Objection! That's a scam.
Maria Varmazis: Hello everybody, and welcome to "Hacking Humans" podcast, where each week we look behind the social engineering scams, phishing schemes and criminal exploits that are making headlines and taking a heavy toll on organizations around the world. I am Maria Varmazis, in this week for our illustrious cohost, Dave Bittner, who is on vacation. And joining me is the one and only Joe Carrigan.
Joe Carrigan: Hi, Maria.
Maria Varmazis: And also joining us this week is returning guest and friend of the show, Michele Kellerman. Hi, Michele.
Michele Kellerman: Hi, Maria. Hi, Joe. Long time.
Maria Varmazis: Long time, not first time.
Joe Carrigan: It's been a week.
Maria Varmazis: It's been a week. Thank you so much for joining us again, Michele. We always enjoy having you on the show.
Michele Kellerman: Thank you.
Maria Varmazis: Glad to have you.
Michele Kellerman: Happy to be here.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Well, let's, we've got a bunch of interesting stories to share this week. But before we get into all that, Michele, you have some follow up from my story last week.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, for those who listened last week when I was saying that Maria's story tickled my brain, I meant it. So I wanted, I started poking around about similar types of stories about all these, like, crime centers. And I found a press release from the UN for, I believe this was in the last month or so. I want to say it was from June maybe. And it was a UN press release in conjunction with the Philippines. So the UN Organization on Drugs and Crime worked directly with the Philippines to try and start cracking down on these organized crime, like, fraud centers. They're called Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, so POGOs, because we needed a fun acronym about it. And --
Maria Varmazis: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: It's only unique to the Philippines, though.
Michele Kellerman: Yes, it's only unique to the Philippines. And so they worked directly with the Philippines to come up with identification and prosecution strategies to crack down on this. And there is a, there is already a massive improvement. So, happy to see that there is some progress being made. This is not just being done without anybody paying attention to it. And there was a bunch of really great statistics on it. I also saw another report from a Chinese website, where they were talking about how China's reporting year-over-year a decrease in fraud and public safety crimes, particularly cybercrime and theft, because of the controls that they are putting in place to crack down on it. Maybe, hopefully there's something that we can learn. So there are pockets of efforts that are turning successful, which feels like a breath of fresh air, because we normally just see how much worse it's gotten.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Michele Kellerman: And we're starting to see some organized efforts overseas actually trying to do something and being successful about it. And doing, prosecuting, they're going right for human trafficking instead of the cybercrime of it all.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting, very interesting angle. And honestly, that feels like it has a lot more teeth, understandably.
Michele Kellerman: And you can see it, like, you can quantify the human toll. Whereas with a lot of these crimes, a lot of times we can't know, even, get even remotely close to what the toll actually is. And being able to prove cybercrime in court is a significantly high bar.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Yeah.
Michele Kellerman: With a lot of stuff that just, there's not a lot of information for prosecution sometimes, whereas human trafficking, you can physically see it. So, you know, they're taking different approaches.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, I think that different approach is fascinating. And as you said, it's a thing that you can see. Cybercrime is certainly not a victimless crime, but it is essentially in a way virtual until it's not, for lack of a better term. So, you know, and certainly the trafficking, the footprint for that is huge.
Michele Kellerman: Here's a statistic for exactly how, just with this one effort over a one-year period, PAOCC has so far liberated 5,949 people, including 3,483 foreigners, 218 perpetrators are awaiting trial on just this one effort in one country.
Maria Varmazis: Wow, wow.
Michele Kellerman: Almost 6,000 people liberated from human trafficking for this.
Maria Varmazis: Oh my God. Unbelievable. Talk about the human toll. I think that is definitely something interesting to put a pin in and keep an eye out as we move forward about other organizations and countries that are going to be going with the human trafficking and, you know, human justice angle first, to see what kind of impact that'll have. So that is wonderful, hopeful news. May that continue and put a real dent in things.
Michele Kellerman: Here's hoping.
Maria Varmazis: That's great. So thank you for that follow up, Michele. And we'll make sure to have a link to all of what you found in our show notes as a great follow up to last week. So thank you.
Michele Kellerman: Of course.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. So before we dive into today's stories, we're going to just take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with Joe first. [ Music ] And we are back. All right, Joe, you are up first today. So, why don't you tell us what your story is?
Joe Carrigan: My story comes from Bleeping Computer, a website whose name I absolutely love, and I say that every time I hear it. It makes me chuckle inside a little bit. It makes me happy.
Maria Varmazis: I love nerd humor.
Joe Carrigan: This is from, yes. This is from Sergiu Gatlan. And the headline is "WhatsApp Rolls Out New Feature That Flags Potential Scam Messages".
Maria Varmazis: Gee whiz, okay.
Joe Carrigan: About time, right?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: I mean, we do a lot of "throwing shade", as the kids say, towards Meta and their companies like WhatsApp. But they are testing a new feature for scam detection. It is an optional feature that runs an on-device machine learning model that alerts users to potential scams. So, WhatsApp says no message content leaves the device for classification, although we're going to find out later that's not entirely true. Nor is it reported to WhatsApp or Meta. The model is trained on scam conversations reported by users. So, I want to give you a little background on how this works. This is a small machine learning model. And I'm getting my second master's degree in data science. And we actually did something like this in that class, where we were classifying things, actually movie reviews, as either good or bad.
Maria Varmazis: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: And I think this is very similar. And these models do not need to be huge. They can be pretty lightweight models. And the way this works is this is something called supervised learning, which means you have data of known good and scam messages, or good and scam conversations.
Maria Varmazis: Okay. Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: And then you train the model on that data, and then you take that model and you put it in, and then you run new information through it and it will classify the conversation based on whether or not it matches with the numerical patterns. Because everything gets broken down into some kind of number here. It's not really any magic or anything. If it statistically matches a scam conversation or a benign conversation.
Maria Varmazis: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: So this is something that's been around for a while. It's not new technology It's, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, yeah, it's not like the wheel, right? You know, it's much newer than that, but, or fire [laughter].
Maria Varmazis: Thank you for that important clarification. Going so far.
