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Exploring Aging
Did you know that according to the Federal Trade Commission, 2,600,000 consumers reported losing more than 10,000,000,000 to fraud in 2023? $10,000,000,000 in fraud, 1,000,000,000 with a b. Have you ever been scammed? Have you ever been robbed? How did that make you feel?
Speaker 1:Are you prepared to fight against the criminals that are seeking to steal your hard earned money? If these questions have piqued your interest, then you're going to love hearing from Emery Thomas, a retired financial planner and advisor with decades of experience as he shares how to avoid fraud and financial scams on this edition of the Exploring Aging podcast. Well, welcome back. You're listening to the Exploring Aging podcast. I'm your host Ray Sanders, and on our last podcast, Emery Thomas provided a wealth of knowledge regarding the 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars that will soon be changing between generation.
Speaker 1:This phenomena is known as the great wealth transfer. It's one thing to be wise about making decisions financially, and to use your money wisely. It's altogether different to work hard for it and then have someone steal it from you. We're talking about scams and frauds and how to avoid them. Emery Thomas is back in studio with us again today.
Speaker 1:And not to be overlooked, I have a couple of guys here that are with me. My cohorts and cohort or cohost in crimes are here as well. Doctor Bill Pierce and Greg McGinnis are both here with me today. Guys, good to see you.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I want you to introduce us as a cohort in crime as we're talking about fraud and scams. I didn't
Speaker 1:even think about it.
Speaker 3:It makes sense.
Speaker 1:You know what? I think that's why we have Emery here.
Speaker 2:I think so. I think so.
Speaker 1:We're going to test your mettle. We're going to find out for sure. Well, how about just cohorts and cohosts? There we go. There we go.
Speaker 1:See, I had a little stumble there anyway. And maybe it was just because I was mentioning you as criminals. But well well
Speaker 3:He did it again.
Speaker 1:He did.
Speaker 2:He did.
Speaker 1:Well, Greg, thanks to you in in all honesty. Greg, thanks to you. We had the privilege of meeting Emory on our last episode. So just just remind our listener who he is. I mean, he unpacked this whole idea, you know about this transferring of wealth from baby boomers to the next generation.
Speaker 1:But today he is continuing to talk to us about our money and how to avoid fraud and scams. Kind of remind our listeners what we have already learned from this great guest.
Speaker 2:Sure. Yes. So Emery Thomas, as we talked about earlier in the last in our last time he was with us, really has years decades of experience in investing and helping people, kind of thing. But, what I love about Emery Thomas is he's a man after God's own heart
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:And wants to help people. And where some of us, here today, we are vocational ministers. But what I love about, Emory is, you know what, he's a minister. He just did it in a different setting
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In a financial world and an investment world, but his heart is to help people and, help them to know Christ. And so something he said, just resonated with me that, you know, the difference between values and valuables, if you will, and you can't wait until you're at the point of death, if you will, to transfer values. Values, transferring of those starts way down the road. Mhmm. When your kids were young, when your grandchildren are young, to transfer values that you've got, the valuable stuff, those assets, that all can come later.
Speaker 2:But, man, to create value, transference along the way. Yeah. That that resonates with me. As a as a dad of young adult children, we've tried to do that, but man, that's important, to always keep that at the forefront. It's the dollars and cents, at the end of the day, it's the values that you're transferring.
Speaker 2:And he he brought that home loud and clear. Mhmm. Well, I
Speaker 1:wanna pick up on something you said and I think that it's fair to say. You can say that I'm wrong, but, you'll be wrong. I I believe probably most of the people that are listening, to our podcast fall into Emory's category. Most of them are vocational ministers. That's right.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna tell you that I think most of them are like him and they are ministers of the marketplace. Mhmm. And they've worked a lifetime to accumulate wealth. They've also served in the local church. They've served their communities.
Speaker 1:In other ways, they have been those ministers, those that were are sent out, you know, we gather and send out.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And if it wasn't for our ministers in the marketplace, you know, how would we, advance the gospel?
