Scammers called Judith, spoofing the Rockville Police Department's number, and claimed her Social Security number was being used for money laundering by a fentanyl trafficking cartel. They then transferred her to someone posing as an FBI agent, Wayne A. Jacobs, to further manipulate her.
Judith believed the scammers because they used real FBI agent Wayne A. Jacobs' name, spoofed official phone numbers, and provided detailed information about her life, including her Social Security number and address. They also created a sense of urgency and importance by framing the situation as a high-stakes investigation involving fentanyl trafficking.
The scammers convinced Judith that withdrawing her money in cash was necessary to help the FBI catch criminals. They told her the money would be stored in a secured vault and returned after the investigation. They also created a sense of trust by calling her daily, using a code word, and showing concern for her well-being.
Banks, including Morgan Stanley, warned Judith that the situation seemed like a scam and even held her funds temporarily. However, Judith, deeply manipulated and convinced she was aiding an FBI investigation, ignored their warnings. The banks did not provide enough detailed information or examples to convince her otherwise.
The scammers built a relationship with Judith by calling her twice daily, showing concern for her husband's health, and discussing personal details. They used her background as a caregiver to appeal to her desire to help others. This manipulation created a sense of trust and urgency, making her more susceptible to their demands.
Judith lost nearly $600,000, her entire life savings. Additionally, due to tax law changes in 2017, she now faces a tax bill of over $177,000 on the money she withdrew, even though it was stolen. This has left her without a financial safety net for her and her husband's future healthcare needs.
Most of the stolen money is in cash or has been transferred overseas, making it nearly impossible to recover. While the FBI is working with Indian authorities to track down the scammers, the funds are often untraceable or already spent. Victims rarely see any restitution.
Michelle advises people to assume any unsolicited call, text, or email is a scam. She recommends verifying the information through official channels, not acting impulsively, and avoiding engagement with suspicious contacts. She also suggests creating a list of verified contact numbers for banks and other institutions to avoid falling for spoofed numbers.
Initially, the Indian government showed little interest in addressing scam call centers. However, as the reputation of legitimate call centers in India became at risk, authorities began cooperating with U.S. law enforcement to shut down fraudulent operations. This shift was driven by the need to protect India's legitimate outsourcing industry.
Scams like Judith's not only devastate individual victims but also strain public resources. Victims who lose their life savings may need to rely on government assistance programs like Medicaid, increasing the burden on taxpayers. Additionally, the emotional and psychological toll on victims and their families is significant, highlighting the need for better education and prevention efforts.
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This is On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. Judith Boivin had done everything right. And yet still, somehow, it all went wrong. She'd spent her entire working life caring for other people. She'd been a registered nurse, a licensed social worker, a psychotherapist. She looked after others both here in the United States and abroad. Judith is 80 years old now.
After she retired, she kept taking care of others, specifically her husband now, who has Parkinson's. Judith also took care of her financial life. She did exactly what financial planners advise. For decades, she diligently saved money so that she could have the peace of a secure retirement. But then, in September of 2023, Judith's cell phone rang.
And her entire life changed. I was on my way taking my husband to a doctor's appointment. And we were still in the car when my screen on my car showed the Rockville police. And I answered it. And they asked me if I was able to talk and was anybody in the car. And I said, yes, I'm taking my husband to the doctor. But he's just now getting out and I have to wait for him.
They said, you know, your social security has been used for three different accounts, telling me that my social security was being used for money laundering of a cartel that was trafficking fentanyl.
And I said, well, that's crazy. I didn't open the accounts. Oh, well, we know, but we also have this on record that you've opened these different accounts. And so it is an active FBI case. And so we're going to be transferring you to the FBI department and they will pick up this call.
