This week on the Perfect Scam.

I am frantically trying to push buttons to figure out how to get this noise down.

And a screen came up on my computer and said,

you have been hacked.

This is Microsoft.

Call us.

Sure enough, I was sitting there

and someone had taken over the computer and I could see the cursor moving around.

I said, well, there's definitely somebody in the computer.

Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host Bob Sullivan.

Our computers are our portals to the world now.

That's been kind of true for a while, but during the pandemic it became, well true for everyone, all the time.

Like a lot of things we count on, water, electricity, internet access.

We don't quite realize how much we depend on them

until they're taken away from us. In today's story, we'll meet Tom and Diane

Clemens, they're lovely people, retired professors.

She's a cancer survivor who had to lock down pretty tight during the pandemic and then

they found their connection to the outside world cutoff in more ways than one.

And this threat eventually costs both of them their entire life savings, most of it stolen in boxes of cash.

We'll get to that. But first, the best way to meet Tom and Diane is to meet their daughter,

Erica. Okay, so first thing that pops in my head.

I think about my dad, we played puppies a lot,

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