The one that I've seen repeated the most was telling folks that they had two or three years or four years of back taxes and that there's a lawsuit that's been issued against them and that someone will be coming to their house to take their house and their car and their license will be revoked and all their personal belongings. Welcome to Keen on Retirement, a show dedicated to helping you thrive before and during your retirement years. If you are looking to grow and protect your wealth and want to know the second half of your life the best half, then listen in as well as the advisor Bill Keen and his host sort through the key issues that you need to know in a lively and candid way. Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Keen on Retirement.
I'm your co-host Steve Sandusky and I'm here with Bill Keen. How are you? Well I'm doing well today Steve, good afternoon. Yes, good afternoon and gosh we are winding down summer now and kind of look back and wonder where it went.
So we're getting ready, school's going to be starting here and so yeah summer's kind of gone fast. I walked one to the bus stop this morning, it's about eight o'clock and I was up there in my suit and eight o'clock Steve it was about 95 degrees and 95 percent humidity I think so. Summer here is still in life and well in Kansas City. I was up in your neck of the woods but I didn't come by your place.
My wife and I were up in Oshkosh at the big air show a few weeks ago. Sorry I didn't come by Steve. Well I know I felt bad about it. You don't like me anymore.
I'll drop in. Don't worry. I don't know that I've shared this with you but when I transitioned into the current airplane that I fly now it was a couple years ago and it's considered a high performance complex aircraft. I looked around the country and I found one of the top if not the top transition training pilots in the country.
His name is Major General Hank Canterbury and Hank was a Thunderbird pilot. He spent many many years in the Air Force and has a lot of time in fighter jets but also a lot of time in beach craft, bananas and barons and I actually had General Canterbury come into town and spend a week with me. We did about 15 hours of flying and we did about 20 hours of ground school. I got to tell you Steve there was times where the General raised his voice a few times as we were flying around his style was he takes it very very seriously and the stakes are high and he's going to get his points across but I'm very grateful for that experience and I had the privilege of running into him at Oshkosh with his son Todd who was a Colonel in the Air Force and was also a Thunderbird pilot and what an opportunity and what an honor to be able to spend some time with them.
I think that's a great story there and gosh he'd probably be a great candidate to be a guest on the podcast. You know it's funny you say that because I was thinking that as well. Well we may have to tone him down a little bit though. Well this is mostly an adult audience.
That's right. We want him to be raising his voice on the podcast. I'll have him sit back from the microphone. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. That'd be fun if you could get him on. You know it would be an absolute honor to have him on and I'll make some calls and we'll see if we can't work that out.
So that'd be great. Sounds great. All right well let's talk about scams and this is not a subject that you know is fun to talk about necessarily but it definitely is an important one because with today's technology we do see more and more people getting scammed whether it's IRS scams whether it's email hacking or phishing and if you're in a work environment if you're still working I'm sure your companies have a lot of policies and procedures to make sure that you don't get hacked in the office but it's also very easy to get hacked while you're at home. So Bill I know you've done a little research in this area and have some experience here as well in terms of some of these scams.
So what are some of the more common ones that you're seeing out there? The first one is this IRS scam that has been going on now for several years. Have you received any calls on this Steve? I've got a voicemail message a couple times on this.
I know I don't recall getting one but I've definitely had you know phishing attempts and that sort of thing. What's happening now is people are getting calls all across the country and they sound very convincing. They're coming off as the IRS and they're even working their caller ID to show internal revenue service. Yeah, now that's a trick in and of itself because that's one of the ways I try not to answer my phone is if I look at the caller ID and it shows like such and such telemarket is like okay that's too obvious.
I think if somebody sees an IRS call man they probably would want to deflect that call as well wouldn't they? Well I let it go to voicemail. That's right. That's right.
That's right. These callers they may demand money or say that you have even a refund due and try to get you to share private information. They may even have some minor information about you possibly an address. The one that I've seen repeated the most was telling folks that they had two or three years or four years of back taxes and that there's a lawsuit that's been issued against them and that someone will be coming to their house to take their house and their car and their license will be revoked and all their personal belongings.
