Pause. Reflect. Protect - AARP's Fraud Whisperer

I'm calling her AARP's Fraud Whisperer, and for good reason. Kathy Stokes, Senior Director of Fraud Prevention Programs at AARP's Fraud Watch Network, has spent years on the front lines helping everyday Americans recognize, resist, and report scams before it's too late. In this episode, Kathy walks us through the fraud tactics targeting people right now — from phone impersonation scams to AI-generated voices designed to sound like someone you trust — and explains why even the most cautious people get fooled.
But this conversation goes beyond awareness. Kathy shares the full scope of what AARP is doing to fight back — from pushing for state legislation to ban or regulate crypto ATMs, to advocating for safe, responsible AI that protects consumers rather than exploits them. We also dig into the powerful resources AARP makes available to anyone who needs help — including the free Fraud Watch Network Helpline, confidential victim support groups, and fraud prevention workshops happening across the country.
If you or someone you love has ever been targeted by a scam — or you simply want to be better prepared — this episode is for you. Because the best defense starts with three simple steps: Pause. Reflect. Protect.
 
Here are links of places you can look to for help and education.

aarp.org/fraudtips


Pause Reflect Protect
https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/pause-reflect-protect/

Words Matter
https://www.aarp.org/lp/fraud-narrative-change/?cmp=RDRCT-FRD-CONSUMER-NARRATIVE-LP-2024

Transcript

 Welcome back to the latest episode of Romance Scam Rebellion Before we jump into today's conversation, I wanted to share AARP's new campaign that we didn't actually ha- get time to discuss during my interview with Kathy Stokes. It's called Pause, Reflect, Protect, a simple three-step campaign designed to help people avoid scams before they become victims. It reminds me of the old stop, drop and roll, if you remember that. It's easy to remember and it teaches you to watch for three common warning signs of fraud. The first, unexpected contact. Next, heightened emotion. And third, urgency. When you recognize these red flags, the goal is simple. Pause, take a step back, think before you act, and protect yourself. I wish I'd had more time to talk with Kathy about this campaign because it's such a creative and practical tool, but I wanted to mention it here before we get started. Now, let's get to my conversation with Kathy Stokes. So Kathy, thank you so much for being on this podcast. I never thought in a million years that you would talk to me, but I, I really appreciate it. Well then you don't know me very well. Well, I didn't think you knew me at all, so you know, there you go. But- Well, of course I do. You've, you've got a history with AARP now. I do. Yeah. And, and- The Perfect Scam. Yeah ... I wasn't sure if you knew about that or not, but I have been working with AARP. So in fact, I'm gonna be doing something with one of the people here later on this month too, to go up to Capitol Hill, I think again, to talk to somebody. So I'm not sure what that's all about yet, but we'll figure it out. Yeah. Glad to hear that. Thank you. So one thing that when I was doing some research on you, I found a picture of a Kathy Stokes and she was in a recording studio and she was singing. Was that you? Because it sure looked like you, but it's been a few years. That was 12 years ago. That was me. Yeah. You have- I, I recorded a song ... a gorgeous voice. Can I just say that? Oh. Oh my gosh, you ... It was wonderful. I just thought- Well, thank you ... I've never heard this about you. Do you want to know the story behind it? Yeah. Um, in 2011, I think, 2012, my kids, I have twins, they were 11 years old at the time. Single mom, had my own business, just trying to keep it together with, you know, get the kids, uh, managed and keeping the, uh, keeping the money flowing in and I was diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer. And, uh, it was a lot. Um, but I'm way beyond them looking at me now every six months. Um, I don't have to see an oncologist anymore at all. Um, it, it was a, was a tough period of time, but it was also a time when, um, I like just sort, I sort of turned in a little and I was writing poetry, which I've done on and off over the years. And, um, at the same time, one of the things I thought to myself is, "I'm not getting back on this crazy, um, wheel again. I'm not... I, I wanna do what I wanna do in addition to doing my work." And I've always wanted to sing in a band, and I never did. Mm. And so I'm like, "I'm gonna sing in a band." And sure enough, I ended up singing in a band right at the same time there was this, uh, guy who has, uh, he has brain cancer, um, and it's completely managed, but he happens to own a recording studio in Falls Church, Virginia. And he decided to give back. He wanted to record, uh, artists do their own music and, you know, all the people that are there and doing the instruments and background, that's all free. Oh, my gosh. The whole day was free. And I was the first person for this program, and it's called Cancer Can Rock, and that was the song that, uh, came from a poem that I wrote when I was afraid I was not gonna be around for my kids. Oh, my gosh. That just gave me chills. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And that's, it was called, um, To The Moon. Mm-hmm. As in love you to the moon and back? Yeah. Uh, I was, I was just kind of blown away by your voice. It is just spectacular, and I hope you're still using it other than to speak. I hope you're still using it to sing. I'm just so glad you brought this up because I've recently started singing with that band from 12 or 14 years ago- Uh-huh ... again. We just had a gig on Friday. Yeah, we're just having a ball. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That is wonderful. We're having- So I can, I can definitely say now you are a superstar. Oh my God, you took me back there. Thank you. In case nobody told you. Okay. Well, so let's start out then with, uh, the business at hand. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about your role at AARP, how you got to be there. I'm guessing the part where you said you needed insurance was because of the cancer diagnosis, right? Exactly. I had, um, I had gotten through, um, most of, uh, everything I had to go through with the surgeries and chemo and all that kind of stuff, but I still had a couple of months to go, and it was, uh, I think it was December 2013, and that's when my, uh, COBRA coverage through divorce was running out, December 31st. Um, but the very next day I had coverage, and that was because the Affordable Care Act went into place that next day. Oh my gosh. So I was able to finish my treatments. Um, but it was also really tough to afford the monthly fee for it. Mm-hmm. And so after about a year or two maybe it was, I was just like, "I've been doing this for 10 years. I would wanna live my own life as an independent business person for the rest of my life, but I need healthcare I can afford." And AARP was one of my clients, and they had a position, and so I took it. It was nothing more than that, and I thought, you know, "Get back on my feet, then I'll go back out and do my own thing." Within two years of