Tennessee Roll Call
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Tennessee Roll Call
Scammers be Scammin’
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If you're a human being and own a cell phone, you have received a scam phone call.. probably hundreds of them. Detective Ryan Fuller of the Winchester Police Department explains the issue and what you can do to not be a victim.
Tennessee Rolling Tennessee Roll. And welcome back to Tennessee Roll Call. And today we are talking about people who are getting all kinds of phone calls from so-called agencies that are uh scamming and doing terrible things to people. Unfortunately, these phone calls are a distraction, an annoyance at best, but some people are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am blessed to have Detective Ryan Fuller with me today of the Winchester Police Department. Ryan, let's start out with telling us a little bit about yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I've been here at the Winchester Police Department in around 14 years. Um I started in January of 2012. Um prior to that, I was a dispatcher. Of course, that's how Rocky and I have have met and crossed paths.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, but since um December of 2017, I've been in the criminal investigations division here. Um I've worked numerous cases of theft, homicides, sexual assaults. Um, of course, we have our and I've seen a great uptick in the last, I don't know, probably three or four years of the scams. Um it's just it it I feel like we've almost replaced our crimes of simple thefts, and now we see people getting scammed more than more than ever. Who's our victims here? Well, and it kind of varies. Um I've seen victims as young as, you know, 20s, 30s, but predominantly a lot of the victims I'm seeing are people that are of age probably I'm gonna say 60 plus. Um, a lot of our senior citizens are being taken advantage of. Because two things. Number one, I think they're a little bit more trusting than what you or I would be, but two, I mean, to be honest, you know, they've got money. I mean, they're a lot of times their houses are free and clear, or you know, they've saved up for quite a while to be able to have money and do things. Um, but for the most part, like I said, it seems to be a lot of the older, I'm gonna say senior citizen crowd-ish people is who we see.
SPEAKER_01That is such a shame because these people have worked their whole lives to get the little that they've got just for it to be taken away. And, you know, to you and me, I I guess maybe there's a little bit of a vulnerability to the older people because they didn't have to deal with this back in the day. We didn't have the cell phones, you know, they didn't have the cell phone issues, you know, and things like that. But now when someone calls, they sound very legitimate.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I've had uh, and that's why I say my a lot of it is elderly people, but I do say a lot of your people that are our age or younger, and I say that because like I had a case just I don't know, right before Christmas, guy gets a call, um, he thinks it's the credit union. Like they spoofed the number of the credit union, everything looked just like the credit union, and this gentleman ended up giving his informate his banking information over these people, and then of course, you know, the race was on from that point. You know, they did whatever they did to do. But I mean, I see it every day, and I could pull out my phone right now. Um, you know, I can see it, Norton Anavirus. You your subscription's renewed already, and it's auto-charged this much, or um you've got Tennessee Department of Transportation, you've got a ticket. I mean, I just got a literal text message two days ago telling me that I owe traffic fines. Um and I think it's scare tactics that people are using because of the um no one wants to have bad credit, no one wants to have their license suspended, everybody wants to try to, for the most part, be in good graces of their financial institutions. And whenever they see these things, all of a sudden they're like, well, holy crap, like I need to go ahead and pay this, so I'm on I'm good. Um But like I said, the fishing scams, I mean, it I we could talk all day about any type of scam that they're that you want to see. Right. Um out there.
SPEAKER_01I think most of what we're getting is like a lot of phone calls. We people get, you know, those phone calls that come in probably five, six, seven a day sometimes, and there's they can be so convincing. How are they able to do that? Like I know uh if I get a phone call scam, it it shows right here in the area, it shows that they're calling from right here in the area. Are they calling from here or are they calling from somewhere else?
SPEAKER_00No, they're calling from somewhere else. Um, you know, you can spoof numbers. Uh now, and I've had people call me back and go, hey, I missed your call. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Yeah. And they're like, No, I just had a missed call from you. And someone had spoofed my number. Um, and I've had phone calls from people like that I've I've got their number saved in my phone. Uh, but they're definitely spoofing calls, and they um, you know, we get the phone scams, but on the phone call scam side of things, like I've seen a lot of those, and they've evolved through time of and it used to be real bad about the grandparent scam. So you get a phone call, an elderly person gets a phone call, and their niece, or not their niece, but their grandson or granddaughter's in jail, and they need them, they need money to get out. And they won't let them talk to whoever this grandson or granddaughter is, but they need money to get out. And they kind of extort, for the lack of better terms, money out of these elderly people because they do have a granddaughter or grandson. But rather than the grandparent thinking, well, why don't when I just call my grandson or granddaughter and to make sure they're not in jail, um, they just go ahead and pay the money.
