The Long View: Kathy Stokes: Why Investment Fraud Is Growing by Leaps and Bounds

please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode hi and welcome to the Long View I'm Christine Ben director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morning Star and I'm Amy Arnot portfolio strategist for Morning Star Our Guest on the podcast today is Kathy Stokes Kathy is director of fraud prevention programs with AARP where she leads arp's efforts to educate older adults on the risks that fraud represents to their financial security Kathy currently serves on the advisory Council to the board of the International Association of financial crimes investigators and on the advisory Council to the senior issues Committee of the North American Securities administrators Association Kathy also serves on a Federal Reserve working group on scam information sharing prior to joining AARP Kathy managed her own company KSM Communications and she also held various roles in public affairs at the Brookings Institute ernston young Mercer and the employee benefit Research Institute she received her bachelor's degree in rhetoric and Communications at the University of Pittsburgh and her Masters in American government at John's Hopkins University Kathy welcome to the Long View thank you so much for having me well thanks for being here this is an important topic we wanted to start by talking about your background and how you found your way to your current role as director of fraud prevention for AARP what what piqued your interest in that subject matter well I've always had an interest in financial matters Financial education and literacy I had an early passion in my career for pensions I know it sounds a little strange but I had taken a job in DC for a nonprofit that was focused on health care and pension issues and I got hired to do health and the first day I got there my boss said I'm going to have you do p and I'm like I'm what's a Pion right and then I fell in love with the area from a policy standpoint from concerns about what the movement from a pension to a defined contribution World means for the future retirement of American workers I ended up going uh getting my uh graduate degree from John Hopkins and wrote All About pensions and 401K plans and the you know changes for the 21st century all that kind of stuff and I loved it and then I moved into actually doing Financial education with erston young um back then we had a national practice where we were going around and educating our big clients employees about their 401K their pension their cash balance uh so sort of taking it from policy down uh to the Grassroots then I had my own business for 10 years and I did a lot in financial literacy Financial education AARP was uh one of my biggest clients and honestly I would have stayed independent for the rest of my life but I had a health issue and the insurance even with a Affordable Care Act was just too expensive for me so I took a job with a ARP and literally it was a port in the storm I had no intention of being with an employer anymore and honestly my first year I'm like I'm supposed to be a retirement educator and I didn't really even know what that meant but in that second year the organization was taking a look at all of the work it was doing in this space of fraud prevention and they did sort of a reboot in 2018 and I was um the first interim director fell in love with the issue as much as I had with pensions and it seems to really make a lot of sense if you look back and realize like I was doing all this work to try to help workers save plan for a a Secure Retirement and now I'm looking at retirees who now are at really great risk for their Financial Security because of the crisis of fraud in this country so before we start in with a topic at hand we wanted to just kind of level set and talk about the different types of Fraud and how investment fraud differs from financial fraud more generally would you say that investment fraud is sort of a subset of financial fraud so for example we often hear about family members or caregivers stealing assets from elderly parents um but that wouldn't necessarily be investment fraud right correct um that would be Financial exploitation we kind of look at it in sort of two buckets at a ARP and it's really confusing because every organization talks about these things a bit differently but when we're talking about uh Financial exploitation that's the known perpetrator that is the adult son or the Crooked lawyer or the paid caregiver who is stealing from that older adult and then there's the other section which I commonly refer to as stranger danger it's typically you know that call out of the blue that there's a problem and it needs to be solved financially and then within that there are people out there pretending to be investment advisers brok who are trying to steal from people you know it could be that investment fraud is perpetrated by an adviser or a broker but I would say definitely way more than not it's criminals just pretending to be something someone they are not ARP had an article saying that people over 50 lost to combined 950 million due to investment related fraud in 2023 does that likely understate the problem given that I would guess that some older adults might be too embarrassed to report that they have been scammed or maybe they're just not aware you know I don't even use terms like they've been scammed um because it suggests that someone got over on them right and and what it is is a crime a criminal many criminals intentionally Target a victim to make them believe something that isn't true and then they