Avoiding Scams: Coffee Break Episode 22

Sean: We've all had our, uh, run ins with scams in one form or another. Usually the ones we hear about are more personal inheritance scams. Catfishing family emergency texts or messages threatening legal action because you didn't pay your highway tolls. The scams don't just target individuals. Businesses deal with them, too. Today we'll talk about scams. We've seen the red flags to watch for, and the one time, we kind of fell for one ourselves. But first, this episode of Almost Productive Copyright is brought to you by New Boston Creative Group. We're the best marketing agency in the entire world. We guarantee that we can get you the number one spot on Google, and we can eliminate all negative reviews, and I promise, over $1 million in profit every.

Julie: What? No, Sean, wait, wait, wait, son, easy.

Sean: Okay, okay.

Julie: We can't promise that stuff.

Sean: Fine, fine, fine. Anyways, to sign up for service, I just need you to go to the store, purchase six gift cards, and then send me the redemption codes at Sean Shaw.

Julie: No, um, no, I don't think we don't do. We don't take. What are you even talking about?

Sean: I think it'll work.

Sean: Welcome to an almost productive coffee break. The same bold flavor of our original podcast brew in a single shot.

Sean: Perfect for those times when you need

Sean: a quick marketing pick me up. I'm, um, Sean.

Julie: I'm Julie.

Addie: And I'm Addie.

Sean: And we are all marketing professionals at New Boston Creative Group in Manhattan, Kansas.

Sean: So today, going to talk about business scams, and I think it makes sense to. To lead off with ours. So our scam that we kind of fell for. So just give everybody the sort of breakdown of what happened. So we had a client email, potential client email, and they expressed, uh, sort of, uh, an illustration progress project that needed done, but then they mentioned that they were hearing impaired, and so they just wanted to be treated, you know, normally, but just to be aware that wasn't a thing that they had to deal with, like, fine, no problem. He gave us the specs and a realistic budget in the sort of like that first initial email, which, funny enough, is kind of a red flag

Narrator: because

Sean: most people don't know the exact details of things like that that they need. And if they do, that usually means, like, they've got a lot of experience, and then why would they sort of be reaching out to us if they know that much? It's sort of like a weird catch 22 of, like, oh, you almost seem to know too much. So, no problem, we can do this. We agreed to sort of be the budget and the project and did a proposal and end up invoicing him for 50% of the project. All just normal business. We tried to schedule meetings, kickoffs to try to get more information to help with the project. They would continue to decline those meetings, sort of specifying, again, were hearing impaired. So they didn't want to try to meet. Even though we were trying, like, whatever technology they wanted to use just so that we could get some information, they would just say no. So what ended up happening was they ended up paying that initial invoice, but they didn't pay 50%, they paid 100%, which, again, weird red flag, but, you know, as a business, you're thinking, okay, fine, they paid the whole thing. Extra money is good. We were about to, I think, start actually doing work on the project when they then contact us and say they need to cancel the second half of the project. So not even the whole project, just the second half of the project because business partner was in the hospital. And so, you know, very tragic. And so you sort of feel for them. And, uh, you know, all these things just start adding up as far as red flags go. And they obviously wanted a refund on the second half of the project, so they weren't even asking for the entire refund. Now in the background, the check that they originally had sent, it doesn't clear. It gets canceled. So while we are on our end working for like, oh, can we give them a refund? We then find out like, oh, that check was originally canceled. I think in here as well. They were letting us know again in very detailed emails how we could send them a refund. Like, you know, oh, yeah, just go ahead and send it through Zelle and. Or send it through a money. Like they had that part.

Addie: Gift cards.

Sean: Yeah, exactly, Send them a bunch of gift cards. So they had that part worked out. So figured out like, oh, uh, yep, we're definitely getting scammed now. Check was canceled. And so we were able to stop payment on everything we were doing and basically, like, just ended things there. At that point, we did some sort of further Google searches about this individual and their business and end up running across a, uh, Reddit thread where someone described the exact scam that we were going through. So it is a common scam. Someone comes, says that they've got some disability and they ask for some project, and they sort of go through these steps. Funny thing is, I think it was last year we got another business inquiry and someone else was doing the same scam. Uh, they didn't. It wasn't for an illustration, it was for something else. But again, they were hearing impaired, they wanted to be treated as normal. They had all the different steps. So like, definitely a thing to watch out for is it seems, it seems so plausible as you're going further down until things start to fall apart once when too many red flags sort of build up on you.

