Welcome and Introduction
00:10:19
Francisco Sirvent: Well, hello everybody. Welcome to our next topic: protecting your parents from scams and “new friends” out there. This is kind of an ugly one. My name is Francisco Sirvent, founder and attorney at Keystone Law Firm. Before we dive into the topic, I do want to make sure everybody knows first, this is being recorded because we do share these publicly on our YouTube channel when we’re done. They get posted about a week later. If you haven’t caught any of the prior topics, you’re welcome to go check those out. It’s easy to find: YouTube.com/keystonelawfirm, and you’ll see dozens and dozens of topics and ideas and concepts and things that should hopefully help you know how to do things and figure things out that otherwise can be pretty complicated sometimes. So go check that out on our YouTube channel for any prior ones. You’re welcome to share those with friends if you see something relevant or you end up talking about something and you go, “Oh, they did a webinar on this and they actually shared some good information.” You’re welcome to share those. We also do post our upcoming topics on our
00:11:28
Francisco Sirvent: website at keystone.com/events. They are all free to join, just like this one is. The topics are listed and the registration links are right there, so you can just click and sign up, and you’ll get an invitation to the specific link for each new webinar.
We’re going to have a little bit of time for questions at the end. This is not necessarily a legal topic, though I’m going to give you some ideas on things you can do legally to protect yourself or your parents. Because I’m going to offer some time for questions and answers, and because this is being recorded, if you do ask questions, just know it’s going on the recording and it’ll be posted on YouTube. So keep your questions vague, keep them general, keep them anonymous as much as you can. That way, everybody gets the benefit of your question and my answer.
Now, of course, because we are lawyers and because we are advisers, we do start off with a quick disclosure.
Educational Disclosure & The Rise of AI Scams
00:12:45
Francisco Sirvent: Everything we share on these webinars is not legal, financial, or tax advice. This is general information of an educational nature. So, I hope it’s helpful, but please, if you do need professional advice about what to do with your specific situation, sit down with an adviser and get the details out about your specific situation. You know, “What do we do with this specific, unique thing?” and then make decisions based on that. So, hopefully that gives you the disclosure that we all need.
The reality with where all this fraud stuff is going—it is just exploding now that AI has come into our world, and we are all experiencing the effects of that. I’m sure a lot of you have had some experience with things like that. But what that’s allowing, what it’s giving all these scammers the ability to do, is expand their reach significantly. So instead of having to manually type out messages or manually research one of their potential victims, or a lot of things that had to be done manually before, they can now just have AI do it and just increase the volume of these attempted scams.
00:14:14
Francisco Sirvent: Arizona is actually one of the highest states in the country for the reported number of fraud attempts. The last numbers were in 2024, with over 100,000 attempts and average losses over $80,000, and it’s increasing. This was a couple of years ago, so AI was just barely coming on the scene, but even back then, it was increasing 33% year-over-year.
You really do need to know this stuff. You really do need to know the most foundational things to do to protect your parents, which you can obviously use to protect yourself from these kinds of things. They are, I’ll say, simple; they’re not always easy, if you can understand the difference. It’s like how eating healthy and working out is going to make you a healthier person—it’s very simple, but it’s not so easy to do every day. Things happen, we get distracted, and then we do something, and the consequences can be severe. So, I’m going to break this down into how this stuff really impacts people. How does it come about?
Case Study: The Phone Spoofing Scam
00:15:27
Francisco Sirvent: I’m going to start with just this one case study. This wasn’t even an elderly person who was, you know, vulnerable and things like that. This was a lady who was running her own business, and she was just hustling and saving in order to expand her business. That’s all she was doing—she’s just kind of grinding away, right? She’s a professional hair stylist in Chicago, and a federal briefing released her study with her consent, obviously.
She’s sitting there working with a client and her phone rings. Like any small business owner, she’s got to answer the phone. She answers the phone, and there’s a man on the line saying this is the fraud department at Bank of America, where she had her bank accounts, and that there’s suspicious activity on her account. Her antenna goes up, right? So, she gets her Bank of America card out, looks on the back of the card because that has the official Bank of America phone number, looks at the caller ID of who’s calling her right now, and it’s the number from Bank of America.
