Podcast: a scammer tells all - fraud prevention

[00:00:01] HOST: Coming up on this episode of AARP's Perfect Scam. The rise and fall of a call center employee. [00:00:07] I realize that this was just no longer something I wanted to

do, and it really put me into a, a downward spiral, and eventually I just, I knew I needed to get out. [00:00:16] HOST: Your phone rings. You don't recognize the number or maybe you

think you do. You pick up, and before you know it, they've got you. You've said too much, or shared what you know you shouldn't share. But who are they? Who are these people

shamelessly calling your number and requesting private information? What tricks do they use to steal your money? Today we're pulling back the curtain on call centers to answer these

questions and to help you be better prepared the next time the phone rings. For The Perfect Scam, I'm your host, Will Johnson. I'd like to introduce once again, my cohost and

AARP's Fraud Watch Network Ambassador, Frank Abagnale. Frank, welcome back. [00:00:48] Frank Abagnale: Thanks, Will, good to be here. [00:00:50] HOST: We haven't talked much about

breeches and big news stories involving breaches, but that's an everyday part of life now. Let's touch on that before we get to today's story. [00:01:00] Frank Abagnale:

Alright. Well, let's talk about first of all that there's been 1206 breaches that occurred in 2016 resulting in 1.7 billion identities being stolen, and then we found out in the

last just couple of weeks that actually that number goes up too, because we found out that the SEC had been breached, Security Exchange Commission, and of course, Deloitte, which is a big

accounting firm. [00:01:25] HOST: So, those are the actual agencies that are reporting on the breaches. [00:01:27] Frank Abagnale: Right, they're finally getting around to reporting it,

so that they had a breach in 2016. In my career, I've worked a lot of these breaches going back to TJMaxx about 15 years ago. And every breach occurs because somebody in that company

did something they weren't supposed to do, or somebody in that company failed to do something they were supposed to do. Hackers really don't cause breaches, people do. All the

hacker does is wait for the door to open and then comes in and steals the information but the door opens because of the act of the company itself, or the people working in that company. When

we have a breach at like say a Home Depot or a Target or a TJMaxx, a retail breach, they're stealing credit card numbers and debit card numbers. That has a very short shelf life. So

you have to get rid of that right away. When you steal someone's name, social security number, date of birth, you can't change your name, you can't change your social security

number. You can't change your date of birth, so the longer I hold it, the more valuable it becomes when I go to sell it, so they typically do what we call warehousing that data for

like two to three years before then it starts to show up on the dark web and starts to be sold, and even then it's sold in batches, not all together, so what happens is we immediately

turn around and say, I'm going to give you one year of credit monitoring service for free, when in reality one year is worthless, because in one year nothing's going to happen.

Even based on the premise that if I told the criminal for a year I'm telling all these people they'll be monitored, why would I go put the information out in the year? I'd

wait till the year was over. [00:03:04] HOST: So, as a consumer, that doesn't make me very comfortable though, knowing that, well everything seems fine right now, but two or three years

from now, maybe somebody will steal my identity. Is there anything I can do about that in the meantime? [00:03:14] Frank Abagnale: All you can do is monitor your credit, so you can freeze

your credit and you can monitor your credit. Those are the only two things you can do. You can freeze your credit, but again, that varies from state to state. So some states don't

charge a fee to freeze your credit, some states do charge a fee, $10 to freeze, $18 to unfreeze, $10 to freeze it back. But that becomes a big deterrent to people, so people don't do

it. There really should be a federal statute that allows people to freeze their credit through all 50 states, and there should be no fee attached. The truth of the matter is, I didn't

give Equifax permission to have my data. They took my data and they now sell it and make millions of dollars selling it, but I never gave them permission to use it. So if they're using

it, I should at least have the ability to control it, and say, I want to freeze it, I don't want you to use it unless I give you permission to use it, or expose it unless I give you

permission to expose it. Not that I should then have to turn around and pay them a fee to get my own information off the market. It's ridiculous. So, we really need to have. [00:04:15]

