Paula Lyons Show Segment
Paula Lyons, TV Consumer Reporter Given: May 23, 1996 at the AARP Biennial Convention - Denver, Colorado
Consumer Fraud Financial/Consumer
“You mail ‘A donation’ to a ‘Good Cause’ or you give out your credit card number over the telephone for merchandise you've never seen. How can you tell when you're being sold a bill of goods?”
PRESENTATION (a portion)
Paula Lyons: Are you saying he took your money and invested in this?
A: No, no. But he recommended that I go to this other .....and I invested 22 thousand dollars and bought these stamps. These stamps were then to be sold to these stamp stores.
Paula Lyons: And what happened, were they worthless in the end?
A: They were worthless. I have a box of 22 thousand dollar worthless stamps. People that I contacted couldn’t help. Fact is to even make it worse, you had a middleman as a distributor and he would charge you a couple thousand dollars to distribute the stamps to the various stamp companies that they were in contact with around the country.
Paula Lyons: The creativity of these guys never ceases to amaze me. But you know, one of the, one of the hardest forms of fraud that I think you're bringing up here is the fraud perpetrated by trusted financial advisors. We hear these stories all the time. In Denver, here, your DA prosecuted a man who had been a treasured insurance agent for a number of seniors for years. But he went out and started his own business. He was a very bad businessman. He was in financial trouble in no time, no one knew it and he took their money. Promised to invest it, never did. So when these kinds of things happen, had you invested before may I ask you?
A: Oh yes, I had been investing for many many years.
Paula Lyons: Did you ask anybody else about this investment?
A: Yes and no but I didn't get any thorough answers to it because I trusted and had confidence in my accountant who was making my income taxes out.
Paula Lyons: Sure.
A: And he already saw that he was making six figures a year and had supplementary income.
Paula Lyons: He didn't look like a crook.
A: Oh no. And he took me over to the......later found out that the promoter received, paid him 10 percent of my 22 thousand.
Paula Lyons: Kickback. What did you learn from this?
A: I was a sucker.
Paula Lyons: You didn't do it again.
A: At the time you see, this was a tax shelter and I was investing the 22 thousand dollars, I would be able to take a 22 thousand dollar tax write-off.
Paula Lyons: But did that help out in the least?
A: No.....after the 22 thousand, I then had to go out and hire an attorney and with penalties and interest, after 3-4 years, it wound up costing me about another 30 thousand dollars.
Paula Lyons: But what I would love to extract from this though, before I move on to the next questioners, what's the lesson here? What, what would you say to people in this room that you would do differently based on what you know?
A: Be careful of your tax accountant......tax accountant....
Paula Lyons: No, but I mean, but I mean, and I don't mean to short circuit you but wouldn't you have been better if you'd checked out the salesman with the securities division of your Secretary of State's office?
A: Yes.
Paula Lyons: Wouldn't it have been better if you had asked some other advisors, I bet you had more than one.
A: Yes.
Paula Lyons: If this was a good idea. That's probably the lesson here.
A: That's true. I did not investigate it any further.
Paula Lyons: But you didn't have it happen again either did you?
A: No.
Paula Lyons: Thank you. Congratulations........
Q: I was caught up in a scam that you did not mention. Early, very early Sunday morning, I was awakened by a group of people who said that they were investigating people who were using telephones to make long distance calls and that they needed my cooperation in order to try and catch these people. They caught me at one of my vulnerable periods. I was asleep because I was ill that day so I was in a very weakened state and they were telling me, I'd try to tell them, "Well I can't talk, I'm going to hang up." They'd say, "Oh no, no, no, no. This is for your benefit because they're using your phone and it's going to cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. So you have to cooperate with us."
Paula Lyons: Can I ask you one question?
A: Yes.
Paula Lyons: Do you think, even in your groggy state there, that a phone company would have charged you thousands of dollars if someone stole your number?
A: No I do not because all I know is that they put like three or four different people on the phone and they gave me a lot of telephone numbers where I could check to see that this was a bona fide research, and it went on all day until finally a telephone operator called me up and she said, "Mrs. Kelly. My name. Do you know people in Asia and South America and what not?" When I received my phone bill, it was like $4,500 and something dollars OK. I did not have to pay it because I had reported it before and they, you know, did make me write and I had to sign a lot of documents and what not indicating that I was not a party of this fraud. But I did want to let people know about this particular type of scam because it was horrible. They were very nice to me like you said, maam, please, all day long until finally I said, "I can't take anymore."