I said, well, is that really necessary? You know, I mean, I because it just it was such an absurd thing. But yet the transferring of the call made it sound more official. And then immediately I do get an officer agent that is telling me,
He's Wayne A. Jacobs, and he's with the field office in Washington, D.C., and he is the director of the cybersecurity. After that initial call, I looked up Wayne, and I looked up the phone numbers, and then I even called the phone number, and it answered as FBI. They wanted me to be an asset for their investigation,
They wanted me to commit to being able to maintain secrecy about it. And he goes on more about the fentanyl and the amount of deaths and the amount of kids especially that are dying. So I did say on the first call, yes, I could do that. I could, you know, work with you. And so it's not like I was being threatened. They really approached me at the level of,
being a caregiver and wanting to do the best for the society at large. Anytime you're doing social work or doing nursing, that's what you do. They told me that I should draw out all my money in cash and what would happen is once all the cash was out of my Social Security name,
Then when they made the next deposit under my SSN, they would be able to apprehend them, which I thought, oh, all right. I mean, it made some sense. He told me that he would call me every day at nine and five. I had to have a code word that I could use so that I would not be speaking to anyone other than who this person was on the phone, Wayne Jacobs.
I was also told that my money would be put in a secured vault at the courthouse and I would be getting it back, but I would have to go through a court case. He told me repeatedly that I would be given a new social security number after this was all over.
to liquidate money that's been held and tied up in money management accounts and everything. It did take a while. And quite frankly, that was the worst part of it because I felt like I was on the defensive with them. They just kept refusing to let my money go.
They just said it sounds like a scam, but they didn't do anything to try to convince me that they've had experience with situations where people draw out all their funds at their own risk. In November is when all the money went out and he would call every single day and he would say, "We'll have a drop such and such a day."
I would get the money and when I got the $20,000, say, in a bundle, I had to wrap it in a plastic first and put duct tape. And then I had to wrap it in brown wrapper paper. And again, I had to tape it so that there were no open seams. And then I had to write the case number and the locker number.
He stays on the phone with me when I go and is coaching me all along the way, telling me where his team are doing and how they're scanning the area and on and on. So he eventually gets me to where they want me to be. And it's in a parking lot by the first drop was like in the giant parking lot. And just across from that is the target parking lot.
and the next four drops were always at the same place. And I was told not to say anything, not to do anything. He explained that they will roll down their back window on the passenger side and you will just get out when I tell you and put the money in the back. Only the first driver and the last driver was the same man.
And I only know he had a COVID mask on and he was in a very large, it was a big black car. It had gadgetry on the dashboard, which that too made me feel like this was an official person. Morgan Stanley sent an email to the OAG's office in Maryland, in Baltimore, on October 31st.
And on January 19th and 20th, I heard from that office. I thought that that was the person that was going to represent me in court. That's when I learned it was a scam. I just went into kind of a shock. I could hardly believe that it was true. I mean, I believed everything right up until the very, very end. And I didn't have just an immediate idea.
pass out or throw up. I was so much invested in the process with them, it just didn't occur to me. And there was no one, not anybody that knew because I didn't tell a soul. Judith Boven lives in Rockville, Maryland. I've had almost $600,000 scammed and I thought I was doing something good.
Judith's story comes to us from Michelle Singletary. She reports it in a brilliant seven-part series called Scammed that appears in Michelle's Washington Post's personal finance column. Michelle, thank you for coming back to the show. Thank you for having me.
I feel the same way that your voice sounds right now. Yeah. And you spent a long time with Judith going through piece by piece of this story. A little later in the show, I want to dig into more of the details with you. But in the couple of minutes that we have here before our first break...
Tell me what was your goal? It wasn't just to, like, report the facts on how someone gets scammed. You wanted to do something else as well about the shame.
Yeah, we hear these stories all the time. And the natural reaction for many people is how could she be, if I may say, stupid? Or how did she not know? And I wanted to write a series of columns that said she was not stupid. She was not gullible. She was manipulated. And so I wanted to do a deep dive into what it felt like to be Judah.
to hear and believe that you were helping the government catch criminals and walk them through how they pulled her into this ether. How does that ether work? And ultimately, hopefully people will stop blaming financial fraud victims and realize that you are not too clever to be conned. Mm-hmm.
When your series first ran in the Post, who did you hear from who said something similar happened to me? I've heard from so many victims, government workers, people with PhDs. I mean, romance scam victims. I mean, they have emailed me and said this happened to me and I didn't.
couldn't tell anybody. I'm so embarrassed. And then they proceeded to tell me their stories and long emails and recounting from day one to the last day when they realized it was a scam. And I just, I mean, every time I hear her speak and I get another email, my heart just...