SPEAKER_01They take it as legit. Uh it it's um, I have, you know, when people when they call me, I have a little bit of fun with them. But unfortunately, it's not a laughing matter when they get all these thousands and thousands of dollars from people. Uh, what is some of this? I know we've talked a little bit about the jail thing. Um, like I know the um I will get phone calls every once in a while of you know, checking your car insurance and things are these legitimate calls or are they also scams? Checking your car insurance. I have not heard of that one. Okay, yeah. Like check uh, they will call um or car warranties, excuse me. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Your vehicle's extended warranty. Your vehicle extended warranty. Are these scams as well? The vehicle is extended warranty. I don't know if it is or it ain't, because I'll be honest, 90% of the time, if anybody ever hears my vehicle's extended warranty, they're getting a click. Um, but yeah, I mean, we've always had the ability to conjure up business through telemarketer calls. Um, but it's just gotten so sketch. I mean, you know, I've gotten to the point where in the last several years, I mean, it even it even makes me question the validity of if I call um Comcast, like I had Xfinity for a while. If I call Comcast, like, am I really talking to who I think I'm talking to? Um a lot of times just when they self-generate a phone call to you, you know, it's it's very sketch. Um, a lot of times your legitimacy, your ones that are legitimate, will send you emails to your email address talking about things, which is what helps you know that they're a little bit more real. Because when you're on the phone and you get an email, it's exactly about what you've been talking about. That helps a little bit. Um, but as far as knowing what phone calls are legit or not, I mean, I have to answer pretty much every phone call because in this job, sometimes I don't have people's numbers saved, and sometimes people call me. But I don't know. I don't know. It's it's tough. It's gotten to be the point where I hate to tell people to do this, but like if you don't have them saved in your contacts much anymore, then I wouldn't.
SPEAKER_01You almost can't use your phone anymore for the purposes you want to use them for in a way.
SPEAKER_00It's gotten better at times, it's got worse at times. Um I know that um it seems like whenever there's a lot of activity going on in the Middle East, whether uh it be some kind of meta med military activity or something like that, it seems like whenever all that stuff happens, it slows down a little bit as far as the phone calls go, but the scams are always there. I mean, I can come in any day of the week on my computer here and look at and look at reports. We at least take probably two to three reports a week of scams.
SPEAKER_01Can you think of probably the worst scam that's occurred here in Winchester?
SPEAKER_00Uh probably the worst scam in Winchester. Um, you know, I don't know that there's a worst. I know that, and this isn't in Winchester, but I know that there's another one I know of where a it's a romance scam is absolutely what it is. And by romance scam, I mean the person that is giving the money thinks that the person on the other end that's committing the scam is in love with them or needs them, you know, they've developed an emotional relationship through their dialogues and their messages. And I mean, there's a woman that lives um in our area that's given, gosh, over a hundred thousand dollars to this guy. And it's got it it's to the point that we know, like we told her, like, he's not legit, like this is a scam. And she just keeps giving anyways. And and you know what's sad is this this specific uh young lady, uh, this specific lady, um, her her husband is no longer alive. She's a widow. Um and what's sad is like he's preying on her emotional, you know, preying on the fact that she is a widow. She isn't, I mean, she's lonely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and you know, we see that I mean I say it all the time. Between we have that portion, then we have the portion of the publisher's clearinghouse. You know, all we need to do is give, you know, send us $500 on a green dot money card, and we'll give you your, you know, $50,000. Um, and it's sad, but I mean, you know, I mean, everybody gets excited when they think they've won something. Yeah. But I always tell people, if you really won something, you wouldn't have to pay anything to get anything. If you really won something, then they would just take the taxes out of what you get, not you have to fork over money for them to take for you to be able to get your winnings.
SPEAKER_01To ride home with this, you said $100,000. That that would be for most of us, for me, first of all, you ain't gonna get $100,000. I mean, I'm not worth $100,000. But for people who have saved that much money and worked hard for, this is absolutely life devastating for them. Do they get their money back, or is there any sort of recourse for them?