Paula Lyons: And if you had called those numbers, you would have just gotten one of their compatriots on the phone.
A: Absolutely.
Paula Lyons: Telling you that this is so important to do.
A: Absolutely. In fact, they called me two or three times, "Oh we just caught one of the people and what not. Just keep it up, we've got a few more to go and we'll have them all."
Paula Lyons: Well thank you very much Mrs. Kelly. Can I ask you ... how many of you have heard of this particular type of scheme? Oh very few. I am surprised. This is something that's a major telecommunications company's have been, have launched many campaigns on and what they will tell you is there is no one in their employ who will ever call you on the phone and ask you for either your phone number, or your telephone calling card number. It is never a legitimate request. That's the simplest way to short circuit this, it may be the only way. That is just someone who is trying to get your number to use to run up international calls all over the world. So it's a very good warning. Thank you Mrs. Kelly.
A: You're quite welcome.
Paula Lyons: Do we have someone?
A: Thank you. I have a recommendation for a little device put out by "Hello", they're a telephone company. I don't know whether they're nationwide. Looks like a matchbox. Use it with your phone and if you get a call and you don't want to answer the call and as you said, a lot of people are reluctant to cut people off. You push this button on this device and it says, "Thank you for your call but we're not interested in anything you have to say. Thanks."
Paula Lyons: I love this device. How much does it cost?
A: They are only twenty-five dollars.
Paula Lyons: Radio Shack or where do you get it?
A: They're advertising it on "Hello", I'm from California, they're not, a magazine called "Hello" that sells many different telephone, answering machines, stuff like that.
Paula Lyons: Well we're all going to look for that "Hello" catalogue.
A: And I think, I know, I have one myself and when I get one of these calls I push it and I'll be standing over there and if you come over there and give me your card number or your credit card number, I'll be sure you get one.
Paula Lyons: ....so if you're not able to terminate your call, you stop and you have the box do it.
A: They actually do exist though.
Paula Lyons: I love this.
Paula Lyons, TV Consumer Reporter
Given: May 23, 1996 at the AARP Bienniela Convention - Denver, Colorado
Consumer Fraud Financial/Consumer “You mail ‘A donation’ to a ‘Good Cause’ or you give out your credit card number over the telephone for merchandise you've never seen. How can you tell when you're being sold a bill of goods?”
Q: The first question, just in general is, what are the most common scams that you see perpetrated against seniors?
A: I think really there's no such thing as the most common because they take every single guise that you could imagine from the old fashioned tried and true street cop, from pigeon drop to the bank examiner scam, right up to investment scams, telemarketing scams of all kinds, sweepstakes, contests, games, financial fraud committed by people you know, home health care givers, people you don't know who may be fly by night home improvement contractors or salespeople. It takes immense forms but we focused today primarily on telemarketing fraud because it's one of the few kinds of fraud that shows you early signs that it is happening so that people who care about seniors who are either their children or their friends or their neighbors, can spot these signs and intercede. Telemarketing fraud is capable, I think it, there is the capability of stopping telemarketing fraud if you see the early signs and intervene effectively enough.
Q: What are the early signs of telemarketing fraud?
A: Well the early signs of telemarketing fraud, of course, one of the biggest signs of all fraud is that seniors are not paying their bills. That is a very good sign that something is going on. If you are talking and visiting with seniors and you see in their home, piles of mail which indicate contests, sweepstakes, you know, that sort of thing, a lot of cheap trinkets, toys, gifts, jewelry, vitamins, water purifiers, the kind of junk, the crummy prizes that they win after spending thousands. If you hear the phone ringing a lot, if they're being secretive, if the phone call seems to upset them, make them nervous, all of these are very good signs that something funny is going on. That doesn't mean you're going to be successful if you try to intervene. Money is a very strong thing with people and they are not always willing to discuss what they are doing with their money. Money does very strange things.
|
Telemarketers are not your friends! |