Joe Carrigan: In the computer world, this is not anything, this is, like, in the machine learning world, this is like the wheel or fire. This is older technology. It's, if it decides that a conversation is potential spam, or scam, rather, the user will see an in-chat warning asking them to block, report, if they want to block the conversation, block the user, report the conversation, or continue with the conversation. If the user decides that the warning is incorrectly flagged, the user can mark the chat as "trusted", in which case the warning is resolved and this tool, they're calling it scam alert, will not flag that chat again.
Maria Varmazis: Okay, I could see some potential issues there, but all right.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, but it's, so it's doing its evaluation based on your chat history, how you talk, how the people you speak with talk, how your conversations go, so it's a personalized almost evaluation from this model?
Joe Carrigan: I don't think it's personalized. I think it's generalized, because then they'd have to have access to your conversation history as training data, and I don't think they have that.
Michele Kellerman: I guess I just assumed that they used to stay overstepping. So I just like, oh, you're going to not take some data?
Maria Varmazis: I would have assumed that they have all that. That's funny that you're saying that they don't.
Joe Carrigan: I would not have put that past Meta.
Michele Kellerman: They live over the line.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. I figured they, of course they have that data. Why would they not use it? But okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't want them to, but I can understand. Okay. Anyway, I'll stop there. But, yeah. So what's interesting to me is sometimes the scam is not obvious.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: So I could see that warning coming up and you're like, no, it's not a scam. And then later the tell reveals itself.
Joe Carrigan: I am going to, I have a follow-on story that is very closely related to this.
Maria Varmazis: Okay, yeah.
Joe Carrigan: That was almost my story today, but I just, I found this story. I was like, wow, this blend, dovetails very nicely with this other story. I'm going to do this and then follow up with that. So that's where we're going to go.
Maria Varmazis: Okay, because I could see a scammer almost gamifying that internally and going, how far can I take this before they mark it as safe, and then I go for the kill.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, okay.
Joe Carrigan: So, WhatsApp adds that if user marks that they can trust the chat, they can also opt in to share the last five messages received with WhatsApp to help improve the feature's accuracy. So, there you go. Some data is shared with Meta and is going to be used for training data. So --
Maria Varmazis: Okay.
Joe Carrigan: -- that statement that says no data is sent back to WhatsApp or Meta, not entirely true, although the user does have to volunteer to do it. Which is okay with me. I'm okay with that part.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, if you're going to do that, informed consent to a degree.
Joe Carrigan: So, here's what I like about this. Number one, it's something right [laughter]?
Maria Varmazis: So the bar is that low.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Truly.
Joe Carrigan: Something from Meta and WhatsApp that looks to do this. Number two, it's a local model, which means that you can preserve your end-to-end encryption. The model will only be looking at your text, the text of the messages on your phone or your device and making an evaluation, not sending them up. And then it pops an alert into that chat. Here's what --
Michele Kellerman: I like that.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah. Here's what I don't like about it. Number one, it is off by default. Users must enable this. At least this is from my reading of this article in Bleeping Computer.
Michele Kellerman: I do like that.
Joe Carrigan: The other thing, oh, you do like that it's off by default?
Michele Kellerman: Anything that's, like, reading and analyzing my, the contents of whatever message I'm sending, yeah, I want to opt in, not opt out.
Joe Carrigan: Okay, I'll accept that. For most of the people out there though, that are about to get scammed, I would rather see this be on by default. And if they're being honest and not sending messages or results or metrics about this back up to them, then I'd be, if it's all happening locally on the device, I would be fine with this being on by default as opposed to off by default.
Michele Kellerman: I'll give you that.
Joe Carrigan: But I accept your reasoning, Michele. It's not invalid. And given the history of companies, especially Meta, I would accept that this is a valid concern, valid configuration. The second thing I don't like is it only checks incoming messages from non-contacts. So, what if the user adds the person as a contact, the scammer as a contact, then does that mean that this is disabled? What if somebody gets compromised?
Maria Varmazis: What if someone gets compromised? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Michele Kellerman: I would imagine that you're, you have to accept them being a contact. They add you as a contact, that doesn't automatically go, like, both ways.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: So if you don't add them as a contact, as long as, like, that doesn't turn it off, I'm fine. Spoofing, there are very few issues that can negate, hey, someone's device was entirely compromised. It's very difficult to have any type of detection of that.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, but if you have a contact, let's say you and I are connected on WhatsApp. I don't even have WhatsApp, Michele, but let's say we are. And I start sending you messages on, hey, you coming into work today? Hey, are you doing, can you do it? And then something else happens and somebody gets a hold of my account. And the first thing they do is, hey, Michele, I got this great crypto investing opportunity. And you know me and you know I'm a big crypto bro, right?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, so that sounds totally likely for you to say that, so ignore the red flag.
Joe Carrigan: Not anything I would ever propose to anybody, believe it or not. I, you know --
Michele Kellerman: He has never brought it up at work, I can vouch for that.
Maria Varmazis: Okay, all right.
Michele Kellerman: I know where his office is.
Maria Varmazis: That sounded like a threat. I'm just going to say it.
Michele Kellerman: Thinly veiled.
Joe Carrigan: Come down there with a baseball bat and go, I just lost $5,000.
Michele Kellerman: I did not introduce the bat.
Maria Varmazis: But you will neither confirm nor deny its existence.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: Anyway.
Joe Carrigan: Oh, okay. So once it's disabled for a chat, it never checks it again, which is probably an attempt to reduce user friction. You know, like, I don't want my mom's chats being flagged as a scam, right?
Michele Kellerman: Well, because you also want to prevent, like, alert fatigue.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, exactly.
Michele Kellerman: If they dismiss it all the time, they're just going to start dismissing it out of hand.
Joe Carrigan: Right, that's a good point. So this is not really a big don't like about it. But the other thing I don't like is I think this will probably be pretty easy to socially engineer around.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, I can see that.
Joe Carrigan: First off, if I can convince you to add me as a contact, this tool will never check our conversation. Or if I'm talking to you and it says, hey, I just got a scam alert. Oh, it always gives that scam alert. Just dismiss it and just trust the chat.
Maria Varmazis: It's so annoying. Yeah, that's exactly it. Because I'm thinking most people are automatically suspicious-ish of a text message from a phone number they don't have as a contact or an unsolicited message that just comes in. Many people are going, I don't know who this is, why are they messaging me?