00:16:39
Francisco Sirvent: Okay, so it’s Bank of America calling. So, she says, “Okay, so what’s going on?” They said, “Well, there’s a hacker who’s trying to access your account right now, and they’re attempting to drain the $20,000 you have in this account. We need to move it immediately so that they don’t get access to it.” Imagine the emotional turmoil that just explodes. She’s trying to take care of this client, she gets this fraud call from Bank of America, and she’s going, “Oh my gosh, this is the savings I’ve been building to try to expand.”
And he says, “The only way we can make it secure is for you to log into your app and wire this money to a secure account. I’m going to give you the numbers for it.” And so she quickly gets on, she initiates the wire, and she hits submit. She goes, “Okay, good. My money’s safe.” Except for it wasn’t Bank of America. And the account number they gave her was not her account.
00:17:40
Francisco Sirvent: It was not a secure account. It was an account who knows where. Poof. Once you initiate a wire, the money’s gone. The bank can’t pull it back.
This is one example of spoofing. Okay? Spoofing is basically impersonating, meaning they can make it look like that caller ID is somebody else. When we see the caller ID coming in, we use that a lot of times to recognize who’s calling us. I mean, if they can fake Bank of America’s phone number, they can fake a family member’s phone number, a friend’s phone number, a grandchild’s phone number, your law firm’s phone number—they can fake it looking like it’s coming from anybody’s phone number that they want. So, watch out for these kinds of things. This is just an example, one of a million.
When you break these things down into thinking about how to protect yourself, they generally think about it in two different categories, okay?
Two Categories of Scams: Strangers vs. Insiders
00:18:48
Francisco Sirvent: There’s strangers that you don’t know, and then, of course, there’s people you do know. When we break it down into those two, there are different types of things to do to protect yourself.
One of the most horrible examples of a stranger scam that happened to somebody I know personally was… you know, people of all ages use online apps to find romance, to do dating, right? I talked to a lot of clients of all ages, and that’s a very common thing now—to use an online app to start dating. And that’s what happened. It was a long-distance relationship. They had phone calls and video calls, and it turned into a long-distance, online romantic relationship. This person didn’t sound like they were out of the country, and there wasn’t any indication that this wasn’t somebody just around the corner, down the street, or in the next state. The romantic relationship just continued for many, many, many months, and they got really, really connected to this person.
The other person all of a sudden came up and said, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got this amazing opportunity. I’m going to put some money in this thing.
00:20:29
Francisco Sirvent: Like, this is amazing.” And they just kept talking about what a great opportunity it was, and that they put money in and, “Oh my gosh, I made some money,” and, “Oh my gosh, I made a little bit more,” just kind of bragging about it. Well, eventually, the invitation was either made or the person I know asked, “Hey, can I put some money in that, too?” And some money started to flow in that direction.
Then it was, “Well, geez, you know, this relationship is developing, so why don’t we do a joint investment?” And so they did. It turned out to be something kind of complex that had to do with some of the cryptocurrency things that were really going kind of crazy over the last few years. Then it came time to get the money out of the investment. In order to get the money out, there were these really bizarre hurdles to have to verify your identity and things like that. One of the ways to verify your identity was to prove that your bank account was your bank account by making a small deposit, and then that would prove it.
00:21:45
Francisco Sirvent: But then it required another deposit, another deposit, another deposit. Even with all of the due diligence of researching the investment, their background, their registrations, all these things, and their contracts, etc., it was sort of like, “This is so good, how can I not do it?” They just kept flowing money into it because, “My gosh, you know, I would even get statements saying things like ‘your investment is growing’ and blah blah blah blah blah.” Eventually, it got to over a million dollars from this person.
After finally thinking, “I just need this money back because I need this money back,” and going through all of the attempts to try to get the money back, they realized this money is never coming back. It was just a complete scam by some stranger who started out with a very compelling psychological connection with this person, spending months building that connection before ever talking about money. Strangers are very sophisticated in this. These are highly sophisticated individuals, or just straight-up AI tools that pretend to be somebody else.
