The scam next door

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Click Here

Episode: The Scam Next Door
Date: September 9, 2025
Host: Dena Temple-Raston
Produced by: Recorded Future News & PRX
Special Guests: Elliot Williams (1A Guest Host), Selena Larson (Proofpoint), Gary Gordon (Riverton Piano Company), Amy Nofziger (AARP)

Main Theme

This episode delves into the rise of "piano scams"—online cons involving free or low-cost pianos requiring only a shipping fee—and unpacks how these emotionally targeted scams exploit human desires and trust. The episode explores the real story of a mother, Patricia, who fell victim to such a scheme, highlights the broader landscape of confidence scams, and offers insights from fraud experts on methods of prevention and awareness.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Are "Piano Scams"?

• Definition: A modern twist on a classic scam. Scammers offer high-value items (like a Steinway piano) for free or at a steep discount, requiring only a shipping or rerouting fee.
• Emotional Engineering: These scams work not because they're technologically sophisticated, but because they leverage hope, urgency, and plausibility.
  • Quote: “It’s not a digital hack, but an emotional one.” —Elliot Williams [00:51]
• Prevalence: Proofpoint tracked over 125,000 scam emails of this kind in the first half of last year alone.
  • Quote: “You can imagine how prevalent this is.” —Dena Temple-Raston [01:09]

2. The Anatomy of a Scam: Patricia’s Story

• Background: Patricia, a Florida mother, sought a piano for her talented son Matthew, hoping music would help with his mood regulation disorder.

  • Quote: "He had shown this unexpected musical talent and she thought that the playing might help him a little bit emotionally." —Dena Temple-Raston [02:41]

• How It Unfolded:

  • Patricia found a free Steinway baby grand on Facebook.
  • Seller claimed to be representing an older woman, Dr. Joyce.
  • Dr. Joyce explained the piano was her late husband's and she was moving cross-country.
  • Patricia was asked for $625 for rerouting via Zelle.
  • She received plausible tracking info and updates but was later asked for another "interstate fee" of $1,000.
  • Upon deeper investigation, Patricia realized the shipping website was freshly created, and all entities involved were fabricated.
  • Despite her expertise in shipping (she owns a furniture company), Patricia was still deceived.
    • Quote: “I was amazed that I somehow got swindled checking all my boxes.” —Patricia de Beer [16:58]

• Clues Missed:

  • Freshly registered shipping websites
  • Realistic but faked social media profiles for "employees"
  • Familiar and industry-standard payment requests (Zelle)
  • Legitimate-seeming tracking tools

• Emotional Outcome:

  • Lost $625
  • Disappointment for her son, Matthew, who lost interest in playing after the ordeal.
  • Patricia fought back by reporting the scammers’ email addresses.
    • Quote: “I reported every single email address that they came across so that Zelle would block all those accounts.” —Patricia [25:31]

3. Social Engineering and "Brain Hacking"

• Explanation: Scammers prey on emotion, trust, urgency, and hope; this is described as “social engineering” or “brain hacking.”

  • Quote: “They fake it. It’s social engineering at its most advanced.” —Dena Temple-Raston [03:57]
  • Quote: “The best social engineers are also the best brain hackers.” —Selena Larson, Proofpoint [19:43]

• Techniques:

  • Sob stories about lost loved ones or moving
  • Carefully crafted online presences (websites and social media)
  • Consistency between tracking, payment methods, and shipping communications

• Scalable Beyond Pianos:

  • Used cars, concert tickets, jobs, and more—all follow a similar formula.

4. Variants of This Scam & Related Fraud

• Fraud Types Covered:
  • Job scams: "We'll send you equipment if you cover shipping."
  • Event ticket fraud: "Pay a fee to get tickets sent to you."
  • Investment and crypto scams: "Pay a little, get a lot back."
    • Quote: "If you pay a little bit now, if you give me a small payment of cryptocurrency, you'll get a larger one in return." —Selena Larson [19:28]
• Crypto Scams:
  • Story of Stephanie, a teacher who lost $50,000 after being recruited into a "safe" crypto investment group on WhatsApp, mirroring other affinity fraud schemes.