Julie: Which it's such a shame because that really preys upon. Oh, I'm an empathetic person who uh, you know, doesn't want to offend anyone and I want to meet you where you are. Not to condone any sort of scam, but that seems especially insidious.

Sean: Right.

Addie: Well, and like not only our end of that, but it kind of discredits other people with actual disabilities. So that someone would even think twice about that being a scam potentially just by mention of a disability is also a real shame. Like that's, that's such a bummer, right?

Sean: Yeah. Because now like, if I see that come in, my first thought's going to be, oh, is this like that other scam or is this person actually have something, have uh, a disability that we need to work with? It's. Yeah, it's not good.

Addie: No people also, that takes, I mean realistically, that doesn't actually take that much work shooting off all of those email blasts or filling out all of those forms. But something I think about often with scams is you're putting so much time and effort into these things, like go get an actual job. Like you're doing so much work. Is this coming to fruition? Like what's your success rate here?

Sean: Right, Because I think that's a good, a good lesson for this one is the amount of money isn't large and I think the total, you know, project wasn't even $5,000. So like if they ended up, if this ended up working, it would have been, yeah, how many weeks of back and forth emails and then they potentially profit maybe 5, 5K. And it's like, is that, was that worth the time? It doesn't seem like it, but I guess it's also something to look out for. Like just because it's a small amount of money doesn't mean you're not getting scammed. Um, right. For these things.

Julie: And that means that it's out there because they're doing it at scale to make it profitable.

Sean: So some other common scams that, that, that I see one that's very common are domain renewal letters that businesses will get. So you'll get a very official looking letter and it says that you know NewBostonCredit Group.com is about to expire and you need to renew. And that's all pretty plain domain names are again they're not expensive. So you know it's asking 20 bucks, whatever, it's you know, maybe 50 for multi years and that's it. But none of that is real. It's all just a scam. Your domain name is not renewed that way. You know, it's, it's, it's usually not a company. It's not godaddy sending you a letter. It's just um, some domain services Inc. Very generic. But I get emails all the time from people who are like is this real? Do I need to renew my domain name? And not to be like no, do not pay that. That is not real. Know your domain is over here. They'll never send you a letter. That'll not happen. So another one to look out for, one that uh, that I see also is project inquiries or real businesses but they are fairly large and thus raise red flags about why they would be emailing us. Not to say that we don't do good work but if you're an um, international company headquartered in la, why are you emailing Manhattan Kansas marketing firms? And then the usually the tip off is the email is not quite right. It's very similar to that company's domain. So again if it's newbostoncreativegroup.com, they're uh, domain might be missing a word or have a designator like-us or it's not.com it's.org like there's something that's just a little off but believable about the email. And so that's the first like tip off for me. Like m this is weird um, to go with like why would this company be email us in the first place? And then you can do further try to Google that person because that's like their name. Do they even work there? Try to find anything about that organization. So another one to sort of like easily fall into. I've never sort of like I think responded to these so I don't know what the next step is. Maybe I should do that sometimes just for my own curiosity to see like if I try to set up a zoom with this person, what will then happen? What will. How does the scam progress itself and the email address?

Addie: I think that's a best case scenario or like most impressive case scenario where they have the email address or the domain that's close to the actual business. A lot of the time it's just a string of random letters@gmail.com or hotmail.com and you're like, well, that's not right.

Julie: Yeah, they're getting smarter.

Sean: Um, one that I got, uh, recently was a, an email from what looked to be DocuSign, meaning me to like sign some legal papers for. I can't remember. It's probably for business reasons at the time and which is perfectly logical. Like, you know, you get sent signature requests for things as a business owner all the time. And it, the email itself looked, and it might even, you know, somehow been crafted from DocuSign. You know, the way these scammers work, they might have tried to actually send me something to sign that. Then once I clicked on it, that next step was how the, how the scam works. So everything about the email looks legit, but then you click to go like the signature. And I think in this case it took me to some weird sign in page like for, you know, Microsoft account or something that didn't like, the jump from DocuSign to the next thing was a little bit awkward. And then you start noticing like, oh, yeah, the website that it sent me to. Yeah, it's a bunch of letters dot net, whatever slash. And you're like, this isn't, this isn't quite right. But like, that one looked legit in the inbox until you got to the next step. So like, again, another tricky one that people should look out for.

