Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Guitars are about as bad as bicycles. And there's. There's a. There's a rule with bicycles that says that the appropriate number of bicycles to have is N plus one, and N being the number of bicycles that you already own. Guitars are about as bad as that because you're always looking for one more. You don't need one more. You don't think you do, but you do need one more than you got right now.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: So that's definitely a math joke, but it worked on me.
Foreign,
[00:00:34] Speaker A: So. Mr. Clark, it is good to see you today, sir. It's been a while.
Yeah, I'm guessing our. Our listeners have noticed that we haven't been around for a few weeks and what's going on? Well, we got no trouble.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah, we got busy. No trouble.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah, there's no trouble.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Tax season and everything came up and then, you know, bobbing and weaving, all these scams that we've been seeing lately,
[00:00:57] Speaker A: man, it's like it's all over the place right now. Scams and taxes. Scams and scams.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Taxes.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: So, hey, I think it is our solemn duty to talk about both of those things and, you know, kind of adjacent things while we're here today. And I think you have something you want to start us off with, don't you?
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Well, I wanted. If this, this has already happened. So if you've been affected by it, you've probably been affected by it in a big way. But we just a tale that to warn people about what can happen to you even in trusted places like an app store on Apple. So what happened is On April 10, Apple released a normal app that was pretending to be an app called Ledger Live. It's a crypto wallet app and it looked legitimate. It got by Apple's people who look at those kind of things all the time and stayed out on the App store for a couple of weeks. But if you opened it up and let it in and gave it your seed phrase, it immediately drained your wallet of all its money and said goodbye. So that was pretty bad. So we had some people losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, because of this app and the way this breach happened, which tells you that even though you are in a protected environment, something like Apple, you still gotta be careful. And there's some things you should do.
Bottom line of this is you should always start at the source. Never just search for these things because you never know what you're gonna come up with, even in a protected environment.
You certainly shouldn't use common phrases when you do this, like Ledger or coinbase because they put those things in the fake ones.
Identify that developer, make sure that it does what it's supposed to do. Hearing this, I would probably have a fake wallet that had a dollar in it and I would try it first before I did anything big, especially for things that I was really using. I don't think that's a hard thing to do and it might be a good thing to do. And you know, you gotta look at an app's history and footprint to see if it's good, especially when it's dealing with your money, bank apps, things that are connecting directly to your stuff. That app should be a long standing app with a long history and a lot of updates. If it's something new that came out yesterday, I would not trust it.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Yeah, man, I agree. And what you said about don't just go searching for things because as much as I like Google and they do a great job with their search engines these days. Lately though, if you just search for something, don't, whatever you do, don't hit the first thing that pops up. Scroll down for a little bit because the first things that pop up are always sponsored ads.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Sponsored ads.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: And since all the whole ad mechanism behind Google is all automated, there's rarely a human who is in there in the mix with this stuff.
Scammers and nefarious people will go and buy up ads to show up at the top of a search for the things like crypto wallets and stuff like that. So you may get something that is completely illegitimate. Gosh, man. I had, my, my brother almost got caught on something like that several years ago. He had, he had clicked on one of the first things that he'd searched for and ended up with some guy trying to, you know, get on and take a look at his phone and ask him to put, you know, wanting, wanting him to put team viewer on his phone and then go and wanted to look in his bank accounts and luckily he, before he got too far down the road, he realized something wasn't cool and stopped it. So yeah, I've heard more and more
[00:04:18] Speaker B: people being caught by these kinds of scams and before you know it, you've answered questions and you think, why did I do that? And then they leave behind dry. I know someone who had to have, who had this happen to them that basically they had to change their bank account because they gave too much information on it. You and I both know people in this industry who have been caught by these things that don't normally get caught, right? So you gotta be Careful. And you know, there's. I'm gonna drop these 10 tips in here about dealing with crypto. I'm not a crypto guy, but, but I certainly understand why these things are important when you're dealing with not just crypto, but anything that touches your bank account, that touches your funds, that transact as you. I've seen a rash of email spooking as well. I think we're gonna talk a little bit about that too.
