Michael Kovnaut. What's going on, man?

Rufus, I got to tell you a story. You have a minute. I want to tell you something crazy that happened to me a couple weeks ago. I promise it has to do with today's episode.

Yeah. Yeah, bring it on. Okay. Well, I was sitting at home. I got a call from a police officer. He said he was from my county sheriff's office, and he told me that I missed a grand jury hearing that I was supposed

to be on jury duty for.

Bad Michael.

Yeah.

So I told him, well, I never received a notice.

He told me that he had sent a notice.

It had been signed for.

He had my name and home address.

And unfortunately, because I missed the appointment, there was currently a bench warrant out

for me, and I was subject

to arrest until I got it cleared. Oh, my God. Yeah, and it was kind of confusing and

bureaucratic, but he said I had to take a case number down to a certain address and talk to a person

and I got his badge number, and I was just getting all this information from him, and it seemed

weird, but whatever. And then only slowly did he start to mention that there was some kind of fine that I was going to have to pay, and I could do it today over the phone. And I was like, wait, now, this sounds weird. So while I was talking to him, I started Googling bench warrant scam. Sure enough, it turns out this is a known scam. This is not how bench warrants work. It's not how police work. They don't call you on the phone like this. So I confronted him. I said, hey, I'm sorry, but I think this is a scam. He said, no, how dare you impugn my office? And he sort of put up a fight for a minute. And then finally he just broke and he just dropped his cop voice entirely and he just went,

I'm sorry, man, I just need some money. Can you help me out? I'm in a bad situation. I'm incarcerated. And I was like, what? Oh my gosh. What a head fake. He almost had you. You're pretty savvy guy, Michael. He did. He did. I mean, I like to think I have a pretty good nose for these things, but, you know, he just had me going. And so it turns out that no matter how skeptical we are, a lot of us are liable to get scammed. In fact, today's guest on The Next Big Idea Daily is a TV producer. He got tricked out of nearly $100,000. And he was so shaken by his experience.

He started a podcast called Queen of the Con, and now he's written a book to help others

avoid his fate.

Wow.

Well, that sounds like something we all need to hear.

Yeah, his name is Jonathan Walton.

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