CCATP_2024_12_21
Pat Dangler shares the story of her neighbor Dorothy, who fell victim to a social engineering scam involving false IRS charges. The episode highlights the psychological impact of scams and emphasizes the importance of skepticism and community awareness.
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In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Pat Dangler, a certified Apple consultant and a trusted friend, about a shocking incident involving her neighbor, Dorothy. The story illustrates the complexities and dangers of social engineering scams that can catch even the most discerning individuals off guard.
The narrative begins on a seemingly ordinary day, but quickly escalates when Dorothy approaches Pat, urgently seeking help to send a picture of her driver’s license to the IRS. Pat recognizes the signs of a scam immediately, yet Dorothy insists she has been in contact with the IRS regarding fraudulent charges. As I walked through the details with Pat, we unearth a web of deceit that began with a phone call from an alleged Amazon representative, notifying Dorothy about a bogus charge for a $1,279 laptop she never ordered.
From there, the scam spirals out of control, with Dorothy being transferred from one faux representative to another—from Amazon to Wells Fargo to the Federal Trade Commission and eventually to the U.S. Treasury Department. The criminals cleverly fed her personal information, including her social security number, convincing her that she was under threat of legal action if she didn’t comply with their demands. Pat describes the high-pressure tactics used by the scammers, encouraging Dorothy to withdraw significant amounts of cash from her banks under the guise of proving her innocence.
In a heart-pounding turn of events, Dorothy followed their instructions, withdrawing $25,000 from one bank and then $5,000 from another. The scammers requested photographic evidence of her driver’s license alongside the cash to verify her identity. However, thanks to Pat's timely intervention and expertise, this alarming transaction was halted just in time. Pat recounts how, despite Dorothy's knowledge of technology, the pressure of the situation clouded her judgment, reflecting a broader issue that many people face when confronted with such elaborate schemes.
Throughout our conversation, we delve into the psychological aspects of these scams and the importance of vigilance and skepticism in our digital age. I emphasize that these sophisticated ploys can be particularly deceptive, even for well-educated individuals like Dorothy, highlighting that such experiences can happen to anyone. Pat and I discuss how the sophistication of fraud continues to evolve, particularly as scammers leverage personal information that is often accessible to them due to previous data breaches.
In the aftermath, the banks took proactive measures, reporting the incident to local authorities focused on elder abuse, further demonstrating the need for community support and awareness. This story serves as a powerful reminder of the dangers of social engineering and the critical need for awareness around these scams. As we move forward, recognizing and addressing these threats collectively is crucial, and sharing such experiences helps keep the issue front of mind for everyone.
This episode is not just a recounting of an alarming tale; it serves as an educational piece, urging listeners to remain vigilant and always verify before acting on requests—especially those that seem urgent or demanding sensitive information.
The narrative begins on a seemingly ordinary day, but quickly escalates when Dorothy approaches Pat, urgently seeking help to send a picture of her driver’s license to the IRS. Pat recognizes the signs of a scam immediately, yet Dorothy insists she has been in contact with the IRS regarding fraudulent charges. As I walked through the details with Pat, we unearth a web of deceit that began with a phone call from an alleged Amazon representative, notifying Dorothy about a bogus charge for a $1,279 laptop she never ordered.
From there, the scam spirals out of control, with Dorothy being transferred from one faux representative to another—from Amazon to Wells Fargo to the Federal Trade Commission and eventually to the U.S. Treasury Department. The criminals cleverly fed her personal information, including her social security number, convincing her that she was under threat of legal action if she didn’t comply with their demands. Pat describes the high-pressure tactics used by the scammers, encouraging Dorothy to withdraw significant amounts of cash from her banks under the guise of proving her innocence.
In a heart-pounding turn of events, Dorothy followed their instructions, withdrawing $25,000 from one bank and then $5,000 from another. The scammers requested photographic evidence of her driver’s license alongside the cash to verify her identity. However, thanks to Pat's timely intervention and expertise, this alarming transaction was halted just in time. Pat recounts how, despite Dorothy's knowledge of technology, the pressure of the situation clouded her judgment, reflecting a broader issue that many people face when confronted with such elaborate schemes.
