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Welcome to "This is Health, Wealth, and the Pursuit of Happiness" your source for insightful discussions with economist and author, Dr. Murray Sabrin. Join us as we challenge convention, expand minds, and pursue truth.
Murray Sabrin (00:01.934)
Welcome to Health, Wealth, and the Pursuit of Happiness Podcast. I'm Murray Sabrin, B A, A, PhD. There's no BS in my background, never has been, and never will be. On this podcast, we explore the ideas, people, and principles that shape healthier lives, greater prosperity, and human flourishing. In each episode, we'll challenge conventional wisdom on healthcare, economics, politics, and personal freedom so you can think independently, make better decisions, and pursue your happiness.
And I'm thrilled to have today's guest, Steve Weissman. I'm gonna introduce him. His resume is so long that you can go to his website, Scam Aside, to get a full flavor of his amazing contributions to the an issue that is in the news constantly, the scams that the American people are subject to online, in the mail, in their text.
Emails. It's just amazing what's going on. So let me introduce my guest, attorney Steve Weissman. He's a nationally recognized expert in scams, identity theft, and cybersecurity, as well as a lawyer, a college professor, and prolific author. I'm not gonna go through everything that he's done. It's just been an incredible career that Steve has had. He as you can see, he's a member of the faculty of Bentley College, and he was awarded what the highest award for teaching excellence there.
He is a professor there where he teaches white-collar crime. And he's he's been admitted to the practice of the United States Supreme Court. He's the author of more than 10 books, including The Truth About Avoiding Scams, named by Smart Money Magazine as one of the 10 best money books of the year. He's been on every major media platform, ABC, NBC. It goes on and on and on. He's been in print, in the New York Times, Washington Post.
He's a much sought after speaker. So, Steve, welcome to Health, Wealth, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Steve Weisman (02:02.901)
It's great to be with you.
Murray Sabrin (02:04.78)
As you know, on this show, we're trying to help people imp improve their wealth. We've had great guests over the past few months. It's a it's unbelievable. We've been on the air six months already, and we've had people giving our viewers really actionable advice on how to improve their wealth. And I've taken some of the recommendations of some of the guests, and my wealth has increased because of the recommendations. And once you have increased your wealth, you want to keep it. Unfortunately.
We have so many scamsters out there. It's unbelievable what's going on. So let's get to the big picture. How big an issue is the scams?
Steve Weisman (02:42.552)
Well, you can start out with the Federal Trade Commission last year said that there were complaints
filed with them showing scams at a a total value of of sixteen billion dollars. But one of my mottos is that things aren't as bad as you think. They're far worse. Because when you factor in the people that don't actually admit often out of embarrassment or report that they've been scammed, the the FBI and other groups estimate that in the United States it's more like two hundred billion dollars.
Murray Sabrin (03:10.192)
Mm-hmm.
Steve Weisman (03:19.872)
that is lost, lost to scams every year. And it's getting worse.
Murray Sabrin (03:24.516)
That is an amazing number, two hundred billion dollars. So the question that I have as someone who gets emails and texts that look like they're the the the top of the list of scamsters, let me ask you this. Who is responsible from the law enforcement perspective in dealing with this issue? Is it the local? Is it the state? Is it the federal government law enforcement agencies?
Steve Weisman (03:49.325)
Yeah, you know, it's the kind of thing where your local law enforcement is is often, you know, very, very helpful in a lot of areas. But they're not gonna have the level of sophistication to protect people against most scams. So what you're looking at really is the FBI. And, you know, frankly the FBI does as good a job fighting scams as just about any organization in the world. Interpol is is very, very involved.
as well. but it's really needs to be done on a national level because quite frankly these scams are so difficult to really discern what's going on and how who's behind them that it takes the kind of expertise that you need with the FBI.
Murray Sabrin (04:38.864)
There's no question about it. The FBI I are there any other federal agencies that are involved besides the FBI? Because we know the national security agency, the NSA, has pretty sophisticated tools at their disposal.
