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Identity Theft-NOVA-DC Public Safety Radio

June 13, 2012 by

Welcome to “DC Public Safety” – Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system. We currently average 90,000 page views a month.

The portal site for “DC Public Safety” is http://media.csosa.gov.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2012/05/identity-theft-nova-dc-public-safety-radio/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety.  I’m your host, Leonard Sipes.  Our program today, ladies and gentlemen, identity theft and scams, and back by popular demand, Will Marling the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, www.trynova.org, and Denise Richardson, she is a consumer advocate and an ID theft education specialist.  She is at www.givemebackmycredit.org, and to Denise and to Will, welcome back to DC Public Safety.

Will Marling:  Thank you Leonard.  Good to be with you.

Denise Richardson:  Thank you Len.

Len Sipes:  Well, it’s always a lot of fun.  I mean I was laughing hard right before I hit the record button because we have such a good time because I’m amazed all the time as to the new things both of you come up with in terms of what’s happening with identify theft, what’s happening with computer-related  theft, what’s happening with fraud.  But—well, before getting into all that, where are we with the constitutional amendment?  At the last program, we were talking about a federal constitutional amendment regarding victim’s rights and set the stage for that most of the states in the United States do have a constitutional amendment protecting the rights of victims and now what we’re doing is going for a federal constitutional amendment, correct?

Will Marling:  That’s right.  Thirty-three of 50 states in our United States have constitutional amendments in the state constitutions.  There’s a lot of story and history and research behind all this, but we know now’s the time to have a thorough and consistent constitutional amendment for victims.  Twenty three rights for the accused in our United States Constitution, of course, appropriate to that need, but zero for victims of crime and so we see the need to change that.

Len Sipes:  Well, it’s—what do you think the odds are of actually getting it through?  I mean any constitutional amendment, if anybody knows anything about constitutional history; they know that amendments don’t come easy.  It sometimes takes a long time to get a constitutional amendment through the United States Constitution.  What are the odds of this actually happening?

Will Marling:  Odds are high.  I’ll tell you why.  First of all, we’ve been working on this, not just for months, but 20 years or more and this has made its run on numerous occasions and has not made it for different reasons, but now is the time, and I’ll tell you why.  First of all, the country needs this.  We need a social change perspective about the needs and rights of victims.  Secondly, we’re in a unique period where the change is afoot.  We’re going into a big election year.

Len Sipes:  Yes, we are.

Will Marling:  And as well, I mean most legislatures aren’t gonna stand against victim’s rights.  They know intuitively that’s the right thing—

Len Sipes:  Especially during an election year.

Will Marling:  Yeah, and so, but there—we believe they’re gonna stand with this.  It’s really building the momentum and making the case, which is appropriate for legislators to understand that this is—the amendment reads well.  It reads like a constitutional should and it reflects the constitutional rights that people inherently think should be there.  I mean, I use this example, if I might, just historically, most people knew that slavery was wrong.  They just knew it was wrong, and yet we had to have a constitutional change for rule of law and will firm what every—but what most people already knew.  Even people involved in it knew that it was wrong—same thing with voting.  I mean, women were not given the right to vote until not that long ago.  We all inherently knew that women should vote, but we needed to change the constitution.  People in the United States know inherently that victims should have rights, and that’s why we simply need to inculcate that in the United States Constitution as with many other social needs and social issues and rights and so forth.

Len Sipes:  Ladies and gentlemen, the National Organization for Victim Assistance is one of the oldest and one of the most respected organizations in the United States in terms of victim assistance.  They’ve been at this for how many years Will?

Will Marling:  Since 1975.

Len Sipes:  Since 1975.  And as member of the criminal justice system, when you get that call from, you know, somebody from the National Organization for Victim Assistance it’s like, oh my heavens, what did we do or what did we not do.  So you all have the clout.  You all have the reputation.  In fact, your reputation is so good you’re now training everybody in the Department of Defense certifying their victim assistance people.

Will Marling:  Well, that’s so kind of you Len.

Len Sipes:  No, it’s true.  It’s true.  I just wanna make sure that everybody understands the prestige of a National Organization for Victim Assistance.  You all have done fantastic work.  And again, for the curious, because most people associate your organization with victims of rape and robbery and other violent crimes, you got involved in this issue of identity theft because of why?

Will Marling:  We got involved because we were starting to get calls for assistance, we have a toll-free victim assistance line, and we started to get these calls, and we weren’t really sure what to do with them historically; violent crime was our particular area of expertise, and we realized, now wait a minute.  There’s something going on here and, of course, we got involved and said, let’s do something about it.  Have—work to focus on remediation, victim assistance, but it’s also opened our eyes that identity theft, and the cyber issues that we’re focusing on actually touch many other crime victimization areas like domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking.  These electronic tools can become electronic weapons much like anything else.

Len Sipes:  It’s all intertwined.

Will Marling:  It’s all intertwined, yep.

Len Sipes:  And give me the example that you were talking about before I hit the record button.  I find this astounding that you were talking to a grandmother whose supposed son called her.  This isn’t done via e-mail; it’s not done via a letter, but they actually called the grandmother basically saying, hi.  It’s me.  It’s Chris, and I’m down here, and I’ve got into a jam, and I need for you to send me $500, and they got all the information they needed to make the story credible off of a Facebook page.

Will Marling:  That’s exactly right.  This is a common scenario.  Somebody gets a call.  They purport to be a relative, like a grandchild, they speak English articulately and so the thresholds for questioning that can be lowered as the person says, okay, this might be my grandchild and because the child is in need or purports to be in need, that, of course—that concern also can lower that questioning, that discernment.  Because if your grandchild is in trouble, and they’re only asking for 500 bucks to get out of a—to deal with a speeding ticket that they achieved in Canada, then you’re more likely to say, well, okay it’s, you know, it’s—I want to help my grandchild.

Len Sipes:  And if you go on the Facebook page, and if you’re getting all this information, you know, and you know that they prefer to be called by their grandkids, grandmommy, and grandmommy, look, you know, I really, you know, need you, you know, I know you’re all the way down there in Baltimore, but I need for you—I mean, you know, they can throw in information that makes it—makes the call come alive.

Will Marling:  Well, absolutely.  And here’s the thing.  Thirty-three percent, according to the recent research from Javelin, 33%—I think it’s 31 actually—31% of people put their full year and birthday on there.  So you know exactly how old somebody is.  It’s not just the—so there’s a test for an older generation person who’s probably gonna have grandchildren and then if you have all this other information, you can add those things today simply to become seemingly more credible.

Len Sipes:  Yep, looking forward to seeing you on your birthday in July.

Will Marling:  Yeah, exactly.

Len Sipes:  Yep.

Will Marling:  Yeah.

Len Sipes:  Amazing.  Denise Richardson, consumer advocate ID theft, education specialist, Denise we’ve really enjoyed in the audience, really enjoyed your participation the last time.  It was really interesting.  You come up with some of the most interesting things.  Give me your perspective as to what Will just had to say.  You know it’s startling to me.  I know about e-mail frauds.  I know about phishing schemes.  I know about letter—kind of contacts by letter, but it takes a tremendous amount of gull to pick up the phone and call somebody.

Denise Richardson:  It does and as Will was saying, you know identity theft takes many different forms, and they can—these bad guys have gotten very good at what they do and I always come at it from the perspective of my own life experiences, the consumers that come to me and tell me their stories, the consumers that share their stories on my blog, and though they always seem amazed that they had heard of this latest scam, I continue to be amazed at how little information is out there until someone has already been tripped up by it and fallen victim to it.  My own mom—I share my own life experiences too because I encourage other people to, but I shared not too long ago a situation that happened to my mom several weeks ago where her first thing she said to me when I answered the phone was you’re not going to like this.  And I thought, oh know.  And she proceeded to tell me that, you know, she had started seeing a new doctor, and she lives, you know, in a different state, and she started seeing a new doctor and so, when she got a call from someone asking for her information, in her mind, because she’s an elderly senior, she thought it was Medicare.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Denise Richardson:  And so, when she gave little bits of information, oh, are you calling about my Medicare bill, of course, they’re gonna go along with what she gives them, and she ended up giving them her social security number and other information, which, of course, immediately I knew why she said I wasn’t gonna like it.  But one of the things I found out in this particular telemarketing scam, it led me to learn something that came—you know when you think you see it all—my mom was particularly stressed out by this and scared, rightfully so, that she did this.

She was upset with herself, but in order to try to correct it quickly it made her more panicked and there’s no easy way to contact the Credit Bureau and incidentally you know, notify them, put a fraud alert on.  Because if you’ve ever tried, you get these automated, you know, most places now you get these long menus that you call and that just intimidated her and made her more upset, so there needs to be some sort of way that, especially seniors or even, you know, more challenged vulnerable people in our communities, our families, have a way to access someplace quickly to notify that you’ve become a victim.