Throughout our conversation, we delve into the psychological aspects of these scams and the importance of vigilance and skepticism in our digital age. I emphasize that these sophisticated ploys can be particularly deceptive, even for well-educated individuals like Dorothy, highlighting that such experiences can happen to anyone. Pat and I discuss how the sophistication of fraud continues to evolve, particularly as scammers leverage personal information that is often accessible to them due to previous data breaches.
In the aftermath, the banks took proactive measures, reporting the incident to local authorities focused on elder abuse, further demonstrating the need for community support and awareness. This story serves as a powerful reminder of the dangers of social engineering and the critical need for awareness around these scams. As we move forward, recognizing and addressing these threats collectively is crucial, and sharing such experiences helps keep the issue front of mind for everyone.
This episode is not just a recounting of an alarming tale; it serves as an educational piece, urging listeners to remain vigilant and always verify before acting on requests—especially those that seem urgent or demanding sensitive information.
Brief Summary
In this episode, I speak with certified Apple consultant Pat Dangler about a harrowing experience involving her neighbor, Dorothy, and a complex social engineering scam. Pat recounts how Dorothy was misled into believing she needed to provide personal information and cash to the IRS due to fraudulent charges linked to a laptop she never ordered. Despite recognizing the scam, Dorothy fell victim to high-pressure tactics and withdrew significant amounts of money at the scammers' insistence. Our conversation unfolds the psychological impact of such scams and emphasizes the importance of skepticism in our increasingly digital world. We also discuss community vigilance and the measures taken by banks to report these incidents, highlighting the critical need for ongoing awareness and education to prevent others from falling prey to similar schemes.
Tags
Apple consultant
Pat Dangler
social engineering scam
personal information
fraudulent charges
high-pressure tactics
psychological impact
skepticism
community vigilance
ongoing awareness
prevention
Transcript
[0:00]Music
[0:10]
Introduction to Scams
[0:07]Well, it's that time of the week again. It's time for Chit Chat Across the Pond. This is episode number 804 for December 21st, 2024. And I'm your host, Alison Sheridan. You've all heard me mention before our good friend, Pat Dangler, who's a certified Apple consultant. I'm always telling stories about things she helped me with. Well, I've asked her to come on the show to tell us a story of something that happened to her friend and neighbor, Dorothy. Welcome back to the show, Pat.
[0:31]Hi, how are you?
[0:33]I'm doing good. So I've talked to you shortly after the incident, I think within an hour, or maybe, like, maybe it was right after, immediately after, but this is a pretty, pretty scary story you had to tell. So you're, you're hanging out at your house, you were doing something, and you got a phone call.
[0:53]No, actually, I share my, my driveway is between Dorothy's house and my house. And so I was outside, she popped her head in the window, and she said, I need your help. And I think she might have sped so far, I need your help sending and texting an image. And I said, okay. So I walked around and met her at the front door.
[1:17]I think you said, can I go change my clothes first or something like that? And she was like, no, now.
[1:22]Yeah, and I put my shoes on because I think I just had like slippers on and I'd come outside to check on the cat really quickly. So, you know, it wasn't meant to be a longer thing. And she said, sure, but just come now. I was like, okay.
[1:36]All right.
[1:38]So I met her at the front door and in a quiet voice, she said, I'm not supposed to tell anybody. You're not supposed to be here, but I need you to help me send a picture of my driver's license to the IRS. And right away I said, Dorothy, it's not real. It's bogus. And she assured me she was very dead serious. She said, no, no, no, it's absolutely it's 100%. It's the IRS.
[2:03]
The Scary Phone Call
[2:03]So I thought, all right, I'm going to give her the benefit of, you know, she's clearly been dealing with somebody on the phone, maybe she called them, I don't know. So I walk in and she's got her iPhone, which I think is an XR maybe, something like that. It's an older iPhone, but she's got it connected to the bathroom outlet because she's trying to charge it at the same time. She doesn't use her phone very much, her iPhone.