That, you know, really can, can catch you off guard. Nobody wants, no one in your family wants gift cards from Walmart to solve their problems. Nobody.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: And they're not going to text you to ask you to go pick up something.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: They're never going to text you that. The IRS is never going to call you and say, we're going to put you in jail if you don't pay your taxes right now with a credit card. Hand it to me now. That's not going to happen. So. And I've seen that at some places I've had to when I'm doing taxes for my loved one, my mom, I've had to go in these places and I see them warning about these scams that are in this season now, especially when you're doing your taxes and you've got to be really, really careful about it. And I know you got more out there, but I'm going to throw this into the show notes and you should really look at. These are really common sense ideas that you should keep in mind when looking at stuff like this.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: I think that's a great idea when you're talking about crypto made me remember that something I wanted to talk about. A friend of mine called me a couple weeks back and ask if I had time to talk about something that was going on with her family.
And she, she gave me permission to talk about this, but as long as I don't give any details. So I just, you know, about the people. But this was something that was kind of scary. She, she, she called me and said, hey, my dad has been caught up in some kind of scheme where he has, he's in his, I think he's in his 80s.
He is a retired professional, put it that way. I'm not going to say what, what is, what his job was, but the guy was, you know, in a, in a professional level job.
But, you know, he's older now and I think, you know, maybe his, if I remember correctly, he's, he, he's alone at this point in his life and he's, he got contacted by someone on one of the social media sites who started talking to him and developed a romantic text conversation relationship online with this person.
And not too long after that, it progressed a little further. This person who he was talking to professed to be a, you know, a financial person who worked in, I think it was Dubai or somewhere like that. And that, you know, there was a great investment opportunity that was happening and you know, that, you know, she, because she liked him and because she wanted to, you know, could keep the relationship going with him, she thought she would just say, this is a great deal. I want to let my, my, my close associates and my friends in on this. So, you know, you can get in on this deal and it's going to double your money pretty quickly. And the guy took the bait and lost a ton of money. I'm not going to even say how many thousands of dollars it was, but it was, it was a significant amount of money. And the more I looked, I listened and started, started doing some searches and looking and thinking about what this was called. I found out that this was called a pig butchering scam.
And it's got some, it's got some hallmarks actually that I want to tell you about. The, the thing that we've got with a pig butchering scam here is, it is what I can read. It's like the biggest money losing scam category right now. And the way it works is pretty much classic. Like this. What, what happened to this guy? Someone contacts you on text, LinkedIn, WhatsApp or a dating site, or sometimes just straight up on Facebook or you know, one of the other social media things out there. They build some kind of friendly romantic relationship with you over weeks, you know, so they don't like tip their hand early on. They, they, they really start to get to know you and get, you get to know them and build up some trust.
And then fairly soon after that, they, they introduce you to this great investment platform, you know, and they send a link to a website and the website shows fake profits to encourage more deposits. And then they make it so you can sign up at that website and you can upload your own, you can get, take your own crypto wallet and put it in there and invest with crypto inside this, this fake website.
And the thing here is, is that when you go and you try to withdraw the money later on, there are taxes and fees and all kinds of things going on. And basically they, there's lots of delays and things that they're keep promising you that you're going to get your Money, but you don't. It's gone. Because the whole thing is fake.
From what I read, the losses from these kind of investment scams alone are in the billions of dollars every year.
And people are losing their life savings through these things. I mean, it is uncool. And the things to out or if you fear if this were to happen to one of your loved ones or someone that you know is. Look for the big red flags are people talking about these guaranteed returns. They only want to work in crypto.
And this one I never would have really thought of, but it makes sense is they want to move off whatever platform that they're on and move over to a conversation over Telegram or WhatsApp.
That's like a big deal with this.
So as I looked into it a little bit more with this person, they. They sent me the name of the person of the quote, unquote person who was dealing with their loved one. And I did some looking around and you know, it was a woman's name. And I found her social media profiles and I saw pictures of her and I did some reverse image searches on those pictures.