being in AARP, I started working in this space of, of fraud, and it, it became my passion, so I can't leave. I've been here 10 years now, and I still have a lot more to do. Yeah. Yeah. There is a lot more to do. It's, I think it's gonna be never-ending. I think you're gonna have that job as long as you want it. Well, I think there's always gonna be a need, but I hope that the need, um, dies down a bit, and I do have some hope on that front. Maybe we can talk a little bit about that later, too. I'm glad you do, because I need some hope I think sometimes. So- Tell me about the Fraud Watch Network and who calls in basically, and how many people call in per day or per year or do you have any stats on that? Yeah. So the Fraud Watch Network itself is a bit broader than that. So we have, um, education, uh, prevention through education, and some of the ways we do that, you're aware of the Perfect Scam podcast, um, that we get out there and help people understand victim impact and not how, you know, just look what they were able to get away with. We don't, we don't go in that direction. We're like, "Look what they left behind," you know? Oh, yeah. So we have that. We have 53 state offices, um, across the country, and each office has a bevy of volunteer, trained volunteer fraud fighters. My team trains them and then they're out in community every day doing anything they can to spread the message of, of fraud prevention. We have, uh, lots of, um, information at aarp.org/fraudwatchnetwork. Lots of great sort of tip sheets on here's what a tech support scam looks like or here's the latest trend. Um, we've got a scam tracking map. We've got just a whole range of things. We're out there all the time trying to get in front of people and help them understand that the biggest risk they face is financial and it's losing everything to these criminals, having everything stolen from them. It has become such The, you know, the top crime. So we also understand that we can't educate our way out of the crisis, so we're doing some other things on the side. Those are the things that kind of give me hope, and we can talk about that. But then on the other side, we have victim support, and there's two elements to that. There's, you can call into a free helpline. We get about 100,000 calls a year. Um, there's a percentage of them that are calling just to say, "Hey, I saw the scam. I didn't engage with it, but I want someone to know about." We share that information with the Federal Trade Commission. They're sort of, um, the agency of record, if you will. Um, or people call because they just got that letter from Publishers Clearing House, which is huge right now, by the way. They just won $2 million and a Mercedes-Benz, and all they have to do is pay up the, the upfront taxes, uh, and shipping to get the car delivered. Is this real? And our volunteers have to, uh, trained specialists, some are volunteers, many are, explain to them why it's fake and what to look for. And then sadly, probably the disproportionate number are people who themselves have realized now that they are victims, or it's a family member trying to get through to another family member or a friend. And, um, so we have a, a, a lot of people that are trained to handle those calls 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern, five days a week. Helpline, not a hotline. We're not law enforcement. We're not gonna solve your problem for you, but we will talk to you as a human. We will understand what is happening. We will ... There's, there's no judgment here because you didn't do anything wrong. You know, you were made to believe something that isn't true, basically. So there's that whole thing. But then there's fraud support, which is, um, small group Zoom sessions that we kicked off four or five years ago, and they've been incredible. We have people that come, you know, maybe there's 10 people at a time, and there's a volunteer or a staff member that acts as the sort of a trained facilitator. And we want them to understand the two things, which is you're not alone, this is happening to a lot of people, and you didn't do anything wrong. It's not your fault. And so these sessions have really, um, built on themselves. I think we've had about 6,000 or 7,000 people come through. Um, a lot of them come again and again, and they develop community within those group sessions, and then they get to a place where they wanna do something about it. And so they want to use their voice, and so we get them up on the Hill or in front of the media. Um, so it's all s- very cool stuff. That's good to know. After my scam ended, I didn't know that there was a fraud helpline or that AARP did anything about that, or that they even knew about it But I think that's why I started this podcast. It was not only catharsis, but it was, is anybody doing anything out there? I mean, the only thing that I ever saw was, um, like on the major media networks that told the story within a 40 minutes or an hour, and that was it. You know, it's funny that you mention that because the, uh, fraud support groups that I was telling you about- Mm-hmm um, we sort of did a reboot of the, um, of the sessions because so many people that were coming and staying for a while wanted also to be educated. It's beyond now. It's like, "Yes, I am going to begin my grieving, and this is how I'm going to begin emotionally healing. But tell me what I need to know. Tell me what's going on out there." Yeah. And so that's been added into each of the sessions. That's great. So when they call in, whoever is on the other line, they'll, they'll either just help them in the moment or they'll direct them on if they need further assistance, right? Yeah. It's a two-tier system. And I will put the helpline phone number in the show notes so that people- Okay can know where to go. But I've been having a lot of people reach out lately and- It's either the victim or it's my mother, my sister, my father, some family member. How do I get them out of the scam? And actually, the first podcast I did with the Fraud Watch Tuesday network over in Massachusetts, someone had a question at the end, um, and it was, " My loved one," I can't remember who it was, "thinks that they're in a relationship with Vin Diesel. How do I tell her that it's not real?" And that has been vexing me ever since I heard it, because I just remember back to when I was being manipulated, and I was so manipulated that do I know that somebody could have gotten me out of it? I'm not sure. I mean, in the end when I had no more money, when I was at my lowest point, that's when a federal officer stepped in and kind of broke me and told me what was happening. But before that, I mean, I lied to my sister, I lied to my kids about needing money or why somebody else needed money, and I would, I was basically isolating myself, which I know now is a thing. He wasn't isolating me, but I was isolating myself, and I was making- He was manipulating you into isolating yourself. Yeah. All of that was him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I do, I do have a problem with it not being my fault. A- and I fight that all the time, and it, and now I think, "Is this just another bad decision that I made?" But I've had to come to grips with maybe it's not just a bad decision. Maybe I'm actually a victim of this. I, I don't like