[2:33]And part of my curiosity with this was also because I know that she knows how to text pictures because I've showed her before and she's done it successfully. But she was she had an existing text message chain text message with someone and she couldn't connect texting the picture from her camera the camera app into that message she could initiate a new message but then she didn't have that person's phone and blah blah so so that's where she kind of got stuck and I was looking at it and I saw the phone number and while she was playing with it you know before she kind of let me in to to do it um yeah I tried to look up the number and it came as some very vague Maryland number okay and uh I could hear somebody in the background on the speakerphone starting to get insistent like can't you send me the you know the message blah blah and And I thought, he's got the wrong attitude. If he's really from the IRS and if he's really trying to help her, he's being pushy. He had a small accent, not very much. So he spoke English very well, but he did have a slight accent. And I told Dorothy, I said, just hang up. And she did. She immediately, she went, she hung up the phone.
[3:54]And I said, this does not, you know, when the phone is disconnected, I said, yeah, I told her, I said, this does not sound right. And this by the way was about three in the afternoon And that's important because she started to tell me the story that it started at around 8 a.m She gets a phone call
[4:14]And it's from Amazon telling, now I'm going to do air quotes on these, which I know nobody can see. But whenever I say a name brand or an agency brand, they're air quotes.
[4:28]All right.
[4:29]So Amazon's calling her to tell her that the $1,000 charge for the laptop that she ordered to be shipped somewhere back east did not go through.
[4:38]Now, hang on. It wasn't just $1,000. It was $1,279. So a very specific amount so it was it was a laptop being charged to account the the the laptop that she had ordered to be shipped to new york and but it hadn't gone through.
[4:55]Somewhere yeah and
[4:57]And correct and who was it uh do we know the name of the rep uh from amazon.
[5:01]Uh in this case yes yeah she because that so so i'm telling you this story but i i went back later with her in the evening to to get all of the details okay um so yeah her rep emily johnson okay uh called called her and and said you know that the charge didn't go through and of course dorothy says i didn't order a laptop this this is not correct and so emily very helpfully says well um who is your credit card through which bank Dorothy answered Wells Fargo. And she said, okay, I'm going to transfer you to Wells Fargo because this is clearly fraud and you need to, you know, check your bank. So she transfers her to Elena Brown at Wells Fargo. Air quotes remember air quotes yeah um and then elena determined that yes this was indeed fraud and i need to transfer you to the feds because they did apparently use her social security number i'm not sure how this came into the conversation okay this came up but there
[6:14]You i don't remember putting my social security number into amazon when i purchased
[6:19]
The Elaborate Scheme
[6:17]things but okay yeah all right this is what they told her all right.
[6:20]So she transferred her to neil at the federal trade commission and he gave her his id number ftc number 10253 and um and we have the phone number and neil was going to run a whole check because he noticed and and by the way he repeated her full social security number to her she did not initiate giving that to anyone wow so so this this is i think part of the reason why she was convinced that this was legitimate is because okay maybe they could have the last four digits of her social but but they shouldn't have her full social yeah so um he uh asked her in part of the conversation where do you bank and she listed off the various banks she's a teacher's credit union and i think she's also at chase and at Wells Fargo. And he said he did a search and found that someone was taking out $67,000 a week against her social security number. This was the words that she used to tell me the story.
[7:33]Okay. From those bank accounts?
[7:36]Yeah from some or some bank account somewhere and uh what they need to do is is run an investigation and they need to prove that dorothy is not responsible for this and in order to do that um oh and there's some sort of section number that he quoted 19a regarding money laundering And so that she needs to freeze or suspend her banks and prove that she's not responsible and that she needs to get a new social security number. And what is going to happen is a Federal Trade Commission officer is going to come to her house and... Uh, we'll have some forms for her to fill out some questions. Uh, and then ultimately what they're going to do is they're going to go in front of the judge and prove that this isn't her. And part of this process is they need her to go to all of her banks and withdraw $25,000 in cash from all of her banks in cash.
[8:42]Just, I want to stop you for saying this is incredibly elaborate. We have somebody pretending to be Amazon, somebody pretending to be Wells Fargo, Somebody pretending to be the FTC, somebody pretending to be the F, yeah, oh, sorry, the FTC.