Turns out that, that that particular person wasn't who they said they were. They're that the photos were of a Korean influencer on Instagram, totally different name. And these photos apparently are starting to show up as part of the profiles of multiple, multiple social. Social media profiles. And it's just. It's just kind of crazy. But, yeah, like I said, won't give me details, but other than that was a lot of money lost in this. And it's.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: So one of the things about this particular scam is that the way it preys on people is that they prey on people who are lonely, who are not engaged with others, who don't have the, the either the ability or the access to people where they can say, hey, I got this thing. What do you think? It's almost always somebody in that lone spirit. So if you're a caretaker, it's not about just caretaking for your loved one, especially if they're in a situation where they're acting and having these own things. You got to ask questions, you got to. You got to be interested in where they're doing and how they're doing it. And I don't mean it to be nosy, but you need to know if your mother is making a crypto account, why you need to.
If she's got concerns about her money and her returns, you got to have those conversations so that you can be in the mix to prevent that from happening. That doesn't mean you always going to happen that way. But, boy, we're not the only ones who are dealing with this. And I'm going to tell you, everybody in there is someone in my family who's exactly the same way. There's someone in everyone, everyone's family. And if you, if you ask the right questions, you're going to find that there are people generally in that older category who are searching for this, this, you know, presence to meet because they prey upon their own, their romantic need, even, even just being friends, you, you need, as a caretaker, you need to ask that question. Because if you don't know, it could be happening to them now.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Yeah. There are ways to do that. There's, There's a list of things. I know you got a list too, but you can do things like broker check, you can look at securities about what some of these things are. The, the urgency, the thing that just draws my attention is crypto, because crypto in itself has an ability for you to put money where you can't get it back.
And so that will always, to me is something that, that starts out that way and then, you know, they always do a wrong number or social media thing or, you know, a dating app or something like that that turns into this. So you got to be really careful about that.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: Trust. Yeah, they. They make you mirror your interest. All of a sudden, that one thing that you're doing, all of a sudden they know they're interested in it too. I mean, they're engineering themselves to a point where you, they gain your trust.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: They really are. And it makes me think about, there's other tech. I've seen reports of it. I've actually seen people trying to contact me with some of these.
These me too scam patterns, you know, and through text, Text or, you know, Apple messages. I got one just the other day and it was, it was a text from a number that I didn't know and a. With a, from a. I think I looked reverse, looked up the area coast, like from British Columbia. I know I don't know anyone in British Columbia. And the thing was, it says every call I make doesn't go through. Is it because you blocked me? And you know, in your first instinct is like, is to almost write back, I have blocked you. I don't even know who you are. You know, it was the thought that went through my head. And of course I said, yeah, no, I ain't doing that. I'm not sending anything back. I don't want even acknowledge.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: And let's stop for that for a second because reacting to them, even when you're trying to tell them off is telling them that you're active and they'll try it another way. The best response to that is block it and never respond.
Yep, always.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: I do that religiously. Delete and report. Spam on the, on my iPhone. Yeah, I'm with you. Don't, don't engage. Try your best to not engage. And the thing is very, let me
[00:14:48] Speaker B: talk a little bit.
Reporting any scam, even when it doesn't work on you, means that you're giving people like Facebook and Apple and Microsoft more information about that person so that they can stop them. So it's not enough for you to say, well I'm not gonna fall for that.
So it's not enough to delete. It's delete and report.
It's really important to do that.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: Yep. If you don't, they're gonna keep trying.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: They're gonna keep trying.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah, they really are. Some of the things that you look out for and that they, it's current classic signs is they're going to pretend that there was some kind of prior contact. So in this way with mine it was like, was this somebody that already knew and I accidentally blocked them, you know what was going on and it, it, and the reason why it's kind of nefarious is because it makes you want to say, well who is this? And then bam, they know you're a human there and then you're somebody who's inquisitive.
They try to throw guilt trips on you. Did you block me? Yeah, that's kind of a guilt thing. Like oh, I didn't mean to block you, you know, I don't even know you, you know, so don't ever do any of that kind of stuff. And what they're doing, like we said, it's fishing for a live number. There's, there's a human there behind it.
