Finance Fortress: Practical Strategies for Retirees Against Scams & Fraud

Plan With The Tax Man

As much as any other threat, recognizing and avoiding scams has become a necessary skill for today’s retirees to develop. Join us as we explore crucial steps you can take to safeguard your financial well-being against the growing tide of scams and identity theft. Learn from real-life stories and gain practical advice to keep your finances secure in this digital era, all from the perspective of a seasoned financial professional.

Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com

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Transcript:

Marc Killian 00:01

As much as any other threat recognizing and avoiding scams has become a necessary skill for today's retirees to develop. Join us this week on plan with the tax man as we explore some crucial steps to hopefully safeguard your financial well being against the growing tide of scams and identity theft. Look up in the sky. It's a bird.

Announcer 2 00:21

It's a plane. No, it's the tax man. He may not be a superhero, but Tony Morrow has saved many retirement plans with his extreme knowledge of tax planning strategies. It's time for a plan with the tax man.

Marc Killian 00:36

Hey, everybody, welcome into the podcast. It's playing with a tax man with Tony Morrow and myself here to talk about your financial fortress, practical strategies for retirees against scams and fraud. And for this month of March, I think Tony and I are going to kind of stay with tech as our theme. We're going to talk about some scams and stuff. This week, we're going to talk about some other technological, you know, retirement planning things on our next episode. So we're gonna kind of use that as our theme this month in March. What's going on my friend, how are you?

Tony Mauro 01:03

I'm doing well. How

Marc Killian 01:04

about you hanging in there? You and I were talking offline, as we got started that it's just you know, it's March already. And

Tony Mauro 01:10

we're busy, busy, busy, busy. And I thought these two topics that we're going to talk about in these next couple episodes be? Yeah, like I said, very, very timely, it's tax season. There's

Marc Killian 01:19

all kinds of things going on. Yes, sir. You're hear a lot from clients. So yeah, looking forward to sending information back and forth doing this, you know, the scammers they love to come out in force at different times of the year, certainly around Christmas, right. That's a good one springtime tax time, right? They tend to kind of come out there, oh, you, you know you, your tax bill is this or, you know, you owe this and use your tax, you know, return to pay for it, all these kinds of things. Right? always something going on. So let's jump in and talk about a few things. And, you know, I got this first a little news example here, Tony, that I wanted you to kind of listen to this and check this out. And then tell me things that you've seen similarly or heard, you know, within your own practice, right. So there was this news example, little synopsis here is the lady named Marjorie 77 years old, lost $660,000 to a Tech Support Scam, where the fraudsters posed as bank officials and somehow convinced her to wire her funds into crypto to protect her money from suppose a theft. Well, of course, they stole their money. Americans over 60 lost $3 billion last year in cyber fraud crazy, absolutely

Tony Mauro 02:30

crazy. It really is. And I think to elaborate on it, you know, most of the time the seniors tend to be the bigger targets but it can happen to anybody. And with all this tech going on and really sitting behind computers and phones all day it comes at us and you know we were just talking about how busy we are and sometimes you you're busy and you're not paying attention and you just go with it and then some potentially could happen the worst case I've seen in our own practice is we had a an elderly lady several years back just that she just uh you know, annual tax climb but she came in and she had said that she had gotten calls from somebody saying that they needed money they were pretending to be somebody she knew and they wanted paid in some kind of visa gift cards. Yeah, she kept going Yeah, going to Walgreens and getting visa gift cards anyway, at the end of it all before she found this out she was out about $11,000 and this poor lady you know, didn't have much to begin with and just a sad case and that is what is going on leading to these huge numbers is stuff like that people are getting our clients are getting robo calls and scam calls from people pretending to be the IRS and the IRS comes out and says they never will call you exactly always a letter Yep. And you know don't fall for it but people people do sir you know and it's it's all over I just had a call actually wasn't a call was an email yesterday directly to me saying that the person's name and says I need access to my portal please help. I looked her up on our system. She's not even a client of ours. I you know, that's a scam email coming in? Oh, wow. directly to me. Yeah, as a business not just individuals, but businesses to businesses, we you know, we clients don't realize it, but how much we spend dollar wise, and, and also timewise and trying to protect their data, because it's all out on portals. Now, you know, all this tax data, we got to be very careful with and it's difficult. But I think from a large, big picture view, you've really got to pay attention to what you're reading. And we'll get to some some more examples here in a second, but it's terrible. And I think it's only gonna get worse because we are getting into a society where we're not even using real money a lot of times anymore, you know, it's all it's all transfers and EFTPS and credit cards.