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Right? It's not saying that pastors and ministers don't advance the gospel, but they encourage us to do what we do. And these ministers of the marketplace, a lot of times they come to the time when they are gonna meet the Lord and they would need to have had their house put in order and that's what Emery spent his life doing. And so that's great. But today he's going to talk to us about something, that's real serious for all of us and this this does not discriminate with age.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And that is this rampant rampant fraud that's out there. These scams, it's a real problem. People are getting scammed at record levels. We mentioned it on the intro, but I'm gonna bring it back up.
Speaker 1:And according to the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, 2,600,000 consumers reported, keyword, and and Emery pointed this out to me prior to the show. They reported losing more than 10,000,000,000 with a b, 10,000,000,000 to fraud in 2023. $10,000,000,000 guys.
Speaker 2:And that's in 1 year.
Speaker 1:Yeah. In 1 year. Yeah. This is a topic that we have got to set up in our seats to talk about. And then Emery pointed out to me before the show started, he said, hey, Ray, did you know that in 2022, just 1 year prior, that number was well, I say only, but comparatively, it's a lot less.
Speaker 1:88,000 victims reported having fraud or being scammed compared to 2.6 the following year. That's crazy. And in 2022, they lost 3,100,000,000. That's still unbelievable. 3,100,000,000.
Speaker 1:Are you are you tracking with me? Mhmm. In 2022, 1 year later, the reported was 10,000,000,000. That is a swing of 7,000,000,000 more than double of what it was the year before in 1 year. Somebody's getting rich off our back and they're stealing and they're robbing from us.
Speaker 1:And we got a guy, he's not a deputy from West Texas, but he's got some ideas on how to pump the brakes. Emery, how is this possible? How is this happening? How are they doing it? What can
Speaker 2:we do? Before you, Angela, Emery, when you brought the intro, here's what came to my mind Okay. Ray. Because you said, have you ever been scammed? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Have you ever been robbed? So when I think of the word robbed, I think of a physical assault.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Let's say a gun or or something robbed. I would think that when you think about the number of people, as we've just talked about, who've been scammed versus robbed
Speaker 4:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Robbed is not happening in our world today. It's still happening. But when you look at the numbers, the scamming, that's we've all could fall very easily victim to that. Yeah. And so when I heard you say or ask those 2 questions, I thought, you know what?
Speaker 2:My chances of being robbed is probably way small. Right. But scammed? That's that's a different story.
Speaker 1:I think the point that's made there is that both of them, you feel violated. Yes. Whether you're robbed at pistol point or, you know, or whatever. And and if you're scammed, they've they've technically robbed you.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I mean, we know that the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. We could say scam fraud and whatever. Yeah. But the idea is we feel violated. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know? It's but how do we avoid that? I mean, I don't want to be a I don't wanna add 1 nickel, dime, or penny to the 10,000,000,000 for 2025. I don't I don't wanna be that guy. Right.
Speaker 1:So that's why Emery's here today. That's a good point you make though.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Emory, tell us, how is this possible? How how is this happening?
Speaker 4:Well, if you think about it, we've always had scammers. When Jesus walked the face of the earth, we had scammers. So they've always been here, and they've always happened, and they've always attacked a few people, and they've been there. But today in this age of electronic communication and all the stuff that we have, electronic dialers, you can contact a 100 1,000 people in a day by doing some of that stuff. Everything's different today than it has ever been before, and I don't know that it's worse, because there's more people now than we've ever had before, but it's bad and they can do it.
Speaker 4:And they they use a lot of high powered computer stuff to do it with, but you don't have to, and I I I don't want to bother you reading a lot of stuff to you, but I have do have a little scenario here that I want to read you because this still gets played out every day.
Speaker 1:Let's hear it.
Speaker 4:In this example, the grandmother might later claim the caller knew her grandchild's name and school, when in fact she supplied it, and here's how it goes, the scammer. Hi, grandma. This is your favorite grandson. Can you guess which one? Grandma says, Bobby.
Speaker 4:He says, yes. This is Bobby. Do you remember where I go to school? State College. Yes.
Speaker 4:That's right. Well, I was at State College, and I decided to drive to Mexico with some friends, and we got into a little trouble. Can you see falling for that? He didn't know the kid's name. He didn't know where he went to school.