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: So, automatically, if we're going to say, we're, yeah, okay, so the hackles are already up, so great to have the checks on that, but it's when the guard is down that I'd be a little more concerned. And then, Joe, I'm actually with you on this one. As much as I want everything to be opt-in, and that's personally also my position for my own things. I've been amazed when I've talked to sort of more general groups of people, and a lot of the questions I've been getting lately are things like, how is AI going to be protecting us? You know, what's AI doing to keep us safe from these kinds of scams that are just becoming so overwhelming? And I think there are a number of people who actually really want this to be on by default, because they don't, they're just like, this needs to be protecting me. I don't want to have to think about this. So, as much as I'm, Michele, personally with you on the terms of I want to personally opt in, I think a lot of people don't.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Michele Kellerman: I do also accept, like, this is their first cut at this.
Joe Carrigan: Agree.
Michele Kellerman: This very likely is going to evolve.
Joe Carrigan: They have made this clear they're in testing for this right now, so they're not, I don't think they're releasing it right now.
Michele Kellerman: They're not saying, oh my god, we solved it.
Joe Carrigan: No. No.
Maria Varmazis: Internet crime is over.
Joe Carrigan: I don't think they're making that claim at all.
Michele Kellerman: They also lose money if crime is over.
Joe Carrigan: Right. An unanswered question here. That's right. They would lose. They would go, their stock price would drop so much.
Michele Kellerman: They'd lose money.
Joe Carrigan: An unanswered question is what is the provenance of the training data? How are they getting the conversations that are not malicious, assuming that they're using some kind of machine learning classifier. That means they have to have data from conversations that are benign. Where are they getting that? I'd like to know. It doesn't talk about that in the article. They may have disclosures about this, but this article didn't answer it. Last, I want to go on to the case of Dave Martin. And I have Dave Martin in quotes, because I have another article here from Local 12, or, I'm sorry, Local 21. It's great being dyslexic. But he's from, Dave Martin is a pseudonym for a guy who lives in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philly. And he lost $400,000 to a cryptocurrency scam when he started playing chess with somebody on chess.com. That person became a, you know, he started chatting with them during that game, and we see this all the time where people are starting to use these platforms like chess.com or Words With Friends or anything like that as a way of opening the scam. But after a while, he added her to his, or he started chatting with her. I say, again, her in quotes again, because it probably wasn't a her, or it may not have been. The scammer started talking with them, with Dave on WhatsApp, and that conversation went on literally for months before any mention of a cryptocurrency investment opportunity. And I don't know if this tool would have helped Dave Martin, because chances are, months down the road when you're talking with somebody and you are building a relationship, even if it's fake, you have probably added that person to your WhatsApp contacts. Which means this tool is not going to check the chat. That's a trusted individual. So, when they start talking about crypto investment opportunities, the tool won't even fire off. So --
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, yep.
Joe Carrigan: I think this is, first off, I'm going to say we do a lot of dissing of Meta. So I'm going to say good job on this one.
Maria Varmazis: Us?!
Joe Carrigan: Yes. Yes we do [laughter]. This is a good first step and this is a good first iteration of the step. I'm not going to criticize this at all. I think this is a good first step. There are a few things that I would like to see in future iterations that maybe change, and ways to look at this, but as far as first steps go, this is a, I'll go ahead and say it. This is a great first step. I'll call it that.
Maria Varmazis: I'll join you on that. I'll join you on that, Joe. I mean, think about Meta and also specifically WhatsApp. Their user base is just about everybody.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: So doing anything to help out just about everybody, yeah. I think that's actually worth it.
Michele Kellerman: And I'll appreciate that they didn't take the shortcut about being, like, okay, but then you have to say goodbye to end-to-end encryption. They actually tried to come up with a solution that would work for users as the agreement stands. Still get end-to-end encryption.
Joe Carrigan: I'm with that, too. That's one of the things I really like about this is that the local model preserves that end-to-end encryption piece.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, this seems like they actually were just pitching a solution without some other veiled end goal from, like, Meta's side.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Michele Kellerman: Like, this actually just seems like it's trying to be a solution.
Joe Carrigan: But it's for your safety and security.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Michele Kellerman: All the time.
Joe Carrigan: We're just going to be reading your messages for your safety and security.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah. This doesn't sniff of that, which is a pleasant surprise.
Maria Varmazis: It does not, yeah.
Joe Carrigan: It is a very pleasant smell, isn't it?
Michele Kellerman: I wouldn't go that far. It's still WhatsApp.
Joe Carrigan: You said sniff of it. So, going with the smell analogy. I guess that didn't work.
Maria Varmazis: It's a scratch-and-sniff podcast. It's great.
Joe Carrigan: I better keep my dog away from this point.
Michele Kellerman: It's getting real weird in here.
Maria Varmazis: And we are only on the first story.
Michele Kellerman: First story.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, well, Joe, I think that that is it for your story today, right?
Joe Carrigan: It is, yes.
Maria Varmazis: All right. Excellent. So, Michele, it is over to you for our second story of the day. What do you have?
Michele Kellerman: So, this comes from the Wall Street Journal. Journalist Joe Barrett put it together. And I've got to admit, when I first read this, I thought that it was going to be a little bit more of a straightforward jury duty scam. It is actually a two-phase thing, similar to what I mentioned last week.
Joe Carrigan: I was going to say, you and your two-phase stories.