steal from them you know the victim experienced crime you know when people say things like they got duped or they got swindled or they fell for it or questioning their cognitive abilities we're we're looking at the wrong thing we need to be looking at this as a crime and yes shame is an absolutely huge Factor regardless of your age you know Federal Trade Commission data suggests that when they get reports from uh fraud victims younger people actually report losing money more often which I think sometimes really blows your mind to think about that but the reality is when that older adult is the victim they have so much potentially to lose because that's generally where the wealth is in our society right exactly so Christine mentioned that 950 million estimated figure and it looks like investment fraud has increased pretty dramatically over the past few years why do you think that has happened well um the 950 million is a huge undercount by everybody's estimation um the the overall losses according to the Federal Trade Commission in 2023 uh and I won't even call them losses the money was stolen you know they they didn't lose it somebody stole it from them but um was somewhere in the neighborhood of10 billion do in 2023 and that's an increase from just before the pandemic of 2.4 billion so you see that meteoric rise but taking what experts presume is the Under reporting the FTC in 2022 thinks that fraud was more like maybe 137 billion dollars you know let that sink in for minute $137 billion doar in one year leaving our economy through through this crime investment fraud is huge because of cryptocurrency that is what we're seeing sort of jump off the page these days what about crypto do you think has been an especially rich for people perpetrating fraud on consumers yeah well I can tell you what was it 3 years ago two years ago when all those Super Bowl ads were all about getting rich on cryptocurrency it totally normalized it and uh criminals have just jumped on the bandwagon you know when when there's something new um and consumers don't know a lot about it it's just a treasure Trove for criminals because they can make you believe anything about it and cryptocurrency is is one of those space right now and largely from what I understand it's coming from Chinese mobs um they are victimizing people on both ends of this where they are enslaving people through um convincing them that they're coming for a job and they're actually um employees in their scam Center and they're making calls they're finding people online they're sending what seems to be a text made in error just to try to connect to somebody to become a friend to become eventually a trusted person in that other's life and then they use that to tell them like hey you've seen how big I'm living I'm doing this because I'm an expert in investing in cryptocurrency and I can help you get started and that's where it begins and the money lost the money stolen is just unbelievable people are losing everything and by everything I'm saying everything they initially invested that they actually had the cash for then taking money out of the college funds for the kids um remortgaging the house people are losing everything so is that what we often hear described as kind of a pig butchering scam where someone will try to build trust and an emotional connection and then use that to exploit the person on the other side yeah exactly and I don't use that term because it's just so painful for for a victim to be then again victimized by what it's being called and it's being called that because that's what the criminals call it but it's right you know fattening for the slaughter I I use Financial grooming I think it's a much more direct sort of explanation of what's happening the journal had a really good piece a couple of weeks ago about investment fraud similar to what you've been talking about Kathy but it was about exploiting lonely older adults but it was an investment scam all the same where this gentleman profiled in the article really staked his whole Fortune I think it was maybe foreign exchange related or something with coaching from an entity to effectively you know send them all of his retirement assets yeah this is what happens you know isolation loneliness are a plague when you don't have somebody to bounce something off of when you're not having regular social connection the call coming in is an opportunity to have a conversation you know the text made an error is an opportunity to engage with somebody you know even just going online and and you know um connecting with people that have similar interests of yours it's things that we do because we're isolated We're Alone we're lonely and then that's where the susceptibility really comes in do you think that artificial intelligence has made this type of theft more pervasive or more difficult for victims to realize that there's something going on that's not right it you know used to be maybe five or 10 years ago you would get these scam emails and it was kind of obvious that it was a scam because you could tell that it was being written you know in kind of broken English with improper grammar and it was much easier to ignore absolutely um with generative artificial intelligence you can now craft the perfect email the perfect text message you can use it to animate a still image to make it look like the picture on a driver's license is actually talking to you and I look real um and then there's the voice cloning we have a victim support program and one of the people that was recently on um these Zoom sessions was talking about how she had experienced a romance scam