5. Industry Expert Perspectives

• Gary Gordon (Riverton Piano Company):

  • Pandemic led to a surge in instrument demand.
  • Outlined the "overpayment" piano scam targeting stores.
    • Quote: "If you're dumb enough, they take your piano and they take $1,000, and the check turns out to be bogus." —Gary Gordon [22:55]
  • Tips for buyers: Always verify model, serial number, and provenance with an expert.

• Selena Larson (Proofpoint):

  • Noted how scams are underappreciated in cybersecurity since they rely on social, not technical, vulnerabilities.
  • Emphasized the power of emotional manipulation over technical exploits.

• Amy Nofziger (AARP):

  • No age group is immune—everyone is a target.
    • Quote: “If you have a dollar to your name, there is a criminal trying to steal it from you.” —Amy Nofziger [32:48]
  • Identifies top scams: identity theft, business imposters, romance/dating scams, tech support, government imposters.
  • Discussed the rise of cryptocurrency ATM scams and new consumer protections.

6. Prevention & Takeaways

• Slow Down: Scams thrive on urgency. Pause before acting.
  • Quote: “Two words are key: slow down.” —Dena Temple-Raston [06:43]
• Verify Independently: Check addresses, urls, and identities outside of the info provided in communications.
• Ask Questions: Demand serial numbers and additional photos for big purchases.
• Check Website Registrations: Freshly created sites are a red flag.
• Be Skeptical with Crypto: Payments in crypto are high risk and usually non-refundable.
• Human Weakness: Ultimately, the weakest security link is human desire and emotion.
  • Quote: “The weak link here is humanity, which makes it nearly impossible to stop.” —Dena Temple-Raston [20:01]
• Young or Old, All Are Targets: Recent examples span generations—from 21-year-old Enrique falling for a fake toll bill [31:12] to long-time online shoppers.
• Emotional Hooks: Effective scams use hope, guilt, and urgency, exploiting moments of need or excitement.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Emotional Manipulation:
  • "It's the human piece of the cybersecurity puzzle that you can't predict and you can't patch." —Selena Larson [20:11]
• On the Longevity of Confidence Scams:
  • “Con artists our whole life long have always used those emotions against us.” —Dena Temple-Raston [37:04]
• On Why Even Experts Fall Victim:
  • “Patricia had done just about everything she could to make sure Matthew's free piano was on the up and up.” —Dena Temple-Raston [15:01]
• On Victim Psychology:
  • “The road to hell is paved with a whole host of these kinds of scams. Most of them are oldies but goodies.” —Dena Temple-Raston [19:04]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• What is a Piano Scam? [01:42–03:57]
• Patricia’s Story Begins [10:11–18:00]
• How Social Engineering Works [04:34–05:05]
• Variants of the Scam (Cars, Jobs, Crypto, Tickets) [06:06–19:38]
• Proofpoint’s Data & Perspective [17:14–20:27]
• Piano Industry Perspective (Gary Gordon) [20:27–23:58]
• Crypto/Affinity Scams & Stephanie’s Story [33:44–35:48]
• Expert Tips on Avoiding Scams [06:43, 22:58, 35:03]
• Human Factor: Why Scams Work [19:38–20:27, 37:04]

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains a narrative, conversational tone—empathetic yet pragmatic. The hosts avoid heavy technical jargon, focusing instead on relatable stories, expert testimony, and practical, actionable advice.

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Final Takeaway

Scams like the “piano scam” are more about manipulating trust and emotion than exploiting digital vulnerabilities. Even diligent, experienced people can fall victim because these scams are tailored to sound "just plausible enough." The primary defense isn’t technical—it's human: slow down, be skeptical, verify everything, and remember that if something seems too good to be true, it almost always is.

