Criminals Are Targeting Americans Through Financial Scams

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0:30 Speaker 2 Let’s keep New York safe. And what is today is James Barnacle and he is the Assistant Director in charge of the FBI in the New York office, the largest office in the country and director of Barnacle tell us a lot of things going on in New York. And I know you have a lot of concerns, and one

0:52 of your concerns is fraud to consumer and fraud to the small businesses. And what do you want to tell the people New York.

1:01 Speaker 3 I want to thanks John, thanks for having me, and thank you to WABC. I think what we want to tell your viewers or listeners is that there are bad guys in the United States and overseas that are trying to take New Yorkers hard earned money out of their pockets.

1:24 They’re trying to rip them off with a variety of fraud schemes, and they’re trying to take that money and they’re going to use it to live lavish lifestyles. They’re going to take the money here and more and more and more we see people from overseas targeting New Yorkers and they’re trying to take their money and take it

1:46 out of the United States, off into a third world country. And so what I want to share today is that some of the types of fraud schemes we’re seeing Americans report to the FBI.

2:00 Speaker 2 Well and tell us when when they find out it’s a scheme, they should call that number one eight hundred call FBI.

2:12 Speaker 3 That’s right, And victims of fraud can report online at FBI dot go o V. They can go to our Internet Crime Complaint Center, which the address is IC three dot gov dot go o V. Or they can call one eight hundred call FBI. As you said, tell us.

2:38 Speaker 2 The type of frauds are listeners. We may have a million listeners this morning. The type of fraud that they should be looking out for.

2:48 Speaker 3 Yeah, the number one fraud. So we have the Internet Crime Complaint Center is a repository for complaints, so people that are victimized by fraud schemes file complaint with IC three dot gov. We aggregate all those complaints and we put out an annual report every year in the spring.

3:09 And so what we’re looking there is what happened and what was reported to the FBI in twenty twenty five. The number one reported fraud scheme in twenty twenty five was investment fraud and we saw reported losses of the United States of eight point six billion dollars for investment fraud.

3:31 So investment frauds can include mostly Ponzi schemes. And we see the hot pitch out there is cryptocurrency. So bad guys are trying to connect with people and they often do it to the Internet. So now people will browse an internet site or social media site and there’ll be either a direct communication, so someone may friend you on

3:57 a social media site, or you may see a pop that when you’re just ser searching the Internet, and it’ll be for an investment opportunity. And like I said, a lot of those investment opportunities are in cryptocurrency, and you see on the news every day and people are talking about cryptocurrency, and a lot of folks want to want

4:19 a piece of the action, you know, they want to make some money on cryptocurrency. So it’s a it’s a the bad guys find whatever’s trending, whatever’s hot, and they use that as their sales pitch, and you know, obviously they’re very predatory, and so they’ll they’ll put cryptocurrency and a lot of people don’t know much about cryptocurrency and

4:39 uh and so they want to make some money. They hear about it, and the bad guys will will exploit those vulnerabilities and they’ll go after them for money. So that’s that’s the biggest one we’re seeing. We also see a lot of tech and customer support schemes and we’ve seen reported losses last here two point one billion dollars

5:02 in that. And what we see there is the same thing. People browse the internet, they see a pop up a lot of times his tech support schemes. So people will see your computer is vulnerable. Call one eight hundred, bad guy, and the victim often are our elderly folks will call that number and they’ll be told a variety of different

5:29 things but basically the main pitch is their computer has been compromised, their bank accounts are compromised, and to protect their assets, that bad guy will ask them to do a variety of things, but it’s usually either send your money to an address for safekeeping and that would be a wire transfer. Sometimes victims are asked to withdraw their

5:56 money in cash from a bank account and someone will come to their house to pick up the cash. Or third the victim has asked to withdraw cash from their bank account and to buy gold bars and someone will come and pick that money up. And in all those pitches, the victims are told being told that their money will

6:20 be safer out of their accounts that were compromised, and the bad guy. Often it’s an impersonation scheme. So the bad guy will say they work for the government, they work for the irs, or they work for the FBI or some other agency at the government, and they’ll try to take their money and hold and take keep in.