and it was uh someone pretending to be in the military in the US but working abroad and he stole everything from her which for her I think was around $40,000 and then when she finally realized it was fraud and that it was from India some of the people she was working with had told her it was based in India she was like how could that be I talked to a man like you know every day and he sounded like he was from the United States well she believes it was because he was using AI to make his voice not have that exent Kathy you referenced your interest in your previous work on pensions and the shift that we've experienced in this country to the defined contribution system I'd like to hear your perspective on how that transition has affected old adult susceptibility to investment fraud because you know you do have folks controlling their own investment Assets in a way that they weren't 50 years ago necessarily um can you talk about that Dimension and how it seems logical that that would have exacerbated the potential for investment fraud among older adults yeah and I can tell you back in the early mid90s when I was writing about this and thinking about this the last thing I thought was vulnerability susceptibility to investment fraud but of course that's what it is and you know and there's this presumption people have that everybody who retired back in the 50s and earlier had pensions and they didn't um so there's always been uh you know a large segment of our retirees who are managing their own money but I mean that's RIT large now uh who has a pension anymore I'm very proud to say at AARP that I do I'm very proud to say that at earn young I worked there long enough to earn a right to a pension there as well but most most people don't and that's a lot of cash right sitting around there it's not something coming from a managed investment from the employer from the provider who's sending you that monthly check so it stands to reason doesn't it yeah so you mentioned that investment fraud or other types of fraud aren't just impacting the elderly but it's the younger Generations as well but are are there any commonalities among the people who have been victimized or are more vulnerable to these types of frauds I would say less about the people that are being targeted and victimized and it's more about the commonality of the fraud attack see a lot of people don't understand that these criminals have a Playbook and it used to work for the lone grifter and it works for transnational criminal Enterprises now and that is to get the target into a heightened emotional state whether it's fear Panic there's something wrong your grandson needs your help right away it's excitement I just won the lottery in a car fear that uh your computer has just been taken over by a horrible virus getting someone into that state of heightened emotion it's what the criminals used to refer to is getting them under the ether because they know that when we occupy that spot in our brain where emotions are happening it's hard to back out to access logical thinking so it's less about the commonality of the person who's vulnerable and much more about the Playbook that the criminals operate with I wanted to ask about aging and the role of aging and cognitive decline in all of this maybe you can address that and to what extent that's a factor and I guess a another Factor among older adults is often that you know you just don't want to believe that you will age your faculties May Decline and so there's just kind of a denial that is I think human instinct as we age we don't want to think about it and so we put off adding safeguards but maybe you can discuss that whole dimension of cognitive decline and our maybe our judgment diminishing as we age well I'm not a neurologist or brain researcher but I have read a lot about this and I and I I think it's important for people to understand that aging does not mean cognitive decline by any sense of the imagination but for people who experience it um they're at much greater risk and I can say that it doesn't just happen to older people cuz if it just happened to older people then there might be something to say about vulnerability of associated with agent but these criminals know no demographic bounds they're targeting everybody and when you see you know our reaction because we've assumed for so long that it's only happening to older people and they're in cognitive decline it means that we can say it's never going to happen to us I think that's changing now though we're seeing so much more coverage in the media about fraud how sophisticated uh the crimes are we did a survey that we uh put out in May nationally representative survey and 42% I think it was of people have actually experienced fraud themselves whether money or sensitive personal information was stolen from them 91% worry about fraud that is a huge finding our biggest worry is becoming a victim ourselves so I think there's some good news bad news there the bad news is frauds everywhere and we're scared about it and the good news is we're scared about it and maybe that means that we're going to act to do some things that are more protective to stay away from the attack so you mentioned Chinese mobs as some of the biggest perpetrators of these crimes are there any other generalizations you could make about who's conducting and benefiting from these these types of frauds well a lot of it is driven by these transnational criminal Enterprises whether it's in Myanmar or Cambodia or India or Africa or Costa Rica or Canada but there are a lot of people on the ground in the United States that are aiding and