00:23:18
Francisco Sirvent: They can come through any mode of communication: a dating app, a random text message, an email, a message on Facebook or any of the social media sites, a direct message. Any of those things can be considered in that stranger category.
The insider category consists of people you know, people you’ve met, or family face-to-face. They’re individuals we know are human, we know they’re here, they’re with you locally, and they are insiders, okay? And they’re going to use that inside relationship to take advantage of somebody. We’ve seen this happen.
One of my very, very first cases that I actually helped fight for this person’s rights involved a niece. The elderly person had a niece who moved in to help take care of the elderly family member, and she was there for a few years helping take care of her until she passed away. Then everybody realized and finally learned that all of the elderly person’s money and real estate were slowly—and then very quickly at the end—being transferred into this niece’s name.
00:24:53
Francisco Sirvent: I mean, we’re talking almost a million dollars, and poof. Then she, of course, liquidates everything and flees the state. Filing the lawsuits, trying to collect the money—all of that can be done, but it’s not what you want to have to do.
Another example was somebody where a hired caregiver was moved into the home to take care of a parent. Unfortunately, the rest of the family was out of state, so they weren’t there day-to-day to see what was happening. But at some point, it was realized that the caregiver had taken the parent to the bank. At the bank, the parent opened a new account because the original accounts were all known by the family, but they opened a new account and transferred multiple six figures of their money into the new account.
Then the caregiver drove the parent to a different bank and opened another account joint in her name—so, with the parent and the caregiver jointly. Of course, it’s presented as, “This will help me make it easier to pay your bills and deal with the doctors and all this kind of stuff.”
00:26:29
Francisco Sirvent: It’s easy to convey some type of value as to why they should do it. That joint account was opened, and then all that money from the new account at the old bank was moved over into that joint account. Then, of course, when the parent passed away, the money was transferred out to another account, to another account, bounced around, split apart, and this person has vanished.
So these are real threats. They are big-dollar risks. Unfortunately, the number of times that the banks or financial institutions stop these things from happening because there’s some suspicion around what’s happening isn’t 100%. It just isn’t. You know, if somebody presents at the bank without any vulnerabilities and they say, “I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to do this,” the bank doesn’t have any grounds to say no. So, there’s just risk there.
As a great example—as if I needed more examples—I received a text message this morning myself, and this is the actual text message, and it’s from somebody I don’t know:
Real-Life Examples: Text and Email Scams
00:27:53
Francisco Sirvent: “Hi, I’m your dedicated customer service representative. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Please contact me via Telegram…” with their contact information, soliciting nothing more than for me to start a friendly relationship.
Anytime you get a text message from a number you don’t recognize, or you’ve never received text messages from them before, your spidey senses need to go up. You need to be suspicious about it. The thing about all of these is they’re usually going to be from somebody that you don’t recognize, from some phone number or some weird address, right? I don’t know this address, and it’s the first text message I’ve ever received from this person, whoever it is. When it’s the first text message and you weren’t expecting the type of message being sent, your radar needs to go up.
And then, of course, why would they be telling me to contact them via some other communication tool? You know, like, “Hey, you just got me on this text message. Why wouldn’t we just interact here?” They’re trying to move me over to Telegram, which is encrypted, and it’s very hard to trace and things like that. Of course, that’s where they want me to go communicate with them.
00:29:04
Francisco Sirvent: With all of these text messages, when you don’t expect the communication, when it’s from somebody you don’t know, and when it’s the first text message, it’s unsolicited. They’re asking you or telling you about things you have no idea what they’re talking about. It is almost certainly spam or an attempt at a scam. At least on iPhones, you have the option to click this little button down below that says “Report.” I do it every time. Click report, a little thing pops up that says, “Do you want to report this and delete it?” and yep, I do, and I go on with my day.