Steve Weisman (04:51.832)
Yeah, th the the FBI and the FTC. The FTC Federal Trade Commission does a lot, and particularly they do a lot as far as informing people. And informing people is a is an important part of it. But part of the problem with just informing people is well, I'll go back to one of the things I've studied scams for years and years and years, is why do we fall for scams? And for seniors, there's a perception that seniors are more susceptible
To scams. And in fact, there actually is some physiological basis for this. There have been studies done at Cornell, UCLA, and USC in which and University of Iowa, which they show there's a part of our brain that deals with skepticism that becomes less viable as we age. And so seniors are going to be more vulnerable. But in addition to that, the amygdala is a part of our brain that formed early on, and it deals with making
snap decisions in emergency situations. And the scammers who have a knowledge of psychology Freud would have envied, they are able to appeal and make us think that there is some emergency. We need to act right away and they convince us to fall for these scams instead of logically thinking them through.
Murray Sabrin (06:11.076)
This is just a good example of how knowing the world around you, knowing who to trust, knowing what makes sense when you get an email that looks suspicious. And I keep on getting emails that look like they're coming from Meta. And I sent it to somebody and she said, This is a scam. Someone who works with us with our podcast and my website, mafiausa.com. And by the way, folks, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so we can get the message out.
Steve has one of the most important messages for you. If you've spent a lifetime or even a short period of time building up your wealth, the last thing you want to do is have your wealth or a portion of it taken away. So that's so we talked about why s seniors are susceptible. So the question is, who are these scams scamsters? Are they mainly US based? Are they European based, Asian based, African based? Where the where the where are they located?
Steve Weisman (07:08.312)
Pick one.
It's anyone. And you know, I I teach it at Bentley University. prior to teaching at Bentley. I taught in the state prison system in Massachusetts, including where I met the smartest person I've ever met who was a professional chess player and bank robber. he used the alias Andrew Goodman so he could sign things a good man. And in any event there were these scam artists that were there in prison who decried the fact that back when they
Did it, it took skill. But now, really, any 14-year-old on a computer, and now with AI and voice cloning and deepfakes, a readily available technology, anyone can do it. But a lot of the scams do come from, as you would expect. You Nigeria is a is a hotbed for scams. North Korea, North Korea's main source of income is scams, and one of the things that doesn't get reported.
Reported very much is North Korea does digital remote bank robberies around the world. And they do all kinds of scams, either macro with companies, but also to individuals. Russia and Eastern Europe also has a lot of scams come from there. So it's it's everywhere, but they do come from a lot of them from other countries. And at one time you'd get that email and the the grammar was
was just horrendous. It was laughable. But now with with AI, that grammar will look good. Actually I'll tell you a quickie with grammar. the the word kindly if you get the word kindly in an email from an American company it's not from an American company. We don't use that. In France they do and there have been a lot of scams that started in France that were coming over here and which you'll see if you would kindly
Steve Weisman (09:08.78)
do this. So kindness doesn't pay off.
Murray Sabrin (09:09.988)
Hmm. It's just extraordinary what is going on. And the thing that bugs me, not only as a citizen, but someone who wants to have sound law enforcement in our country to avoid the fraud and the abuses that take place in our society, what can the average person do, first of all, to protect themselves? And then what can law enforcement do to beef up their approach to
Getting after the scamsters.
Steve Weisman (09:41.955)
Yeah, and you know, here's w one of the things as far as what we can do. And my motto in in cybersecurity we call it zero trust. My motto is trust me, you can't trust anyone. And so whenever you get an email, a text message, a phone call, any kind of communication, you can't trust it. You really and so if it asks you to download an attachment, click on a link, or make a payment, no matter how legitimate it appears.
Your caller ID says you're getting a a call from the IRS. Well, first of all, the IRS isn't going to call you, but
People will see that and they'll trust it. It's a very simple technique called spoofing where a scammer can make can manipulate your caller ID so it'll appear as if it's coming from a legitimate source. The same thing with emails and text messages. So the thing you need to do is you always have to confirm. So for instance, you know, right now state farm state farm in insurance is giving away a huge dividend.
