Suicide After a Scam: One Family’s Story

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[00:00:01] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:05] Matt Jones: he was very excited about this, this person that he had met online.

[00:00:09] Laura Jones: I would say that when we, a turning point for me was when we get together every summer. I live in Minnesota, but we would get all the grandkids and kids and dad together. So last summer we were all together at a lake house with, with everyone and he was talking about this big investment, big opportunity that he was just on the brink of figuring out and very excited about the possibility of leaving an inheritance.

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[00:00:50] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan.

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[00:00:57] Bob: A warning to listeners, today's episode includes extensive discussion of suicide. So we want to say upfront, if you or someone you love is in crisis, immediate help is available. Call or text 988 and professionals are ready to listen and offer an empathetic ear for free.

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[00:01:18] Bob: Scams are becoming more serious, more costly, more common, more dangerous, and with more tragic consequences. I've been writing about, talking about tech based crimes for 30 years. And I've never been as worried about them as I am now. If you've listened to The Perfect Scam before, you know organized crime is now behind many of these crimes and the scale of them has dramatically increased. It seems like we all know someone directly involved in a romance scam or a gift card scam, or a crypto scam, and that's where we begin our story today with a son and a daughter remembering their dad long before he got romantically involved with someone online who said she had an opportunity for him.

[00:02:07] Yeah, our dad, I remember loved water. So he would, when we were living in Florida, I have memories of him packing all of us up to go to the beach and you know play in the sand, and I, and I actually have a memory that's pretty funny of, we had stepsisters at the time, and I think Matt and my stepsister had collected like a lot of shells and they had forgotten to remove them from the car.

[00:02:43] Bob: That's Laura Jones, talking about her dad, Dennis Jones, and her brother Matt Jones.

[00:02:50] Laura Jones: And there was, my dad woke up the next day and there was just this terrible smell, we could not figure out what it was and I think that the shells had like living little, you know, snails in them. And they had sadly baked in the, um, Florida heat. So yeah, that was our dad.

[00:03:09] Matt Jones: He hated you getting his car dirty. It was his, uh, it was his brand-new Jeep that he was very proud of.

[00:03:15] Bob: Oh boy.

[00:03:16] Bob: And that's Matt.

[00:03:18] Matt Jones: And uh, the part that uh, Laura didn't realize, so that we knocked them over the, not only were there rotten clams all over the back of his brand-new Jeep, but also beach sand. So...

[00:03:31] Laura Jones: He loved; he loved water. I have memories of going on like a little sailboat with him. He loved camping. I do have a memory of going on a little camping outing with him and my sister in a popup camper, and you know he loved to be outside. Water sports, water activities, airplane museums. He spent a lot of time, um, when my kids were, I guess my, some of my favorite memories too of him involve when I first had my children, I was still living in Maryland and he had a flexible schedule, and he would, oh sorry, I'm a little emotional, but...

[00:04:14] Bob: Take your time. Let's don't worry about it at all.

[00:04:16] Laura Jones: There was this, um, sweet little airplane museum in, in a part of Maryland, and I'm forgetting the name, but it had, it had one of the oldest continuously operating runways and it was nice. It wasn't huge like the Smithsonians and I would bring my, my two little boys and he would meet us there and hang out at the museum and if I, I was home with my kids when they were little and he would always make time to join us on outings with them when I invited him.

[00:04:52] Bob: That's such an amazing thing to have a grandparent nearby who can spend that kind of time with the kids.

[00:04:57] Laura Jones: Yeah.

[00:04:58] Bob: Matt, do you have memories from childhood you want to talk about?

[00:05:01] Matt Jones: Oh yeah, he was, he was very involved with, with my pursuits, you know I ended up uh, as a professional musician, and REO engineer, and he was, he would always show up at my concerts, even when my bands were terrible, it wasn't the kind of music he wanted to hear. But you know he was always, uh he loved photography as well. So he would, he would always show up with you know some new lens, he'd try and capture the moment onstage and he was always very involved and supportive in kind of creating your own destiny. Not working for the man, you know, and just be the arbiter of your own success. And uh, yeah, he, he was extremely supportive, you know of my pursuits as I was growing up and I attribute a lot of me ending up in the field that I'm in to him and him supporting me, kind of through the awkward years of working overnight shifts back when there were Kinkos to support myself while I was pursing music during the day. So yeah, a lot of great memories with him.

[00:06:07] Bob: The family moved when the kids were young. It wasn't easy.

[00:06:11] Laura Jones: Yeah, we lived in Florida for much of our childhood. We were all born in Maryland and moved to Florida when my parents were married and my mom's parents were sick with cancer, we were down there. And at a certain point in our lives we, our parents were divorced and our mom was unable to parent at that time. And so our father got full custody and we moved to Maryland where we moved in with him. Sort of, I think I was in the 9th grade. Adrienne, our sister, middle sister was in 7th, and Matt was probably in like 5th or 4th. We were, we relocated to Maryland, and that's where we, we all lived until adulthood.