SPEAKER_00So I always tell people, um, you know, the investigation of a scam is very challenging. Uh, and it's very challenging on the sense of a lot of times our victor our our scammers, the ones that were our suspects, um, they're not dumb. Um, they're very smart and clever in the fact that they will use um they'll use oh VPNs, virtual private networks, so you can't track their IP address. Um the phone numbers a lot of times just kind of fall to deaf ears because there's been they're being smooth. Um it's just very tough. And it it it gets to the point where it's you just don't have a lot of investigative leads to follow. Not to mention, you know, a lot of times these people aren't in our country. And when they're not in our country, it's extremely tough. Now, I always tell people to go and file a report with a National White Collar Crime Center, I think it's called NW3C. Um and basically that's the government's arm of like fraud and scams and stuff like that. Um, sometimes they can help them. I know that I've seen the the best ones I've seen to be able to get help are I say best, I mean the Bitcoin scams where people will go down to the one of these Bitcoin ATMs and they'll put thousands of dollars in one of these ATMs to convert it into Bitcoin, which is a digital currency. Um when they do convert that money over to that, sometimes they're able they're able to get a hold of the provider of whoever that ATM is, and they're able to stop that money. Sometimes it just depends. Um I mean statistically, a lot of times our victims don't get their money back. Um the only fortunate way that they get their money back sometimes is like if there was something involving a debit card or something with their financial institutions. Um but I mean, granted, I mean, at the end of the day, you're just transferring whoever's out the money from the victim over to the credit union or the bank or whoever that may be. Um it's just very tough. And especially, you know, seems like back whenever it really got started, always the super telltale sign that it was a scam was um people would say, Go and get me gift cards or Western Union money orders or whatever. Um of course once those are once those funds are depleted off those cards, I mean, they're totally hard, uh hard and very impossible to trace. But um that used to be always the telltale sign.
SPEAKER_01Um that still happen?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Okay. I mean, it's I could, you know, go and get us a $500, put $500 on a Green Dot money card or an Amazon gift card, and then as soon as they do it, I mean, they would turn around and they would give them the pin number on the card, and they would just do like anybody else checking the balance. I mean, they would they would get all the information and they would transfer it off. Um one thing that I've even it's it's even been interesting to see is they're very persuasive and honestly to the point to a degree, depending upon the type of scam that it is. I've seen them get downright mean with people on the phone. And like I've had banks call me and somebody's on the phone with one of these scammers, and like they're showing up to Citizens Community Bank or any, you know, whatever bank they use, and they're on the phone with these people, and these people are saying, Don't don't hang up the phone on me. Um and they're there, I mean, they're ready to get out as much money as they'll let them have.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, I've had banks call me to come to the bank and say, Hey, will you tell, you know, Miss Smith or Mr. Johnson like this is a scam? Um because they're they're so convincing and they're very persuasive. I mean, like I said, a lot of times they're like, you need to go to your bank now to do this.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned the love scam. That made me think of one call we had, and I couldn't convince this lady. I tried. She was 100% convinced that the money she was sending to was Jay Uso of the WWE. And also Cody Rhodes had joined the chat somewhere in there, and she was sending these people money, and I I tried my best to tell her this is not who you're do you think you're talking to, and she actually would not believe me. That's how convincing she would not believe an officer in uniform. She really was sold on this. So I can definitely feel your pain when it comes to trying to you know put this out there. But one thing that we can say, and one of the reasons for the program today was we're trying to prevent, and that's the big word is prevent because once it's done, getting your money back can be almost an impossibility. So we're going to go over some prevention ways of how you can keep yourself safe and your friends and family safe as well from uh falling for these tactics. And the one thing is, can you think of a legitimate reason why a company would want to be paid in Bitcoin or a company, a legitimate company want to be paid with a card rather than giving your banking information online?
