Fraud specialists Kristy Desimone and Chloe Lesterhouse join host Lynne Jarman-Johnson as they talk to diversity, equity and inclusion consultant Christina Arnold about her recent fraud experience. Also, Vice President of Mortgage, Josh Summerfield chats about being conscious of the costs to consider when thinking of purchasing a home.

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00:00:06.7 Lynne Jarman-Johnson (LJJ): Money, I’m Home. Welcome in. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. We are focusing this episode on the number-one requested topic, and that is fraud. We’re going to introduce you to two people who have not only been, ugh,I hate to say it: scammed. But they also then learned how to get out of it. And they learned some really important lessons that we’re going to share with you. And then later on at the end of the podcast, don’t forget it’s our Money Minute Expert this week. It’s all about mortgages. It’s that time of year. Let’s get started. Joining me today is Kristy Desimone. She is our co-host with us today to talk to two individuals, two members who have been involved with fraud. And now here’s the deal. We’re talking about very smart people who every day are looking at making sure they stay safe. And yet fraud is so huge, Kristy.

00:00:55.7 Kristy Desimone (KD) Yep, it really is. And I’m so happy that we have two people here to talk about it, to share some knowledge and hopefully get over that hump of not communicating with us.

00:01:03.9 LJJ: You know, you and I have had the conversations over the year— Which, our number one podcast that’s listened to is the one where, actually, I almost was taken. And got to the point where I recorded the caller because all of a sudden there were red flags everywhere. And you had tried to teach me, and I still almost went down the wrong path.

00:01:23.2 KD: Yep, they get you that emotional pull, and sometimes you just start going and then you don’t know where you’re going to end up.

00:01:29.5 LJJ: Well, Kristy, we’re going to start off with Chloe and Christina. I love the fact that we have an all-women panel here today to talk to you about staying safe. Chloe, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself.

00:01:41.1 Chloe Lesterhouse (CL): So my name’s Chloe. I’m actually a fraud specialist as well here at Consumers. I’ve been with Consumers … I’m coming up on three years here in December. Yeah, I’m here fighting fraud every day alongside Kristy. It’s lots of fun. Never a dull moment.

00:01:55.1 LJJ: We can’t wait to hear your story, Chloe. Christina, I was watching on Facebook the other day, and all of a sudden I see a post from you that was so, like, eye opening to me because … Tell us a little bit about yourself and then we’re going to get into your story.

00:02:11.6 Christina Arnold (CA): Okay. So I’m Christina Arnold. I: born and raised in Grand Rapids. Had my career in higher ed at Grand Rapids Community College. And I’m a consultant now, and I do work around diversity, equity and inclusion and project management.

00:02:27.4 LJJ: Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m going to start with you, because the post was very eye opening to me. Right now it’s tax season. There’s so many things that are going on. And all of a sudden, what happened to you?

00:02:40.1 CA: Well, I had been having some problems with my computer and I have a subscription to the Geek Squad. And, you know, I had all this stuff I needed to do for different clients and so forth. And, of course, you know, when you’re the most busiest, I called the Geek Squad. And so the person that answered said, you know, tech support with Geek Squad. And so I started to get into what was going on. So he requested access to my computer, which I had done before. And so it was taking quite some time. And then he said, “Well,” he said. “I think, you know, things are running good, but it looks like your financials have been compromised.” This doesn’t sound right. He said, “No, no, we’re going to notify your bank and they’re going to call you in 15 or 20 minutes.” And I said, “No.” I said, “This doesn’t sound right.” And I said, “I think you’re the one that’s hacking me.” And so I just all of a sudden got like, really panicky. And and then he said, “No, no, I’m just trying to help you.” And I said, “No, no. I’m taking my computer and I’m going directly into the store, into the Geek Squad in person.” And then he called me back like three times and said, “I’m just trying to help you.” I said, “No, please don’t call me. I don’t think this is legit, and you’re hacking me, and I’m going to in person.”