HOST: It's a scam. [00:04:15] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, we have this scam, and we really need to have that done across the board. And the credit, you know, if you, if you are a victim of

identity theft, I've had a credit monitoring service for 25 years, since 1992. I like it because I can then go check my own credit. I don't need anybody to do anything. I can go

look every day at my credit, and I can correct mistakes, I can see who's making inquiries on my credit, and I... [00:04:45] HOST: So that's an important one, because you can

immediately see if somebody's gone and applied for something. [00:04:48] Frank Abagnale: In real time, and so I can do something about it, but they also, for part of that fee,

they're monitoring it. So, they'll let me know as well. [00:04:55] HOST: But if someone is stealing your identity, I know this is somewhat of a probably there's a long answer

to this, but the short answer, if your identity is stolen, the thieves are looking for a way to make money, right? [00:05:06] Frank Abagnale: Right. This is... [00:05:08] HOST: Nothing else,

right? [00:05:09] Frank Abagnale: This is why all, all identities are not used otherwise everybody would everyday having their identity being used... [00:05:15] HOST: Because everybody

doesn't have money? [00:05:16] Frank Abagnale: No, well, a lot of that, so the criminal, if you're the criminal and I'm looking at your identity, who are you? You know, and

what value is it to me? So, identity thieves have come to learn that the best identity to steal are children. That's the best identity to steal. [00:05:30] HOST: That's awful.

[00:05:31] Frank Abagnale: More so than say a 62-year-old male who's a multi-millionaire, owns shopping malls, office complexes, and hotel complexes. You'd be much better off with

a 14-year-old who's in junior high school and has nothing. And that's because the 14-year-old has nothing, so that means I can become that 14-year-old for a long period of time, 5

or 6 years before the 14-year-old ever knows I stole their credit. And so I can use that credit, resell that credit. That's why I'm... [00:06:00] HOST: So does a young person start

with the good credit score? I don't remember. [00:06:03] Frank Abagnale: No, what happens here is this. So this is why on the dark web, if you said I have in this envelope a newborn,

just released from the hospital two weeks ago, but I have his or her social security number, vs. I have a 14-year-old in this envelope, they're going to take more money for the

2-year-old because now I have 18 years or so that I can become that 2-year-old, reuse that over and over. [00:06:24] HOST: And build up good credit for that person. Is that true? [00:06:27]

Frank Abagnale: Yes. [00:06:27] HOST: That you actually would go through the process of... [00:06:29] Frank Abagnale: Of becoming that identity of that individual. And now, what happens here

is that credit bureaus by federal law are not allowed to keep credit files on anyone younger than 18. So they don't even know a file exists, so they're creating a file with that

new social security number and saying that they're this individual. [00:06:44] HOST: That's really creepy. [00:06:45] Frank Abagnale: Right, and this is why we hear so many times,

Carnegie Mellon did a great study a few years ago that went across America. They interviewed 40,000 children in every age bracket or their parents or guardian, and asked them if they had

been a victim of identity theft; more than 10 percent had already been a victim of identity theft, and that was a few years ago. It's much higher today. But this is why I get emails

from young kids who say to me, I applied to the University of Idaho, I'm 18, I just graduated from high school in June. They tell me that I've already had a student loan and

defaulted. I've never even got a, I just got out of high school. Well someone got that loan in their name and then defaulted on that loan. [00:07:22] HOST: You can't get a credit

card, or you can't... [00:07:24] Frank Abagnale: You can't get a credit card... [00:07:25] HOST: Or you turn a certain age, and you say, alright, my parents want me to, or I want

to get my credit monitored, or check the score. It should be absolutely flawless, right, if you're just starting from scratch, and all of a sudden you learn that somebody's been

running around using your name and your social security number. [00:07:41] Frank Abagnale: And that's what happens. Because if you were just starting out, the credit bureau would say to