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever click a link on unsolicited text messages like this. They say, “Hey, click here to do whatever”—don’t click it. Number one,
00:30:10
Francisco Sirvent: it may end up downloading a virus to your phone, and number two, it’s a scam. That link in and of itself might take you to something that looks legit, that looks like what you’re supposed to have.
I got one that I wish I would have kept, probably about six months ago, from Verizon. It looked absolutely legitimate, and it said, “You have some rewards points in your account that are going to expire. Do you want to use them?” And I was like, “Oh, yeah, of course.” You know, I click the link. I go to the website—it’s a Verizon website. Looks totally legit. “Here are your rewards points and what prizes you can pick or exchange for them, blah blah blah blah blah.” Then it says, “All you need to do is enter your name and email,” and I’m going, “Wait a minute. If I’m already on Verizon’s website, they already have my information. Why is it asking me to enter it again?” Something about the page looked a little bit off.
00:31:09
Francisco Sirvent: So, I started just looking now with my spider senses up. Is this really their legitimate website? I went back to the Verizon website I know about, I logged in, and I started looking around. Are there even rewards points for Verizon? I’m looking around and I can’t find anything about rewards points. I’m going, “Oh my gosh, I fell for it.” Went back to my phone, I clicked the report spam button, and went on with my life.
What I noticed was, though it looked like it was from Verizon, I had never received a text message from that specific phone number before. I do get text message reminders about my bill or when my bill is paid, but all the historical messages are there. This one was the first message, and it almost got me. So, just if it’s the first text message you get from somebody, be very, very, very suspicious.
And then, of course, we all get all kinds of emails that are junk, that are spam, and that are attempting to scam you.
00:32:16
Francisco Sirvent: These were just a couple I’ve gotten the last couple of days, and you know, they’re great. “Avery James: RE: Follow-up. Hey, hope you’re doing… following up on my previous message.” Oh, this person already emailed me, let me look, right? This other one: “Would it be okay if I shared our brochure?” I don’t know these people. I’ve never communicated with the first person.
These things look like just a quick message back and forth. They’ll even fake-create prior messages between you and them below. Like, if you scroll down, you go, “Oh, I have emailed this person.” Then you respond and start talking to them. If you don’t know them, if you don’t know what they’re talking about, do not reply. Do not click a link, and report it as spam to your email provider.
The Scam Mechanics: Building Trust and Irreversible Payments
00:33:29
Francisco Sirvent: What happens most of the time with these unsolicited text messages, emails, or direct messages on other platforms is they’re either going to try to just build a relationship of some type with you—friendly, professional, or something just, you know, where they’re not asking for anything. They’re just going to start engaging in back-and-forth to build your trust. That’s really it. Then, eventually, once you trust them, then the money thing will start to come up.
The second thing is they’re trying to get you to click a link, and that link is going to be one of a bunch of potential problems. It could be a direct virus download to your computer. There’s one where when you click the link, it somehow reads all of your emails that you’ve sent out, and then it immediately sends the same email to everybody in your inbox. It looks like it’s from you saying, “Hey, for whatever reason, I’ve got a file you need to download. Click this link,” and it just perpetuates the scam.
The link click might download something to your computer that is watching your computer, and as you enter usernames and passwords on different websites, it’s reporting that back to the scam artist so that they can then go log in and do what they want to do.
00:34:47
Francisco Sirvent: So be very, very, very wary about clicking a link in a text message, in an email, or in a direct message on any platform. Those links themselves… the way it works is you click the link and it goes into an internet browser, and your internet browser, whether you use Chrome or whatever, has to then download information to your computer. So that link is you telling your computer, “Please download what’s at this website,” and by clicking it, you’re giving your computer permission to download that thing. Links can be very dangerous because you don’t know what it’s downloading, and maybe not until it’s too late. So be very wary about clicking links.
The other things to be really wary about are irreversible payment methods. We talked about one, which is wire transfers. Outgoing wire transfers are a big part of the scam system. Crypto is a very hard thing to trace—almost impossible once you transfer crypto. Sometimes, even once you think you’ve purchased crypto in your own account, if it’s not with a registered broker, dealer, or custodian of some type—if it’s on one of these other creative ones that isn’t exactly registered and monitored—it may not even be in your account.