Len Sipes:  Okay, let’s just get into prevention measures.  We go into a thousand different directions every time we talk—because I want to get back to this concept of the fact that people are calling, and you take a look at your caller ID, and it shows a local number, which gives it credibility.  In one case, it gives the identification of the local police department who is calling you to say that you have unpaid parking tickets, and then you’re looking at your caller ID, and it says, well, you know, Baltimore Police Department and you assume that this is not fraudulent, but first—I mean let’s go back.  Bottom line is don’t give out any information over the phone period.  They’re not gonna call you.  Reputable organizations are not going to call you.  Is that the first rule?

Denise Richardson:  Absolutely.  And do not trust your caller ID.  The caller ID—there’s a term—it’s being coined spoofing.  They can spoof your caller ID and cause the display to be any entity they want.  They could be calling from another country, and it could say the name of a bank, a credit union, or an electric company.

Len Sipes:  So, just because it comes up as a legitimate, excuse me, as a legitimate identifier on your caller ID, does not mean it’s legitimate.  The bottom line is don’t give out information over the phone.  If your bank calls you, you say thank you very much, what is your name, what is your telephone number, and then you go and look up a number that you know is a correct number—that there is no question that it’s a correct number and then you call them.

Denise Richardson:  Sure, check on your latest billing statements.  You can look it up in the phone book, but call the number that you know is legitimate, and it really is someone calling from your bank or from some institution that you do business with and you tell them, you know, I’m a little leery of identity theft, I’d like to call you back.  They’re going to say certainly, on that extension 1324.  You can go look up the number and then when you get that specific legitimate company—

Len Sipes:  But don’t call them back at that number though.

Denise Richardson:  No, no.  Never call them back at the number that you receive in an e-mail, text, or voice mail or on the phone.  Look up the number first.

Len Sipes:  Will, was it you or Denise, who said that there really was a scam where supposedly the police department called about unpaid parking tickets, and the name of the police department popped up on the caller ID?

Will Marling:  Yep, yep.  We have those cases.  Indeed, yeah.

Len Sipes:  My God, that’s so wrong on so many levels and could be so disastrous to the well-being of human beings.  What if you got a call from the local police department saying, come out now and come down to the station, we need to talk about something, and if I saw the local police department up on my phone I’d probably do it.  I mean I keep saying to myself, I’ve been involved in the criminal-justice  system for over 40 years, and you keep telling me stuff that even I would buy into, and I don’t trust anybody.

Will Marling:  Right.  Well, the issue here that Denise is making—the point that she is making, as well as I make, is that the basic issue of paying attention.  Just paying attention and asking some questions on the very front end is completely appropriate.  For credible legitimate people calling, which seems to become rarer and rarer, they’re gonna be willing to cooperate.  But for others, you know, they’re gonna try to talk you into some quick decision, get information out of you as quickly as possible because they might be nearby, but to be honest, they might be in another country, and you don’t know where they are.

Len Sipes:  Mm-hmm.

Will Marling:  I mean it can get really complicated that way.

Len Sipes:  Mm-hmm.  All right—

Denise Richardson:  They’re very tricky at what they do and make sure when you hang up the phone with them that you hang up and pick the phone back up and hear your dial tone because there’s been instances where they have stayed on the line, and someone picks up the phone, and you’re dialing your number, but you really still have the scammer on the other end of the phone.

Len Sipes:  Oh, this is too amazing.  We’re half way through the program, ladies and gentlemen.  Are we all frightened now?  We’re half way through the program with—

Denise Richardson:  And I’m glad you said that Len, because really, and I know Will feels the same way—these are not stories.  These are factual things that we hear from people who contact us, but in order for us to share this information, some people may say well, you’re scaring us, but really the only way you can get this information out there is—

Len Sipes:  This is vital information.  People need to hear this.

Denise Richardson:  And often times they don’t understand it with just, you know, shred your documents or whatever.  They need to hear about the types of scams that come across where they could easily fall for them.  Like you said, you’re a very intelligent man.  You’ve been in the justice system and you—there’re so savvy that they could even trick you.

Len Sipes:  It would fool me, and that’s the thing that scares me.  All right, let me reintroduce both of you.  Ladies and gentlemen, more than half way through the program, Will Marling the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, www.trynova.org.  Denise Richardson, she is a consumer advocate and an ID theft education specialist, www.givemebackmycredit.org.  Both of those websites will be in the show notes.  All right, where do we go to from here?  What’s new on the identity theft and fraud horizon Denise?

Denise Richardson:  Well, the types and varying trends.  A lot of what I’m seeing and hearing—you know, we—we’re telling people don’t give your information to strangers, don’t give your information to people who call you, e-mail you, or come door-to-door, but you also need to be aware that whatever information you are giving, sometimes to trusted individuals, does not mean that you’re immune from an identity theft.  In a lot of situations lately, especially where I live in Florida which is number one on the list always for all sorts of fraud unfortunately, and I think it can be somewhat attributed to if you are a criminal do you want to live in, you know, in a populated where—

Len Sipes:  Do you like snow or do you not like snow.

Denise Richardson:  Exactly, exactly.  So we’re accustomed to all sorts of scams and frauds, but we’re number one because we still are gonna fall for it, but not only that.  You go into hospitals.  You give your information to hospital employees.  Think of all the places you give your information to trusted individuals, whether they’re bank tellers, whether they work in a government office.  Each of those—

Len Sipes:  Your cable company.

Denise Richardson:  Exactly.  Each of those places—I could point you to actual arrests of rouge employees in those particular businesses who have sold the business or the organization’s information.

Len Sipes:  How do you stop that?  All right, I mean I—everything else falls under the umbrella of do not reactively give information to anybody under any circumstances regardless as to how credible they seem.  Thank the person, stop the e-mail, stop the phone call, put down the letter, and contact that entity through a number that you know is valid.  That’s the number-one rule.  So in terms of those people who legitimately get our information, how do you stop that?

Denise Richardson:  Well, you know, and Will may have a different view on this, but my view is you can’t stop that because you never know when any company out there is gonna have a data breach or how—or if there’s gonna be an insider who is approached by an ID theft ring who offers you money to give them information, which has just been in the news a lot down here where there was hospital employees, or you know a lot of our police and fire had their social security numbers sold by insiders, rogue employees.

Len Sipes:  Oh, that’s terrible.

Denise Richardson:  Yeah.  You cannot stop it, but what you can be is aware and know what to look for.  Check your bank statements.  Check your credit reports, you know, do what you can.  I always say, you know, living here in Florida I can’t stop a hurricane from coming.  I certainly can’t control Mother Nature, but what I do is I get batteries, and I make sure come hurricane season I have all the supplies and you know, things that I need to lessen the impact.

[Len Sipes:  All right, so the bottom line is check our statements, check your credit card statement, check your bank statement, check all statements and make sure that the information on there is accurate.

Denise Richardson:  Correct.  And if you see any red flags, you know, then you can know, you know, instinctively in advance.  You’re more prepared, and I guess that’s the message.  Just don’t put your guard down.  I’m not saying you have to live paranoid, but live wise.  You know, just pay attention to your bank accounts and your credit reports and do what you can to minimize the impact if it does hit you.

Len Sipes:  Will, this harkens back decades ago when I was in the crime prevention business for the Department of Justice’s Clearinghouse in the National Crime Prevention Council.  I mean it is—what we said back then is use common sense in terms of where you go, how you dressed, what your environment is.  It’s pretty much incumbent upon you to keep yourself from being victimized, so there was some responsibility for you know, not walking down the street as I did when I—I remember working for the National Crime Prevention Council, and I remember getting money from somebody, and I remember walking through Fell’s Point in Baltimore City, which had a crime problem, and I was counting money.  And then I stopped dead in the street going I’ve just did exactly what I’ve told thousands of people not to do.

Will Marling:  Well, yeah true.  You know we also focus on the fact that crime victimization—the blame rests with the perpetrator period—period.  I mean no woman gets blamed for how she dressed.

Len Sipes:  Right.

Will Marling:  No businessman gets blamed for how he’s dressed.

Len Sipes:  Agreed.

Will Marling:  There’s discretions.  Of course, there’s wisdom driving in appropriate places, but that’s part of the challenge with this.  In reality, consumers need to be educated on the front end to make a difference here.  Let me give you a very simple principle as we move into, you know, ever increasing, ever evolving, technological tools turned to weapons here and that is the concept of if it’s convenient for you, in terms of commerce, it’s probably as convenient for a thief.  For example, we’re getting into wireless transmissions, transactions with our phones.  Is your phone built for that?  Let me give you a simple analogy.  We used to have the Hummers that were military grade.  And then we came out with this commercial-grade Hummer.

