Scammers Fabricate Drug Cartel to Steal Family's Life Savings
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2020
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Utah, Machal is busy caring for three of her grandchildren while her daughter recovers from surgery, when she gets a phone about her Social Security number. The man on the phone claims to be from the Social Security Administration and says that multiple bank accounts have been set up by a drug cartel using Machal's number. He tells Machal that her family is in danger, she needs to act quickly. She is told that the drug cartel is watching her, so for their safety, she is to tell no one what's happening. Especially not her husband Kyle, a member of Utah's house of representatives. Kyle shares how he found out about the scam that stole his family's lifesavings.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week on the perfect scam. |
| 0:03.0 | You just need to understand my wife is an incredibly smart, smart woman. |
| 0:08.0 | She's not easily fooled. |
| 0:10.0 | She is trusting, but everything just aligned just right in such a weird way |
| 0:18.8 | Welcome back to AARP's the perfect scam. |
| 0:22.9 | I'm Michelle Kosinski. |
| 0:24.5 | This week, a couple who had their future all set. |
| 0:28.0 | But then one day along came some drug cartels |
| 0:31.5 | and government agents, or so it seemed. |
| 0:35.0 | This is a terrible scam, posing as protection from a scam. |
| 0:41.0 | What we're dealing with here is, in fact, the most common type of scam. What we're dealing with here is in fact the most common type of scam |
| 0:44.9 | reported to the Social Security Administration's Office of the Inspector |
| 0:48.6 | General when scammers impersonate someone from the government and say they need your personal |
| 0:53.2 | information to fix some problem or restore your benefits. How common? More than a |
| 0:58.6 | million reports to the Federal Trade Commission in the last five years common and the total losses are even |
| 1:05.2 | worse more than 450 million dollars in the vast majority of these cases the |
| 1:11.0 | imposters say they're with the Social Security Administration. |
| 1:14.3 | And just last year alone, the SSA got more than 400,000 complaints from people saying they were |
| 1:20.5 | targeted. |
| 1:21.5 | So this scam is obviously working, and that's why it's on the rise. |
| 1:26.0 | Plus it's even harder to detect when the scammers point you to real government websites, |
| 1:31.0 | even real people who work there. |
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