Story Time: What Happens In Vegas...My $25k Scam Story

In this episode of our series "Hoodwink: Surviving the Scam," we're diving into the story behind the name. Host Rita Owens opens up about her personal experience of being scammed out of $25,000 and how it inspired her to create this podcast. She discusses the importance of shedding light on scams, breaking the silence, and arming ourselves with knowledge and resilience. Rita reveals how she fell victim to an internet guru, the red flags she missed, and the power of reclaiming control. Get ready to uncover the truth behind scams and learn how to come back stronger. Tune in and let's take back our power together.

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Transcript

0:51

Hey, this besties. Because this is the first episode of my series hoodwink surviving the scam, I wanted to let you in on the back story behind the name. So the name isn't just catchy. It's actually got some real meaning behind it. Y'all know what the term hoodwink means. Right? Well, I do because it actually turns out to be one of my kid's favorite animated movies, but it's basically when somebody tricks you, or they mess with your trust. That happens to a lot of entrepreneurs, and it's something that we have to talk about. Now the word hood also brings a little something extra to the table. You might think of hood like in the term hood like hustle mentality as being tough or having that street smart edge. But sadly, some folks are actually using that vibe trick people into falling for their scams. Looking back at the scams that I've actually fallen for, I've noticed a pattern. I was often doing business with someone who looked like me and used our shared experiences as minority business owners to deceive me. And in talking to some of my other entrepreneur friends, It's like they were running their business as if it was a street hustle. So I call it this podcast hoodwinked. We're not only pulling the mask off these scammers, but we're also giving everyone who's been tripped, a place to talk about it, learn and come back stronger. This podcast is about regaining control and ensuring that no one takes advantage of us. Alright. So now that we've got that out of the way, Let's dive right in. Today's episode is intensely personal for me, and it's why this podcast exists in the first place. I tell you guys, I actually thought about this podcast for quite some time, and it's taking me a little while to get it up and running because I just wasn't sure if I was ready to tell my story. So I'm about to share a chapter of my life that was not only eye opening, but downright soul shaking. I was scammed out of $25,000, you guys. Yes. You heard that right. $25, poof gone just like that. And by someone I thought was really a good person, but unfortunately, it it always seems to happen that way. Now, why is it crucial to bring these scams out from the shadows? Well, that's simple. When we talk about it, we take away its power to shame us, and we arm ourselves with knowledge and resilience. Because let me tell you something. Scam artists bank on our silence. They bet on our shame keeping us quiet, and that is how they continue to operate. I guarantee you some of the same people who have turned around and scammed me has also scammed my friends and are still scamming and selling programs and courses in all of the things. Why? Because people are ashamed to speak up and speak out. So today, I pull back the curtain on a world praise on hopes and dreams. I'll be revealing what led me to this so called internet guru, what drew me into their love deceit. And the red flags that I missed. We're going deep you guys. We're getting real and most importantly, we're taking back our power. So Are you ready to get into it? Because I am. Alright. So let me just first start by setting the scene of exactly how all of this came to pass? Like, how did I actually meet this person who ended up scamming me out of$25,000? So the backstory is this. We met in a Facebook group of aspiring entrepreneurs. It's actually a pretty popular Facebook group where entrepreneurs come to learn different things about the financial services industry. And so we met in this Facebook group of aspiring entrepreneurs, and I actually had never heard of him before. But being in the same group, I had noticed that he commented a lot and he posted a lot, and we also seem to have some mutual friends. So, you know, after seeing his post and getting myself familiar with what it was that he did for a business, he became familiar to me. I also started receiving a ton of different ads from him. So I would, you know, I'd be browsing Facebook and I would see these ads pop up of his And I was like, wow, these ads are really well done. So in the group, he kind of marketed himself as this, like, social media marketing guru. And I figured, like, it must be working because I'm constantly seeing this person ads on Facebook. And even with some of the things like screenshots and comments and posts that he would make, it looked like he was doing pretty well. From a financial standpoint. It looked like it was something that was very lucrative for him. So this person that I'm speaking of, we're gonna call him Dan. We're not using real names on this podcast just for legal reasons, but we'll call him Dan. So Dan was somebody who would continue to post and share his wins with the group. And that is initially what drew me to his his product and services. So I remember seeing an ad of his where he invited us to come and participate in this free webinar that he was doing. So I thought, okay. You know, it's not, a financial investment, but it is an investment of my time. Let me give an hour of my time to learn a little bit more about this entrepreneur and see if he has a service that, you know, I might be able to, utilize to help me in my business. So I was blown away by