Len Sipes:  Mm-hmm.

Will Marling:  Let me ask, is your phone a military-grade piece of equipment or commercial-grade piece of equipment?

Len Sipes:  You can put—I heard on a technical podcast the other day that you can put key logging software on a cell phone, which means—

Will Marling:  Your phone can be compromised like a computer, just as easily, and it with later effect.

Len Sipes:  Yes.  Your phone is a computer, and it’s fairly easily compromised.

Will Marling:  It’s more than a computer because it’s got a GPS in it that your computer doesn’t care to have.  It’s got a camera in it, which many computers do have.  It, of course, has microphones.  It has recording devices.  So, anybody who can compromise that phone has actually access to everything that phone can do.

Len Sipes:  And it shows your location if you activate the GPS device.

Will Marling:  Yeah, well, and they listen to your phone calls.  They can read every text.

Len Sipes:  So what is the lesson?  What is the lesson in all of this?  So if they can do that, is it not to use your cell phone for banking?

Will Marling:  Well, my recommendation is to think about whether the convenience really is that necessary.  If we think about banking, do—when you build a bank—you build a bank, you start with the vault, and then you build the building around it.  I’m not gonna convert my house into a bank, but basically that’s what we’re doing with cell phones.  So when you think, oh, this is a really cool option, the question is, do you really want to have that option on your phone for a lot of different reasons.  First of all, it could be intercepted.  The phone could be compromised, lost, and/or stolen, so there are mechanisms to help secure phones if it’s been stolen and this kind of thing, but the question is, do you really need to do all of those things on your phone?  Do you need a bank on your phone?  I don’t, and I won’t.  I refuse to.

Len Sipes:  No, no.  I—no, no I hear you loud and clear.  Or what about your home computer?

Will Marling:  Well, you know, again that’s at least internal and while, you know, there are house—there are robberies that involve just people taking the computer cause they know it’s gold—it’s, you know, the value in it, at least you can secure your computer, and people do transactions, but those can be done safely, once again, but your phone is mobile.  And it’s connected to you, and it is out there and I just have serious concerns personally about where this can go.  Again, a lot of that could be forwarded simply by our appropriate aware use of the tools that we have.

Len Sipes:  And also a good long complicated passcode to get into your own computer.  Not the simple things that we use on a day-to-day basis.

Will Marling:  Well, yeah and the same thing with our phone.  Anything that gives you an opportunity for a passcode, the deal is use it ‘cause there’s a reason that passcode was put there, as the option was there.  People find it inconvenient to type in their passcodes on their phone, but you know, do it.  It’s a nominal inconvenience, one again, for an extra level, an extra layer of security.

Len Sipes:  Most people don’t use the passcode for the phone.  Most people don’t even know they have a passode for the phone.

Will Marling:  Yeah, it’s too bad too because again, you’re just a low-hanging fruit.  You know that phrase.  And we just tell people constantly well, we know this is out there, and you can’t control what other people do, like Denise said, with our information, but let’s control what we ourselves do with it and let’s raise our fruit.  At least raise it up a hair.

Len Sipes:  Denise, we only have four minutes left in the program, and every time I do this program I just want to keep going and going and going because we never do cover all the ground that we said that we were going to cover.  All right, so give me—so we did say last time that in terms of places to contact, it would be National Organization for Victim Assistance at www.trynova.org, your own website, www.givemebackmycredit.org, the Federal Trade Commission, ftc.gov, for additional information and also, ladies and gentlemen, the FBI puts out a lot of information on fraud, and you should feel free to contact www.fbi.gov and look at, especially, their computer crime related sections.  They have a lot of good consumer tips.  Anything else in terms of sources of information?

Denise Richardson:  Well, definitely.  There’s a Federal Trade Commission identity theft hotline, especially for, you know, people who want to just make a call and report any type of scam, and you can call 1-877-438—

Len Sipes:  877-438—

Denise Richardson:  4338.

Len Sipes:  4338.

Denise Richardson:  Exactly, and you know I just want to back Will up on what he just said as far as definitely, you know, control what happens in your life by taking care of what you can do.  It’s just like I don’t want to scare anybody, I just want to raise awareness and—

Len Sipes:  Oh, scare us.  We have to be scared.  We have to.

Denise Richardson:  We can’t stop driving on highways.  We’re—an accident is just around the corner for each of us, but it’s not gonna stop us from getting in our vehicles, and that’s what we need to realize.  We can enjoy these phones.  We can enjoy our computers.  We can—not stop us, but just like when you get a new car.  What you do?  You put your seatbelt on, you know.  That’s what you need to do if you look at it that way.  Contact security experts to figure out if your computer and your access points are safe—same with cell phones.  And spend a little time, I would say, on the web looking at and being up to date on these latest types of scams that we barely touched the surface of today, but at least it helps to have that awareness.

Len Sipes:  Well, don’t react to anything.  Contact the source independently through a number on the computer or through the Yellow Pages, even your local police department now-a-days, and it sounds like it’s a matter of passcodes and the use of the passcodes and it sounds like it’s a matter of checking up your bank statements and your credit card statements.  It sounds like those are the three principal things that came out of this quick conversation today.

Denise Richardson:  Those are great starting points, absolutely.

Len Sipes:  But for additional information contact www.givemebackmycredit.org, or National Organization for Victim Assistance, or I’m gonna give out that number again for the Federal Trade Commission, 1-877-438-4338, 1-877-438-4338—anything real quick Denise, Will?

Denise Richardson:  Talk to your kids.  Talk to your kids who are on all these social-networking sites, Facebook, and let them—and talk to your—you know, your family, seniors you know.  I say spread awareness.  Let them know what type of risks that are out there, so they are less likely to fall for these telephone scams or door-to-door.

Len Sipes:  Okay, got it.  Denise you’ve got the final word.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety.  We’ve dealt with the issue of identity theft and scams today.  Will Marling, Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, www.trynova.org, Denise Richardson, consumer advocate and ID theft education specialist, www.givemebackmycredit.org.  Ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate all the interaction that you provide us in terms of e-mails and phone calls, and guidance in terms of what you like and what you don’t like and, especially, in terms of new programs, and I want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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Identity Theft-NOVA-DC Public Safety

June 13, 2012 by

Welcome to “DC Public Safety” – Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system. We currently average 90,000 page views a month.

The portal site for “DC Public Safety” is http://media.csosa.gov.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2012/03/identity-theft-nova-dc-public-safety/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety.  I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today’s program is about identity theft, and back at our microphones, Will Marling, the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, www.trynova.org.  Will’s been at our microphones before, and it’s always a pleasure to have him back. With Will today is Denise Richardson.  She is a consumer advocate, ID theft and education specialist, and, again, that’s going to be the meaning of the show. To Will and to Denise, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Will Marling:  Hey, thanks, Len.

Denise Richardson:  Yes, thank you for having us.

Len Sipes:  Now, Denise bear with me for a second.  Will and I were talking before the show about a couple things.  Number one, Victim’s Rights Week is coming up in April, and I certainly do want to mention that.  Also, Will, the National Organization for Victim’s Assistant that has been around since 1975.  You now have been given the task of certifying all victims’ advocates within the Department of Defense, correct?

Will Marling:  That’s right.  Yeah, just a recent decision by the Department of Defense is for us to become the secretariat to certify their victim advocate.  So we’re extremely honored, I have to say.

Len Sipes:  That is wonderful.  That is wonderful and that’s a huge undertaking.

Will Marling:  Well, it is.  It’s an important one.  It’s a demonstration of the military’s commitment to victim assistance, and it’s also their recognition of I think the important work that this organization has done historically as well as today.

Len Sipes:  Now you guys have been certifying victim’s rights specialist for quite some time.

Will Marling:  We have.  The National Organization for Victim Assistance is the secretariat for the National Advocate Credentialing Program.  It started in 2003.  So that’s a – it’s similar – it’s credentialing certification.  It’s all kind of — they look very similar but we provide a credential.  We’re the secretariat for that National Allied Professional Credential, and of course we’re honored to be part of that as well.

Len Sipes:  Oh, I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s an immense undertaking.  But I can’t say that this is immense and it’s not that I’m not excited about that but the Federal Constitutional Victim’s Rights Amendment is back on the radar screen, and I find that to be wonderful.  I mean one of the things that the public needs to know is that there are a lot of State Constitutional Amendments for victim’s rights.  36?  Correct?

Will Marling:  33 I think technically.

Len Sipes:  33.

Will Marling:  Three fifths of our nation’s states, that’s right, have it in their constitution.

Len Sipes:  Now, but we tried a federal constitutional amendment, victims’ rights amendment before but it lost just by a couple votes, right?

