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Welcome to Too Good to Be True, an investigative podcast about exposing the scams, schemes, and financial

cults trying to separate you from your money.

Welcome back to the financial diets Too Good to Be True. I'm editor and journalist

Ryan Hulahan. And I am Julia Lorenz Olson, the co-host of Two Sense from PBS and an accredited

financial counselor. So what topic are you bringing to our horror show of Nesties and Baddies today?

Well, this is kind of my play zone, if you will.

Welcome into my world.

So I have been in the financial industry in one form or another for I was just thinking about this today.

I was like, how long have I been doing this?

Between like 12 and 13 years.

And there are so many products and services out there that sound really legit, one, and have

kind of an army of people and PR around them to make them seem very attractive.

But really, it only takes a little bit of digging to see how hollow the offer really is.

And some of this is just, I mean, you know, there is that sort of scam spectrum.

And these kind of do run that, you know, somewhere within that spectrum, but some of them are

just really, really bad. See, that's so interesting. I think what's really tough is that for someone

like me who I've done a lot of writing about money and about specific issues of, you know, scams, for example, or concepts about money.

But in my actual personal life, my finances aren't terribly complicated. And I haven't been, I'm going to be

completely honest, the most proactive person until recently about taking charge of

...