abetting these criminals so when you get the sort of rope reaction from law enforcement that well they're overseas we can't do anything anyway um that's a shortsighted response because there are a heck of a lot of people on the ground here that you can pick up and give real prison time to to begin to disrupt that fraud business model I wanted to follow up on Amy's question about who is most vulnerable to some of these investment related frauds I had seen some research uh several years ago that pointed to actually somewhat sophisticated investors you know like not absolute novices were sometimes vulnerable in a way that novices were not have you seen any data on that on sort of the individual's perceived level of sophistication and how that might interplay with susceptibility to investment fraud yes I remember a ARP being involved in some of that research before I came on board in uh 2016 2017 somewhere around there um and I do recall that the research suggested it was people who had more knowledge of investing and maybe there is a all sense of security kind of like when we hear about when there are car accidents most of them happen within 5 miles of our home because we're comfortable we're used to being in that space and we might just you know take our eye off the ball or something when we're driving maybe it's similar to um you know the sophisticated investor who really believes in their own skills so it seems like some of the areas that are kind of hot spots for investment related fraud are precious metals coins and commodities could you talk a little bit more about why those areas seem to be you know more commonly used as part of these crimes well I think I don't know that we've done research on it but you know we can make some broad assumptions and one of them is with cryptocurrency being so hot it's something again that the criminals are able to take advantage of not a lot of knowledge about it to make people believe basically anything about investing in it but you also see the precious metals and whatnot and I hear that you know the criminals will use anything that seems to work and in the case of precious metals I understand that some of the criminal gangs were using precious metals to get away from crypto because they felt people might be catching on so I think it's really just um opportunity it might be a little to do with u sort of current sentiment in the United States of a lack of trust in government so maybe that leads to a lack of trust in the economic system and maybe that's some of the strings that the these criminals are pulling are there any areas of the investment landscape that you're kind of keeping an eye on that have not emerged as like really key investment fraud areas currently but may become so in the future any emerging problem spots yeah well it occurs to me that I think we're going to see what we're seeing in the banking industry right now happen more in the investment advisory space of impersonations we can talk about that I also think that certain Insurance products um are probably ripe you know once the criminals catch on that people are holding on to a lot of wealth in you know an insurance plan they're going to go after that as well so you mentioned investment advisory impersonations can you talk a little bit more about what that is and what it involves well I can tell you what's happening right now in banking one of the hottest frauds out there is the bank impersonation scam where you get an email uh we're all probably used to getting the email from our bank saying you know can you confirm this transaction was yours and these come from your bank so if I'm with Bank of America it will say Bank of America uh this transaction is it yours why for yes and for no your immediate reaction is wait that's not my transaction you're reacting emotionally you click no and the next thing that happens which never happens in real life but the next thing that happens with this crime is you get a phone call and it's Bank of America fraud investigations and they have enough information about your account the call comes in with the number from the bank that you're accustomed to and they are telling you that your account is actively being hacked but don't worry we're going to help you um and it becomes a very complex scheme but it ends up where the criminals make the account holder believe that they have to keep their money safe by moving the money somewhere and then it turns out that that somewhere means into the criminals pocket and they are completely wiped out they call their Bank the next day or later that day because they're worried about it and the bank's like what are you talking about that wasn't us um I can see that happening in The Advisory space as well yeah I wanted to follow up on that your group has put together a lot of great resources to help people do their due diligence if someone is purporting to be an investment advisor steps they should take to check up on that individual's legitimacy can you walk through the key things so for consumers who might be listening and you want to make sure that an advisor is legit What should you be looking for you've got to do your research uh there are tools out there if someone is purporting to be an advisor find out if they really are um if they're a broker uh go to broker check. fenra org fenra is the body that regulates uh The Brokerage industry you can look them up if it's an investment advisor there's also really great resources from the Securities and Exchange Commission I think the easiest way to get those resources is just go to investor.gov that is the um the site for investor education