State Farm is a mutual insurance company. So they are sending out dividends and there it's letters from emails from State Farm telling their customers, click on this link and you can connect to get a Venmo a Zell or a PayPal of your dividend. But I just the scammers are there posing as State Farm. You can't trust it. So what you do is you go to the source, you go directly to the State Farm website, and there you're going to be able to you know find.
legitimate thing. The text message that you get from your bank that there's a problem, click here. No, you don't, you don't respond there. You go directly to your bank. And that's also where a lot of the defenses have to come because once this money's gone, for the most part, it's really almost impossible to get it back. So you need to look at the brokerage houses and the banks to do a better job of recognizing the scams. They're not going to have the same psychological
Steve Weisman (11:49.777)
impact of an emergency. They're gonna be able to see and recognize that it's a scam and there's good software and security software to help them do it. They're the ones that need to kind of shut this down.
Murray Sabrin (12:02.714)
This leads me to I think a question that many people have. How do we get our our cell phone and email away from the scamsters? Is there a way that we can protect that protect ourselves so they don't have access to our email and cell phone?
Steve Weisman (12:20.067)
You know
I wish I could give you a good answer, but the answer is no. And again, one of my mottos is things aren't as bad as you think, they're far worse. What some of the the scammers have done is they've used a lot of scams in the UK there was a study recently showing about half of scams originated on social media. And if you're a scammer, you take out an ad on social media, and when you take out an ad on social media such
As Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, their algorithms will actually target, they will target who is going to be susceptible to that scam. And there's also a section of the law called section 230 that protects a lot of these social media from fraudulent posts that are posted by third parties. Now, this is something that's being litigated a lot, but at the moment, you really don't get the protection.
there. So you're going to be you're going to be vulnerable really wherever you are.
Murray Sabrin (13:27.632)
So that leads us to I think the logical question about section two hundred thirty. Should it be repealed?
Steve Weisman (13:33.419)
it should be drastically changed. And you know, it it it's really a remnant from early internet days when the internet needed some protection and no one anticipated what it was going to turn into. But when you look at, for instance, Meta, and Meta w has the technological capacity to
Murray Sabrin (13:45.68)
Mm.
Steve Weisman (13:54.871)
protect us from a lot of these scams and quite frankly they're not doing it. So if they're going to get the sex protection from 230, they have to earn it. They have to take reasonable steps to recognize and eliminate the the scams. Right now, if someone reports to Meta this post is a scam, Meta will give them a warning. And it's not until there are multiple, multiple, multiple times. And frankly what they do is Meta makes more of a profit.
They'll say, okay, you, the scammer, are going to be penalized. You're going to have to pay more for your ad. But they really are complicit. So yes, Section 230 definitely needs to be modified a great deal.
Murray Sabrin (14:36.272)
So section two thirty gives these social media companies total immunity from any fraud that takes place on their platforms?
Steve Weisman (14:44.3)
Yeah, if it's posted by third parties. So for instance, if it's if you're the New York Times and you're publishing your own content, you're gonna be responsible for that. But third party posts, which is so much of social media, the the sites are not legally responsible for that. And there have been there have been cases that have gone to the Supreme Court and for the most part till now section two thirty has been upheld. But this is something that there are proposed
in Congress, but you know, sometimes I remember Mark Twain saying the opposite of progress is Congress. they're not exactly working so well on this.
Murray Sabrin (15:20.858)
Mm.
So s so just step back a little bit. What can the federal government do since we have a lot of international scamsters around? Is the United States government as the Trump administration proactive in speaking to their counterparts overseas and saying you've got to stop this. Our people are bleeding money here, and what are you going to do to stop the scamsters?
Steve Weisman (15:46.915)
Yeah, and this is something that you're you're absolutely right, Murray. It it takes international cooperation. So for instance, you're probably aware that in Malaysia it has been a scam center. they actually have human trafficking, people think they're getting jobs and in in fact they're they're put into a a slavery where they are required to do the kind of scams over the phone and through the computers. And you know, while we've seen some
Organized efforts internationally to stop this. Quite frankly, a lot of these countries in Southeast Asia are making money from these scams, and so they're they're really not into it. What we could do if we had, I used to be a talk show host, and there was a fellow host Gene Burns who used to say, testicular fortitude. So if they if the government had testicular fortitude, what they would do would be cut off their links to
To satellites that are providing them with internet connections around the world. So there are things that governments can do and there is some cooperation, but not with Russia, not with North Korea, not with China. I used to say when I was teaching in prison, I would
Murray Sabrin (16:49.52)
Mm.
