00:02 John: So, we're gonna be talking about some different things related to kind of protecting that money side of this, but I thought I'd start out by telling a story. My dad is a college professor, he teaches an entrepreneurship, among other things, he teaches strategic management. But he also started this entrepreneurship program with a guy named Sam Barshop. Sam Barshop was the founder of La Quinta Inns, down in San Antonio. So my dad would teach on one day, and then Sam Barshop would bring in one of his rich buddies on the other day of the week to talk to the students about whatever they felt like talking about.


03:48 John: And so I got to sit in on many of those and got to sit there and listen to people like Michael Dell from Dell Computers, Herbert Kelleher who founded Southwest Airlines, and lots of others. And many of these folks were really impressive, like Herbert Kelleher who founded Southwest Airlines. His love for his employees, his love for what he did, you can tell that he put his heart into it and that, that is ultimately what made Southwest Airlines a success. But there was another guy that came in and this guy happens to own a whole bunch of car dealerships in the San Antonio Metroplex area, he also happens to be the owner of the Minnesota Vikings, as well as a professional basketball team. This is a very rich guy, and unlike many of the other speakers, this guy was just an absolute con-man through his entire life. I mean, he could sell anything to anybody at anytime and was perfectly willing to do so. And I remember he was telling a story about, some reason he had gotten his hands on a whole bunch of longhorn cattle. Now anybody who knows anything about cattle, knows that a longhorn cow is pretty, it looks neat sitting out in your pasture but as a piece of beef, is totally useless.


05:21 John: You don't wanna eat a longhorn, there's much better cows out there for eating. There's much better cows out there for milking. If you just need a pretty cow, a longhorn will do you just fine. So he ends up with this whole pile of longhorn cattle, knowing full well that they're completely useless. So he decides he's going to sell these longhorn cows. So what he does, he reaches out to people all across Europe and the Middle East and with these private jets, he would fly in these Barons and these Sultans from the United Arab Emirates. And he had a big barn, and each longhorn cow groomed and sitting in its own individual stall.


06:15 John: And he would give a whole speech about how the longhorn cow was the key to the American West and that it's such a hardy breed, and that these premier individuals from their respective countries would be well-served to bring a piece of the American West back to their home countries. And then he would auction off these longhorns with many of them going for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per longhorn. This guy could sell anything to anybody. And essentially, the funny thing about this was, he gets rid of all these cows, which were totally useless in the first place, makes a fortune. But you know the thing is, what he was really doing was he was just scamming folks out, out of their money. Now, of course, many of these people were people that had more money than sense.


07:22 John: I happen to be in Brunei, the country of Brunei at one point. The Sultan of Brunei, at one point, was the richest man in the world, even outpacing Bill Gates at one point. And the Sultan, he had one son that turned 16 and he bought him an amusement park that looks like Six Flags. Let his son play around on it for a day and then just gave it to the public. It's free. Anybody that wants to show up, you just walk in, ride the roller coaster. So, anyway more money than sense. But I guess my point was, these were smart people. These were people who were leaders of government, these were people who were oil industry tycoons. These were very, very smart people, and yet, this one good old boy from Texas was able to scam them. And if he can scam these people, then anybody at anytime can get had.


08:28 John: As I was preparing for the show this morning, I pulled up one article here, and a list of people who have been scammed; Howard Hughes, John McEnroe, Robert De Niro, Cindy Crawford, Sidney Poitier, Kevin Bacon. Lots of famous people. Lots of people who... I mean, Howard Hughes was no dummy and yet, got taken. Lots of people can get scammed out there. And if smart people with lots of advisors and lots of other things can get head, that means you can get head. And the folks out there that would like to scam you, they're good, they're creative and they come up with new stuff all the time.


09:21 John: And so, about every year, we try to bring on to the program somebody who is well-versed in all of the new and fun senior scams out there. The whole idea being that maybe, just maybe, you'll pay attention. And if you pay attention, maybe you'll see it before you get there, because it's big. I was at a Elder Law Conference recently. One of the attorneys that was presenting at the conference, and this is an Elder Law attorney down in the Houston area and they've got probably, 10 or 15 Elder Law attorneys that work just in their firm, covering the Houston Metroplex and surrounding community. So this is a big, well-established firm, and one misstep on the internet, and they're getting taken.


