services unit i oversee our school resource officer r d r officer and i also handle any elder exploitation fraud special needs and any mental health issues so i do a lot of those investigations things have changed but somehow it's the some of the frauds that are going on are still happening we're still seeing and unfortunately still seeing people victims right now tis the season with taxes i'll be going over that with the i r s fraud that's actually also one of the handouts and i gave you and actually last year we also saw a spike in a form of identity theft of people having their taxes filed falsely files last year we had about thirty five calls thirty five different victims of having their  tax returns falsified ok so first we'll start with the definition of fraud so is the crime of obtaining money or some other benefit by deliberate deception so get the money or the dilbert  in some really someone who deliberately deceived another usually for financial gain and again that's the i r s scam saying that you owe taxes ok who's the target of a fraud anyone can be a become a fraud people of all ages education and income level have all been victims of crime i have seen people back when people really refinancing their homes as a young man who was only about thirty two and he found a great bank online with a great interest rate and wired them twenty five thousand dollars to secure the refinancing and bank went out of business or that was it the mortgage company went out of business and he lost his twenty five thousand dollars so it really is any age you see people of all different education levels different ages different income levels and there are people who get taken advantage of and they only have fifty dollars i've also seen people give away hundreds of thousands of dollars company that's based on a california you know if there's a mortgage company here that you're having an issue with you can walk to their door the police department it's easier for us to handle but to handle company i'll be out in california and what their laws are in their bankruptcy laws everything else you know it's a lot more difficult to have to michael went to court person to file something which means going to court in california ok so the different types of fraud that we have seen and still see are this week's sweepstakes l utility fraud bank fraud and this is all in your hand out if you received my hand out that i gave the yes well what i was i want that a second but they say we're from the utility company and you own all three hundred dollars in your electric bill and we're going to shut you off and unfortunately the first couple of victims the people who tend to be from at stock and there are business owners and they fell for it however the government call again that includes the i r s and credit card fraud and just identity theft in general and many times fraud and identity theft and force they got in here so the sweepstakes the victim receives a call or e mail saying that they have won the lottery many times along reform in other country canada usually the color doesn't always give the name of the lottery company the colorform than a fee is required for taxes or to secure the delivery of the prize fees can range from three hundred to four thousand dollars depending on the amount of the prize victim as instructed to send the money via money gram purchase some money  they want the money bags are the green cards they're almost like prepaid visa cards but they don't think these are master card they just say money pac i haven't seen many legitimate uses for them but sometimes people use it to buy something online if they don't want their credit card  to be compromised online but the whole thing with the money packs is there's numbers on the backs of all the deals or call the personnel say you know buy it with a money gram they'll call the person back in the press will give them the numbers on the back of the card and they have access to the money right then and there they don't have to go to western union or to start a money gram to pick it up and they have access to that money immediately ok and they say that someone will bring a price to their house and unfortunately have ha and there's a red hell's to the right of you so again the n o one comes with a prize and a victim can lose thousands of dollars now i actually had the opportunity to speak to these people who do these types of fraud a case i was working on and profound about a half an hour thankfully it wasn't one distance but i guess i mean they did sound like they came from another country and they kept passing me on to different people because i just kept playing dumb like i don't understand and then they would save me from the i r s don't sound like you're from the i r s and again they tell them to pay over the phone immediately or their service will be shut off so they're either instructed to pay with money tax or give their bank account or credit card information to the caller by the time the victim realizes they have been scammed it is too late to the victim the quarter that we had one of us as it was a business so to tell a business that had refrigeration and things like that were going to turn off your like tricity they panic and that's their business they have prejudice they have freezers does not have the ability to turn off your light tricity if you receive a suspicious call from utility company me and they hang up and call the customer service number on your bill never call the numbers they gave you ok bank fraud they can't receive an number so we can verify that you know who you are and then unfortunately that's when the fraud actually starts and then they'll say that because you know you get more panicked you think oh my goodness especially you know if you don't have a lot of m i don't recommend them just because it's past whenever there's a problem to go to a local bank you're local bank knows you you know the tellers will be that's when we get some of our calls we actually just like i was talking to one of my sergeants they were actually able to intervene and one of the family member trouble scams where one of the other grandson was in trouble and the bank kind of asked her a couple questions and called the