Marc Killian 04:53

Yeah, exactly. And that we're gonna Yeah, that's a great point because like with your credit card, or excuse me your gift card comment where Gotta run through some of this stuff, right? So let's go, let's kind of break some of these things down for folks and give some examples. We'll put a link into the show notes as well, that gives kind of more examples of some of the things from Thompson's routers, article from Thomson Reuters on there, that might give a few more ideas for people to look through as well. But, you know, so there's, we've, a lot of us have heard of phishing, right? We know about phishing emails. So there's phishing vishing. So that's phishing with a V. And smishing. This is hilarious how we make up these words, right? Yeah. But anyway, so let's, let's run through those three real fast. So phishing, of course, we just mentioned, you just talked about it yourself, emails and websites trying to steal your data. That's one, right. So be Be diligent there, I think we've gotten a lot better about those. But, you know, again, keep your head on the swivel, exactly,

Tony Mauro 05:44

because I mean, emails are coming at us so fast, that again, a lot of times, we're not reading them, and we're just flying through them very easily to be deceived, I would definitely check out you know, the headers of your email, make sure it's coming from somewhere you kind of recognize that's, that's the big one. And even

Marc Killian 06:02

with that, Tony, I would say be still be very careful, right? Because we're seeing these kinds of scams. We've talked about this a little while back, where, you know, you get an email from Amazon, for example, since it's so massive, and everyone uses it and says, there's a problem with your order, click here to sort it out, or we'll help you get it taken care of, don't do that. I don't care if it you know, if it says Amazon, and it looks like their logo and everything looks fantastic. Immediately just delete the email, and then log in to your personal web, you know, Amazon account, go on the web, whatever, you know, you go there versus a link, they provided you to go there, right. And that way, you're going directly to the horse's mouth to see if there's an issue nine times out of 10, there isn't one, it's just someone trying to scam you. So definitely be careful there. What's vishing, Tony, or

Tony Mauro 06:48

visiting is if you actually get a call. And a lot of times these will come in through your cell phone, because everybody's using the cell phones, and they're trying to trick you into providing personal information. And they're very good at it, you know, and most of the time, I mean, the easiest way to do this is, if you don't recognize him, I would probably just hang up, it would be my best advice. If it's somebody you know, or somebody that really needed your personal information, they're either going to call back, or they're going to get it some other way. But this is where I think my dad's got a lot of these calls. He's a senior, he gets them at home a lot on his landline. And they're asking him for his information. They're pretending to be either a credit card company, or somebody soliciting and they're asking him for his course, they know his name, but they want his address. Sometimes they'll ask for credit card information. Some of them have even asked him for his social security number. Yeah. Obviously, you do not want to give that stuff out. No bank information, do not give that out nothing. And

Marc Killian 07:42

they try some of that stuff to this is the IRS calling or that kind of stuff, right? And it's just that's not the case, right? They're gonna send you certain certified letters, they're gonna send you appropriate things of that nature. So smishing is also cell phones. This is just through text. And that's obviously the big one now too, right? Because it's like, again, it could even be the Amazon thing. There's a text from Amazon saying, there's a problem with your order, click this link to sort it out. You know, yeah,

Tony Mauro 08:07

I just, I just had one of these yesterday, I pulled it up on my phone to for this call. It was from a person, I get a text that says, Hi, my dear friend, it's been a long time since I've heard from you. Have you been? I have no idea who this this number is. So I texted them back said who is this? And she said, It's Diana. And you saved my number. And I said, I think you have the wrong number. And then she started asking me questions about my personal information. And that's like, why do you need this? I was playing with her a little bit, and finally got her to just stop. But I think she was fishing for some personal information from me pretending to be an old friend. And oh, yeah. And that that's just a little bit too fishy, you know? Exactly.