and resources from the Securities and Exchange Commission you can look up investment advisors there as well but you know use those sources um you know most of these people that are in this game are not registered so that's your first big flag but it's also important to take that step back you know there's every time there's a one of these crimes it's because the person is being forced being pressured into acting quickly you know you don't have that chance to step back hang up the phone talk to somebody resist that demand but if we could just remind ourselves that right now in this world Communications coming into us really can't be trusted so picking up a phone call from and it ends up being you know someone allegedly a broker trying to you know sell an investment um opportunity I know this is going to not sound great to the investment Community that's trying to do this but don't trust it can't trust those incoming calls right now yeah I think that's a great point that you know anything that you're receiving from a call or an email or a text you have to automatically be skeptical you know even if it looks like it's a legitimate communication so if we go back to the example of you receive a a text or an email from your bank that appears to be legitimate saying you know your account has been hacked or your card has been stolen what would be the the best approach to take to handle that would you just want to instead of engaging with the email or the text would you want to call your bank directly using the number on your debit card exactly so if it's card related flip that card over and call that number even if it looks like it's coming from that number it's so easily spoofed is the term they use so don't trust the number as an indicator of legitimacy you know anytime you get a contact email text voice and it's from somebody that you do do business with don't engage with it you can't know for sure that that's Amazon or that that's you know Bank of America if you have an account an online account with any of these companies that are potentially trying to be impersonated go to that account you know if it's a website login if it's an app login if you have a a relationship by phone you know what the number is go find it off of your um account paperwork but just don't trust those incoming Communications right now it seems like the financial services firms the legitimate Financial Services firms have really tried to get their client-facing personnel to be cognizant of these issues and to work with clients to you know help them navigate do you feel like those efforts have gone far enough on the part of Banks and you know investment institutions to help protect consumers from falling PR to some of these nefarious actors you know it's really hard to make a blanket statement I know of Banks and financial advisers that work really really hard to educate people on the signs that somebody may be making decisions under duress made to believe something that isn't true um and and sometimes you know you get someone who's under this um ether as you say and they are made to believe that you can't trust anybody at your bank you can't trust your financial advisory firm you can only trust the person on the phone so even if you know the front-line employee picks up on something they may have a really hard time because that victim really believes what's happening is is real and that you may be as the as the uh Bank employee trying to deceive them it's a hard thing I mean social engineering is a hard thing to combat but education is key of the bank employees I know a does have a program where they it's called Bank um and and it's uh educational to get those Frontline employees to see what the signs are that somebody is being exploited or um deceived so it seems like one good rule of thumb might be to only do business with established providers Fidelity Vanguard Morgan Stanley Etc but are there also instances where a fraud has been perpetrated by someone claiming to be from one of those big firms yeah it's what I mentioned before as maybe the next Vector I don't hear of that now but I don't think it's not happening if it's working at the bank level um you know it certainly could be an impersonation at the financial advisory firm level and certainly criminals are getting people who have those advisory accounts to withdraw the money so a lot of that is happening and I think the advisers have a little bit more more tools at their disposal The Trusted contact is more common in the advisory firms than the banks the recognition that you know if this money is leaving their advisory account to go into a bank account that there's a threat there and they can um put a pause on the funds while they're trying to figure out what's going on so yeah I mean I think any Vector where there's money and lots of it the criminals are following wanted to ask about old older adults who really are enthusiastic about managing their own portfolios and these are a lot of individuals we have on morningstar.com they're really active engaged individual investors how should they protect themselves and maybe decide to not be a DIY investor what what are the signals they should look for to make sure that they are kind of putting in safeguards against investment related fraud I think anybody should be thinking about the things they can do if down the road uh they do experience some cognitive impairment and have those Protections in place um AARP sponsored a project and if you go to thinking ahead Road map.org you'll find this really wellth thought out sort of guide on how to choose a financial power of a attorney and it's