Michele Kellerman: Well, there's a lot of them now, isn't there? So.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah. I think this is becoming a very profitable business model.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, because we're all kind of learning. So, this is a jury duty scam, as I alluded to, in Tampa, Florida. A woman was scammed out of $25,000 in a jury duty scam. But this was not just taking her money. Like, she was traumatized after. This is, I've never read a story like this. It's really hard to get through a little bit. So, this started with a, in Pasco County in Florida. A woman, she's a late 30s woman, she had just gotten a refurbished Samsung phone and didn't recognize a number calling her. It's important that she had a refurbished phone. The person on the other line, a so-called deputy, said that Fudge, that's the woman's last name, had missed jury duty in a federal case despite signing a document promising to appear, and an angry judge issued a warrant for her arrest. The caller knew that the woman's parents had retired from the nearby Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department and he offered her a deal, pay bail and then come to the station to confirm her signature didn't match the documents, and she will get a refund on the spot. He was trying to scare, like, I know your father worked in the sheriff's department. Do you really want to, you know, get in trouble with the law? And there was one catch. There was a gag order in the case, meant that if she told anybody, both she and whomever she informed could face charges. She wasn't allowed to talk to anybody. They introduced the time pressure. Her fine was $15,000, but she only had $4,000. And they said, okay, we'll do the $4,000. And she was given a drop-off location. So she goes to that drop-off location, and she's fairly taken aback when there was, it was a convenience store with a cryptocurrency machine inside. When she pushed back asking, are you sure this is where I'm supposed to post bail, he got super serious and he reminded her that they have her location and deputies were two blocks away prepared to bring her in if she did not pay her bail. So she could even, during this call, she's on the phone with these people the whole time. During the phone call, she could hear apparent police radio traffic and chatter in the background of the call, making, lending it to its legitimacy.
Joe Carrigan: Awesome. That's a good tactic.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: And I say "awesome" with the, dripping with sarcasm, if you can't tell.
Maria Varmazis: It's like the crying baby sound effect.
Michele Kellerman: Not sarcasm, disdain.
Joe Carrigan: Right, yeah.
Michele Kellerman: She was told to scan a QR code on the machine and deposit the cryptocurrency, and she did that. During the exchange, she used her phone to search the nearest bank branch, and the scammer asked her what she was doing and why she was Googling that. She realized that the deputy could see what she was searching on her phone. They had, like, they knew her Social Security number, they knew how much she had in her bank accounts, they could see her texts, they could see her, like, her searches. They knew what she was doing. There's a note in here that explains that, and this is where it's the two-parter. Refurbished phones can come loaded with spyware prior to shipment. They shipped her, somebody shipped her a refurbished phone with spyware loaded, and used that to get all this information that law enforcement may potentially have.
Maria Varmazis: Oh my gosh.
Michele Kellerman: She had no idea.
Maria Varmazis: Oh my gosh.
Michele Kellerman: You can refix it by restoring to factory settings, but that's not common practice. You expect that it's shipped with the refurbishment, but she was, they were able to see her searching the nearest bank branch and they're like, why are you doing that? And they probably said that they have a warrant to be tracking her phone, lending legitimacy to this whole thing.
Maria Varmazis: Wow. Jeez.
Michele Kellerman: So after she, yeah. Oh, I'm not even done. I'm just like, I buy a lot of refurb stuff, so.
Joe Carrigan: This gets worse?
Michele Kellerman: This gets worse, like, about two or three more times.
Joe Carrigan: Oh jeez.
Maria Varmazis: Oh my God.
Michele Kellerman: Remember she was duped out of $25,000. We're only at 4,000 at this moment.
Joe Carrigan: Okay.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, God.
Michele Kellerman: So after she deposited the cash, a new deputy came on the phone to escalate, saying the judge had reviewed her finances and would not approve the lower bail for $4,000. She has to do the full $15,000. And she attempted to make multiple deposits totaling $17,000. She gave extra money in the panic. Like, this is a continuous phone call that she is doing. While, and they told her after she hit the 17,000 that, yep, that is enough. Come on down to the police station and let's resolve the signature issue. While she was in transit, the police told her to pull over and apparently informed her that the bail needed to be deposited all at once to trip something in the system, not in increments. While crying from this, because she doesn't have this money, she said that she thinks that this is a scam. And then another voice, we're now on, like, the third person, took over, claiming to be the marshal, not a deputy, and told her to wait there while they send deputies to arrest her. Or she can just pay the full 15 in full in one deposit, and that'll, like, trip the system to make this all go the way it's supposed to. So she then texted her husband. Her husband got involved, and she asked him to transfer $5,000 on PayPal, tried to forward some of it to the scammers, and PayPal's fraud protection threw a flag and stopped the transaction.
Maria Varmazis: Okay.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, so PayPal coming through, the first stop in this. And the husband, who was, like, very confused over the phone, because the text message was something along the lines of, don't ask questions, I need $5,000, just, we'll talk later. And he trusts his wife, so he did it. He asked ChatGPT why she would want to do this, and Chat said that it's probably a scam. Someone's probably scamming her. So when she asked for more money because the transaction was stopped, she asked her husband for more. He said no money until he knew that she was safe and he called 911. After nearly eight hours on the phone with these scammers, trying to get them money, the scammers patched in her husband and warned Kimberly not to speak, like, with her husband on the phone, warned her not to speak unless directed to, or they would retrieve her from her location. Because they have her phone location, they have everything on her phone.
Maria Varmazis: Oh my God.
Michele Kellerman: And even the husband said that it was hard to tell if it was real or not. He said that their accents sounded, and this is a quote, I'm not saying this, he's saying this, sounded like "real hillbilly cops" in whatever neck of the Florida woods they are in.
Maria Varmazis: Jeez.
Michele Kellerman: They used AI to fake local Florida accents to make it sound like they were from that area. Eventually, Jonathan had an idea. He told, Jonathan's the husband, he told the callers Kimberly could swing by home and grab a debit card and hit the ATM. As she proceeded there, they threatened to arrest her and Jonathan again, and suggested that she stay in a hotel overnight to not violate the gag order while she gets the additional money. By the time she got home, when she was, like, realizing that this was a scam, there was a real deputy to take her report. Ten hours on the phone, five different people acting like they were escalations, an entirely compromised cellphone with all of her personal information, to get a total of over $25,000.
Maria Varmazis: I, my gosh. Okay. So firstly, I almost don't believe, like, I believe you, but I think if I was meeting you at, like, a bar and you were telling me this story, I would say I don't believe you.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, I would get sent back to the writer's room for not being realistic. I'm with you.
Maria Varmazis: I, this is incredible in, like, the worst possible way.
Michele Kellerman: She said --
Maria Varmazis: I'm sorry, I'm just a little bit in shock.
Michele Kellerman: She said that she was a psychological hostage. She could not use her phone --
Maria Varmazis: She was.
Michele Kellerman: -- to get any help. And I think that that is --
Maria Varmazis: I believe it.
Michele Kellerman: -- an apt description for what she went 10 hours, no eating.
Joe Carrigan: I would agree.
Michele Kellerman: They could not, she could not even look to try and find help.