[8:58]The Treasury Department, yeah.
[9:00]Wait, we're going to go to the Treasury Department next?
[9:04]Yeah, and then the IRS is going to get involved, an attorney at the IRS specifically. This is elaborate. Apparently, she apparently then left the house, went to Chase and withdrew $25,000. At Chase, they did have the manager come over and talk to her and say, listen, we're not really sure that this is legitimate. Oh, let me just preface. When they told her to go to the bank and take out the cash, they said, don't tell them what it's for. Just make up a story like it's for, you know, you're doing a renovation or you're doing landscaping or something and you need to pay in cash.
[9:47]So she did that?
[9:54]
The Cash Withdrawal
[9:48]She goes to the bank and the manager came over and she said, no, no, I need the cash. This is, you know, it's legitimate. This is what, you know, I need. And the bank manager emphasized, just so you know, if this is fraud, you are not protected. You will not get this money back. And she told him, I get it. And she got her $25,000. And then she went to one of her other banks. I want to say it might've been the credit union. And at the credit union, they actually said, the most we're going to let you take out is $5,000. So they did limit her there. And my understanding is after she went to those two banks, she came home and she either she called them back or they called her back. And they said, okay, what we need now is a photograph of your driver's license sitting next to the cash. So that was the picture that she was trying to text to this phone number, and this is where she got stuck. Now, when I first looked at this whole situation, the picture that she was trying to text, I thought, boy, that's a really lousy picture of her driver's license because it was small in the picture, but it didn't register what anything else was.
[11:05]You weren't noticing the cash in the photo?
[11:08]It was really small. It was on the phone, right? Right. But after we hung up, this is when she walked me over to her kitchen counter, which is where she had the cash laid out and her driver's license there. And I realized, oh, this is what she was trying to text them. Oh, my gosh. So I'm glad we stopped it at that point.
[11:25]Thank goodness she didn't know how to send the text message.
[11:29]And she does know how to send a photo over text. She's done it millions of times with her family because I've shown her how to do it. Yeah. But it was the.
[11:37]
Almost a Disaster
[11:38]Like replying to an existing one.
[11:40]Because they, right, they weren't in her address book. Yeah. That phone number.
[11:44]She wasn't initiating it from photos.
[11:45]It was just a text that she had gotten.
[11:46]And share. She was starting from messages, trying to reach back and get a photo and didn't know how to do that. Don't teach her.
[11:52]So, yeah, that's true. I haven't taught her. So, of course, by the way, the instant that I had her hang up on whoever was on the phone with her, the phone just kept ringing and ringing. They were trying, they were calling back.
[12:07]I think you've skipped a step here.
[12:10]Okay.
[12:10]Let's see. I'm looking at Pat's notes. So let's see. The Federal Trade Commission officer said they'll come to her house. You talked about that part, but then he called back and now it's gone to the U.S. Treasury Department and an attorney is going to take over and the call was transferred.
[12:28]So the coming to her house part was after she sent them the text with her ID,
[12:39]
The Investigation Deepens
[12:35]which obviously was going to have her address on there, and then they were going to send somebody.
[12:39]But this, your note said it went to the U.S. Treasury Department and an attorney was going to take over and the call was transferred. We have yet another person, Alvaro.
[12:48]Yeah, and this was the person who was going to, he's running the investigation now, and he's the one that's verifying about the assets in all of her accounts, and part of this was he was going to get the cash.
[13:02]He's the one that directed her to send the cash. Okay. Yes. And his ID number is PN-1156. I mean, every single person's making this sound so freaking legitimate.
[13:11]Yeah. And the great thing is she took notes. I mean, you know, when she does this, when she's on the phone with whoever she's asking for help with, she takes really good detailed notes about who she's talking to and so on. Now, I will say that when I went back and I had her tell me the story from top to bottom, probably three different times in the story, she looked at me and shook her head and she said, I should have known this was bogus right here, you know, at this point.
[13:41]I hope you made her feel not stupid.
[13:44]Oh, completely. You know, I told her, I said, this is, and this is what I tell everybody. Because I get a lot of calls from clients who says, I think I've been hacked. Probably not. More than likely, if anybody is getting access to your accounts, it's using something called, oh my God. Phishing? Social engineering.