And these things can lead to things like the pink butchering scams and any, any of these other kind of romance related things where they're going to end up trying to, trying to get money out of you one way or the other. And I think you've run into some of this before with, with some of your relatives, haven't you?
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And it was mainly because they were in an isolated state where they didn't. So one of the things that's listed here is don't ever go it alone.
And from a caretaker's point of View. Don't let them go it alone. Let them talk to you about all the kinds of things they're doing. And even I can't imagine dealing with this afterwards. But I've had this happen to me a couple times. But what you really want to do is set up an ability of trust where they can come to you and have this conversation even when they're not having problems.
Make it a part of the routine so that you know, okay, hey, you're investing in America prize. Okay, fine, tell me about that. And it's not being nosy. It's about getting into a habit of making sure that when you discover something new, you talk to somebody else about it. Because normally these cameras don't want you to have that content because that breaks the spell.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's true.
Like my dad, he. I think I have my dad trained now. He calls me. If he gets anything weird, he will call me and ask me what that's all about. Any kind of. Any kind of messages on his phone that looks different. The one thing my. My brother actually had to caution. Caution him about was not too long after my mom passed away, we went through probate and all that kind of stuff. And one of the parts of probate was redeading his house and land. And when that happens, there's some kind of search that people can do on the tax databases to see that something's happened with real estate, that there has been a change, because immediately after he did this, he kept getting calls about, hey, are you interested in selling that house that you got there on this at this address? And that kind of thing. The. The way where it got kind of bad was my dad would. Would engage with these people on the phone and talk, and he loved to talk and tell them about how long he had been in the house. And, you know, it was built in 1938, and my great grandfather lived here. And he goes into too much detail and doesn't realize what kind of data, too much stuff.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: And because he's. Because he likes having that conversation. He's. He's of that generation where people walk up to you, engage, you check them out in. In a very physical way, and then you start talking.
And you can't do that online because we have too many bad actors who do all kinds of things to endear themselves and put reverse mortgages on you and take deeds away and put tax liens on it. There are all kinds of ways to do that if you have enough information. And you got to be careful.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: You just have to be careful right Scary.
Well, I got one more kind of scammy thing I'd like to talk about if you got time for it. So over the last couple of months, I've been playing guitar a good bit. One of my new New Year's resolutions was to. To pick guitar back up, be able to play at least one song and sing it at the same time all the way through. All right, that doesn't seem like a lofty goal, but I haven't picked up a guitar in 30 years.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: It is for me, but go ahead.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: So I'm working on that. I went and I went and bought a new little guitar that I really like and I' had fun playing with that, but that's beside the point. But guitars are about as bad as bicycles. And there's, there's a, there's a rule with bicycles that says the appropriate number of bicycles to have is N plus 1. And N being the number of bicycles that you already own. Guitars are about as bad as that because you're always looking for one more. You don't need one more. You don't think you do, but you do need one more than you got right now.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: So that's definitely a math joke. But it worked on me, so I guess I didn't work on.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: So it. Given that I'm like looking around Facebook Marketplace and I'm looking around for, for deals near me and that kind of stuff. And I noticed this pattern and I think I'd seen it before when my, when my dad was looking for a vehicle, he was looking for an extra vehicle at one point in time. And I saw this pattern at the time and I thought it was a one off. But what I'm. What I saw was, is I saw this guitar that was listed. It was, it was actually cheap for what. For what the guitar is. And I thought, ooh, that's a really good deal. I need to look into this. So I opened up the ad and I looked at it and in the text now in the description, it says text me at this number and the number in a telephone number. And it's formatted with like the area code, three star, three asterisks, the, you know, the next three numbers and then three more asterisks and then the last four numbers, they formatted it like this. And if you're interested, it says, oh, and here's the kicker right here. I bought this for my son, but he sadly passed away in a car accident. I can't keep it at home anymore, so I've decided to sell it. It's in pre new condition. Message me for the price and details. Text my cell phone number at this number right here. If you didn't know any better, you thought, oh, my goodness, they lost it. They lost. They lost their son. But, hey, I'm going to take advantage of this really good deal on this guitar and go and go buy it. They get a little money and get it off their hands. They're not going to be reminded of their dead son. So I'm sure y' all by now know that this is bs.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah, my BS meter went up a long time ago, but go ahead.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: So. So the classic signals then this, that, that, you know, that it's a scam is one. There's an emotional hook straight up. I bought this for my son, but he sadly passed away. So scammers love to use that strategy, that strategy to lower your skepticism and to. To get you into this empathetic, sympathetic mode or early on.