[00:07:03] Matt Jones: Yeah, he had run into some financial trouble in Florida just uh with the real estate crash, I think it was in the, the late '80s, early '90s, there was a, a big real estate crash. He was in commercial real estate and it kind of, that kind of wiped him out. He was doing well, and then uh that was, that was kind of the reason for him moving us up to Maryland with his parents was just to kind of get a, a fresh start.

[00:07:25] Bob: But you guys were early teenagers, if not quite teenagers yet. That's a tough time to move, right?

[00:07:31] Laura Jones: It was tough for all of us. I think it was tough for grandparents taking on teenagers, for a single dad, you know, to take full custody and tough for teens.

[00:07:40] Bob: But your dad did it and again, that says a lot about him.

[00:07:43] Laura Jones: He was super, he was always, family was his priority. His kids were his priority.

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[00:07:49] Bob: And the kids remained a priority while after they grew older and started their own lives. Laura ended up in Minnesota with her own young family. And Matt, well he ended up back in Maryland, not too far from his father's apartment.

[00:08:04] Matt Jones: Well, when I moved back about 3 years ago, I would see him once every couple of weeks, we would try to get together for, for lunch or, or a dinner.

[00:08:15] Bob: And family is very much on Dennis's mind when an opportunity seems to present itself, and in fact, Dennis can't wait to talk about it with his son.

[00:08:26] Matt Jones: Well, at first he was very excited, so at first he was constantly wanting to get together because he wanted to talk about you know this new opportunity that he had discovered. He was always into like alternate ways of making money. You know he, he always looked at the internet as this, this wide open resource that you could make your fortune there if you'd, if you played your cards right and were smart about it, and you know, like I said before, he was kind of, he was kind of always anti-establishment corporate job. He was really big on trying to make your own success. So he got very excited about this and you know at first he was calling me quite often to try to get together.

[00:09:05] Bob: What is the opportunity that Dennis is so excited about?

[00:09:09] Matt Jones: He would describe it as crypto mining or this, you know cryptocurrency investment that and, and a lot of people are doing that and you know so I, you know I kind of just told him, like, "Hey, you've got to be careful. Just make sure it's credible and," you know just I'm, I'm no financial wizard myself, but you know I'm, I'm pretty careful when it comes to things online, and you know, he spoke from time to time about you know a woman that he had met online that was, he was getting along with very well. And you know and I also tried to caution him there, like you know just, it, “Hopefully it's a real person, but you know if they ask you for any money, just, you know, don't hesitate to just turn and run, you know, just be really careful. If they ask for money or tell you where to put your money, just,” and um, so he was, he was very excited about this, this person that he had met online.

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[00:10:00] Bob: This person calls herself Jessica. And Dennis is very excited to talk about her and about the world of cryptocurrency that she has introduced him to. Matt has some worries, but he doesn’t want to pop his father’s balloon for no reason. But that summer, things seemed to change.

[00:10:17] Laura Jones: I would say that when we, a turning point for me was when we get together every summer. I live in Minnesota, but we would get all the grandkids and kids and dad together. So last summer we were all together at a lake house with, with everyone and he was talking about this big investment, big opportunity that he was just on the brink of figuring out and very excited about the possibility of leaving an inheritance. He worked his whole life. He, as Matt said, was kind of really had bought into this kind of self-made independent man, you know, I think it was generational, but also just how he thought about success, and so he was really excited about this. And over the course of the weekend or I guess it was like a long week, but we tried to understand more what was happening, and um, we even had rented a pontoon boat which you know he loves water, he loves boats. And he couldn’t make the time to join us with the grandkids and everyone on it, because he felt like he had to you know be monitoring and engaged in whatever he was up to.

[00:11:42] Bob: It is strange. Dad is stuck behind a computer instead of out on the lake with the grandkids. Very unlike him. Matt tries to pry out of him what’s going on.

[00:11:53] Matt Jones: As Laura said, he was spending all of his time on the phone and his laptop with this, you know, new opportunity. And he took me out to breakfast away from the rest of the family and wanted to fill me in on what he was doing. And he, he was a bit secretive and kind of closed off, but I was able to get, well certain things were red flags, he, he said that he had made $40,000 in a week on, on an investment. And I was, whoa, that’s a huge return, like how much, how much money did you put in, like what is this investment? And then he started talking about bit mining, kind of discussed a little bit about what his impression of bit mining was and what I understood it to be. It, it didn’t line up.

[00:12:39] Bob: Matt can’t get the whole story out of his father that morning, but he gets enough to follow-up and do some research on his own.

[00:12:46] Matt Jones: So I was able to ascertain the name of the website where he was doing his investing. And I have a friend that works in cybersecurity and some of these cybercrimes and was able to send him the web address and just be like, “Hey, can you just, you know, do a shallow dive into like whether this is a real site or not.” And he did and you know within 24 hours he came back, yeah, this is a, a very well-known scam. So like stay away from it.