[14:09]Yeah, social engineering through phishing.
[14:11]Yeah. Yeah, it's a person who has convinced you to give them some of your information in some way. Whether that's a password to an email account. Not a technology hack. Right, it's not what we see in the movies, you know, where somebody's sitting in a van with a computer. And they're I mean now and I've turned off the security cameras that's very rare yeah um so you know I told her I said look this is you know it happens to everybody and honestly in my experience it happens to my most educated clients oh once you have the PhDs it's it's the weirdest thing I don't know if it's their the level of you know being able to sniff out um bogusness is is not as good or something i don't know what the what that is but that's just my little observation um so they were good news is they were
[15:05]Going to send a lawyer to her front door and she was going to hand them the cash.
[15:10]Right that was that was the the you know what was going to happen now i am pretty sure i've seen a news report on this and i don't know if it was 60 minutes or nightline or one of these news reporting things where they actually arrested the person who came to the door who was more on the level of an uber driver that was sent to pick up something and and they may not have known what it was okay so i don't know if this is how this would have played out or you know some actor would have come or somebody pretending to be somebody official would have come to pick up the the cash from her but um yeah so it ended well thankfully because as soon as i left her she got in her car and went back to the bank and deposited the money now a follow-up with chase with the bank uh they on their own called the Los Angeles County of something in aging. And it's people who deal with elder abuse.
[16:18]
Support from the Bank
[16:18]And that person called her, came to the house once, she wasn't home. The second time he arrived, I happened to be there. I was just leaving. I was standing on her front porch with her and he shows up and he has an ID, you know, which I of course was extremely...
[16:34]Yeah, right, right.
[16:35]Yeah, I'm like, uh-huh, I bet you are. Let's talk out here. But he was really nice.
[16:40]Yeah.
[16:41]He offered to help her file a police report. And, um, he wanted to be assured that no, that she didn't actually lose any money and, uh, you know, and that sort of thing. So he was, um, that whole thing was initiated by the bank, which I'm really proud about for that.
[17:01]And I like that they tried really hard to help her not be, uh, trusting. Yes. I almost said stupid. Exactly. And that's not the right word. Trusting.
[17:10]No. Yeah. Yeah, it's really that sort of, you know, that false sense of trust in there that somebody convinced in her. And, you know, she retired from her work life as an assistant principal. So, she's not a dumb person. She's traveled the world. She's taken many over. You know, I've known Dorothy since I was seven when we moved in the house next door. And over those years, she's traveled a lot. She's not dumb by any stretch of the imagination. But, you know, it's an emotional thing when, you know, somebody is convincing you that you may be at risk of having to go to jail, you know, if we don't prove that you didn't do all this. So, it's, yeah, it's definitely unfortunate that this keeps happening because clearly they must have a certain amount of success if they have enough people to get involved and do this kind of a...
[18:13]
Lessons Learned
[18:09]Yeah, to have five separate representatives faking five separate organizations. I think what the reason I was really interested in having you on about this is because it's almost like we have to just keep reminding ourselves that this is out there and this can happen.
[18:26]And I've told this story many times since it happened. Pretty much every client that week had me sit down and tell them the story. And of course, their first reaction, well, that would never happen to me. But you know, you can't think that. Because it may be in a slightly less obvious form. You know, we all get emails, you know, this is an invoice of $400 to PayPal that, you know, you need to pay for this service that you bought. But, I mean, I'm getting those probably once a week.
[19:00]Yeah, yeah.
[19:01]And, you know, I also get them from clients.
[19:05]I got caught out twice on the same one. It was a plugin that I used to use for WordPress. And I didn't even use it anymore. But I was like, I use so many different things that I've got. And I was like, oh, let me click through this link. And luckily, it didn't work. But I fell for it twice, two years in a row. I was like, oh, geez, you know.
[19:24]I have clients that send me these emails and I always tell them, please do. I mean, I'm not going to charge you for this. Just send them to me and ask me if I think that they're legitimate or not. And I've got another client whose email service, her company's email service is through a vendor. And the email came from that vendor saying, click here, you need to update all your passwords because if you don't, your email is going to stop working in the next month. and it was not legitimate. If you look at who it's actually from...