Could you imagine? I mean how scary would that be for anyone actually? We kind of joke about this tongue in cheek because a lot of us are at a point where we think well we would never fall for that. Right we're too smart for that.
Yeah too smart for that and we would never fall for it but these things are pretty convincing and can really scare people and trick people. So this is the concept that they're coming up with is they will be able to get all the charges dropped as long as you will settle up with them on the phone. Oh how nice of them. That's right.
You get to keep your house or license your car or your personal belongings and you won't have to go to jail if you can just give them $3,000 right now. Something to kind of be on the lookout for. The IRS will never they will never call to demand an immediate payment or call about any taxes owed without having first mailed a bill and had some correspondence through mail. And that comes right off the IRS website.
So here's the confusing thing. We used to think that the IRS would never call ever but now what they're saying is we would never call to demand payment without first having mailed you a bill. So it indicates to me that the IRS may call as long as they've sent you a bill. Do you follow that little nuance there?
It's confusing to people. Yep. So if someone calls you and says they're from the IRS and you've never received a bill from them saying that you owe something then maybe you just ask them why don't you rescind the bill. Yes.
Yeah exactly. So you know it's a scam I'm sure we got a phone number here that we need to call to report the scam. Another thing the IRS will never do is demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to question or appeal the amount. So it kind of goes in line with the letter and giving you a chance to come back and make some negotiations or just get further understanding.
One of the things that they'll never do as well is require you to use a specific payment method for back taxes let's say. And what the scammers are doing is they're telling folks to settle up. They've got to use either a personal debit card or do a Western Union, do some kind of a wire. The IRS would never do that.
Finally, the IRS would never threaten to bring in local police or law enforcement groups to have you arrested for not paying. That would never happen. So if someone gets a message on their voicemail, which I actually did, I got a voicemail to this effect and hear any of those things, you know immediately that it's a scam. And then lastly, if you believe that you have some issue or you have taxes that you might owe, you simply call the IRS directly and we can link to that on our show notes.
Okay. I'm trying to bring information to the table that's educational and relevant and pertinent that can help people be successful but then avoid big mistakes. And I just thought, I mean in our episode 20 here that we really should think about alerting people to these scams that are out there because they're real and people fall for them all the time and millions of dollars are lost. So I'm glad that you were agreeable to doing this episode.
It's not that exciting. It's kind of negative, but I still think we need to bring attention to it. Yeah. And as we were talking offline a little bit that there's a lot of value that the folks here at King wealth advisors deliver that goes above and beyond just the investment management piece.
It's things like this. It's alerting people to scammers out there who might be trying to get you out of your money. And there are some very simple remedies that people just are aware of it and are familiar of what to watch out for and how to report problems like this. So let's put those scammers in their place.
I also might say that if anyone has something come up that seems odd or anything actually, make sure they give us a call. We have information and we're able to vet things and kind of help folks work through some of these things to either figure out if it's real or not and then help people get to the right authorities if there's something that's gone awry. Okay. Any other scams you want to talk about out there?
Well, you know, one of them is the Medicare health insurance scams and we work with the we're a retirement based firm and this was a retirement podcast, but there are perpetrators out there that will pose as Medicare representatives to get people to give them their personal information or they will actually provide bogus services for elderly people at makeshift mobile clinics and then use that personal information they provide to build Medicare and pocket the money. And who would ever think that someone would go to that length? I always say that some of these scams you hear about if these people would just put their efforts into something legal, they would probably be doing very well for themselves. Yeah, how true is that?
Exactly. Yeah. Just put that energy towards positive uses and you'll earn money legitimately. There's another one that's the counterfeit drug scams as well on the internet.
So we're finding that seniors are increasingly going to online to find better prices on specialized medications and this scam is growing in popularity a ton in the last 10 years where folks are the danger really is that besides paying money for something that won't help a person's medical condition because truly in some cases the medicine is not the medicine. Victims may purchase unsafe substances that can inflict more harm and then they share that information with other online scammers as well. It's interesting but there's a whole kind of dark pool of this scam world that once you're in it, you just have to be on point because now they share information back and forth. They know that, hey, these people are susceptible.
They fell for once. They might fall for it again or two or three or four times. It's sad. That's a list you do not want to be on.
