Scams & Cons

Winter storms have swept the country recently and we've previously experienced other forms of severe weather or dangerous phenomena.  In this postscript edition, we tell you about the scammers who swoop in during disasters.  Don't make a crisis even worse. Listen in and find out how to protect yourself from those who want you to pay for services or say your charity money will go to help...

Learn about our new podcast -- Unseen Influences. It takes you behind the scenes of the techniques others use to guide our behavior. It officially launches in February, but Scams & Cons listeners can listen to early episodes right now. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts or by going to our website, unseeninfluences.com . In this four-minute episode, I'll also bring you up-to-d...

The only ways I know to get easy money is to either to be born rich, marry a rich partner or have someone bequeath you a fortune. If someone stepped up to us and said they have a way for us to make a lot of money fast, odds are we’d listen – listening doesn’t cost anything. Unless the person doing the talking is a scammer and they have now set the hook and may very well reel us in. Today we'l...

It's not easy to escape from prison, but when you have a lot of time on your hands and experienced con artists available ... well, it's going to be inevitable.  A few weeks ago, we looked at how con artists used their skills to escape a highly secure prison. This time we're looking at the case of the Texas 7 who managed to escape, but not without costing a police officer his life. T...

Fear gets your attention. It throws you off-kilter. It corrupts your judgement.  You recover quickly when surprised by a spider. The impact is greater if you awaken in the night and see a stranger standing at the foot of your bed.  In this episode, we tell you how scammers use fear to get us to do things that interfere with our ability to reason and recognize the scam for what it is.

The basics of romance scams haven't changed all that much. Find someone who is lonely, gain their trust and affection, then bleed them dry of all the money and assets they have. In this update to season one's story, we tell you how scammers are using new techniques and technology to make their efforts more effective and dangerous.

Why would a good scammer give up their trade just because they are in prison where those skills could be used to escape? If they are bold enough, they wouldn't. This is the tale of the Maze Prison Break. Maze is a prison within a prison within a military base. It took a lot of planning and a lot of cons, but they got out. We'll tell you how.

Nearly all scams are impersonation scams. They need you to believe they are someone else in order to get you to hand over your money. In this episode, we tell you about some of the new ways scammers are using impersonation techniques to rob you and why it's only going to get worse in the future.

In our last episode, I told you about social engineering -- how a con artist's patter can convince you to do anything. But sometimes props are needed to make that tale seem more real. In this episode we talk about the devices and distractions tricksters use to keep you from noticing your money is slipping from your fingers. 

Nearly all scams are built around the technique of social engineering. Con artists know how to manipulate you, what buttons to push and allow you to believe you made a choice you never had. In this episode, we explore the techniques of social engineering and why we're all vulnerable to them. And you'll hear a scammer confess to her crime and said she took advantage of an elderly couple b...

We're ready to go back to school with Scams & Cons classes that begin Sept. 11. Enjoy the long weekend, then it's back to the fun!

It's time for our summer break so I can prepare new episodes for season 9. Listen in as I give you the details and respond to some listener notes. Have a great summer and make some time away from the news to have some fun. You deserve it!

If you bought tickets to a pop-up taco museum restaurant in San Antonio, you got scammed. If someone wants to hook you up with a priest who does exorcisms, beware. But we begin with the story of a brand new scam called call merging. It involves merging your phone call with a scammer and a bank’s two-factor authentication system, stealing your secret code.

More than 60 hotels are conned by a man who dirtied rooms with roaches and condoms, and scammers are showing up at people’s doors to collect money they say they are owed. And I want to tell you the tale of a gambit that I can't call a con, but it's a great way to lose your money.

We're all vulnerable to scams, but we don't have to be willing victims. Today I'm doing something I should have done a long time ago -- tell you just what to do to thwart scammers.

A new scam is moving across the country that can capture the information on your credit card's chips, plus Minnesota legislators are considering a law that would reimburse victims of scams.

What some of you may remember as the Scopes Monkey Trial is a scam. If you don’t know about the trial, you may know about the movie, “Inherit the Wind,” which – and I’m being charitable here – took poetic license with the truth. Today, as we near the 100th anniversary of the trial, I tell you why. Scopes 100 Celebration

Alabama leads the nation in losses from online scams and a Massachusetts butcher shop owner says he was scammed out of $60,000 of meat. Plus, we'll update you on the Frye Festival scheduled for Mexico, but who knows where in that country it will be?

There are con artists who have pulled off major cons. What they do is so ballsy, it’s hard to believe anyone would fall for them. Yet, in the annals of history, they live on. Today on Scams And Cons, we'll tell you their stories.

We'll tell you the story of con artists who preyed on the elderly with home remodeling scams. One was  brazen enough to outright tell the homeowner what needed to be done and begin work.

Is this written by me or an AI? Will you hear my voice or an AI voice in this podcast? (Spoiler, you'll hear both) AI voices and images are so easy to create these days that it's easy to throw someone into a money-gushing panic if they get a phone call from a friend claiming to be in trouble. The key is not to try and recognize the voice, but to recognize the scam. We'll tell you ho...

In this week's news, Thailand takes the unusual step of cutting off electricity to 500,000 people to stop scammers and con artists are staging car crashes to collect insurance money. Plus, Georgia exempts banks from protecting customers from scammers even though they say they want a law requiring them to do so. Listen at ScamsAndCons.com or wherever you get podcasts.

Is this written by me or an AI? Will you hear my voice or an AI voice in this podcast? (Spoiler, you'll hear both) AI voices and images are so easy to create these days that it's easy to throw someone into a money-gushing panic if they get a phone call from a friend claiming to be in trouble. The key is not to try and recognize the voice, but to recognize the scam. We'll tell you ho...

A man got taken by a scammer and called a local TV station for help. The scammers weren't caught, but they later called the man back, pretending to be the anchor and tried to shake him down again. It didn't go well for the scammers. Hear this story and more on Scams & Cons News

Groups of con artists roam the country, sweeping into a community and taking it for all they can until the police get wise. They're called Travellers and we'll tell you how they work and why they are different from other scammers.