Romance Scam Alert: Keith's Financial Tips and Tales

Financial advisor Keith Zdrowak (31 years in the business) explains how common scams work and how to protect yourself and aging loved ones. Highlighting warning signs like sudden money requests, secrecy, and urgency, and recommends verifying unexpected calls by hanging up and calling official numbers, being cautious with links and realistic-looking emails, shredding sensitive documents, monitoring bank/credit statements, adding trusted contacts on accounts, and using a family safe word to confirm real emergencies.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Keeps Drowback offers securities to Castro Investment Services LLC, Member FINRA CIP. Investment Advisory Services offered through Castro Advisory Services LLC and affiliated with Castro Investment Services LC. While Department of Finance Strategies is not affiliated with Castro Investment Services LLC or Castro Advisory Services LC.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the House of Hustle, the home of grinders, dreamers, and doers. No fluff, just fuel. Let's go. Well, hello, everybody. I am so pleased to bring to you today Mr. Keith Stroack. And I'm telling you ahead of time when you go and look at his website, it's not going to look like that. The spelling does not look like the pronunciation. Keith Stroack from Wealth Empowerment Financial Strategies. And he's going to talk to us today about something that I think that we all need to be prepared for. And that is how to avoid financial scams. Keith has got some stories, personal stories that he shares through his personal connections with his clients. He was able to be there for them and give the assist, which is what you want out of your financial advisor. And then he's going to give us some tips and tricks so that we won't fall prey to the same thing. So welcome, Keith.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Thank you. This is great. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

How long have you been in this business?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Next month it'll be 31 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Wow. Okay. So you've seen lots and lots of change.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

I've seen a lot of things happen in this lot of evolution in this business. Back in the 90s, I think a lot of us started off as what you would call stockbrokers. And then eventually the ones that made it and kept on, we evolved into financial advisors to helping in more than just stocks.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Which must feel great to you. And you've seen over those times a real rise now in security concerns.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Because of the computer and everything that's done on the internet. First of all, tell us your first story, which I'm going to call a romance scam, is what we call it here in the legal industry. I don't know if y'all call it the same thing, but tell us about your client, what happened, and how you helped.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

My client, Catalina, this is probably about 10 years ago or so. She called me up out of the blue and she said, Hey, I think I want to buy some gold. And I said, Okay, we could talk about maybe buying some gold stocks or gold mutual funds. But she wanted to buy some actual gold. And you mean like a gold bar? Gold bar, gold coins. Okay. And she was talking about how can, you know, what if I take money out of my IRA account to do that? And being that she was in her mid-50s at the time, it would have been very costly. She would have had to pay taxes on taking the money out of her IRA. She would have had to pay a 10% IRS penalty. Probably I successfully, on about four separate conversations, was able to talk her out of doing that. And finally she called back again. She was like, hey, look, my friend that is urging me to buy the gold coins, he's very wealthy. He pretty much has promised me that if I lost money, he would reimburse me. And so in the back of my mind, I'm thinking to myself, is this somebody who is just very wealthy and she's very close with? The point, it's her money. And I could offer suggestions of what to do and what not to do, but in the end, I can't hold her money hostage. So she officially took out a very large sum of money. It was probably like around $50 or $60,000.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

So did she get that from her IRA? Can you r really quick remind people what those penalties are? Because I know sometimes people think about that being a source of savings account.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

So because she was under $59.5 years of age, whatever she took out, which maybe was like, let's say $50,000, she had to declare that as income, so she was going to pay taxes on it. And because she was under 59 and a half years of age, she had to pay a 10% penalty on top of that.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Aaron Powell So $55,000 plus paying taxes on the money. Okay. All right. So despite your best efforts, she continues on and she gets the money. Then what happens?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

So then what happens is probably about five months later, the little bit of money that she still had with me, she said, Hey, I'm going to transfer the rest of my money to an e-Trade account. And my financial advisor, who is the guy that convinced me to buy the gold, who at the time I then realized was like her boyfriend, she said, he's going to manage the rest of my money at that point. And at that point, it brought up a little bit of a red flag to me just because there isn't a financial advisor that would say, take your money out before you're 59 and a half years of age out of your retirement account and pay not only taxes but pay penalty. Yeah, I could tell it's what she really wanted to do and it's what she believed. And she already had taken the money out for the gold. So I said, okay, that's fine. So pretty much she is was basically out the door as one of my clients. And it was probably about, I think about two months after that she called me back. And that's when she said, I think he could be a con artist.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