That's right. Any other ones here? It's almost become a joke. They call it the Nigerian Prince scam.
Oh, yeah. I see those all the time. Right. I see the Prince that he's inherited all this money but he needs to be able to unlock it all and share it with you.
He needs you to wire him $2,500 or some number. Right. Unfortunately, we had an elderly parent of a client of ours who actually went down to Western Union and wired the money. Oh, my goodness.
That opened up the floodgates and finally a Western Union rep after they had wired money several times, the Western Union rep actually shut it down. Another one that I wanted to share along those lines is where someone will call an elderly person and they'll say, hey, this is your grandson or this is your granddaughter and they will wait for the grandparent to say, oh, is this Mary or is this Tommy? And when they say that, the person on the other hand, having had no other information except the phone number will say, yes, this is Tommy. And next thing you know, they're telling, please don't tell a mom and dad, but I'm stuck over here and I don't have rent money and I have a car payment.
This happened with another one of our clients, parents, where there had been multiple wire transfers sent to someone they thought was their grandson. And before it was actually, they figured it out. So I wanted to bring light to some of this because I just think that again, we talked up front, you don't think it could happen to you, but a lot of these things are tricky and they look very real. Yeah.
And I'm glad you're bringing all this up because I think just being aware of it and being on guard, being on alert here that when you do get a phone call that it just remotely sounds a little fishy, then your ears should be perked up after listening to this podcast and pay even closer attention to it. And if it is anywhere close to being sounding fishy, then definitely investigate it further and figure that out and just be aware of it. I think we'll go a long way toward preventing it. We get a lot of questions here at the firm about do we see anything coming into our firm and we have not, we haven't seen anything like this come into our firm.
But the one thing that I will just share with our listeners is just know that instructions cannot be taken by email. And that's my policy at Keenewealth. We will not take instructions by email. We have to talk to you in person.
One of the scams that has been going around is they will break into your email contact list. And this is scary. I had a client that owns a business here in Kansas City and his CFO got an email that said, please wire X amount of money to a certain account to pay a payable. And it came from the co-owner of the firm to the CFO.
And the CFO wired 100,000 based on that email that came from the secondary owner of this firm that looked exactly like his email. And they found out about a week later that that was a scam. Someone had broken into their email system and figured out how to make an email look like it was from one of the owners to the CFO and requested that and they never confirmed it verbally or in person and they're not getting that money back. I mean, it is a real thing.
So if I get an email here at the firm or an even the Keenewealth team, we are all over the phones and talking and making sure that we have that instruction and it's legitimate. We are on high alert for that type of thing over here. I know I've seen a lot of scammy emails from PayPal. Now they were not legitimately coming from PayPal, but they were people impersonating PayPal because I do have a PayPal account.
And so that makes you a target there too. So yeah, there's unfortunately, there are some bad people out there who are trying to take your money. And so we just have to be why alert for those potential situations. Steve, I have something I want to direct our listeners to and you may have seen this, but this will be a great example of what these scams are exactly like.
You know, of course, my friend Scott Hanson of Hanson McLean. Yeah. I'm a government advisor and I'm honored to call him a colleague. I had spent some time with him at the last barons meeting getting to compare notes where they had court order there in Sacramento.
Is that right? Yeah, the Sacramento area. So they've had a radio show for about 20 years and they just do a fantastic job. I actually listened to their podcast of their radio show, Steve.
I get a kick out of it. I love their style. They're fun. They got a call from one of these fraudulent IRS scams and they recorded it.
They called back and recorded the call. Oh, fun. And it was funny because I heard Scott and Pat vantering back and forth like, hey, is it legal to record a call without telling the people? And I think Scott said something like, well, I don't know who's going to sue us.
The IRS scam guy and overseas. I mean, you know, so anyway, I'm sure their employees department said you're fine, but they recorded the call and it's out there on YouTube. So I would love for you to help me link to that or have that embedded in our podcast or our blog. So our listeners can go to that and listen to it and watch it.
One, I think it's entertaining. It is funny, but it's not funny either because a lot of people are falling for it. And I think it gives our listeners an idea of truly what to expect if they get one of these calls. Right.