Will Marling:  Well, yeah, the attempt was to start with the Senate, and it was just two votes shy of cloister in the Senate, and of course that stopped it.  But we think the momentum, the timing, there’s so many things that have come together today, right now, for a victims’ rights amendment, you know, a 28th amendment to the United States Constitution to affirm victim’s rights.  And we’re — to be honest, we think it serves the nation to do this.

Len Sipes:  Well, it’s something certainly the hope for it is certainly something to pray for because you know the fact of victims within the criminal justice system – you know, I’ve been around in the system for 42 years.  We haven’t done the best of jobs in terms of taking care of victims.

Will Marling: Well, yeah, that’s right. I mean, I many times say the system is designed to get the results that it gets.  People just don’t realize that many times it works the way it’s actually designed.  So when you think about redesigning it, that’s one dimension.  Sometimes it truly doesn’t function meaningfully.  And at the end of the day, who’s the biggest stakeholder in this?  It really is the victims.  There are others impacted including communities.  But certainly the victims need to have that voice, and we believe a constitutional amendment in the United States Constitution would provide that social grounding as well as the legal framework for affirming socially the needs of crime victims and the consistent service that they deserve at every level.

Len Sipes:  You know I’ve talked to a variety of people who have been in the criminal justice system who victim’s advocacy was something that they were partial to.  They certainly were not against it.  But it was not first on their radar screen until they or a family member became a victim of crime.  When they walked through the experience directly as a victim or being very close to somebody who was a victim of crime, their attitudes changed remarkably.

Will Marling:  Absolutely.  I mean, it’s the doctor becoming the patient.

Len Sipes:  Yes, that’s exactly right.  That’s exactly right.  All right, but the program today is about undoubtedly theft. It’s one of the things that always is on my mind.  It is always on the mind of people throughout the country.  And I do want to reintroduce Denise Richardson.  She’s a long time consumer advocate and author of “Give Me Back My Credit!”  The victim of identity theft herself, Richardson set out to research the effects of this kind of theft and became a certified identity theft management specialist and trained and certified by the National Institute of Fraud and Risk Management.  Denise, this concept of identity theft, who within this country does identity theft not touch?  You can talk about burglary.  You can talk about sexual assault.  You can talk about violence.  You can talk about theft.  And that affects individual pieces of the population.  Identity theft, that issue belongs to everybody in the country.

Denise Richardson:  It belongs to everyone in our country, and it effects everyone in the world, because, unfortunately, as victims of this crime in this country, a lot of it can come from outside the country, and it makes it really tough on law enforcement to be able to even have the resources or ability to hold them accountable, to stop it.  So it allows the crime to just explode and grow in all sorts of ways.  From across the country, in the country and it hits everyone.  And one thing I’d like to say is congrats, Will, on all of your efforts because NOVA is one of the organizations that stepped out to realize that identity theft is a traumatic event.  And it can leave scars, whether they’re visible scars or not, and those scars can serve as a reminder of the pain that can last a lifetime.  If somebody has your social security number and is able to commit crimes and do other things in your name, it can literally take a lifetime to get through.  So for NOVA to come out and say, yes, this is a traumatic – can be a traumatic crime and there are victims, I just applaud your efforts in doing this.

Len Sipes:  www.givemebackmycredit.com is the Website for Denise Richardson.  Denise, now, the people listening to this, they are members of the criminal justice system, members of the public.  What’s the one thing that we need to know straight from the very beginning of the program?  What do we need to understand about identity theft that we don’t understand about it now?

Denise Richardson:  One of the frustrating points that I see over and over when I hear from other victims of this crime is that they didn’t know.  They didn’t know it could be this bad.  They didn’t know this could happen to them.  They didn’t know – they had credit monitoring.  So they thought just by monitoring their credit reports they would have known.  But you wouldn’t know if someone’s hijacked your tax return, if somebody is committing violent crimes in your name.  You wouldn’t know this.  So, to me, the number one thing is more education on today’s identity theft trends and the types of risks and impact it can have, because often I see it downplayed in the media that, oh, if a stats gone down, if there’s a statistic that’s gone down in one area, you would never – if you look at it this way, you would never say to yourself, “Crime’s gone down in our neighborhood, so I think I’ll leave my doors unlocked now.”  And that’s the type of message I think continues to come across because that’s what I hear from the consumers who turn victims and say, “Why didn’t I know about this? I always heard it wasn’t a big thing and the credit card companies would just take care of it for you.”  But there’s the problem.  Not all the crimes that are committed today are credit related.  Yet people are still equating the crime with just America’s credit card and the banks will take care of it for you, so I would say education.

Len Sipes:  When we’re talking about identity theft across the board, we’re not just talking about our credit cards.  We’re not just talking about our social security number.  We’re talking about every little piece of paper that is attached to us.  And I had somebody the other day, a pretty prominent person, came to me and said, “Oh, my God, my name and my – where I live and everything else is available on a Website.  How could that possibly be?”  And I said, “Well, they pull from public records.  Have you bought a house?”  He says yes.  Well, all that information in terms of who you are and where you live is a matter of public information.  That’s startling to a lot of people.  But so there’s – number one there’s a lot of publicly available information on you out there.  We participate in Facebook.  We participate in Google Plus.  We set up a Google profile.  There are public records that apply to us.  So from the very beginning people need to understand that a lot of information is publicly available about you off the internet, and thieves can go from there and get the rest of it, correct?

Denise Richardson:  Absolutely.  And these identity thieves have gotten sophisticated, and if you remember, that’s their job, to sit on Facebook or Twitter or wherever they can get a wide range of information, hack into large databases, whatever it is.  And they can take small bits of information that you have on your profile and put it together with other information that’s public, say, your property records or whatever.  So they use that information.  They sell it to other scammers who use it and then pretend to strike up a conversation with you or know you or connect with you, whatever it may be.  A small little bit of information can turn into the key that unlocks the door to every other bit of information, and you wouldn’t even know it.

Len Sipes:  Okay, now that we sufficiently scared the dickens out of everybody listening to the program, because I think identity theft is huge.  I think it is beyond measurement.  Will, do we have a sense as to how many Americans are impacted by identity theft on a yearly basis?

Will Marling:  Well, we do.  I mean the Consumer Sentinel Network, which is the Federal Trade Commission’s report; they indicate that for 2011 there were 1.8 million complaints.  Now what’s important to recognize—

Len Sipes:  But not everybody complains.

Will Marling:  Well that’s what’s important to recognize.  I mean in terms of uniform crime reporting, identity theft is one of those crimes that doesn’t actually get reported.  You can sort of speculate and extrapolate.  We know it’s a lot worse than that.  I mean, come on, partly because you are obligated as a victim to report.  Secondly, sometimes law enforcement actually won’t take a report, and even if they do, they might not know what to do with it.  But the challenge becomes just even collecting that information. So we always encourage people, tell the FTC, file a police report if you can because at the very least we need to know what’s going on.  What’s important to know is that, with the latest report, credit card fraud is only 14 percent of what’s going on here.  Government documents benefits fraud is 27 percent.  So when people say, “Oh, identity theft is just about credit card, and I had that happen, and the bank said they’d take care of it.”  Well that’s another issue.  The banks not necessarily going to report for you that there was another identity theft even though that’s what occurred.

Len Sipes:  What do you mean by government documents?

Will Marling:  Government documents, anything pertaining to a government document, for instance, getting a driver’s license in the name of somebody or getting government services in the name of somebody, filing a tax return in the name of somebody to get a $2,000 refund.

Len Sipes:  Do they really do that?  They’ll file tax returns?

Will Marling:  Oh, absolutely.  I mean it’s a great business.  It’s a massive business.  You know we don’t know exactly.  It could be $20 billion worth of business but it’s hard to quantify completely, but absolutely.  If they get your name, social security number — you can go online right now and find people’s PDF’s of their tax returns.  And so commonly in training I ask people you know, “Raise you hands, how many of you have a PDF of your tax return that says “Tax Return 2010″?” And people raise their hand.  Well if you have access to somebody’s computer and you just do a basic search and say “tax return”, and it comes back, I have your tax return plus all your kids, their social security numbers, your spouse.  See, I have all of that right there.  And what’s a simple way to default that?  Well rename that PDF file.  It could be one, call it “Grape Juice Recipe” or actually take it off your computer.  Put it on a jump drive separate but file it up somewhere.  That’s the easiest way to thwart that potential compromise.

Len Sipes:  You now I keep – the amazing thing about when we have these conversations about identity theft I say to myself, I’ve been in this system for 42 years.  I have four college degrees, university degrees, and you constantly come up with stuff that I never would have thought of in terms of discussing this topic, because our taxes are filed on our computer, and we’ve done exactly what you’ve said.  Never crossed my mind to do this.  Never crossed my mind to name it grape juice recipe.

