Fighting back against spams, scams and schemes

It's Been a Minute

NPR

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4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's not just you – the constant texts, calls, emails and DMs from scammers are invading so many of our lives. And when the scams are successful, there's often no recourse at all. So how do we protect ourselves from these schemers?

Host Brittany Luse talks first to Laci Mosley, host of a podcast called 'Scam Goddess,' about how even a scam queen can become a victim. Then, Brittany chats with Susan Tompor, money columnist at the Detroit Free Press, about how these scams work, what's being done about them and why we all need to stop judging people who've fallen prey to scams.

You can follow us on Twitter @NPRItsBeenAMin and email us at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, you're listening to it's been a minute from NPR.
0:06.5	I'm Brittany Loose.
0:07.9	I don't know about y'all but every day I'm ducking, robo calls, phishing emails, scammy
0:20.2	texts, you name it.
0:22.3	I even got caught up in a flower delivery scam this week!
0:26.1	It's like the scams are never ending and it's getting harder and harder to figure
0:31.4	out what's real and what's not because there are so many kinds of scams.
0:37.6	Sometimes the scam is as straightforward as a spoofed phone call from your bank.
0:42.2	I was called two days before Christmas by a group posing as my credit union.
0:48.3	A week later when I checked my bank account I put the pieces together.
0:53.8	There was no money in it.
0:55.9	Or as intricate as creating fake apartment listings complete with a whole team of actors
1:01.5	capable of fleecing multiple prospective tenants.
1:04.9	Hey boys and girls, it's tea time.
1:06.9	Listen to how I guess scams for thousands and thousands of dollars for a New York City
1:12.2	apartment.
1:13.2	It's rough out here and a lot of the time the victims of these scams don't get their
1:17.9	money back.
1:19.3	But there are some people fighting back.
1:21.8	And there are ways.
1:22.9	They call me up and they told me that they were with the FBI.
1:26.3	So what I did was I said just a minute, there's somebody knocking at my door.
	...

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