00:36:20
Francisco Sirvent: It may not even be anything you can track back. So, be very wary about crypto.
Direct payment methods like Zelle and Venmo are incredibly convenient. Pay your landscaper or your pool guy or whoever it is, right? Or send your grandkids money. It’s very convenient. Just be wary that that’s a one-way ticket, right? You can’t ask Zelle or your bank to pull it back if it’s fraud. You really want to confirm, double-confirm, that who you’re sending to is somebody you know, that you’ve verified their information to receive it, and that it’s going to the right place.
And gift cards. This is a weird one, but this happened to a friend of mine who owns a business. His secretary came in one morning and she’s like, “Sorry I’m late. It took me a while to get all those gift cards.” And he’s like, “What are you talking about?” And she’s like, “I got all the gift cards. Here they are.” She starts handing them over—a whole bunch of Apple gift cards.
00:37:23
Francisco Sirvent: And he’s like, “What is this?” And she’s like, “You asked me to get these on the way in this morning.” He’s like, “What? No, I didn’t.” She’s like, “Yeah, you sent me a text message.” He’s like, “What are you talking about?” And she’s like, “Here.” It says, you know, “Hey Susie, can you stop by the Apple store and pick up…” I don’t know what it was, 20 Apple gift cards for $100 each or something. I think the text said, “Send them to some other address,” but she brought them to the office, thankfully.
He’s like, “Oh my gosh, I did not send you that text.” They looked a little bit further. His phone didn’t have the text to her. They looked a little further and, oh yeah, somebody faked his text to her. Once gift card codes are shared, right? Once the code on the back is shared with the scammer, it’s drained.
00:38:14
Francisco Sirvent: It’s gone. It’s just moved into some account who knows where, and it’s not coming back. If you get an email or text message from anybody, even if you think you know them, saying, “Hey, go buy me a bunch of gift cards and then send me the codes,” it’s a scam. Don’t fall for that one.
There are some ways… and I thought about whether I wanted to give you a list of these different software tools today, but I’m not going to because I’m not an IT security expert. You will have to do your own due diligence. There are a lot of very good and legitimate apps or software tools you can put on your computer, your phone, or your iPad that will help you legitimately protect yourself or protect your parents from scams. There are a few—there’s only maybe two or three that I know of—that are specifically built for an adult child to help monitor and protect a parent’s financial life. They’re really quite amazing in the features they offer and the tools that you can enable.
Monitoring Tools and Protective Steps
00:39:31
Francisco Sirvent: Things like read-only access to transactions on all of their accounts, right? You can have a one-stop shop where you can see transactions, and it can even set up alerts for outgoing transfers to places they’ve never used before or transfers over a certain dollar amount. All kinds of alerts can be set up for that. You can watch for these things or new accounts that are created, right? Because that’s an issue.
You can set them up so that you’re not taking away any control. They still pay their bills. They still write their own checks. They still spend their own money and do whatever they want. So, you’re not taking any control, but you’re getting the ability to watch and act if something happens. At least you can act quickly, right? You’re not trying to act a month or a year or five years after the fact.
So, I recommend you look up some of these apps and software tools. Do your due diligence, of course, and investigate.
00:40:37
Francisco Sirvent: Can some of these things make life easier? You know, Michelle Dexter, my partner, saw something on the news yesterday that a Mesa teenager actually invented an app to help protect people from these types of scam texts and things like that. It’s really cool. He saw this as a problem, created the app, and has launched it. It’s free. Again, I’m not recommending any specific tools, but they are here to make life easier because it’s hard to monitor this stuff from afar for a parent. It’s hard enough to monitor all this for our own financial life sometimes.
But look up those types of things. Do your due diligence. Talk with somebody who is knowledgeable about IT security and pick one of those. If they have a cost, it’s usually relatively inexpensive—it might be 5, 10, or 20 dollars a month for some of the more sophisticated pieces—but it may be something that could really save a big nest egg.