Maria Varmazis: I mean, I'm exhausted thinking about it. I mean, you can't see me. We're not a video podcast, but the whole time you were telling me this, my jaw was literally dropped. I'm --
Michele Kellerman: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Oh my gosh. Whoa, unbelievable.
Michele Kellerman: And it all started with a refurbished phone being sent out with spyware.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, my. So, okay, for those of us who buy refurbs, I'm one of those people. Just, you have to do a hard rewriting.
Michele Kellerman: To factory settings, yeah.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. I was going to say hard rewrite, right? And if you don't know how to do that, there are ways to find out on the Internet.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: But, I mean, I think the other thing that I'm taking away from this is I think just a few years ago, I would not have believed this would happen to an ordinary person. This sounds like an incredibly elaborate setup that they'd only go after, you know, a high-value target that they had, you know, gone out of their way to figure out.
Michele Kellerman: And her father was in law enforcement. She's not just a never interacted, doesn't know how anything works.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: She just happened to get caught in their net. But they were able to keep her hostage is exactly the right phrase.
Michele Kellerman: They created the pressure by monitoring everything in her phone.
Maria Varmazis: Oh my gosh.
Michele Kellerman: Monitoring her searches. Can see, like, oh, you trying --
Joe Carrigan: I can see how that absolutely ramps up the pressure.
Michele Kellerman: Absolutely, oh yeah. You have no idea.
Maria Varmazis: Holy cow.
Michele Kellerman: Just so many, it was mind boggling.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. So what do people need to remember about interacting with actual law enforcement? Like, there are certain parts of this story that maybe there may have been an offramp that, and again, I'm not putting blame on her for this. But are there offramps here that people should keep in mind for what real interactions with law enforcement actually are like?
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, the authorities warn, they will not call you to threaten to arrest you or demand money over missed jury duty. These are, as with anything else, the police have proper procedures to follow. It is not going to be a you have to do something right then and there for, to avoid legal battles. Our legal system is a mess and it takes forever. One of the nice things, though, about that then is nothing you do has to be done in that moment. The courts take time to do their processes. Everything comes with legitimate paperwork. Nothing will be done over the phone. And obviously, do the hard reset, but --
Joe Carrigan: If the cops have a warrant for your arrest, they are not going to call you. They're just going to show up and take you.
Michele Kellerman: They are going to show up.
Maria Varmazis: Yes, they show up in person. That's right. Yep. Yeah. I think it's interesting for a lot of us who don't have, and again, her being a law enforcement family, that does add some interesting flavor. But --
Michele Kellerman: That was part of the threat at the beginning. They said, oh, yeah, you know, we can, like, we can just call over to our buddies over at whatever sheriff's department your father was part of.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. I think for a lot of us who don't even have that kind of a context, we might think that law enforcement or just the law in the United States works a lot faster than it actually often does. So, I think that's a really good note that you included there, that this does tend to work more slowly, if it's even really happening and it doesn't work this way. But a lot of people don't know that. I mean, we just sort of assume it's, crime's been committed. Police are going to arrest you immediately. It's just --
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, it's like the shows on TV. Oh, we got 'em, boys.
Maria Varmazis: And it doesn't it doesn't work that way.
Michele Kellerman: And with a standard, they will never take payment in crypto.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Michele Kellerman: Literally ever.
Joe Carrigan: Yep.
Michele Kellerman: That is not how anything is collected when it comes to the law.
Maria Varmazis: But you can, but if you're, yeah, it's one of those things like I can see how you would believe that. I can see easily how, especially if you're on the phone for that long, they can construct a very believable world that you don't even realize that you're falling into. It just seems just plausible enough. Oh man, ten hours, that's, wow. That's so, wow. Wow. What a story. So.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, it's not just an immediate, hey, click this link for some implausible-looking prize. It's so frustrating now that it feels like every action you take, no matter what, you have to avoid being scammed. Even from, like, legitimate businesses, it's like their business model is scamming you now. Even for, like, technically legitimate businesses. Getting a refurbished phone should not involve the opportunity to put spyware on it. But that is where we are.
Maria Varmazis: No, it shouldn't.
Michele Kellerman: It's exhausting.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, it's, I think, I've seen a lot of social media chatter about this kind of thing lately, about moving into a lower-trust society as in --
Michele Kellerman: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: -- we're watching it happen very quickly in the United States, and the emotional and mental toll it takes on people, and it's real. It's real, and it's something I think we don't call out specifically on this show because we're sort of talking around it. But, I mean, we're seeing a lot of it and this is a great example of, you know, a way that you wouldn't have to expect you would need to also keep your guard up. And yet there it is.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, I should not need a PhD in investigative journalism to want to buy a $200 couch or something. Like, I shouldn't need to do that.
Maria Varmazis: And yet.
Michele Kellerman: And yet here we are.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. And here. Yeah. Yep. Michele, what a great story. Thank you for bringing this to the show. Really appreciate it. And of course, as always, we will have the link in the show notes for people who want to read more about it. Let's take a little palate cleanser break. I know I need one for a little hydration. A little quick ad break now before we get to our last story. All right. We'll be right back. [ Music ] All right. Let's go back now for now for our third story. And this one's me. And it's going to be much lighter than your story, Michele.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, happy, happy, somebody's going to bring --
Joe Carrigan: It almost has to be.
Maria Varmazis: It has to be.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: And it's funny because I sort of prided myself on being, like, the Debbie Downer on a lot of shows that I appear.
Michele Kellerman: No, no, no. I'm great at parties [laughter].
Maria Varmazis: You and I will just sit in a corner, progressively depressing the other person until we're just like a dark cloud.
Joe Carrigan: You're both over there in tears.
Maria Varmazis: Life is horrible. All right, so let's check in with our Scammer Liturgical Calendar, shall we? Hey, I know.
Joe Carrigan: What season of the liturgical calendar?
Michele Kellerman: I finally get to be a part of one.
Maria Varmazis: I know, we really need some theme music for this.
Joe Carrigan: Yes, we do.
Maria Varmazis: I kind of want it to sound ecclesiastical.
Michele Kellerman: Excuse me, what's that word? Ecclesiastical?
Maria Varmazis: Churchy.
Joe Carrigan: Churchy.
