AmeriServ Presents: Bank Chats

Cupid Doesn’t Take Crypto, But Scammers Do

• AmeriServ Financial, Inc. • Episode 28

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Love stories rarely start with prepaid gift cards. As more relationships begin online, romance scams are rising fast, turning loneliness and hope into a con that empties bank accounts. We pull back the curtain on how scammers build quick emotional ties, test boundaries with small requests, and escalate to bigger asks through carefully scripted messages and believable cover stories.

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Resources:
IC3
More Information on Romance/Dating Scams

Credits:
An AmeriServ Financial, Inc. Production 
Music by SchneckMind
Hosted by Drew Thomas and Jeffrey Matevish

Thanks for listening! You can find out more about AmeriServ by visiting ameriserv.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

DISCLAIMER
This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts, with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics; as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast, and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended, and should not be understood or interpreted to be, financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. AmeriServ Presents: Bank Chats is produced and distributed by AmeriServ Financial, Incorporated.

Drew Thomas:

Here we, I can't believe it's February.

Jeff Matevish:

It's already February, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Which is really odd, because January always seems to feel like the month that never ends. And yet, somehow, whenever February comes around, it feels like, wow, we're already a whole month into the year.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we're 1/12 of the way done with the year already.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you can, yeah, you can, I mean, yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right.

Jeff Matevish:

It's still snowy. The groundhog saw a shadow, so we got six more weeks of winter.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, I don't know, I, are there any other Rodentia that predict weather, other than the groundhog in Pennsylvania?

Jeff Matevish:

There is, and I for whatever reason, I can't remember what the, the animal is, but there is another rodent, yeah, predicts the animal or that predicts the weather. But I guess when, when this first came about, I guess the Germans brought this tradition over.

Drew Thomas:

Because of course we did.

Jeff Matevish:

But it used to be like a chipmunk or a badge, like it was, it was a different, you know, they adapted to whatever animals we had in Pennsylvania.

Drew Thomas:

Ah, gotcha. Okay, so, yeah, it was like, all right, well, we'll use a woodchuck.

Jeff Matevish:

Oh, no. It was a, that's what it was. It was a hedgehog tradition, traditionally, and we don't have hedgehogs. They're, you know, illegal to own in Pennsylvania.

Drew Thomas:

And are they really?

Jeff Matevish:

They are illegal to own in Pennsylvania.

Drew Thomas:

That's interesting. I wonder why?

Jeff Matevish:

Because they don't want them reproducing in Pennsylvania and taking over, okay, yeah, the our beautiful nature, I guess. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Okay, sure. Why not? And speaking of reproducing, we're going to talk about romance scams today.

Jeff Matevish:

Right, right before Valentine's Day, yep.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, because for all of us that you know, have wonderful things to think about at this time of year, let's definitely talk about how people are being taken advantage of. You know.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, well, I mean, people are getting into relationships more and more online, and, you know, they start virtually. You know, going to, out to, you know, some social event and meeting your, you know, future wife or husband is not as common anymore, I guess.

Drew Thomas:

I guess not. I mean, I remember a time when dating online was considered to be just the worst type of method to meet people. People were embarrassed to say that they met online whenever I was younger. Well now it's the predominant way that it happens I would say.

Jeff Matevish:

Whenever you were dating, there was no online either.

Drew Thomas:

All right, that's how we're going to play it today. All right, I see, that's fine. You're not wrong, yeah. So, how did you, how did you and Kelsey, were you guys met in high school though, right? So, do you have any, are there any pictures in

Jeff Matevish:

We were high school sweethearts, yeah. So, we, I mean, actually, our, our, our dads knew each other before we knew each other, and we didn't know it. Okay, yeah, but yeah, we met in high school. your families of like, the two of you in the same place at the same time, but you didn't know it? No, okay. No, no, no, yeah. But her dad is a contractor, and I remember years later, he came to our house to, you know, we were going to get a quote on some work or something like that. Yeah. And it was years later that I put, finally, put two and two together, and said, okay, hey, that's yes, your dad, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

How about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool, yeah. But you're absolutely right. A lot of people, a lot of people, meet online, whether it's, whether it's the casual sort of hookup apps, or whether it's the more personalized types. I don't even know what all the different, the different sites are. Oh, I don't know either, yeah, I'm assuming that there are sites out there, like, match.com, is that that was, like, one of the first.