No, I think that's a good idea. And what you just said right there at the end is we'll give our listeners a good idea of what to expect when someone calls. And I'm imagining that there's probably some bad giveaways on the call as to this really doesn't sound too legitimate. Again, if you're someone and you weren't expecting it and you got these calls, it could be very scary if you weren't prepared.
So yeah, for sure. All right. Well, Bill, anything else that you want to wrap up with here? There's a couple of things.
One is if you have been the victim of one of these scams, if you will, or even so far as to had some identity theft, which we hadn't talked about a lot today, but a lot of these things is kind of one and the same where you get involved in some sort of a scam and in some ways, steal your identity. There's a couple of major tools that you can use. One is called a fraud alert and another is called a security freeze. And I just wanted to bring a little bit of attention to these.
So a fraud alert is a notation placed on a person's credit report that requires potential creditors to verify a borrower's identity before any new credit is issued in their name. Now, a fraud alert doesn't cost anything. There's no real specific rules for how to verify for how these new firms issue credit to verify if a fraud alert is on your account. We're not sure how tight an actual fraud alert is.
A lot of the firms that are creditors want to own money. That's their business. So so by contrast, a security freeze is much deeper. It's called a credit freeze also, and that prevents potential creditors from even viewing a credit report.
So this means no one, not even you can open a new line of credit in your name unless the freeze is lifted. So it's a little deeper and a little more ongoing. It does cost about $30 or so to have those set up depending on the states of residence. Well, then how do you undo the security freeze if you want to do it?
Permanently following a security freeze can be pretty involved. So consumers must contact each of the three bureaus to request an end to the freeze. It's a nominal fee, maybe $10 or so to provide and then provide a personal identification number that they had received when they first initiated the freeze. So it's a little more in depth, but the information that I have says that you can get that freeze lifted within a week or so.
If you think you're going to be applying for credit, it's really kind of a double-edged sword. If you've got somebody out there and stolen your identity and they're making charges on your account, so you definitely want to stop that and get a handle on it. But again, if you needed to borrow money and you have a freeze on your credit, you're kind of in back to a corner, aren't you? Yeah.
So we're in some remote place in Florida. And fortunately, our credit card company has been really quick to call us or send us an email and say, hey, please verify these transactions. And we've been able to shut it down pretty quickly. But we had one here just in the probably past nine months where they racked up dozens of charges within like a 24 or 48 hour period.
And it was just a real hassle. The credit company was good about it, but it was just a hassle to make sure that they reversed every single charge and they didn't the first time. And then I had to double check it again and call them again. And so it just was a series of phone calls that none of us have time for, but we got to do so.
But now they've got these chips in the credit cards. Yes. And I was at a baseball game last night. I think I mentioned that earlier.
And so I went to one of the food stands to get my food and went down at my seat there. And about 15 minutes later, one of my friends comes with his food and sits down and he says, man, he says these chips in these credit cards, they delay card transaction because apparently it takes longer with the chip transaction than before when you just used to do the swipe. So apparently this verification process with the chip takes longer than the old swipe. So he was somewhat jokingly saying that these new credit cards that have tighter security are creating longer food lines at the ballpark.
Oh, no. A byproduct of, I guess, technology. Yeah, not in 10 consequences, but I'm sure it's a small price to pay for greater security. These aren't fun things to talk about or consider or go through, but I do think that being proactive and thinking ahead is way better than being reactive.
And once it's happened, having to scramble and come up with ideas. And again, we don't have control over it. If somebody gets a card number and you start seeing charges coming through, you have to deal with it. But I do think it's good that we take the time to talk about it because, hey, it's financial.
Are we talking about the bond market or the stock market or inflation or interest rates today? We do that a lot on our podcast. But today, you know, this is focused around these issues that's every bit as financial as anything else that we might be talking about. You know it, definitely.
So another great show here, Bill, and appreciate all the wisdom and research that you do here to help bring some of these issues to light. And we'll look forward to the next episode. OK, Steve, thanks much. I always enjoy our episodes.
All right, thanks, Bell. Take care. The opinions expressed in this podcast are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry.
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