And she started talking about it. And that's when I suggested to her, I think you need to go and take all the gold coins that you bought and go get them appraised. And she was very uncomfortable with that idea because she didn't want to be driving in a car with $60,000, $70,000 worth of gold coins. And I told her, what if they're really not worth $60 or $70,000?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

So you were suspicious.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Right, yeah. So the next day, she called me on the phone and I could almost hear her trembling on the other line because that's when she found out that her gold coins were worthless.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

And so it was at that point I was trying to encourage her to say, it's, hey, you know what, we're going to get through this, it's going to be okay. And mind you, she was technically she really wasn't my client anymore. But to me, in this industry, maybe there were some advisors that would have at that point said the heck with her or whatever, but that's just not my nature. We started talking and I was trying to encourage her. And it was at that point she went to the authorities. And when she went to the authorities and she told them about this guy, the authorities said, this guy doesn't exist. Oh yeah. At one point she was living with this guy. He was her boyfriend, and she never saw his driver's license. He gave her a fake name. And so the police were basically saying there's nothing we can do about it.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Now, how did she meet him?

SPEAKER_01 6:00

I'm not really sure where how she exactly met him.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

But he presented in a romantic way.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Oh, yeah. No, he was he presented himself very sharp. He was very well dressed, seemed very educated, seemed very wealthy, very confident. And basically, he was, we could say he was a ladies' man.

unknown 6:17

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

So then I don't know how she came up with the idea, but she called him up and she said, Hey, I need to sell some of my gold coins. Of course, he tried talking her out of it, and she was like, I really need to sell about $5,000 worth. And rather than risk himself getting caught to that, hey, there's something wrong here, he said, I'll tell you what, I'll buy it back from you. So they met for lunch, and he gave her like $5,000. She gave him some fake coins back. And then after lunch, that's when her private investigator started detailing him. And it was at that point they realized that he was dating like a rich widow down in Boca Ratone, and basically it was doing the same thing to the widow. Coincidentally, apparently Catalina had stayed at the rich widow's house once before. I guess she the rich widow must have been out of town, and this guy was like, Oh, hey, well, he can stay with me. Posted as his house. I don't know if he posted it as his house or not, but basically they stayed at the house. And from what Catalina told me, there was a point where, as a gift, he gave Catalina one of the really nice paintings that this rich widow owned. They pretty much started tailing him, but they still didn't really know who he was. You know, they don't they weren't able to get the right identity on him yet. And I can't remember exactly how it came about. The rich widow had a son, and I think a lot of sons don't really maybe they don't like the men that are dating their moms.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Yeah, that's true for my son.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

And so next thing you know, it's Catalina, she reached out to the son of the widow and explained everything that happened. The guy basically really he believed everything Catalina was saying. So at some point he calls up his mom, and his mom is vacationing with this guy, I think over in Naples, Florida. And I guess the woman, she hangs up with her son, and she basically maybe she does some thinking about it, and then she tells the guy, she's like, We gotta go, we gotta go. So they get in the car, they drive down on Alligator Alley on I-75, she stops the car and basically throws his golf clubs and his luggage out and leaves some stranded there, and she leaves. And a few days later, Catalina finds out about it, and Catalina was just like, no, this is horrible because now they knew who he was. They had his identity, and they knew that they how, hey, we can actually get this guy in trouble because I guess he wanted by the law in California. No, no. So now he's on the run, and now Catalina with the wealthy widow, they've teamed up together. They've hired another private investigator, and so they're trying to think where will this guy go next? And they're thinking he's not gonna stop what he's doing. So they start putting these wanted posters of him at like country clubs and bars, like like really nice bars up in like the South Florida area. And sure enough, my understanding is so there was a this really nice bar in Jupiter, Florida. He walked in to get a drink, had no idea that his wanted poster was right behind the bar. And but something, I guess, must have spooked him. And he decided he was going to leave through the back door. And as he went through the back door, the cops got him.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Oh. So did they ever learn how much he had taken from how many women?

