THE Cambridge Connection - Episode 40

Awareness. Awareness and recognition. Absolutely. I don’t think that enough time in a day could be spent sharing this great milestone. And I have always tried to work with that mantra of continuous improvement.

Introducing today’s guest and topic

And when you recognize things like this that were really, really, again, terrible and we’ve gotten past it, it is worth celebrating again and again and again. Absolutely. So for our consumers, today’s show, we’re going to have Steve Wiseman from Scamicide to talk about credit repair scams. Obviously, there’s so many scams out there with people being desperate these days. It’s a great conversation to have.

In my 20 years of being in the financial credit industry, people have fallen for them forever. So the more awareness we can bring, the better. All right. We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back with Steve Wiseman from Scamicide.

This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. Spring is here and it’s a great time to clean up your debts with a debt management plan from Cambridge Credit Counseling. Reduce your credit card interest rates and lower your monthly payments. Call Cambridge Credit Counseling today. 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.

Guest introduction and background

Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie, where we’re helping you, our friends, families, and listeners navigate financial wellness and empowerment. And it is an honor to introduce our special guest, Stephen Wiseman from Scamicide. Stephen, welcome to The Cambridge Connection. It’s terrific to be with you again.

Before we get into one of the recent articles about credit repair scammers, can you tell our audience a little bit about your background and your profile? Sure. I’m a lawyer, also a college professor at Bentley University, where I teach white-collar crime, hopefully how to defend white-collar crime, not become white-collar criminals. I’m the author of 10 books dealing with scams, identity theft, and also financial planning. com, which is a daily update of the latest scams, identity theft schemes, and cybersecurity threats.

And just this past couple of years, The New York Times ranked Scamicide as one of the three best places for information about coronavirus-related scams. So we keep up on scams, identity theft, because, as you said, they are a perpetual threat. And right now, they’re probably particularly dangerous because whenever the economy is having difficulties, as you said, people get scared, and scammers prey on fear and greed. And there’s plenty of that around. You know what’s so amazing to me, and again, we’ll get into the nitty-gritty.

But this work that you do, you see some of these influencers on YouTube and social media, like the guy Salt Bae that cooks and then throws salt off his elbow, and yet he’s got eight quadrillion followers. And part of having you on the show is to do our best to help spread the word of this great work that you do to try to protect consumers in any way, shape, or form. Because both Tina and I, in this industry, people were getting scammed in 1996. They were getting scammed in 1993. They were getting scammed in 2001, and so on.

So here we are, while you’re bringing this awareness, still people are getting rooked by really bad actors. Well, I think also, especially with the economy the way it is, people are desperate. Absolutely. And they want to believe anything because it’s out of desperation. So let’s talk about this credit repair scam article that you had written.

Credit repair scam tactics

Yeah, there’s been a lot of action by the Federal Trade Commission against various scammers for credit repair. And the idea behind credit repair, our credit reports are incredibly important documents in our lives. Because your credit score and your credit report can really have a big effect on whether you’re going to get a job, whether you’re going to get insurance, whether you’re going to get a loan. All kinds of things are affected by your credit score and your credit report. So during difficult times in particular, people’s scores go down.

And they turn to scammers, because there are a lot of scammers out there who look legit. They may even appear to have government approval in some of the social media or the emails they send. But the bottom line is what they end up doing is making things far worse. And one of the key ways to find out whether one of these scammers is indeed a scammer, there are two things that I always looked at. One is advanced fees for credit repair companies that are operating for a profit are banned by the Credit Repair Organizations Act.

So if you are looking to get some help from someone who says they can guarantee to increase your score by 200 points or whatever, but you have to pay them in advance, you know they’re a scammer. They’re breaking the law. The other thing is there’s a common scam fraud that they do to try and manipulate the credit reports. And that is you’ve got your credit report, it’s keyed to your social security number. What they try and do is have you switch over to a tax ID number.