You know, it's so hard and it's such an epidemic. It is such a huge problem. And we think it's happening to other people. And it is. I bet that most of the people listening right now either know someone who has been attempted to be a scam victim or was a scam victim. Hmm.
Well, Michelle, we'll hear more from Judith a little bit later in the show because she did lose her life savings. That's almost $600,000. But when we come back, I want to hear more from you about exactly how this happened. So that's what we'll talk about in just a moment. This is On Point.
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You're back with On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. And today we're talking about long-term, highly sophisticated scams that are robbing Americans of their life savings. And we're learning all about it through the story of Judith Boivin. Her story is told to us by Michelle Singletary, columnist at The Washington Post, who wrote a seven-part series about what happened to Judith. So, Michelle, let's kind of start at the beginning-ish, where Judith told us that
The FBI called her or at least someone pretending to be the FBI. They used a real name, Wayne A. Jacobs. What is the world that they created from the start and how did they do it?
So a lot of what they do is they spoof the real name of the agency and telephone number. So when she got that first call, it said the Rockville Police Department, and it had the number of the Rockville Police Department. So you believe your eyes. And by the time she answered, that had been a third call. And so she didn't ignore the other two, but she thought, oh, I don't know what this is about. But when they called a third
Third time, she said, well, this must be serious. I must answer this. Same number, same title of the department. And then proceeded to say, well, we're going to transfer you to the FBI. So when that person came on or when they called her back, same thing. FBI shows up in her caller ID, the FBI number for the Washington or
office shows up. And so she immediately is put at ease because she believes that she's getting a call from the real FBI. And the scammer used the resume of Wayne A. Jacobs, an extraordinary agent, special agent, who has spent a lot of his career fighting the very thing that they were committing against Judith.
Okay, so we're going to hear from Wayne himself in just a second here, but there are some additional details. This scam, this criminal enterprise, turned out to be coming from a criminal phone scamming company or group that's in India. Yeah.
So when I read your articles, one of my first questions was, did these scammers have accents? Turns out they did. But this is where the building of that ether right around a victim is so important because Judith, as she described earlier, like she's worked internationally. And so the idea that even an American with an accent saying that they're from the FBI didn't strike her as unusual at all.
It did not. And, you know, we have been employing people from all different countries and backgrounds. And so and because she had been living internationally, it didn't strike her as odd that this person had an accident. And it's so interesting you brought that up, because when people talk about this, they will say, well, they had an accident. So, of course, they were a scammer. But that's ridiculous. If you call it.
any company now, a lot of the call centers are in other countries. And so we have begun accustomed to hearing accents. It's nothing, I mean, there's nothing where I call my bank and I get someone who's in a call center in India and I'm listening to them and they listen to me. It's a very normal thing. And so that is not a red flag these days that the person you're talking to is a scammer. You know, the other thing that they did is they
They created this world that has, I'll call them facts, that has parts of it that are taken from reality. And it's a reality that Americans deeply care about, right? The scammer said, well, you know, the FBI has identified your social security number as having been stolen and not just stolen by anyone.
But this is a case that supposedly involved Mexico's Sinaloa cartel. I mean, people who follow the fentanyl epidemic in this country would have heard of that name and of the issue of fentanyl itself. Many Americans care about it. So these are all the little building blocks that make it interesting.
seem really plausible. But how did they know this much about Wayne Jacobs and the actual Wayne Jacobs, the FBI agent, and how to impersonate him?
So we have so much of our personal information and professional information online. LinkedIn, you know, my whole profile is up there. Someone can call it up and know where I went to college, when I graduated. I try to remove some of those details, but, you know, that's how we search for jobs. That's how employers search for us. And then there's things that you post. So when they called her, they knew a lot about her background, some from initial conversations with her, but others from things that were posted online.
data breaches. So they knew her social security number. They knew where she lived. They knew enough about her that you're thinking, well, only the government would know this kind of information. And that is how they get it. 90% of what they told her in terms of the information was true.