[19:57]If you hover over it and see the...
[20:00]Yeah. But the email looked authentic. It had their logo and, you know, the wording seemed correct. It had a button on there to click.
[20:09]Yeah. And with AI, all those emails look a lot better than they used to. You used to be able to spot them a mile away because they were misspelled and they had all these goofy characters in them and everything.
[20:18]Emojis in the subject line. Yeah.
[20:21]They're getting better and better. I think the two things that I like to keep in mind on this is one is all of these breaches we hear about, you don't immediately get hacked, but the amount of information that exists about you, the fact that they had her social security number, well, of course they did. That's been hacked from somewhere. I mean, mine happened to be the federal government who gave it away accidentally. But there's a treasure trove of information. I mean, I'm sure they know my kid's name, where my kids live, you know, my grandkids' names, my dog's name. My maiden name. Yeah, well, again, the government gave that one away. But the wealth of information that's available that they could make you think they know they're coming from a place of authority because they have this information is vast. And the only thing you can do is never trust anything. Initiate everything on your own. Like, had she thought to say, wait a minute, $67,000 a week is being pulled out of my accounts. I should be able to log into my accounts actively on my own and see what my balance is. And if it's negative now, you know, $67,000 a week, I don't know if Dorothy's, you know, heir to the Hearst Foundation money wouldn't notice that, but...
[21:34]I think in that case, it was that they had used her social security number to open up a line of credit at a different bank or something that she didn't have control over.
[21:45]Ah, okay. Of course. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, this is a good story to keep telling. And I think, you know, we had Ed on to talk about his sister-in-law and how she's been scammed and is continuing to be scammed to this day because she is convinced that that gentleman
[22:02]
Importance of Sharing Stories
[22:01]that writes to her is her boyfriend. Uh they uh telling these stories over and over again helps us keep it front of mind you know so that we whenever we're talking to somebody i'm so happy with steve's parents the minute anything looks even the teeniest tiniest bit weird on screen they pick up the phone and and they always say oh sorry to bother you no keep bothering me keep bothering me and their spidey sense is really good now they spot all kinds of weird stuff so telling these stories is is important, and I appreciate you coming on to tell us about it.
[22:30]Oh, sure. Sure. Anytime.
[22:33]All right. Well, if you're in the Los Angeles area, you should contact me if you need someone who is intelligent, resourceful, educated on everything about Apple stuff and networking, and will not make you feel stupid, which by the way, I always tell people that's your superpower, especially with female clients. I don't want to diss all men or anything, but there are times when men will maybe be a little dismissive, perhaps, in talking to some women. Pat is the person you want to call whether you're male or female if you're in the la area you should definitely contact me to get a hold of her unless you want to give out contact information directly pat sure.
[23:07]You can reach me by email at pat at dangler consulting and it's d-e-n as in denmark g-l-e-r consulting.com uh anything else if you really need my phone number you can get that from Allison.
[23:21]And just send me $1,279 and I'll send that to you.
[23:26]Yeah, credit card.
[23:28]
Conclusion and Contact Info
[23:29]Yeah. All right. Thanks for coming on the show, Pat.
[23:32]Thanks for having me.
[23:33]I hope you enjoyed this episode of Chit Chat Across the Pond. Did you notice there weren't any ads in the show? That's because this show is not ad supported. It's supported by you. If you learned something or maybe you were just entertained, consider contributing to the Podfeet podcast. You can do that by going over to podfeet.com and look for the big red button that says support the show. When you click that button, you're going to find different ways to contribute. You can donate one time through the big donate button with a credit card or Apple Pay, or you can use PayPal. If you want to make a recurring contribution, click the Patreon button. Keep in mind, I don't charge Patreon for chitchat across the pond or programmed by stealth episodes just once a month for the nocilicast. That keeps it simple. If you want to contact me for any reason, you can email me at alisonandpodfeed.com, and you can follow me on mastodon at podfeed.com.
[24:22]Music