And then this one, I didn't actually know this one until I started digging into it. The text me at thing where they gave. Where they gave you the phone number in a weird format. What that's doing is it's trying to get you off the platform, for one thing, so that you don't get. You don't get. You get kind of past the scam protections that are happening in Facebook Marketplace. And that, that formatting of the telephone number, there is another way to get past some of those scam protections that are already built in. So the fact that they're doing it all up front is really a red flag. And the other thing I ran into and I. So I started looking around at it. This particular one, you looked at the photos of the guitar. There's like four or five photos of the guitar. You know, they're impressive. They look like they're in somebody's house. It's. It's all cool. Well, after I, you know, I knew. I knew it was a scam, but I started looking around a little bit more. I found the same ad under. Under like seven or eight different.
Different profiles in different places with the same pictures. With exactly the same pictures.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: So, yeah, man, it's. It's. It's really nefarious.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: This is talked about on some podcasts that I, that I frequent. It's not. It's not. Not even about being innovative and coming up with, you know, the first person to come up with I'm a prince and, you know, made up money and all that stuff. No, now it's the kits. Now it's places you go that give you instructions. Now you can buy software products that do the hard part for you and you just plug in a little bit.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: I get it, I get it.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: It's all pattern based. And with AI they don't misspell words anymore. They do things like that. So you gotta be just careful and understand that if it sounds too good to be true, probably is. And verify, check do you know, type in the name of the phrase of what you're talking about and put scam and search on it.
You find all kinds of things that
[00:23:16] Speaker A: way and ask your friendly neighborhood AI. LLM. They've seen bank, ask your bank.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah they have dealt probably with the aftermath of this scam in some time. And if you have a banker, if you have a personal banker, I know my mother and my father normally did, you can ask that person is this scam. And they can tell you protect yourself, do things small ways, talk to other people. It's really important.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Oh, and one thing too our listeners may not know this part is like, well, how do they make money off of this? You know, I didn't give the, I didn't give the end to this is what will happen is that you'll, you'll ask them about it, you start getting more details about the product and you want to buy it, right? So what they will come back to you and say is well, you know, I'm, I'm out of town. I'm not going to be back in town for, you know, three, three or four weeks or a big one. I saw when my dad was looking for a, for his little truck was I'm, I'm actually in the military, I'm deployed right now. And the truck is near you, you know, near the town he was in. But I tell you what, I won't. There's a lot of people asking about it. If you want it, just send me a small deposit of X number of dollars and then I'll hold it for you. And they always ask for Zel or Cash App or Apple Pay or sometimes even gift cards and you know, if it's something smaller, they don't ever want to meet you. They'll say okay, I'll just ship this to you. I'm not going to be, you're not going to be able to be around for a little while. I'll make sure that it gets shipped to you. It's all good. I can trust you.
So that's the thing. And then you'll never see your deposit ever again.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Never again.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: And it must be, they make it up in volume or something. I don't know. But yeah, if you see any of these kinds of things, just run. It's never going to be as good a deal as you think it's going to be.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: And I know in the, when you're in the heart of it, it's hard.
I've had people. It had to me. I woke up in the morning, buy something, something. I saw an ad and it gave you the wrong number, did the wrong thing, slow down. There is no rush on any of this stuff. If it's around and it's good, it's a deal. It's going to be around an hour from now, two hours now. Go have a conversation with somebody, check it out.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's part of the, that's part of the whole thing. The urgency, you know, It's a really good deal.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: They want it now. Now. Right now.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
So, yes, Lord, just man scams, nefarious scams. They're just way too many of those. But hey, some people think that our other, our other subject today is nefarious and sometimes scammy government scam.