And so if you hear all of this, you're thinking, well, of course I'm talking to a legitimate government official. And it's called government impersonation scams. And they are so manipulative. They manipulate the victims in a way by telling them information to confirm what they are
What they know. Right. Social security number address. You know, I've heard from victims who said they knew where I banked. So how would you not think that that was the bank if they knew that that's where you banked? And not just one bank, but multiple banks. Yeah. So government impersonation scams. This is important. Right. Because in Judith's case, it was a scam or a group of scammers.
pretending they were FBI. As you said, IRS is also something that the scammers oftentimes pose as Social Security Administration. These are very specific parts of the United States government that people have very interesting relationships with.
I'm going to come back to that in a second. But the actual real life Wayne A. Jacobs, as you said, Michelle, is an FBI special agent. He's in charge of the Philadelphia field office. And we just quickly spoke with him yesterday. And he told us that when he found out that scammers were impersonating him to defraud Judith, he actually wasn't all that surprised. Right.
I was obviously by that point familiar with just general police impersonator scams. So in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't all that surprising that my name would be used in connection. Obviously, just incredibly unfortunate. And there's a part of you that is motivated by the fact that, hey, this is the work that you're trying to sort of put forward to prevent.
And to have your name be used in this fashion to further someone else's scheme, just intensely frustrating. Michelle, how did Mr. Jacobs find out? I called. I mean, there was another field agent in Washington that was working Judith's case, but he hadn't told Jacobs. In fact, they had actually worked together. But I was making calls because I wanted to try to
track down every person or truth that they use against Judith. So I talked to Wayne Jacobs, I talked to another FBI agent who had retired. So I tracked him down to talk to him about the fact that they used his name in one of the letters that they sent to Judith via email. And so I called the press office and said, hey, this is going on. I'd love to talk to Wayne Jacobs. And
And they gave me incredible access, I have to say. So I talked to the field agent who was working the case. I talked to Wayne Jacobs and another agent. So I was very appreciative that they opened the door so that I could tell this story. And he was stunned. And not just that, because Judith was one of 13 victims. So in all, this scammer, 13 victims, $2.9 million. Wow. Wow. Using Jacobs' name. Wow.
So it's not just the calls, right? They do create even a physical reality around the victim, right? I mean, in your column, in your stories, you have...
that Judith received. They all have a case number on them, case number CP920-416. They have official-looking graphics on them from the FBI. You'd have to look very carefully, but there are one or two little potential giveaways there.
Right. The email address was one. So the email that she received said Wade A. Jacobs at USA.com. Now, when she was first told that by the Maryland's AG office that it was a scam, the investigator said, well, did you look at the email? Because if it was a legitimate email from the government or the FBI, it would have said FBI.gov. And Judith said, how would I know that? Hmm.
So I work in the press, you work in the press. We would know that because we get emails from government officials. But if you don't get an email from a government official and you see USA, your eye goes to that and says, well, that's official. And the way A. Jacobs is official, he's a real person with a real resume and a history with the FBI. And so you don't look at those little nuggets of things that might clue you in that it's a fraud. The seal is correct. There's a
language. If anybody has ever gotten an official letter from the government, it's like a lot of gobbledygook and numbers and things like that. And it looks like it's official. And so all of that, they practice that, they hone it for every victim, you know, but someone who may say, no, I think this is a scam. They improve it for the next person who then will believe it. So they, there's a building block of people who turn them down and people who, who get scammed to the point that they create that final, um, uh, uh,
Yeah. That is so good. I mean, I'm looking at these documents and I'm telling you, I can't say that I wouldn't think this is real. Mm-hmm.
I mean, the other thing is you'd have to, first of all, you'd have to recognize what a legitimate government email is, but you'd have to even know how to find the actual email address, right? Like in modern email, when we receive it, sometimes it just has the person's name and you have to like click a little carrot in the corner, right, to actually reveal the email. Right.