Steve Weisman (17:05.418)
I would add extra sent years to the sentences of particularly stupid criminals. So there was a Russian scammer, and the Russian scammer was fine as long as he stayed in Russia. He decided to take his family on a Disney cruise. The FBI was really actually pretty nice about this. They waited till they were getting off the ship in Miami to arrest him. But there's a guy I would have added extra time. You don't take the family on a Disney cruise if you're a wanted cruise.
criminal in the United States.
Murray Sabrin (17:37.178)
It's unbelievable. So is there any indication of how many scamsters are are there around the world and in the United States that are actively doing their their dirty work across social media and other venues?
Steve Weisman (17:52.779)
It's hard to say. A lot of it is done by by g certain gangs and gangs around the world and some of them like even just teenagers. Shiny Hunters is one that has recently gotten a a lot of media attention, particularly because they were the ones behind the most recent hacking into FBI data. So we we really don't know. But the interesting thing is a lot of this took sophisticated technological knowledge.
And at one time, Interpol estimated that there were only about a hundred cyber criminal geniuses. I called them the Lex Luthers of crime. But what they did is they changed their business model. So they now have on the dark web that part of the internet where criminals buy and sell goods and services, they will lease out their technology. They will lease out the email addresses, they will lease out the phones.
Murray Sabrin (18:32.144)
Mm.
Steve Weisman (18:52.652)
They will d bake basically soup to nuts and they will lease their services to less sophisticated criminals for a portion of the of the funds that they steal. So it's it's easy to get into and I mean even you're you're down in Florida. one of the if we want to look at a a good thing, there was some statistics that street crime in Tampa, Florida went down when the local gangs got started getting into income tax identity theft.
rather than violent street crime.
Murray Sabrin (19:22.832)
Mm.
Now, is there any specific area in our society where seniors are particularly vulnerable like social security checks like Medicare and other government programs that could make them think that they're getting something from the government when in fact it's it's a scam artist?
Steve Weisman (19:44.324)
Yeah.
And th imp imposter scams as you refer to are the are the most lucrative form of scams, particularly for seniors. And so when you're looking at particularly Social Security, there will be emails, text messages, phone calls, and under a vr wide variety of guises and pretexts, people will have to either provide their personal information or make a payment. And this is something where here again,
People you you've got to step back. Our brain is gonna tell us, my goodness, this is an emergency, I have to respond. my my f email is telling me this is legitimate, my phone is telling me it's legitimate. You need to step back, you need to confirm. but yes, the imposter scams from government agencies, particularly Medicare and Social Security, are a real area where seniors get preyed upon.
Murray Sabrin (20:40.848)
w now with AI, which has done incredible work in terms of writing and images and things like that, how is that involved in in scams around the country?
Steve Weisman (20:56.748)
It's it's made them just so so much more difficult. I'll give you two good examples. One is the family emergency scam. We often call it the the grandparent scam. you get the call in the middle of the night from the grandchild, there's an emergency, they're on vacation in wherever. they need to have money wired right away. Now, this has always been an issue, and it used to be the scammers would they would look to obituaries to see who
Murray Sabrin (21:06.754)
Mm. Right.
Steve Weisman (21:26.692)
May be recently widowed, and they would contact that widow or widower, and they would also have the names of the of the child. But it wasn't going to be the voice. Now, with voice cloning, first of all, they'll harvest a lot of information, the scammers will, about their targets, and AI will do that for them. They'll learn all kinds of things they do, things they're interested in who the family members are. I used to love the
the the Big Bang Theory. And Sheldon used to call his his grandmother Mima. So they've picked they'll pick this up the special names that family members use. And now that voice from the kids' social media only need a few seconds of it will sound exactly like that child. And so it it's going to be believable. What families have to do is you have to have a code word. And there that code word everyone knows and they use that so that you can
Murray Sabrin (22:14.864)
Mm.
Steve Weisman (22:26.478)
Tell that it's it's a scam. But the other one, and this is more for society in general, Microsoft recently showed how using AI, a a scam group recently harvested information from this one company and all of their customers and sent out a million emails with phony invoices. But here's what made it even worse: they call this the business email compromise. They'll send
out the email posing as the CEO or the CFO to someone else in the company to wire money to this company that we do business with, they've got a new account. But the thing that they included, not just the phony invoice, they included an email thread of emails going back and forth, supposedly, between the CEO and the the the person who is supposedly the legitimate company. These things look great and companies are falling for
Murray Sabrin (23:26.872)
Unbelievable. So what can people do on their computer, on their cell phone to possibly screen? Because we just got new phones earlier this year and it has a spam blocker that which seems to work great because I keep on getting messages that this call from an eight five five or an eight three three number has been blocked.