geared to people who are sort of younger older who are thinking down the road and knowing that they want the protections of um you know Health directives and Powers of Attorney and things like that so I think all of us should be thinking about that sooner than later and The Trusted contact is really important know you can do that with your financial advisor Banks may not offer it but you can ask for it a lot of people think that if I'm putting a trusted contact on my account that means they're going to have access to my money and that's not the case at all it's having that other person to call if my financial adviser or my bank can't reach me maybe I'm in Tahiti and I didn't tell them about it and so they can call someone who I trust or if they think that someone is trying to deceive me to steal my money they can call that person in and and help me understand what might be happening so it sounds like that might be something that an adult child might be able to use to help protect their parents you know talk to their parents about getting themselves listed as a trusted contact yes um and it doesn't always have to be a child it could be a friend it could be a niece or a nephew the person that you would trust the most with your financial decision- making wanted to ask about kind of the role of government in all this do you do you see the growth and investment fraud as a failure of laws and Regulation and if so are there any obvious adjustments that should be made in your view in arp's view to help protect older adults well I'm not sure it's necessarily about laws and regulations per se and that's really the domain of our government Affairs group anyway but I would say that this massive growth of fraud lacks any really meaningful law enforcement response right now we're just not up to the task from a law enforcement perspective to fight this threat and there are a lot of valid reasons you know under resourced people not even understanding that this is a crime and what I really am looking for myself and what I'm I'm I'm trying to um get support for broadly is a new way of helping law enforcement federal law enforcement be able to tie these seemingly disparate cases is together so in the scam world a big one is um the grandparents scam where you get that call in the middle of the night and it's your grandson Mikey and he's gotten himself into real trouble with a DUI and an accident and you know uh he needs your help right away that's not just happening in one County uh at one time it's happening all over the country and if you had the resources to tie those cases together instead of being singular 9 or 10,000 um theft cases they get tied together to the common perpetrator and there are millions of dollars of cases and that helps to you know bring the FBI into this because it reachs their thresholds and if you have those cases already sort of pulled together then that helps them on their work you know instead of them starting at level one they're like at level eight and they go out and put the bad guys in prison and there's an initiative a foot now to focus just like this on Elder fraud um and you probably will see something launch in the fall it's called the national Elder fraud coordination Center and it's to do just this starting with elder fraud because that's where the massive losses are and maybe you know recognizing that all fraud is conducted by all the same criminal organizations so getting them on Elder fraud is going to also pull them away from fraud targeting other demographics so I was looking at the AARP site in preparation for this call and it looks like there's a page where you can go to you can put in your zip code and see reports of frauds that people have reported within a certain distance of where you're located but is there also an area where you can go to report broad on the AARP site so what you're talking about is our scam map and the quick shortcut to that is aarp.org scam map you can report there as well as look and seeing what's being reported in your geography but we also have um a national helpline it's called the fraudwatch network helpline you don't have to be um an ARP member you don't have to be of a certain age if you want to report a scam that you know you didn't interact with but you want to make sure people know about it you give us a call and we'll share that with Federal Trade Commission if you're not sure that that letter from the Publishers Clearing House is legit or not give us a call and if you've experienced fraud or a loved one is in the midst of something and you're trying to get them to you know sort of break out of that ether call that number we have live Specialists probably about 200 of them around the country that will talk to you about what's happening and that number is 8 7798 3360 a related question Kathy is if I see an email come through that seems to be like a fishing scheme or something I'll usually report that but what sort of formal steps should I take when I see things come through my transom to make sure that whatever is happening is getting reported correctly you know it's important so if you get a text that's um clearly it's a scam attempt of course you don't want to engage with it but at least with uh Apple iPhones right now you should get a prompt that says this caller or this number isn't in your list um report it and you say report it and then you can pick one of you know half a dozen options like it's political spam or it's General spam or it's a scam attempt and click the scam attempt um whatever that terminology isn't quite that but they in real time the companies behind texting can add that