Judith is, what, 80 years old now, and she was, what, 78, 79 at the time. It is not realistic to expect anyone, let alone a 79-year-old who's looking after her husband, to take the time to be like, oh, let me just double-check the resolution of this email address. But as if that weren't enough. Right.
I've got to ask you, there was an actual human being in this country that she interacted with for at least a moment or two who drove up in a car, right? When she put the money in the car.
So there's like there are people in this country who are physically part of these criminal enterprises. Yeah. Now, some of them are the criminals. They are working with their buddies and some of them are victims themselves who don't realize that they're being victimized. And so she most of the money was given in cash. And so they drive up in very official looking government cars, black tinted windows. I mean, come on. You know, that's what we see in the movies. That's what they drive. And then.
Some of the money was sent in cashier checks to Atlanta and California, and the California money went to a victim herself who was being scammed in another different government imposter scam. And she realized it and didn't cash the checks. And that's how Judith ended up getting back about $50,000 because this woman was like, oh, my gosh.
I'm being victimized and she didn't cash it. And a Maryland police officer investigator was able to track that down and get that money back for Judah. So you can see how complicated it is. So we can't always say that that person in that car is a criminal because they could be a victim being told, you've got to go pick up this money as part of this investigation. So there are layers and layers and multiple levels of people are being scammed. I mean, and this goes on for months, right? Months, months.
And I think it's the duration also that creates the ether, right, that you talked about. Tell me more about what you learned from psychology experts about how this works, this creation of an alternate reality around a person in order to scam them.
So they want to develop an intimate relationship with you, in this case, not romantic. But so in those, remember she said she had these daily phone calls in the morning and the evening, and they weren't just saying, give me your money. They were like, how are you doing? How's your husband doing? And, you know, oh, I've got to go to a wedding. What are you doing this weekend? Oh, I'm going to go visit my grandchildren in New York. And so they develop a relationship.
this relationship where you feel comfortable. And every time she talked to them and giving them information, they would then use that against her in the next conversation. And so it's not like they call up, give me $600,000 of your money. They, you know, they develop,
They lay the groundwork so that you can trust them. And they pull you in with, first off, you know, details. Telephone number looks the same. Resume looks, you know, legitimate. You know, I care about what's happening with your husband. You know, and then your guard is let down because they have manipulated you to do so. So there's one huge red flag here that Judith herself has.
told you about and then told us about. And this is the point at which I'm sure a lot of people were like, well, how could she be so stupid? Right. And that was when the bank didn't want to release the money to her. And she says they even went so far as to say, this is a scam. Can you tell us more about that? Because I think a lot of people are like, well, when your bank says don't do this, you should stop doing it.
Yes. So part of the series is I contacted, there were five banks total, the Morgan Stanley initially was where she had all of her money and then four local branches of major banks in Maryland. I contacted every single one of them. And, you know, I have to say Morgan Stanley was very forthcoming in what had happened with permission from Judith. They sent me a statement. They said that they felt like this was a scam. They tried to tell her, but you know,
Remember, she's in the ether. She has been speaking to this person twice a day for weeks. And she has a level of trust. And they were telling her, this is an investigation. You can't tell anybody. And so she's thinking, well, they might be right in the sense of they think something's happening, but
They don't know that this is an investigation. It's a private investigation going on. And so what Judith was saying is that they would use the word scam and maybe even government impersonation, impersonation,
But what they didn't say is, this is what this looks like. Here's some articles of other victims. And so the banks did what they were supposed to do, based on my reporting. They said, listen, we think this is a scam. Morgan Stanley held her money so that they could try to contact the Maryland officials. But Judith was in the ether. She was...
manipulated for so long and feeling that she was trying to help a criminal investigation that she couldn't hear them. And remember what she said, they were on the phone with her, even as she was talking to bank officials. So they're in their ear. And,
And listen, a lot of us put our monies in these institutions and we don't hear from them personally. We don't have a real deep personal relationship with the folks that are managing our money. And so who are you going to believe? The person you've been talking to for weeks who says your name is being, you know, used for criminal activity where we've got an investigation case, we've got a court number, we're trying to help you with this. And people over here saying, well, we think this is a scam. We're not sure. If it's a doc,
If it walks like a duck, it acts like a duck. It's a duck. What does that mean to the victim? And I also, even as we're talking about this and we mentioned red flags, I still want to be careful that we say that this is not her fault. She didn't miss a red flag. She didn't know it was there. Right.
