax bill on

on money that they don't have. And so there's some bills coming up, hopefully in the next Congress that will fix that. But Judah fell under that. So not only was almost $600,000 stolen from her, but now she's got this tax bill and she's not sure how she's going to be able to pay it. So you're scammed, you're a victim, and now you're victimized by the tax code and a way to pay for tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy folks.

That's very unfair. Do banks and financial institutions have any policies or responsibilities when it comes to paying money back to people who've lost it in these fraudulent schemes?

If you are a victim of a crime in which they went into your account and took it out and you were no part of it, then there are laws that will protect you and get your money back. This is where the cleverness and the sophistication comes because they manipulate. And I have to keep saying that because I want people to understand that they weren't willingly doing this. So they manipulate the people to pull...

to pull money out. And from the bank's perspective, the victim did take the money out. And in Judith's case, I will say that all the banks did say, ma'am, we think this is a scam. But when you listen, listen to the video from Judith because it's not enough to say that. You have to do more. And in fact,

In fact, in the last part of the series, one victim was saved by a bank manager who suspected it was a scam. But then instead of just saying, ma'am, I think you're a victim of a scam, he pulled her into his office. He started to ask her questions because Judith said that they were asking her questions, but it put her on the defense, right? And she says at the end, one of the parts, it says,

It made me feel like I was a crazy old lady. And so it's the way you talk to the victims. And so this bank manager who saved another victim, he said, tell me what's happening. What's going on? And he said, where are you supposed to send the money again? And he pulled it up on his computer and he showed her that it was a house where nobody was living in.

And that's the point where she said, oh, my goodness. This makes you really emotional. That's how you do it. It does because, A, we treat these people like they're the criminals. Like they somehow were sitting there going, well, I'm going to miss all the red flags and give these people my money. That's not how it happens. Listen to every single person who called into your show. They were emotional. They were afraid. You know, they were so, you know, they had emotions.

they had information about them. They had one person's son's voice. And, and so we have to sit when we talk to them, we have to talk to them in a way and understand that they are in an ether. They're in a different space of mind. And so when you say things like it's too good to be true, then it is, what does that say to a victim? Because from the, from,

From Judah's point of view, that FBI incident was real. So to tell her it's too good, she had checked out the resume, right? And so you got to stop saying stuff like that. And when you see them and when you hear them and they tell you a story...

The one thing that should not come out your mouth is, why didn't you see the red flags? Or I wouldn't have done that. Or I could have seen that. Well, you weren't in the ether when it happened to you. And until we treat the victims with the respect that they are due and the fact that we were attacked

And they had scams that were tailored to them because they know so much information about you. They were tailored to them. Until we do that, we will not create fraud prevention programs that will help prevent this from happening. And until the legislators understand what an epidemic this is, we're talking billions of dollars.

out of our communities, out of people's retirements. So what does that mean? Then they have to rely on the government more. This is, you know, I'm so angry because Congress is so busy, all the other stuff that they're doing, that they're not recognizing that right here, right now, we have Americans who are having their hard-earned money stolen, and they have not made it a priority. And that makes me angry.

Well, I think it's important to point out, as we're hearing from our listeners, that there are also unintended consequences. We heard from Barbara who says, I've never been scammed, but I have ignored messages to which I should have responded because I believed they were scams. The

The legitimate communicators need to do a better job of distinguishing themselves. And Brooks shares this. I have an elderly coworker who ignored collection calls about her home because she thought it was a scam. She had fallen for other money scams, so she's always hesitant about people asking for money. Long story short, she lost her home. I wonder how to effectively warn about scams, but also to not ignore valid calls. And Michelle, I think that gets at this issue

I don't know how many times in a day my phone rings, and I don't answer it unless it's a number I recognize. If it goes to voicemail and they leave a message, I check the voicemail, but...

I'm also, as you pointed out, I'm a pretty informed person. And so I know how to research things, but I'm not convinced that if I got an AI call that sounded like my husband's voice, that I would respond any differently. You don't know until you're in that situation. But there's also this erosion of trust in institutions that you should trust because you don't know who's who. So are there ways for people to better discern what is legitimate and what's not?

So I would say that's such a great point. I would say that any call that has something to do with your finances, you should take action, but not on that call. And don't use any number that anybody gave you. So this happened to me. I have alerts on all my bank accounts, so I'm getting dinged all day long. If my husband spent $2, I know, and I'm on the phone with him, did you spend $2? Yes.

It annoys them to no end. But that's how I've been trying to protect my money. And so I got a call from my bank and it was an email. If you get text messages regularly from your banks, there's a train, right? They come in under the train. And so it came in under that. And I, you know,

Most of me was like, okay, this is legitimate. I said, not today. This is not the devil, not today. And so I called them and I said, I know that this was under the legitimate train that I've seen before, but I just didn't trust it. Did you try to contact me because someone had compromised my credit card? They said, we sure did. I said, well, I don't mean to bother you, ma'am, but I was not going to trust that text message. She said, you know what? We would rather you do that. So you did the right thing. So if you get an email or a text message or something...