the word, but I don't like- People are victims sometimes We- wear the word that fits for you. It is a crime. There is a victim in each of these scenarios by definition because it's a crime. If that doesn't fit for you, it doesn't have to. But understand this, you weren't making decisions. You didn't make a bad decision. You didn't, you didn't decide. Your brain bypassed logic because that's how good they are. They moved you right past the logical center in your brain right into action through emotion. Academics actually have a term, the amygdala hijack. Mm-hmm. That's why these scams work. It has nothing to do with somebody making a poor decision. You didn't make a decision. Well, I went from, and it was on LinkedIn. I'm not on any dating sites. I'm not, you know, big social media person, but I trusted LinkedIn, which I now know I should not have. I, I had no idea that there were sharks swimming around in that, those waters. But it went from here's this cute guy who wants to connect to curiosity because he wants to talk to me, and from there it was the niceties that went into the full-blown romance scam tactics. But yeah, I mean, that's just something I've got to live with, but I'm trying. I'm trying every day. I'm trying. Yeah. I know a lot of people, um, from your situation refer to themselves as survivors, and that's, and warriors. I think I appeal to the point where- I've gone through all of the grief stages, but the anger's never gone away. I'm angry at why they did this to me, why they're continuing to do it to somebody else, why they have to be so ruthless and take every dime you ever had is bad. But let's get back to AARP. Sorry. Um, one of the things that I did with AARP was when... Well, and, and I don't know if you know how I was connected to them. Do you have- I don't think I did know that story. So I was doing my podcast, and this lovely girl named Erin Martin who is a volunteer for ARP- AARP heard the podcast, and I guess it really resonated with her. You know, she was studying all this stuff, and she reached out to H- Holly Hunt, who's in Massachusetts, who does the Fraud Talk Tuesdays. Mm-hmm. And so they asked me to be on that podcast. So when that was done, she says, "Well, you really ought to be working with the people over in Utah." And I said, "Okay." So she connected me with the people in Utah, and the... It was just before they were doing the crypto ATM legislatioN- legislation. And so, um, Joe Hirabayashi came and we went out to lunch to talk about it, and here I thought this old guy was gonna come to my door and, and, you know, take me out to lunch, and he's like 35 years old or so, and just the cutest guy. And so we went out and talked about it, and I ended up, you know, testifying for the Utah Legislature. And I know right after that, so that was March, and in April Indiana went with a full ban, um, on crypto ATMs. In April, May Tennessee did, and in June Minnesota did. Yeah. And I just thought, tell me how that feels. Tell me how all of that is working because to me that's super exciting. So our government affairs team, first of all, they're amazing. Um, we have a, a state government affairs lead, her name is Francoise Cleveland, who deserves, like, so much love for how she was able to just run and jump on something. So the helpline was the source of, "What's going on with these crypto ATMs? We're hearing about these crypto ATMs." Amy Nofziger runs our victim support programming, and so she starts looking into it. And three calls to the helpline is a- it's the canary in the coal mine. Like, you hear two or three of the same thing in a day or in a couple of days, that's the next trend. It's just always been how it is. Wow. So she gets in front of the government affairs team, and Francoise at the state level, and she's like, "We gotta do something about this. What do you guys... What can you do?" And they just went at it. They understood it, they created a model bill. They'd learned off of, uh, maybe two states that had passed something, and then they just, they went to town. And there are now more than, I think, 30 states that have done something. Um, I think AARP's been involved with 26 or 28 of those, um, with more to come, and then the three bans. Um, so, and, and, and then a, a couple of weeks after, um, a couple of weeks after the r- most recent win, I think it was after Minnesota, uh, the, the, the big Bitcoin ATM machine company, uh, filed for- Bitcoin Depot bankruptcy. Bitcoin Depot. That took 9,000 of those machines off right then and there Do you think that the other ones are going to be following suit or- I have no idea ... or do we still just need to continue the legislation fight to pull those down? Oh, absolutely. I think it, every state should be looking at these. If, if a state has, has passed restrictions, they need to go back and look at the bans. Um, clearly we're understanding, every week we're understanding more about what's happening in these machines, and there's three or four state level studies that's showing upwards of 90% of the activity in these ATM crypto kiosk machines is, is illegitimate activity. Most of it involving scams with older adults. I can't imagine any reason that a legitimate person using those ATMs to purchase Bitcoin would have to go to a physical station to do that. You can do that online. So I'm thinking it's probably 100%. That's just me. I don't have to answer to anybody. But that, that's my take on it because who else uses those? I mean, people are directed to those, and if you're being directed to those, it's definitely a scam. I had no idea what those things were and it- What did- ... made me so angry when I found out. What, what did, what did they call it for you? Did they call it a crypto kiosk or did they- Uh, well, he first just called it an ATM, and I thought, "Huh?" It, it took some education from them for me to understand what they were talking about. But they sent me a picture of where my nearest crypto ATM location was, which is about a mile from my house, and they taught me how to use it. I did a couple of episodes on crypto ATMs in my podcast because I was so angry. All they are is they're, they're just a feeder system for the scammers, and the people who own those are taking 30% off the top. So, like, you send $1,000, they're gonna take 300 of it and put it in their pockets. And they were mak- they are making so much money And I, I just really, I was hoping that Utah would get a stricter law, but at least they got a law on the books. I think the first three days is, like, 2,500 a day, and then after that you can do 5,000 a day. But I'm thinking those crypto owners are still getting 30% of all of that money, and there's really, there is really no use for them. This is pre going into bankruptcy. Um, McDonald's, there's like 14,000 McDonald's in the US. There's about 17,000 Starbucks. There are as many or more crypto kiosks as those two other businesses. So every time you're passing a McDonald's or a Starbucks, you're probably also passing, you know, that many crypto ATMs. They were flying under the radar. And when it's something that consumers don't understand well, and then it's something that it's really hard to explain to lawmakers who are stretched thin on so many issues, it takes a bit, right, to catch up. I know. Yeah. Um, but in this case I think we're