You can't miss what you don't know is there. And so even as we talk and as I continue to talk about this story, I have to check myself to say this is not her fault. If you are listening and you are a victim of a scam, it is not your fault. You were you were you.
You were manipulated. You were brutalized. And that has to be the, we call it in our business in the print, the nut graph of this story. I couldn't agree with you more, Michelle. All this week as we've talked about preparing for this conversation with you, my poor staff has heard me get very ragey.
about this because the victimization of people this way, and especially people who are perhaps in a vulnerable position, it just, it's hard to maintain equilibrium on that. So hang on for just a second, Michelle. We're going to have more in just a moment. This is On Point.
You're back with On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. And today we're talking about long-term, highly sophisticated scams that are robbing Americans of their life's savings. And we're talking about this through the story of Judith Boivin, who had $600,000 stolen from her in one of these long-term scams. And Judith's story comes to us from
Michelle Singletary, who wrote about it in a seven-part series in her personal finance column in The Washington Post. Now, Michelle, let's go back and hear a little bit more from Judith because, as listeners will recall—
In the first segment, Judith told us that it was only after she had withdrawn all the money from her various accounts and met that mysterious person who was driving an official-looking vehicle and put the money in the car, et cetera, only after that did she eventually receive a call from the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, which told her that she had been scammed.
And it's been nearly a year since that day that she received that call. After that call from the OEG, I would say for about the next six weeks, I had some health issues. I couldn't sleep. I would go to sleep, but then I would wake up with this whole thing coming down because it's hard to believe that
that all your life savings is gone. And of course, the catastrophizing because of my husband's Parkinson's and the hope that we had a secure future ahead of us for health purposes, primarily, because we know that there's no treatment, no cure for Parkinson's and it could come to, we don't know what. But so that security blanket is taken away
Judith says she was lucky in that her adult children were there to help her right away. They took turns staying with her and her husband. They helped her with paperwork, filing reports, and working with the authorities. And she was grateful, is grateful for the help and support. But Judith also says it's hard to adjust to the fact that she simply does not have the financial safety net she once had. I just see all the places where
I would have done this, but I didn't. I would have gone here, but I didn't. I would have been able to have Christmas like I used to have Christmas with all my grandkids getting a gift and everything. So it impacted me quite a bit at Christmas time because it was the first Christmas. Last Christmas, I didn't know I'd been scammed.
Judith says that if she were younger, maybe she'd be more upset, more angry, more resentful. But at 80 years old, Judith says she doesn't have the energy or emotional space to hold all that anger right now. In fact, she's trying to move on in the only way she knows how, helping others. And that's why she told Michelle her story, so that people can learn from her ordeal.
It's part of my journey, and that's how I frame it. And just like illnesses and everything, it's part of what I'm here to face and deal with and grow from. That's why I could see immediately that I was perfectly okay with being open about this situation.
Even if there is a bunch of kickback and rejection, I don't like to see it and I don't like to have it thrown at me or others. But to not try to make things better through educating and through informing people about what this does to a person. And it's not just one person.
I mean, I've got a pretty big relation and everybody is affected by this. That's Judith Boivin. Michelle, to add a considerable insult to her already grave injury in having been scammed, you write that because she emptied out those accounts, she has to pay taxes on it.
That's right. That's right. She's been scammed again. I mean, so before the 2017 tax changes under the Trump administration, victims of this type of crime could deduct from their taxes the loss of the money.
As a part of trying to pay for that package, they took away that deduction. So Judith and thousands more victims who don't have this money because it was stolen now have to pay taxes on money they don't have. And so she's facing a tax bill between the federal government and Maryland state taxes of over $177,000.