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Transcript

[Dena Temple Rastin]

From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click here. Hey there, it's Dena. A quick note before we start. Today's episode is a little different. Twice a month, we team up with our friends over at 1A for what we call Cyber Monday. Host Jen White and I talk for a bit and then we play part of one of our podcast episodes. And then typically, we take calls from listeners. Today's Cyber Monday is on piano scams. And the first voice you'll hear is from one A's guest host, Elliot Williams. Take a listen.

[Elliot Williams]

You know the phrase if it sounds too good to be true? It probably is. But what if instead of too good, it sounds just plausible enough? Like, say, somebody giving away a piano because they're moving across the country, but asking you to pay a shipping fee or offering a great job and sending you the equipment if you'll cover the delivery cost? Today, as part of our ongoing series Cyber Monday, we're talking about scams. We go beyond the kind that show up in your spam folder or come with flashing red flags. These are quieter, more targeted, and they prey on what makes us human. It's not a digital hack, but an emotional one. As with every Cyber Monday, we're joined now in studio by Dina Temple Rastin. She's the host and managing editor of Click Here. That's a twice weekly tech news podcast from PRX and recorded future news. Dina, welcome back.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Thank you very much.

[Elliot Williams]

So, Dina, before we get into the story of the two people you profile, Patricia and her son Matthew, walk us into this world a little. What is is a piano scam?

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Well, what's fascinating about piano scams is it's really just a variation on a very old con. Someone offers you something really valuable, in this case a high end piano, and all they ask you for is this small fee to ship it. And it's emotionally disarming just on the face of it, because who doesn't want to believe in a little bit of good luck? Now, there's this cybersecurity firm called proofpoint that says in the first half of last year they had tracked over 125,000 emails connected to precisely this kind of scam. So those are just the ones they caught. So you can imagine how prevalent this.

[Elliot Williams]

Is now, so widespread. Tell us, exactly how widespread do we get a sense as to how these are?

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Well, they're targeting music schools, they're targeting music stores, but they're targeting people at home, too. So the victim we follow in our episode is a mother in Florida. Her name's Patricia. And she just wanted to get a piano for her young son. He had shown this unexpected musical talent and she thought that the playing might help him a little bit emotionally because he'd been diagnosed with a mood regulation disorder. So she goes online, she's looking for something affordable. You can imagine yourself being in her shoes doing this. And then she thought she'd found it, but in fact she was being drawn into this thing that's much more calculated.

[Elliot Williams]

Now, a common response is often when people get swindled out of their money and you deal with them a lot or you personally profile them a lot on Click Here is, well, why didn't you look into it to make sure it was legitimate? But piano scams in particular seem particularly successful against people who did seem to do their homework. Tell us about that.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Well, think about it, right? You're looking for a piano. A lot of people don't buy new pianos, you buy them used. So this is a normal thing that you would do. And part of this that really surprised me is Patricia did all the right things. In fact, she did more things than I might have done if I was looking for a piano. She googled the seller, she checked the freight company, she confirmed social media profiles. She even found the shipping company's website, which looked totally legitimate to her. And in fact, she finds out later that it'd just been created weeks before. But at the time it all sort of rang true. And that's what makes these scams so hard to detect. Scammers know how to mirror authenticity. They anticipate the things you'll check, they fake it. It's social engineering at its most advanced.

[Elliot Williams]

We're talking to Dina Temple Rasten. She's the host and managing editor of Click Here. That's a twice week tech news podcast from Recorded Future News and prx. Now, I wanna pick up on that last thing you said there, this idea of social engineering. Briefly, what is social engineering?