catching up. Do you think, do you think all of the lawmakers now are understanding? Oh, yeah. Or do we still need to educate the law? Like- Uh, th- that's ongoing. Is it? That's ongoing. But, you know, I do see that things stick. If you say it enough and with enough passion, they get it. Um, and, uh, for example, at the federal level I, I've testified a few times on the Hill, and I've gone from hearing the, um, the members of Congress at those hearings, you know, parroting old data, $12 billion lost, um, for people who got duped from reporting to the IR- or the FTC. Mm-hmm. That whole, that whole sh- that whole mindset that was just so stayed and bored and, like, only thought this was happening to older people who were in cognitive decline, that's changed. It's not changed for everybody, so there's a lot of work to do, but when you hear the chairman of a major committee referring to money having been stolen from people, not lost- Right ... that use the data from the Federal Trade Commission that tries to account for under-reporting and says $200 billion in a given year, who understand that there is emotional and psychological manipulation, and there is no fault on the victim, that's... That, we were talking about hope before. That for me is hope. Yeah. I see articles that so many people go and talk to the people on Capitol Hill, the Congress, and yet I have not seen any action from them. I mean, I'm, I'm hoping for Let's start holding these big tech companies re- responsible. If they, if they want to create all these fake ads, fake profiles, and allow all of these scams to go through, let's have them put a pot of money aside for the victims that get caught up in it, you know? Yeah. If they did that, maybe they would take down all the fake stuff and most of this problem would go away. But is that ever gonna happen? Um- Is Congress ever gonna stand up to big tech? So I think a, a, a couple of things. One is that, yes, the social media platforms are deplorable with all of this, um, and, and absolutely need to be doing more. But there's an entire scam life cycle, and it may start on social media. It may start with what seems like an errant text to your phone. It may start on email. It may start by a phone call. Um, it may be somewhere else online that you wouldn't think would be a, a place. So, uh, and then there's the banks, right? Um, where the money leaves that last point. But this entire scam life cycle, there needs to be preventions and interventions at every step of the way. Um, I think, you know, for AARP our, our, our motto is, you know, um, i- is, is education will help you, help protect you. But I think we're kind of beyond saying, "Okay, I'm gonna do what I can to protect myself," and just say, "All right, Congress, do something about this." This is the biggest crime in our nation. Yeah. People are losing their families, their ... They've had everything stolen from them. They're, they're gonna end up on safety nets, if those still exist. But, you know, um- Yeah ... local communities where people used to be able to spend their income are suffering from it. Um, people are dying by suicide. What, what more do we need to show that this needs a, a, a whole of society and a whole of government reaction? One big thing has to be a national fraud strategy. Yeah. 'Cause they, they can come up with ideas and try to, you know, implement things, but if it's not coordinated, we're not-- we're just layering problem after problem. And with the transnational organized crime, I mean, can't we just pull the plug on their internet? Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't it just be nice if e- everything could be solved like that? Unfortunately, because for the better part of a quarter century- Our country was allowing ourselves to believe that this is a them problem. This is an older person's problem. Yeah. It only happens to these older people. It's not my problem. I don't have to deal with it. Oh, can you believe they answered the phone? All of that has deprioritized this as a crime. I was in this space for, like, three years before I'm like, "Oh my God, these are crimes," right? I even talked to the DOJ. I'm like, "This is a crime, right?" They're like, "Yeah, it's a crime." I'm like, "Why don't we talk about it that way? Why don't we talk about it as a crime?" So that led into a lot of work that we've done to try to shift the narrative about fraud, um, moving away from blaming the victim, moving away from assumptions that it only happens to older people who are too nice to hang up the phone or not sufficiently tech savvy or have cognitive decline, when those aren't... No, that's not. Those are tropes. And now we're 25 years behind trying to solve the fraud problem, and it's now transnational. I think the UK and Australia, they're way ahead of us in determining that these are crimes and doing something about it, aren't they? Yeah. They're far ahead of us, but also, um, far more simple systems to address it through. Oh. We, we have a very, very complex economy, um, that it's some of the things that they can do in these other countries where maybe their banking system is 10 banks versus hundreds of banks and credit unions and community banks and, you know- Yeah ... it's, uh, yeah ... different systems to funnel money through and, yeah, I see that it is a huge problem. But we should be able to put pressure on these countries too to stop it, because Cambodia is the scam capital of the world, I think, at this point in time. Why don't we go to the leader who is also involved in it? And, uh, and I only say that because I read Jacob Simms' report. I mean, I haven't read all of it, but it, you know, just basically it starts from the top down. And why aren't we putting pressure on the prime minister of Cambodia to stop this? It's like 9/11. Those questions, tho- yeah. Those, those sort of policy discussions at an international level, I, I, I don't have any- I know. They're getting- I can't speak to it 'cause it's, like, not in my, in my space. But I can tell you that one of the things that's prevented people in the United States, law enforcement in the United States from doing anything about it is by saying, "Oh, it's transnational. We can't do anything about it. It's too complex. We, we will never find them anyway. We can't get your money back." Um, and- The reality is there are so many people here in the United States that are aiding and abetting these transnational crime rings, that if we begin to put the pressure on the systems here where those people are working and we begin to round them up, you know, uh, arrest them and, and prosecute them and put them in prison, you know, give them 10-year sentences, not a slap on the wrist- Right and they're back out, right? Begin to s- send the message that, hey, this isn't, this isn't the crime to get into anymore. Everybody's turning to this crime because if you're a drug dealer, you know, you can go away for some time, right? Mm-hmm. Well, the drug dealers are now into financial crimes. Yeah. Because they know nobody's coming after them. So we gotta come after them to, to, to push for that. And so AARP's really into solutions, and one of the things that we've been a huge proponent of is that, you know, begin to disrupt the fraud business model on the ground here. And so we are a founder of something