Marc Killian 08:49

No pun intended, right? Yeah.

Tony Mauro 08:51

It's just so you gotta watch it because they will, you know, they will. I've seen clients bring stuff in with text, pretending to be credit card companies. Again, your your card has been declined at least call or at least provide information. Things like that. Haven't seen too many from the IRS, the IRS scammers usually call or send emails, but it's probably possible that they could start data again, the IRS doesn't text at all, they're very old fashioned with their communication. So you know, be be careful with that, too. So there's three three areas you got to be careful of. Yeah, exactly. They are just crazy. And what's at stake, right, Tony is obviously identity theft, financial loss, credit damage, motional stress, right?

Marc Killian 09:31

So the obvious kinds of things. So let's provide a couple of examples here. And I said, um, as I mentioned, we'll put the link in here to the Thomson readers that give some more details on each of these. But let's run through kind of a few bullet points of the styles of scams that are going around government imposters big one right? Because people get immediately scared Oh crap, I gotta take care of this. It's the government you know, and often that's what they're they're preying on that and praying for you to also be like, just scared and immediately do Whatever, because you don't want to, you know, have some sort of government problem. Yeah, we

Tony Mauro 10:03

haven't we have a commercial here, for example, from the Polk County Sheriff, saying that, you know, we will don't fall victim to scams that somebody calls you from the sheriff's office demanding money or you're going to jail, you know, that, that kind of thing. So they're, you know, they're, what do you want to call it? In an authority figure? Yeah. And that scares people, just like the government. And so they actually are taking their time and money to run commercials, because it's going on around here right now that people are getting scammed like that. And police would be another one,

Marc Killian 10:35

I would say, yeah, right. We've seen those kinds of things to where if you don't pay this amount, sheriff's department's on his way out to lock your house to lock you out, you know, for some sort of, and that's like, that's all crap, right? Don't fall for that stuff. They do not do that you're going to certainly be properly notified through certified mail. You know, so don't fall for that governmental imposed imposters, sweepstakes. I don't know if I see these as much anymore. But certainly like, hey, you've won something kind of thing.

Tony Mauro 10:59

I haven't seen a lot of people complaining about this. But you could see how this would work. I mean, you know, somebody calls says you want something and oh, by the way, give us all your information and your credit card to collect the prize or something you've already won, which should send up red flags right away. But again, people especially maybe the you know, the elderly, or people that are alone, a little little more craving for some contact, and conversation. So gotta be careful there as well.

Marc Killian 11:25

Yeah. Computer Robo scams, you talked about that robo calls and phone scams, the robo calls. So this big one here, folks is and Tony, like, I know, you know this as well make sure that you don't say yes, you know, when you get these phone calls, where they're like, Hi, this is such and such, you know, blah, blah, blah, I'm having trouble hearing you. Can you hear me? And you go? Yes. And they record that? Yes. And now they plug that in to whatever automated thing where would you like to buy, you know, $5,000 worth of whatever. And they plug in your little voice saying yes. And therefore you're kind of screwed. So don't say yes, just say, I can hear you. Right or something like that.