The Role of Your Estate Plan
00:41:43
Francisco Sirvent: I do want to address how these things are impacted by your estate plan. At our firm, at Keystone Law Firm, we create estate plans for clients. We’ve been doing it for almost 20 years. An estate plan is the whole package of legal documents, from your living trust to your powers of attorney, your healthcare directives, your will—all the pieces that go into that. The parts of that that can be helpful are typically going to be your durable power of attorney for financial decisions and your living trust. Okay, those are the two sort of financial documents that address how financial assets and real estate are accessed and who can deal with them at different stages of life. Who can write checks? Who can move accounts? Who can sell the house?
There is a stage in life where it can seem like there’s protection, but then it is easy to actually revoke that protection. It’s in that stage of life where somebody is still managing and taking care of all their bills, but they are starting to have some cognitive decline, maybe even minor.
00:43:11
Francisco Sirvent: A lot of times what we see is during those first stages of decline, the person is mostly in denial. They don’t want to admit it. We all want our autonomy. We want to stay in control of our life, and so we just don’t want to admit it, right? So there’s this stage from when it first happens where some vulnerability sets in, and we don’t admit it, which means this is really the risky stage of life.
During that stage of life, even if they’ve named a power of attorney, if they haven’t handed over the keys to the kingdom to the power of attorney, the power of attorney doesn’t have authority to do anything. They can’t tell them, “No, you can’t wire that money out. You can’t open a new bank account,” right? They don’t have the authority to say no.
Even more so during that stage, the parent has the authority to revoke that power of attorney. That can be the biggest problem because if they revoke it—if they’re convinced by an insider to revoke that power of attorney—then their real power of attorney, the person they really trust to help, now has no legal authority to do it.
00:44:31
Francisco Sirvent: So the revocation of a power of attorney can be done at any time. It’s through their own act. It’s voluntary, and unless they’ve been declared incapacitated by a doctor, it can be done at any time, and that’s a big risk. Then the scammer can appoint themselves.
The other thing is we see a lot of people who… we’ve seen the scams and I’ve talked about them with the joint account issue. There’s also risk in just putting an adult child or somebody that you trust as a joint owner on your account. There’s a big risk with that, and it’s not just from being taken advantage of. It could be that if they get in a lawsuit, they get in a car accident, or they get in a divorce, that account is now going to be subject to all of their financial problems. So, putting them on as joint doesn’t solve the issue. It’s not that simple. You want to think these things through.
The better way to do this is to have your trust set up in a way that your successor trustee—whoever you chose when you were alive and well, when you were able to think things through clearly and it’s not a snap new decision that somebody’s just kind of stepping in to try to help… if it’s really been your decision that “this person I can trust” and they’ve proven it over years, you want your trust to be able to have a mechanism for them to step in and help.
Co-Trustees, Bank Accounts, and Real Estate
00:45:36
Francisco Sirvent: Even if you can’t necessarily say you want the help, that can be triggered either by a doctor’s letter or it can be triggered by the successor trustee themselves. If you trust them to manage your money, we should trust them to be able to say, “I need to step in and help.”
You can also—we have a number of clients do this, and I think this is a great idea—at some point where we’re just getting older and I’m not able to think as quickly, and you know, I notice I’m forgetting some simple things… it’s that middle stage. I’m not yet incapacitated. I want to live my life still, right? But I’m starting to realize things are getting a little harder. When that happens, if we trust that person implicitly, let’s get them on now as co-trustee. You just appoint them, poof, and they go to the bank and they say, “Okay, I’m co-rustee.”
Now, what they can do at the bank is they can—at least at some banks—set up parameters that require two signatures for amounts over a certain dollar amount. They can require two signatures for outgoing wires. They can require all kinds of things like that, and that puts a good little circuit breaker on if somebody tries to take you to the bank and convince you to do something that really you don’t want to do.
What’s good about a trust versus an individual bank account is that trust accounts at banks have a little bit more… for some reason, they scrutinize them a little bit more. Because it’s a trust, and I don’t know exactly why, but banks sort of evaluate what’s happening with a trust a little more closely than what’s happening with individual accounts.