called the National Elder Fraud Coordination Center. Um, the website for that is, uh, fightelderfraud.org. And it's run, the CEO is a former FBI. Uh, he did transnational crimes for his entire career. Elder fraud was part of that. And he's proving a model where companies, um, have a lot of, of fraud intelligence, and they put packages, they package up information and they send it off to law enforcement. Well, law enforcement is overwhelmed. They're not, they're not doing anything with it, or not doing a lot with it. But enter what we call NEFSC. Um, and they get a case from the FBI where the FBI's like, "We've got, we've got, like, 40,000 bucks here and it looks like it's going in some different way. Um, could you see if anyone has any information?" And so Brady Finch as the CEO, his team analyzes it and puts out what he calls a request for information to all these companies and said, "Hey, what do you have on these?" They call them fraud selectors. And then the companies can come back and say, "We have this, that, and the other thing," or, "We need a friendly subpoena. Just have that sent and we'll give you that information." And these little cases that seem like unconnected are suddenly becoming giant actionable cases that the FBI's actually now being able to go after these people, investigate them, they're known criminals many of them, arrest them, and to begin to apply that pressure. You know, and one thing that I was thinking, I got a little bit ahead of myself there. Um, the first time I kind of saw a romance fraud in the media was Cecilie Fjellhoy. Is that how, say her last name? With the Tinder swindler. Yeah. And she's what, in her 30s? Mm-hmm. So we cannot just say that this is an elder fraud that, you know, oh, there's cognitive declines. Well, you know, I'm old. Maybe I have cognitive decline, but I can still function in society. It doesn't matter your age. I mean, they're getting the teenagers involved now with sextortion. Yeah. I don't think it matters one bit your age. As long as you have access to money, they're gonna- Yeah ... come after you, don't you think? That's exactly right. And, and what we have seen since about 2022 when we started our own campaign, we call it the Narrative Change Campaign, um, we have seen, uh, we do our own surveys, and we've seen, you know, five, six, seven years ago people were being like, "Yeah, it'll never happen to me. It only happens to older people." Mm-hmm. And that number of people that are worried has gone up and up and up. Now we're like nine in 10 people are worried about fraud, and their number one concern is it happening to themselves. So that's a sea change. Wow. That- Yeah. And it's a nationally representative survey, so I get all excited, but then I hear people sort of in other scenarios talking about it like in the old days, and it just was like, what are you- you saying? Yeah, no. In the old days. You know, and those, those overseas, uh, people aren't there, according to the report I read, upwards of 350,000 people out there trying to defraud Americans. In fact, I've got a couple of episodes that are coming up here in the near future, and one of the, well, two of them are victims that were enslaved in Cambodia. Oh, wow. And one wrote a book, and it was, the title of it was God Bless America. He didn't publish it until after we spoke, and I thought, "Well, that's an odd title. Why has he got that in there?" And then I read a little bit more and, and he explained it. He said, "That's what's shouted across the offices when another American loses thousands of dollars." And that just made my blood run cold. They don't think that they're coming after you. They're coming. Don't kid yourself. Yeah. Did you end up listening to the, um, series that The Economist did called Scam, Inc.? No. It's the... It was like a seven-piece maybe podcast from a year ago. Oh, huh. And they went really deep into the, um, the crime rings in Cambodia and, well, some in Southeast Asia. And one of the things the reporter reported out was that every morning this one group would shout, "Death to America" and the UK or to Europe or... It was just like that was what they were driven by. It's a national security threat. Well, if we're all dead, they can't get our money. Oh, gosh. Death by a thousand cuts maybe. Yeah. Oh, that's, that's so frightening that they would deny you- I think that's what we... You know, it's... We've really struggled because the last, you know, 10 years of this work, eight years of this work or so, um, you know, we really wanna empower people. Like, you have the power to protect yourself. We're not trying to scare you, or if we're scaring you, okay, now that we have your attention- Yeah we need to be doing a lot more. Um, so it's, it's hard because we used to be able to say, "Yeah, no, look for this in the email," or, "Look for this in the text message," or, "Look for this on the website to make sure they're legitimate before you engage." And we can't say what to look for anymore because of AI and its ability to generate the perfect email, text- Mm phone call, website, ad. And so we can't just sit here anymore and go, "No, but that's okay, 'cause get a VPN," or, uh, you know, "Learn how to use a password manager." Those things are important. Mm-hmm. But what's more important is that we have a broader plan to protect people in this country from this. I'll say it again, it's the biggest crime in this country. Yeah. If- Yeah ... if $200 billion is what the FTC says it could've been as high as that in money stolen in 2024 alone to fraud based on their idea of underreporting, 200 billion, $200 billion, if that was a company by revenue, Fortune 17. We should be agitated. Like, why, why are we still looking at ourselves and going, "Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I should get that password manager." Yeah. I mean, and seeing the government needs to know that because if all of our money is going overseas, what does that do to our economy? That's very well understood. Uh, well- Is it? ... it's not broadly understood, but it is. Um, AARP's involved with an effort that began with the Aspen Institute probably 18 months, two years ago now, and they pulled together 80 different organizations for, like, a year and a half, and it was non-profits like us. It was for-profit companies in all the sectors where scams come through. It was, uh, it was law enforcement and federal agencies. And the idea was really to dig down and say, "Okay, what do we need to do as a country to begin to address this?" And the, it's all within the construct of we need a national fraud strategy so that we can have coordination. Um, and they produced a report last October. It's like 100-some pages with, like, "Here are the things we can do." We can't just say we're gonna do a PSA campaign and let everybody know. Yeah. We gotta do more. And so those do more things are in this document, and they've just started bringing back together a smaller group of leaders to try to effectuate some of that change. Um, so I mean, that's stuff that people don't see outside of Washington- Yeah ... or don't see if they're not, you know, all up in it all the time. Um, but it's things like that that again, I go to the hope board. Like, more organizations are coming to the table. I think organizations are a little bit slower to take a bold