Tony Mauro 12:02

That's right. I, my brother, again, I've got so many examples of this. But it's a robo call kind of phone scam, where the scammers are recording people's voices. And then they're using AI to create that voice in a conversation. And my brother had an insured who called him up, because he's trying to get basically wanting to know if there's any insurance coverage for this. But the client received a call that he swore was his son, it was his exact voice and everything saying he had been picked up, he was in jail, and he needed him to wire him $5,000. And the other guy did it. And it was a scam. And the guy was trying to see if he could get some insurance coverage. But insurance company said no way. Yeah. But this guy, I mean, he's not elderly. He swore it was his son. Now, he left a voicemail. And then you know, the father panicked a little bit saying, Well, I can't call him he's in jail. I'm going to I'm going to wire this money right now. And he did. So that's a that's an extreme example, but it does happen. And with his AI, if they hear me talk a little bit, they probably can somehow, you know, clone my voice and make make words up for

Marc Killian 13:15

1. Exactly. And that's kind of similar Tony to the grandparent scam, which is on my list. fairly similar. It's a loved one scam of some form, right? Where, to your point, you know, you get this message or an email saying, Hey, grandma, grandpa, it's, you know, Suzy, and they've got the information. And you know, I got in an accident, and I've got to pay $3,000 to for bail or you know, whatever. Right? Yeah. And people will jump to that. So don't do that. Don't worry about definitely don't go down that route. The computer tech support scams. We just talked about that for Lady Marjorie, who fell victim to that. Be very careful with tech support of any kind, they are hoping that seniors will be like, I don't understand this thing. So let me get some help. And again, don't go through any links or information that you've gotten via email or text. If you really are having a tech issue with your computer or a specific app or software. Go directly to that company for tech support. Don't go through a link that some you know that you especially unsolicited link, right. Unsolicited links. Yeah, yeah. Okay. To your point about the grandparent scam, I'll actually or to you, excuse me, you're talking about that person that was messaging you and acting like they knew you. That's a new one to a romance scam.

Tony Mauro 14:28

Yeah, this very well. Could have been that, you know, I don't know, I didn't get that far with it. But yeah, you really don't know. You know, maybe they're trying to scam you. And again, with the ability of you think about it on the phones with a romance scam. What I'm thinking of is somebody send you maybe a provocative pic of whatever, and people are gonna say, Oh, well, you know, what's that? Let's take a look. And then all of a sudden you're in a conversation with somebody you don't even know. And you know, then all of a sudden you've given out some information you should know

Marc Killian 14:56

while they're playing. They're playing on the fact that they're hoping that you're lonely especially Yeah, because they can find out if you're widowed or something like that, right? Yeah, single person. So So those are some examples. And we'll give a few more things telling you this so we won't get too too long in the episode. Let's go through kind of rapid fire or some ways to better recognize the signs of the scam. I'll start with a simple one age old thing that grandma taught us a long time ago, if it's too good to be true, probably is.

Tony Mauro 15:21

Yeah. And I think another one I mean, I'll rapid fire the next one. You know, if you if you get links, and you start reading an email, you need to look at the link. I definitely wouldn't open attachments. That's a rule in business for us for sure. Eating on a personal pewter. That's how all this stuff creeps in.

Marc Killian 15:39

Yep. So be very careful about that. Does it look suspicious? Yeah, exactly. Is it we mentioned it a second ago. Is it unsolicited? You know, is you're getting some random thing, asking you for personal information or to solidify something that you may or may not have done, and you don't recall it. If you've sent solicited, then that's a good sign. Yeah.

Tony Mauro 15:59

I think another one with that is if you get an email, and it's the paragraphs don't make a lot of sense. Or wording. Oh, spelling error? Things like that. Yeah, definitely. Then look up top seat, you know, I

Marc Killian 16:13

mean, who does that that's a great point. Another one. A lot of scams originate from overseas in different countries. And so therefore, their wording or their their English translation may not give me that click right. Right. Something looks off, you're thinking? Well, it to your point earlier about the pictures or something like that, you're thinking, well, this person looks, you know, or says they're from Florida, for example, right. But yet the wording in the language tells you that maybe they're not, you know, or something like that. So that's great point, actually, are they requesting a small amount of money in order for you to get a bigger amount of money? This one? I think most people are wise to this, Tony, it makes me think about the one from since of anyone around the 90s. Right that that prints in Nigeria that will give you $40 million? If you you know, that was so old, but there's still things going like that going around.