10:20 John: And he was kind of talking about some of that, and how that had affected them, and how that messed up all of their stuff, and it affected their business. And again, these are smart people, these are people with a very successful business. So it can happen to anybody, we just gotta know how it's likely to happen to you. Because as far as I can tell, the single biggest target, and a growing target in this market is your senior community. In our practice, we talk about people going into a stage of life that we call, "Frail, vulnerable, but not incompetent." This is, by far, the most dangerous situation of your life. You still have your wits. These are people who are still driving themselves to the doctor and back, still going to the grocery store and getting their shopping done.


11:18 John: They are competent, but because of the aging process and how that has slowed brain functioning, how that has made them physically weak, and in some cases, dependent on others, that frail and vulnerable side of that leaves them more exposed. Things that they would not have otherwise done, maybe now, they're at a greater risk. And unfortunately, it's not just the Elder Law attorneys that recognize this standpoint in peoples' lives, it's the crooks out there. They know it just as well, as we do and so they are out there targeting. So that's gonna be our topic today. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a quick break so that we can hear from a couple of our sponsors and when we come back I'm gonna bring somebody on who is an expert in all of this, and we're gonna hear from her and learn about some of these sort of stuff and, of course, take any of your calls that might come in. So stick around, we'll be right back.


[pause]


9:25 John: Welcome back to Aging Insight everybody, this is your host John Ross, here live in the studio ready for your calls, if you have any. Phone number is 903-793-1071, and we're gonna do our annual update on senior scams and some things that you need to be worried about out there. I'm not a criminal law attorney. I don't represent criminals out there. I don't prosecute them. I don't defend them. That's not what I do. If you listen to the show and you say, "Man, this John character, he seems to know what he's talking about." And then tonight you get arrested, do not call me. I am not your guy. So, as I've always made a point on the program, is if I know stuff I'll tell you I know it. If I don't know stuff then I'm gonna bring somebody else who does. And so that's what I've done today. In the studio here we've got Christian Pool, welcome Christian.


10:27 Guest: Hi. How are you? 


10:27 John: I'm wonderful. And so what is your title? 


10:32 Guest: I'm the Risk Management and Fraud Manager at Red River Credit Union.


10:35 John: Alright, so with Red River Federal Credit Union and Risk Management and Fraud Management means you see the risk and fraud out there. [chuckle]


10:44 Guest: Exactly. A lot of it.


10:46 John: Alright, yeah, I would think so. I've had 10,000, 15,000 elderly clients over the years and they all have a bank account.


10:59 Guest: They're good savers.


11:01 John: Yeah, they're good savers. They all have bank accounts and many of them have money in those bank accounts, which makes them a target.


11:08 Guest: Right.


11:09 John: That in and on itself. Along with they have regular monthly income.


11:14 Guest: That's right.


11:16 John: Their Social Security loans, pensions, those things. We have retirement accounts. IRAs things like that. They got assets.


11:23 Guest: Yes.


11:24 John: And this is also the same population that I talked about right before the break, can become frail and vulnerable.


11:33 Guest: And trusting.


11:33 John: And trusting. Especially that generation, particularly the greatest generation. There was a polite bunch.


11:44 Guest: Right.


11:46 John: That was the whole thing behind the Nancy Reagan's... Nancy Reagan had a program related to some of this that was just hang up. But Nancy Reagan talking to her generation, that we've always, for 75 years, we've been taught to be polite, and if somebody's on the phone well then you're polite to them on the phone. And hanging up on them seems rude.


12:15 Guest: Yes.


12:15 John: So yeah. What do you see probably the most often in the banking world related to some of these sort of things? 


12:25 Guest: Well, we see a lot of the lottery scams, but lately we've seen a lot of the sweetheart scams, where they're concentrating on the older generation. Single elderly females.


12:37 John: Okay, so the sweetheart scam... So, I'm an old person. You're a scam artist. How does this work? 