I mean, talk about insult, injury after the crime. And that deduction is...
the removal of the deduction is slated to end this year, but we're hoping she's hoping I'm hoping I'm a columns. I can say that, that the Congress will take this issue up now that they have resumed their duties to address this, this grave, grave mistake to help these folks who have lost so much. And, and this is, I know some people were thinking, well, they did this, but, but,
Judith now doesn't have that money so that if it comes to a point where her husband needs more health care or she needs more health care, then this becomes all of our problem because then they may have to have, you know, resort to, you know, programs, you know, Medicaid or something like that. And so this is a problem that affects all of us.
And we should be very concerned about this. This ought to be a priority to help alleviate this thing that has happened to so many people. You know, again, since you mentioned that people can have the tendency to think, well, you know, Judith did this because she was the victim, you know, she fell prey to these scammers. Right.
On the other hand, if someone is scammed in the United States by an entity or an individual who's here in the U.S. who commits fraud, right, which is what this is, this is a massive act of fraud, there is a court system in which ideally the person can get their money back, right, because it's recognized as a criminal act and they are recognized rightfully as the victim of that criminal act.
But because the scam originated overseas, is there any way or no way at all for Judith to recoup what was taken from her?
It's rare for victims in these types of situations to get any of their money back. The money's gone often because a lot of it was stolen in cash. And so now it's overseas. Now, the FBI is working with the authorities in India to track down the criminal operation. But a lot of that money has gone. And so even if there is a criminal case, there is no money there to collect to give back to people like Judith.
But having said that, one of the reasons why Judith came forward and I want to write this series is that we want to encourage more people to come forward because the more people come forward, the better the cases they can build and hopefully get to that money before it's gone. They can, you know, look for bank accounts, you know, where in case the money was deposited online.
Or if it or cryptocurrency was used, track that down. And so it's very important for victims to come forward. And I know that's a hard ask for them. But the FBI in one report, they was able to track down this ransomware case and, you know, thousands and thousands of victims and only about 20 percent asked.
actually filed a police report. And so we know that there are more people out there in the shadows, silent, because they don't want to be judged. They don't want to be criticized. And they will be because this is, you know, I think naturally people, they want to do this because they feel like if I say this, then it couldn't happen to me. But when we do that, we keep them behind bars.
that wall of silence. And it impedes the ability of the investigators to do their jobs. And if we don't hear more from them...
And we think the odd case. And also, it's not just happening to seniors. Actually, young adults are more likely to be scammed than seniors. So this is not an old person's problem or someone with dementia. You heard Judith. She's brilliant. She's articulate. She's such a wonderful person, which is why it crushes me that this happened to this individual who spent her life
Serving other people. So, Michelle, I'm really glad that you brought that up about young people, because it is easy to sort of, again, fall into a mental trap thinking, well, when we, you know, people are vulnerable when they get older. Right. And so those are the targets. But what you're quoting is is a fact from a report from the Federal Trade Commission itself that says people in their 20s are in fact vulnerable.
scammed at higher rates because they're online more. And maybe they don't actually also have enough life experience as well. And so they are exposed more and to fake offers for jobs that you've written and investment scams and fake shopping sites even. And it seems real to them. So I just wanted to highlight what you just said, because it's so, so, so important. This isn't just a like senior citizens podcast.
problem. This is an everybody problem. It's an everybody's problem. That's exactly right. And the difference is that the money, the amount stolen is larger because they have more money. That's why they get the big headlines. But it isn't because of who they are. It's because that's where the money is. Yeah. Well, I wanted to add just one little thing because we, you know, this particular scam, uh,
criminal enterprise was in India, and many of them are. They're also in Southeast Asia, frequently in Russia and China. So, of course, my mind, in addition to all the issues that you brought up in your series about Judith, went to, well, is there anything that U.S. authorities can do to encourage the shutting down of these
scammers in the countries where they're located. And so we actually reached out to Betsy Broder. She's an attorney who for a long time worked for the Federal Trade Commission tracking international fraud. She's not with the FTC anymore. And in fact, she worked on several cases in years past that were in India. And we asked her about
Is the Indian government or federal and state level government in India really willing to help U.S. authorities in shutting down scammers? And she told us when she began her work, there was really very little appetite in India for addressing fraud. But interestingly, that changed once it became clear.
to the eyes of the Indian government that legitimate call centers, you know, the ones for the banks and stuff that you had mentioned, Michelle, that the reputation of illegitimate call centers in India was at stake.