Tony Mauro 16:59

They must on that. I don't see that very often anymore. But every once in a while I will. It's a must. Somebody must be doing that still. Exactly. Yeah. What else you got? Well, you know, one is, like I said before, you know, most legitimate companies aren't going to have you pay them in gift cards. Yeah. And so be very careful of that. Because just like my little story with my little tax client, I mean, that's almost for sure. A scam? Yeah. Just just don't do that.

Marc Killian 17:28

Yep. Okay, so let's, let's beyond like spotting those red flags. Let's talk about some protections, we'll wrap it up with some protections here to avoid being a scam victim. Obviously, in today's day and age, we're all sick to death of passwords. I get it. But it is the world we live in. So create some strong, unique passwords. And for God's sakes, folks, if it's financially related, please change them regularly.

Tony Mauro 17:51

Absolutely. I always encourage clients to get a password keeper that randomly generates passwords have different passwords for every site. Because if you have the keeper, you don't need to know that you just need to know your master. And, you know, I so many clients have the same password for every single site. We've all heard it. And then like you I hate them, too. I hate multifactor authentication, but it's the world we live in. And it'll certainly protect you a lot better than having, you know, your first and last name as your password. I mean, yeah, it doesn't take very long for hackers to break the hip stuff. Exactly.

Marc Killian 18:26

And I get it. We all hate it at this point. But you got to do it, man, especially when it comes to your financial stuff, monitor your bank statements and credit card transactions regularly, folks, we can probably tie these two here together, Tony, turn on those fraud alerts, right with your credit cards. I mean, every time I make a transaction, it's annoying to get that extra message. But so what you know, hey, you charge $47 Well, if I know that I did it, then I ignore the email. But if I say I charge $47 And I don't recall doing it, it allows me to think well let me go dig into this.

Tony Mauro 18:58

Yeah, I think if you don't have that on your credit cards with the tech that they have, and we'll offer you with that, that's just plain silly. And then I think we always tell our clients even personal clients, you need to be reconciling your bank statement and credit cards every month now many don't do it and that's when you're going to miss something that may be slipped through on that bank statement and you didn't know about because all you're doing is you know living off of the last ATM slip you got right you had this much money in your bank account. Yep. And that's how things go unnoticed in small amounts because the good the good ones with bank accounts they'll slip stuff in very small odd amounts so to hopefully go unnoticed yeah, great point Tony. Great point they're not big big dollar amounts and then next thing you know you've got 15 charges say from like a Google yeah of $12.50 over five months you know and that's how they do it and then once you catch on they

Marc Killian 19:52

move to the next Yeah, for sure. I just got one myself from from there's a I know there's a gaming service. I know it's a legitimate service. called Twitch, but I've never used it and there's no teenagers in my house. And all of a sudden, I had three random twitch $7 Not a big deal, you know, but I'm like, well, that's not I didn't do that. So of course, I immediately talked to the credit card company, and they got it reversed. So somebody gets your information. And yeah, to your point, they're hoping you will just be like, Oh, $7 Oh, I don't remember what that was and move on. And then it's, it's a reoccurring monthly charge? Well, you got three of them now 21 bucks a month, every month? Hey, you know, that adds up. So and if they're doing that to 100 people, well, they're making bank. So you got let me ask you is as a tax professional and a financial professional, Tony, what do you think about, you know, retirees, pre retirees, or really anybody freezing their credit, especially like, if you're set as a retiree or a pre retiree, if you're over 50, there's a good chance that you're not planning on opening any new lines of credit soon? If that's the case, is it worthwhile to freeze your credit,

Tony Mauro 20:52

I think depending on your situation, and the amount of money you have, I think it's, it's worth looking at, absolutely, because you're not gonna always unfreeze it, and you don't have any need to run out and get credit. And it's just gonna make make it that much harder for somebody to really get one over on you or, you know, get credit cards out there, it is a little bit more work to then go get some credit to unfreeze it. But again, you're not in any any real rush. So