Maria Varmazis: Churchy, but although I think it would imagine on your flavor of church, if one does such a thing.
Michele Kellerman: Somebody was playing with their thesaurus. >> Maria Varmazis:Oh no, it's because I grew up going to church, so for me that's like a --
Joe Carrigan: It's Greek. Or is it Latin?
Maria Varmazis: It's a Greek word, yes. It comes from the word ekklesia, for church.
Joe Carrigan: Right, because --
Michele Kellerman: I love that.
Joe Carrigan: Are you sure? Now I'm going to look it up, because in Spanish, iglesia is the same word and it means church.
Maria Varmazis: It's because it comes from the Greek word.
Michele Kellerman: Okay, your story.
Maria Varmazis: It's my obligatory, "It's a Greek Word!" segment.
Joe Carrigan: Okay.
Maria Varmazis: So my story is about the, again, the Scammer Liturgical Calendar. In this case, we're talking about back-to-school scams, because here in the United States, we are, as the moment of recording, deep in the season of back to school. Many kids are back at school already. In the case of my kid, we are just a few weeks out from that dreadful, or wonderful, day, depending on your point of view. And the name of the publication is The Democrat and Chronicle, and this is from New York State. And this specific story was written by a person with the best name ever, Beyonce Thomas-Reynoso. So I'm reading a story from Beyonce.
Michele Kellerman: You're joking.
Maria Varmazis: No, no. That is her name, Beyonce Thomas-Reynoso.
Michele Kellerman: I love that.
Maria Varmazis: Thank you, Beyonce, for this warning story about back-to-school scams.
Joe Carrigan: Now, I've got to be careful about this because I'm going back to school next week.
Michele Kellerman: Oh. I don't think you're going to be the kinds of people that they're going after with, like, get a deal two for one for pencils, you know?
Joe Carrigan: I've got to go out and get the Trapper Keepers, and --
Maria Varmazis: You've got to get your Trapper Keeper. And I know for a fact you are not in the market for a new backpack because we talk about that, sensible Joe.
Michele Kellerman: Oh, you beat me to it. So mad.
Maria Varmazis: It's like Joe backpack. We have to say it.
Michele Kellerman: James Ford doesn't want to talk to you. They know better.
Maria Varmazis: No, no. He's an Osprey man. I mean, we've established this. Oh my God, I know too much about this now. So, for this story about specifically back-to-school scams, this was written, what was that?
Joe Carrigan: Oakley, not Osprey.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, Oakley. I'm sorry. I thought it was Osprey. Oh my gosh. Retracted. You're an Oakley man, not an Osprey man.
Joe Carrigan: Yes.
Maria Varmazis: Oakley. Okay, my bad. All right. So for this story, it's a New York-centric back to school scams. But I think this applies I think for many people wherever you're located, if you have especially children that are going back to school. I didn't know this, but apparently this shopping season is the second biggest of the year compared to the holiday season. So this is, I had, I wouldn't have necessarily expected that. But it's also not terribly surprising. So, there's a lot of money flying right now.
Joe Carrigan: There's a lot of opportunity for scamming people.
Maria Varmazis: There sure is. So a PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, US Consumer Poll found that 73% of parents and caregivers plan to use, what else?, but artificial intelligence during their back-to-school shopping, including researching products, comparing prices, and creating budgets and finding deals. So I think this may go beyond simply just searching for "cheap backpacks near me" and seeing what, you know, the search engine of your choice comes up with an AI result. I think some people are also maybe using those in-browser extensions where they're trying to help you find deals and cut straight to the chase, or maybe even do the shopping for you. And that is where people are apparently starting to get into more trouble than they used to. As we have talked about on the show many times, it is trivial, and I mean a matter of seconds, for scammers to generate a fake but really convincing-looking website, a retail website specifically, as well as deceptive advertisements and AI-generated content. And all of this is creating, as it will during the holiday season when we talk about it in a few months, a perfect storm for scamming people out of their hard-earned cash. So if you are looking for backpacks, pencils, whatever back-to-school supplies, or just clothes for your little one, just keep in mind that scammers can and are creating websites by the dozens, if not hundreds of dozens, that look really, really legit. In some cases, they're meant to look very similar to a retailer that maybe you know and love, but just maybe a little different. And in other cases, it's a brand-new retailer that maybe you've never heard of before, but it has, like, this really nice boutique offering that looks appealing and the prices are just right. So, check URLs for weird spellings or extra characters or unfamiliar domain extensions. Those can be a kind of a red flag. But if there are really emotional stories trying to sell to you, if the reviews look a little too perfect, although those are hard to trust now too because those are easily faked, that just look out for red flags like that and trust your Spidey sense. If it's going, this looks a little too good to be true, it probably is. The discounts also, if they're too appealing, if someone's offering you 75% off for a back-to-school special, my friends, probably got some bad news there on how legit that website is. Although I'd love to believe it. I'd love a 90% discount on stuff. But. And then apparently going along with the back-to-school shopping scams, there's also a lot of package scams that come along with this. So the classic, hey, you missed a delivery-type text. People are, scammers are betting on people getting a lot of packages coming to their house this time of year. So if they slip in, hey, fake delivery scam text, they're hoping maybe you won't be as vigilant because you've got a lot coming your way. So increase your vigilance, if anything, right now. And if you've got a high school student or someone in your family who's taking some sort of standardized test, there are a lot of fake test prep offers that tend to explode this time of year as the anxiety ramps up. So, be on the lookout for those as well. So just a warning that the College Board, for those that know what that is, they don't make unsolicited calls or request sensitive information like a Social Security number or credit card information. So be very wary of calls to that degree. And yeah, so it's just, this is sort of my just general warning that the scams are abounding this time of year especially, and if you are in the school system, whether it's a kid or it's you, just be wary of what's coming your way and be aware of things that are too good to be true.
Michele Kellerman: I miss back when criminals had a code, you know? It used to be, I know, like, I find myself yearning for, like, it used to be, like, early on in, like, cybercrime and learning in cybersecurity and stuff, criminals would not go after three things in particular, kids, hospitals, or space. You know, it was kind of understood, space is super important, we don't want to mess with, you know, that kind of communication stuff. Like, there's a lot of things that rely on that. It's not worth it, not worth the juice, not worth the smoke that you would get. Kids, just don't do that. Hospitals have to be able to have access to their computers and stuff. And now because anybody can point and click, you know, anybody can create a scam, and that kind of like criminal's code seems to have gone away with the bar of entry into this.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, for sure. Yeah, it takes no skill to do a lot of this stuff. It really doesn't. It's not criminal genius at all.