[00:13:15] Bob: Matt’s father thought he was investing in crypto, thought he was mining crypto, but he was just sending his money to a scam website. When Matt talks to his dad, he resists this new information. So...

[00:13:29] Matt Jones: So I put him in touch with, with my contact, and they began to go back and forth because my father at that point through probably just disbelief, not wanting to think that he had just sunk his entire nest egg into something that wasn’t real, and also the ro--, romantic side of things, the friendship side of things with this person who got him involved, was reluctant to share more with me once I started kind of trying to address it with him. My contact was able to convince him like hey, this is, this is probably not what you think it is.

[00:13:59] Bob: Matt and his sister start doing more work to figure out what their father has actually done. It’s not easy. The best they can tell, he’s already sent most of his life savings, his retirement money to this scam website. And they gently try to persuade their father of the reality of the situation.

[00:14:19] Laura Jones: We over a series of, you know, I don’t know, Matt, like a couple of months probably were trying to work with him on accepting what had happened, and it was really difficult for him to, I think one, the, you know the, the loss, the financial loss was devastating for him. I mean he was not someone with considerable wealth. So you know he had hoped that this would kind of turn into inheritance, and also be something that would set him up for his aging years, but that was one piece of it.

[00:14:59] Bob: Matt and Laura aren’t sure all the steps that happened next, but one thing they are sure of, their dad cares about Jessica.

[00:15:07] Matt Jones: My father being loyal to the people that he cares about went directly to this, this person that had gotten him involved and told him, like, “Hey, this is what I'm, I’m hearing from somebody that's a trusted source. You should start getting your money out,” you know, trying to protect them. And then his account was then immediately locked. He wasn't able to get any more money out.

[00:15:29] Bob: Dennis tries to warn Jessica. And his account on the scam website is locked. Now it’s clear he can’t access the investments he sent in. But Dennis is still worried about Jessica.

[00:15:43] Bob: And so when it came time to, for you guys to talk to him about helping come to terms with what had been stolen, he was still defending this woman, right? He was still defending her?

[00:15:52] Laura Jones: Yes. Yep. He felt like she was possibly at risk too. So in his mind, he felt like he was trying to protect this person and then later, he, I think, thought maybe that she had been somewhat coerced into it, or there was some, or there was some, you know, unlawfulness to her involvement that he didn't want her to face any kind of legal consequences for. And at the time I think, you know, we were so frustrated because it felt so clear to us that this was a scam, but what we didn't know is that he was, you know, probably right in some ways that whoever he was communicating with was probably under duress. And part of, we had no idea that this was an international, you know, scam run in kind of industrial level off of the backs of human trafficking.

[00:16:56] Bob: We talked on The Perfect Scam before about the human trafficking side of scams. Many people on the other end of the phone are also victims, trapped in work houses and forced to spend hours on the phone committing crimes against their will. So Dennis isn’t necessarily wrong in his sympathy for Jessica. But Matt and Laura now know their dad is in a lot more trouble because he stays in touch with Jessica.

[00:17:20] Laura Jones: And then the other piece of it was even as he began to kind of come to terms with the financial loss, there was always this protectiveness over this relationship that he thought he had, this person that he, you know, thought he had connected with. And that was always much, much harder for him to wrap his mind around, I think. You know, he said at a certain point that he just would not, he, it didn't make sense to him that someone would do this. Why would someone have personal conversations and talk to him and share things and spend so much time with him? It, it didn't, it didn't make sense that that could be real to him. And so it was after that I think that, you know, as kids, we really started to try to figure out a way to intervene more assertively with him and help, you know, see if we could, if we could interrupt this.

[00:18:23] Bob: But being more assertive, that backfires a little. At times, their father seems to understand he’s the victim of a scam, but at other times, there’s still a sliver of hope that his money might not really have been stolen, and that Jessica is real.

[00:18:37] Matt Jones: That’s when he kind of really withdrew substantially, where it was difficult to get him on the phone or keep him on the phone. It was difficult to, to get him out, and, you know, there was, there was definitely this kind of gray period where he really didn't want to talk about, about his investment and where the money was and how it was going with trying to get it back. And he definitely withdrew a lot near the, the last, uh, four or five months. That was kind of, that was kind of the series of event--, events that led up to him kind of withdrawing from us a bit as well, because then it became this, it was a frustrating thing. And that’s, that a very difficult thing as a family that we discovered is that as you’re trying to help this person and they wholeheartedly believe that this thing is real. So it’s, it’s trying to convince them, not only that it’s not real, but this relationship isn’t real, and you can become an enemy to that person, not you know he, we never felt like we were his enemy, but he definitely started withdrawing from us, stopped coming to us for advice, stopped reaching to just get the, he, he became very uh secluded from us. And we, we had to make a much larger effort to, to get involved with him.