action once they get to that table. Yeah. But I'm also starting to see that- That changed a little. A little I think it'd change a lot faster if their mother, sister, brother got caught up in this kind of stuff too. And I mean, it very well could happen, but nobody wants that either. Um, one thing that you brought up was AI. And, and I know that that is something that's looked, uh, on negatively when we talk about fraud. But can we... What if we could reverse it a little bit and, and use it in our favor? For instance, before I came online today, I went to ChatGPT and I typed in a question. And I'm thinking that this may help people who don't want to reach out to a biased family member to, you know, somebody that will tell them what they don't want to hear, right? Um, but so I, I put in as a question, "I just met a man online. He works on an oil rig in Abu Dhabi. He asked me to transfer some of his money from his bank account to his supplier. Is that okay? He's been very nice to me and I trust him." Which is actually what, one thing that happened to me. And the response was, "No, you should not transfer money on his behalf or move funds from his account to anyone else. This situation contains several classic romance scam and money mule warning signs. You met him online only. He claims to work on an oil rig in a remote overseas location. That's one of the most common stories used by romance scammers. He's asking you for help with financial transaction. He wants you to move money between accounts." Um, and then it, you know, just goes on, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it, it's pretty thorough. And then at the end he says, "How long have you known," or, "Can you tell me, how long have you known him? Have you ever video chatted with him? What exactly is he asking you to do with the money?" And so I thought, well, maybe for people who don't, who don't want to come clean with somebody that even if they trust them, they don't want their little fantasy world shattered, which w- was me, um, could AI be helpful? I think as a tool, generally, yes. I would be very concerned about what comes back, because these are wide open, large language models, and stuff can get in there that misrepresents. However, I will say that AARP has created its own AI Ask AARP bot on fraud. Oh, wow. And the, the LLM for it is within the confines of what AARP writes about and produces. So it's only AARP fraud information coming back to you. We just launched it. It's actually, it's doing pretty well. I just went in, um, the other day before I was meeting with a, a company- And I wrote, uh, something like, uh, " Person comes to my bank window, um, to take out a, a large amount of money and there's somebody on the phone with them. Is this a scam?" And it's like, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. "Yep, it is. Here's what to look for. Here's what, you know, and call the helpline." Um, so yes, I do think you can. I think you have to be careful with what- Yeah ... the source is ultimately. Yeah. With AARP, if you just type in aarp.org/frauddtips, the very first thing that, that pops up is the window for ask AARP. I'll put that in the show notes too, because if people have that resource and they don't really wanna talk to anybody else about it yet, um, maybe that would be- Yeah. Yeah, I can understand that, for sure. And if, there is the helpline too, but again, that's actually saying something to somebody. I mean, maybe i- if they have questions and you're not a relative, maybe they think you'll be more straightforward with them. You know, maybe they think that their family members just don't wanna understand this relationship. Yeah. Which is not the case. I mean, your family has always got your best interest at heart. Who doesn't have your best interest at heart is whoever's on the other end of that line. Trying to make you believe not to trust anybody. I don't engage with anybody anymore. But you know, not like they could get any more money out of me 'cause I don't have any more to give. Basically what you're saying, you're using your technology as intended, and you cannot trust it. Yeah. This is where we are. That's not a good place to be Yeah, it's very sad. Yeah. So- The other thing about AI is there are companies that are embedding artificial intelligence into their prevention tools, so we are seeing a lot of good in, in that space. I'm seeing so many startup companies or larger companies who are now getting into offering protective tools to consumers because AI makes them so much stronger. Uh, one example is that, um, AARP teamed up with a company called Nomorobo. I don't know if you've ever heard of them before. I think I've seen the name. Yeah. Yeah. It- they block scam, or scam and spam text messages and phone calls. They've been around for a long time and most recently have, um, added in this AI element to be able to process a lot more information a lot faster. They have these, quote, honeypots, like tens of thousands of phone numbers that receive scam calls. Or receive calls and then they can identify them as scam and block those numbers. But with AI it makes it that much faster, and they actually have a tool that when the call, when a call comes in through an AI agent it will say something like, "You're... Explain why you're calling." And if you're like, well, you know, it's an unknown number, like, you know, "This is the doctor's office, let me through," then let, let... But if it's- Yeah ... if it's a scammer on the other end, they've determined that most often they're just gonna hang up. Oh. 'Cause it's, it's not, it's not easy. Yeah. If you make it a little bit harder, you know? So I signed up for it. It's a discount for AARP members. Nomorobo.com/aarp. Lots of free information there about the scam calls that they get and blogs and stuff, but then you have this as well. And I set it up. Being in DC and this being a primary, this, we vote tomorrow, I was getting a zillion political messages. Oh, boy. You know, spam versus scam. But- Mm-hmm ... I turned this on and they all went into a different folder that I didn't have to deal with. Oh, nice. And so if they were scam texts and they went into that different folder, they're still there, but I can look at them and go, "Huh, this was flagged as, you know, a scam. Yeah, that makes sense." You don't have to react in that moment. 