police and we came down to let her know that your grandson is fine this is definitely fraud so that's why i like you know the local banks being able to actually walk in somewhere and say hey i got this phone call you don't tell me is this true or not ok so the family member in trouble of my mother actually got this call that the two weeks ago the person said grandma and she said home which one is time same last name families were related in town with half an hour with each got phone calls they didn't fall for pretending to be someone who was an accident the dominican republic oh you know grandson our son has been in an accident and he's going to be so if you receive a call like this hang up and call another family member to find out if the stress present is really another trip or travelling i mean some families live close by and so they know what everyone's doing and some have felt there was a little further away you may not know that your grandchild was gone away on spring still travel a lot and bring your computer with you we actually had a case a resident on one was actually on a trip overseas and i'll just say a country i'll say france and they were in the airport and using their computer and someone from the airport in france hacked into it and sent out an e mail saying i'm in france i need help so thankfully the first friend who kind of the e mail i just got off the phone with them so called right back and said hey are you ok yeah i mean in reality if someone truly is in trouble overseas the first thing they should do is go to the american embassy you know of anyone who's ever for anyone who wants to travel overseas the first thing is that's for security reasons wherever you go you want to make sure you know with an heiress american embassy or consulate as so if you really are in trouble that's where they should be going now e mailing all their friends ok so the government cards of this one has been pretty popular they link the victim receives a call from a person claiming to work for the i r s or the state police the can't tell the victim that they go back taxes or fines if they don't pay a warrant will be issued for their arrest grounds as a form of payment i mean in reality with the i r s why didn't these are under arrest warrant they can they're the only government entity that can take money directly from your paycheck directly from yourself security directly from your bank account why do they need to arrest you all they have to do is swipe of a few keys and start taking the money that you go out of everything you have there's no need why they would need to arrest you they have the last hour ok so this is another one we s actually especially like after superstorm sandy because people like the tents saying that the head office had been damaged in the storm and they had lost all information so again you receive a phone call informing them that there's a problem with the medicare account they but for many people with medicare if that's your health insurance oh my car it's been compromised they're very frightened that i have a doctor's appointment or what's going to happen that's really going to get you with the fear so never give any personal information over the phone if you have any questions about a medicare account you can go to medicare dot gov or you can even go to your local sort of purity office there's one right in cambridge there's one right and one of them is on somerville there's plenty of local offices you might have to wait on line but you can those local places ok it's a credit card fraud so unfortunately this is huge we see this all the time where people's credit cards are used as fraudulent charges ok so there's many different ways that they can get  one of the most common is hacking into personal personal corporations computers to obtain information their own really big target home depot one yeah but any people had to get your credit cards because they had hacked into all i think was directly right into the registers into the credit cards getting this happens when you use your card to pay for an item and the thief scams the information then put it on another credit card we actually have a case of this in belmont and business in melbourne and how we're going to figure it out was we had many different victims and this person has a credit card with all your legitimate information and you have your credit card balance so you have no idea that your information was taken so that's what's giving it yes ok well i mean have you it on this little machine that collects all your information your credit card information and stores it and then he can actually you know he doesn't charge to answer back to you then he takes a stolen credit card and he runs it again and it puts all the information on that credit car it's another person can use that credit card and charge it and is charging it just like a jerk regard because unfortunately now with all the it's so much easier now you can just wave it right at the at the register so no one's looking to see if the name matches the person no one's looking in the back to see if there's a signature or they don't even look to see if the signature matches you know years ago when you first use credit cards they would look on the back of the seat the signature matches or something credit cards that would have a picture of the person on it recycle you want to only give your credit card information to a fraudster over the phone you know like the scams i talked about paying for utility pole lines and like that you know you not only pay for the utility line utility bill to a fraud even library card to use privately that seems silly but you can rent videos and you can rent video games so they ran them and then they sell them and they never return them we actually did the moment margaret did have an instance where they can never get your can information to someone you don't know always shred any documents pertaining to your talents and always look at your credit card statements question any unfamiliar charges no matter how small sometimes that's what the issue is will start doing small charges because nowadays more you see more of the college kids people charge everything they go to starbucks for three dollars and they