[00:19:56] Bob: And as Dennis withdraws from his children, their concern about him only grows.

[00:20:02] Laura Jones: As we tried to check on him, I do remember calling him and, and, and talking to him and he did express at one point frustration that he felt like everyone thought he was dumb, but we were, didn't, you know, think that he knew how to take care of himself and that, you know, he, it was really, really painful for him. The wounding to his, his pride and his sense of, you know, um, he's lived independently his whole life and, you know, been very self-reliant and he felt like when we tried to talk to him about it, that it was kind of, you know, an unspoken criticism of his judgment and his intelligence. And I do remember one conversation with him where, you know, I said, “Dad, it's, I'm concerned about you. If you've been the victim of a crime and that must be really hard. You must feel betrayed.” And he said, “Yes, yes, I do.” So I think when we were able to approach him slightly differently, he was able to, you know, connect more, but yeah, he felt, he felt defensive and, you know, and embarrassed and ashamed, I think.

[00:21:25] Bob: Hmm.

[00:21:26] Matt Jones: And I think he was also panicking a bit, you know, he just, he, he had everything that he had had, he put into this and, he, he was trying to get himself comfortably to the finish line and maybe leave something for his, his kids and grandchildren. And that was what he was excited about. And then that completely got flipped upside down. And I think there was, you know, as anybody would be, they would feel a little panicked, of like, what am I going to do now? Like, how do, how do I get to the end of the line you know without, he, he, you know, he was in his 80s. But he couldn’t just go down the street and get himself a job and be like, well, I'll bounce back from this.

[00:22:06] Laura Jones: And so then we moved into trying to help him figure out what next, you know, and so, he'd been living on his own in this apartment for 35 years and was suddenly feeling, you know, on his fixed income that he couldn't fully afford it. And we started looking at alternative living options and, and, and he didn't like aging, you know, he did not think of himself as old. He was in very good health. He spent a lot of effort and energy on being active and eating well and taking care of himself. And, and so, um, he really struggled with the idea of moving into some kind of space for, for older people. And so that was part of it too. And, um, we'd started helping him look at kind of housing that would be, he'd be eligible for based on his income and kind of working with him on that and working through some, you know, resistance that he had around being around who he thought of as, as old people. He didn't think of himself as one, but there was that, there was the idea of like not wanting to be put out to pasture. You know, he really felt like if he weren't, if he wasn't earning money, if he wasn't kind of somehow like working in some way, he felt like he was being put out to pasture in his mind. So there was that. And so we were kind of in the process of, of thinking these things through.

[00:23:37] Bob: About six months have now passed since the family discovered the crime and Matt and Laura feel like they’ve at least moved closer to dealing with the reality of the situation that their dad has just about no money left.

[00:23:50] Laura Jones: Yeah, I think that is what I believe that we were dealing with the aftermath of it, you know? I think we thought this, okay, you know, he's lost everything. Now, now we're just figuring stuff out as a family. You know, we're looking at housing, we're looking at how to support him. We were thinking through things. We had successfully encouraged him to apply to get on some waitlists, and you know we started that process, and I think we sort of thought naively, well, you know it’s done, he’s out of money. Like this is, what else can happen? You know now we just thought we were dealing with the consequences of it. And what we didn’t know is that it could happen again and it’s common to happen again.

[00:24:38] Bob: It’s common to happen again. Matt and Laura don’t know it yet, but Jessica is still talking to their dad, rekindling some of those dreams about leaving behind a big inheritance for his family. Meanwhile, the kids do get dad to fill out a crime report about the incident.

[00:24:54] Laura Jones: The one and only thing that we got him to do was to report what happened on the IC3 site for the FBI. That's what we were told was the right thing to do, that it wasn't something that was in the jurisdiction of local law enforcement. And so, we did get him to, you know, file something there. But we thought, and he thought, that it was initiating some form of formal legal crime reporting process. And we were really devastated to learn that it functions much more like just a database. And he never heard anything. We got him to do one thing related to this, one thing to report the crime, and I think we hoped that he would hear from somebody in law enforcement at that time saying, yeah, this, I'm sorry this happened, this is, you know, this is a crime, and we don't know if we will be able to apprehend, you know, whoever did this or we don't know if we'll be able to recover anything, but we will look into this and you were the victim of a crime. I think that's what we as a family hoped would happen and he never heard from anybody and I think that left a door open in his mind that maybe this wasn't a crime, maybe it wasn't fake, maybe, you know, just maybe this was legitimate and that door, he, he went back through that door in, uh, December and January 2024.

[00:26:36] Bob: And with that door open in Dennis’s mind, Jessica starts a new pitch to Dennis.

[00:26:43] Matt Jones: The difficult thing about in the way that the scam is run, because, because they have basically found someone to create some kind of an emotional bond with you that person continued throughout this entire thing, even after, you know, he was convinced it was a scam and reported it, he was still in contact with this person. And they were telling him, no, no, it's, it's not, my money's fine, and but you have to pay these fines that you have to give them another $10,000 to unlock your account, so that they can verify that you've got a working account. And that’s kind of like the rabbit hole he got into at the end. Just desperately trying to get these accounts unlocked.