'Cause you, do you get that feeling- Yeah ... with a text message- Oh, yeah ... especially more these days than a phone, right? Mm-hmm. This slows that down. That's, that's good because then- I think that gives you more opportunity to look more objectively at it. Yeah. I- if, you know, it's like, "Oh, this came in a couple of days ago. I just barely saw it." And then you can... I don't know. I just think that that would work better. A- at least in my brain it works better, so. It takes, it takes out that, "Oh my God, this is my bank and there's a problem." Yeah. And that urgency to, to act. One, one thing that I did wanna, to discuss with you too, we talked a little bit about it, is, is the victim blaming. Um, and I- I have experienced that a little bit, but I've got some questions about that. And one of them is on one of my podcasts, um, this guy wrote in and he said, "Well, you deserve to be scammed. You were greedy," and blah blah blah, whatever he said, right? And I thought, you know, I'm gonna come back punching at these guys. I'm not gonna just let them run over me. And so I ... He said, "Oh, if somebody reached out to you and they were working at McDonald's, you wouldn't have given them a second chance." And I said, "Oh, well, that's really great information." I said, "Where were you two years ago when I could have used this, working at McDonald's?" And, but anyway, then he came back. He did a complete 180 and he said, "Oh, well, I'm really sorry what you went through, and I've been helping women for the last couple of years and I've been helping, you know, Spanish women. And if there's anything that you need, if there's anything that I can do, please reach out to me." And I thought, how strange. Do you think that could have been a scammer? And the reason that I say that is because I wonder if that's part of their jobs, is to keep people quiet, to shame them so they won't speak out. I don't know if that's ... If you've seen anything like that, but I just thought that was so strange. You know, we, where we're able, we don't allow commenting because of what we were seeing was two things. One is people with no knowledge of what had actually happened to the, to the, to the person who experienced this is, you know, they're gonna be rude, and they're gonna make fun of them and say like, "Oh, I can't believe you did that. You're so stupid," like all that horrible stuff. Mm-hmm. And then comes the scammers, but the scammers are more like, "Hey, I have a business that can help you get your money back- Oh, yes ... from the crypto," you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So we try to, you know... And then where we do have comments we try to keep an eye on them. I don't know if the, the sort of blamey thing and then the, you know, let me know if I can help you, kind of sounds scammy to me. It does, doesn't it? I mean- Yeah ... why would a troll all of a sudden come back and say, "Oh, let me help"? But, you know, and, and then I thought about these job scams. So, so mainly I just deal with romance scams, but there's so many other scams out there, you know, and job scams are a big one. One of the things that kind of related to what's happened to me is the job scams, they- advertise now for, um, like data entry. Well, or I don't know if, what they call it, but you receive money from X place, and then you transfer it into crypto, and then you forward it on to the next place. I've seen like that, and then there's also another one where you receive packages and you repackage them and s- and forward them on. Both of those things happened to me during my scam, but are scammers out there trying to pick up people for these particular purposes, to be money mules and package re- Uh, at scale. Yeah. A lot of the employment scams are exactly that. "Hey, we only need you for, like, 10 hours a week. Um- Oh, my god ... and, you know, the pay's really good. We just w- what, we need a little bit of help with our accounting, so this is how it's gonna go. We're gonna send money to you, and you're gonna take that money and send it to our suppliers, and we're gonna tell you how to do that." Or, um, "We are in, you know, like a mid-tier of a system of, um, you know, package processing, and so we're gonna send you packages and ask you to relabel them and, and send them on." All of that is about laundering. Do people understand, who, who are answering those ads, do they understand what they're being asked to do, or are they unwitting? I... They're un- I, I think, I would bet 99% of them are just trying to make a buck on the side because they need a buck on the side. Because it's easy work and there's- And it sounds like a good deal. Yeah, yeah ... no thought into it. Yeah, yeah. That just frightens me, because I, I did have a situation where I sent a package and, um, the person's apartment was raided, and not only was my package in there, but there were about 90 others, and they were all being repackaged to go to Nigeria. And I just, that's kind of what started clicking in my brain at the end. And then when I saw these job scams, I thought, "Are, do they just recruit?" Oh, oh, it just makes me sick. Yeah, they're everywhere Okay. And yeah, I mean, it's like you're either a scammer or you're a target of a scammer these days. There doesn't seem to be any other type of people. I can tell you that every conference I speak at, I'll inevitably say, "Does anybody know anybody who's experienced a scam?" And, you know, people used to like, you know, put their hands up. Now it's like every single person is like, "Yep, that happened to my mother, that happened to my sister, that happened..." Like, every- everybody knows somebody now. And the horrible thing is everybody now knows somebody, and that's just a travesty. But the positive thing is now, okay, let's get to work. We all now understand it can happen to anyone. Yeah. We're sitting ducks in a way. Yeah. You know? So let's protect ourselves. Each of us has things that we can do, you know, the, the locking the doors to the car kind of things that we can do. Okay. Well, let's move on. I have a theory, and let me run this past you and th- see if it makes any sense at all or not When people are victim blaming, um You know, like when we see a picture of Bernie Madoff, we immediately think fraudster, criminal. When we see people who have committed crimes, heinous crimes, Ted Bundy, Ghislaine Maxwell, and, uh, Jeffrey Epstein, we know who those people are. We know what they did. But when it comes to romance scams, we can't see those faces. We only see the victims, and the ones who are willing to come out. I'm wondering if that's why victim blaming is so prevalent, because victims are the only people that we can see, so it must be their fault. You know, they did something wrong. Do you think there's any logic in that, or am I just fishing? I mean, I, I, I see your logic, but I think the, the roots of victim blaming run deeper than that. I think that part of it is our visceral reaction isn't because we think you did something wrong, even though we're saying, "I can't believe you answered the phone. What were you thinking?" Mm-hmm. Our visceral reaction is, "Oh my God, this happened to my loved one, my friend, my partner. L- I h- I let this happen." Like somehow, like it's almost like a self-protective thing. Um, when we learned this through actually doing some research about this, um, and, and what we've learned is that every level of our society where individuals talking to each other, if it's businesses to individuals, if it's law enforcement, we all start with the blame. Um, but we also learn there are reasons for that. One of them is, um, there's an attribution bias. You know, there must have been something about you that caused you to fall victim, because it wouldn't happen to me. Like, so it's that sort of- Yeah ... trying to say like, "It can't happen to me, because this is why it happened to you." Part of it is, you know, the, our American sense of record individualism. Well, that's on you. You know, pick yourself up from- Yeah ... on your bootstraps. But I think that what w- because we know that we went deeper with people, and they're like, "Oh, well, I don't know. I don't mean to harm anybody. It's just how op- or I'm so used to reacting," whatever, that we can change it, which is why I think that we are seeing the change. And if you go to aarp.org/saythis, as in say this, not that- Mm-hmm ... um, there's some good information there about what we learned and what we can teach each other. Uh, especially as, um, like, uh, my, my mom recently passed. Um, but like I would try to have conversations with her about- you know, a call that might be coming in, you know, to have a conversation that scams are out there, and we all sort of need to have each other's backs. Mm. Um, not as a, "Mom, don't answer the phone," but, "Mom, there's this huge crime out there. People are texting, and they're emailing, and they're calling, and I need your help, and I wanna be able to help you. So let's share with each other what's happening, and let's talk about it." Yeah. Um, and I think, I think that gets us to a better place than that immediate visceral, "Oh, my God, I can't believe you did that." 