12:44 Guest: Well, they get in touch with them through the Internet. Most of the time it's gaming sites or even Facebook, and they'll just start off with a conversation, and then they get the victim to trust them. And it usually takes a month or two, and they've got a lot going on the side, so you're not the only one they're dealing with. You're not the only victim. They've got quite a few of them that they've got going at the same time. Once they get the trust of this person, of the victim, then they start making requests. And one guy told the lady that his account had been frozen, and he was stuck in a hotel and he needed some help. So he needed her to wire some money. But he didn't want to take her money. He had a friend who owed him money, so he had his friend send her, the victim, some money orders for her to deposit into her account and wire to him. And she did try to do it of course because she trusted him and because she said she would. And it was hard to convince her not to do it.


13:51 John: And I'm guessing then the money orders were fakes.


13:53 Guest: They were fraud. Yes. They were fraudulent.


13:56 John: And so essentially what she would have done would be deposit bad cheques, but wire out good money.


14:03 Guest: Right. And when those money orders were sent to the paying bank, they would have refused them and sent them back to us. And then we would have to take the money back out of her account because that's where originally it was deposited.


14:15 John: Right. There's a delay in there from... Somebody brings in this money order from the time they deposit it though to the time it goes to the supposed payor bank.


14:32 Guest: Right.


14:32 John: It might say "Bank of America."


14:34 Guest: Right.


14:34 John: And you all send it to Bank of America 'cause that's what it says to do. But it takes a couple of days maybe, by time that comes back as fraudulent. But when the older person wires money directly out of their account...


14:49 Guest: It's gone.


14:50 John: It's gone. Right then.


14:51 Guest: Right. They sent good money for bogus cheques.


14:51 John: And the thing is we've had a client under these circumstances. A random phone call to her house started out as a... You mentioned the lottery scam.


15:10 Guest: Right.


15:10 John: And that's actually how this one started out. The guy called her and said, "You've won the lottery." Or whatever, "And you're gonna have to pay the taxes."


15:17 Guest: Yeah.


15:17 John: And that whole business. And, "Send us a cheque for the $2,500 for the taxes, and then we'll send you the cheque." Or whatever. And of course the lottery money never came. But the scammer was quick to realize that he had a lot of times what we call the, "Senior orphan." Here's a lady whose husband has died. She's alone. She either doesn't have any children, or they're train wrecks and don't call, or anything like that. And so she's there. She's by herself. She's lonely. As her health declines, her home starts looking more like a prison as she cannot get out of there to go to church and socialize. And so yeah, she's desperate for this contact. And this guy starts saying, "Yeah, you know you remind me of my grandmother. I mean it just gives me a warm feeling. You are such a nice lady. Maybe sometime we could maybe even have Thanksgiving together or something like that. And you know what? I bet I could come down for Thanksgiving. Would you mind? I can't afford it, but maybe you could send me $500 for plane tickets. And I can come up, and you and I can have Thanksgiving together." Yeah, so that's the Sweetheart Scam. So you're seeing quite a bit of that at this point? 


16:46 Guest: Right, right.


16:46 John: And I suppose there's a few others.


16:48 Guest: Yes.


[chuckle]


16:50 Guest: There's quite a few others.


16:51 John: Alright. Well, we're gonna go into some of those when we come back 'cause I know there's somebody out there listening, and they're saying, "Oh, yeah. John you've talked about this before. Ain't gonna happen to me." Yeah, that's what everybody says right up until they become the victim of it. So, yeah, this is good information, and you're gonna listen in. And then when you're done today, you're gonna go tell all your friends about it so that maybe we can save them. So stick around. We'll be right back.


[pause]


17:23 John: Welcome back to Aging Insight everybody. This is John Ross, I'm here in the studio with Christian Pool from Red River Federal Credit Union. She's their Fraud and Risk Manager, and I've brought her on because I wanted to update everybody on the scams and stuffs that are going on out there. And so, we were talking about the Sweetheart Scam and again, especially as it relates to some of these senior orphans and things like that. It does kinda go to the fact that if, if you've got a parent or brother, or sister, whoever it is that you know is entering into this stage of life. Again, making sure that they're socializing and keeping in contact with them and things like that. If you go to Sunday school and there's somebody that used to go to Sunday school and they've stopped coming, maybe 'cause their physical health has declined and things like that. And maintaining those contacts a lot of times keeps them from falling victim to these sort of things. Would you say? 