Speaker 4:He got it all out of that lady like that, and chances are she would tell the police that he had the name that she didn't tell him. They're good. They're very, very good, and that's just a phone call.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 3:grandma just hears the word trouble, and when she hears that word, she's all about trying to get him out of the trouble instead of thinking she's getting scammed.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Absolutely. And she gave him all the information that he needed, and if it went on and on and on, he probably got her phone number and got some money got her to send money somewhere. Example. You know, but but that's just so believable.
Speaker 4:That could happen to any of us. You know? Well, today with AI, they if they did a little more homework, they'd find a kid and get him to say just a few words on the phone and they record it, and then AI can duplicate the voice and they can tell it what to say. And then he can call grandma, and she's gonna recognize his voice. Wow.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:You know? So this is getting more and more,
Speaker 1:When you say AI, just to be clear, we're talking about, you know, artificial intelligence. Yeah. Artificial intelligence. And it's that's just the quick way, the AI. I mean, these fakes take a little bit of your voice inflection.
Speaker 1:I mean, think about it. Us on the radio, and next thing you know, they use that and they're they're calling people.
Speaker 3:It's really scary. It
Speaker 4:is. It's real scary. And this is advancing very, very rapidly. Today, you can look at some some AI video, and you can kinda tell the people aren't real if you look real close. I mean, if they're wearing glasses and there's there's a glare on there and they turn their head and glare stays exactly the same.
Speaker 4:I mean, there's there's things you you can look and you look at their skin, and it just doesn't seem to move when they they're talking. Mhmm. But that's gonna change, and that may be changed in 6 months. Mhmm. All of this stuff is changing so rapidly that audio and video well, like photos used to be evidence in court.
Speaker 4:Not anymore. Not at all. There's there's no reason to take it at all and offer it as evidence because it could have been doctored, and it's harder and harder to tell, and that's what's happening. So some of them use this highly realistic fake audio and video, you know, and they can send that over your computer if you're in there surfing the Internet or just reading your emails that can pop up. They can they can put noises in the background with people talking or machines running that sounds very, very much like they're calling from a real place.
Speaker 4:Well, they are a real place, but I mean
Speaker 1:Like the Mexico example. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Precisely. There's a realistic sounding telephone calls that appear to be someone you know.
Speaker 4:Uh-huh. That's there, and I I don't mind telling you when this first started, because I have now that I'm retired, I have a broker, and because I was a broker for years and I trained him, I can call him and tell him what I want and he just does it.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Because he's not worried about me giving him the wrong orders or I'm not ever going to sue him. I mean, if he does if he does what I tell him to, not like some of the clients might do. Right. So I'll just call him and tell him, and I called him one day and I said, how do you know this is me? Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Wow. And he said, Emery, is that you? And I said, Well, of course it is. And then he said, Well, now I really don't know. So one of the things you can do, you can come up with a code word that you can share with with your broker or with whoever you're talking about that that would actually manage money for you, and and so we didn't share a word.
Speaker 4:We we shared a little, just a little talk about what's going on in my neighborhood because who's gonna know that
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:From another from somewhere else.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You
Speaker 4:know? And so now anytime seriously, anytime I call him, because I call him on his cell phone. I don't call the office. I don't need to talk to those folks. He'll wanna know about what's going on in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I can tell him exactly what's going on, and then we're off and running. Sure. Great advice. Great advice. But you need to do something.
Speaker 4:I mean code words work, code conversations can work. You can also ask people, you know, what's your mother's maiden name?
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Scammers probably aren't gonna know. Right. You know? There there's a lot you can do. Probably, some of the best advice is don't do business with somebody you don't know.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And and that's kinda hard, but it's kinda not. You know, if if we talk about going to see our doctor, we all have personal physicians who fix 99% of the stuff that goes wrong, but there's other things that go wrong that they send us to specialists. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Well, do I ever hesitate to go to the specialist my doctor sends me to? Mhmm. No. Because he's not gonna send me to somebody that he knows might not do a good job because I'll come back and tell everybody. Mhmm.
Speaker 4:You know, so he's going to send me to somebody that he's done business with before, that he has faith in and and and and trust. So, do the same thing when it comes to managing money. These people that call you that have great deals and all this stuff, that's just a bunch of baloney nearly every time, but talk to your neighbors, talk to your friends, you know. Bring it up with people and who are you using? Where are they?