SPEAKER_01 9:46

I don't know if they learned everything from how many women, but I got the impression that they took a good amount of money from Catalina, but I got the impression that he took a lot more money from some of these other women. He was not a very good guy.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

I tell you, Catalina wasn't rolling over, was she? I'd admire that.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

No, yeah. And so what happened was so Catalina, she was determined not to just say, all right, I'm a victim or whatever. She went ahead, she wanted to go ahead and fight. And so then he got he went to jail for a couple years. He's out of jail now, but he went to jail. And so Catalina was urged to write her story. So she wrote up her story. She got published in the Huffington Post. And eventually, next thing you know, she got invited to be on the Megan Kelly show. And she got to tell her story across the whole nation. And the good thing is there's been a couple of what do you call them like lawsuits that she's be able to do. So she's been able to recoup some of her money back from what happened.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Something.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Yeah. But you said the heartbreak and the financial hit, you know, you just can't it's unimaginable, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Oh yeah. She must have felt so stupid. I I'd I would say she probably did. But I think that when you meet someone and you really trust them, if they're a good person, then hey, uh that's great. It's you know every now and then you can meet someone and whether it be a romance or someone like you look what Bernie Madoff did with friends and family of sophisticated people. Yeah. If you meet someone and they're a bad person and you trust them, there's just no way for you to know. If you're seeing little signs of things that kind of make you suspicious, I think you gotta just gotta watch out for those things.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

And it's hard. I've had clients that have had similar things happen, and I remind them that they call them con artists for a reason. If they weren't good at what they did, nobody would see them coming. They're con artists, right? And if you're an honest person, it's hard for you to realize how dishonest people can be. And I'm sure he was just shining her on and telling her all the things that her heart wanted to hear, and then being able to present a good face forward because of the money that he would stolen from other people with his fancy clothes and wash and somebody else's house.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Well, and you wonder what turns a person into that. What turns you into, hey, you know what, I'm going to survive in this world by basically stealing from people and not just stealing from people, I'm gonna try to make them almost fall in love with me so that I can go ahead and then I could steal as much as I want and not have any remorse.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

So he's out of jail now. One does wonder what he's doing.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, you wonder where he's been and or where he's at now. And could he be doing the same thing again? He could be, you just never know.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

So, from the financial advisor perspective, you would say red flag, someone in a relationship trying to get into your money, basically, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. You just have to be if someone is talking about money with you, and I just wonder why they are doing it.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, yeah. And maybe she should have listened to you more. I know there's only so much you can do. You can't say no, I won't give you your money, but I'm sure your alarm bells were just ringing very loudly.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

They were ringing loudly, and then the it wasn't until the moment where she was just like, Oh, and he's a he's my financial advisor now. And it's wait a minute. But it's one thing for just someone to be very wealthy and say, hey, I think you should do this, and I got so much money. If you do it, if something goes wrong, I'll help you or whatever. But your first financial advisor to once they're making some suggestions like that, it's yeah, there was definitely some alarm bells were going off.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

You have another financial scam you want to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yeah, I have a client of mine, just a dear client. She's been my client for probably gosh, 16, 17 years now. And uh back about a year and a half ago, she called me up and she was just like, Oh, hey, I just found out that I won a $750,000 sweepstake.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

And I'm like, Oh, that's great. That's fantastic. And to me, if the money's real, I'm thinking this is this is wonderful. And if it's at that point, I was like, when are you gonna collect on this money? And she said, Well, next week, Monday is when they're supposed to the check's supposed to be arriving at the airport. And I said, Okay, great. So then on Tuesday, I call her up and she lives in South Florida, and there was a hurricane that was coming through. And so she said, I was like, Oh, did you get your check? And she said, No, the they they basically said with the hurricane coming through that it'd be delayed. But they asked if I could send them another check for $7,500. I was like, another check? Wait, why are they why are you sending money? Which I wish that I would have maybe asked more questions or she would have said that the following week. So immediately when she told me she had just mailed the check and they probably hadn't received it yet, her and I were talking and she was explaining how they had they had someone from the FCC call her to talk about this. So in the course of the next few hours, I call up the FCC just to have a conversation from someone there so that I could call her back to say, no one from the FCC is going to call you anything like this. And then next thing you know, her and I are calling up her bank to cancel that check. Because I convinced her it wasn't real. So we called up, we canceled the check, and I thought all was well at that point.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Now, had she sent them another check that they had cashed?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