[Dena Temple Rastin]

It's playing on your emotions. It's basically, it's not malware, it's not ransomware. It's just a persuasive story that you want to believe. And it usually comes with a little sense of urgency. There's very little money up front. One expert we spoke to calls these kinds of scams brain hacking, that the scammers create just enough emotional incentive, whether it's the dream piano, a dream job, free concert tickets, and then your sort of rational filters that are usually up just go offline.

[Elliot Williams]

Now, along those lines, what lengths did you find that scammers went through to make it seem like pianos were actually being sent to people.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Well, there were pictures of pianos. There were sob stories. My husband died. He played the piano every day. It hurts me to just have it in the house. So I wanna get rid of it or I'm moving across country and to take it with me is more than I can do. I mean, when you think about it, pianos are really a hassle to move if you've ever had one. So just the plausibility, just the basis of it is like, I don't wanna drag this piano halfway across the country. It makes sense. You could see why someone might let it just go for shipping fees.

[Elliot Williams]

Now, it's not just about pianos. And I would assume, and tell me if I'm wrong, but I would assume that the tact for scamming or duping someone into purchasing a piano can easily translate into other items or products or services or whatever else. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Products, services, jobs, you know, it might not be a piano, it might be a car. We talked to one guy in Paris who was convinced that he was getting this Peugeot and it was about the right price and everything else. He did it completely online and then he shows up at this train station where he's supposed to meet the seller and get the car and nothing. And so this is happening everywhere. So your hackles kind of have to be up all the time when you're online and you're looking for these big ticket items.

[Elliot Williams]

And I'm going to ask you, before we pause for a moment, what did you have you discovered were good ways to not fall into scammers traps and to avoid doing exactly what they want you to do.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

So two words are key. Slow down. So these scams are designed to make you feel like you have to act fast. And that's the problem. You also have to verify. So if you get a text from FedEx about a missing package, don't click on the link, go to fedex.com I always double check the address as well. If you think it might be a scam, look at the address line. And more often than not, there are X's and numbers and something spelled wrong. And that should tell you right away that's a scam.

[Elliot Williams]

We're gonna pause right here. We're talking to Dina Temple Rastin. She's the host and managing editor of Click Here. That's a twice weekly tech news podcast from Recorded Future News and prx. Coming, we listen to an episode of Click Here. Dina meets Patricia, who went onto Facebook to Find a piano for her son Matthew. She ends up finding one, and then the transaction turns into something else entirely. I'm Elliot Williams, in for Jen white. This is one.

[Selena Larson]

A.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

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[Patricia de Beer]

Just try anything.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

This is Patricia de Beer and her son. Matthew is the one who's playing.

[Patricia de Beer]

Try it in the lighter notes, the middle notes. I like this one. Yeah.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

A few years ago, Patricia was sitting in her living room in Florida. Matthew was about 6 years old at the time, and he was seated before a small toy piano when out of the blue, he suddenly declared.

[Patricia de Beer]

He goes, hey, listen to this. And he started to play a little tune on the piano, a small piano that we had, a very, very small one.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

The tune was something he'd heard on YouTube.

[Patricia de Beer]

And I asked him where he learned it, and he said, I just heard the song and I figured it out.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Patricia was amazed. Not just because he seemed to be Plucking the tune out of thin air, but because he seemed to be so at peace while he was doing it. At 6, Matthew was like most boys his age, but he also had trouble regulating his emotions. He'd been diagnosed with a condition called disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Patricia wondered if learning to play the piano might give Matthew an outlet for all those feelings he struggled with. So Patricia went online to see if there was a used piano for him.

[Patricia de Beer]

I was on Facebook, and I was just browsing, and I came across this listing for a piano that was free.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

And not just any piano. A Steinway baby grand, a kind of Rolls Royce of pianos.

[Patricia de Beer]

So I do know what Steinway is, and I know it's a very expensive piano, and it was a baby grand piano. So I was like, that's pretty nice.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

She clicked on the listing. The piano, it said was free. The buyer just needed to pay for the shipping.