Speaker 4:How did you get in touch with them? How long have you used them? Have you always been happy with them? You know, just like you would a doctor or anybody else in town, don't go dealing with perfect strangers who call in on an 800 number.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you the one that and we'll move on, but I just want to mention this one. The one that gets me, and I think there's something innocent about you, you're on Facebook or you're on one of the social media platforms and you see an ad and you think, well, it's gotta be safe. It's, you know, it's Facebook or it's a oh, man. You can take some rabbit holes and you're you're doing business with somebody and, you know, who knows what. So we have to really be careful when it comes to clicking on ads, and they call that a phishing and that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:So that's that's one of the ones that I need.
Speaker 2:I'll share a quick little story that happened to me just, last week here in the office. Had a phone call that came in and the caller ID said Oklahoma City Phil, o k c p h I l. And so I answered the phone, and this person identified themselves with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, wanting to know, if we wanted some future tickets. Now, mind you, Karen and I had not been to the Oklahoma City Phil in probably 2 years. It wasn't like we just went there.
Speaker 2:I mean, we had just gone to see a lyric performance a few weeks earlier, but this is something different.
Speaker 4:Really?
Speaker 2:And so I said, ma'am, thank you, but I'm not interested, and hung up the phone. But I'm thinking and and that's what I'm now hearing is that these scammers are identifying themselves with an organization that you've had some kind of exposure to and they're using caller ID, the number may not be correct, but it identifies as who they are with. And so you can't take that even for granted. So in my world, if I don't know them, I'm not buying anything. I'm not giving credit cards.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:They'll gladly take your credit card.
Speaker 2:They'll take your credit card.
Speaker 1:They'll get you front row seats Uh-huh. To a scam.
Speaker 2:Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So that was just that was last week, for me. And interestingly enough, they had to call here at the Baptist building through a switchboard and a live person answered that phone and then put it to my office and it still showed OKC Phil.
Speaker 2:Wow. So and it could have been a legit thing. But I do know from hearing news reports, they're now using caller ID to identify who they think you or who they want you to think they're with. Mhmm. So,
Speaker 3:I get I get the phishing emails every week.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And then I get emails from our security people telling me to watch for phishing emails. And so since I get them every week, I'd be interested in knowing how do you spot that stuff and what can you do to defend against it?
Speaker 4:What I told my clients, and I still tell friends this, if you don't know who it is, don't mess with it. I mean, it should be somebody that you're familiar with, it should be an organization that you're familiar with, and even at that, you've got to ask the right questions. And one way to figure that out is fake an emergency. Say, I've got to go right now. I can't talk to you, but I'm interested.
Speaker 4:Give me your phone number. You get their phone number. If they won't give it to you, just hang up. Yeah. If they do give it to you, then you call back using a number that you looked up, not that one.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. And you can find out real quick if that was a fake call. But, yeah, you're you're exactly right. You can't believe the numbers that show up on caller ID anymore, and, you know, you'd think they could fix that. You'd think the phone companies or somebody could stop that, but apparently they can't.
Speaker 3:I think scams can be really complicated or really simple. It can be one person in the same city you live in calling to collect for some organization that they have nothing to do with, or it can be something so sophisticated. There's lots of deep layers into it, and they can really hook you in good. So it's really dangerous stuff.
Speaker 4:Mhmm. You don't ever ever give out technical information over the phone. You just don't do it. If you're doing it on the computer, you should have originated the connection, not them, and you're still going to get caught. I will tell you a story that happened to me last year.
Speaker 4:The FTC is who follows all this stuff, and that's who you work with, and if you want to report fraud, the best one to go to is the FTC because they've got Federal Trade Commission because they've got a whole department set up and and some really smart people running it, so that's where you go to report it. I got a scam from the FTC. Wow. Call me on the phone, and I was sitting at my computer and just answered the phone, and he said, You can check me out. He said, Go on there and check out FTC.
Speaker 4:So I kept sitting there with the computer, so I called it up and he said, Go to the personnel, go to this department and go down, there's my name. Sure enough, his name was there, but it wasn't him. Oh, wow. It wasn't him, and I figured it out two ways. I said, If I want to get back to you, give me your address so I can get to you, and it was exactly what was on the FTC address, except it was dotcom instead of dotgov, and I asked him about that.