Addie: Constant vigilance. It's too much.

Julie: Do you have advice? If someone clicks a link and then realizes, oh, no, I think, I think this is a scam. Like, what should they do in that scenario?

Sean: Yeah, I think if you, if you end up clicking a link and depending on like what device you're on and where that link takes you is sort of the level of how seriously you should take it. So if you're on your, your iPhone, on your Mac, you click a link, it takes you somewhere weird, but you haven't done anything yet. You're probably safer than most where those devices because Mac is so locked down. Usually automatic spyware and stuff isn't as much of an issue there. Um, also because the, the user base for those is lower than say a PC or a Google. So a lot of times scammers don't target trying to hack an iPhone or a Mac. But if you are like your Google device or on a PC and you click a thing, it could potentially lead you somewhere where it could have downloaded some sort of spyware or virus. In that point, you might Want to do a scan depending on what sort of uh, device you're on, if you've got that installed or if you want to take it into somewhere. I would be definitely be vigilant if I was on one of those to just double check like nothing weird happened and just make sure you're not. It does send you like a login. Don't log in if it looks weird, check the URL, try to stop there. And you might be fine. Because it probably wants you to take a couple more steps to, you know, steal your login or steal something else that they're trying to get access to and not just downloading some spyware to your computer. Another one that um, I think happened uh, a few years ago where your business will get a phone call where they will just start asking you questions to verify information and so, you know, to so and so work there. Is this their name? Is this your address? And so you end up just saying yes or you uh, just affirming everything they're doing. And I think in this instance the company made a claim that we had agreed to some um, service or some contract where they were going to start invoicing us, um, based upon some sort of like, oh, you had said yes to all these things and either was like, however the question was worded that you said yes to, or they just recorded you saying yes to another question. And then we're going to come back and like, you know, audio manipulate you saying yes to a different question. And I think we just end up ignoring them and nothing ever happened. But it's uh, every time we sort of get one of those, I'm always sort of like, what am I agreeing to? Even if they're asking me a normal sounding question about what's our business address? I'm like, is it this? Well, I don't know. Why am I saying yes to this? Who are you? Like, why would I affirm to these weird questions? So another one sort of look out for.

Julie: Yeah, I'd heard that about saying yes and being recorded saying yes. So occasionally if someone calls and I don't recognize the number, but I think I should answer it, I won't even say hi, this is, and say my name. I'll be like, yo. Or I'll say something really weird and then if it's like, turns out, oh, hello, I'm calling and it's legit, I'll be like, oh, hi, I'm sorry, I thought you might be scammer, but. Or instead of saying yes to an answer, I'll Be like, uh, you know, I'll just say something weird.

Sean: Usually when I might steal that when we're at the beginning of when they're right, uh, think maybe it's that. I'll be. I'll just restate their question. So, like, oh, is your address this. I'll be like, that is the address. Just like, trying not to give any. Any other thing that they could pull from if that's what they're trying to do. Um, the last one I wanted to mention was one that Nick ran into a copyright scam on a video.

Narrator: The copyright scam was sent to one of the other principals, Kristen, because we do a series called Cool Careers for a nonprofit called Higher Paths. Check it out. But the, ah, we got this weird letter, an email that said that we had used a song by Adele. Someone like you was the song that they had mentioned. Um, I don't know without pulling it up. Like, the company was like, you know, been in NOP or something like that.

Sean: You know, like a law firm.

Narrator: Yeah, a law. Like a law firm. And the, the immediate catch was the email. It was from a Gmail. A Gmail, um, email. So it's like, okay, why would they be using a Gmail if this was a legit law firm? But still curiosity. Like, was it maybe in the background? Because I have heard YouTube videos getting flagged. Because maybe there was. The songs in the background is on

Sean: a radio or something.