That was the case. Or at this point, did she know that? This was the s second check. I thought it was the only check.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

But it was the second check.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

It was the second check. So then about a week and a half later, I called them just to check on her to see how she's doing. And next thing she's bringing up the sweepstakes again, and she's like, Yeah, I spoke to him earlier this week and they told me because of the other check, I needed to send another one. So I just I sent off another check. I was like, No. So we once again, we not only do we before we call the bank, actually we called the bank up to cancel the check again, but this time I also got I called up the federal, the FCC, and together we called up my client, Sherry, and basically she heard straight from them, we're not gonna call you, ma'am, that this is a this is probably a scam. And so once again, she was convinced that this is not real. Within a week and a half later, she had sent off another check. And so what was happening was she she was in her 70s, and there were conditions going on with her that would, I guess you could say she was becoming a vulnerable adult.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

So very persuasive, very easily persuasive. Someone was pretending to be from the airport saying, Man, we got your check all ready for you, but you need because you didn't pay the money, I can't get distribute the check to you. So not only did her and I call the airport together and speak to someone there, but there was a moment where during the rain she got in a taxi cab, went down to the little airport, and basically was told by them we don't hold checks like that. This isn't real. I called at the police department, they went to her house, and basically while she was at the house, I was there on speakerphone talking. So there were moments where we would be able to convince her this wasn't real. And then they would, these guys would be calling up to 10 o'clock at night, pretend to be from the S FCC and convincing her. So one moment she knows it's not real. The next moment she's thinking it's real. And she wasn't married, she didn't have any children, but she had a really good friend that lived nearby who I know, and another really good friend of hers that lived like a few hours away. I started getting them involved. I never thought I was gonna have to get them involved, but they got involved. But even though they started getting involved, it wasn't easy because next thing you know, she's being convinced I need to send money. And they're telling her you can't send checks anymore because you keep canceling the checks. So they convinced her to start sending cashier checks. No. So she would go down and she would send cashier checks. But in the end, it it's all working out in the end to where she's gonna be okay. But my understanding is I believe that I believe she sent them somewhere between $60,000 and $120,000.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

I don't know for sure the for sure amount, but that's just what I believe based on conversations I've had. And uh it goes back to we talk about trying to avoid scams just for ourselves, not clicking on a wrong website, being careful who you meet, who you trust. If we have loved ones in our life who are getting older, who are getting in their 70s and 80s, but you have to be very you have to be very watchful over what scams could be out there that they could be a part of. And here was a phone call comes in, ma'am, you just won $750,000. Okay, great. This is fantastic. And it was just if it's too good to be true, it is. It normally is too good to be true. But it's just something that we, as we're all getting older, being mindful of just and our parents are getting older. Yeah, yeah. Our parents just being mindful of just things to watch out so that they're not caught up in all that.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah, it's it's heartbreaking. We had a client that was in guardianship for a similar thing. She was on Facebook and thought she was talking to the real actor whose name I won't give because he obviously wasn't involved. And he was saying, I I want to come see you. I want to meet you in person, but I need you to pay. And at the end of the day, she ended up losing almost $200,000 to these folks. Did they ever find out the bad guys that were taking the money from her?

SPEAKER_01 19:22

To me, that's the other frustrating part about this. So I I got I called up the police to get them involved to go down there. And I pretty much they like a report was filed. And I said, What happens next? And they're like, they made it sound like there wasn't really much that would happen.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Only the FBI, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

So that they said that they gave me a website that I could go to basically like file like all the information on this to where you would think it would be taken to the next level.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

And it wasn't?

SPEAKER_01 19:49

And I went on their website, file all its information on behalf of my client. And from my understanding, the best that I of my knowledge, no one ever contacted me from this website, even though I said, please feel free to contact me, nor did they ever contact her as well. So it's what good does it do us if these things are happening in this particular case? Who knows who these individuals vigils are? Who knows where they're located? She was mailing, she was obviously mailing checks to an address. I think the address was somewhere in like near somewhere in Nevada. So she's mailing it checks to this address, whether or not this property was like a property that was really involved. It was just a vacant house. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

But nobody did the investigation at that point.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

It was like you you give them all the information and it's like, all right, we got it, thank you, but we're not gonna do anything about it.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yeah, it's not a big enough number, although to her, of course, it's tremendous.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

