Hope you're having a great holiday week. I am off on adventures. So this is a best of

addition of the Clark Howard podcast. I hope you enjoy it and that you have an enjoyable

holiday week.

It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show Armage, just to serve you and

empower you to make better financial decisions in your life. So one of the keys to

financial freedom is you got to avoid being taken back by scams and fraudsters.

They're so good at separating you from your money. I'm going to tell you what I

want you looking out for. Later, when booking travel, you used to be able to see

the name of a hotel and know what it meant. Today, not really at all. I want to tell you

why that is and what you need to do to protect your wallet and the experience you're going

to have when you're booking hotels. So there are multiple reports that Ponzi schemes are

just bigger than ever. In fact, Barron's magazine reported that Ponzi schemes are up 70%

70% over the last year. And the amount of money being stolen from people that's reported

stolen is many, many, many billions of dollars. And that's only the reported amount. It's

actually much higher than that. One thing that's fascinating, who are the perpetrators? 90%

of perpetrators of Ponzi schemes and scams, men. What is it about us as guys? 90% of the

criminal activity and financial cons is coming from us as guys. Anyway, what the scams are

rotates, depending on what there's buzz about. So naturally enough, the area that's led to so many

of the scams in the last few years has been crypto is kind of like the headliner because people

thought crypto was the shortcut to wealth. And so it just became a thing to con people with crypto.

But it can be many, many different things. And you got to be really aware how easily you can end up

getting taken. Now listen to this, one in three people getting scam now are younger. In fact,

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