And this idea of switching to a federal employer tax ID to use instead of... your social security number when applying for credit it’s blatantly illegal you know anyone that tells you that they can get something negative off your credit report uh... is just frankly frankly like you know the negative information if it’s true uh... stays on there for seven years bankruptcies for ten years now that’s not to say there is plenty false or misleading information that may be on there and that uh... you can get uh...

taken off which can improve your your credit score but the big thing is looking at these companies that uh... guarantees they’re going to increase your your credit score charge you ahead of time uh... you gotta be wary you know uh... when i first got into the counseling business uh... what the gimmick was back then was to find a consumer that wanted to apply for something and then what they would do is they would challenge a debt on the credit report and when they go through that process of challenging it they remove the item from the credit report so that that’s the window to apply so that when the lender pulls up the credit report that bad debt or that debt isn’t showing then people get approved in the next thing you know that item comes back on the the credit report and back in the day when technology wasn’t so wonderful there were some times where creditors couldn’t prove that a debt existed and because maybe they were in a file in a courthouse somewhere or now that we have electronic records verification of debt is just really simple now so to even challenge things like that uh...

i think tina we’ve had this conversation you talk to consumers all the time about if the debt is real there’s no fixing it you have to work your way away from the debt get it paid start moving your credit in the right direction you can’t just have a magic wand and just make things disappear well then then there’s also the the credit repair companies that simply write letters to the creditors just to constantly bombard them with letters disputing it and hoping that it goes away it can come back and and that’s what a lot of consumers i don’t think they’re fully aware of they think a miracle happened there’s no miracles yeah you did hit it on the on the head tina and you too gordon because there are some of these uh... really bogus credit repair companies that do just that without any basis they challenge just about everything that may be negative on your credit report and uh... in in so doing they’re trying to uh... to see if they can you know really get something by or uh... find that quick window when they’re growing up in a minute yes yes you know what else these this is a problem that uh...

in the article and i want to just read uh... one of the statements that you have in here uh... in its lawsuit the FTC alleges that the randos and their company illegally charged consumers thousands of dollars for worthless and illegal credit repair services including filing false identity theft reports now tina you have dealt with consumers that have had identity theft uh... compromise unfortunately some of them by their family members right and and what you want to talk about a process that is lengthy you have to basically lock down your credit for applying for anything while you go through investigation and then you’re kind of in the hands of the investigators right so who knows what the time frame is on that to get your credit life back and most people they don’t wanna press charges on their family members right although they probably rethink that you know down the road a little bit uh... so so steve uh...

you know you you brought up an example about how some of these things look real and one of in one of our past conversations together i had talked about the student loan envelope that had the department of education and uh... logo on it so it made the the person feel immediately that it was an official document and i think the point that that i had a customer uh... in the past asked me hey should i respond to this to get my information i’m like no go into your account login is who you are follow that phone number and call the number that’s in your account and that is such good advice because one of my mottos is trust me you can’t trust anyone and you’ll you’ll get something that looks official i teach at bentley university years ago i used to teach uh... in the state prison system and uh... met some interesting people including some old con men who talked in their day it took skill to be a counterfeiter now any fourteen-year-old kid can pull off a logo and make something look really uh...

really good when you’re talking about uh... having an email come that looks like or even a letter that looks like it’s official as i want to bring up uh... something for everybody and this is uh... a touching on what you said in regard to uh... fixing the credit if you become a victim of identity theft the credit reporting agencies and i’m not real fans of how they operate but i will give them a little slack with the hundreds of millions of records that they have to deal with mistakes will be made honest mistakes will be made and so it’s really incumbent upon people to check their credit report regularly and this is something important because there can be mistakes it’ll also help you find if there’s identity theft but the idea is if you do find is something mistaken on there or the evidence of identity theft you want to deal with it before you’re applying for that car loan before you’re applying for that mortgage so it’s the kind of thing that people should regularly do and in fact what the we used to be able to get a uh...

free credit report once a year from each of the three major credit reporting agencies now uh... since the pandemic started and it’s been extended a couple of times uh... you can get a free credit report weekly and uh... this has been extended to the end of uh... two thousand twenty two so i don’t know if you need to necessarily check weekly but it is something that people should do regularly check their credit report to see if there are any mistakes or indications of identity thefts because the sooner you can deal with it the better it will be for you.

Break and podcast reminders

Absolutely i think that what we’ll do is uh... we’ll take a quick break and then we come back on the other side uh... we’ll go over some tips for consumers on things they should be doing and even bringing up how to monitor your credit reports with The Cambridge Connection. This is Gordon Oliver. We’ll be right back.