Steve Weisman (23:39.597)
Yeah.
Steve Weisman (23:48.557)
Yeah, and you know, AI is the problem, AI is also part of the solution. And so AI is being used. You wanna make sure you've got good security software on all of your devices, including your phone. And they do have this built in that will block some. The problem is that it's it's playing whack-a-mole and a lot of times they'll find new ways of getting through s but it it definitely is something to to help.
But i i again, i the the big thing comes back to whenever you're asked to provide personal information, to click on a link, download an attachment or make a payment just uniformly. You can't trust it, you've got to confirm it. And when you confirm, make sure if you're making a phone call, that you're you're calling the the right number because scammers will they will buy a phone number that's maybe a digit off. you know, or or
The other thing is, again, don't trust don't trust Alexa, don't trust Siri. Get me customer service for. So for instance, there's a scam going around now, a phishing email that looks like it's from Spotify regarding your your subscription. And your it is a huge bill for it, and then they have their customer service number for you to call if there's a problem. Well the interesting thing is if anyone really knows about Spotify.
They don't have a customer service number. They don't do it. But if you ask, if you ask Siri, if you ask Alexa, if you go to your search engine for a customer service number, you'll find that the scammers will either buy an ad for a customer service number for Spotify or something else, or be smart enough to manipulate the algorithms to get a high position there. So you always have to make sure when you're calling, you're calling the correct number.
Murray Sabrin (25:44.837)
Unbelievable. It's it's it's just remarkable how people are using their talents for nefarious purposes. And if they spent more time doing legitimate activities, I think e obviously we all be better off. what are some of the investment scams now going on, especially with cryptocurrencies?
Steve Weisman (26:03.672)
Crypto's the big thing.
And in fact cryptocurrency investment scams have often been they've evolved to be a major part of romance scams. So in the romance scam, someone has gone online, they've met someone, immediately they're falling in love, and there's there was always an emergency for the the person to needed to send money. But now they start it started in China. They called it Sha Zhupan, and it's called pig butchering in in English. And what happens is
Is after they've built this relationship, they tell the people, you know what, I am making so much money with this cryptocurrency, and you can get in on it. Here's the platform, here's the advisor, you can, and they'll phony up the records. And you know, no one should invest in anything that they don't truly understand. You need to know who you're investing with and what the investment is. you can go back, Bernie Madoff actually had the the nerve.
to blame his victims. He said anyone who looked into what I said I was doing would have known it was impossible. And there are people that invest in crypto without knowing, without doing any research. You know, recently there was a in the news about a a scammer who was posing as a player for the San Francisco 49ers and he would do with these romance scams he would tell people to invest
With him and his investment advisor and he would put them on and connect the people. Well, if anyone actually looked up the role the investment advisor, they would find there was no investment advisor and he was not licensed. And if they looked up the crypto that they said they were investing in, you would find it not listed on any legitimate platform. So people need to they need to understand and know what they're investing in. And again, you you trust me, you can't trust
Steve Weisman (28:04.59)
anyone you have to verify.
Murray Sabrin (28:07.132)
y y there's something that you emailed to me about a Dolly Parton charity scam. What's that all all about?
Steve Weisman (28:13.196)
Yeah, you know, w the the scammers will take advantage of
Anything that's in the news. You know, as as we speak now, there are hurricanes in Hawaii and often hurricanes other places and charities there'll be phony charities that'll turn up and you may get even you'll see it on on social media where the pictures of people who need your help in these supposedly legitimate charities. So you need to check out. Now when when Dolly Parton passed away, so much interest in her work and people want
to contribute and in fact she had a foundation. The problem is these scammers using AI would make these phony websites for her foundation and you'd get you'd see ads on these on social media and people think they're donating to Dolly Parton but they're donating to a Russian scammer.