Don't respond to that email or that text or that phone call, hop off and call and say, did you contact me? And that's what I tell people because actually not acting in the moment gives you more protections than acting in the moment. So it's okay to call and double check, call and double check everything. If someone called me and said, my husband's been erected here in jail, or if my husband is on the phone and it sounds like him, I'm like, you baby, uh,

I'm going to hang up and try to call and make sure that it's you. And so that's what I do. And I do that all day long with messages that I get. I just, I hang up. I ignore the text messages. I go right to the source. And so that's what you have to do. Go to the source, not from anything that you receive. So here's my advice. Don't trust anything. Don't trust nobody. And don't trust me. If I tell you something and I'm completely legitimate, I need you to check it out, call and make a call, but don't

tell that victim in the moment that this, and that's, and people were criticizing me because they were like, Oh, well you didn't put all these tips. That was not the moment to do that. This series, that's not the time for this. This series was to get you to understand what it's like to be victimized. And now I'm writing more columns about how to protect yourself because if there's a victim of a crime and they're at the station, it makes no sense for the police officer to say why you leave your door unlocked. Fool.

I would slap you. I don't want to get arrested. Please don't, Michelle. Because that's not the time. I know, right?

to do that. That's not, that's, in that moment, you need to be empathetic to the victim. How can I help you? How can I help you heal? Because that's, that's, that's, that was the series. How can we help these folks who have been financially and emotionally damaged? And I am not going to pile on, you know, this, this self-righteousness that we had. I mean, it's one of the few crimes that we feel it's okay to say, how could you be so stupid? How could you be so stupid? That,

Oh, don't say that. Michelle Singletary is fired up today. We will have some resources on our website, the1a.org. We'll also link to Michelle's reporting there. I do want to mention with the growing sophistication of these scams, one thing they recommend, and it's something my husband and I do, we have like a code phrase. So if I get a call and I'm questioning whether it's you because the situation seems outlandish, we have a phrase that we know to ask each other.

that is completely obscure, not anything anybody else would know, but it's a way of double-checking that I'm speaking to him and he's speaking to me. Let's go back to our inbox. I love that. Yeah. Love that. Yeah, let's go back to our inbox.

My mother, who is in her late 70s, received a phone call telling her that she had run a red light and there's a warrant out for her arrest and she needed to pay the amount immediately with a credit card. She called me panicking because she didn't have that amount of money in her bank account or on a credit card, asking me to help her. And I said, Mom,

This is not real. This is not happening. I'm going to call the closest police station to see if that at that intersection that actually happened to ensure that you understand that somebody's trying to scam you. I'm so glad that she thought to call me first. Otherwise, she would have lost $800.

We also got this from Laura, who says, After inbound calls every day, all day long from a scammer, my father with dementia was en route to write a check to win big. His community neighbor contacted local police to protect my dad. In the end, he was spared any loss. States must protect elder aging populations in these communities. When we talk about our elders, Michelle, they are often targeted in these scams, right?

What conversations should families have to try to protect them, prevent them from going into the ether where they're isolated from the people who love them and who can protect them? Right. So two things. First of all, let's just make sure that we are not saying that this is just seniors. Right. Because the scams are not just attacking seniors. In fact—

20-year-olds, 20 to 30-year-olds are more likely to be scammed than elders. Two in five adults in their 20s reported losing money. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So let's not try to say that, oh, you know, all these old people, you know, that is not the case. They are targeting them because they have the money. You know, that's where the money is.

And yes, there are some who are suffering from some dementia and things like that. But the vast majority are smart and educated and they are engaged with their family. It's not like they're sitting in the kitchen by themselves looking at the phone. The scammers know that that's where the money is. I just want to make sure we put that out there. And so I like

what one of your colleges. In my family, we have a go-to person. You can guess who that is. So anybody who has any question is card-blank to call me. I don't care if it's 4 a.m. in the morning. And they have done that. That's how I saved my sister. So we have a rule now that if you have something, and I regularly send out text messages to my family to say, hey, this came across. Look out for this. So you should designate it. And it should be a family plan. All of you all about to meet with each other for the holidays and things like that.

Make this a point to talk about this in your family. And so how do you protect them? One couple said they had their elderly parents put something by the phone that just says, these are sort of what they'll say to you. Not that it's a scam, but they'll tell you not to tell anybody. They'll tell you that you're under arrest. So you've got to be very specific about it. Put it by the phone. And then also, big red note, call home.

me before you do anything because they're going to tell you not to tell anybody and that's a scam. And so put all that by the phone, regularly communicate with the people in your family. And I love the idea of having a code. I'm going to do that with my husband. I'm like, I was going to be, I shouldn't tell you, right? Don't tell me what it is. It's not on radio, Michelle. I know where it is right now.

Let's not do that. But Michelle, thank you for your reporting and thanks for speaking with us. It's always great to have you on the show. Yeah, thank you for having me. And I hope people read this series. It's so important. It's to protect you. Print it out. Take it to your holiday dinner. And y'all talk about this and come up with some ways to protect each other.

That's Michelle Singletary. She's a personal finance columnist at The Washington Post. We'll link resources at our website, the1a.org, where you can report suspicions of fraud. And of course, we will share a link to Michelle's reporting. Today's producer was Jorgeleena Manorea. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk again tomorrow. This is 1A.

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