Michele Kellerman: Exactly. And then so it's just like, you know, you don't have to, I'm not going to go through my rant from last week. But yeah, it's just like, I miss when there was, like, a code of ethics within.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Michele Kellerman: Like, you go after the people that can stand to lose it, not kids who are already doing school drives for crayons.
Maria Varmazis: I know it. Yeah. And I feel, you know, I'm deep in the season of back-to-school shopping right now because my kid, again, is a few weeks out. And I only have one kid and she's not hard to shop for. And I'm going, I would love to outsource a lot of this, because the idea of having to drag her to a mall or whatever, what year is it?
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Maria Varmazis: And do all this stuff?
Joe Carrigan: With everybody else? Ugh.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah. Does not fill me with joy.
Michele Kellerman: I grew up in a household with if my mom got scammed out of 50 bucks, I didn't get sneakers.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Michele Kellerman: That was it. That was the $50 for sneakers.
Maria Varmazis: And I hate to tell you that that's, like, the low cost of sneakers for kids nowadays. It's crazy how expensive kids' shoes have become. They cost as much as an adult's pair of sneakers now.
Michele Kellerman: It's a whole other conversation.
Maria Varmazis: It's a whole other thing. Like, I just look at the price tag and I'm just going, I could buy shoes for myself at that price, and this person is half my size. So anyway.
Joe Carrigan: And she'll outgrow them in three months.
Maria Varmazis: In three months, yeah, it's a whole, yeah, again, don't get me started. But yeah, it's a lot of money. It is a lot of money, and it's a lot of time, even if you're just doing it online. And I don't even want to give people the advice of, like, you can avoid all this by doing it in person, because nobody got time for that, so.
Joe Carrigan: Right.
Michele Kellerman: And also a lot of stores don't have good selection for that anymore.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, that's like a whole thing.
Michele Kellerman: Stores have abandoned brick and mortar. It's not even like a, oh, you can just opt out of it. That's not an option anymore.
Maria Varmazis: No, you can't just hop on down to Sears.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah.
Maria Varmazis: I mean, again, what year is it? It's not like it was when we were kids of people who were saying this stuff to me.
Michele Kellerman: Oh yeah, doing that runway walk in Payless. Now turn. Run [laughter]. Oh yeah, I'm like a superstar. I'm like a superstar. How's the toe fit? Is it scrunched? Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: Pick your toe up, pick your toe up, see if I can feel it through the shoe. Where is it in the end of the shoe?
Michele Kellerman: I have not had a unique experience.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, I knew the Payless Walk real well because I have wide feet, so it was the only store that I could shop at, so.
Michele Kellerman: Exactly. And that's not an option anymore. It's, again, doing investigative journalism to see where you're getting your favorite colored pencils from is legitimate. It's exhausting.
Maria Varmazis: Yeah, it is. It really is. And I have, as I said, I have it on easy mode. I have only one kid, and my school district actually buys all our kids their supplies. I'm very, very lucky. So I don't have to do, like, the going out for pencils and folders or whatever. And I still am overwhelmed by the stuff I've got to do to get ready. So it's just, it's a lot. So, for everyone else who's in the trenches, please just be aware, keep track of what's coming in. Be aware of deals that are too good to be true, as much as I really wish they were true. And be wary of text scams coming your way about packages as well, because those will pick up, so.
Michele Kellerman: And don't beat yourself up if, like, you're trying to do best for your kid. There's a different emotional side of this. Do not beat yourself up if you do get pinched by one of these. Just, like, give yourself some grace.
Maria Varmazis: That is very well said.
Joe Carrigan: It is.
Maria Varmazis: Very well said.
Joe Carrigan: And you're very distracted. I guarantee that, 100%.
Maria Varmazis: All right. Now it is time for "The Catch of the Day". [ Soundbite of reeling in fish line ] Sounds like we have a good one today, Joe.
Joe Carrigan: We have an interesting one. It comes more as a story. There's a picture in here as well. But it comes from Amy, and she says, "Hi, Dave, Joe, and Maria." Well, today we're going to say hi, Michele, Joe, Maria.
Michele Kellerman: Strong start.
Joe Carrigan: "Huge fan of the show. Love how the three of you gel so perfectly. Thanks for what you do. I've learned so much. I was listening to the episode of "Hacking Humans" titled "Red Flags Ahead". Joe stated that using cash or check in person is the best option. While typically I agree with Joe, I wanted to share a check scam I'd never seen before. I've been holding on to this one, waiting for the perfect time to send it. And even though it happened to me back in 2022.
Maria Varmazis: Wait a second, you've been hanging on to this for four years to send it in?
Michele Kellerman: What?
Maria Varmazis: Wow.
Michele Kellerman: I want to talk, I want to get to know her being like, what's the threshold? How do you make your decisions?
Maria Varmazis: Also, my goodness, I can't remember things from four days ago. You've held on to this for four years. I'm genuinely impressed.
Joe Carrigan: Yes.
Maria Varmazis: Wow. Okay, so go ahead. Joe, what did Amy send us?
Joe Carrigan: There's more here. It says, "I send a check to someone monthly for their services. In June of 2022, she told me she hadn't received the payment, and knew this was weird for me. So I checked and in fact, I had written the check to her and it was cashed. However, when I looked at the check, the image of the check, which she sent along, the front had been changed and a new person signed it next to my service provider's name, was written Cecilia Johnson, and then signed the back Cecilia Beauty Johnson". And here's the check. So if you guys look into the script, you will see the picture of the check. It was written to somebody, and Amy has smartly blacked that out. But at the end of that it says "or Cecilia Johnson".
Michele Kellerman: I didn't know you could do "or". I thought it was only "and".
Maria Varmazis: Or? This is news to me. Or?
Michele Kellerman: This feels like an oversight on the bank.
