How Edward Smog Scammed a Retired Nurse Out of $150K

My friend Joe sells real estate. He called me about one of his clients, a retired nurse who was selling her house, because something about her story wasn't sitting right with him. She'd lost her savings to a man named Edward Smog. Found her online, quoted her scripture, told her he was her way out of debt. By the time I got involved, she was out a hundred and fifty grand. Now a new scammer is coming after her. She believes he's an offshore oil rig worker, and they're going to get married. I'm trying to stop him before he takes any more of her money. If you or someone you love is being targeted, here's where to go. To report it, the FBI runs the Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov, and the FTC takes reports at reportfraud.ftc.gov. If you want to talk to a real person for free, call the National Elder Fraud Hotline run by the Department of Justice at 833-372-8311, seven days a week, 6am to 11pm Eastern. You can also reach the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Tips for your elderly parents: No real grant, agency, or lottery ever asks you to pay a fee to get money. Gift cards, wire transfers to strangers, and crypto are how scammers get paid. Full stop. If you've never met someone in person on a live video call, assume you don't know who they are. Ask for that video call right now, not later. Take a screenshot of their photos and run a reverse image search. The excuses will tell you everything. And before any money moves, tell one person who loves you. Out loud. The scam only survives in the quiet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Episoder(322)

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 8

Gypsy Rose Blanchard thought no one was listening. For years, everything she said from inside Chillicothe was being recorded. Now it's public. More than five hundred hours of it. Some of those recor...

29 Sep 40min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 7

"I didn't f---ing get my own f---ing mother murdered just so I could live for everybody else." That is Gypsy Rose Blanchard on a recorded prison line, saying the quiet part out loud. She had taken th...

22 Sep 42min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 6

There are people online right now who don't believe Dee Dee Blanchard had Munchausen by proxy. Some of them don't believe Munchausen by proxy is a real thing at all. So if the abuse wasn't real, how d...

15 Sep 41min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, part 5

According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've found it. The smoking gun. Gypsy Rose Blanchard has a rare genetic disorder, a microdeletion on chromosome 1, and depending on who you ask online, that one wo...

8 Sep 42min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 4

According to the anti-Gypsy camp, they've got the receipts. Gypsy really had leukemia. She really needed that bone marrow treatment, and the feeding tube and the surgeries were all real and documented...

1 Sep 39min

The Stalker: Shelbey Fernandez Speaks, Part 23

It's like getting to the end of a movie and discovering the twist, then going back to the beginning because every scene means something else. That's what I've been doing all week with the Rick and Tan...

28 Aug 25min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 3

Long before Gypsy Rose Blanchard's mother was murdered, the tension inside that house was already at a breaking point. The private videos between Gypsy and Nick Godejohn that nobody was supposed to se...

25 Aug 37min

The Gypsy Rose Obsession, Part 2

Her critics say Gypsy Rose Blanchard can't keep her story straight. So I sat down with her for almost three hours and asked about all of it. The pills through the feeding tube. The video where she tel...

18 Aug 42min