Well, Tina Marie, here we are already in our mid-thirties. Um, have you checked your license lately? You’re a far cry from being in your mid-thirties. No, no, not me. Our show, The Cambridge Connection.

We’re already more than halfway through our first year of great guests and need-to-know topics. Oh, I thought you were talking about your age. Well, that would take a lot longer than we have in this message, but what only takes a moment to share is that if you miss any of our shows on Saturdays on WHMP, don’t worry. com, click on podcasts, and all of our shows are listed there. Plus, listeners can find us on all the podcast sites when they listen to their favorite podcast.

Well, when I get home, I’m going to listen to my favorite episode. And what’s that? You know, the one with me in it. Ha! Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection.

Inflation, romance, and lottery scams

com, talking about credit repair scammers. Steve, thanks again for joining us. My pleasure. In the scamming con world, how can people get scammed with times of inflation? What we’re seeing in times of inflation is people are looking for primarily good investments.

They’re also looking for all kinds of deals and better ways to get the goods and services that they need. And, you know, quite frankly, when it comes to inflation or anything, the quickest first responders are the scammers. And so they are there with all kinds of investment scams. They’re also there with their websites and online for goods and services that you might need. And a lot of the times when you go on to, you may get a, see on social media or see a website or get an email or a text message from something that is going to get you a great deal.

Perhaps it’s even, you know, one of the things we saw had to do with a lot of the baby formula. So what happens is, how do you know if it’s legit or not? You know, certainly you can take the name of that company and put in and see if it comes, Google it and see if it comes up as a scam. But there are plenty of times that the scammers will, they will pose as companies that are legit companies that you know and trust. So how do you know that website is legit or that email is legit?

com. And this is a company, it’s a service that registers domain names. I did a piece once with NBC and we did this actually live. There was a Walmart website and it looked terrific. A lot of times they’re really prominent.

This one looked really terrific. com, put in the exact domain and found that it was owned by someone in North Korea. Now, chances are, it’s not going to be a legitimate website if it turns up that way. So you’ve got to be skeptical. You got to be really questioning when you get these deals that seem too good to be true.

They generally are just that. Well, on that note, I’m sure you recognize, I have a face for radio, but yet I get all of these emails asking for girls that want to be my boyfriend, right? Are those some areas where if you click on those, you’ll find yourself potentially getting into trouble? Absolutely. You know, we’re laughing at it, but romance scams are one of the biggest scams out there.

Particularly for elderly and not so elderly, really women over 50 in particular, they are hit by these romance scams. Someone immediately falls in love with them and then, bam, they’re being hit up for money. And the thing is, these scammers have a knowledge of psychology that Freud would have envied, and they know how to prey on us. An interesting twist on the romance scam now is not only are they seeking to take money from you, but they’re actually seeing the scammers turn their victims into money mules and therefore criminals. They use their victims to launder funds.

They’re going to say, I’m going to have some money sent to your bank account. You receive that, and then I want you to wire it someplace else. And these people think they’re just helping out their lover who just has some banking issues, but it ends up there becoming an accessory after the fact to some kind of crime. Yeah, I know it just made me think about a consumer I helped recently. I actually was so frustrated with her, I found, because I just couldn’t get through to her.

Stop sending $8,000 overseas, well, he’s my boyfriend, and she had no family. Then she had a point. She says to me, well, how can I trust you? How do I know you’re telling me the right thing? So I think those websites that you were indicating earlier, those are great resources to go to.

com, right? No. You won’t find those. But what you can do is, one of the things is they’re going to send you some pictures, and those photos really look good. So what you want to do is, there are sites like TinEye and others where you can do a search and see where else those photos have turned up.

And when it turns out that the photos you’re getting from an American who’s overseas for some purpose, and it turns out that the photos are those of a modeling agency, you’ve got a pretty good idea that it’s a scam. Another thing is, even the legitimate dating websites, they can’t bet everybody. But when the person asks you to go off that website, that’s when you also want to start thinking that perhaps this is not legit. But you talk about the trust. I mean, one of the big things, particularly with seniors, is lottery scams.

And it’s very hard to win a lottery. It’s impossible to win one that you haven’t entered. But people get called and texted and emailed and told they won the Jamaican lottery, among others, and they end up paying thousands and thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there actually was a guy in Kansas, because it reminded me of what you were saying, his family was saying, stop sending them money. You didn’t win anything.