you, we have no file on you. Say, well no, cause I just graduated from high school, and I got this job, but I want to buy a car. And you'd have to build up credit in, in your name. I

do want your audience to know that parents need to, grandparents need to be concerned about their grandchildren's credit in making sure that their credit's not being misused or

their social security number is not being misused. [00:08:07] HOST: But most of the time we don't even know. [00:08:09] Frank Abagnale: Right. [00:08:09] HOST: Or we can't find

out. [00:08:10] Frank Abagnale: Right. [00:08:11] HOST: Alright, Frank, we're going to shift from talking about online breaches and credit scores and all of that incredibly important

stuff to pulling back the curtain on a tech center in Florida and we actually got to speak to a gentleman, his name is Dan. He started working at a call center in Florida in March of 2013.

He saw the job posted online and based on sales experience, he was immediately interested. (MUSIC SEGUE) [00:08:36] Dan: My background has always essentially been sales. Again, I come off

very confident. I come off very friendly, and I am a very confident, friendly guy, you know I, I do believe that I am a very trustworthy, ethical, moral person, so I believe sales was a good

way for me to go. Pretty much out of high school, it was, it was sales, and literally the ad was, "All leads are hot, exclusive leads coming directly to your phone in real time of

people actively looking for our help and services." You know easiest sales you could imagine. No outbounds, no cold calls, you know, it was, so that was kind of the draw. Then the fact

is, you're giving me an hourly plus commission, you know, you realize that there certainly could be some money to be made. [00:09:22] HOST: Dan quickly got the job, and a short time

later started a week of training. [00:09:25] Dan: Well, the first, the first week was spent at a separate building than the one I actually worked at. It had a small training room where they

would set you up in front of the computer and they would do a PowerPoint presentation, kind of walking you through what you're going to say, what you're going to look for on

people's computers, how to access those parts of the computer, and parlay that into being able to sell your, our services to the consumer. After that ended after about a week, we were

put into our actual building where we were going to work out of, which was just one very large room. It was just a very large open area with approximately, I'd say about 12 or 13 tables

that were probably 40 to 50 feet long each and each table was packed with computers and people sitting in front of every computer. And the first couple of tables were called the bone

pickers. Their job was to pick the meat off the bone. Essentially try and get as much money that we couldn't get from you at the beginning. The next set of tables were the actual

registrants, which is what I was doing, and then the third set of tables was in-house technicians. I didn't go in, again, knowing that it was a scam. You know, they did not present it

that way. They did not train us in that regard, they trained, they told us right up from juncture, you're going to be helping people out. They need their computers fixed, all you need

to do is just show them where the issues are, and then hand them off to our technicians. [00:10:58] HOST: As Dan mentions, they were all inbound sales calls. In other words, he didn't

have to pick up the phone and make cold calls. The potential clients were people who had already responded to an ad about some type of PC cleaner software, and then downloaded the software.

Dan would then basically try to upsell the callers with more products and services. [00:11:15] Dan: The consumers would end up on the phone with me by either seeing an advertisement or by

actively looking out for the PC Cleaner, which was a downloadable software that they could put on their system that would clean the background of their files and speed up their PC. What

would happen was they would download that software, and it would run a, it would run a scan and tell them they had X amount of problems with their computer, henceforth, it needs immediately

fixing in order to make their computer better. They would then end up paying for the software to actually make it work and then to register the software, it would give you a phone number

that you would have to call. This phone number you never really actually needed to call it. Anybody could easily register their own software if they knew what to do. It was literally taking

the license key that was already sent to your email and just inputting it into the system. But most people weren't aware of that, and they saw the phone number, and that phone number

would lead directly to my call center, specifically my department. After my, after we got on the phone, we would then remotely access the consumer's computer by explaining to them how

to make that process happen, which would be downloading another piece of software so we could do so. Once that happened, we would very quickly just copy and paste the license key from their

email into the software, and then say something along the lines of, while we're already, while I'm already here in your system, how about you just let me take a look into it