information into their algorithms to be able to stop those attacks from hitting other people it's it's pretty cool to be able to do that so reporting is important and if you actually experienced theft whether it was information or money the first place to go if it's money is to contact your bank if they're involved in it in the transaction and anyway and see if there's anything they can do to help you um you know recover the funds or stop the funds from getting to their final destination but call the police you want to have a police report the response by law enforcement is a bit uneven around the country I think there's a growing recognition that this is a crime and you should at least allow someone to file a police report but I'm thinking you know even if they're not going to be able to do much to help you you have now a record of what happened and maybe that can be used down the road if there's an opportunity for restitution whether it's a state level fund a federal fund some people may find that their homeowners insurance covers Financial loss like this you also mentioned the FBI getting involved in some of these bigger frauds and larger criminal organizations how do frauds typically get surfaced to that level um there's a a reporting portal right to the FBI it's the internet crime complaint center or ic3.gov and Reporting it in there make sure that it's in the FBI database if you've had a significant loss to you though if the theft is you know affecting your life report it there but then print that and find the closest FBI office and walk in there and say I need help and um that report will help them be able to pull it up and um see what they can do you know to help you out there you and your team have mounted a campaign to change the narrative about how we talk about fraud victims and I've even noticed you know at the outset of the conversation you said no it's not a scam it's a crime so things like that what was the old narrative and what's a better way to discuss victims of fraud yeah um we sort of have this societal tendency to blame the fraud victim you know oh my God I can't believe you fell for that or how could they be so stupid that was clearly a scam or you know using the words that they were tricked or they were duped or they were swindled they fell for it when we say those words we're essentially blaming the victim by saying there was something you didn't know or something you didn't do that made you a victim of this and we don't even see it as a crime right we're starting to a lot more but our focus is wrong it should be on the perpetrators it should be on these transnational criminal Enterprises and the money launderers and the money movers that are behind all of this and treat it for the crime that it is because we've allowed ourselves to just sort of believe it only happens to older people and it's because of cognitive deine that it'll never happen to me we've deprioritized fraud as a crime and I would admit that the largest crime happening in this country today is fraud so as you've been in your role are there things that you've changed about how you handle your own finances or steps that you've taken to avoid these types of crimes well I feel that I'm pretty well prepared because I know what to look for and it's more than anything it's that emotional um reaction that they're trying to get but that doesn't you know necessarily mean that I'm going to catch everything but the really important piece of information in all of this is that education does matter we can't educate our way out of this crime but if you know about a specific you know fraud scheme like we talked about the grandparent scam or investment fraud or things like that there's data that shows you're 80% less likely to engage with that fraud attempt so knowledge really is power here well Kathy this has been really eye openening and such a worthwhile conversation thank you so much for being with us to share your insights today oh thank you for having me I really appreciate it thanks again [Music] Kathy thank you for joining us on the Long View if you could please take a moment to subscribe to and rate the podcast on Apple spot ify or wherever you get your podcasts you can follow me on social media at christineb onx or at Christine Benz on LinkedIn and at Amy arnut on LinkedIn George cidy is our engineer for the podcast and Carrie Gretch produces the show notes each week finally we'd love to get your feedback if you have a comment or a guest idea please email us at the Longview morningstar.com until next time thank thanks for joining us this recording is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice opinions expressed are as of the date of recording such opinions are subject to change the views and opinions of guests on this program are not necessarily those of Morning Star Inc and its Affiliates while this guest May license or offer products and services of Morning Star and its Affiliates unless otherwise stated he or she is not affiliated with Morning Star and its affiliates Morning Star does not guarantee the accuracy or the completeness of the data presented herein Morning Star shall not be responsible for any trading decisions damages or other losses resulting from or related to the information data analyses or opinions or their use past performance is not a guarantee of future results all Investments are subject to investment risk including possible loss of principle individuals should seriously consider if an investment is suitable for them by referencing their own finan position investment objectives and risk profile before making any investment decision [Music]