Never Admit You Can Hear Them! Ep. 6.145

welcome once again to Latos law here's Steve Leto I'm always looking out for scams I can talk to you about hopefully you can avoid them if you hear about them and somebody passed along to me one that was publicized in the CBC this is a couple years ago but it's a common type scam and it's a it's a variation on one that's extremely common so you should know about this and again these are hopefully things that if you hear about them once if they're it happen to you you'd spot it a little bit sooner and avoid getting ripped off but this is a story out of the CBC the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Wallace Snowden wrote the article in Wallace is a woman WL is Wallace and the headline is can you hear me now new phone scam tricks you into answering yes and the trick is that they are calling you pretending that somehow somebody bad connection and they're trying to get you to say the word yes out loud because if you do they gotcha so the Better Business Bureau warns if you don't recognize a number calling you don't answer which is probably good advice all it's a difficult thing to do but it's becoming more and more obvious with all the junk phone calls we all get the other day I got four in a row from different scam companies boom boom boom boom boom you know right in retro that's how I started in Monday morning and this is my business phone so Canadians but Americans also are being warned to watch out for the phone scam that uses audio recordings to dupe unwitting consumers out of their money here's what we do a new scam revising your voice and they're asking you to answer simple question can you hear me now can you hear me now the scammers are trying to trick you into saying the word yes out loud you might say why would they do that well anti-fraud agencies say that simple acknowledgement can be used to make it sound as if you agreed to purchase something and you know a lot of times if you are involved in a purchase over the phone with a legitimate company after you've agreed to something you'll often say okay we need to record your voice now an or an ask you the question did you agree to buy this goods these goods or services and I've had them do that before and so theoretically somewhere down the road if you were to say I don't remember doing that they could play back the question-and-answer where they said do you agree to buy these services these goods and you'd say yes think oh that's right I remember hearing that so what they're doing here is they're just getting you to say the word yes and then later on using editing software which is extremely easy to use trust me they're gonna simply put a different question in front of the word yes and then say yeah you agreed to buy office supplies for example so Ron my chalak it was a spokesperson with a Better Business Bureau of central and northern Alberta which is Canada says they're trying to get a recording of you saying the word yes they're going to take the recorder yes move around the audio and make it seem to you or someone at your business that you have agreed to buy some advertising a cruise or a big-ticket item and they'll send you a bill now if you get a bill for something you legitimately didn't order and the fact that they simply have a recording that's been doctored to include the word yes that probably isn't gonna hold up in court but they're also not planning and actually suing you for this they're hoping that some people are going to go oh I must have agreed to or someone else in your organization will say oh he must have agreed to this therefore we should pay this bill the scheme normally targets businesses in an effort to rope them into office supply purchases they did not order but it appears the scam is now targeting consumers mighty luck says they're going to call you back later after sending you an invoice and then they're gonna also send you when it's past due and they're going to say that we can prove that you agree to this we have the recording their play the recording he says some people will get scared and pay the bill reports of this have surfaced in both the US and Canada and I can tell you that when I had an office where I owned the copier I had my own copier that I actually paid good money for now I've got someone else is paying for the copier it's another story altogether the point is I remember when I bought my copier and it owned a copier like live my own copier hey small things in life because sometimes bring joy like that and the funniest thing was that and I remember hearing about the scam what happens is someone will call phone numbers at random looking for offices and when someone answers the phone they'll say hi We're from ABC one too three copier supplies what brand making model copier do you have and if you say why do you ask let's say oh we want to send you a catalog of supplies that we're going to try to compete to get the business for your toner cartridges or your paper or your widget grease or something but we're gonna send you some some some catalogs and brochures and literature about your copier and you say oh okay and what happens is they wait about 30 days and then they ship you some overpriced toner cartridges and if you have an office that's large enough the boxes come in and use all the toner cartridges are here and then go and put them back by the toner toner come back by the copying machine I mean it summer down the road someone opens it up sticks it and uses it and next thing know you could have built these people and the toner cartridge which is normally like say a hundred bucks is like three hundred dollars and somebody realizes like we never ordered that and then they give you a bill and they go yeah you you must have because you used it and here's the bill and it's a scam it's a scam and so I remember having to tell my secretaries and I had one faithful secretary for many many years she's brilliant I loved her hey Missy and I remember having a talk with her saying by the way