deeper, just to make sure that this speeds your PC is what you're going to need. At which point then, it would literally just be following the script and the training that we were given

to go through different aspects of the computer, where we would look at the processes that we're running on the task manager. We would look at the error log which was essentially a

gigantic scare tactic somewhere in the back of the computer that would show you different issues that your computer had had at certain times, and essentially just kind of showing you other

areas that would essentially be, again, scare tactics in regards to what your computer actually needed. [00:13:26] HOST: So, Dan jumped into the job. As he explains it, the calls were more

of less constantly coming in, day or night. [00:13:32] Dan: The company itself was a 24-hour company. So there were people that, to take calls and fix computers all day, 24 hours a day, 7

days a week, including Sundays. The shift I worked went for about 4 o'clock to 12 o'clock. There was probably a, anywhere between a, I would like to say about 40, somewhere between

40 and 60 people doing just what I did during that shift. Solid, 8 to 10,000 calls a day. Between all the people that worked 24 hours a day, it had to have been close to that. The incentive

was, if I remember correctly, it was $12 an hour plus 10 percent commission on whatever it was that you could sell. So the actuality was, there was a pretty good deal of money that could be

made from doing this, especially if you got the people that had multiple computers in the household, because that was a more expensive plan and fix, and wanted to sell the antivirus

software which is where the main majority of your money came in, was the antivirus software and selling the lifetime keys. But there were sometimes where you could get 1000, 1200, 1500

dollar deal off one person, and you made 100, you know, 100, 150 bucks just on that call alone. So there were definitely most weeks, I'd say I'd probably average out to be about a

$1500 a week paycheck. [00:14:58] HOST: The reality of the job for Dan as he came to realize was that his sales background was turning into something more like fear tactics. [00:15:04] Dan:

Without question, the scare tactic that worked best was the error log. The error log would come in towards the end of the, would come in right at the end, it was the cherry on the icing of

the cake, essentially is, all of a sudden this error log would come up and for most people's computers, it would have thousands and thousands and thousands of errors from, it's the

day they owned the computer until the time we were on it, and that was certainly an eye opener for a lot of people to think that there was definitely something going on behind the scenes

that they didn't realize was happening with the computer. And it was easily the way to show people that look, this problem that you're explaining, definitely goes deeper than what

it does. You've been having problems with your computer since day one of owning it, and it's a good thing you're on the phone with us now, cause now we can actually fix this

properly and do it the right way, which most of the time actually never really happened. After they've seen the error log, now it's where you know, we explain to them that I have

inhouse technicians that are ready to go and ready to fix this right now, no waiting for a call back, no having to drop off your computer, you know, at a retail store, a Best Buy or anywhere

like that. We can get this done from the comfort of your own home, you know, and this would be the price. And then the price was actually whatever it was that we could make it. I'd

like to think that a lot of the people that I did actually got some sort of services for what I had. I do know for a fact that there were people that I sold that never got anything done.

[00:16:37] HOST: So, along the way, Dan realized what he'd gotten himself into. As he explains it, it's not how it started. [00:16:42] Dan: Going into this job, we didn't

actually know what it was indeed, a scam. We were told that this is exactly how the company works, this is how the company makes their money, and that they follow through with everything

like that. We didn't, I honestly didn't figure out that what was going on until much closer to my, when I left the company. I don't think without question that what we were

doing was absolutely a scam to people. There would be a lot of times where we would tell people that if they actually went through, it was probably going to be a few hours where they'd

have to fix the computer, so don't touch the computer, let it stay put and my remote technicians are going to do what they need to do in order to fix the computer system. There were a

lot of times where people would call us the next day saying, "I never touched my computer all night, and nobody's done anything to it." And I know in my, the way my job was,

was after we made the sale and gone through, was to talk to the consumer about the issues at hand and why they even wanted to do this in the first place, and then after that would be to

remotely access our technicians in India that were doing the fixes and sometimes they would come on and start fixing it immediately, and then other times, just no one every actually picked

