It is happening to millions of Americans
every day. Talking about scams dishonest schemes designed to
defraud others. Many ways of being used to separate unsuspecting
people from their hard-earned money and possessions, but perhaps nowhere,
is it a bigger problem than with the elderly?
That’s why the FBI is ramping up its efforts to make
all of us more aware of what we can do to create a layer
of safety around, senior citizens. He Bianchi is the assistant special
agent in charge of Houston’s white-collar criminal Branch. Thank
you for joining me this morning.
Morning, thank you for having me. So, how big is this problem?
Unfortunately, it’s sad to say, but this problem is growing
at an alarming rate year after year.
So from
from I saw a statistic somewhere that said
there was like an 80 something percent increase from one year to the next
you know, should the FBI puts out a yearly Elder fraud report and that
is the data that’s collected from our internet crime, complaint center. When we
refer to, as I see three.
And last year, we had over 88,000, senior citizens
file,
a complaint there
with over a 3.
Point 1 billion dollar loss, which was that 84 percent
increase from the year before. So can we
determine what attributed to that increase that we
know you have any sense of? Well, a lot of it are
these
these criminal organizations
organizations are from International based groups
and they are really hammering the investment schemes of
where we see the biggest number of increase.
I’ve seen that the cryptocurrency and some other things is trying to get people to
be, you know,
you have a fascinating video on the air.
A website I want to
do that. It’s a very clear snapshot of just how easy it
is to fall prey to these scams. If there is no awareness,
want to play that so
you can understand what I mean.
I served in World War Two
and Korea.
I was a federal judge.
I was the director of the FBI
director of the CIA.
And I was the target of an elder fraud scheme.
Don’t
fall for scammers promises.
Money
friendship,
love for romance.
These are criminals who want to take one thing
your money.
You’ve worked hard,
you’ve saved.
Don’t let criminals try to take that away from you.
So
if he can be a Target, I mean, anybody, I mean his credentials are impeccable,
he would think, okay, he’s not there. It just shows how easy someone can
scam. If you’re not aware of it shows, anyone can
and will be targeted and these criminal networks go after anyone
and if director Webster could fall a victim, anyone in our
country could.
So what kind of plan is the FBI putting in place
to try to mitigate this issue? So, obviously we are
working to Target these criminal networks and that requires us to
investigate and use our International partners,
Because most of the time,
these are crimes that are committed from from West African country
countries,
South Asian, Southeastern age and Country. So we’ve got to work together
as a law enforcement to Target this and dismantle those
networks. That’s a tough job to do. Yeah, I’m still gets a little job.
Yeah. And
just to be frank, we need to focus more on educating
our
community.
And that is a team environment that we need to do. Because the only way to prevent
this is to educate to try to prevent it from. Well, I’d like to suggest
that I’m a part of that.
Team now is we’re trying to get some of that word out right now and other one of the things,
some of the schemes out there, got a example of some of them out there, for example,
posing as romantic Partners,
that’s a good way to do or
a grandchild. Actually needing financial help may be impersonating.
Government employees are charging homeowners for repairs that they don’t
even
perform
and even relatives or acquaintances scheming to get their
money. There are a lot of ways to get this done, I guess. One of the, if we just
put the information out there about all these different things, maybe that
can help solve some of this. Absolutely not
The highest number of victims, fall, prey to those call centers that
are doing that customer support, or that Tech fraud scheme. That
you highlighted there, they’re calling saying, they’re from the government and you
owe money and you need to pay it today.
That’s not how government agencies work. So you should never give
money out just because someone says, they’re from the IRS or from
the Harris County Sheriff’s Department.
Those types of schemes are falling prey every day.
If someone calls and says, hey you need to update your antivirus software
on your computer, please give us your credit card,
those types of things.
Numerous numerous schemes that they are doing every day.
Some are low headers, just trying to make a few hundred dollars
and then these investment schemes where they’re trying to make hundreds of thousands
or millions of dollars
per victim if they have that type of
cash sitting there.
So
people who are not aware, they don’t know where to go
to get the information, maybe to check these things out.
Is there a central place? Where people can call or go
on an email or website?
If you will to go ahead and find out more information. So the more information
Ation, obviously I’m fbi.gov and also, I see, three dot-gov
housed
psa’s out there that are.
We’ll talk about the scams that are there,
but a lot of it is just learning and having those conversations
and then
making sure you are talking with your loved ones with your neighbors that
maybe elderly
that are lonely, that may be isolated because
these scammers will also Target those individuals that
that
are there by themselves and are just the polite.
This is the, the type of nature that they are.
And they’re trusting
and They seized upon that and make them victim. So the
criminal punishments enough for Wendy. We
find these people are they being punished in a way that will be determined
to other people or is it just kind of never-ending you just got to stop it with the awareness
part? Every story is different, obviously sometimes
these
criminal networks may be in countries that are unwilling to work with the u.s. to
extradite them back. So I think we focus on taking
and disrupting them when we can and that involves the quicker
we get involved and we’re noticing
I’d
if it is a wire transfer that’s gone out. We have the capability to work with
banks, to try to stop the wire.
If it is cryptocurrency, which is really taken off a
300% increase last year.
We do have the capabilities to trace the cryptocurrency and possibly
sees it or freeze it down the line. So the sooner,
the FBI or any law enforcement gets involved,
there’s a better chance we can get it stuffed
websites again fbi.gov and I see three dot-gov
fancy 3.5 assistant, special agent in charge yankie.
I
tell every
FBI guy here to cut this what I’ve always wanted
and you plant it that way and you got it. So that’s good for you. Thank you for
what you’re doing on behalf of our country and on behalf of the elderly.
Those folks trying to Target our seniors we appreciate you being here this morning. Thank
you.