what's going on what's going on welcome once again to what's going on my name is delores me doll and i am very pleased to have today with me new tenant kristen daily from the belmont police department who is going to talk to us about scans and frauds neither of which anybody likes to be subjected to and when we are we wonder how we was so foolish to fall for whatever the prank was well the world changes from day to day and there are more and more methods yes of approaching people  o don't think about these new clever ways of getting into our lives in ways that are only negative for us so krist what what do we do if we think that we're being scammed well the best thing to do if it's a phone call to do it is to hang up the phone immediately and call the police who we would like to be especially if you've given the person any kind of information personal information over the phone you know you want to call the police right away we'll have an officer come and speak to you and if you did give them any personal information you want to call you know your bank and your credit card companies to let them know that you could pass it's going to possibly be a victim of a scam and potentially identity theft to let them be aware because that's a lot of times what they do is if they're asking you lots of questions sometimes they will ask for your social security number your bank account number one of the scams that we saw especially after the storm sandy who is pretending to be from the medicare company and social security saying our local office or our city our office new york new jersey office was destroyed and we lost all your information so we need your so security number we need your bank account in for i have and say yes or your medicare card has been compromised so we need your so security number for your medicare card that's the scams in which they use they get for identity theft so they'll take your information and open up credit cards or get loans so that's one of the ways of of them scamming there's other ways in which it's to get money from you like a family member in trouble or saying that you won the lottery we're saying that you all utilities so it's it's one of those there's so there's two different ways there's a way that they're going to be calling you to try to get information from you so they can basically do identity theft and the other ways to get money from you so either way can be very destructive to someone because you can be out a lot of money or be they can one of breaking up credit card bills and opening up loans and mortgages and your credit report can get really affected and so how how can you tell if a call is legitimate or not well personally what i try to tell people of you don't know who the caller is don't answer the phone i'm sure nowadays most people have caller id right if you don't know who it is don't pick it up you know you let it go to voicemail i know sometimes if you have family members who have cell phone numbers and it doesn't come up with their name it just comes up with a cell phone number if you recognize the cell phone number then pick it up but if you're not sure you know don't answer don't answer it let it go to voicemail and if it's someone you know and you can pick up the phone and talk to him but most people's phone numbers are listed then it'll come up on the caller id or it's from your doctor's office or you know like one of the local doctor's offices about medical it will come up don't want medical on the caller id or in mount auburn hospital if you the best way to avoid the scams if you don't know who it is don't answer the phone do you think this sometimes corning also to see if there's anybody home because in which case not answering the phone isn't necessarily an indication yes i mean sometimes they're not used to be many years ago when when they would have you know for to break into someone's house you know they we have seen a few years ago that someone did try that a couple of times so one shouldn't be scared know now adays know all of the not answering the phone no no not really no you you'll be fine because again i mean with all this technology and the amount of money that they can get are faceless they don't see the face of the victim you know so it's a lot easier to steal from someone when you don't know them personally and you don't see their face now that sort of in a way contradicts what i had read in one of the local newspapers  this year regarding increased number of breaking and entering and belmont well yes i mean we did you know we we did have a ration of breaks but when we looked at all the statistics over the years it was the same amount yes i actually went through for the paper and and we had roughly the same amount every year and unfortunately lot of them were people whose some they did break into homes that were locked but a lot of them were people who left their doors  unlocked and so the people just tried the door and went right in name thing with the car brakes it's when people leave their car doors unlocked only valuable things we've never really we've really had someone smash a window to steal something out of a car because so many people leave their car doors unlocked what mostly are they looking for well with the brakes they're looking for things that are easy for them to sell like i phones haters or just loose change that people keep sometimes people even keep the walton purses in the cars or you know in easy to access areas so but the big thing that we've see the most victims are these scams i mean we've had people unfortunately lost over five hundred thousand dollars and scams oh yes goodness gracious yes so that's where we really like to focus because that's where we see the most loss is in these scams my goodness gracious me so now with modern technology another way to access us is through the computer right yes so what do you recommend a regarding messages we get on our computers well that could sound tantalizing and attractive yes yes if it sounds too good to be true it usually is you know delete you know delete the e mails you know right away because allow look one of the big one that we saw was from bank of america that was a big one was a company claiming to be from bank of america this was a few years ago because of america is such a big bank just about every one must have something be it a bank of america bank account a mortgage or a credit card and they created their e mail address so it looked very legitimate like the bank of america security dot com  and it was your bank accounts been compromised we need your bank account number and your social security number and things like that they were doing that both with phone calls and e mails if you're from any type of company organization again most of them just a little i mean one things you've also seen is people getting their e mail accounts hacked into and they they get them hacked in and then they send out an email to all the people in your email list saying i'm a way i'm in trouble i lost my passport i need money ha and again you know it's if your friends truly know that you're ok and they know that you know because that actually