Let's talk about taxes.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Well, so I'm in the middle of a story right now that I will probably give more detail to later.
But doing taxes for my mom for the first time, because it's, it's that time. I'm doing it for the first. And then you have to get a lot of information to fill out somebody's taxes. And so how do you do that? You have to get government accounts. You have to line into things. There are some exotic things that they do to make sure that there are live persons around here. The live selfie is part of that now.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Yep, I ran into that.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: So be prepared. Don't wait till the last day.
As your friend did you know, also realize that because I think we mentioned this in September, they're not checking checks anymore. They're not sending you checks anymore. So you have to have direct deposit. You have to have, you need to have some form of payment. And so you need to be ready for that next year when you create IDs for your loved one. If they're doing things like that and they have online IDs, you need to get that information so that you can fill out their taxes down the road, have that conversation with them about that. And if you have a tax preparer who is helping them do this, make sure they know who you are. And then when there's the appropriate time to switch, okay, your son's doing your Taxes, now they know who you are and deal with it. So lucky for me, I had a very good relationship with my mom's tax preparer and we solved a lot of our problems, but there were a lot of them. And so I'm going to come back later and talk about things like that. And the other thing I want to mention too, and I think you have this as one of your items also is, you know, as you get older and you find your ability to drive is not there anymore, how do you switch from the driver's license to the ID card? And in some states that's easy and in some states that's very difficult. And I hope to have some more information on that.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I've been wondering about that too. So I'm curious to see how that works out for you. It's, it's apropos because I recently just updated my own driver's license thing. It's, you know, it's, it's going to be expired in a couple of months and I thought, I've never done this before, but I want to try the thing online.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: And you know, it's relatively easy to do. But one thing that you may not know if you want to try this is that at least in our state, there are some restrictions. And I'm sure whatever state or country that you're part, you're in, it may be different for you. But for the state that I live in, what they allow you to do is every other time that you need to redo new your driver's license, you can do it online, you can't do it two successive times in a row, which is kind of interesting. And even if you do it online, you still need some proof that you can see properly. So what they ask for is a, is a doctor's report that you, that you've done a vision test and that you, you know, successfully passed. And that was kind of interesting the way that worked. I called my eye doctor and they said, sure, we can do that for you. There's a charge for it. It's 25. And the way this is going to work. And if they hadn't been telling me this, it would have sounded like a scam. But it's true. This is exactly how it works. They, they said, okay, we're going to take your phone number. You're going to get a text from this lady named xyz, whatever her name was, and she's going to, she's going to send you a link that you go to that link and you, you you're going to go there and you're going to pay $25. And it was an online link that you go to a website, you fill in the blanks, you, you pay your, you pay your fee.
And said after you pay your fee. I know it's really weird, after you pay your fee they will, within 24 hours you will get a code back.
And you use that code when you're filling out your driver's license renewal form online.
And what the way it worked was I got to the point I'd put in my demographic information and all the other stuff. You know, they knew it was me and my old driver's license number and that kind of thing. And at the point they ask about the vision exam, they should put in your code. So I put the code in and then it came back with yes, this was done at this, on this date. And this was the doctor that, that, that, that verified that you could see properly and that kind of thing. And I verified it, said is this correct? And I'm Yep, that's correct. And a couple more screens and I think there might have been a charge for doing it online. I can't remember exactly, but a couple more screens and you're done. And it's supposed to show up within 15 days. So it's dead simple. But that hub back and forth verific with the eye doctor and the, the click on a link to go and pay your, your bill from that, that if you, if that was not initiated by you, that would, that would be a scam. But if you, you initiated the whole transaction and you worked with the people directly to do that, you're, you're all good. So. But even that sounds, even that seems a little sus, doesn't it?
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. I mean, yeah, I created a government I did for my mom.
I basically had to do a similar back and forth with website code and a selfie. So I had to be. And they had to look at that selfie and something looked at it and say oh yeah, that person is moving. So it couldn't be a still picture or something I took before analyze picture of her driver's license front and back.