Marc Killian 21:20

I think they've made this technology better, too, right? I think you can go on to your, to these credit rating places and just put a hole, put a freeze on it. And that basically just means nothing new can be opened under your name until you unfreeze it. And I don't think the steps are all that complicated now. So no, not like they used to be Oh, yeah. For sure. You know, just a couple little really extra steps logging in and, and Firefox and freezing it. Yeah. Yeah. So it could be worthwhile. It's a great way to protect yourself. So last piece, we'll wrap it up. I know, we're getting a little long here, folks, but just some digital housekeeping real quick. Keep your anti virus software up to date. That's a good one. What else? Tony?

Tony Mauro 21:57

I'd avoid using public Wi Fi, you know, especially definitely don't use it. And access to any type of bank info or any personal data. Yeah, you're gonna do that good point. Like, you probably

Marc Killian 22:07

have a public Wi Fi there at the office, you know, many doctors offices, lawyers, offices, so on and so forth. Right? They offer public Wi Fi while you're waiting, especially doctor's offices, right? Because you're there hours or whatever. And you want to jump on your phone and do something, well, fine. If you're using that. But keep that real basic. If you're jumping on to check your Twitter or something fine. Maybe right. But certainly don't go check. Don't go checking your bank, don't go into your banking app while you're on unsecured public Wi Fi. That's a that's a no, no, let's not do that. No, no. And then finally, you know, you talked about passcodes. And then we talked about passwords, well, make sure that you've got something on your phone that way too, right. Don't use your address as your passcode. You know, some people like to use their fingerprint, and that's fine, you know, or that design thing where you got to draw some weird pattern to unlock your phone, but just consider having secure your phone lock it up to

Tony Mauro 22:59

Yeah, even even now with the iPhone. The face ID is better than just know nothing at all. Yeah, the

Marc Killian 23:06

things would still weirds me out, though, right? I don't know how I feel about that. It's like,

Tony Mauro 23:12

I don't trust it.

Marc Killian 23:12

I don't need it. And then you got my face too. But of course, I guess at this point, everybody's posted pictures of themselves on Facebook at some points or faces or everywhere anyway. Yeah, interesting stuff. But you know, there's that two factor stuff, too, right. A lot of companies now are almost forcing you to do that. Yeah. So we make them for our payroll clients, you know, to get into their portals, we

Tony Mauro 23:32

have the two factor authentication. Yeah, for every every payroll, clients, employees, you know, and some employees really don't like it, but we tell them we're not shutting it off. Because if somebody gets in and changes your bank account information, you know, then that's going to be bad for you. And so it's for your own protection. So,

Marc Killian 23:51

definitely, well, you know, final summary folks, you know, there's a lot of scams out there. If you do think you're a victim immediately start calling the companies you need to talk to if you're working with a financial professional like Tony, for example, reach out to them and let them know so they can immediately take steps if you feel like your information has been compromised, of whatever level and of course if it's egregious enough for your concern, call the police. Whatever the case is, but take steps to protect yourself so Hopefully, this helps you out a little bit here on this episode, the financial fortress and Tony anything else where we go Oh, that's

Tony Mauro 24:22

it looking forward to next meeting.

Marc Killian 24:25

Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're gonna keep continue on with the tech stuff here again, because it is that time of year, tax season is upon us and the scammers do come out and for So protect yourself out there, folks. And if you need some help reach out with Tony and his team at your planning proz.com You're planning proz.com Don't forget to subscribe to us on Apple, Google Spotify, and we'll see you next time here on plan with the taxman.

Walter Storholt 24:52

Securities offered through a van tax investment services SM Member FINRA SIPC, investment advisory services offered Are through a VAT tax advisory services insurance services offered through an event tax affiliated Insurance Agency investment strategies discussed in this episode may not be suitable for all investors please consult with a financial professional