Will Marling:  Well you’re a smart guy, right?  It’s just an awareness issue.

Len Sipes:  It is.

Will Marling:  I mean that’s what this will confirm.

Len Sipes:  That’s what Denise just said.  So, Denise, what are the prevention tips we need to get out?  Is it okay to go to them that quickly?

Denise Richardson:  Well I would just to expand on what Will was saying, to give you an example of how you say you hadn’t heard of this or changing your name.  People do not know that their kids who are on Facebook and Twitter and they have their own iPhones and everything, these iPhones are nothing more than a little computer.

Len Sipes:  Oh, absolutely.

Denise Richardson:  They need to be protected as well.  And if your kids are using your home computer and they’re sharing music, your files could be open for sharing everything.  And that is a lot of how – you know you could be on a network in your neighborhood coffee shop and if your files are set to open and to share, anyone can get your information.  And as far as the income tax fraud, filing fraudulent tax returns, I live in South Florida, and the FDC report that just came out named South Florida as the number one metro area for this type of crime and Florid itself as the number one, again, several years.  And it stills strikes me that we – and the FDC came out and said two weeks after tax season opened identity theft crimes jumped 50 percent.  And the next day – I mean this was on our front page of the paper every day for a week.  In between that time I would read an article online by somebody out there saying, “Do we really have to worry about identity theft?  Is it just fear mongering?”  And in the meantime I’ve got all these emails from consumers saying, “What do I do?  I can’t get my tax return.  I plan to pay my property taxes with it.”  And so I’m seeing one thing that’s reality in my life every day but then when I read this kind of information I think it is harmful.  So I just think we need to send a better message that I think people can learn how to protect themselves better.  There’s no way to prevent it, but you can do things and talk to your kids or your neighbors, seniors—

Len Sipes: Okay, I have to break because we’re way past the half way mark and I have to reintroduce both of you, and then we’ll get back to the conversation.  Our guests today, ladies and gentlemen, Will Marling, the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, been around since 1975, www.trynova.org.  Our other guest is Denise Richardson.  She is a consumer advocate and a ID theft and education specialist.  Her Website is www.givemebackmycredit.com.  Okay, so we’re way into the second half.  Either one of you.  So again, what we’ve done is scared me, scared all of our listeners.  I need to focus on what we can do.  Is there one place that we can go to get information about this?  Is there a one-stop service?  Where do people go to get the information they need?

Will Marling:  Well, yeah, let me jump in here.  There isn’t one place to go.   Of course, the internet offers us access to a lot of different resources quickly, but we try to principalize this so that people build an awareness, because however you instruct people about vulnerabilities, there will always be another tool that’s used by perpetrators, a new technology or whatever.  So we talk about raise the fruit.  Have you ever heard the phrase “go for the low hanging fruit.”?

Len Sipes:  Sure.

Will Marling:  We always talk about raise your fruit because make it even that much more difficult.  Can that stop it all?  No.  But why hand them your tax return on a PDF?  Why keep all your sensitive documents on your computer when you don’t access them regularly and you can put them on a jump drive and lock them up in a box?

Len Sipes:  Well, but there has to be a mantra in terms of all of us simply need to be aware that if our kids are file sharing on computers and the bad guys have access to our computers, there’s got to be a sense that every person that is not known to you, every email, every phone call, every snail mail communication where that person is not known to you, you immediately be suspicious of it.  I mean there’s got to be a grounding that we can start people off with.

Denise Richardson:  I agree.  And I think it is being informed and being alert, being aware that you shouldn’t’ ever give your information to anyone who is soliciting it.  And you shouldn’t blindly trust anyone who calls your house.  You shouldn’t trust your caller id anymore.  You know and I say these things and people will say it’s fear mongering, but there’s where the issue lies.  IT’s just simple education and trying to learn what you can do.  I don’t expect a consumer out there to know fishing, smishing, vishing, skimming, spoofing, cook jacking, tab napping, all the names that people who work in it every day understand, but I’m all for – what my passion is about is just raising awareness to what you can do, what should you do.  You should know about the latest scams.  You should know that you shouldn’t put too much information on your profile.  You should stop and think before you publish anything.  Ask yourself, “If I hit this publish button and it was going to be on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow, would I do the same thing?”  And you might stop and think about it.  You know we tend to hide behind the screen of the computer thinking everything is, oh, just our friends see it.  But that’s not the case.

Len Sipes:  You mean, just my friends read my Google Plus profile?

Denise Richardson:  Well, some people feel that just your friends are getting into your space, into your – you got your settings set one way.  But the settings can be changed.  They can be hacked.  People can use the information you put in your profile.  For example, you love lacrosse.  You do this.  You do that.  And they can pretend to have those same exact interests and send you a note and say, “Hey, what school did you go to?  This is what I did.”  And your guard is down.  We tend to trust, and criminals know that, so they take advantage of that trust.

Len Sipes:  Hey, you and I are both friends with Will Marling, so obviously I’ve got to be legitimate if you and I share a friendship with Will Marling.

Denise Richardson: I would say so, exactly.

Will Marling:  Sure.

Denise Richardson:  And that’s what they think because, oh, she was sent – I can not tell you how many times I get a call from even a friend who knows that I work in this industry.  Just a couple weeks ago somebody called and said, “I think I got myself in a world of trouble.”  I said, “What did you do?”  And he said, “I went to Yahoo! And it said that they were protecting me because I didn’t have – I had to re-put in my information, so I did, and then it asked for my social and I—”  And I said, “Please tell me that you didn’t give them all that.”  He did.  So he spent hours changing his PayPal account, this account, that account because then I found out in asking him a few questions, he has the same password.  So if a criminal gets a hold of – hacks into one of your passwords, and they’re easy to guess because we have – we use combinations that they figured out through our public information.  Just imagine if they hack that one password how much havoc they can create in five minutes time.  Check to see if you have a PayPal account, if you have an Amazon account, anything.

Len Sipes:  You’ve just made thousands of people very uncomfortable because the research says that’s exactly what we do.

Denise Richardson:  And I hope I made them uncomfortable.  That’s the point.  I want them to go out and say, “Oh, my gosh, I need to change my passwords.  I need to strengthen them.”  I did a speaking engagement at one point and I asked the people in the audience how many people use the name of their car or where they graduated or what year they graduated in their pass code.  And over 75 percent of the people raised their hand.  And I then explained why that wasn’t a good idea, and someone said to me, “Oh, my gosh, I do that with all of my passwords.  I’ll use my spouses name, my spouse’s birthday, my child’s name, my dogs name because it’s so easy to remember.”  Criminals are smart, and they know that.  So never – unfortunately you’ve got to come up with ways to have stronger, longer, unpenetratable passwords.

Len Sipes:  All right, but the one thing – to me this is the best suggestion of them all and that is is that anytime you get a communication from anybody that is part of your financial world, so you get an email from your bank saying your account’s been compromised.  You get a call, an email from your credit card company saying that your account has been compromised.  Immediately contact them independently on your own through a number and through a source that you know to be legitimate and then ask that person a question.  So never proceed with that initial contact.  Always go to the source.  I’ve always found that to be the most powerful of them all.  Am I right or wrong?

Denise Richardson:  You’re absolutely right.  You have to do that because a lot of these scams now will appear to come from Go Daddy or Amazon or your bank or even the U.S. Government.  And they’ll provide you with here’s the fraud department number to call.  We suspect something and people will panic and call that number.  What they don’t realize is they’re calling right into the thief.  So always – so never use a phone number, and your bank is not going to email you about something like that.

Len Sipes:  Yeah, but people don’t know.  I mean—

Denise Richardson:  Right.

Len Sipes:  –we got a phone call the other day about our credit card being misused.  And the point is that my wife had a conversation with the credit card company regarding that, and it was very legit and very straightforward, but my wife shouldn’t have done that.  My wife should have hung up and called the credit card company back.

Denise Richardson:  Well because sometimes what happens when they call you, they have quite a bit of information on you already, and that tends to make consumers think, oh, yes, that’s my bank because how would they know that?  But if it really is, your bank is going to understand if you say, “You know what, I’m concerned about identity theft.  So let me hang up and call you through the number that I have for you.  Do you have a particular extension?”  Something like that.  Or if it’s legit your bank should be able to tell you your password on that account, tell you everything you want to know, not the other way around where you have to confirm it with them.  I recently had the same thing happen to me with my bank calling about another credit card fraud.  But today the criminals are getting even more savvy with telephone calls, using the phone to hook you into falling for anyone of their many scams.  So if someone calls you, never give out information.

Len Sipes:  If you post on Facebook that you’re going to Florida and then the scammer calls you up and say you know there’s –evidently you’re in Florida and you have problems with your credit card, you immediately assume that this is legitimate.