[00:27:22] Bob: And Jessica says she knows how to get the accounts unlocked if just Dennis would take out a loan.

[00:27:29] Matt Jones: And, you know, the promises were being made of, well, no, the money's there, so if you could just take out a loan to give us the verification money, and then you'll be able to pay it back in a day, so you won't even incur any interest. And that was kind of where it kind of really spiraled out of control for him, because somehow he was able to, in his 80s, without any kind of standard income, he was able to get these loans, and they were high interest loans that matured, I think, after, what was it, like three months or something like that, that the, the terms came to the loans?

[00:28:05] Laura Jones: And, and they walked him through opening an LLC and then applying for, you know, credit cards in the name of the business. And they walked him through, you know, how to, how to, you know get more. And we, and that’s the part you know as a family we didn’t know.

[00:28:24] Bob: What you’re describing is so common and just so tragic, but he didn’t get a call from law enforcement, but he did get a call from this person named Jessie, and Jessie seemed to care when, when nobody else cared, yeah.

[00:28:36] Laura Jones: Yes. Yeah.

[00:28:38] Matt Jones: Yep.

[00:28:39] Bob: So Jessica walks Dennis through the process of getting a $10,000 loan, high interest. Dennis thinking, he could still get back the money that’s been stolen and leave it for his family. But there’s another request for even more money. There’s another delay and another. And he has no way to repay these high interest loans. More importantly, he has no way to reconcile what Jessica has done to him.

[00:29:06] Matt Jones: That was one thing that he said. He was like, “You just can’t believe anything online anymore.” And it's like, “Well, yeah, you gotta be really careful.” And he's like, “Well, I don't know what to believe, I don't know...” you know, so it becomes totally disorienting for the, for the victim.

[00:29:19] Laura Jones: Oh I mean, looking back it’s like I knew the, the cost of this, you know financially, and I knew what this did to his pride. But what I didn’t know was that it pretty much shattered his sense of safety and trust in the world. You know, I think he couldn’t believe in a world where something like this could happen, and since he couldn’t reconcile that, when he had to accept that this is a world where this happened, he was no longer able to be in this world. I think that’s what how he felt.

[00:30:03] Bob: No longer able to be in this world. Dennis Jones takes his own life.

[00:30:09] Matt Jones: We thought we were kind of just in the aftermath trying to figure out what to do next. We didn't realize that he had like spiraled back into this, and they had convinced him to, and that, that was ultimately what ended up causing him to take his own life was that these loans that he had, there was no way for him to get, to get uh back to zero with those, and on top of it, he wasn't able to get his money out. So now he was just completely upside down.

[00:30:35] Laura Jones: I heard a story of someone in a book, and the way it was talked about in that story was knowing that he took his own life, but also feeling like he was killed by a crime.

[00:30:55] Bob: Killed by a crime. Laura and Matt and the rest of their family have to deal with the most awful news a family can receive, a pain that will probably last forever. But they have bravely decided to speak with us because they are well aware their dad’s situation is becoming terrifyingly common.

[00:31:16] Matt Jones: It took us a while to kind of respond back for, for this podcast as well, um, due to that, but it, yeah, it's, it's definitely been, been difficult, um, because on one hand you want to share the story and, you know, we're hoping that one person hears this and if, if one person's loved one is kind of in this trap, hopefully they can hear what's going on and maybe it'll, some similarities will kick in and they'll, they'll be able to turn it around, but at the same time for us as a family it's very difficult to speak about it and to talk about it, because there, there is kind of this, unfortunately, and it, and, you know, but there, there is kind of a stigma of, of greed that comes along with these kind of scams. People think, well, how could you, how could you be so blind and just throw all your money at this thing that’s very obviously, like, I would never fall for something like that, you know, like, and I think that's how he felt. You know he felt ashamed of that, and they get, I mean, they're, they’re able to scam people that are incredibly financially savvy get, get taken on these things, and I don't, I don’t think that he was ever coming at it from a stance of like greed or wanting to be rich, he just wanted to make it to the end of the road.

[00:32:39] Bob: And you’ve already said it, he wanted to leave something for all of you.

[00:32:42] Laura Jones: Yeah.

[00:32:42] Matt Jones: Yeah.

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[00:32:43] Bob: Laura and Matt have learned a lot about suicide as they try to understand everything that’s happened.

[00:32:50] Laura Jones: The thing that I have learned since that I didn’t know at the time is the rates of suicide go up as men get older. So as men age, there is a higher and higher, the rate of suicide for older men is, you know, increases as they age. So that's one thing, and then the other thing that I didn't know is that people with gambling disorders have the highest rate of suicide of all of the addictive disorders.