[Patricia de Beer]

So in the listing, it stated basically that the person that was selling it online was selling it for a second sister or a family member. And the person that was listing it was a bit older. So I understood that. I know my mother's not the best at listing things on Facebook, so sometimes I help out.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

And did you reach out to the person?

[Patricia de Beer]

I did, and that's when they referred me to email this person, Dr. Joyce.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

When she emailed, Dr. Joyce told her that the Steinway had belonged to her husband and he had recently passed away. And then Dr. Joyce said she was making a fresh start and was moving across the country.

[Patricia de Beer]

She then said that the piano had already been shipped out, but I could contact the freight company that was shipping it and have it rerouted.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Dr. Joyce told Patricia she could have the piano for free if she just covered the $625 rerouting fee.

[Patricia de Beer]

In my work, we ship large tables, and there has been times where I've had to reroute packages. And it takes a bit of work, but it can be done.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

She sent the money through the Zelle payment app, and she got a tracking number and a delivery date. And this was awesome. Until it wasn't. On the day the piano was set to be delivered, Patricia got a strange message.

[Patricia de Beer]

I got an email saying that I need to pay an interstate fee.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

The shipping company was asking for an additional $1,000, and I was like, what?

[Patricia de Beer]

The world's an interstate fee fee? I work with shipping, and I ship across state lines all the time. You don't pay any fees to cross state borders.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Patricia owns a furniture company, so she's very Familiar with the ins and outs of shipping even. So she double checked, Went back to the shipping company website, but this time to check when it had been registered.

[Patricia de Beer]

And that's when I realized the website had only been created, like, two weeks prior or a month prior.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Patricia realized there was no piano coming, and she had lost more than $600. But more importantly, Matthew wasn't going to get that piano. That could have helped. Looking back on it, Patricia had done just about everything she could to make sure Matthew's free piano was on the up and up. When she called the shipping company, she got the name of the woman she spoke to and then actually looked her up on Facebook Just to make sure the employee was who she said she was.

[Patricia de Beer]

I went to her profile. I went through her friends. Her profile was an older profile. She had several friends where people are wishing her happy birthday. There's communication going on on her profile. So I know her profile was a legitimate profile.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

She also vetted the person who was selling the piano, that Dr. Joyce, the Dr. Joyce lady.

[Patricia de Beer]

I looked her up. There's some Dr. Joyce out there and kind of has a tie to Vero beach. So I was like, okay, there's legitimacy there.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

She even dug into the shipping company.

[Patricia de Beer]

Everything was legitimate looking. They had tracking numbers, and the tracking numbers you could input onto their website, and it would pull up your details.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

The whole pay me through zelle situation passed Patricia's smell test, too. She was used to doing that.

[Patricia de Beer]

I pay a lot of my trucking companies through zelle. So for a trucking company to say, hey, send it by, Zelle, completely understand it.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

So when instead of a baby grand, Patricia got an email asking for more money, she began to retrace her steps. She called the delivery company's number, the one she had used before, and all.

[Patricia de Beer]

Of a sudden, it's, no, nobody's answering. Nobody's anything.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

And it just keeps ringing. So she goes online to check out the shipping company's Facebook page. It was real, just like she thought. But she found out later scammers had created it. And the shipping website, that was made up, too.

[Patricia de Beer]

The website was completely a shipping website. When you see logistics all day, it was a logistics website. So I never thought that somebody would go that far.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Objectively, this shouldn't have happened to Patricia. She works with shipping every day and even did a ton of due diligence.

[Patricia de Beer]

I was amazed that I somehow got swindled checking all my boxes.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Of course, thinking through all the angles ahead of time is the essence of a great scam. Just ask Selena Larson.

[Selena Larson]

That is something that the best social engineers will do is they will do their research to try and see what can be a convincing story.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Selena is a senior threat intelligence analyst at Proofpoint, a California cybersecurity company, and she co authored a recent report on the surge of piano scams. They've seen more than 100 piano scam emails just in the first half of 2024 alone.

