Online scams on Veterans and Seniors and more on NH Today WGIR-AM

Hey, I had some fun with Jack this morning. Usually, it's a fairly short segment with Jack Heath on New Hampshire today. His show is carried throughout the state of New Hampshire on a number of different stations and of course in parts of Mass, Maine, and Vermont. You know, we got kind of a number of small states up here in the northeast. I talked about two big scams that are going on right now. So here we go with Jack Heath.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Related articles:

Cybercriminals Target Veterans Looking for Civilian Employment

 

“Technology Help” Cybercriminals Scam Seniors into Paying Thousands

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Automated Transcript:

Craig Peterson 0:00
Hey, good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I had fun with jack this morning. Usually, it's a fairly short segment with Mr. Jack Heath. On New Hampshire today. It's carried throughout the state of New Hampshire bunch of different stations as heard. And of course in parts of mass and Maine and Vermont. You know, we got kind of small states up here in the northeast. And I talked about two big scams that are going on right now.

Jack Heath 0:29
But joining us down the auto fair listener lines on this Monday morning, 30 days into September, thank you for starting it with us. We appreciate it very, very much. We know you have some choices. And thank you for flying with us. Craig Peters on our tech talk guy and Craig. Veterans scams or something I always try and pay attention to our friends at AARP has talked about this, how veterans are sometimes targeted. But sometimes some fake sites can sort of lower veterans in telling us about the great public service here you have and what you've discovered.

Craig Peterson 0:56
Absolutely, jack, good morning, we've got vision another about a topic you talk a lot about, and that has to do with elderly victims. But in this case, there is a group out there. But this is a group that backs me and my business. I've called Cisco Telos, they found a website that there tends to be an organization called higher military heroes. What happens when you go to the site is it offers a download of program that it says that veterans can use to get job opportunities, and they've done a good job on this program on the site, the site is down. Now it is not up online. But it does offer software for all of your major versions of Windows. And unfortunately, this is another example of software that is malware that is not detected by most antivirus packages. In fact, they tested it against 69 different pieces of antivirus software, only three of them caught it. And jack this software that supposed to be helping our veterans actually installed to malware infections, one that gathers information about the veteran and their computer and another that executes commands remotely. They're given to the computer by the hackers. It's a shame to see stuff like this. And it's all part of what the hackers the bad guys are trying to do now to kind of Spearfish, in this case, our veterans.

Jack Heath 2:24
Yeah. And, you know, it's, uh, there's so much of this, Craig, there's so much of it. And it's just so hard to know how you really get to keep your guard up, don't you?

Craig Peterson 2:35
Oh, you do and that kind of leads us into our next one, which is an arrest of it just happened. And this is a massive it, you know, information technology and computer support fraud. And my dad fell for this now. My dad is no slouch when it comes to technology. And this You certainly wasn't. Now he's in his 80s. But he was the guy that the family members went to to get help with their computers to reinstall replace drives, download drivers, he new computers, and he fell for a scam that, again, he was trying to get tech support. He did a search on Google, he found a company that supports windows, he called them up. And they started installing almost right away. One of these pieces of nasty were now in this case with the arrest. Apparently, these bad guys father defrauded more than 7500 victims. And they convinced that these poor people elderly and almost all of the cases that their computers needed 16 they had a pop up that would come up on the computers as a fake warning installed, drive by on a website. That's all that they had to do these poor people. And this indictment that was released on Wednesday said a phone number would be provided the victim would call it an order to get rid of this infection that was on their computers. And you know what, unfortunately, these guys these two people are legends have made $10 million from these thousands of elderly victims. Yeah. And it can happen to people that should know better. Right?

Jack Heath 4:17
And you know, it doesn't take much because they don't need that many to fall victim in, you know, even if like, you know, the less than 5% that it's worth it to them as the crooks you know, Craig, while you were talking about that elderly one Craig Peters on Tech Talk Craig Peterson with an ON calm if you want to contact and learn more what Craig does, Craig you know, the Have you heard this the other day, but good police work led to at least cracking into that that IRS scam, if you heard about that one, when someone leave you a voice message, usually a female voice it if you didn't contact the IRS back and some field agent within you know a certain amount of time they would take criminal action and on the way to arrest you and call back with your attorney and you basically had this this should be the tip you had but you know you can kind of get out of it with a 20 $500 gift card or something else. I we obviously the IRS doesn't work that way. So somehow gift cards were involved in the scam and police are tracking where they were using in the area of Los Angeles in this neighborhood that the bad people were you know, going to one particular target to cash it in the gift cards. And they were able to kind of find out where the call center was and busted this 25 year old woman they had one at over a million dollars worth of basically computer call equipment that they were doing this robo call operation out of pretty funny, not funny real I did.

Craig Peterson 5:37
And this happened to me Jack that I was on in fact after the trade show. And my phone rang and I answered the phone call. And it was a lady that had no discernible accent. It was definitely an American that I was talking to saying that she was calling from the IRS and that there has been a problem with my tax Three's Company fun. And I kind of thought what what what's going on here? and you have all

Jack Heath 6:07
And you of all people right Mr. Like on guard and you get a call like that. Now imagine being living alone not being as up to date and how nerve-wracking that would be. Now, of course, folks out there, the IRS doesn't call you they don't call. But you don't get the call. You think it's real,

Craig Peterson 6:24
But you see, I knew I knew better. Right? And so I hung up and I just thought oh my gosh, what is really the IRS? What if there's really a problem? You know, am I really gonna get in trouble. And I knew better jack.

Jack Heath 6:40
Yeah, they're good.

Jason McIssac 6:42
What I tried to do is when I figured out it's a scam, I try to stay on the phone with them as long as possible, almost fun and mess with them. Yeah, because I figure if I'm taking up their time, that's less time they have to actually scam somebody, right?

Craig Peterson 6:53
And you know what else, you do is you basically turn it around and start asking them questions. So, if it's live - you can say, Oh, yeah, you say how many years you've been working with the IRS? And they might say they'll stick to their script. they'll stick to their script. And then you'll say, who's your field? Director, your supervisor, what Ira CY at what IRS office? You out of? Right? You ask him enough questions after a while you know you're here.

Jack Heath 7:22
Oh, Justin wouldn't love this.

Craig Peterson 6:53
I don't know if you guys saw this. But there was a captain and Stevens and she's with the apex Police Department down in North Carolina. And it was about a month ago she took a call from a man who identified himself as officer john black. And they were coming by to arrest Captain Stevens in about a 20 minutes if she didn't send the money. And Justin she does exactly what you were talking about. She messes with scammers she kept them on the phone. And there she is videotaping this whole thing. And she's in full uniform, you know her captain's uniform on and you know, you could go either way on this, but I like your approach. Justin, don't know my gut was turning over and I'm I didn't you know, she called back like three or four times. I just kept hanging up on her.

Jack Heath 8:10
But maybe that's the way to handle it. Yeah, just just just busting my chops. All right. Thank you, Craig Peterson, thank you very much on this Monday morning when we come back. General Motors.

Craig Peterson 8:19
By the way, if you are not on my email list, make sure you drop me a line. I send out great information I get so much good feedback. I so appreciate that. You guys, I really love you. And in what you're doing here for what I'm doing is I'm trying to get this information out to everybody, right? So you will get my weekly show notes is usually six to eight different articles that I have selected from the thousands that I've reviewed every week that I think are important to you as a business person, business owners, as well as home users, retirees, just like we did with that segment with jack. And then I also have free classes that I make sure I let you know about and some paid ones as well. So sign up right now at Craig Peterson, calm. Hey, have a great day and we'll be back on the morrow. Bye bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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