Denise Richardson:  Exactly and I always tell people, oh my gosh, stop telling people where you are every minute of the day because people have been being robbed because they watch this.  If they have enough information and they know where you live and here’s a picture of me, I’m sitting a thousand miles away on a sunny beach.  We’re all here on vacation.  There was just a story in the news not too long ago where the teenage daughter didn’t know that she was giving out any information like that that she shouldn’t and said “Oh, we’re at the airport.  She text right at the airport, “We’re getting on the plane.”  Well her friend posted it and a friend of that friend, they tracked it back to because they did catch the people, robbed their house while they were gone.

Len Sipes:  Denise we have one minute left.  What point do we need to make that we haven’t made in one minute?

Denise Richardson:  That there are available – there’s information out there, and the best way that you can avoid becoming a crime victim is to be informed, look out for the risks and know the impact and have a plan of action.

Len Sipes:  Yeah, but there’s so much to know.

Denise Richardson:  There is.  I mean you can’t possibly learn it in one moment. You can go to the FTC.gov site.  They have a lot of information.  Will’s site, I’m sure, does.  My site at – on my site I have areas, categories for the current scams.  I try to keep that up-to-date, the types of risk, what to do if you’re a victim.  So there’s definitely information out there.  And here’s something.  If you’re ever in doubt, you get an email that you think might be a scam, type it in your browser.  Chances are people have already written about it and learned about it.

Len Sipes:  Well that’s a wonderful idea.  All right.  Our guests today and in terms of summarizing and it’s a lot to summarize, Will Marling, Executive Director, National Organization for Victim Assistance, www.trynova.org.  Also with our theft identity – identity theft expert, Denise Richardson.  She’s a consumer advocate and an ID theft and education specialist.  Her Website is www.givemebackmycredit.com.  It seems as if the Federal Trade Commission just Google or your favorite search engine, Federal Trade Commission and look for consumer fraud or identity theft, and there’s information there.  What I heard today was about file sharing in terms of especially in terms of your kids and downloading music or file sharing, relabeling your computer files to be sure that if you’re hacked that the person won’t go and find your important documents.  Be careful with social media in terms of what public information you make public, change your passwords, go to the source if you get a call from somebody or contact from somebody. Don’t continue with that.  Just hang up and go to that source independently so you know that it is legitimate.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety.  Have yourselves a very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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Scam Victims United-NOVA-DC Public Safety

May 18, 2010 by

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/03/scam-victims-united-nova-dc-public-safety/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

– Audio begins –

Len Sipes: From our microphones in downtown Washington, D.C., this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Back with the National Organization for Victim Assistance with Dr. Will Marling, the Executive Director of NOVA, and Shawn Mosch. She is a victim of fraud, but she turned that victimization into positive action. She is now with Scam Victims United at www.scamvictimsunited.org, but before talking to will and talking to Shawn, I want to thank everybody, once again, for listening, watching, and reading the materials that we have at our website at media.csosa.gov, D.C. Public Safety radio, television, transcripts, and blog. We are up to 200,000 requests on a monthly basis for everything that we do, and we are extraordinarily appreciative of everything that you’re providing us with, even the comments as to how many times I screw up, or ideas for new programs and directions in terms of where we should go, and meaningful conversations in terms of the comments log. You can log into the website, again, media.csosa.gov, or you can email me directly at Leonard L-E-O-N-A-R-D.sipes S-I-P not T, P-E-S@csosa.gov or you can follow us via Twitter. That’s Twitter.com/lensipes,L-E-N-S-I-P-E-S, no break in those words. Back to your program. Dr. Will Marling, the Executive Director of NOVA, and Shawn Mosch, the person basically in charge of Scam Victims United, and to Will and to Shawn, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Will Marling: Thanks, Leonard.

Len Sipes: Will, I’m going to start off with you. How does the National Organization for Victim Assistance get involved with this issue of fraud. It’s pretty apparent to me – first of all, ladies and gentlemen, National Organization for Victim Assistance has been around for decades. At the very beginning of my stint in Washington, D.C., thirty years ago, there was the National Organization for Victim Assistance. When I worked as a senior crime prevention specialist for the Department of Justice’s clearing house, they also gave me the victim’s beat, which I knew nothing at all about, and the folks at NOVA were wonderful in terms of instructing me, and now we have Dr. Will Marling, who is now in charge of NOVA. How did we get into the scam and fraud issue?

Will Marling: Well, I tell you, we have a victim assistance line, Leonard, and you know, our expertise is primarily in violent criminal victimization and identity theft, but we get a lot of calls on this line. And of course, when people are looking for assistance, they see victim assistance, and we get, sometimes, a wide range of victim calls, but fraud victims, is there any angle, opportunity, remediation? What do they do? And while that’s not our area of expertise, we felt it important to start looking for at least some resources. We want to be able to at least hand them something, and that’s when we had the opportunity to connect with Shawn Mosch and Scam Victims United. And she’s a great resource, and the website’s fantastic. It’s a really useful tool.

Len Sipes: Is there any difference between identity theft and scams and frauds. It’s all pretty much the same thing, correct?

Will Marling: Well, no, no. I mean, you know, it all depends on the nature of the victimization, of course. Identity theft, you can have your identity stolen and never even know about it. The average identity discovered, the average identity theft discovery is twelve months, maybe, with a victim. With a scam situation, you’re engaging in something, and you believe that it’s an ethical, reputable approach, and then you discover that it’s not. There’s deception and this kind of thing, so there are different dynamics to it, and Shawn’s situation is even more irritating. She can tell you about that, but especially when people think they’re getting something, but they’re not, actually, that’s fraud.

Len Sipes: Absolutely. Now, I think I’m a perfect example of where I did not know. I mean, I’ve been in the business for forty years and I’m having a hard time distinguishing between identity theft and fraud. So, you know, there’s probably lots of people out there who may see – maybe they’re as dumb as I am and they see these issues as being one and the same. I mean, in essence, we’re concerned with burglary, we’re concerned with theft, we’re concerned with robbery, but much more money leaves our pockets through ID theft or through fraud and scams than through garden variety street crime, correct?

Will Marling: Well, you know, statistically, some of that’s hard to track. You know, we have uniform criminal reporting and a lot of that is related to the violent criminal side of things, which is horrific. But from the financial side, the emotional impact could be significant as well. When people take your earnings and something you’ve been saving for, or sometimes people end up losing quite a bit, and end up having to try to recover that, but at the heart of it, it’s an attack on us, personally, and it really steals something from us emotionally, many times, traumatically, and that’s why we still emphasize that. We recognize that certain outcomes from physical violence are different, and we as an organization are still committed to supporting violent criminal victimization folks who have that need, but we definitely see the growing, increasing demand on supporting fraud victims, because it’s there. And in the economic situation we’re in, these perpetrators are looking for every angle to still line their pockets with more money.

Len Sipes: And we’re going to do our very best today to stop them. Shawn Mosch, a victim of fraud. Tell us a little bit about that story and what brought you to create scamvictimsunited.org or scamvictimsunited.com.

Shawn Mosch: Well, back in 2002, my husband and I were selling a 1951 Buick Special that he had owned since he was in college, and we didn’t have a place to store it anymore, so we were selling it, and put an ad online, got some people that were interested. There was one person that sent us a cashier’s check to pay for the car and also to pay for shipping the car from us to them.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shawn Mosch: And we brought the cashier’s check to the bank, and because we didn’t know this person at all, we said to the bank, “We’re selling a car and we want to make sure that this check is good. You know, I don’t want to ship the car off or start using the money from this check and find out later it’s bad, and then we’re left in the hole.” And they said, “Oh, no, it’s a cashier’s check. Those are verified, it’s good in twenty-four hours. No problem.” And I said, “Wait, verified as good in twenty-four hours? That seems a little fast.” And they said, “Yeah, because cashier’s checks process faster.”

Len Sipes: Right.

Shawn Mosch: Twenty-four hours. That’s all you need to wait.

Len Sipes: I thought a cashier’s check was as good as cash. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Shawn Mosch: That’s the other thing that, you know, “Oh, they’re as good as cash,” so they assured me it had been verified, it was good, it was clear. The funds were available. And I said, “Okay,” so we went forward with the transaction. So part of that money was for shipping the car, and that we did to the person that was going to take care of that transportation, and then the other part was for the sale of the car, which we kept. So one week to the day later, the bank called us and said the check was counterfeit. And I said, “Well, what does that mean for me, because you already told me it was good and it was clear. You can’t un-ring that bell.” And they said, “That means you owe us the money.” I said, “What do you mean, I owe you the money? You told me it was good. I wasn’t going to touch the money – ”

Len Sipes: Until you told me it was good.