have to a friend of mine and i knew he wasn't on a trip i knew he wasn't in paris however what we did actually see one time was someone was on a trip overseas and they were in the airport in that country and they were using their computer on the wife i in that airport and someone was in there and they hacked into their account saying i'm in this country which they were and i'm in trouble so the best way to protect yourself is you just have to remember that any why find a public place isn't one hundred percent secure or handle that's going to know when you're going to starbucks or when you use it you know nowadays it seems like you can hold on to wife i anywhere but don't be guaranteed that that is secure not always secure and sometimes they will give you a warning i've been in hotels where they will say when before you hook on to this wife i other people can look at this this is not a secure why fight because a secure ones like if you have a wife i home those are secure but then there are other places that are not secure so if you'd if you didn't ask for that e mail to be sent to you delete it and should we call whenever we have a suspect should we call the police whenever we have a suspicion that they've actually not only sent the email but have actually in some way got into information about you you definitely want to call us then even if they didn't get information from you if you believe someone tried to scam you let us know because this is how we find out about some of the new scams i say like that what was happened recently only about a year ago you pretend to be from the utility company and say you owe and unfortunately did have people fall for it even though the person claimed to be from and star and as you know belmont doesn't have a star they have come out late and you know they called the business in town and said you old two thousand dollars and you need to pay right now or we're going to show off your electricity so to a business who has refrigerators and freezers that's really important and so unfortunately they did pay they asked for them to pay with the green dot which is like prepaid credit cards any time any no legitimate company wants you to pay a bill with a green dot which is again like a prepaid credit card you can buy at c v s yes so the first time that happened that let us know that this was happening and we put the word out so we find out a lot of the new scams from the residence when you know especially if they have fallen victim sometimes they'll just calls and say i just want you know i didn't fall for this but people are starting to call about you know saying our medicare card about the utilities house even if you didn't fall victim it lets us know what some of the new scams are out there my mother doesn't i called the police station in pretending to find out we find out through our residence now let's say something that's really innocent sounding like i would like in from where the surveys people who call for surveys what would you suggest that we do i usually don't answer the surveys you know  you don't because you don't know there are legitimate organizations not profit organizations some of the political organizations that do want to do surveys but it's hard to tell over the phone whether it's a scam or not i mean the u s census bureau they do have surveys that they do ask people to fill out but they usually mail those and there's a phone number on there that you can call if the person if it's you know if it's even especially for something that you're interested in with the survey ask them for a website and ask them you know and look to and study it and see if it's legit and maybe even if you get a phone number where you can call back to do the survey but check with the better business bureau check with the attorney general's office you know do some research before you would answer that survey aha that makes sense wouldn't have occurred to me though i certain organizations you know to give your opinion but don't answer the survey right away down some information and say what's a number i can call back to do the survey from interested and check their website you know check in the attorney general's office because many of the bennett better business bureau turns general's office you can search an organization and they'll say because especially it's a nonprofit they should be registered with the secretary secretary's office of the state secretary of state and you can search those organizations to make sure that they're legitimate organizations and you c even get a legitimate phone number because all those organizations nonprofit have to be registered and have contact information and stuff in the state keeps an eye on them now for example of people who are the like it needs a job do you recommend that people first looking to see whether those pamphlets are from legitimate businesses or yes do you think it's ok to go ahead and call them and simply interview them we should think is any time you can have any work done in your house you always want to do research and you always want to get a couple of estimates and you also the main thing the most important thing is to have a contract written up if someone wants cash and what does not want to do a contract and i would not go with them because there is a new state law it's a few years old and we have been successful in prosecuting contractors contract a violation of law and that you have to have a contract written up  we have actually been able to bring criminal charges against contractors who have violated the contract and not to finish the work basically have taken the money and run but you always if the person doesn't want to a contract say bye bye bye bye because a contract will protect actually both of you would protect you and would protect the contractor so yes so those people that come in knock on the door and say oh i was doing work in the area those are the ones we really see the scam i mean people do put out flyers for their businesses and yes you do always want to check check with a better business bureau the tourney general's office look up and see if it's legit business but the ones that are with more than scams are the ones who knock on your door and say i was just doing your neighbor's driveway and i have some extra asphalt aha i can do your driveway for very cheap or same thing i was just doing a neighbor looks like your roof could use some work you never want to just pay cash you never want to you just you always the number one thing is a contract you want to have a contract written up for any work done in your house because again this protects you and it protects the contractor wow so much what am i not asking you that i should ask you about well i mean some of the exact to tell you some of our are scams that we've seen quite often you know there isn't really much that goes around the holiday season so i know sometimes people ask what we actually see more just to go off for a moment around the holiday season as people getting their packages stolen aha because just about everyone you know orders online amazon dot com or other places so a couple of things that we