Jeff Matevish:

Original, yeah, yeah. That was like, now there's, there's one specific to certain demographics. And, yeah, I mean.

Drew Thomas:

So, regardless of how you're out there. And you know, these scams, let's, I mean, let's be fair, these scams predominantly target older people, yeah, but not exclusively, right, but predominantly.

Jeff Matevish:

Yes, yes. But actually targeting younger people is on the rise too, because the younger people are the ones using those apps more.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, but there are things that you can definitely do to try to you know, we're not telling you that you can't use these apps. I mean, so many people do, and by and large, you know, like most things, if you're conscious about how you're using them, and you're aware of what could be an issue out there, hopefully you can prevent some of these things from happening to you, just from being aware, right, of your surroundings. It's sort of like walking down the street in the middle of New York City. As long as you're kind of aware of your surroundings, you're less likely to be mugged than the person that's just obliviously walking down the street not paying attention, yeah.

Jeff Matevish:

But the problem with these kinds of scams is there's emotion involved, and, oh, yeah, once your emotions involved, then that's all you think about. You know, you look past whatever you know, downfall that other person may have, and you get fair. You get taken.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, yeah. That's, that's totally fair. And you know, for some of these people, especially the older people that are affected by this, sometimes they're exposing themselves to these people, as far as saying, you know, they go online and they, they admit that they were recently divorced, or they admit they were recently widowed, or something like that, yeah, and they sort of set themselves up for these scammers to find them in those ways, and these scammers will target people in their most vulnerable emotional states with the promise of having some kind of companionship, somebody to talk to. Some of these people, especially older people, they don't have family that live nearby anymore. Their family has moved away, and if their, their wife or their husband has passed that you are starting to feel that kind of away, or they've gotten a divorce or something like that, they find themselves very, very lonely. And really, a lot of emotion, they are going to try to just wait, like, like, just, these things don't start out from, from a traditional like teenager in love type place, and more of just a desire to have some sort of connection or companionship to talk about, just pile on to that emotion, to get you in as deep and mentally yeah, you know, talk with people, yeah. sort of disengaged as possible, getting you listening to your emotions more than listening to your brain. Yeah, sure, right. The other thing that you're going to find with some of these people is that, like you said, they start asking, like, I can't, I have a difficult, I don't know about you, I have a difficult time even asking for friends to borrow some money. Oh, gosh, yeah. You know what I mean? You know, if I, if me and my friends were out to dinner and I realized I needed to borrow 10 bucks, I would feel bad about it. Yeah. You know, yeah, these people have, don't have those qualms. They're going to start asking you for like you said, they're going to say, hey, oh man, you know I'm, you know, I'm here chatting with you via text messages, and I'm stuck at the bus station because I don't have, I don't have bus fare. Is there any way you could Venmo me five bucks? Yeah, right, yeah. And you think to yourself oh it's five bucks, sure, what the heck? I'm going to be a nice person. I want this person to like me because I'm feeling in love with them, or I'm feeling infatuated with them, right? You know? So, you do those kinds of things, and then they start to realize, oh, you're the type of person that will do stuff like that, right? Yeah. And so, like you said, that those amounts start getting larger and larger and larger.