18:29 Guest: Yes. Definitely.


18:30 John: Yeah, okay. So, what else we've got out there? 


18:33 Guest: Well, one thing to make clear a lot of times these scammers, they'll let the victim think that they're not gonna be out any money. So, most of the time a fraudulent cheque is sent to them. For whatever reason they come up with, they gonna send them a cheque, to cash, deposit at their own financial institution and wire out. So, anytime, anyone sends you a cheque or needs your help cashing a cheque. Even if you cash it for them against your account, you're going to be liable for that cheque. So, like in the lottery scam what we've seen is they'll send them a check and tell them that these are to pay your taxes, so you're not gonna be out any money. All you do is deposit the cheque into your account and you wire this to pay the taxes and paperwork to get your million dollars.


19:18 Guest: The victim thinks that they're not out any money when in fact they're cashing the fraudulent cheque against their account. We've also seen... And you wouldn't think that this was possible, but it has happened, where a grandchild will call the victim and tell them they're in a Mexican jail and they need help, they gotta get out of there immediately and they need money. So the victim will wire money to wherever this... And they're in a hurry, the kid is in a hurry, they've got to get off the phone, so they take down the information and they wire out the money because they think that they're helping their grandchild. And you would think they would know their grandchild's voice but because of the circumstances, they're in a hurry and it's an emergency, that the victim doesn't always realize it's not their grandchild that they're talking to.


20:05 John: Well, I can't hear anything.


20:07 Guest: Yeah. That's true.


20:08 John: Four years in the Marines, that pretty much blew my hearing. And so, yeah, talking on a cell phone does not do me much good. I can generally hear you, but it ain't great. My dad is even worse.


20:23 Guest: Yeah. My dad is also.


20:24 John: I've gotten into the habit, I text dad, I call mom.


20:28 Guest: Yeah.


[chuckle]


20:29 John: He can read a text. If I call his phone, he's just gonna hand it to my mom anyway.


20:33 Guest: Yeah, and if they have the television on. Right, right.


20:39 John: That's actually very easy to trick somebody. Like you said, and they're good, they practice.


20:46 Guest: They do. That's what they do for a living.


20:48 John: When you were talking about calling, it was one of the things that you were telling me before we started that I didn't know about. When you're talking about calling, many of us with our phones, and our home phones and things like that, we sign up for caller ID. I know at the office if we get something... It'll come up and it'll say 1800 number or something, and we know that there's these groups that are always trying to give loans to businesses. We've gotten to the point most of those, we just don't even answer. But if I look at the caller ID and it says, "Texas Department Health and Human Services," well, then I figure that's Medicaid calling about one of my clients that I'm trying to get Medicaid for. And of course, if I look down there and it says "Texas Department Health and Human Services" on the caller ID, my assumption is, it's the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. But that's not necessarily the case, right? 


21:51 Guest: Right, right. There is websites that these scammers, these crooks and go to, and for $25 they get 165 phone numbers that they can call, and they can manipulate. They can type in whatever they want the display to show.


22:06 John: And then it'll come up as whatever. Alright, well we've got a caller on the line. Let me see if I can get them up here. Alright, caller, you're on Aging Insight. What can we do for you? 


22:16 Caller-1: Yes. This business that she's handed, it looks to me like it would be time limited. Because a lot of the young people nowadays don't talk on their phones, they text only. And a lot of the young people today don't care to own anything, many of them don't wanna own cars, they use their bicycles, or they rent, hire an Uber or whatever, and they just don't care to own anything. They don't have that much... They've gotten away from material ownership so much that it's very interesting to think about what the future is going to be, that's why many of them embrace socialism.


22:57 John: Well, of course, one thing about it and thats, when you're talking about these scammers. Yeah, no there's not a lot of point in trying to scam a millennial, they ain't got nothing.


[laughter]


23:08 Caller-1: Yeah. Even when they get older they probably won't have much.