SPEAKER_00Um, I mean, most of your companies are going, I mean, you're legit if you're paying legitimate bills, um, you know, they may send you a letter, they may send you sometimes an email, depending on how the correspondence is. Now, granted, I tell everybody this on your emails. Like, if you get an email and you think that it's it might be legit or whatever, especially on your phone, click that if it may say it's from Lowe's Credit Center, click it where it says Lowe's Credit Center, see what that email address says. Um, sometimes it'll have like some random domain, and that might mean it's a scam. I mean, who knows? You may have a Lowe's card or whatever, but I would be very leery. I don't know any legitimate businesses that have to or that need to receive payment in gift cards and Bitcoin. Um, for the most part, my mortgage, I mean, I pay it online, but um when I pay my mortgage online, I've got my own little portal, I've got my login, I've got my banking information put in. Right. Um, and of course, that's another thing too, is be careful if you're paying bills, um, especially through mail, because I have seen I have seen people involved in that are victims of scams as well. Of I mean, common most common thing for checks anymore is pay bills. Okay, so you get a bill, you it's for $72, you pay it to let's say it's your water department. You put it in the mail and send it off to the water department. But what I've seen happen too is is people somehow will get an intercept your check, and then they'll take your check with your banking information, your writing, number, your account number, all that stuff, and they'll make a check that looks just like yours, and they start writing, you know, rather than a $72 check, they may write a $3,500 check and they'll write it out to this person over here who's a homeless person that they'll send into a bank to cash this check. So once again, I am an advocate of paying with checks or or paying through normal methods, right? But you have to safeguard yourself in that as well. Um, the biggest advice that I can give somebody for prevention, and this is no not to any bigger um bigger industries or bigger establishments, but like it's just so helpful. You know, yes, I know that our area we have gotten a little larger as far as um as far as how many people moved in here, but it's so much more convenient. Like if you think something's sketchy, like I can pick up the phone and call the people that work at my bank. I can pick up the phone and call, let's say that I got a bill that's supposed to be from the state of Tennessee. Like the state of Tennessee is not gonna just reach out to you, and because for that fact, the state of Tennessee doesn't have your cell phone number.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um so I guess the the best thing, the prevention the prevention measure is is it helps to do business with people you kind of know. I mean, not to say, I mean, I do business on Amazon all day, I do business on a lot of these other places just as much as everybody else does. But the reason I say that it's beneficial to do business with people you know, is because like if for some reason I think something's sketchy, I can call and be like, hey, did did this have you have you seen where there's supposed to be a charge coming through my account for this or whatever? And because the biggest thing is is to stay on top of it, and I'm not exactly the best either about checking my bank account every day. Um but you know, like you get an email that says, for instance, you got charged for $400 of Norton Antivirus. Well, you can find out if that's true or not real quick, because all you gotta do is just head up your banking app and see.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And if you don't feel good about that, you can call your local bank. Um, but the prevention-wise, the best prevention I can tell everybody, um, if it smells weird or it seems weird, just call us. Um good deal. I mean, I've said forever, um, I had rather you call the police, um, because we see this stuff every day, we know how it goes, and you know, like the whole if you think that your license is about to be suspended because you got a text message, let me know. I can look your license up, see if you got anything on your license, it's gonna suspend your license. Um, you know, if you think that um if you think that you supposedly won this or whatever, I wouldn't call the right people. I mean, um there's just always we have different avenues that we can go. Um, because like I said, the biggest thing for us is we see this all the time.
SPEAKER_01And the big and what I love what you just said, it does utilize your local police department. Absolutely. Uh utilize them because that's what you pay taxes for. And if you get something, and if it's if it's It's not a scam, then fine. I mean, you're not wasting anybody's time. If it's not a scam, great. You know, we can move forward. But make that take the time to make the phone call if you feel something is off. Uh, you mentioned the publisher's clearing. I don't remember, I don't I don't think I've heard of that one lately, but a lot of times if you haven't entered a contest yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yes, you can't win the lottery, you can't win the publisher's clearinghouse.
SPEAKER_01If you didn't buy a ticket or enter, you're not gonna win it. Right. So, I mean, I I've never, first of all, I've played the lottery, I've played publisher's clearinghouse and ain't won a thing because that's my luck. But I definitely don't think I'm gonna win anything that I didn't even participate in. So, yeah, that that's gonna be number one. And I don't know of any legitimate place. Now I know like if you win something big, you're gonna pay taxes on it, but I don't think anything's up front. So if they're saying you have to have, okay, you know, pay us $500 and then you're gonna get your winnings, that should be a huge red flag. There's not a problem with calling your local police department.
SPEAKER_00I love that. Yeah, I mean, I whether it's, you know, whether your department has two officers or 200, call them. I mean, you know, because like I said, we're exposed to this every day as far as seeing what's out there and knowing what's coming around. Uh, it's prevalent. It's here. Um, but the worst thing that happens is is we find out it's legit, and that's fine. I'd rather deal with I'd rather deal with 10 people calling me about wanting to know if something's real or legit versus that one person that just lost uh a generational wealth.
SPEAKER_01Right. Absolutely devastating. I've had I've had one too many elderly victims come up to me and just tell me they've lost everything. And it just makes you so mad that it's happening.