Jeff Matevish:

It's like, it's like other scams too. I mean, credit card and debit card scams now. I don't know if you've been, you know, had a compromise or anything like that, but now these, these fraudsters, are sending in transactions of $0 just to see if that card is on and you know, they can ping it, you know, once they see that, hey, that zero transaction went through, then they start moving and increasing their, their, you know, yeah, pull on you.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes it's in the hope that you just don't notice right away, right, right, right? Because a lot of people don't keep a check register anymore, true. They sort of rely on just looking at online banking and their transaction history, and that's fine to a point, as long as you keep a mental log of what you've spent money on, right? But if you start looking at your, your, your statement, or you look at your online banking profile, and you start to see, man, I don't remember spending$16 on, on that like, or what is that transaction like? And it would be, it would be helpful, quite frankly, if some merchants would be more descriptive in their, yeah, descriptions, right, right of what things are. But yeah, you're, you know, so sorry. Sidenote, you're absolutely right. So, what else do some of these people do that, that, that, that people can look out for?

Jeff Matevish:

Asking for payments that are not your traditional payments, prepaid debit cards or crypto, you know.

Drew Thomas:

So, not as traceable. So, not saying, hey, can you Apple Pay me this, right?

Jeff Matevish:

Because there's, that's traceable. You know, they're asking for money in ways that it can't be traced or not easily traced, at least.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. The other thing that I was reading about is, is they, especially as these things get longer and these, I hesitate to call them relationships, but any, any interaction between two people can be considered a relationship, right? So, as they, as they, as they, reel you in and the relationship gets longer and you become more attached to this person, invested. Yeah, there's, there's a natural desire for most people to want to move from being online to being in person. Yeah, right, right? And these people will oftentimes find a way or find multiple reasons why that can't happen, right? Right. Either they live too far away and they can't afford a plane ticket, or they had some or you were supposed to meet this weekend, but they had some sort of an emergency that came up. Maybe it's...

Jeff Matevish:

Employed overseas. They're, yeah, they're just job doesn't allow them to see you, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

That's a good point. Maybe they claim to be in the military or something, or they claim to be somewhere where they just can't, they're not allowed to leave, yeah.

Jeff Matevish:

And that's, that was another, another one that I saw was these, these, like fake profile because we're talking about catfishing pretty much, yeah, yeah. So, a lot of these profile pictures that you see on these dating apps or these social media, they're taken from someone else, or now they're, they're enhanced with AI to make it more appealing. Yeah, a lot of times you know these fake profiles and fake profile pictures are people that are in professions, like a soldier or a doctor or someone that you know has a high valued profession or...

Drew Thomas:

And one, and one that you would sort of natively trust, right? Right. We're predisposed to want to trust doctors and lawyers and military professionals, and they we're not, we're not necessarily predisposed to trust other professions like those, right? So, yeah, I could see that. And you're right with, with generative AI, these days, they can generate an image of somebody they don't even have, like, one of the things they used to tell you to do was to do a reverse image search, you know, take their profile, take this person's profile image, and then pop it into search engine. Yeah, for those of you that know how to do that, right, go to Google and you can, you can actually look for a picture, right? And then if that image shows up on 25 different dating sites with 25 different names, right, you could start to feel pretty confident that this person isn't who they say they are, yeah. But now, with a, with generative AI, they can just generate a new profile picture for every one of them. So, now you can look and to be fair, things like generative AI are getting better at stuff like this, but you can, if you're what, there's a thing that humans have, especially with looking at other humans faces, where you can kind of tell.

Jeff Matevish:

If it's too perfect, yeah, if it's too good to be true, yeah, the old sentiment of, it's too good to be true, it's probably, you know, not worth it.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, you know, if you're looking at this profile picture, and you think to yourself, my gosh, this person has never had a pimple in their entire life, right. Right. You know, they don't have any sort of weird like, oh, when I was five years old, I bumped my head on a rock scars. They don't have any...