[laughter]


23:13 John: That's right. Although many of those 60's hippies turned into the powerhouse bankers of the 80's, so maybe there's hope for them yet.


23:27 Caller-1: There may be hope yet.


23:28 John: There may be hope yet. [chuckle] Alright, thanks for calling in. Alright, yeah, so for $25 I can get on the Internet, I can buy 165 phone numbers essentially, and then I can turn those into whatever I want on the caller ID.


23:49 Guest: Right. All they have to do is, they go in and they type what they want the display to show. So if they want it to show FBI, they type in FBI. So when the caller gets a call they look down and they see FBI when in fact, it's really the scammer.


24:02 John: Yeah, so imagine, think about it from your standpoint, you're sitting at home and it's tax season. Many of you are filing taxes, some may be expecting refunds, some may be having to pay a little bit, some may be having to pay a lot. But regardless you're typically filing tax returns. Tax law is not easy to understand, I get that. So yeah, your phone rings, you look at it, says IRS, you answer it and the person says, "This is Bob from the IRS, and we notice that you didn't file the form for the ObamaCare penalty and so you... You've seen about this on FOX News that if you don't have the proper ObamaCare insurance you're gonna have to pay a penalty. Well, we've looked at your return and your insurance doesn't meet that and so there's a $400 bill."


25:10 Guest: Right. Or they'll call, there's been cases where they call, and they say that there's a warrant out for their arrest, and even if they know they haven't done anything wrong, they tell them that if they don't pay it immediately the sheriff is gonna show up at their door. So they tell them that they have to have their debit card number and they need $450 or else they're gonna be arrested. And they are looking down, they see that it says, "Texas County Police Department." And there's a man on the phone saying they're facing to get arrested, or going to be arrested, and they give them their debit card information.


25:46 John: And as far as that goes, from FBI or IRS, but just as easily somebody could make that caller ID say, "Red River Federal Credit Union."


25:55 Guest: Exactly, yeah.


25:57 John: And so yeah, it would be very difficult to figure... So if I'm at home and I get that call, and it says, "Red River Federal Credit Union," What am I looking out for? 


26:10 Guest: First, you wanna find out what they say the problem is. And then you hang up and you call Red River Credit Union from the number that you know. You look it up in the phone book, you call that number, and then you can ask for the person that they claim to be, or you can ask for that department.


26:28 John: We've had plenty of these where we'll get a... We've seen folks who brought in, they've brought in cheques, they've brought in things like that and it looks official. Letterhead from Bank of America, and even the phone numbers are Bank of America phone numbers, but then when we call that phone number and ask Bank of America we're like, "Okay, we've got a letter here from Bob Smith." And they're like, "Ain't no Bob Smith work here." Or the account number will be wrong, Bank of America say, "Well yeah, that looks like one of ours but the number is wrong because we have a different routing number." Or transit number. Whatever those things are.


27:12 Guest: And your bank should never call and ask you what your account number is. They already have that. So if in fact Red River Credit Union was calling you, we won't ask for your account number. And if we're trying to verify that maybe there's somebody in our drive-through that's got a cheque drawn on you for $500 and we wanna make sure you wrote it, we're not gonna ask you for your account number. We have it right there and we have the dollar amount that cheque is, and we should be able to give you everything that we need answers to right there. You shouldn't have to give us any information at all. Except yes or no.


27:44 John: Excellent. Alright well, we're gonna take one more break, and then when we come back we'll finish up our discussion on senior scams. And I wanna learn a little bit more about some things maybe I should think about related specifically to banking. So we're gonna talk about that when we come back. Stick around.


[pause]


27:59 John: Welcome back to the last segment of Aging Insight here, we've got about 15 more minutes, 13 more minutes something like that. So if you've got anymore calls feel free to give us a shout, phone number is 903-793-1071. And I'm here with Christian Pool from Red River Federal Credit Union. Their fraud and risk manager. And we're talking about some senior scams and, guess what struck me is right after we cut off there at the break. You said, "God, there's just so much I wish I could tell them."