up the work order to start fixing their computers, and they would call back 24 hours later, quite upset with the fact that, you know you told me it was going to be 3 or 4 hours, and

nothing's been done in a day and I spent 700, a thousand, 1200, whatever it may have been to get this service done. [00:18:15] HOST: But with or without any actual services to offer,

the bottom line was always making money. As much as they could get out of people. [00:18:23] Dan: There really was no maximum that we could put in place. I mean if we felt that we could get

somebody that was gullible enough to really spend what we told them to spend, then it, it was essentially kind of almost unlimited. [00:18:36] HOST: And targeting older people was definitely

a sales strategy. [00:18:39] Dan: Without question, the senior citizens that just didn't have the knowledge because it just wasn't part of their day and age were the easy ones to

convince that there were definitely issues that were deeper than the surface. [00:18:50] HOST: Dan had been on the job for less than six months when he got a call that gave him a wakeup

call. Ultimately it was the signal for him to get out. [00:18:58] Dan: The incident that happened is something that I probably will end up remembering forever. I had talked to a woman, an

older woman, definitely clearly in her 70s, potentially even her 80s, possibly even older than that and was very nice. Very sweet lady. Let me go through everything. Was having me through

the computer, and was more than willing by the end of the call to let me fix her computer system and get antivirus software and go through the whole spiel, and I don't, if I remember

correctly, it was approximately about a six to 700-dollar sale, if you will. She did not have her credit card on her at the time and had asked me to call her back the next day when she saw

her daughter to be able to put it through at that time. So, I told her no problem. I'll, you know, there’s very little I can do at that point, so I made the appointment with her to call

her back, and the next day when I was in there, I indeed called her, she answered the phone, again very nice, very sweet lady, and her daughter took the phone, and her daughter immediately

started screaming at me. Screaming at the top of her lungs at me with curse words and expletives, who the F is this? Why are you calling my mother? And you could tell that she was quite

distraught. And I calming explained to her I was talking to her last night and I was trying to help her fix her computer system because she called in with issues, and that this was, this is

what she asked me to do. The daughter then immediately, I could hear her just absolutely screaming at her mother, saying I can't believe you're going through this again. You know

how, you've already been scammed a couple of times with your identity and you've lost thousands of dollars on things like this before, and yet you continually fall for this, and

you could tell the daughter was absolutely just besides herself, crying over the fear for her mother's, you know wellbeing. And they had clearly dealt with some sort of issue like this

before in some other facet with her, and the daughter just was broken down in tears. And at that timeframe, when that mother and daughter call came into play, and I really heard it firsthand

through the daughter's eyes that this is an ongoing issue with probably a lot of senior citizens in the country that just don't have the same mental capacities that they did, you

know when they were younger, that it just kind of dawned on me at that point that, how many other of these people that I have talked to, have that I've taken their social security

income to fix just, just to simply fix their computer? How many people did I talk to you know did I potentially remove this money from their rent checks? Did I remove from their grocery

bills? Did I remove from their car payments? You know, not everybody has kids that are able to look after their finances to make sure that everything stays copacetic with that, so they

continue to pay their bills. You know, a lot of these people are indeed self-reliant on themselves, and it started to really make me think how many of these people did I really screw over?

[00:22:06] HOST: So take it from someone who's been in a position of taking your money for nonexistent services. Dan has this piece of advice for anyone needing help with their

computer. [00:22:14] Dan: Without question, if you were looking to try and get your computer fixed, take it to someone you can physically see and trust or deal with people face to face.

People that can explain to you what they're doing, that won't try and charge you an arm and a leg, cause it's really not as expensive as it's made out to be by a lot of

people. [00:22:31] HOST: And I'm back with AARP Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale. Frank, this is an interesting story. It's probably one that you're very familiar

with in terms of the set up and the boiler room and all of that. Dan's an interesting guy, he clearly is good for the job in the sense that he's a salesman, considers himself one.