Jeff Matevish:

Filters can handle that. It's more of the like, yeah, symmetry, you know, it's everything's too symmetrical, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

And everything's just too on point, right, right? So, yeah, you got to look for that stuff, you know. And again, the, the fact that these, that these con artists remember, they are right, rely so much on these, convert these, these long cons, right in a weird way that can backfire on them if you are doing what you would do with any relationship. If you're talking to this person, and for the last three months, they've been telling you that they are living in the biodome in France, right? And they can't leave, yeah, right. And then you're having some sort of a general, sort of throwaway conversation, and they mentioned that they went down to the local grocery store to pick up carrots and peas. Well, that should be like, a, well, wait a minute, I thought you couldn't leave your biodome.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, type, right, you know. But again, you're those, those emotions play into it, and you, you know, nine times out of ten, I would assume you just let that go, because you don't even thinking about that.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. But I'm saying we should, we should, yeah, you know, like, make sure that their stories are adding up. And that might be an oversimplified sort of example that I'm throwing out there, but if their story doesn't add up, if they tell you that they are deployed overseas, but yet, they know an awful lot about the news that's happening locally in some small town in Montana, you know. I mean, think about it, yeah, you know, like, you know, and you're absolutely right. When your emotions get involved, you get very defensive, and you get very protective of that other person, and you get very protective of that relationship, yeah. And honestly, I think this, the advice I'm about to give goes for even, even healthy relationships. Don't get so defensive about that relationship that you don't listen to your family and you don't listen to your friends, yeah, don't listen to the people that are trying to give you objective advice.

Jeff Matevish:

Yes, yes, yeah. Get an outside opinion, yeah. Just talk about your relationships with someone else, just to get a different perspective.

Drew Thomas:

Sure, and especially if the person that you're in an online relationship with is advising you to not tell your friends, yeah, oh yeah. You know, if they're saying, hey, listen, you know, I'm in a, I'm in a, really, I'm a, I'm a, I don't know, I'm a professional sports figure, or I'm somebody that's sort of a pseudo celebrity, and if it gets out that I'm talking to you, it's going to be a problem.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, this isn't a Romeo and Juliet where we can't be talking together. And you know, yeah.

Drew Thomas:

Anytime that someone's advising you in a romantic relationship, whether it's a dating scam or whether it's a legitimate you met this person and you, you've known that they lived in your town for the last 25 years. Don't, I know it's hard from the emotional standpoint, but don't get so enamored that you don't listen to the people who love and care about you. Because, you know, we have seen that even in our industry, in our, in our local bank, where we have experienced people that it doesn't seem to matter who tells them that they are being scammed, you know, they you can go to these people and you can say you are being taken advantage of in very plain words, and they will not believe you.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, because they trust that other person more than they trust you.

Drew Thomas:

Right. You know, and they you don't want to let go of that. And I totally get it like, I know that feeling like you don't want to lose that feeling of, of, of love and attention and all that kind of stuff, you know, but boy, you know, just be aware. Yeah, you know, definitely be aware. I have chiming happening in the background. I don't know if anybody can hear that or not, but.

Jeff Matevish:

What else can we do to, to stay safe? We talked about being too perfect or isolating you from friends and family. You would, you had mentioned that you know these, these scammers know what works and what doesn't. So, they, they've a lot of their texts, their messages and stuff, are pre-scripted. So, just like you said, you know, with the profile picture of doing a reverse search, if this is a, you know, it's truly a fully online conversation, you can take that text, that messaging that they're sending you, and put it in that same search engine and see if, hey, this is, you know,

Drew Thomas:

And the rest of it would just stand on the something that's been circling around the internet before. periphery and wait for that person to get beat up, yeah, by the hero, your turn until, until they would run in. Like, these people are not doing that. They're, they're, they're scamming you, and they're scamming 20 other people all at the same time.

Jeff Matevish:

So, it's important to report anything like this. And then that's the sad statistic is, I think it was like 13% of scams are reported because people were embarrassed that they got taken true.

Drew Thomas:

I mean, and I totally get that. I mean, just like I said, I'm embarrassed to ask my friends for 10 bucks to cover me if I, if I happen to forget my wallet and can't pay for dinner, yeah, and these are people I've known for 30 I can't imagine how I might feel if I had to report that I had sent 10s of 1000s of dollars from my savings to some random person that I didn't really know because they had emotionally manipulated me into doing it, right? So, I totally understand that, there's no shame in feeling that sort of, man I can't believe I did this, you know.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, but anything that should help make you feel good, that you may be protecting someone else, right?