00:47:57
Francisco Sirvent: So if somebody tries to walk in and convince you to change your trust account to do all kinds of things you don’t really want to do, banks are typically going to—I hope—put a little bit higher standard of, “Hey, what’s happening? Why are you doing this? Who’s the successor trustee? We really need them here,” etc. And if you’ve already got them on as co-trustee, it’s going to be mandatory. So, a trust really can give you a little bit more protection at your bank, at your investments, you know, your brokerage accounts, things like that.
With real estate, real estate is a new area for scam artists that they are taking advantage of. They’re having fake deed transfers signed, notarized, and recorded. They’re doing all kinds of things. Maricopa County has a title watch you can sign up for. That’s free. Anything that’s recorded under your name, you get an immediate email on. It doesn’t prevent anything from happening, it doesn’t prevent them from scamming you, but at least you know about it immediately if you sign up for that free title watch.
Then again, having a piece of real estate owned in your individual name, or joint with you and your spouse, is again slightly different than owning it in your trust name. Because in your trust name, the deed to transfer it to somebody else has to be signed by the currently acting trustee. If you’ve become the co-trustee, and they try to just transfer it without your signature as co-trustee, it’s a lot more evidence that it was fraud. Getting that deed declared invalid is going to have a lot more support in your favor. So I always recommend a trust for purposes of avoiding probate, but it also acts as another layer of protection for this stuff.
Talking Points for Families and Free Resources
00:50:25
Francisco Sirvent: When you think about this stuff and you thought, “Okay, I’m going to talk to my parents. We need to start putting this stuff in place,” that can be hard. So I want to give you a couple of talking points on how to maybe bring this up.
Don’t… you know, some people have a completely open relationship. You can just bring it up and say, “Hey, Mom, Dad, we need to do this,” and there’s no offense taken. They don’t feel like you’re taking away their autonomy. They’re just like, “Oh, good. Yes. Thank you.” If that’s not the case, what I would do is I’d recommend pointing the finger at the enemy. Pointing the finger at the enemy, like, “There are a lot of new AI things that are getting really good. I mean, they can do voice cloning now.” You can get a call from somebody and it can sound exactly like the person you know, but it’s a robot because they have AI tools now that can listen to a sample of your voice somewhere and then sound like you—have your same cadence, have your same tone, your accent, whatever. So now, listening to a voice that we think is familiar isn’t even reliable.
You can say, “I just saw this webinar. There’s a whole lot more scam things out there. We really need to review and see that you’ve got everything set up in a protected way,” and you can talk about the co-trustee thing. I would at least plant that seed. It’s one of the best ways to protect against this stuff.
This is something that might be hard to implement and remember in practice because I was thinking about this… one of the security recommendations out there, because of the scam where they can now clone your voice, is that in the middle of the day, Grandma gets a phone call. It sounds like it’s her granddaughter who lives in another state, and she goes, “Oh my gosh, Grandma, whatever, I got arrested. I got a ticket. I got something and I just need you to Venmo me some money. I need you to wire me some money. It’s an emergency, right? Like, hurry.
00:52:22
Francisco Sirvent: I need it right now for some reason.” You could, with each of the people in your family, say, “Hey, look, this scam stuff is real. We’re going to establish a safe word, a security word, whatever you want to call it, that helps you identify each other in that call.” Right? If you get one of those calls, you could say, “Oh, Susie, I’m so sorry you’re going through that. Let me make sure. Yep, okay, I’ll take care of it. What’s our family security word?” And they’ll go, “Uh, uh, uh, I don’t know,” right? Or give you something that doesn’t work. Then you go, “Okay, this is a scam,” and you hang up.
All of the other things that I recommend about putting some type of view or read-only access on parents’ accounts can be really important and really helpful for you to be able to see if there are suspicious transactions going out.
Then look at your trust—if you have an old trust, look at it. Does it allow for a co-trustee to be appointed? Because that’s one of the biggest tools. Does it allow a successor trustee to step in and help immediately while you’re alive? Those are really key factors that need to be in trusts nowadays. Does it allow your trustee to have access to your digital assets, things like email and crypto and your online accounts? Because those things are usually where the scam is going to be happening.