His experience though of getting into a situation where he was going to make some money and then wanting to get out when he realized what was going on, is that a common one, do you think?

[00:23:00] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, I think so. I think in a lot of these things, they are selling somewhat of a legitimate service, they're downloading the product, they claim it works

and does these thing. So someone working there would assume that that's what it does. I think you'd have to be there a while to start to realize that maybe it's part of a scam

and that somebody's really selling something that really doesn't do what it says it does, and then I see people walking away from that. Other people just look at it as a job. I

sell things and this is what I sell. It's not my job to worry about whether it works or doesn't work. I'm just selling the technology. So, you know, I always tell people when

it comes to your computer, if you feel there's a problem with your computer, that there's something wrong with it, or someone calls you which of course, and then tells you

something's wrong with it, you need to have a trusted IT person to come where you are locally. I have an IT guy that comes to my house, whether it's my laptop or it's my

computers in my home. I would never download or install something without calling him first, or just sending him a text and say, what about this? And he'll tell me yes or no, but if I

have a problem, I'd rather pay some guy $100 or $150 max that's going to come out to my house, sit down, and go yeah, you do have some malware. Took it off and I fixed it and

everything's up and running, and that's the end of it, rather than get into this $600, $500. You know now sometimes when you hear about the daughter, I totally understand where the

daughter’s coming from, but this is what happens sometimes unfortunately with elderly people. They start doing things like that, just because they want to talk to someone on the phone, they

might be lonely. They start buying services they don't need. I remember once, a friend of mine telling me that he had gone to see his mom, she lived out in the country and he

hadn't been there for about 8 months or so. The minute he walked in the house, there were UPS boxes everywhere. I mean it looked like a warehouse, and he said, none of them are open. He

said to his mother, "What is this?" And these are all these things she was buying on TV, like toasters and whatever she saw advertised on TV, she'd buy it, and they'd

make it easy for you, cause you'd just click your thing and you'd say, I'll buy that. [00:25:10] HOST: Far too easy. [00:25:10] Frank Abagnale: Yeah, and so I can understand

why unfortunately sometimes elderly people do that, and I can understand why their children get very, very concerned about that, but again, you know the safest way to deal with any kind of

computer issue is not trust some pop-up that comes up or some solicited call that comes up, or you call some company you just happened to see their phone number, it's better to call,

you know you have Best Buy. I mean there are a regular household name companies that you can call and ask if a tech can come out, look at your computer. [00:25:44] HOST: The error log trick

he mentions, I don’t know if you've heard of that one before, but it seems pretty sneaky to be able to say, not, I mean if you know about a computer a fair amount, you know that

everybody has error logs, right for anything and everything that's gone wrong or not quite right, but they're making it seem like, oh, something's wrong with your computer and

it's been that way for a long time. [00:26:00] Frank Abagnale: Right, and as you and I discussed, Will, they have ways to even make your computer flicker, they can make lines come on

it, they can download these little things. [00:26:08] HOST: To manipulate the screen. [00:26:10] Frank Abagnale: To manipulate the screen so you actually are sitting there going, there is

something wrong with my computer. And so again, it could or it could not be but why not be safe and just call someone locally trusted to say, can you come out and look? And if it's an

honest guy that's going to come out and say, you know, ma'am, I'm just going to charge you a service call because there's really nothing wrong with your computer, I

checked it out, it's working fine, and that's it. [00:26:33] HOST: But again, the scene, going back to the scene in Florida in this boiler room as they're known, whether

it's in Florida or Oklahoma or Idaho or California or maybe even India or somewhere else, typically similar scenes that you'll run into. [00:26:46] Frank Abagnale: That's how

they're kind of set up. There are people who ex--, are experts in certain areas. It's almost in a legitimate company you have salesmen, and you have a sales manager, so when you go

buy a car, the salesman says, here's the car, do this deal, and then the sales manager has to come in and say, this is the kind of deal I'll give you, it's the same thing in