Shawn Mosch: Until I knew it was good and it was clear and it was verified. “You told me it was. What did I do wrong?” And actually, once I got talking with our legal department, my husband even asked them, and this was now days after we had found out it was counterfeit, and he said, “How long does it really take for a cashier’s check to clear?” And they put him on hold and then came back to the phone and told him, “Twenty-four hours, sir.” And we said, “Well, wait a minute. If that was accurate, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Len Sipes: It is, it is –

Shawn Mosch: Like it’s the real time, and they were never able to give us that information. So basically, I was upset. I started talking about this to anyone and everyone that would listen, started a message board, and through the message board, we found other people that this was happening to. So at first, I thought it was just my bank’s policy was messed up. So then, as I started to look at it, I found, ‘No, it’s the banking system.’ The banking system will tell people the check is good, it’s clear, and make the funds available in twenty-four hours before the check has been honored by the issuing bank. So now you can use and spend that money and then it could be 7-10 business days later that it comes back as counterfeit, and then you are liable for all that money.

Len Sipes: And how did you, how did all this make you and your husband feel?

Shawn Mosch: Oh, we were very upset.

Len Sipes: Yeah.

Shawn Mosch: So, we started talking to the media, and once it started to get in the media, we got even more people that were telling us, “Oh, it happened to me. Oh, same thing,” so then we started the website, Scam Victims United, and that was in early 2003. In the first two years of our website being operational, we helped stop over $2,000,000 from going into scams.

Len Sipes: That’s amazing. Now, okay, so you hold the key, then, for the rest of us, to tell the rest of us what not to do.

Shawn Mosch: That’s ironic that you used that phrase, because I did a presentation called ‘Education is the key.’

Len Sipes: Right.

Shawn Mosch: So we can all hold the key. Education about scams and frauds is the key.

Len Sipes: But every day, we are confronted with these scams, and I remember being on my computer and being three-quarters of the way through this statement from my bank and it just struck me – again, I’ve been a senior crime prevention specialist for the federal government. I’ve been involved in the crime prevention arena for a decade. I’ve been in the criminal justice system for forty years, and I was within a keystroke of sending fraudulent information through a phishing scheme. Any one of us could fall for this. I was on Gmail the other night and, you know, the scams that run on Gmail seem to be every single day. This is amazing. I mean, we are under attack.

Shawn Mosch: Every time we think we got the word out about this scam, they’re going to invent another one.

Len Sipes: And they look so legitimate.

Shawn Mosch: Oh, yeah, so many of them, they use the logos and all the right letterhead, and you get the check – the bank managers can’t even tell, by looking at the check, if it’s good or not.

Len Sipes: That’s amazing.

Shawn Mosch: But this is why I always tell people that if you are sent a cashier’s check or money order – because they’re also counterfeiting money orders and traveler’s checks – if you’re sent any one of those for payment for anything – something you’re selling online, a donation to a charity, payment for a room you’re renting, if you are sent cashier’s checks, money orders, traveler’s checks, and then told you need to wire any money to anyone, it’s a scam. They will go as far as doing on Craigslist – they’ll go out there and find somebody who’s renting a room. They’ll say, “Yep, I want to rent your room, send you a cashier’s check for the first month’s rent and deposit.” Then, once they know you’ve deposited the cashier’s check, they’ll say, “Oh my gosh, something happened. I’m not going to be able to move in with you. I’m so sorry. I have to back out of our contract. Can you just wire me back the money?”

Len Sipes: Wow, that’s amazing.

Shawn Mosch: This is the thing that I get all the time. So many people would say, “Well, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to wire money to somebody I don’t know.” But in that situation I just described, if you were renting out a room in your home to someone, and then they emailed you and said, “My mother passed away. I have to stay where I’m living to help out the rest of my family and I have to back out of our contract and not move into your room. I know I already sent you a thousand dollars. Keep a hundred for your trouble and inconvenience. Wire me back the rest.” Most people go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Yes, of course, I’m going to send you your $900.”

Len Sipes: Right. Okay, well, what are the three major things, as consumers, as regular, everyday people, that we can use to prevent this sort of thing from happening to us?

Shawn Mosch: Like I said, if you’re sent any sort of check, cashier’s check, money order and asked to wire any portion of it to anyone for any reason – I don’t care if their grandma died and their house fell down on top of them and they need the money – don’t.

Len Sipes: It’s a fraud.

Shawn Mosch: That’s the first thing. I mean, absolutely 100%, every single time I have ever talked with a person and that is their situation, it is a scam.

Len Sipes: Okay, give me another.

Shawn Mosch: Again, like you were talking about with the phishing scams, never ever click on a link in an email. If you get an email from your bank that says that there’s a problem with your account, call the customer service number to your bank and talk to a real human being.

Len Sipes: And don’t call the customer service number listed on that email. Right.

Shawn Mosch: Yeah, you can’t call the phone number listed in the email, because that might be redirected to the scammer, who is going to tell you, “Oh, yes, we need your information.” You know your bank. You bank with it every day. Pick up the phone and call their local number. Same with credit cards, where they say there’s a problem with your credit card. Flip over your credit card; look at the back. There is a customer service phone number. Call that number and say, “Hi, I got an email saying there’s a problem with my account.” If there really is a problem with your account, their help center will be able to pull it up and there will be a big flag on your account that says, ‘Yep, here’s the problem we need to fix.’

Len Sipes: But even –

Shawn Mosch: Don’t click the links on the emails.

Len Sipes: The example that I gave a little while ago with Gmail – I mean, all they’re asking for is account information, and I’m saying to myself, “Well, they’re not asking for my social security number. They’re not asking for my date of birth. They’re not asking for my home address. They simply want the account information. How could that possibly help them?” And then I said to myself, “Oh, silly, everything in there – something in there – whatever it is that you used to sign up for it provides them with access to practically everything else that you’re doing. Don’t do it.” And I emailed it to Gmail and they emailed back saying, “Yes, it’s fraudulent. Don’t worry about it.” But what that does is there are so many of these frauds going on, it almost makes you wary of any official correspondence coming to you via the Internet.

Shawn Mosch: It does, and I noticed that with myself, that every email I read, I kind of look at it and go, “Well, is this person really up and up?” And I do my research now. Google is a wonderful resource. If you are in doubt at all, copy and paste the person’s email address into a Google search, and if they have done this scam to somebody else, there is probably a post somewhere. We have had so many people come to our website because they did just that. They either Googled the name of the scammer, their email address, the companies they said they were working for, or their phone number, and it brought them right to our website, because so many people have posted, “Here’s the name and information about our scammer on our message board, so then we’re helping others to prevent the scams, because they did the Google search and found the information.”

Len Sipes: We’re more than halfway through the program. I want to reintroduce our guests. Dr. Will Marling is the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, long, venerable, and honored within the criminal justice system for the work that they do. You can reach the National Organization for Victim Assistance, www.trynova.org. www.trynova.org. Our other guest today is Shawn Mosch. She is a victim, but more important that she took her victimization and turned it into something wonderfully positive. She is the person who organized Scam Victims United and it’s www.scamvictimsunited.org or www.scamvictimsunited.com. All right, so basically, any time you get a cashier’s check, any check, and you’re asked to wire the money back, that’s an obvious fraud. You know, never click any attachment or an email asking for any personal information. Go back to your bank, go back to your credit card company, go back to Google and just be suspicious of just about virtually any email requests that you get. But I bet you people are scammed all the time by regular U.S. mail.

Shawn Mosch: They are. The ones we see the most are the Internet ones, because most of the scammers are in another country and the problem is, you report the crime to your local police, and they can’t do anything jurisdiction-wise because they’re in another country.

Len Sipes: Because they’re in Russia.

Shawn Mosch: Now if Nigeria, the United Kingdom, usually. Sometimes Canada. But Nigeria is probably – if I had to put a top three, it would be Nigeria, U.K., and then Canada.

Len Sipes: Mm, that’s amazing. So I was overly stereotypical, because I heard so much about servers in Russia, even if they’re in other countries, being used for scams, but England and Canada and Nigeria, those are the three. All English commonwealth countries.

Shawn Mosch: Exactly.

Len Sipes: Interesting, interesting.

Shawn Mosch: Yeah, with Canada, the big one was the Canadian lottery, that they would get a letter saying that they had won the Canadian lottery and then you have to contact this person. Now you might get that first letter of contact via snail mail, but after that, things like the cashier’s check are usually sent overnight, like FedEx, the reason being the scammers know if they mail that counterfeit cashier’s check in the U.S. mail, that’s mail fraud.

Len Sipes: Yeah, and there’s a whole organization to –

Shawn Mosch: They use a delivery system, then it’s not.

Len Sipes: Okay, understood. I mean I get the British lottery scam every single night in my Gmail. When I open up my Gmail, the British lottery scam is there every single night.