28:29 Guest: There's so much. [chuckle] And these scammers, they have to keep recreating these scams because once we get accustomed to one of them, we can stop them. Even if we have to fight the victims. 'Cause sometimes the victims don't wanna tell us everything. But once we become educated on the scam, we can pretty well tell them what's gonna happen before it happens. And then of course, that can convince some. But they keep recreating the scams and they're so many out there.


29:00 John: Yeah. And particularly you gotta watch out as we become more and more technologically involved with the Internet and all of that sort of business. It's bad. Of course, we were talking about the little things that they can put in a card slots.


29:17 Guest: Yeah, the skimmers. They can get the debit card information from a skimmer.


29:24 John: And it seems like I read one thing. They were saying that, yeah, if you're going to a gas station and you're gonna use a card, you're better off selecting the credit. Even if you're using a debit card, select the credit option, so you don't have to put in your pin.


29:38 Guest: Yeah. That helps. That does help. Because a lot of the skimmers, they'll have not... The skimmer goes into the slot but there's a camera somewhere on the ATM or the gas station. And they record the key strokes. So, if you enter your pin number, it's recording your pin number, and it coincides with the skimmer.


29:59 John: Yeah. Maybe, that or just use a credit card. If you get a fraudulent transaction on a credit card, it doesn't wipe away your ability to pay your bills that month.


[chuckle]


30:17 John: You may still have to deal with it and you're still gonna have to go through the whole fraud process with Discover or Visa or whoever it is. But you're not sitting there with an empty checking account.


30:28 Guest: That is true. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be on an ATM or a gas pump. Their skimmers can fit in the back of someone's pocket. If you give your card to somebody at a restaurant, they can have a skimmer in their backpocket. That's happened. And as they're walking to cash you out, they stick the card in their backpocket and they skim the information. And they can use it as a credit.


30:52 John: Yeah. Yeah. They're out there. Now, as far as the banking goes, assume you probably do see folks where, I know most seniors scams are committed by family members. That's the ugly fact of all. A lot of this is that most elderly abuse is actually committed by the people that are most closely associated with the elderly person, their families. That being said, it's not uncommon for somebody to think, "Oh, well, you know what? I'm getting a little older. And I'm probably gonna need some help along the way. I better add my kid to the bank account." Maybe not so good of an idea depending on the circumstances.


31:36 Guest: Right. And depending on if the elderly person really trust this person. Because once you've added somebody to your account, they have access to your account. They have as much access to the account as you do. But you can have PODs which are, after you passed away the person will get the money. Which is in a lot of...


31:54 John: Pay on death.


31:56 Guest: And it doesn't help though if you need help while you're living. In some cases you do need to have a joint owner to help you.


32:04 John: Or maybe an authorized signer.


32:06 Guest: Yeah.


32:06 John: As opposed to a joint owner or something like that. Yeah. But oftentimes, I've had... I think I've even told the story on the show before. We had a lady come in and says she's got two kids. And her daughter helps her out a lot, and she was one to do a power of attorney for the daughter and things like that. Which is all fine and dandy. And we said "Okay. Well. Give us a couple of days. We'll put it all together." Well she comes back a couple of days later and says, "I can't do any of that, I told my son that I was doing this and that I was gonna appoint his sister, and he told me that if I didn't appoint him as the power of attorney, that I'd never see my grandchildren again. And so I guess I need to appoint him." No. You do not. But a lot of the folks out there, when they start having these conversations with their kids, there's the good kid who's saying, "Look, I don't necessarily wanna be on your account. That's yours. You need your independence." And yet it's the bully, it's the scammer, it's the potential abuser that's the one pushing to get on the account.


33:22 Guest: Yeah. Yeah. That is true, we see that a lot too.


33:25 John: Yeah. You gotta look out for that sort of thing. On the other hand, of course, there's the flipside of all of this. Which is, it's very likely that you will be incapacitated at some point.


33:36 Guest: Yeah.


33:36 John: And somebody's gonna have to handle those sort of things.


33:40 Guest: And you can have more than one joint owner on an account. But, if one joint owner takes all the money, that doesn't help the other joint owner.


[chuckle]


33:47 John: Yeah. It's already gone at that point.


33:49 Guest: Yeah. Yeah.