Drew Thomas:

Right, yeah. So, you know, while I totally understand that emotion as well, these people, look these people know what they're doing, and like I said, they, they're following a script. They've, they've tested things. They know what works. They know what doesn't. You shouldn't feel necessarily bad about being one of the people that was, that was caught up in it. No, especially not so bad that, that you don't report it. Yeah, right, right. So, so yeah, definitely keep that in mind. Just as a statistic, I looked at this, in 2025 victims lost $1.3 billion in the United States alone. Wow, through these kinds of scams. Wow, $1.3 billion.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, and that's, that's a steady increase from years previous, yeah, like 2021 it was a third of that, or half of that, or something like that. I mean, it's so, it's increasing steadily year after year.

Drew Thomas:

Yeah. And while those, while those numbers are terrible, and you don't want to see them continue to escalate, I think it illustrates, objectively, that you are not alone. Yeah, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, or you're watching this podcast because, you know, sometimes you watch things like this, or listen to things like this because your family or friends are telling you something and you're trying to verify that you're not being taken advantage of. That's not happening to me. Yeah, they say it is. But I listened to this podcast and they told me, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, right? I mean, how many times have people done things like that, you know. But if you're listening to this and you're objectively going, man, that sounds familiar, really familiar, or that maybe, maybe my daughter or my son or my friends, maybe they're not wrong. Please don't, don't, don't regress back to the idea of convincing yourself that, that you're right. Look for some of these things test the waters. You know, you like I said, it can backfire on them, the fact that these long cons, they give out a lot of information too. Try to get as much information out of them as you can without giving up a bunch of your own, right. Yeah, you don't tell them where you live, right. Don't tell them, you know, where you work. Don't, don't you know things like that. But if you can get more information on them, that's more information you can, you can then pass on to law enforcement or whatever, not advocating you become some sort of a vigilante, right? But the information you collect because you've been part of this scam can be helpful, yeah, is I guess, is I guess where I'm saying.

Jeff Matevish:

Yeah, yeah, don't delete all your messages if you have been scammed. You know, you may need some evidence to give to law enforcement.

Drew Thomas:

That is a very good point. Plus, you know, if you take screenshots of these things, or keep the messages natively in your device, on your computer and your phone. They can see, you know, the profile picture and the name and stuff. But it never hurts to take a screenshot anyway, because sometimes they have the ability to go in and delete certain things. They can delete their profile, and then when they delete their profile, sometimes their profile pic and their screen name and stuff goes with it, but if you screenshot it, there's evidence not going to go anywhere, right? Because it's, a photo on your phone now. So, yeah, but you know, so I think you know, just to wrap this up, you know, just try to remember that first of all, you're not the only person that this has happened to. There are red flags you can look for, and you should definitely do that, no matter where in this process you think you might be. If you just met somebody yesterday, or you've been talking to somebody for six months, there are red flags you can look for. And if you're objective about it, you can, you can start to put the pieces together and start to decide, okay, is this, is this legit, or is it not? You know, have we been, have we been planned to be meeting up together five or six times over the last five or six months, and every single time, something has happened on the other person's end that has prevented them from meeting me. If you know, if every photo I've ever seen of them looks like it came out of a Walmart photo frame, right? You know, that kind of stuff, you start to think, you know, and particularly if friends and family are telling you, hey, this, there's something off with this. There's something weird about this. Listen to them. Listen to them. Yeah, you know, don't necessarily, you know, pass it off as, oh, you're just lonely, or your sour grapes, or you don't want what's best for me, or you don't understand, or I get all that, I totally do, but don't, don't just blindly keep following this, this path, because, man, it's hard. And you mentioned something about telling your bank, and your bank might be able to do some things to recover certain things, but it really depends on how you've sent that money, and you mentioned that before. You know, if they're saying to you, hey, you know, I don't want you to send me the money for this via, via your bank. I don't want you to send it to me via some sort of a traditional payment platform, but rather, I want you to wire me money, yeah, or I want you to, I want you to go to the store and buy a prepaid debit card and mail that to me instead or something. Man, those are red flags. Oh yeah, those are really red flags. And those are once, some why, once money is wired, once you've purchased a prepaid gift card and mailed it, there's no getting that money back. Yeah, it's gone.