They did not want the whole industry to be tarnished by these frauds. And the way that we explain that is people don't want to hear an Indian accent on the other end of a service call and think that they're being defrauded. And I think that there are a number of prosecutors, both law enforcement and prosecutors, who understand how important it is to address this problem for India's own self-interest. And that's encouraging.
Having said that, the problem is immense. And you can shut down a call center in one place, and then the next day something else will pop up. That's not an excuse not to do anything. It's just a function of the reality. So that's Betsy Broder, who used to work at the FTC.
That whack-a-mole problem is going to go on for a while. So I don't want to spend too much more time on it. We'll continue to talk about it in future shows, I'm sure. But, Michelle, right now, right now, at this second, someone is getting a call like that. Someone is getting a text. Someone is being told, my name is IRS agent such and such. What should people do when that happens to them? Yeah. So...
So just don't believe anybody. Any call, any text, any emails, your initial response is it's a fraud. Just say it to yourself. It's a fraud. It's a fraud. It's a fraud. And then jump out and go online. And you've got to be careful about even Googling online. So you want to go to the official site of that agency or company.
company to try to figure out if they've actually called you. And I've gotten a call from my bank. My card, my credit card was compromised. They sent me a text message. The text messages fell under other legitimate text messages from that bank, but I saw it and I said, Nope, Nope, this I'm not the one. And I,
deleted it. And then I called the bank and I said, you know, I got this text message. I didn't believe it. And she said, no, that was us, but you did the right thing. Don't believe anything. If my husband called me right now and said, baby, I need to move $100. I'm like, hang this phone up. I'm going to go around the corner and see if you're in your office calling me. Just, I think that's the best way to protect yourself. So, because a lot of the tips that we have been using in the past just aren't working anymore. And it says people think things like if it's
too good to be true. It is. But if that victim is in the ether, then it is truth to them. Yeah. Right. If you say the government won't call you, but you got a call with the government ID on your caller ID. So you're thinking, well, that doesn't apply to me because this actually is the government calling. And so I think the way you protect yourself is don't believe
anything ever and check it out. And I'll have to throw this in. Actually, no action gives you more protection than acting. So a lot of people react quickly because they think, well, my money's going to be gone. But if someone takes your money and you have not talked to them, you've not given them a
code from your phone, you have more legal protection than if you act. So I know that's hard to do in the moment, but just think, if I don't act, I've got more protection. If I act, I could be... I didn't mean to jump in there, Michelle, but I just want to say that's so important, right? Because the second that you actually engage, then you're losing a lot of that legal protection that you said.
So do nothing. Do nothing. And also, I just want to highlight, when you said you call your bank back, you call your bank at a number that you know belongs to the bank, not the number that was sent to you, right? That's right. Just to be clear on that.
I don't use the number in there and I have a list of all the numbers of our banks and my contact and I use those numbers and I actually purposely create contact lists for my so that I don't even have to go online because I've talked to them I know the number for real and so I would suggest
people do that. And one thing really quickly on my voicemail, if you call my home and now my, and I'm going to put it on my cell phone, I actually have a message that says, look, I know you are a scammer. Hang my phone up. And so, and that, because they're algorithms, they're things that the moment you say, I think of a scammer, like they'll hang up. And so I found that I'm having more hangups on my phone by just saying, I know you're a scammer. Don't call me again. So I would suggest you change your voice message to say that. Hmm.
Well, Michelle Singletary, she is the personal finance columnist for The Washington Post. And she wrote this remarkable seven-part series about Judith Boivin called Scammed. And we have a link to that at onpointradio.org. Michelle.
Michelle, thank you so much for reporting this and bringing this story to us. And thank you for joining us at On Point, as always. And thank you for giving us so much time. I, you know, I so appreciate you for letting us breathe in this segment. And I'm hoping that more people, it'll help protect people. And I just want to also say that Judith is my hero. Yeah, same. She's so brave for what she did. This is On Point.