The guy actually committed suicide and left a note saying, when the money comes in, you’re all going to feel really awful when you see that it was legit. Oh my goodness. That’s just horrible. That’s why, again, it’s almost like they’re psychologists, because you see the ones coming in asking that they have no food for their family. So that pulls on the heartstrings, of course, and then I feel guilty when I don’t respond.

So again, for that matter, the thing to do would be to go find a legitimate place where you can donate some money and help feed a family. You know, even here, they’re always, whatever is appealing to our charitable instincts and wanting to help people, what I’ve seen a lot in the last few months have been scams related to Ukraine. And so people want to help, but a lot of scammers are out there on social media. And there was one on TikTok, and this person was appealing for funds to help them, and you could hear gunfire in the background. If you look closely, the street that they were showing was a street in the UK with all kinds of British license plates.

org. What this will do is, you put in the name of a charity that is soliciting you, and it will tell you two really good things. One, it will tell you if that charity is a scam, but it will also tell you, even the so-called legitimate charity, it’ll let you know how much of what they collect actually goes towards charitable purposes and how much towards their own administrative costs and salaries. That’s important. So you’ve got to really check these things out.

Wrap up tips and closing

All right. So of course, as usual, Tina, the 28 minutes fly by. Steve, before we let you go, can you give a couple of major tips and then let our listeners know how to get in touch with you, how to follow the blog? Yeah. You know, one of the biggest things is, and we were talking today about your credit reports, check your credit report at least once a month.

And if you see something that is inaccurate or appears to be identity theft, you want to follow up with that. But you also want to freeze your credit and freeze your children’s credit. You were talking before about identity theft. and the family. Most of the identity theft of children, which can really create problems for them when they become, say, 18 and are looking for a college loan or a car loan, are caused by family members that are used to stealing the identity of their kids.

But you want to freeze your credit report, freeze your children’s credit report. That is probably the best thing you can do to protect yourself from identity theft. And then when it comes to inflation and investments, particularly in cryptocurrencies these days, never invest in anything unless you really understand what you’re investing in. Absolutely. So, let’s let our listeners know how to find you and how they can follow Scamicide.

Best place to go in Scamicide, it’s absolutely free. com. The bottom of the first page, if you want to subscribe, you’ll get our Scam of the Day. There’s a new one every single day, and we’ve been doing this for, well, about 3,900 days. And I’d imagine you really don’t have to look far, do you?

No. I don’t want to cry, actually. I’m not sure why I’m laughing. I think I want to cry, though. And I know the team over at Cambridge, Tina, is sharing some of the Scamicide blogs as they relate on social media.

So, Steve, keep a lookout for that, too, because the sponsor of the show, Cambridge Credit Counseling, I know they share your work frequently, and we’re doing everything we can and having you on to help our listeners with prosperity, financial wellness, and empowerment, and getting scammed can cause all kinds of financial problems. Great speaking with you, as always. Always a pleasure, Steve. Thank you again. We’re going to take a quick break.

We’ll come back and end the show. This is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. com comes in. com is the brainchild of attorney and Bentley professor Steve Weissman. com provides daily, up-to-date information that you can use to avoid the latest scams, identity theft schemes, and cybersecurity threats.

com was named by the New York Times as one of the best sources for information about scams. com today and subscribe for free to receive a Scam of the Day alert, or check out Steve’s books, Identity Theft Alert and The Truth About Avoiding Scams, because as Steve says, BS means be skeptical. Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie. This show is agnostic, where we are navigating financial wellness and empowerment, talking about all topics that really could lead to having problems financially or, more importantly, having a plan to be financially sound.

It’s free advice. Free advice. With that said, obviously, you have to take control of your ship, so I have this week’s quote. When it comes to your goals, you have two choices, quit or conquer. It’s as simple as that, and if you have no intention of quitting, you must learn how to forcefully and effectively conquer resistance, fear, obstacles, and setbacks.

Gary Ryan Blair. I want to give a huge thank you to our producers, Leah and Lisa. As you see, with Steve and our past guests, we try to bring the greatest experts to this show to give you, our friends, our families, our listeners, information to have a sound financial plan. com, click on podcasts, where you can find all of our past shows. You can also find the show where you listen to your favorite podcasts.

org, or feel free to call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.