the very first webinar that I attended because it was supposed to be about an hour a half or so, and it ended up being like 3 a half hours. The call to action at the end was to be able to join him in Las Vegas to do this conference where he would be teaching about marketing, and all of the things. Right? So I was like, that's pretty cool. So the next step for me was to fill out a questionnaire to talk to him about working with him a little bit more after this webinar. And after our initial conversation, I was like, well, you know, he seems to know what he's doing. Let me, you know, look a little bit more into this. And after our our first initial conversations, I decided to go ahead and invest in one of his courses. So his course was like a group course, and it came with an opportunity to meet in Vegas at this event with other entrepreneurs who had also purchased the same course. So I paid for the course, which was about $5000, and I was able to go through some of the different modules and things like that in order to learn about my client avatar and all of the different things that come to play when you're you're trying to market, right, to your target audience. Now Keep in mind, I have a background in marketing. It's what I studied in college. However, my background is not in social media marketing. It's been some time since I've been out of college and the, you know, the landscape of technology has changed immensely. So For me, I'm always a student. And I was like, okay. Well, if you can show me different ways to get more people into my business, then I'm all ears. So I made that initial $5000 investment with the hopes that I would be able to fine tune my target audience as well as eventually be able to start running some Facebook ads for my business. So that's what initially drew me to the product and service. Now the very first encounter that I had with this person live was the Vegas trip. So we went to Vegas. And on a side note, I also did a side partnership with this person after talking to them because I'm in a the, turo business. Right? So the car rental business in this person was as well. And he was like, hey. You can have one of my cars be you know, here where I am and and I would keep my other fleet with me. And so I was like, okay. You know, that sounds like a cool idea. And we tried that didn't work. Whole another story. You guys not even gonna get into it, but definitely another red flag. So when I got to Vegas to the initial meeting, it was cool. And I will say that the most valuable thing that I got from it was the people that I met. There were people that I met there that I still have relationships with now and they're amazing people. But I have to say that was probably one of the only benefits of that. Of that meetup. There were a couple of speakers that he also had there, and some of those speakers delivered exceptional value One of the speakers, though, however, I did also decide to work with on his recommendation, and he turned out to be a scammer too. But you know, it that's the way that it goes sometimes you guys. With these scammers, a lot of them get kickbacks. If they refer you to other people, And it just so happens that sometimes those other people are scammers too just like them. So that was another story now. I told you guys, like, I've been scammed before. And I haven't just been scammed once. And I wanna just let you know as a sidebar that being scammed is nothing to be ashamed of because even the best people with the best intentions get scammed too. Alright. So I digress. Let me get back on track here. So let's talk about some of the red flags. Okay. So I started working with this person and after Vegas, I was like, okay. Cool. You know what? He seems to know what it is that he's talking about. We still didn't get to the Facebook ads that I was supposed to get with my investment, but his excuse was, okay, well, Facebook is not doing that great right now. Mind you, he's telling me that Facebook's not doing so great. But he's showcasing that he's making all this money from Facebook in our group that we're in mutually. So I asked him about that, and I'm like, You know, you're saying that you're making all this money in Facebook, but you're telling me that this is not the right time. He had some kind of excuse that I bought at the time, in retrospect when I look back, I'm like, girl, why did you why did you believe that? But, you know, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. So he explained to me that, you know, our time was up. It was like a 3 month commitment and that, he wanted to work with for an entire year and build out my business and help me on the marketing side. Now I've had coaches in the past, that I've worked with. And and I'll just say this. Not every coach is an expert in all the things. So sometimes you may have you know, different coaches, a coach for marketing, a coach for public speaking, a coach for business, whatever, whatever. Right? So with this particular situation, I'm like, okay. You know what? I could use a social media marketing coach because that is not my area of expertise, so I decided to invest in his 1 year program. And that 1 year program was$25,000. So I invested in that 1 year program and we got right to work, so I thought. So we, you know, we set up the preliminary things and things were going okay for a little bit. Now what ended up happening and what ended up being the red flag was that as the ball got rolling, I would notice that he would miss some meetings. And I'm the type of person where if you say you're going to be somewhere, please be there and please be on time. Now every now and then, that's fine. And going through, at this time, COVID and stuff, people were getting sick, totally understandable. I completely understood, you know, like, if somebody was sick or whatever, even I got sick. So I wasn't as harsh in regards