Speaker 4:He said, well, we're we're just running out of space, and we had to do something real quick. Yeah. He just gave me an answer, but that was my key, that that the the whole thing was fake. He had and it was just the smallest thing, and if I hadn't been looking for it, I wouldn't have found it.
Speaker 2:Good for you to be aware.
Speaker 4:Yeah. You just had to be on top of it to get it, And there he he was imitating a government agency and a real agent.
Speaker 2:Wow. Wow.
Speaker 1:You've given us several already. I'm just gonna review what we have so far. One is, you know, you said technical or personal information. You used this, a little bit previous with safe words or scenario. You talked about your neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. You just talked about what I would say it would be skepticism. Mhmm. You know, be, you know, be skeptical. A secure communication channel, you know, make sure that it's you know you're on you know, wifi is free everywhere, but you know make sure that you're not using somebody's hotspot or something else when you're connecting and things like that.
Speaker 1:One that's a lot of people don't always know about is this 2 factor authentication. This is a, you know, an opportunity for you to be called or get a code in order to, advance. I think that's a that's a really good one. That
Speaker 4:one works really well.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:It seems complicated until you used it 4 or 5 times, but my credit card company, if I call them Mhmm. They'll send me a code, and if I'm doing it on my phone, of course, you only have one screen at the time, but on mine, it comes in as a text message, and I can pull it down from the top.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I can pull it down
Speaker 4:far enough to see those six numbers, then let it go, and then type them in the blocks. Right. Uh-huh. So you can do that. I mean, you have to get used to it.
Speaker 4:It seems awkward and difficult the first few times you do it, but that gets easy.
Speaker 1:That's one you recommend.
Speaker 4:That's a two factor. Yes.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned all already reporting, but, so the FTC is who we report to.
Speaker 4:Yeah. FTC dot gov slash fraud.
Speaker 1:Okay. Say it again.
Speaker 4:Ftc dot gov slash fraud. That's great. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And then the last one, that was mentioned was just overall awareness. And I'm gonna let Greg get his question ready, but I wanna I wanna mention something that it's so easy to do these things and think people know what we're talking about. And I'm going to tease Bill a little bit. Now, Bill, I know you're a baseball fan.
Speaker 3:Oh, big time.
Speaker 1:You're a big you're a big baseball fan.
Speaker 3:Don't ask me any hard questions.
Speaker 1:Well, but but here's the thing. I'm wondering what you do all day because you say you get a bunch of phishing emails. And and my thought was, is it Bass Pro that's calling you or something? But you're not talking about that kind of phishing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I'm the
Speaker 3:they're they're using the bait, and I'm afraid I'm I'm what they're trying to hunt
Speaker 1:up for. But that's not the kind of fishing you're talking about. It's it's p h I s h I That's right. I n g as I understand it. But they're basically trying to really draw you in.
Speaker 1:Yes. But but I just wanted to tease you a little bit. Go ahead, mister Craig. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:So, Emery, you you said a few minutes ago, you know, the technology, if you will, in this artificial intelligence world, you said, like, in 6 months may be obsolete. You know, the things that they're doing may be perfected, if you will.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Perfecting is what I meant. Yeah. It's just getting better.
Speaker 2:You talked about kind of you used the illustration of kind of eyeglasses and maybe a a reflection of light in that or what are some other things a person might kind of identify as, you know what? Here is some here's some shady AI generated stuff.
Speaker 4:Their movements aren't smooth enough. The ones that I've looked at recently and it's not that they're not smooth like like moving your hands.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:It's movements that they shouldn't be doing, that you would not anticipate. I mean, they're they're doing things that that somebody just threw in there to make them look lifelike, and you're thinking, well, why did you do that?
Speaker 2:Interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. That that's a good one.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 4:Shadows under your, you know, the top of your eye is usually in a shadow.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:Now they can some studios will arrange the lights
Speaker 2:to
Speaker 4:do that to get rid of the bags under your eyes so you can't see those. But generally with with AI, you can you can see some of that. If you just look, they're too perfect. They're just too perfect. They look more like a doll or or something that was created.
Speaker 4:But I tell you, that's going to go away. They're going to make that thing work, and I think 6 months from now, by the end of the year at least, what I just told you about that will have happened.