33:49 John: Although there are, at least, from a legal standpoint, there are some roles out there that although a person who is a joint owner, legally, that joint owner can empty the account. That does not relieve the person that pulled that money out from legal liability. You can still file claims against them from either a criminal side or from a civil side, it's not the bank's fault because you're the one that gave them the access to the account. But just because they have the access, doesn't mean that they can steal your money. You can still go after that person, individually.


34:27 Guest: And we do train our employees to watch for elder abuse. So, if our employees see something that they think might be bad for our members, especially if it's an elderly member, they do report it and we do look into it.


34:40 John: Yeah. And that kind of goes to one of the last little things I wanted to mention here is that, I've had folks come over to my office, mad as a hornet. Just hopping mad because they were over at the bank and trying to do something, and they were giving them all kinds of fits about it. And when I actually looked at it I said, "You realize that if they would have let you do this, you'd probably been in trouble." "Y'all are trying to be difficult." [chuckle]


35:15 Guest: No, no. And we don't. The money in the account, it doesn't affect us one way or another. If you've got $5, or $50, or $5,000, it doesn't affect us. We just wanna keep the person, the owner of the account, especially if it's an elderly person, we wanna keep them safe and we want to keep them in control of their money.


35:33 John: Yeah. And if you banked at some place and you bank there for a long time, you've been very happy, and then you're going in there to conduct some piece of business and they're saying, "Look, this looks like a scam." This is not necessarily the time to argue with them but maybe open those ears. It's hard to admit when you're wrong. I had a nursing home, a business office person from a nursing home call me this week 'cause I had told a client something. And then the client had gone to the nursing home and said, "This is what I need to do." And then the business office person at the nursing home called me and said, "John, are you sure about that?" And I was like, "Yeah, I'm 100% sure. But let me look real quick." And I looked and sure enough, rules had changed, I was wrong, she was right. I can admit that. I don't like to admit it, but I'm big enough to say, "I don't know everything. It's too complicated." And so...


36:35 Guest: And it changes.


36:36 John: And it changes. And things change all the time. And yeah. So, if you realize, if you'll admit that it's possible that you'll be a victim out there, then if somebody is telling you, "Hey, looks like you might be a victim." Maybe you'll be a little more...


36:55 Guest: Right. 'Cause we're not after your money. We're not after it. We've already got it.


[chuckle]


36:59 John: Yeah, yeah, that's right.


37:01 Guest: It is here. But we don't want you giving it away to someone who doesn't deserve it or who didn't earn it.


37:06 John: That's right. And just like in your situation, a customer of a bank might see one or two fraudulent transactions during the course of their lifetime of banking, where you're gonna see what? Couple of hundred... [laughter]


37:28 Guest: Yes. At least one a day. At least one a day and that's just in Texarkana. We have branches as far as Nashville to Clarksville. And it happens all of them, see it, used to it, it was a big deal. And with everybody, you would get like a little adrenaline rush, that tellers would because they just caught a fraudulent cheque. But now, it's so ordinary to have a victim. And in most cases, they do listen to us. But there are some that's been, like the sweetheart, they're emotionally involved with these criminals. And it's harder to get through to them.


38:07 John: Yeah. And that's one of the big things out here is because if... You wanna maintain your independence. I know that, and I've talked to enough seniors at this point. I know, that's probably your single biggest issue is you wanna maintain your independence. And if you've got the bank personnel saying, "Look, this is a Sweetheart Scam, you need to stop, you need to back up." And you go forward with it anyway. What's probably gonna end up happening is your family is gonna end up stepping in. And many times, they're gonna overreact. They're gonna go seeking court actions, having you declared legally incompetent. And...


38:49 Guest: That's good, yeah.


38:50 John: Take some advice. So listen, thanks for being on the show.


38:52 Guest: Thank you.


38:53 John: Alright. You've managed to stick around to another edition of Aging Insight. Once again, thanks to all of our sponsors. I don't have enough time to read off all the names but thanks to all of them. Thanks to Red River Credit Union for coming on the show. It's awesome of them. And thanks to all of you all for listening. Of course, Lisa and I will be back in the studio next weekend. So if you got more questions, you can call us then. Otherwise, we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.


Guest = Christian