00:04:01.1 KD: I think too when you … did you download some sort of app in order to allow them to remote into the laptop?

00:04:08.9 CA: Yes.

00:04:10.1 KD: Yeah. I think that is also a red flag we see quite often that, you know, you download it. I think AnyDesk is an example of an app that they use in order to remote into your laptop. And I think for me personally, from what I’ve witnessed and what I do, is I would be very reluctant to let anyone have access to my computer just because it does house so much personal information. You have so many things saved on there and you really don’t know what they grab when they finally get access to it.

00:04:40.6 CA: I just was too trusting with letting someone get access because I’ve had that before. And when I was in my, you know, former job, you know, technology would access my screen. And so, you know, you think that, you know, you can trust. But obviously, you know, that happened and you can’t. You just have to be, like you said, you just have to be super cautious. And I know now that I’ll go directly in person when I have problems. So …

00:05:08.5 KD: Right. And it’s great that you stopped it where you did because people don’t stop, they keep it rolling, and all of a sudden it’s $20,000 out the window at this point. And they realize they’ve been scammed.

00:05:18.8 LJJ: You know, Chloe, you are in our fraud department and you, like me, it sounds like … kind of took a hit.

00:05:27.0 CL: Yes. Yeah. We are kind of at that point where we’re looking for a new place to rent out. And we had been searching all over the Internet just kind of trying to find something for a good deal. And my mom actually sent me over this listing from Facebook. It was a really nice three bedroom place, but not like so nice that I was going to second guess why it was priced the way it was priced. I was like, “Actually, this isn’t too bad of a deal. Everyone’s been asking for all these crazy prices. I want to message her on it.” I even went to the point where I was like, “Hey, do you have a website for the company that you work for? Just so I can kind of take a look and look around at what else you guys offer?” And she’s like, “Yeah, absolutely.” Sends me over a website. I’m looking through the entire website. Everything looked good. Yeah. So I print off the application that they had listed on their website, and it was just the Michigan rental application: basic that you could find on the State of Michigan website. So I was like, “Okay, this seems legitimate.” And she was like, “All you have to do is just pay the application fee.

00:06:28.7 LJJ: There we go.

00:06:30.1 CL: And we’ll give you that address.” So I was like, “Okay …” So I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to pay my $40 fee on my credit card, get the address.” I do that. I get the address. And the first thing I do is … I’m going to go look at the charge on my bank account. And I pull up my credit card account on Online Banking, and I look at the charge and I’m like, “Finish Line Outlet all the way in Indianapolis charged my credit card.” And I was like, “Why is Finish Line Outlet charging my credit card?” And that was kind of when it hit me that this isn’t real.

00:06:59.6 LJJ: Wow.

00:07:00.3 CL: Yeah. So I immediately locked my credit card in Online Banking. And now that I had the address, I searched it in Google. And the first thing that popped up was a Zillow listing that the home was pending sale. So I found the Realtor, and I reached out to the Realtor and was like, “Hey, I found this on Facebook. Are these people renting or are they offering rentals?” And she’s like, “Actually, no, we aren’t looking for sales at all. Or, we’re in the middle of a sale. They aren’t looking to rent it all. That isn’t something that they even brought up doing.” I got got.

00:07:36.4 LJJ: You got got.

00:07:37.5 KD: Do you ever feel that sense of embarrassment, like when you try and talk about it or kind of what was your feeling after all that happened?

00:07:44.1 CL: I think absolutely. There’s always that like human feeling of, wow, this is a little bit embarrassing. Like it’s kind of like a come to earth moment of, wow, that was not what I thought it was. And I think that’s totally normal. And in that moment, I kind of followed my own advice that I give our members that get scammed often is: it happens to everybody. And it happens to a lot more people than you think. And even as you said earlier, they … just like I have my job that I excel in these scammers, this is their day to day job that they excel in. So I try to remind myself of that every time I feel a little bit embarrassed about telling people about it. It is … It happens to everyone. It’s normal, unfortunately. But we say that as best as we can, we try to step in when we can.