Murray Sabrin (29:11.632)
Unbelievable. Now, what about the platforms that host these scammers? if you've a foundation, don't you have to provide a a letter from the IRS saying that you're a 501 or 501c4, whatever the case may be? So it looks legitimate. so isn't it up to the platform that is hosting these scammers to do some due diligence?
Steve Weisman (29:38.211)
They should, but they they aren't required to do so and quite frankly, in many instances y you you want a letter from the IRS? I can get you that. I mean they're they're really easy to to counterfeit. But
You are correct is what we need to do f so for instance, robocalls are also a major source of scams, particularly for seniors. And the government has tried to come down on the companies that are doing the robocalls, not so much the the the scammers, but the the phone facilities that are being used. But this has to be done on a greater scale and have greater penalties.
Murray Sabrin (30:22.68)
We just have a couple of minutes left. What about s gas pumps? scammers at gas pumps. What's what's that all about?
Steve Weisman (30:29.954)
Yeah, you know, one of the things credit card fraud has gotten a lot better because it used to be someone would get your your credit card number and they'd be off to the races. Although quite frankly, the credit card companies have done a good job of policing. But now your credit card comes with a chip and that chip creates a new number every time it's used. And so if someone is able to gather all of the credit cards,
Credit card numbers by hacking into a particular credit processing credit card processing equipment at a retailer, it's not gonna do them a lot of good. And that has reduced the fraud in credit cards a great deal. However, it's an expensive thing to turn over and get the technology for this. And so what we're seeing is gas pumps still in many, many instances are using the old-fashioned magnetic.
magnetic strip rather than the chip. And so that's where you when you're using it you want to try and use your card on one that has the chip, has the scan, rather than one that's just the magnetic strip.
Murray Sabrin (31:44.241)
This this has been fantastic. Steve, where can people go? what's your website so people can go and keep up to date on the scams that are out there and all the information that you provide, which is of great public service. If if this is w this is probably one of the most important websites that I've seen because it helps people protect themselves from this $200 billion fraud that's going around. So give us the information about your website.
Steve Weisman (32:12.002)
Yeah, it's scamaside dot com. S C A I C I D E dot com. And you know, quite frankly, when I started it about fifteen years ago, every day I do a new scam of the day. And I tell you what the scam is and how you can protect yourself. It also gives you information how to freeze your credit, what to do if you're a victim of identity theft. And since that time I wondered if I'd have enough scams and fifteen years later and six thousand scams later, there's still
There and you can you can subscribe and get the scam of the day for free right into your email every day. Just go to scamaside.com.
Murray Sabrin (32:51.204)
And if people are scammed, they do send money, what should they do? What should the first thing they should do when they realize that they've been scammed?
Steve Weisman (33:02.08)
You want to report it immediately. So there are some instances and the FBI is getting better on this, particularly with guar regarding crypto. You know, this is why you the the scammers often want gift cards, they want globe, gold, they want crypto, which are all difficult to get back. But if it's a if it's a scam with your credit card, your credit card company will help you report that right away. If it's something from your bank, get to them immediately. The quicker you respond.
the greater your chance of being able to get anything back.
Murray Sabrin (33:36.123)
Steve, I can't tell you how delightful I am, delighted I am that you came on and talk about I think one of the most important issues facing the American people is not to be scammed, not to be frauded, defrauded, and try to live their life without having to deal with scamsters that are all over us. I I think somebody wrote a book years ago. I think they called the government a big scam. So that's a topic for that's a topic for another day, but in the meantime.
Steve Weisman (34:00.681)
Ha ha ha.
Murray Sabrin (34:04.516)
Thank you so much for coming on. We'd love to have you on again to update us with what new and nefarious activities people are engaged in around the world. So thank you, Steve, for being with us.
Steve Weisman (34:16.895)
I'd love to come back again. Thank you, Murray.
Murray Sabrin (34:19.224)
All right. Thank you for listening to Health, Wealth and Pursuit of Happiness. I'm Maurice Sabrin. Until next time, keep questioning conventional wisdom, keep pursuing truth, and keep striving for a healthier, freer, more prosperous life. And please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Health, Wealth and Pursuit of Happiness, and visit MafiUSA.com so we can celebrate financial independence along with our political independence that we just celebrated.
on July 4th, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration. So until next time, pursue your happiness and let your dreams come true. Thank you.