6:40 But really it’s just a pitch and they steal the money. So we see people in nursing homes and assisted living get targeted, we see people at their houses get targeted. We see it all walks of life. Every single age group is targeted in the United States, and every single age group in the United States is reporting losses to

6:56 these various schemes.

6:58 Speaker 2 So consume are our listeners, the consumers, our small business people are very vulnerable. So if the deal looks too good, you know, be extra.

7:09 Speaker 3 Careful, that’s right, John. We would ask people to take a take a beat, take a moment to think about what is being offered. If it’s such a great opportunity, that opportunity will be there in a week or two weeks.

7:27 But the bad guy is always trying to give a sense of urgency that this this deal is going to close right now. You have to give your money now. If we’re going to the tech support schemes, the same thing.

7:40 If you don’t protect your money now, if you don’t take these steps, you’re going to lose all your money. And and that that urgency gets people, you know, we get amped up and we and we want to make sure we’re doing the right thing, and we don’t have time to think about things. And sometimes where we just

8:00 ask folks take a minute step away from the situation and does this sound too good to be true? And I can tell you no, law enforcement agent, no member of the irs. Nobody is coming to your house to pick up your money, or your goal bars or your valuables to keep them safely. We do not do that.

8:26 Speaker 2 Good.

8:27 Speaker 3 We will not ask you to transfer money. You will never be asked to transfer money by the federal government. And so one other thing that small businesses are getting hit hard with is business email compromise. And basically, a business is getting a bill, usually through an email, and they’re being asked to pay the bill, and oftentimes the

8:48 bad guys are using a legitimate vendor and they’re sending a new bill with the bad guys bank account number, and they’re asking the business to wire transfer money to that account. And we see a ton of losses in that space as well. And I think last year is about three billion and reported losses the business email compromise.

9:12 Speaker 2 That is big. Now, let me ask you, that’s big. But even bigger is some of the frauds that perpetrated against our own government. And there could be tens of billions.

9:23 Speaker 3 And are you in charge of that too, yes, sir, And so if you’re absolutely right, so frauds against the government, our benefits and program frauds are ridiculous the American taxpayer and the good graces of the American government and the American people. We’ve created programs to take care of Americans and foreign adversaries, and people in the country are targeting

9:50 those programs. So, for instance, our national healthcare expenditures for twenty twenty four were five point three trillion. Wow.

10:02 Speaker 3 And they’re a huge number, a nonimaginable number. But if you just estimate five or ten percent of that money is taken for fraud, you know that’s an astronomical number too. And so we have squads here. We have task forces for securities fraud and bank fraud and money laundering and healthcare fraud, and we work with our partners at other

10:28 law enforcement agencies to target these program frauds and frauds against individuals and businesses. And we’ve had some good results, but we really need people to continue reporting these frauds. Just a couple of weeks ago, to Department of Justice announced the results of our largest healthcare fraud takedown in US history. In forty five states. The federal government arrested

10:54 four hundred and fifty five defendants, of which ninety of those were medical professionals, and the reported FOSSE claims that were filed were six point five billion dollars.

11:07 Speaker 2 Wow. Well, James Bonnacle, Assistant Director in charge of the FBI in New York, and thank you for everything you’re doing. The last question, a quick one because you only got a minute left, is are you you’re responsible for keeping New York Is safe too? So give us the status of that.

11:30 Speaker 3 All right? Right now, we’re running an initiative called Summer Heat, So we’re out there working with state and local law enforcement agencies to take gangs, narcotics activity, gun and drug trafficking down. So we’re looking to find bad guys that we can federalize the cases and work with the good people at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern

11:55 District of New York and Eastern District of New York so we can get these repeat offenders, the felons off the street, put them in jail where they belonged, to protect the New Yorkers.

12:06 Speaker 2 Well, James Barnacle, Assistant Director in charge FBI, thank you so much for coming on and keeping all New Yorkers, all Americans informed, and God bless you, God bless America, and thank you for everything you do.

12:23 Speaker 3 Thank you sir, and thank you to the viewers and listeners of WABC.