SPEAKER_00And you feel bad for them because they're embarrassed. I mean, because that one I've dealt with a lot of them once you tell them it is what it is, like, you know, it's like and they feel bad. They're like, how how can I how can I be so foolish? How could I be so gullible?
SPEAKER_01Don't be embarrassed because if you're in these people, that's what they do for a living. They know how to scam you, they know the right words to say, they know what to do to get you to believe. Like I said, the one lady I was just talking about, I am a police officer in uniform telling her this is a scam and she wouldn't believe me. These people know what they're doing, so absolutely don't be embarrassed. Let's just try to see if we can get the money back. Um, does the FBI are they are are they the jurisdiction that handles this type of stuff? Or who who is it that does this, do you know?
SPEAKER_00I mean, for the most part, I mean the FBI can play and handle a little bit. Um and that's kind of where it falls into like a super, I'm gonna not I'm not gonna use the term a gray area. Um, but you know, we know for the most part, no one's trying to scam another person from the other side of town. Um no one's trying to scam another person from the other side of the county, or even the other side of the state. Most of the time, it's you know, like I said, you're lucky to get the United States involved as far as it being in our country. Um a lot of times you see it from out of out of the country, but what is tough is yes, the FBI, they honestly they got the resources and everything like that, but it's just hard to get them involved. And a lot of times it comes down to and I hate to say it, but a lot of times it comes down to having a report done to turn over to your credit reporting agency or to have the report done to turn over to your bank or whatever to help them, you know, at least it's documented, you know it's it's false, it's not true, or you're you know that they did were a victim of scams. Um I'm not to say that I'm not gonna sit here and say that the FBI won't do anything. Right. Because I think that they're vetting some of those NW3C complaints as well. Right. Because I'm sure that they're using that data to try to get an understanding of where those things are coming from and and the similarities and the scams. Um but I can't tell you that like they are the silver bullet that's gonna solve you know your scam problems for them.
SPEAKER_01So the big takeaway on this prevention is key. Prevention. So you've got to police yourself.
SPEAKER_00An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
SPEAKER_01Right. So you know, pull it, don't trust anything that comes over, don't take it at face value. If if it's legit, that's fine, it's legit, but there's there's ways of checking it. And and I like it, like you said, call the police department, call the company. You know, if you um you mentioned the scam of the sheriff's department, because I know that's been happening lately. Had a lot of those. Where somebody will, you know, as a matter of fact, let me bring this up because I think they've even gotten to the point to where the scammers are doing a little bit more private research to where they will use, like they will find out that let's say Detective Ryan Fuller works at the Winchester Police Department. So they would put something to the effect of, hi, I'm Detective Ryan Fuller, you owe this money, and spoof you, but because now there is a legitimacy. Well, I know my police department, and I know there's a detective named Ryan Fuller. But Detective Ryan Fuller would never call somebody and say, you have a warrant, so pay me now over the phone.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, it doesn't work that way. That's that's uh that's called official misconduct. Uh but no, I mean, anytime anybody's calling you and asking you for money, um, you know, like you said, um, the Coffee Can Insurance Department, the Frank Cannon Insurance Department, they're not gonna say, hey, you have a warrant, but for the low price of $19.99, you're gonna get out of it. No, that's not how it works. Uh, the only warrants that we have that actually come with a monetary out are child support warrants.
SPEAKER_01And it's probably not gonna be handled over the phone.
SPEAKER_00Correct. And I mean, in you know, and it's no, you're right, it's not gonna be handled over the phone because if you if you're looking to get that monetary out and to keep from going to the jail because you owe back child support, you're gonna have to go to the jail and pay that money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh you can't do it over the phone through Venmo or PayPal or Green Dot Money cards.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, but they have, like you said, they have gotten better about doing a little bit of research about who is at the agencies. Um, you know, your court clerks aren't gonna call you up and solicit money over the phone. Right. Um so like I said, it's just gotten so if you get a phone call, it's just always say, Oh, I'm sorry, I'll have to call you back. Call them back. Because if it's legit, um you know, whether it's Jenny Anthony's office or Robert Baggett's office or wherever you live, they're always gonna be able to say, Yeah, that was us, or no, that's not us. Right. I mean, because and don't be bullied.