'Cause people don't mean it. Yeah. I have, uh, there, there's a term out there, and I know that we're of the same, uh, way to think about it, but I, I will, I will just say it so people know what we're talking about. Pig butchering. Why is it that some people who are trying to fight fraud still use that term? Because that's what the Chinese criminals used to dehumanize their victims. Why have we carried that over, and why are we so resistant to let that term go? I think there are a variety of, of answers. I think sometimes, um, I think, I'm in a, I'm an advisor to a financial crimes organization, and I see financial crimes. People talk about this stuff, and sometimes those who are, um, less sort of clued in to what's actually happening to these people may say it because they don't even get it. They don't get, they don't hear it as an affront to the person who experienced this crime. Mm-hmm. It's, that's just what we're calling the crime. It's, so that's part of it. Um, I think another part of it is it gets eyeballs. People perk up, especially when we didn't hear that before and all of a sudden started hearing it. It's like, oh, well, what is that? I'm kind of interested in that. That's rather salacious, you know? So it gets eyeballs. I've, I've never wanted to use the term, and I think at aarp.org on all, all of our content, if they use it, it's parenthetical to, like, financial grooming is what we call it. But if they feel like they have to reference it because it's known better as- Mm-hmm ... they'll parenthetically say, "Sometimes known as blah blah," but- Mm-hmm ... but it tends to, you know, shift blame. But yeah, but in, in essence, that term blames the victim, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. It absolutely does. Yeah. That's why I won't use it. Uh, you know, and I think, I think that's, I don't think it's intractable. Um, but I also think that maybe instead of fighting where it's used, let's just work really hard to make it not used in lots of other places. Yeah. Um, well, and, and I should be letting you go here, but one thing that I want to ask you before I let you go is, are there any questions out there that people haven't asked you that you wish they would? You can ask everything under the sun. Or, or something that you, you really think is important to maybe- Yeah. I, I, I don't know if I've... I certainly haven't gotten every question. I've gotten some interesting, like, "So, what are you looking forward to as you age?" Oh. Like, well, I actually afford t- uh, I look forward to living, because that's what I call aging, it's living. Yeah. You know? Oh, dear. Not really sure how to respond to that, but okay. Um, but I think one of the- What are you looking forward to aging? Hmm ... one of the more important messages that I think we all have to keep coming back to is share what you know. Share what you know. I told you, we are not gonna educate our way out of the fraud crisis, but if we're all talking to each other about it and we make it part of normal conversation, you know, it's in that space of personal finance. We don't wanna talk about it to each other. Let's try to break through that and say, this is about protecting each other. This is about managing significant risk. Share what you know, because if I tell you about a specific scam, for at least six months you're not going to engage with that scam if it comes your way, because it's, it's knowledge for you. It dies out over time, and we have to keep doing it, but we all have to just keep talking to each other Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, keeping isolated is not helping anybody. No. And it, it's just kind of everybody's got their own story. You know, like when the World War II stories started coming out, there's a gazillion of them. I mean, we know basically what happened, but individual stories matter, and it's good to hear those. Um, so I, I would liken that to, you know, there's probably just as many scam stories as there are World War II stories, if not more. I don't know. It, as, as time goes on there'll probably be more. But somebody will always bring something new that will help somebody else. The, the first person stories have more impact than anything I've seen full stop. So keep doing what you're doing. Get people who've experienced this out there talking about it on your channel, wherever else you can do it. We started last summer with, uh, a YouTube program we call Fraud Wars. Um, and it's on the AARP YouTube. Was it YouTube.com/aarp? Um, and it's a series of maybe six videos and, and it's all the first person as victims what happened to them. And then we try to break down why things, sort of like what you can see now. Yeah. Um, but- You couldn't see then. Yeah. And we just started with editing for, uh, season two. We've got everything wrapped and- Oh, wow ... we're taking a bit of a different approach. But like think about like 11, 12, 13 minute videos that are highly produced to tell an engaging story, and that person that's engaging you is the person who experienced this themselves. Super, super impactful. Well, AARP has a plethora of information on their site. Yeah. So yeah, I hope everybody goes and does some research on there, and I will definitely put that information in the show notes so that they- Yep ... have a place to go. And, and one other thing at the, if you go to aarp.org/fraudwatchnetwork, like the main thing- Mm-hmm ... you can sign up for these biweekly what we call watchdog alerts, and it's by email or text. But it simply takes a single scam and in, in an email just says, "This is why I'm telling you about it. This is how it's gonna show up. This is what you should know and this is what you should do." You don't even have to click out on anything, right? The message is just right there, right? Let that be your reminder to share what you know with somebody. Pick up the phone and call your kids. Pick up the phone and, or text them 'cause who talks on the phone anymore when you're a kid? Yeah. Um, call your friends, you know. Yeah. Go to the water cooler and have a conversation with somebody, "Hey, did you hear about this?" Yeah. That goes a long way. Yeah. Kathy, thank you so much. I, I am so appreciative that you would come on this podcast, and I hope I get to talk to you again sometime. I would love to. Let's continue the conversation somehow. Okay. Thanks again. All right. Okay. Thank you. Bye-bye.