Shawn Mosch: Oh, I get it too. I get it sent to admin at scamvictimsunited.com.

Len Sipes: [Laughs] Well, again, what is the larger perspective in all of this, Will Marling, Executive Director of NOVA. What is the larger perspective? Have we covered it in terms of our introduction? I would imagine – my guess is that this is happening a hundred times more than burglary, even though we don’t have hard data on it. My guess is that this is happening far more than street variety crime, and that this is a real issue, not only for this country, but for organizations like yours.

Will Marling: Well, sure. I mean, it’s hard to quantify, certainly, because these spamming situation, they can send out a hundred million emails and even a very tiny percentage of response is still a meaningful response for them, because it’s just the law of large numbers. Our main concern is educating people, like Shawn does so well, because really, at the end of the day, a lot of it truly is common sense, and that isn’t to minimize people or to criticize people who have fallen for this, because to be honest, we’ve had people perpetrate on our organization for things. And sometimes, you know, you want to step forward and, with an open hand, meet people and assume the best, but then you discover later on – but with a lot of these things, it plays on certain intrigue that we all have. The opportunity may be to get something for nothing, like some of these phishing opportunities, but as much as that, many times it’s just stopping and thinking. You know, does the bank need to ask you for all your personal information? Shouldn’t they have it already? I mean, why would they need to verify all that?

Len Sipes: But it’s impossible, though, Will. I mean, don’t you think, in the situation with Shawn, somebody handed her a cashier’s check. If somebody handed me a cashier’s check and if my bank said, “You know what? You’re good to go,” I would pretty much bet the farm that I’m okay.

Will Marling: Well, sure. And that’s because you have a good relationship, at least at the time, with the bank, and you’re trusting them. But again, you know, we’re talking cashier’s checks, and so it’s an awareness issue. It’s a consumer consideration to say exactly what’s going on here, and to be honest, it’s going to continue, I presume, at that level, until the banks become more committed to educating consumers themselves, and their clients, their customers, as to what truly can happen. I can’t see any reason for the bank to say, “No, we need to hold onto this. There could be a concern. We see a profile, we see a pattern, and here are the steps we recommend you take. Let’s work together on this.” But the bank just needs to recover their money.

Shawn Mosch: Banks don’t have any incentive – the bank doesn’t lose any money. It’s the customer that has to pay back, so if the bank was liable, you know there would be changes, that they would be making sure that the check is legitimate before a penny went out. And I have stressed to people that all it would have taken was for the bank to say, “The funds are available, but the check might not clear for 7-10 business days.”

Len Sipes: Right, so let’s not touch the money until –

Shawn Mosch: Probably 96% of the scam victims. Excuse me?

Len Sipes: I said, so the bank would say, “Let’s not touch that money until it does clear.”

Will Marling: Right.

Shawn Mosch: Right, but on a banker’s stand, because I’ve talked to the bankers on this issue, they say that for every cashier’s check that comes in, you have to hold it for 7-10 days, we’re going to get pissed off customers coming in and going, “Well, it’s my money. I want my money now.” You know, “My brother-in-law wrote me that cashier’s check, so I know it’s good.”

Len Sipes: Well, let him sign a release, then.

Shawn Mosch: In that case, have a form that they sign that says, “I’m releasing the bank of any liability. I understand that it might still come back on me.” At least tell people that it could take 7-10 business days, versus saying “Twenty-four hours. Good as gold.”

Will Marling: Right. I mean, all you need to do is hold onto the money. My thing is, okay, clear as the bank hands you the money – well, hold onto the thousand dollars for two weeks, because you can turn it back into the bank, right?

Shawn Mosch: Exactly.

Will Marling: But people don’t think about that. Naturally, we’re trying to conduct our business, and if the people you trust, which is your bank, like Shawn’s saying, since she was fifteen – you know, the bank says, “Hey, you’re okay.” Well, you know, it’s like somebody in the business saying, “It’s okay.” And that’s what needs to change.

Len Sipes: It’s sort of like the automobile industry years ago, where in the crime prevention field, we knew that by computer chips and keys, would virtually eliminate, to a large degree – now they can come along and tow the car away – but if you would have a computer chip in a key, that would eliminate probably 70% of automobile thefts. They’ve done that, and automobile thefts have plummeted. It’s the same way with the banks. They’ve got to step up and take responsibility, it sounds like.

Will Marling: That’s what it sounds like to us, too.

Shawn Mosch: Exactly.

Len Sipes: Okay. Shawn, we only have a couple minutes left. This program has flown by like wildfire. Give me a couple more tips in terms of what people need to do.

Shawn Mosch: Again, Google is your friend. Google everything and anything. Go to places like our website. We have a message board where we update information on scams. You can do a search there. We’re also on Twitter and Facebook, where you can follow our blog, where we’ll let you know about the latest and greatest and newest twists in scams.

Len Sipes: I’m going to do that.

Shawn Mosch: Also checking out the Internet Crime Complaint Center. When we were talking about statistics and how much money is lost to scams, the Internet Crime Complaint Center keeps track of that kind of information.

Len Sipes: Is that the FBI center?

Shawn Mosch: They always say – excuse me?

Len Sipes: Is that the FBI center? The Internet crime center that you just mentioned?

Shawn Mosch: They are a coalition between the FBI, the national white-collar crime center, and a couple other organizations.

Len Sipes: Okay. What’s their website? Do you know offhand?

Shawn Mosch: Um, the ic3.org, I believe?

Len Sipes: Pardon?

Shawn Mosch: It’s Internet Crime Complaint Center is probably the best place to go.

Len Sipes: That’s why – just Google that and people can get to it. All right, do you have another one?

Shawn Mosch: Exactly. Well, I was just going to say that even their statistics, though – and they will tell you this, too – are low, because they know that not everybody reports scams and frauds. Because most people will say, “Oh, I’m embarrassed that happened to me, that I fell for it.”

Len Sipes: I was mortified when it almost happened to me. Go ahead, please.

Shawn Mosch: If somebody robs you on the street corner, you would report it.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shawn Mosch: People who are victims of Internet scams and frauds need to report that, too, so that we have accurate information of how much is being lost so that we can encourage our lawmakers to change things to protect the customers, because if we would have kept all that money in the U.S., the economy would be doing a little bit better right now.

Len Sipes: Oh, absolutely. And you’re right, looking at it from an economic point of view, you’re a thousand percent correct. I wonder how many millions or billions are leaving the country every year due to fraud. We have a minute and a half left.

Shawn Mosch: If just our website can stop $2,000,000 in two years.

Len Sipes: Wow. Okay, and I’ll give out the website at the end of the program. Will, do you have any closing remarks?

Will Marling: Yeah, just to clarify, it’s ic3.gov. Ida Charles three dot gov is the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Len Sipes: Right. Ic3.

Will Marling: Yeah, that’s the one we give out, and snopes.com is also another site that collects scams, aberrant emails – it’s snopes.com.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Will Marling: And I think we’re becoming more educated – there’s no question. But you feel for folks who just don’t realize what’s down the pike. Wailing is another issue for even executives, where people get information on the inside a little bit, enough to go through, say, an administrative assistance and forward on, and so the executive thinks that it’s legit because the administrative assistant forwarded it on. It all looks legitimate. So even within a company, you just have to be careful with your email. You have to know exactly who you’re talking to and what they’re talking about.

Len Sipes: Well, we’re out time and I do want to summarize; what I’ve heard today is that if you’re sent a cashier’s check and your asked to wire money back for whatever reason, don’t. It’s a fraud. Never click on an email where they’re asking for personal information. Contact the bank, contact the credit card company. Every email request, be extraordinarily suspicious as to what it is that they’re asking for. Google is a friend, one of the things I heard from Shawn. Google that information to see if there’s anything that pops up on the Internet in terms of fraud information. You’ve got the Internet Crime Complaint Center, i3g.gov, and we’ll mention snopes.com S-N-O-P-E-S.com. And I do want to emphasize, again, Shawn’s website: www.scamvictimsunited.org or www.scamvictimsunited.com. And once again, for Dr. Will Marling, the Executive Director of NOVA, it’s www.trynova.org. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you again. 200,000 requests. We couldn’t be successful unless we had your input, your suggestions, and criticisms, and feel free to point out all the times I screw up. I am enjoying those. And again, for those of you who ask us questions that are outside the scope of the radio show, that’s fine with us. We’ll find help for you, so feel free to get back in touch with us if you like. Again, it’s leonard.sipes@csosa.gov. Again, that’s for the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency in downtown Washington, D.C., or follow us via Twitter at Twitter.com/lensipes. I want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

– Audio ends –

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Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Criminal Justice, Fraud, Identity Theft, Internet Crime, Victim's Services