SPEAKER_01Don't yes because I remember you s you mentioned a second ago that they can be very aggressive. No, they can't be. Don't hang up the phone on me, or this is a very serious thing. That's not gonna happen here either. Uh, from an a legitimate agency. Yeah, no, no, so don't let them push your own. So, besides calling the police department, all like that, do you have any more tips that we can kind of give out there to just warn people and caution people to what they can do to not be victims?
SPEAKER_00Um, I guess uh be vigilant. Um, and uh you know, I'm not saying don't trust anything, but ask the questions. Um, another thing that I think's beneficial is to, and I'm not trying to sell anybody on anything, but if you have credit monitoring or and it's gotten really affordable, um, if you've gotten some kind of credit monitoring, because like I mean, this is another one. I had a guy call me up one day, or I'm sorry, it was actually Adam Barnett that runs our Chevrolet of their ship over here. He was like, hey, um, I've got a guy that's trying to buy a Camaro, and he says that he's not trying to buy this, but there's this other guy that's saying he's him. Well, basically, this guy had stolen this other guy's identity, and he was trying to get a $75,000 Camaro delivered to Atlanta, Georgia with this other guy's identity. And the victim, the true victim, would have never known if it hadn't been for he got an alert on his phone that his credit report had been pulled. Wow or his credit had been pulled. So that's an awesome service to get into. Um, I think that that's a benefit. Um, the credit reporting side of things, you know, keep on top of your bank accounts. Um if the bank sick if the bank texts you and says your car's been compromised, just go get another card. I mean, it's I know it's a pain. But and then the other thing is just be ask questions. Don't take everything at face value because you know, compared to 10 years ago or 15 or 20 years ago, people aren't going to call you up a lot of times. People calling you up now are trying to get money from you not to help in your as much. Be be suspicious. Especially if you don't recognize the number.
SPEAKER_01Be suspicious when anybody calls wanting money. Yes. I mean, that's if it ain't if it ain't a regular thing, absolutely. We don't have a whole lot of time left. First of all, thank you so much for for taking the time out of your day and through all of our technical issues we had. We could have done a whole episode on all the technical stuff that happened here this morning. That's all right. But so thank you for being patient with me. Um, if they are victims of crime, if they realize, okay, well, I've got this that's happened to me, uh, who do they need to report it to?
SPEAKER_00So um, if you are a victim of a crime, whether it is a scam or not, you know, Coffee County 728-9555, uh, Frank County 967-2331, um, those are your local dispatch centers. They will get you in touch with the correct law enforcement agencies you need to get in touch with. Um, you know, it's all kind of turns technical as far as whether you live in the city or the county or whatever, but at least call, talk to an officer, say, hey, you know, um, even if it's $200 or whatever, I mean, call if you get a if you have been a victim, call and have a report done. If you think you might be a victim or you think that someone's trying to get you, call. I mean, we'll we're here for advice, we're here for um guidance. Um, so call your local dispatch center. I mean, you can call the the police department front desk or whatever, just depends upon business hours or whatever. But yeah, I mean call us and we can give you the direction and put you in the we might just tell you you need to call your bank or you need to call whoever. Um, one thing that I don't know about that I've not really looked into that much is and I had a scam on a local government agency. Is I don't I'm not a and I'm not an insurance agent, nor am I trying to sell anybody on this. You'd have to ask them, but um one local insurance policy actually covered the losses due to a scam.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Um that would I wish I'd done my research on that.
SPEAKER_00Um there was a deal where and it was an email scam where they received an email that looked legit like the company they had been doing business with, they received a request for payment, they wired them the money. That's another thing. If you have to pay for something, um, let's say that you're buying a car or you're buying a lawnmower, take a when you do this, like I don't care how pushy they are. I got seven people wanting to buy this car, don't do a wire. Once that money's wired, it's gone. Tell them, say, I'll give you a I could get you a um cashier's check from my bank and meet them. Don't do a wire though. I've dealt with several, several of these, and it's it's $25,000, $40,000, $50,000 wires. Wow. Um, because once it's gone, that's gone. Um, but yeah, don't and I I'm glad I thought about that. But yeah, don't do a wire. Um but back to what I was saying though, the insurance possible possibility. I don't know if some places have a scam insurance rider. Um, but that might be something to look into. I mean, like I said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Well, Detective Fuller, thank you for being with me today. I know this, like I said, it was crazy getting started, but um hopefully everybody will benefit from this. Hopefully everybody will uh take that ounce of prevention and move forward. Uh Detective Fuller, thank you, buddy. I appreciate it. Thank you. From the news to the zero.