charge and they charge this they charge that and so you'll see all these different charges and so on and you can remember what it was for they take advantage of that and they'll start with small charges first to see if you're really paying attention to your account and then once things see nothing happens after a couple months than they do some big charges and then that's when you notice it doesn't they've already got  their big trip for their plane tickets already so always always check your credit card statements because i mean i didn't question it because sometimes i'll charge a business but it's a subsidy subsidiary of another business so i come like oh no that's t someone charges you know seven hundred fifty dollars in italy oh well you know you're not liable for the charges someone takes your bank card and drains your checking account and it's sunday and you need to take some money out i mean you follow courtney eventually hope you get your money back but what you can do that sunday when you have no money while you take money out it's you know it's a little there's a lot more at stake when your bank heart is compromised then your credit card and what i always recommend to many people even my friends what i've been doing my checking account that my bank cards attached to all my money and all my seems to go into that account just enough to pay bills i have accounts at other places where they can from saving for something or saving for a credit because stationary ones because those are more likely to be compromising the scammers because there are people around always use the actual bag branch if you can also doesn't it only one credit their identity while committing another crime file false tax returns or apply for a loan so never give your personal information hold the phone unless you initiate the call yelling subtends call from medicare or if someone's calling you in from social security whatever they have on information they don't need to verify but you know when you call your credit card company they say it was the last  oh hello mrs smith how are you do you want to use the same credit card that we have on file customer number so they have all your shipping information and they also know your credit card information which makes it easier for you to buy however if someone gets hold of something as simple as that and also makes it easier for them to get into to buy a lot of this stuff  your credit report at least once a year for any questionable entries especially as you get older when i'm taking most people don't need to get a mortgage you don't need to get any student loans so you don't really check your credit report so sometimes you have no years since you've done a credit report or you didn't realize that your identity was taken and you had no idea and why not someone has three credit cards and each one has a twenty thousand dollar than what's on the so it's just a good idea i mean it's free you can even do it online with experience  know if you look in here there are three there are three companies that actually keep track of your credit they are calling eagle fax experian and trans union so like if you were to go for a mortgage and the mortgage company would want to get your credit report this is what they would call you are entitled to once a year a free credit report cost in europe you know your closing costs was the correct recourse because the mortgage company sure as heck wasn't paying for you were many years ago but you know it's always going just shack ok protect your computer make sure you have updated firewall and anti virus software and keep it updated if you suspect something is wrong with your computer take it to a well known place like such as best buy or geek squad never trust a phone call telling you there is something wrong with your computer we haven't heard a little while but i actually got a phone call i'm from the american computer company and there's computers you know to run the plates stuff and everybody but and we can find like parked on the street i can see you can tell who has wireless internet and any of those houses i mean it's a scrolling lot but people can do that it could be awesome and i go away if i'm going a lone a long trip or i turn off my wireless internet so people can't read that because they see that you have wireless in your home and they know you buy an i pad and you have a laptop and you have a lot of portable lovely small easy to hide it's what you do if you're a victim and it does happen you want to call your credit cards and your banks to let them know what happened right away those are the first ones you want to call because you want to stop the fraud you want to stop the charges file first place a fraud alert or freeze on your file at all three major credit bureaus you can do that you can put a freeze we're basically no one can open up a credit card or a mortgage or a lo really only ask for it like once a year to update information that's not like all the time most of most of everything is right on your own is writing your insurance card be you and you know open up because now they have you want to open up an old navy card you take twenty percent right away and they have you sell them all then all the men and the only company entries in your so security number will come up saying whoa you need to call this number first before you that you were a victim of identity theft and using it just a police report ok so if you are a victim you want to check your credit report immediately after the scam or the fraud they want to do it two to three months later then once a year after that you know the people who've had their taxes falsely filed those ones we doubt they recommend you know they obviously must have access have had access to your security number so you want to check your credit report immediately and then two or three months at later and once a year after that is something to hold on to the information and they don't use it told few months later so you don't realize  just go along at roughly looks about much i tried to smother they just paid but look at each little thing you said check your credit report you get one free from each one so yes january for all in my case they would have any questions