So there were lots of little things like that and there was no real word to retic what order was coming in. And so sometimes I got in the car and that's realized I needed to have the driver's license with her because they were going to ask me for things about that. So you know, you have to be careful about that kind of things. But I Hope I'll distill it down next month. Whatever.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Through that process with my dad getting him an ID not too long ago and that whole, the thing that struck me was it, it wasn't terribly difficult. But you, you had to be familiar with all this. That how they would expect an 80 year old to do this on their own, who, you know, are not very facile with, with, with a, with a mobile, mobile phone or any other thing. Electronic. Yeah. This blows me away that they couldn't do this on their own. They need your help for this kind of stuff.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Absolutely. And you gotta plan it, you gotta put some time to it and talk about it. And you need to do it early. Don't wait till the crisis happens and do this, this is something you do beforehand. If you're hearing my voice now and you think I might need to do this, you do need to do this, do it now.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Yeah, you do need to do this.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: For sure.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: For sure. And you actually made me think about something I need to do with one of my, one of my relatives who I help out with their financial stuff is they, they're at the point they still can do their taxes or they still work with their, with their accountants. Straight up, they're, they're fine. But at some point in time I need to go get introduced to their tax preparer so they know me and that, that I can help out when the time comes, that kind of thing.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Tax preparer, stock analyst.
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Financial advisor, things like that.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Yep. For sure.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Get in the loop. Lawyer, get in the loop.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: Yep. Well, gosh, do we have anything else on the list?
[00:32:25] Speaker B: We do, but we don't have more time. You know, this is the, we could go on and on. I mean, unfortunately, these scams are so numerous and they get all kinds of people. I hate this. But, but the bottom line of this, be careful and think about what you're doing before you do it.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Talk to someone like it's, that, that's good advice. And so I think we're, we're at the point where we, you know, I just want to throw in there things are going well with my, with my, with my loved ones. We're getting real estate deals done and cleaning up some, cleaning up some things and tying up some loose ends and all that. And that, that all feels pretty good at this point. And I take it your, your situation's all good.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: You know, moms have a rough time and, and that's because of the progress of her disease and her condition.
She's had a good couple of Weeks. We found some things that were. That make her more comfortable, and we're. We're trying to do that. I think, you know, one of the things you. You run into when you. When you do this for a loved one is that there's so many little things hitting them all at the same time. It's the effect of all of them happening. And so, yeah, you just have to. And take the good days when they happen, because that's joy, that's memories. So, yeah, you know, and I say that I'm probably saying it for me as much to others, but, you know, it's. People get older and things happen, so do the best you can to make them comfortable. That's the way. That's what you're for.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: So. So I. I can't feel like I say, well, everything is okay. I'm not sure about that.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: But.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: But what I. But I do know is it is as God is planning. So, hey, there you go. I'm here to help her, and I'm doing. Hopefully doing that well. So, yeah.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: And if nothing else, what we're doing for these people will help us help the people who are going to help
[00:34:17] Speaker B: us one of these days and go back and look at this tape and say, well, you said that you shouldn't do the scam, so that's fine. I'm sure people will use my words on me back then. Maybe I'll be able to look at it and go, okay. I guess it was me who said that.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Hopefully so. Hopefully so.
Well, as always, y', all, thanks for listening to us. One last thing I'm gonna throw in there is on we. We've got some new, new countries out there who are really downloading our stuff. And let's go. Vietnam. There's a lot of folks in Vietnam recently, recently paying attention to our podcast. So, you know, that's pretty cool. There was a couple of other places in Indonesia, I think. I can't remember several across Europe. But anyway, I always love it to see when new countries show up and new and new cities around the US show up too.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: So, you know, and help, like, us subscribe.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Yep. If not on this, just from a search. Yeah. Think about subscribing. If you're looking at us on YouTube, please comment. We'd love to see comments likes. And it kind of helps our channel if you do that. So we'd love to. Love to hear from you.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Grow community.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, everybody have a good one. And we'll be back in a couple weeks. Take care. Okay.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Bye, everyone.