[00:33:19] Bob: Their dad’s obsession with Jessica, with cryptocurrency seems a lot like a gambling addiction.

[00:33:27] Laura Jones: And that’s sort of what this felt like at a certain point, it felt compulsive. It felt like a compulsive behavioral disorder. And we as a family were not able to compete with the idea of someone who's offering companionship, unlimited time, the promise of financial security for, you know, his remaining years. We couldn't compete with that as, as his kids and we needed help. We needed help to intervene. And I think that's, more than anything, what I wish for. I think prevention is obviously so important, but once people have been scammed, we need ways to help victims and to help their families because it's devastating and the costs are much higher than just financial loss, as we know.

[00:34:23] Bob: The costs are so much higher. Of course Matt and Laura are left wondering if they could have done anything differently or if anyone could have done anything differently. One thing they made clear was they wished the process of reporting the crime could be improved.

[00:34:40] Laura Jones: So looking back, I think that you know having him do a lengthy kind of anonymous process on the IC3 site was kind of the last thing that we needed to do, like he needed to hear from human beings who were skilled in working with people who are engaged in this. It's just like with any other kind of behavioral disorder, you know, like there's ways that you communicate where people get defensive and shut down and feel, you know, closed off from people because they don't want to, you know, be told that, you know, what they're doing is wrong. And then there's ways to communicate to people that is kind of coming up beside them and, you know, letting them know you're on their side. I would want law enforcement to have clearer processes for how to report and get help. You know justice can look like a lot of things, but part of it is even just acknowledging the experience of having been a victim of a crime. and so that would be the first thing is just having like a very simple, here are three things that you can do and making sure that it results in some action because I think the silence allows the, the hope, the belief to continue. So that would be the first thing. I think the next thing I would say is like, I, I think we need to actually track the rate of death by suicide for people who have been a victim of this because I suspect that it's, it's higher than we might realize because the devastation is just so total in terms of financial, you know, loss of whatever relationship you thought you had, and just the shame, the crippling shame and stigma that leads people to that, that despair. Um, so I'd like to see that tracked, and I'd like for it to be recognized that the, the cost of this crime is much more than financial, that there is this huge psychological component and risk that comes with it. And then the last thing I want is, I do want to know that there will be places for people to go, people like our father where he could have talked to other people who had a similar experience and didn't judge him and didn't you know, where, where he felt he could understand that people that are like him, you know, had fallen for something too, and he could get support. So I would like to see support groups, interventions, programs, just like we have treatment for other disorders. I'd like to see that offered either peer or professionally facilitated and for families to get help, because it's so hard, it's so hard to...to watch someone go through this and not know how to help.

[00:37:44] Bob: AARP’s Fraud Watch Network offers an online small group victim support program. You can learn more about it at AARP.org/fraudsupport. Matt wishes large technology companies would get more involved in fighting scams.

[00:38:01] Matt Jones: And then I think that the, these scams are all, it’s just a, it’s a hornet’s nest, you know, on social media. And I get, you know, people reach out to me all the time on mine. I don't, I rarely go on anymore, but I’ve had so many friend requests from very obviously, you know, fake accounts and, you know, unfortunately, an 82-year-old man is like, oh, this person wants to be friends with me, not as suspicious as, as some are, as I am. But um, yeah, I would say that social media has a huge, huge impact on this and is currently, the way that they're doing things, I think actually helping these scams along. They’re, they're actually like a breeding ground for these scams, and I don't see them doing anything to resolve that, and you know, yeah, I feel, I feel just as victimized by that as I do, the person, whoever the person was on the other end of that profile that my father was speaking to.

[00:39:00] Laura Jones: But it, yeah, it, it just was, it just facilitated this and there were little ways, you know we didn’t even as individuals, had a really hard time trying to um get the website down, you know. I, we, we, he had posted about, or he reported this to the IC3 site and if that website had been removed, if anything had been done, if that website had been taken down, if the Facebook account had been shut down, if any of these things had happened, I, I can’t say for sure that he would still be alive, but certainly, when they didn’t happen it contributed to the final despair. He wouldn’t have been able to go back...

[00:39:43] Matt Jones: Yeah, if the door wasn’t open.

[00:39:45] Laura Jones: Yeah, he wouldn’t have been able to go back and do the, you know, verification, whatever in December, January if the website had been shut down. If the Facebook profile had been shut down, you know, he wouldn’t have been able to reengage communication with them.

[00:40:00] Bob: Laura also thinks the financial system could do more to help victims.

[00:40:06] Laura Jones: I appreciate that there cannot be you know ageism or, you know, locking people out of their money, but man, I, I sure would have appreciated some notification that he was doing wire transfers that were effectively emptying out his bank account in a short amoun--, a period of time, you know, and, and the fact that he was able to open an LLC and get business credit cards at 82 with no income blows my mind. And I felt extremely triggered by phone calls from creditors, um, calling me about clearing up the estate after he died. And there wasn't enough to even pay for his headstone. We've done that out-of-pocket. So there, there wasn't even enough to cover all of his final remains. But I, I have started letting people know when they call for debt collection, that he died by suicide due to a scam and the debt that he incurred through the credit cards related to that scam.

