How to outsmart a scam: Strategies from legendary con man
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In today's world, anyone can be targeted by scams -- even famous con man Frank W. Abagnale. For this reason he shares his top advice for protecting yourself against fraud.

When receiving a suspicious call, be aware of the two major red flags of immediacy and info-sharing. Is the person asking for money, and they need it right now? Does the person want sensitive personal information like a social security number or date of birth? If the answer to either of those questions is yes, it's probably a scam.

Scammers obtain much of their info from a victim's social media accounts. Caution is key for prevention, and education is the most powerful tool in outsmarting this type of crime.
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FRANK W. ABAGNALE

Frank W. Abagnale is one of the world's most respected authorities on the subjects of forgery, embezzlement and secure documents. Mr. Abagnale has been associated with the FBI for over four decades. He lectures extensively at the FBI Academy and for the field offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is a faculty member at the National Advocacy Center (NAC) which is operated by the Department of Justice, Executive Office for United States Attorneys. More than 14,000 financial institutions, corporations and law enforcement agencies use his fraud prevention programs.
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TRANSCRIPT:

FRANK W. ABAGNALE: It doesn't matter who you are. Anybody can be scammed. I mean I know that I can be scammed. Anybody can be scammed. So, the target is not just necessarily someone who you might think is an easy pushover or that might not be real intelligent. It can be anybody.

So doing the research for this book I realized that no matter how sophisticated the scam was or no matter how amateur it was and I looked at every type of scam I found that there were really basically two red flags. At some point someone was either going to ask me for money, and it had to be immediate. Go down to Walmart, get me a Green Dot card, read the number back to me, give me your bank account number, give me a credit card over the phone. It had to be right now, this moment. Or I was going to ask you for information. Whats your social security number? Whats your date of birth? Where do you bank? Whats your credit card number?

Every scam has that red flag. So one of the things I realized is that you start to recognize those red flags no matter what the scam, whether its a romance scam or its someone trying to say its a grandparent scam, sweepstakes scam. If you start to recognize those flags you know it. Of course, all con artists try to get people under the ether. The only thing thats real scary today is that 50 years ago when I did it, and there were con men and con women, which basically stood for confidence men, they had to gain your confidence and it was one-on-one. You were sitting right in front of me. I had to dress well, speak well, have a good vocabulary. And, of course, you got to like me, know me and we had a relationship. Because of that there was some emotion and obviously there was some compassion. I might have said well Im not going to take this guy for all his money. Hes kind of a nice guy. Im just going to take some of his money. I dont want to leave him broke.

The difference today is the con man is someone sitting in a kitchen with a cup of coffee in their pajamas on a laptop in Moscow. They never see you. You never see them. There is no emotion. The victim never sees you. The victim doesnt know theyre being victimized, so there is no compassion. I find that they rob you for every single penny they have and theres no compassion involved at all.

One of the things Ive found doing the research for the book is that millennials are scammed more often than seniors but seniors lose more money because they have more money. I actually realized that anybody can be scammed. I do a podcast out of Washington DC for AARP called The Perfect Scam. When people get scammed, we send an investigator out to interview them and talk to them, and then I later do a podcast about that particular scam. Weve had two former FBI directors in their 70s and 80s now that have been scammed.

You know these are typically like grandparent scams. A grandparent scam is one of the most common scams today where basically the phone rings in the evening, you go over and the caller ID says that its a New York police department. Right away you believe the caller ID because it says its...

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