And you wonder, like you're doing this to her, how many more people have they done this? And I she would give me all the information, like the names of the people, which obviously they were I'm sure they're fictitious names, and the phone numbers. And the one time I called one of the phone numbers up, and Guy answers the phone, and I think he was pretending to be from some organ, he was pretending to be from some organization. He did a great job of playing the part. And but it's just amazing that you don't see the investigations going in to try to stop any of this.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

No, Megan Kelly was at least interested in the story.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

So for your first client.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Yeah, so for Catalina, Megan Kelly got involved. And in that particular case, because they they knew specifically who it was, they knew who that they eventually found the name of the guy, he got arrested, and they were able to bring claims against him, not just from Catalina, but from other women as well. That was totally different. In this other case with my client Sherry, they would have known the exact names of the perpetrators, then maybe that would have been different than, oh yes, you're going to jail for this scam. But there was zero effort to find out just who these people are.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

That's awful. As you're working with your clients and then those listening, what are some things? That you would suggest that we can do to protect ourselves? Keep this from happening from the con artists who we we all think, we all pee everybody's listening who's never been scammed is thinking, oh, I would never believe if somebody got la-la. Or I'd never just trust some guy. But I think we need to remember the con artist part. So how do we protect ourselves from the artists?

SPEAKER_01 22:20

I think that having our guard up, I think is a good thing. If you're getting a phone call out of the blue about, you know, someone from your bank or someone from from Amazon, all right, it very well could be someone from your bank or Amazon. But maybe the better thing would be to hang up on that individual and just go online and find the phone number to call and then call back and then find out, did someone call me in regards to this? Oh, they did. Okay, great. Or no, they didn't. So I think having your guard up, being very suspicious about phone calls that are coming in, suspicious about websites that you might click on. Just being very vigilant about everything coming in. Because I think as time has gone on, the crooks are getting more and more sophisticated.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Yeah, you remember when they were what you'd get was an email from Nigeria with the broken English. And we get things that come into the law office that make its way through our filters that we have as a law firm. And if I didn't know better, I would think it was real. Docu sign, or they wanted me to click on this or click here, click there, and boy, can they make it look real.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

They can scary. They can make it so real. And it's very I think it it becomes easier and easier for even those who are really vigilant to click on something by mistake. We're all very busy, we're doing five things at once. Oh, okay, here's this docu-sign. And maybe the one Docu sign you're clicking on isn't really a Docu sign. And maybe you're expecting a Docu sign. So I think that it's becoming easier for even those who are very vigilant to potentially make a mistake. And I think what's important is if you make a mistake, try to fix it as fast as possible. Hey, you clicked on a wrong website and oh wow, yeah, you realized, thank goodness maybe you realized it five minutes later. Are you able to take action to prevent them from hacking into your computer and everything, which can happen? But I think that, yeah, if we're getting phone calls from people you don't know. And I think if you have elderly relatives that it's like, are you able to do something with their phone to where they're not getting any phone, they're all the phone calls coming in from numbers that they aren't plugged programmed in their phone, they're just automatically blocked.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah. So what we're seeing from my side of the elder law world is a lot of older clients, the last group tranche of people that still want a landline because that's what they're used to. And the scammers love the landline because they know the likelihood is they're going to find a vulnerable adult at the end. So we actually counsel our clients to be careful with their parents about a landline. I and I know for me, if I receive a document, even in a case where I'm working with an attorney or someone that I am a business partner, if they send me something and I'm not expecting to get that, I will actually check, even if it looked like it from them, hey, did you send me a docu sign? And I've actually had times where they say, Oh, nope, sorry, we got hacked. And I'm somebody that would be more sophisticated than our average vulnerable adult parent that we're dealing with. Any other things that you see on the financial planner side to help protect folks?