I did find, as part of my research on this, that last year the United States Senate Committee on Aging actually put together a really good report. They call it a report, but honestly, it’s a pretty user-friendly book on all of these types of things: the types of scams out there, how to protect yourself against them, some of the statistics about it, and even the state ranking and where states are as far as reported fraud. Arizona, unfortunately, is in one of the higher categories. If you want that, happy to send it to you. You could probably even Google it and find it online. Just send me a chat message, you know, just say you’d like it, and I’ll make sure it gets emailed out to you after the webinar today.
That’s all the content I had.
Next Steps: Trust Reviews and Q&A
00:54:24
Francisco Sirvent: The steps that we take to review an old trust, just so you know—the first thing we do is we schedule a quick phone call. There’s no cost to it. It’s with our intake team, and we just talk about how old your trust is, where it’s from, what are the things you’re concerned about, and see if it’s time to update. If it is, they’ll talk to you about what that looks like, what our process is, what our fees are, and how we do that. We amend old documents almost always, or if you need new ones, we create brand new ones. It’s usually a three-step process for us; we finish in about 6 to 8 weeks.
00:55:20
Francisco Sirvent: Once you’re done with that, then we tell you what to do at the bank and wherever else you have financial business so that you know what to do at the bank to tell them, “Here is my new document. I have a co-trustee or successor trustee,” or whatever it is, so that they know how to record things inside their systems.
If you want to schedule that free call, I dropped the link there in the chat. You click it, the calendar’s right there. Just find a time that works, book it, and Alexis will be the one who calls you at that time to do that first free phone call.
That is all the content I had for today. I do want to share with you guys the upcoming events, so let me post that if you are looking for additional topics. It’s going to be right there. And then, why not give you our prior ones on our YouTube page? So you can click those links. These are real links, right? You’re inside a secure webinar. You know who I am. I’m giving you those links; they’re not going to take you anywhere bad. They’re going to take you somewhere good. Schedule that first phone call, register for an upcoming event, or look at our prior recordings.
I don’t see any questions coming in on the chat system. Let me real quick flip the opportunity for you to turn on your microphone if you have a question. You’re welcome to do that. I’ll hang out here for another couple of minutes. Thank you guys for attending. This is the first time I’ve done a topic like this, so I appreciate your attendance here. Does anybody have any questions?
00:56:28
Michelle Dexter: Francisco, I don’t have a question,
Francisco Sirvent: Questions?
Michelle Dexter: but you know, I just think that it’s so important that people recognize that this stuff is moving quicker than most of us can even imagine what the next scam is going to be. So there is a lot to trusting your instincts and verifying the information independently—
00:57:26
Michelle Dexter: not utilizing the information that they’re giving you, but the information that you know. When you signed up with Verizon, who did you contact?
Francisco Sirvent: Yeah.
Michelle Dexter: Did you go into a location? You know, maybe you’re following up by doing some of those things because, yeah, these scammers are really tricky. And to your point, sometimes it’s family and sometimes it’s strangers, and so you really have to keep your spidey senses up, so to speak. It’s just important.
Francisco Sirvent: It is. It is.
Michelle Dexter: We see it a lot just because we have perspective on a lot of clients and people in the community.
Francisco Sirvent: Go ahead.
Michelle Dexter: Yeah, and our experience has been that loneliness is a funny thing. You know, our aging parents get lonely, somebody shows some interest in them, and it’s very easy sometimes for those doors to be opened. And so, we definitely want to make sure that people are aware of some of those things to look for and be paying attention to.
Francisco Sirvent: Yeah.
Michelle Dexter: So, thank you so much for providing this information today. It’s been great, and I hope that it will help a lot of people.
Francisco Sirvent: Yeah, thanks Michelle. Me too. Anybody else have any other questions or thoughts? If not, thank you everybody for coming, and we will see you next time. Have a great day. Bye.
Transcription ended after 01:00:32