if anybody calls and they ask for and what brand copier do you see we don't have one we do not have one and if they say you know would you like to have one that's different but don't admit that we have a copier and and I remember coming any things we just got another call just got another call there the it's it's you know it's it's a scam now you might say Steve what about legitimate copier companies yeah and there's also legitimate companies out there that that want to help you build your credit and reduce your interest rate and get your extended service contract on your car know so many of these are scams that the people who are legitimately trying to sell toner cartridges just quit now okay because your your your industry has been sullied by scams so anti-fraud agencies in British Columbia received their first round of complaints in 2017 noting that the US had been inundated with the new twist on a phone scam that can be very tricky to avoid currently over 70% of the scams reported GAM tracker in the US are this scam so they're hitting a lot of people said Evan Kelly a BBB spokesperson in British Columbia our scam tracker in British Columbia has just received the first few complaints so we just want to warn the public that this is now starting to happen in our area some skeptics have questioned the validity of the scam specifically whether the caller could authorize credit-card charges in another person's name simply by acquiring a voice recording to make the scam work the caller needs additional personal and credit card information but that's not how complicated it is it's simply the matter they're gonna call you get you to say the word yes and later on their Ana send you something and go you agreed to it we have your recording we college do you want this in order to charge you five hundred bucks in this thing do you want it yes we sent it to you now you almost five hundred bucks the bureau hasn't been called by any complainants who would admit they've lost money with the scam but has heard from many people who received the can you hear me calls we only recently have started to receive enquiries about the scam in Alberta so there will be a time delay depending on how the information is used this is the first case that we've heard of this with the scam targeting citizens and that businesses so my chil X is we don't yet know where the scam will proceed to and the best way we can educate people but any sort of scam is information it's also about educating people on where and how their information being used and shared online by various companies he advised consumers to screen all coming incoming calls report any suspicious activity and ensure their names are added to the no call registry which in Canada I don't know that works not does not work in America it's meaningless in America if you believe you may have fallen for the scam contact your bank and credit card companies to flag your accounts file scam report with your local business bureau office and you know that kind of thing the best way to prevent being victimized is to simply hang up if you don't recognize a number don't answer if you do pick up and the instantly start asking can you hear me are you there don't say anything if it's fishy hang up don't fall for the trap my brother was visiting me yesterday and I had him in here in the studio in the inner sanctum and I had him measuring this space right here he say wanted him to build me shelves one set for each side and he's going to be doing that as we speak soon those shelves will appear while he was in here I got a phone call and I looked at it and it was a scam phone call and I answered it and I talked my way through the first couple hurdles to get a live human being on the other end of the phone and the guy said hey I want to talk to you about such-and-such and I started screaming at the person until they hung up on me my brother to circle that thing because who was that a sales call oh because the first half the phone call you sounded so normal yeah that's how I handle him so if they were to record that and play that back later say you agreed to something I'd say no no I think I was trying to ask you if you'd agree to something for yourself yes I used the word you a couple times but I never said me so my advice to you is if you get wacky phone calls just hang up on them okay if someone's trying to tell sell you something if they came to your house or they called you Chancellor I didn't need it otherwise you'd be going to them or calling them and if they are pitching something that sounds too good to be true it is too good to be true and if you have any questions at all before you do anything okay ask around I this is a friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing but someone recently told me that someone I know got scammed after responding to an email that had offered something I can't go into it too much on this one but when I heard the story my first thought was that's that's that's such an old scam how could anybody fall for that well you know I just happened to get him in a little moment when they weren't thinking that well and they were kind of hard up for something and they thought that the email might be legitimate and by the time they realized it was a scam the money was gone and the money was gone there was money and it was gone so these scams do work and the only way to make them stop they call you don't answer if you do answer make it to where they want to hang up on you and do not ever give them anything tell them anything or say the word yes if we've learned nothing else today that's it so the scams will continue and I will continue to update you on them questions or comments put them below about stalk dinner bye thanks for watching Latos law mailing an entire building in the u.s. became illegal in 1916 you

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 384,062

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: SD9O88goRhE

Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019