SPEAKER_01 25:27

I going back to your loved ones that are getting elderly, keep it in close contact with everything that they're doing. Make sure you're having conversations with them about their financial and about the financial stuff. And a lot of times they may not want to do that. They may want to give you pushback because all their life they maybe didn't want you knowing about all their financial information. But the sorry thing is that someone could be very sophisticated all their life. As they get older, they're not as maybe sophisticated as they once were and that they become vulnerable. So I think trying to be very proactive with whether it be your parents, your aunts and uncles, just trying to stay connected with them. And just in addition to that, if there's documents that they have they don't need, make sure you're shredding them and just that and that they're not just being thrown out and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

That's important, right? Not being thrown in the regular trash. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

And just and if they have computers, try your best so that they're not clicking on things. But going back to all of their financial information, if you're able to have it so that you could log in to see their bank accounts, so you could see anything that looks a little bit out of the ordinary. And even maybe you have it so you're able to see their credit card statements if they still have a credit card. Watching out for any, oh, would you spend this $500 on? So things like that nature. I think that is a is also something you want to do, like for any of your older relatives.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

If you can convince them to let you. Yeah. That's the trouble. Exactly. And I'm sure for you, if you have a client who's willing, an older client who's willing to involve their children in the communications regarding their account, I'm sure that you do that.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

People's kids or nephews, nieces, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

And that's one of the things that in this industry that's changed over the last 15 years is the ability to add what you call trusted contacts to your accounts. Really, and basically the whole purpose of a trusted contact is it's not so that I could call that child, the adult child up and say, hey, this is what's going on with your parents' accounts. It's more to potentially call that adult child to say, Hey, you know, talking to your mother or your father, they seem a little different. Oh. To alert them that there's something going on. So that's something which, you know, these days, if if we see something happening, we could let the other relatives know.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

And you're better placed for that because older folks, the studies show us that as they're declining, when they're in their usual relationships, talking with kids in their own homes on the regular routine subjects, they can hide the decline. It doesn't show up as soon as opposed to the conversations that they might have with you that are a little more sophisticated where you might notice, hey, dad seems to be a little more confused than he was last year about what he's doing with his money. And that's great that you have that ability to reach out then and say, Hey, just here's what I'm experiencing. Check in on mom or dad.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Well, the one thing that is scary, like for my client that was involved in the sweepstakes scam, we have a great relationship. And it was because of that great relationship that I was able to keep convincing her that it was a scam. Unfortunately, they kept calling her to convince her it wasn't a scam. But I think that let's say she didn't have any financial advisor at all. And let's say she was in charge of let's say all of her accounts were at, let's say, e-Trade and she was watching over them. Is it very possible that when it was all said and done, she might have sent them much more than $100,000 or something?

SPEAKER_00 29:07

I bet you they would have gotten almost everything she had.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Yeah. So how often does that happen? Because let's face it, I think that some people are more sophisticated than others when it comes to investments. Some people and there are some people who are very confident individuals on how they have their investments. And a lot of those individuals, maybe they don't have financial advisors. And maybe in some cases they really don't need them. But then maybe they get a little bit older and and they're maybe not as sophisticated as they once were, maybe they're a little more vulnerable, but they're not really realizing it, and they could something bad could potentially happen.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Well, to that point, we represented a gentleman who lost his home, and the reason he did is he had been relying upon distributions from his 401k to help make payments, and his money was in a Vanguard account, not watched over by someone that knew him and could pay attention to his affairs. And he ended up losing the entirety of one of his retirement accounts, some like $450,000. And so here he is at 76 years old, lost the money to live on, and then losing the home. And all he had to resort to was to try to live on Social Security. And that was because he didn't have a financial advisor to help. So that's to your point, precisely.

unknown 30:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

If anything, having a financial advisor that you trust, you're able to have candid conversations with, bounce ideas off of, and oh, hey, I've heard about this investment. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Now, ultimately, maybe you choose to listen to that financial advisor or not, but is it possible the financial advisor maybe talks you out of doing something that maybe is a good thing you got talked out of doing?

SPEAKER_00 30:44

And you don't that's the personal touch that we still need, especially in this digital going crazy kind of world.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's just the between the digital world and just the scammers just trying to think in more creative ways. The you have the whole the grandchild scam. I is really funny. I had about it's probably about seven years ago, I had a client of mine out in California who I know very well, and he was maybe in his mid-50s, and he called me up. He said, I can't believe my son Carlo got himself arrested. And he's like, What happened? He's like, Apparently he called up my father-in-law and said, I'm I was at a bar and I got arrested. And so my client is like, what is he doing? He's in the army now, what have you. And as we hung up the phone, something was triggering in the back of my mind. I thought, wait a minute, I think there's a scam where a grandchild, they'll have someone pretend to be a grandchild, call the grandparent up and say, Grandpa, it's me, it's Joey and whatever. And so sure enough, that's what exactly happened. And I don't know if his grandfather sent the like the 250 bucks that he was asking. But the funny thing is, since that moment, I have probably personally gotten seven of those phone calls over the last seven years.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Really?