Narrator: Sure, yeah. And there were other, uh, weird instances too, especially one that Addie pointed out, which was, it said, you know, we scanned your fan page. We don't have a fan page. So if you just reading the email, very intently, checking the, the email that, that it's coming from, all those red flags are telling you, okay, this is a scam. And this scam didn't seem to be needing or wanting money. It essentially just took you to another link, or you clicked on a link from the email, um, that took you to a page that kind of broke down what they were going to. To do if you didn't take, uh, any action. And so they're like, okay, check out the video at this link that we scanned for. And you click another link which takes you to a Facebook sign in. And at that point you're just like, like, why do I need to sign into. Like, why do I need to sign into Facebook? So I'm not entirely sure what they were wanting. I don't know if they might have been.

Sean: It just the Facebook login might have been enough.

Narrator: I. I, uh, Yeah, I guess so. Uh, so but it was, it was very legit, very well prepared. And to Addie's point earlier, just a lot of effort and a lot of work. And it looks like a lot of hours put into this that, you know, you would hope that somebody could put that energy into something that's, you know, um, more good for this world.

Addie: And then also this is kind of the alternate argument, but you've already done all of that work. Not that I want scammers to get more efficient, but why not like the Gmail account that could have been better. Like there was the fan page.

Sean: That's how read all that is notes like do a better job.

Addie: Uh, right. Like either do it full fledged or don't do it at all.

Julie: So scammers, if you want to up your scamming game, contact New Boston Creative Group. We can help you. Be seen, be heard, be better.

Sean: I'll leave with uh, a couple tips I don't know if I've clearly mentioned in all of this, but something that I advise we sort of talk about like yeah, investigate the email addresses that things come from. Investigate the website that you land on the URL. Double check on that. Uh, another thing you can do is just google that exact verbiage. Like I said on the one where we got scammed the hearing impaired, I was able to find that exact scam because like if you type in, you know, the similar words happen that email people are just reusing that so other people post about it so you'll find it. The other thing that we end up doing not at the beginning but at the end when we found out like, oh yeah, this is probably a scam is you can go to like the uh, the Secretary of State website for different states and actually look up if the business exists. So that was something I did for this person because they were, you know, we were sending you know, the, the checks to whoever, Inc. And so I just went to, and I can't remember what the state was. So we'll say Tennessee, you know. So I went to the Tennessee website, typed in that business to see if it even, if any business with that name even existed. And it didn't. Um, so I was like, okay, that's not right. And then the final thing I did was I looked up the address of like oh, send the check to this address. So I just went like googled the address and went to like Street View. And it was just like in the middle of some residential area with like rundown house, like a single family sort of run down house on one side Trees on the other and I'm like, yeah, this is, is not looking good.

Addie: No, we should scam them back and like sign them up for a bunch of ads or like magazines or you know, whatever, something and then their just mailbox gets filled with junk.

Sean: It's a good idea.

Julie: That's a great idea. Let's post that online.

Addie: Exactly. Doxxing the scammers, right?

Sean: Awesome. Yeah. Any other, any other things for. For scamming? Any, any pro tips for other scammers? We've given us some good ones to help scammers giving out some tips to avoid scammers.

Julie: You mentioned googling the exact verbiage. Sometimes I just take a high level and then write the word scam in or legit and see what comes up then.

Sean: Yeah, good tip.

Addie: And if you're getting like fishy feelings, then forward it to a coworker and have someone else take a look at it and just be like, do you think this is real? Because you know two brains better than one and then you guys can get to the bottom of it.

Sean: Yeah, good call. Just get fresh eyes on a thing where someone's not invested in it. Mhm. All right, well thanks so much everybody. Be safe out there. Don't get scammed.

Addie: Don't get scammed.

Sean: Thank you for listening to this episode of Almost Productive. If you'd like to learn more about what we do at New Boston Creative Group, you can reach us@newbostoncreative.com you can also follow us on social media, ewbostoncreative on Instagram and New Boston Creative Group on Facebook and LinkedIn. If you like this episode, please like, follow, subscribe, leave a review and share the podcast with your friends. And if you didn't like the show, feel free to recommend us to your enemies. Tune in next time for some more office shenanigans, thoughts on trending topics and marketing adjacent insights. Until next time, we hope you have a productive day. It.