to you know, making sure you you made every single meeting, as long as you communicated with me communication is key. But when I started to see that he was starting to miss meetings, I called him out on it and was like, hey, look, you need to be on time for these meetings. And I thought that we had a mutual understanding. Fast forward, this individual asked me to be a speaker at his events So he was throwing another event, but this event was going to be something on a larger scale. And so I was supposed to be one of the speakers of the event. I was given a 30 minute slot in order to speak, and it turned out that that's not exactly what I got. I I didn't get what I signed up for. So what ended up happening is at the very last minute, after I've done all the marketing for this event, and I've helped to sell tickets for this event because people came specifically to see me speak about business credit and business funding. He decided that he was going to move me to an all women's panel. Now being on a panel is not bad, but that's not what I signed up for, especially for the fact that I was paying my own way to get to this event in exchange for video and photography. So he was supposed to give me photos and video that I could use in my social media marketing and also to help build up my speaker reel. That was the agreement. I got none of that, you guys. None of it. Not only did I travel on my own dime, but also our panel was put on late at the event, and we also did a lot of waiting around. He wasted a lot of my time and at the very end, of everything, it turns out that allegedly he didn't pay the videographer or the photographer, which is why I didn't get what I signed up for which was photography photographs, right, of me speaking, as well as video for my speaker room. So I was really, really upset with that. And I was also very patient though. Let me just say that. And some of you who've been scammed before, I know that you can relate to me when it comes to patients, like, You wanna believe that someone's going to do the right thing. And then when they don't, it's so crushing. You know what I mean? It's so crushing, but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt number 1 because, you know, I thought that he was a good person. I'd met his family, his kid. I'm like, okay, this is a real person, not just somebody off the internet, but boy was I wrong. So after that, you know, I feel like he started to get a little, like, sure of himself. And started marketing more, recruiting more people into its program, but then not delivering. So here's the thing you guys that I want you to watch out for this. If you work with somebody, make sure they have the capacity to handle the people that are coming into their business because what I believe is that this person did not have the capacity to handle the amount of clientele that he was signing up because not only was he not showing up for the meetings, He wasn't returning phone calls or emails or anything. And in fact, it actually left the country and failed to show up to the meetings that we had previously scheduled. So that was another red flag for me. Okay. So now let's talk about the actual scam and why I feel like I was scammed out of $25,000. So after this person had missed several meetings, I finally had enough. I remember sitting there, logged into Zoom, waiting, just waiting. I think I waited maybe, like, 15 minutes for this person to show up. And at the time, he was out of the country doing whatever he was doing, but I was so furious that he had continued to waste my time that I sent him an email, and I'm like, look, you know what? You're wasting my time. I want my money back. I haven't received what I was promised that I'm supposed to get. You're unreliable. Flaky. I don't wanna do business with you anymore. Let's end this relationship. I also sent him a text message. Y'all know he ghosted me. Okay. He ghosted me. And I'm thinking like, okay. Cause I know I put a demand in there, like, you need to give me my money back. But he completely ghosted me. And maybe he ghosted me because we've been working together for, you know, a few months, and he knew that I couldn't charge back. So I had actually put the charge on my credit card, the$25,000 on my credit card. And with a lot of credit card companies, you only have a certain amount of time to do a chargeback. So I was feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm SOL. I'm not gonna be able to charge this back. I have to convince this man that he needs to give me my money back, especially since he's ignoring me and ghosting me, but he did not care. I think I sent him a couple of emails in a couple of texts. I called him. He not respond whatsoever. And it's in that moment that I realized I'd been scammed. And I remember, like, the feeling in my stomach, in my gut when I realized that I had been scammed by this person. Because at first, I thought like, you know, Maybe he's just a little flaky. Maybe he's just a little overwhelmed. No. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly what he was doing. And what makes me even more upset about this whole situation is that my husband had started to see the red flags before me, And he was asking me all kinds of questions kinda like, Rita, like, are you sure? Did you vet this person? And I'm like, yeah, babe, you know, He's in the group. We've got mutual friends, social media friends, you know, and I realized in that moment that I had been scammed, and there were so many different feelings that I felt. I was angry. I was hurt. I was embarrassed ashamed. You know, like, I was just a whole ball of emotions to you guys, and I know that some of you out there can relate to exactly what I was feeling. But I wasn't going to let that anger or that feeling of resentment or that feeling of being ashamed, keep me from getting my money back because here's the thing. I'm all about making sure that if I give you my hard earned coins that you are going to give me that return that I was promised. So immediately I got to work. Right? I did all the things. I sent the request for my refund I looked into the terms and conditions of my credit card, a company, and then I finally reached out to them. And so I want you guys to take note of this, okay, of how, like, if you've been scammed by somebody, how you can actually get your money back from the credit card company, even if it's been quite some time since you made the initial purchase. So because of the fact that I didn't purchase a product from him, I purchased a service And I purchased a service for a certain amount of time 1 year. Right? I was able to reach out to my credit card company and let them know, hey, I didn't get the deliverables. I didn't get what it was that I was supposed to get from this person, and this was the future delivery date. So because I didn't get what I was supposed to get and the delivery was supposed to be in the future, I was able to start in an investigation credit card company and eventually win my case and get my money back. Now, I will tell you this. With this particular person, Dan, He actually scammed quite a few allegedly of my social media entrepreneur friends, personal stories that I've heard that are completely disgusting you guys and really sad, I mean, to the point where he was just he was a loose cannon. He didn't care. I mean, single moms, people who you know, barely had any money, like, and that were scraping together in order to, you know, invest in themselves and invest in their business because they believed that he could help. It was really, really sad and to the tune of 20 to 30 people. Now hearing these stories, it was something that actually helped me to be able to move asked and get through the situation because I will tell you this. Like with a lot of people, I believed that I was alone that I was on an island that there was a reason why this happened to me maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I missed, you know, certain red flags or things like that. But then when I realized that this person literally made a career, out of doing this, taking people's hard earned money, and I'm telling you $25,000 may not seem like a lot to some of you, but It's a lot of money to most. Okay? So for me, I was one of the lucky ones. I was able to get my money back, but for Others, they just they had to write that off as a loss, but I'm not that girl. So I had to make sure that I got my money back. Now let's talk about you know, the aftermath of it all. Emotionally, I was a complete wreck. Number 1, because I couldn't believe that you know, someone who looked like me, meaning a minority, right? One of my people would turn around and scam me, especially knowing how hard we had it as business owners in the first place, right, is it's hard for us, you know, as minority business owners. And especially, you know, as women business owners, to really, number 1, be taken seriously as business owners, but also to be able to, you know, thrive as a business owner. So I felt some kind of way you know, about that. Emotionally, I felt ashamed because I told you, my husband, it kinda told me like, hey, look, I don't think that this is right, but I went to vouch for this person that in reality, I didn't even really know outside of social media. And then from a financial standpoint, I had to deal with that law for a few months until I figured out what I could do to get my money back. And, you know, my thing is, like, I'm a business funding expert. So when it comes to getting cash and being able get money infused into my business, I can do that all day. However, I do not wanna be just wasting money with people who are just trying to scam me out of that money, I could use that money to invest in other things that's going to make me money. So that was something that really triggered me and made me set, but the thing is at the end of the day, you guys, and I mentioned this before, no one is exempt from getting scammed. But it's what you do about getting scammed that helps to shape what's going to happen for you in your future and your reality. And again, I created this podcast because I wanna be a voice for those of you who've been scammed and who are being silent. I wanna create a place for you to be able to come and share your stories and talk about how you were able to move past the scam because, listen, There is life outside of that and beyond that. And when I tell you, I have so many stories of entrepreneurs who have been scammed for 5, 6, 7 figures in business, it's unreal. And it's not going to stop. It's not going to stop until we start standing up for ourselves, and we start naming names when we have to. But like I said, on this podcast, we won't be naming names. That's why we're referring to this individual as Dan. So that's a wrap for this episode of hoodwink surviving the scam. We've peeled back the layers, exposed the fraud, and most importantly, we've learned how to bounce back stronger than ever. If you found value in today's episode, I would be so grateful if you could leave a review and share this podcast with someone who needs to hear it. Also, if you're someone who'd like to share your story, please reach out to me. I will leave the information in the show notes, because I'd love to invite you to be on the podcast in order to share your story and how you were able to grow beyond the scam. But before you go, don't forget to sign up for my email list so that you can be the first to know about upcoming episodes, exclusive tips, and you'll also get access to our community of resilient entrepreneurs just like you. Until next time, remember, we're not just surviving scams. We're thriving beyond them. Stay savvy, stay empowered, signing off this is Rita Owens. Take carry out.