[00:41:09] Bob: What do they say when you respond that way?

[00:41:12] Laura Jones: Um, they apologize again. I mean obviously it’s not their fault as the collectors, but they indicate that they’ll make note of it in the, in the file.

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[00:41:26] Bob: The Securities and Exchange Commission this month issued a major warning about the kind of crime Dennis was a victim of. They call it crypto relationship scams. They’re causing, “catastrophic harm,” the agency said as it brought it’s first ever enforcement action against criminals engaged in the scam. Consumers had an estimated 5.6 billion dollars stolen through crypto related scams in 2023, and it was up 45% from the previous year the FBI says. Investment scams account for about 70% of those losses. Individual losses can be enormous. The head of the Romance Scam Recovery Group at the Cybercrime Support Network said on a recent podcast published by FINRA, the dollar losses average about $178,000 a person. To talk more about crypto relationship scams, we have here with us Jan Hart who is on the board of an organization called Advocating Against Romance Scammers or AARS.

[00:42:28] Bob: Romance scams have been around for quite a while, um, but cryptocurrency really adds another element to it, doesn’t it?

[00:42:34] Jan Hart: Absolutely has taken it to an absolutely devastating level.

[00:42:38] Bob: And you know it’s one thing to buy someone a plane ticket or send someone gift cards, it’s another thing to send them $50,000 in bitcoin, right?

[00:42:45] Jan Hart: Absolutely.

[00:42:47] Bob: Jan became interested in romance scams when her boss became a victim. His photographs were being used to lure other victims.

[00:42:54] Jan Hart: We discovered that my CEO, Anthony Dorman's identity had been stolen by scammers and were being used on social media, uh, in romance scams. And women began to contact us on his official Facebook page to let us know, or to ask us, you know, who are you? Or to even send him a love note. And then I had to inform them that they had been engaging with a scammer. And so that literally thrust me right in the smack of the romance scam phenomena that has come across the country in the last decade.

[00:43:34] Bob: Jan thinks romance scams and particularly crypto romance scams have become more intense since COVID.

[00:43:42] Jan Hart: Um, one of the things that caught me on Dennis’s story is that one of the first things I thought, Bob, was that Boomers trust differently, Dennis was 82 years old and they trust differently. They, the, that generation didn't grow up in a world where scams were so prevalent and out in the open. And there was no online platform matrix back then. So, um, I believe that they had a different way to trust. I think COVID increased the numbers of the scams exponentially. While seniors were, began to become engaged online more than ever, but still with that different type of trust, right?

[00:44:22] Bob: In her work with victims, Jan believes that shame is perhaps the most powerful weapon that criminals wield, and shame led to Dennis’s death.

[00:44:32] Jan Hart: Shame is powerful. And across all vectors of crime, it seems to me that the shame factor causes a real blurred vision of reality. It seems like it overloads a human with guilt and self-blame. So, in my opinion then, the extent of the loss and the shame is directly correlated to the damage to themselves and especially to those they love as a result of their actions. He said that he, you know, he'd ruined his future, his legacy, if you will, for his family. And that deepened his shame.

[00:45:04] Bob: And that’s why one thing all of us can do is talk more about these crimes, reduce the power shame has over us.

[00:45:11] Jan Hart: But then it’s a learning process, isn't it? To understand the psychology of fraud and how they use it and what social engineering is. And I think that as a community, we need to begin to speak against victim shaming, we need to be able to speak loudly to embracing victims, having immediate resources available for victims and families to go to that are safe spaces, safe places, and are filled with applicable resources for those victims. And I think victim shaming is a big deal, and I think that unfortunately, Mr. Dennis died in his shame.

[00:45:50] Bob: Dennis was attacked by a whole team of criminals, an organized group with well-tested scripts and schemes designed to confuse and manipulate him. The Secret Service told the family later that Dennis’s money had ended up in Shanghai. Jan believes that if victims understood they were being attacked by crime gangs, that would reduce the shame they feel.

[00:46:12] Jan Hart: I think of a victim as educated right off the bat, that their one guy or their one gal was most likely an entire team of scammers scamming them. It helps them to understand that they were totally manipulated. I think that can begin to enlighten them and reduce their shame factor and it’ll also serve to empower that victim, help them feel less and alone and incapable. The shame is just huge. It’s just huge and, and it definitely distorts their sense of reality and recuperation.

[00:46:40] Bob: Jan thinks lawmakers need to do more.

[00:46:43] Jan Hart: They need to start taking a hard look at all of the different platforms and, and what they can do. Just raising that awareness level to let people know that we need to do something about this, right?

