Scam Squad

We have been seeing an increase in tax return theft where the crooks steal your identity to file early in your name and steal your tax return money before you probably have a chance to file your return. Learn how to prevent this.

Crooks are always looking to make friends with goodhearted, innocent people so that they can trick them into being a money mule who will unknowingly launder thousands of dollars of illegally obtained money for them. Learn how to avoid being tricked into being used by crooks who need to launder their illegal money.

Well selected and trained scammers operating out of India were arrested for running a phony Social Security office scam. The scammers were selected and trained to have little or no foreign accents and called threatening prosecution unless you pay out up to $3,400 to fix the problem.

Beware of anything to do with receiving packages from the Ukraine on behalf of a friend or relative or anyone. Since US involvement in overthrowing the democratically elected government in Ukraine and replacing it with a facist neo-nazi regime, you cannot trust anyone who has anything to do with Ukraine. Be very suspicious of anything Ukrainian or anything from Ukraine. Don't get involved, it is very dangerous.

While Vicki is on vacation, Patti and Laurel discuss talk online scams that happen while you are paying onlline. There are many fake websites out there that have url names which are similar to real businesses, but people accidentally misspell the url slightly and are sometimes fooled into thinking the fake business they are on is real and thus give out personal information. When their package doesn't arrive, they then discover they misspelled the business url and got scammed into giving out their credit card information to crooks that plundered their accounts.

What are the risks and safeguards when we depend on family, friends, and others to help us manage our money as we become weaker, more forgetful, and frail. Laurel Sykes, Vice President of Montecito Bank and Trust tells hosts Patti Teel and Vicki Johnson all about it in this week's episode of Scam Squad.

Many modern families do not visit their elderly relatives as often as they would like or should in order to see if they are being treated well by their caretakers. With massive budget cuts and deregulation, corporate greed and computer automation, elder abuse is rapidly rising as more and more elderly relatives become isolated and forgotten about except for the quick drop-by during the Holiday Season. Vicki and Patti have a huge list of big red flags to look for when dropping by to visit elderly relatives.

The Phony Debt Collector Scam has been hitting us hard the past few weeks. Crooks will call and claim that you owe money for all kinds of things. and then threaten to wreck your credit standing and even threaten to have the police put you in jail. Patti and Vicki tell us how to know real debt collectors from fraudulent ones and give out phone numbers of agencies that fight against scams like this.

Beware of people who approach you in parking lots that offer to fix the dents in your car right there in the parking lot for a cut rate price. Almost all of them are cons and scammers that will quote you a low price, but will find ways and excuses for jacking the price up really high. When they're done, changes are they fixed more dents that were agreed upon and will insist that you pay a small fortune for the work they did. They will also often say that you had agreed to pay a much higher price that you really did. When you complain, they become very aggressive and threatening and always pick people they know they can beat up if you don't agree to pay them what they are now demanding. Listen to our elderly guest who went through a very, very scary ordeal with one of these scumbag cons that extorted her out of hundreds of dollars.

The Grandparents Scam is an old scam that just keeps hanging on, mostly because so many of us post a lot of information about us and often our whole families on social media sites such as Facebook. This information is used by crooks in order to be so successful at pulling off the old Grandparents Scam again and again. Find out how crooks take information off your Facebook and other social media sites in order to easily con your family members into losing their entire life's savings.