these scenarios. They've got people who make the initial sale, then if it's a hard sell, they pass it onto somebody else, and then finally if it's a real thing where they see

a real live wire, they pass it on to somebody's really a pro at closing those deals. It's the same way but in a, selling an illegal service or something that they're not going

to fulfill, so it's a way a lot of companies actually work that do legal telemarketing or legal sales. [00:27:30] HOST: Another thing that goes on in this one is the, I mean Dan sort

of has an epiphany if we can call it that, but a moment when he realizes, I don't want to be doing this anymore, and I've got ask you, did you ever have a moment like that in your

past, when you were like, this is not for me, I've got to get out of this, but you just weren't able to? [00:27:47] Frank Abagnale: You know, first of all, what I did for me

personally was an extremely lonely life. There was no one that you could trust and confide in. You knew you were constantly running and you got tired of looking over your shoulder all the

time. I certainly was getting older, so maturity was setting in, I was starting to realize this is not the way you want to spend the rest of your life. I was also smart enough to know I was

going to get caught, that I wasn't going to walk away from this somehow and not get caught. It's not a, it's not a great life, so obviously I think when people get wrapped up

in this, they finally then try to just figure out how do I get out of it? I don't want to be in it anymore, and sometimes it is easy to walk away, and sometimes it's not easy to

walk away. [00:28:32] HOST: One final point on this, is that the people at the top of the game are the ones making all the money. I mean these other... [00:28:36] Frank Abagnale:

They're the real crooks. The people who own that company, the people who came up with the idea to sell that, they're the real crooks. The people behind them, sometimes they're

just people they're using, and again, they know or they don't know, sometimes you go in and the more they trust you or the more you're good at what you do, they advance you,

and eventually they bring you in and say, you know, this is actually a scam, you know that, right? And this is what we do. We don't really fulfill these things, we don't do this.

And that's again a point where someone can make the decision, well, even though it pays great, I'm leaving, cause I don't want to be a part of that, you know, or somebody

stays on because of greed. You know, I don't really care, and again, it's that whole thing of, you're not addressing the victim personally. You're not looking at the

older woman saying, boy, I'm really ripping this lady off our of her money. You don't see her, so to you, it's just a voice on the phone, and that's where this whole

technology separates the human emotion, and that's what makes it so easy to scam people. There is no regrets, there's no, I'm feeling bad, I don't go home and can't

sleep, because you're not even, what's that person look like? How are they? What are their feelings? You know, you don't know anything about them. [00:29:42] HOST: This show

has made me think about that a lot. And it's very, I mean it almost makes a lot of sense that we would think of somebody grabbing a purse off the street as a real criminal. That's

a criminal, but the guy at the call center, maybe not so much. Even though they're both stealing money. [00:29:56] Frank Abagnale: Right, well the con men who years ago spent days

separating somebody from their money and knowing every minute they went to see that person they were conning them, they were lying to them, they were deceiving them, they were stealing from

them. They had to live with their conscience no matter what it was, and they had to think about that when they went back, I don't care what anybody says, and certainly think about it

later on in life, but this person doesn't think about it, because this person's thousands of miles away, they have no idea what they look like, they have no idea what their real

feelings are like. There's no emotional attachment, so it has made crime a lot easier and a lot easier for people to do it, because the emotion is not there. Their conscious isn't

there, [00:30:35] HOST: Okay, Frank Abagnale, we've learned a lot this episode. We've heard about breaches, we've heard about credit scores, making sure you have a good credit

score. Protecting your kids for goodness' sake, I mean that's all part of it. [00:30:47] HOST: If you or someone you know has been a victim of a scam, please call AARP's

Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. [00:30:59] HOST: Alright, I'd like to thank our producers, Julie Getz and Brook Ellis; our audio engineer, Julio Gonzales, and of course,

my cohost Frank Abagnale. And be sure to subscribe, download, rate, and of course, please like our podcast on Apple Podcast or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. END OF TRANSCRIPT