Jeff Matevish:

I mean, and you could lose money that you never even had. I mean, one of, another one of these scams is, and I don't fully understand why you would do this, but the fraudster will send you a check and ask you to deposit it in your bank and then take the money out and mail it to them. You know, if that check is bad, and you've already sent that money, you're now, you know, out 10s of 1000s of dollars that you know never existed. Oh, yeah. And if that, if that, if it did exist, and that money was legitimate from that check, but it was taken, or it was acquired by, you know, some illegal activity. Now, you're a money mule, right?

Drew Thomas:

Yeah, yeah. Now, now you're, now you're complicit too, yeah, right, yeah in this whole thing, right. And so that's, that brings up another point that I didn't think of, but it's something else to keep an eye on. You know, if somebody does do something like that to you, if they do, if your, if your paramour sends you a check and says, hey, I want you to deposit this and then turn around and then take, you know, I'm going to send you a check for $10,000. I want you to keep$1,000 of it for your trouble, and then I want you to mail$9,000 back out to some other place, or something else, or whatever. Wow, that's, that's a giant, giant red flag. And hopefully, much like your friends and your family, hopefully, when you take that check in, your bank is saying, notice that, yeah, your bank is saying, hey, there's something wrong here, right, right? We're going to have to put a hold on this check, or we're going to have to do something. And then you're going to get angry. Yeah, you're going to get angry, and you're going to say, I don't understand why you, as my bank, you know, I want to do this, I want to send this check. This is my money. I could do with it what I want, because we've seen this before, right? Your bank is trying to help you, believe it or not, your bank is trying to help you. So, so you know, I'm, I'm speaking from experience, and if you're again, if you're listening or you're watching this, and you think to yourself, man, that happened to me last week and I yelled at my bank. I'm telling you, I don't know your bank. Yeah, I don't know you, yeah. But I'm telling you, that's what good banks will do, is they will tell you, hey, there's something wrong with this, because they're looking out for you, right, right? They're looking out for your best interest. So, all right, listen, if anybody has other questions or issues or anything like that, drop something in the comments. Please let us know. You know, we like reading comments. We like seeing feedback, and we don't get as much of it as we'd like, to be quite frank, but the more times that we get comments and feedback, the more things we can talk about on the show that apply to what you want to hear. So, but we don't know what you want to hear unless you tell us. So, so you can click the link in the description. You can send us a message, direct message. You can leave a comment if you're on YouTube or something like that, yeah, we do read them.

Jeff Matevish:

Drew's tired of, you know, commenting and reading his own comments.

Drew Thomas:

So, that's, yeah, you know, I get lonely. What can I say, you know, don't fall victim, yeah. I mean, I'm in a romance scam with myself. I've created, I've created some sort of, like, you know, locked off version of my personality and commenting on our page. Yeah, no, but I mean, really, let us know. And if you, if you like the show, I know, you know, every, every single, every single thing that you watch on YouTube, everything you, you listen to, they all, they say the same thing, like, subscribe, all that kind of stuff. But the bottom line is that liking and subscribing and doing those things tells the algorithm, the almighty algorithm, that you enjoyed or you interacted with this material, and that helps. So, please, if you are a subscriber, thank you. But still, that doesn't mean you don't ever have to hit that little like button. It takes less than a half a second hit the like button. Tell the algorithm that you liked what you heard, and leave us a comment and tell us what you want to know.

Jeff Matevish:

Well, said, Awesome. Thanks. Happy Valentine's Day, Drew.

Drew Thomas:

Happy Valentine's Day, Jeff.

Jeff Matevish:

This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics, as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended and should not be understood or interpreted to be financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. Thank you for listening. Please check out our full library of episodes, which can be found on the ameriserv.com website. You can also download or stream the podcast from your favorite podcast app.

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