00:08:30.3 LJJ: You know, Christina, that was the one thing I was so proud of you, that you were not shy at all about saying, “Hey, look it, this happens.” And it’s really important for people to to kind of, if you’ve got that feeling that something’s not right, it probably isn’t.

00:08:46.5 CA: Yeah. And I think that it’s important. You know, for me, it was like, yeah, I felt so violated and angry, but at the same time it’s like, I thought it was important to share because sometimes, you know, people are in a hurry, just like I was and just going through things. And sometimes you just get too trusting or don’t think, you know. It’s kind of a, you know, notice to people that: think twice about some of the things that are happening online.

00:09:16.9 LJJ: Such good advice. Kristy, what do you think that you can also share? I heard today … really interesting … I heard today the one thing that is: card controls, that you can turn off your cards. Yeah. If you have online banking, how important that is. If you think that your credit or debit cards have been compromised, how important it is to reach out immediately. And if you can do it online, do it.

00:09:40.1 KD: Yeah, I think the one of the most important things is to act quickly, once you realize what is going on. Reach out to your financial institution, go into online banking, turn off your card as quickly as you can so that it prevents fraud from happening and taking money out of your accounts at that point. And I think the other thing is to talk to somebody you trust, right. Turn to somebody you trust and tell them what happened so that you have that support system and then they can say, “Hey, you know what, let’s talk to somebody else or let’s go to your financial institution.” And they can also provide a moment of calm when you are rushing through things or thought, “Hey, this is legitimate.” When it’s not.

00:10:17.1 LJJ: Well, Christina, Chloe, Kristy: thank you so much. What an awesome podcast. And I’ll tell you what, thank you for listening. Here’s the deal. If this ever happens to you, do not be afraid to pick up the phone or walk into your financial institution. But most importantly, don’t be afraid to share what happened. Don’t be shy. Don’t be embarrassed. Because what ends up happening is it’s like that meatball that keeps going down.

00:10:42.8 KD: Yeah.

00:10:43.6 LJJ: Or maybe a snowball. [laughter]

00:10:44.4 KD: A snowball maybe gets bigger.

00:10:46.2 LJJ: That gets bigger. And so we want to make sure that that doesn’t happen to you. Thanks, you guys.

00:10:51.1 KD and CL: Thank you.

00:10:52.2 CA: Thank you for doing this.

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00:10:58.7 LJJ: And now it’s time for our Money Minute Expert, Josh Summerfield, with our mortgage team. Josh, I remember clearly buying a home and then all of a sudden realizing, “Holy cow, it costs a lot to landscape. Is that— You know, there’s so many extra costs that come from the housing.

00:11:14.3 Josh Summerfield: Yeah, there is a lot to think about. I think initially you get so in love with a house and you don’t think about all the extracurricular things that are going to come up as far as expenses go. And that’s that’s important to think about, right? That’s— Have those conversations. What things should I— Ask your family. Ask your friends, you know, that have been through it. What other costs popped up along the way? You know, there’s landscaping, as you mentioned, furniture. You know, maybe you need new dishes. All the those types of things that are going to come up with purchasing a home. But there’s also taxes and insurance and things like that are attached to, you know, more of the home purchase
as far as, you know, the mortgage expense cost. So those are things you want to think about as well. And those are some of the things that are kind of going up right now. Insurance costs are going up. So you want to be aware of those extra costs that maybe you’re not thinking about when you fall in love with that house online.

00:12:06.3 LJJ: So it’s not just about that mortgage payment. Head to our website, consumerscu.org,
where you can find checklists and really lots of great education on what you should look for when you’re getting that new home. Another amazing episode here on Money, I’m Home. If you have a topic you’d like, send them our way. I’ll tell you what, fraud is always number one, but you might have a community person that you’d love us to meet. We’d like to meet them too. I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union.