SPEAKER_01 32:00

And it's just it's really funny. It's just crazy how I'll answer the phone and grandpa, it's me. Oh, hey, how are you doing? Is this Joe? Yeah, it's Joe. And sometimes I'll play along. Yeah. But it's just really, it's really crazy that the fact that they normally only are asking for maybe $150 or $200, it's maybe it's a lot easier for that to work or what have you. But yeah, that's something else that they try to get you on.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

They're telling us now with AI, they're able to take our voices, right? So our grandkids, me, there's so many places on the internet where you can find my voice. AI can take all these little snippets and then put together a conversation that if you knew me, you would think it was me talking on the phone. That's how good the technology is getting. So, what we do for our older clients, uh all of us, actually, even within our own family, if anybody ever calls and it's at any request for money, any request for gift cards, any request for anything, we actually have a safe word in the family that we all know that this is the word that we will use, and it's not in any way connected with anything. And we've been very careful not to put that word anywhere, but between us, mouth to mouth. Wow. So that's something that we recommend for some of our elder, older clients too. Let's have a safe word and have it be something really strange, super califragilistic expialados or something that if somebody calls and they really do have a need, they'll know that safe word to you. Okay. So that might be something that you could suggest to your folks too.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Yeah. And like for for me being an independent advisor with all of my clients, it's all like very personal touch.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

It would so I've never thought that I've had to I would ever have to worry about anything like that. I guess the I guess it's one thing for AI to be able to create a way to use your voice to have a conversation, but to also create that and create a conversation that will not raise any red flags, there's nothing going on. That would be that's scary to think about that potentially that we could come to that.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

And I think we're getting there quickly. It's uh it's all getting ahead of us. So as an independent financial advisor, you've mentioned that a couple of times. Explain to our listeners what that means. How do you differ than someone who works for Charles Schwab?

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Aaron Powell As an independent financial advisor, I am not shown that this is the way I should do things. In other words, I'm not told I have to do things one way or another. There's a lot of investment ideas that I could show to my clients as long as I'm working within the parameters of what their objectives are, how much risk they want to take. Basically, I don't there's not like a set thing that I have to show somebody. I could construct all sorts of portfolios and there's hundreds and thousands of different investments that I can include within that plan. And by being an independent advisor, if it's a fee-based or commissions, I basically I'm not told that I have to charge X amount. I could charge an amount that as long as it's within a certain parameter. So is it possible that maybe I'm charging less than some other advisors? Maybe. As an independent advisor, yeah, there's I guess flexibility is the way to put it. There's a lot of flexibility of what I am able to show my clients. And for me, customer service is very important. For example, my one client who unfortunately had the sweepstakes scam, she's collected all of my Christmas cards over the years of my family because I always put that on there. And it's in like we've had so many conversations about our pets and whatever. So to me, it's about building a relationship. It's about being a client that almost comes like a friend.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

That's nice. That's more value for you too, I'm betting.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Not just value for them.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Yeah. All right. So if somebody wants to find you, how do they reach you?

SPEAKER_01 35:52

So they could give me a call. My phone number is 407-296-4587. And my name is Keith. My last name is spelled Z and Zebra, D S and David, R-O-W-A-K, but it's pronounced Stroact. We pretend there's an S T R in front of it. I could also be emailed at Keith, K-E-I-T-H at Wealth, W-E-A-L-T-H, Empowerment, E-M-P-O-W-E-R-M-E-N-T, F like Frank, S-like Sam.com.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

All right, and you will respond.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

I will definitely respond.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

Do you have a minimum amount that your for the clients have to be willing to invest?

SPEAKER_01 36:29

I would say for the most part, not necessarily. Normally, yeah, I would say 25,000, what have you, but there are time special cases where it could be less than that. But I would say at least 25,000 is normally what we tend to look for.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

Okay. Wonderful. All right. Thank you for being here and sharing this information and helping people stay safe.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

I'm happy to be here. This is great. Thank you so much. And maybe we could do it again.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Yeah, thank you so much. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

Sounds great.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

That's it for today. Now go turn that coffee into cash flow. Later, hustler.