Speaker 2:Will have happened. Interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 3:We're in a lot of trouble if we can't trust what we see. And all of a sudden, we're living in a world that we can't trust what we see. We don't even know if a picture, a photo is is real or really even an old photo. We don't even know if an old photo is really real anymore.
Speaker 4:You you don't. So, I mean, for for my clients, I told them, you need to be doing business in person. Go to your bank. I mean, and tell them, I mean, do it in person, go see your lawyer in person, do everything in person that you can, and when you can't, you talk to somebody who does know that person, who has had communications with them and had a long term relationship with them, and then you get the phone number from them and call them. You just can't rely on doing something out of the blue anymore.
Speaker 2:That's a good word.
Speaker 4:Too many people out there wanting to get your information, and if they ever get your information, it's a big mess.
Speaker 2:Not a big mess.
Speaker 4:I mean it's a big mess, and it just takes a long time to straighten it out.
Speaker 1:Wow, guys. I could talk about this all day long. It's a serious issue. $10,000,000,000 last year. It's growing.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of concern. Emery has given us some incredible advice. This is serious stuff And you know, we just can't be naive and just assume that these thieves won't find us. They're they're gonna find us. They're gonna be looking for us, but we just have to outsmart them.
Speaker 1:We have to, you know, follow some, you know, clear advice that we've been given. And you know scamming technology is evolving just like Emory has said. It it's in such a speed, that who knows? I mean where is it gonna be? What's fiction and what's reality?
Speaker 1:It seems simple but it as I listen to Emory, it seems like and Bill you alluded to this, but sometimes it's just good old common sense. If it's too good to be true, if they sound too perfect, if your gut is telling you something's not right, did you hear what he said? Hang up the phone. Disconnect, I mean do that. You know, if someone contacts you by phone or video, and makes an unusual request or demand involving money or sensitive information, you just need to stop.
Speaker 1:Just stop. Don't go any further with them. When in doubt, don't. Do all you can to immediately verify the person. One way one way to do that for sure is to go in person.
Speaker 1:Know that it's them, you know. Squeeze their cheeks, Bill.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Is that you, Bill? You know? I maybe we call that the grandma test. My grandma always just squeeze squeeze my cheeks. But don't wait.
Speaker 1:Seconds matter. I mean, wow. They can get so much so fast. Don't don't think you're gonna outsmart outsmart them. Just avoid it.
Speaker 1:Contact your bank or your financial institution, your advisor. Call them, go directly to verify. Chances are, if if you can't verify some basic information, you're in the middle of a scam. Mhmm. And, Emery, tell us again.
Speaker 1:I think it's worth repeating. The the FTC website, tell us that again. I mean, it was
Speaker 4:I'm I'm pretty sure it's ftc.gov
Speaker 1:/
Speaker 4:fraud.
Speaker 1:Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha.
Speaker 4:You know, and if you type that in, if it's wrong, it's gonna correct it for you. Yeah. So It will. One one other thing I wanna say. Yeah.
Speaker 4:We we we've talked about all this stuff and how dangerous it is. This should not scare you from living your life and going out and doing what you need to do. It should not scare you at all for that. Just don't go there. Don't be afraid to transact your life.
Speaker 4:We've got to do this, and you can go back a 100, 150 years when people were out here and this was a prairie. You had to be careful about a lot of things. If you were walking around, you had to look for rattlesnakes. You know, I mean anything could have happened. Well, we don't do those things today, at least I don't, but we look for other things.
Speaker 4:So I don't know it's any more difficult than it ever was, but it's different. We just need a different set of skills now, and don't be afraid to live your life. Don't be afraid to leave home and get out of the house. Do that. Be active, but be careful.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's good.
Speaker 4:It is.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll leave us with a final thought and I'm just gonna kinda put it this way, healthy skepticism is always a good idea. Just a little bit of skepticism is good. You know, Emery, we are so grateful. Thank you for raising our awareness about how to avoid fraud and scams. We we really appreciate you.
Speaker 1:You have given us a lot of your time the last couple of episodes. To you our listeners, thank you for joining us on this journey. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't care about you as well. We do hope that you will share this podcast with your friends. And until next time, we want to encourage you to stay active and stay informed as we explore the realities of aging on the Exploring Aging podcast.