Joe Carrigan: Right. I'm going to get to this. "They brought the check into the, in person to a branch of the credit union and provided an ID and got the money. When I got the credit union involved, they said it looked like the same handwriting and the same pen to them. So in other words --
Michele Kellerman: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: -- this person did a pretty good job of forging Amy's writing style and used the same kind of pen. "They even questioned me about it despite writing checks to this provider for years that did not include Cecilia Johnson. They eventually gave me back my money and hopefully someone found this scammer. It is a mystery how the check was intercepted. I was shocked that it was this easy." And here's my favorite part. "I can hear Joe now saying, Didn't you write a line through the blank space after the provider's name on the check? No, Joe. No, I didn't." I'm going to say this. If I don't fill up the entire line of that check with pay to the order, in the pay to the order of, I put a line through the rest of that check.
Maria Varmazis: Oh, my God. What year is it? I cannot believe we're still using checks in the year 2026. It's just.
Michele Kellerman: Well, I mean, there are places that charge a 3% convenience fee if you're doing anything more than a little bit, then, like, yeah, I'm writing a check.
Maria Varmazis: I guarantee you all of our listeners outside of the United States are like, how is it that you all are still using checks? It's wild. It's wild. Okay.
Joe Carrigan: "Just thought anyone still using checks like Joe should know about this. Very easy way your money can get taken. I look forward to more episodes and more chicken updates." So Amy's pro chicken.
Maria Varmazis: She's pro chicken. Yes.
Michele Kellerman: Write that down, write that down.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, here's a funny thing. Just a couple of weeks ago I went to a birthday party. My niece has a one-year-old and we showed up to the birthday party and I wrote a check to, payable to either my niece or my I guess grandniece. There's another me getting older. But I put both their names on the check with the "or" in the middle. So yes, you can do this.
Michele Kellerman: Yeah, that feels like that shouldn't be allowed.
Joe Carrigan: It is allowed.
Michele Kellerman: I'm just saying I feel like it shouldn't be.
Joe Carrigan: I do know this, I think I learned this in, this may have been something I learned from somebody when I was selling or delivering auto parts. I was, I think I walked into, if I'm remembering this correctly, I walked into the business office and there was a, like, an account clerk there. And she was taking checks that had been written to the auto parts company and putting lines after the "pay to the order of" the auto parts company. I can't say the name. They're not around anymore. It was Aero Auto Parts in Rockville. And they would, she went through and she said you should always put a line after this because somebody can write "or" their name and cash the check.
Maria Varmazis: Wow.
Joe Carrigan: And I was like, interesting. I didn't know you could do that, but I did know, so I have known for, like, 30 years, 30 years? Yeah, 30 years. Let's say 30 years. I haven't crossed 40 years since I was delivering auto parts yet. I'm not that old. But --
Michele Kellerman: Quick maths for an old man.
Joe Carrigan: I've known, wow. Thanks.
Maria Varmazis: Dang, Michele [laughter].
Joe Carrigan: Good thing we're not at the office.
Maria Varmazis: Baseball bat.
Joe Carrigan: But yeah, so I mean, I, this is a practice I do, is writing that name or writing that line after the name. Or if I can fill the whole line up with the name, then it makes this very difficult as well.
Maria Varmazis: I had no idea.
Joe Carrigan: Yeah, this is --
Maria Varmazis: I had no idea.
Joe Carrigan: This is a real thing and apparently it's been happening as recently as 2022.
Maria Varmazis: Wow.
Michele Kellerman: I'm getting flashbacks to the, like, Leonardo DiCaprio movie "Catch Me if You Can".
Joe Carrigan: Oh, that was a good one.
Michele Kellerman: Excellent for all the check cashing schemes and stuff and all the ways that it used to be super easy to, you know, write a check and scam. And then what was it last year? The Gen Z-ers discovered check fraud and made a social media thing on it.
Joe Carrigan: Right [laughter].
Michele Kellerman: All over the TikTok trend, and it's like, no, that's a crime.
Joe Carrigan: You're committing fraud.
Maria Varmazis: That's right. I remember we did an episode on that, like, this is all, like, that's a crime. You will get a --
Michele Kellerman: But sure, chronicle it for TikTok. That'll go well.
Maria Varmazis: Yes. Smart people. Yeah. The flexibility in check writing I know has been to my advantage when I'm writing a check to someone when they've just had a baby. And it's like, hey, we're taking donations for their 529, or when someone's just gotten married and I'm giving them cash because culturally that's the norm in my culture, so it's okay. And it's like, I don't know exactly what name to make this out to so I'm going to give you my best guess. I don't know if you're using your maiden name anymore or what's the deal. So that flexibility has helped in that case, but the "or" thing, I had no idea. I'd never heard of this.
Michele Kellerman: It feels like a loophole you could drive a truck through, but yeah, you know.
Joe Carrigan: That's why you put that line after the pay-to-the line.
Maria Varmazis: That line. That line.
Michele Kellerman: Ironclad line.
Joe Carrigan: Right. I mean, well, it's like when you write the line across the check for the amount, right?
Maria Varmazis: Yeah.
Joe Carrigan: You put $800. You have to write that dollar so someone doesn't go $800,000.
Maria Varmazis: Right. And yet I'm thinking of all the times I've had checks rejected because somebody wrote the wrong year or they forgot that, you know, the year had passed or anyway, checks. Jeez. Okay. Well, that was a very interesting Catch of the Day. Thank you, Amy. And thank you, Joe. That was awesome. So thanks for that. Let's take a quick ad break now before we close out the show. [ Music ] All right, everybody, and that is "Hacking Humans" brought to you by N2K CyberWire. As always, we would love to know what you think of this podcast and if you learned something new about check writing. Your feedback ensures that we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing world of cybersecurity. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app. Please also fill out the survey in the show notes or send us an email to hackinghumans@N2K.com. As you just heard, we love receiving your email. We are privileged that N2K CyberWire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector, from the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. This episode is produced by Liz Stokes. Our executive producer is Jennifer Eiben. We're mixed by Elliott Peltzman and Tre Hester. Peter Kilpe is our publisher. And I'm Maria Varmazis, in for Dave Bittner.
Joe Carrigan: And I'm "or" Joe Carrigan.
Michele Kellerman: And I'm Michele Kellerman.
Maria Varmazis: Thanks for listening. [ Music ]