recommend because you can't always guarantee that u p s or fed ex is going to request a signature law that time that depends upon what the company requests and also what the value of the package but sometimes even just having if you leave a note and give instructions for the package to be left behind in the back porch in the you know or in your garage because what happens most of time is that people will just drive down the street and they'll see a very large package and they'll just run up no grab it h interesting and they'll take it or have it left you know or even sometimes people even have little boxes either on their front porch to the side or on their back porch that looks like something you would put boots in but they'll have the packages put in there it's because  it's kind of under the packages being stolen or a crime of opportunity so they drive down they check the different streets and when they see the packages right there and some plain view they'll grab it but they won't go they usually don't go down someone's driveway around the back because that takes too much work around this time there's plenty of packages on people's front steps so that's what really see around the holiday time other seasons one of the things that we see is the i r s cam people claiming to be from the i that your back taxes and they get the same thing they only come to the door no they call they call they call they call names say we're from the i r s you all back taxes and you need to pay go and buy one of those green dots or western union or give us your credit card number and pay your taxes well in reality the i r s never calls you the i r s sends you a letter when your back taxes and the i r s doesn't need your credit card information they don't need to send money western union the i r s if you really old money can take it directly from your bank account is that right yes the i r s isn't the only government organizations that can garnish your wages so they have many different ways to legitimately take your money that they don't need to call you same thing like with utility scam they never call and say you are late on your bill it's always you know it's you get a letter like your phone bill it'll say this amount is past due and then eventually get a letter saying if you do not pay this amount we are going to shut off your service they don't call they never  yes another one that we don't know we have the heart of that frankly the other one we see some of the newer ones that we've seen is calling to say that your computer is broken and we're here to fix your computer and they will i'm not exactly sure what kind of information they ask so i'm not as good at computers as some of other all the other officers but they have you do certain things on your computer that they can get remote access to your computer yes through the internet so if someone says i'm here to fix your computer no just say well i will take it to the local computer repair place because they they don't have their own access to your computer yet so how can they know that your computer is broken but if you think about it computers are very important it's all or internet it's how many times people pay their bills and keep in contact so they know that a computer is very important to someone and if your computer is broken you need a fix right away how are you going to check e mails how are you going to pay your bills are you going to do your christmas shopping online so they kind of get people at their sensitive spots  such as the family member in trouble scam when they call and pretend to be a family member a grandchild usually or most the time as a grandchild or when they get the older generation and what they'll do is sometimes they'll call  grandma or grandpa it depends upon if a man or woman answers the phone and the unit but you'd think that you'd recognize the relatives well we don't always say i'm going to an x but that sometimes they'll talk like they've just gotten into see hard for you to understand i see and they'll sometimes you know because they'll because they'll claim they're from in another country the dominican republic is usually a popular one that they're in the dominican republic they got into an accident they got arrested and they need money for bail w know and something like that immediately hang up and call and the other thing they'll do is they'll say nana please don't tell mum and dad please don't tell me haha i don't want to get in trouble very clever and so they don't tell their grandchild they don't tell their parents and they just go and send the money you know if you want to mediately hang up the phone and call that family member directly or call you know their parents to find out if they're ok and would you recommend that all these things that we've been talking about require also a call to the police to inform the police that yes going out is or you can would that completely leave you completely bombed out no not necessarily him especially with a family member in trouble if you know if you if you're a little concerned you know if especially if you can't get in touch with that family member or other or other family members you know you can call us and we can help you reach out to them  sometimes it's not always international sometimes they'll say i'm in new orleans are i'm in florida or especially if the student let's say your grandchild is a college student california and you can't get in touch with anyone call us we can call that university police department we can call the local police department and find out a lot of information for you need to so it doesn't hurt i mean sometimes people just call and say i just want to for the record i don't need a police officer coming by but i just want you know i was scammed not sure if you've seen these scams before and you know you don't have to have officers something we just like to get education again from the community know what's out there i mean how we found out with the medicare scam was one of our residents who is ninety two years old who did not fall for it and she said i just want to let you know is someone just tried to scam me saying my medicare card had been compromised they wanted my so security number so we sent an officer buy in and he wrote a report you know and we were very impressed that she didn't fall for it ninety two years oh yeah yeah  very very gosh i should take some lessons from her wonderful so and ways of protecting your privacy what we always recommend to people is shredding everything you know you don't want to just throw away your credit card bills and also don't keep your like your social security card or your medicare card in your wallet at all times because those have your soul security number on it and what if you lose your walk or what if it gets stolen you know certain anything that have a lot of identifying information you don't always you don't want to us i really appreciate your visit today and i hope your your phone don't ring off the hook we hope so too but again when abdel please we want you to call us all to call the police station well thank you very much and until next time with what's going on bye bye