[00:46:55] Bob: I asked Jan, what’s the best way to talk with a person you love who you fear might be sending money to a criminal?

[00:47:03] Jan Hart: I think the best way, in my personal opinion, if I was going to go talk to my mom about this, I would sit down and say, have you heard about this? Did you know this is going on? Mom, did you know that they do, hey mom, look at this, man, they use this and this and practical, applicable situations and stories off the internet that she can actually see the pictures of, right, that relate to what she's going through, um, or what she's experiencing herself and hoping that she'll begin to connect dots. So sometimes they’ll listen. I think it’s indicative of the relationship between the parent and the child. These are adults. And you know, they’ve been around a lot longer than you have and they don’t need you to tell them how to live their life. Kind of like teenagers, same thing.

[00:47:42] Bob: One thing I felt was quite valuable in what you were suggesting though was, not to go in heavy and say, mom, this is a scam, but instead sit with mom and say, wow, read this story that Bob Sullivan wrote about a romance scam. Look at this piece on CNN, and you know maybe sort of go in indirect so as you suggested so they can connect the dots on their own.

[00:47:59] Jan Hart: I think so. I think maybe driving the forklift in right from the very beginning, all that does is it increases that shame factor. It comes in and says, Mom, you're an idiot for falling for this, even if that's not said, it's implied.

[00:48:12] Bob: How about if let’s say someone who’s listening to this podcast is getting a funny feeling that this relationship they thought they were in, or this investment they thought they were in, might be a scam? And listening to you is persuading them to at least feel a little uneasy about it. What should that person do?

[00:48:28] Jan Hart: Hmm, I would encourage that person to do some research, take a face, a picture of that profile and do a reverse image search. Do a little bit of digging. See what you can find out without including the person you're talking to. Don't let them know that you're doing it. You know, put on your sleuth cap, and check it out a little bit and see if, if any other red flags start popping up for you. Who are their friends on their Facebook profile? Did they have a lot of followers or did they just have five followers and they're following 1,300 people? Lots of little red flags like that. Education is online. You can find it, just type in romance scam and you'll begin to get a list of resources that are pretty trustworthy.

[00:49:13] Bob: There are resources available for victims and their loved ones. The Fraud Watch Network Helpline is available Monday through Friday 8 am to 8 pm at 877-908-3360. We’ve already mentioned support groups at AARP.org/fraudsupport, and also...

[00:49:33] Jan Hart: You know one of the places that I would send someone would be Cyber Crime Support Network. I think they're at fightcybercrime.org. They have some great resources on that website. They have some great people working there. They can offer some, some up close and personal resources for counseling, for intervention.

[00:49:51] Bob: But most of all she said, people from all walks of life have to come together so Dennis Jones’ death is not forgotten, and so everyone understands the gravity of the crime epidemic we are living in.

[00:50:04] Jan Hart: We need to stand against victim shaming. We need to unite the fraud fighting community. We need to fuel as much education as we possibly can and thank you for what you’re doing. Dennis Jones was 82. He trusted, he was humiliated and shamed, he committed suicide in that shame, he’s one of a growing number, and it’s time to stop it.

[00:50:25] Bob: It takes so, so much bravery to talk publicly about a family member who has committed suicide. And again here I’d like to remind you that if you or someone you love is in crisis, you can call or dial 988 to get immediate help. It’s absolutely essential that we begin to chip away at the shame that Jan talked about, and the best way to do that is to talk openly about it. That’s why I’m so grateful for the courage of Matt and Laura.

[00:50:54] Bob: I am so sorry that we had to have this conversation. Um, and I wish the both of you peace wherever you can find it. I, I can promise you that we’ll do our best to, to honor the story and to make sure that more people hear about this, and it will, it will make a difference to, to people. It really will.

[00:51:12] Matt Jones: We appreciate your time and your interest in our father’s story.

[00:51:16] Bob: The whole theme of our podcast is that anyone under the right circumstances, it might be a different cover story or a different time, but any one of us could end up in this situation, that’s why it’s so important to talk about it and to try to get rid of the shame. So I am personally grateful that you’re talking to us about it.

[00:51:30] Laura Jones: You know, shame lives in darkness, and so when this happens, and people are as victims retreating, or as families don’t know how to help or where to go, I guess look for, look for places to tell your story and ask for help and you know don’t give up, keep looking, because I think people need to know that stigma and shame is a huge part of what entraps people in this process and so we need to help find a way for them to find their way out of it.

[00:52:06] Bob: Look for places to share your story and ask for help.

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[00:52:13] Bob: For The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.

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[00:52:22] Bob: If you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, you are not alone. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next. Our email address at The Perfect Scam is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, and we want to hear from you. If you've been the victim of a scam or you know someone who has, and you'd like us to tell their story, write to us. That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org. Thank you to our team of scambusters; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; Researcher, Becky Dodson; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; and our Audio Engineer and Sound Designer, Julio Gonzalez. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For AARP's The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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