[Selena Larson]

When I first saw this, I was like, you know, I find these games to be so interesting because who, who is looking for a piano?

[Dena Temple Rastin]

But any musician will tell you this is a pretty common way to get a piano. A colleague of Selena's who's a pianist told her as much.

[Patricia de Beer]

He's like, no, this is how people.

[Selena Larson]

Get rid of pianos. You know, they, they give them away for free, but ask the recipient to pay shipping, because that can be the most expensive part of it.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Starting around January 2024, a flood of postings for free pianos started making the rounds on the web. Selena and her colleagues found more than 125,000 emails linked to these scams. And lots of people have been falling for them, not just Patricia.

[Selena Larson]

So it's actually pretty clever. So if you are a musician or looking for a piano, this is not necessarily something that would immediately seem suspicious because they oftentimes how they're, you know, gotten rid of from people. Just, you know, I just, I just want to get this out of my house, but pay for shipping and it's yours.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Which, of course, is the trick. Scammers are playing on two ideas. First, the scam is pretty simple. It's not built around something really complicated like crypto. And second, they tap into people's hopes, dreams and wishes and then try to satisfy them. All this can be yours, they say, as long as you pay a little.

[Selena Larson]

Bit of money up front to whoever is offering the goods or service.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

The road to hell is paved with a whole host of these kinds of scams. Most of them are oldies but goodies. There's job fraud, where they'll pretend that.

[Selena Larson]

They'Re offering a job and say, okay, we'll send you the equipment needed for your job.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

If you just send me shipping event ticket fraud.

[Selena Larson]

Oh, if you, you've won some tickets. If you just pay me this money will send you the tickets.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Even investment fraud.

[Selena Larson]

Oh, if you pay a little bit now, if you give me a small payment of cryptocurrency, you'll get a larger one in return.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

All of this happens because of the most basic thing. Human desire.

[Selena Larson]

People can say the right things to trigger your brain to make certain decisions. And the best social engineers are also the best brain hackers. And that's really what it comes down to. There's no technological vulnerability that they're exploiting. They're exploiting the human experience.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

And more than anything else, this is the power of this kind of scam. The weak link here is humanity, which makes it nearly impossible to stop.

[Selena Larson]

It's the human piece of the cybersecurity puzzle that you can't predict and you can't patch. It's so important for us to be aware of the different ways that people can manipulate us.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Gary Gordon has been in the piano industry for four decades. He's the sales manager at the Riverton Piano Company just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. And he took us on a little tour of the showroom.

[Gary Gordon]

Yeah, I mean, we've got quite a few different pianos in here. We carry Yamaha, Baldwin, Schumann, Roland Boozendorfer.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

It's 5,000 square feet with grand pianos everywhere, including a Busendorfer. They're a handmade piano from Austria. Is that the Busendorfer there? Wow, look at that.

[Gary Gordon]

Yeah, you can see it's $286,000.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

How much?

[Gary Gordon]

$286,299.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Wow. He has a theory about why piano scams are running rampant these days. He links it all to the pandemic.

[Gary Gordon]

People didn't have anything to do. Music. Music went through the roof. Piano sales were just amazing.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Locked in your house. Time to finally learn to play the piano like you've always said you want.

[Gary Gordon]

I kind of felt a little strange during the pandemic because, you know, a lot of my friends and stuff were not doing so well, and I had my best two years ever. I mean, good gosh, 2022, I sold over a million odds worth piano.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Gary wrote a blog post on all the different scams he'd been seeing. And there was one in particular that stood out, One that he himself had been targeted with at least half a dozen times. And it seemed tailor made for music stores like his.

[Gary Gordon]

They'll see a used piano that I have advertised, and they're like, okay, I want to buy that. And I'm like, okay, well, here, I'll write this up and, you know, send me an invoice for. Send me a check for whatever, $3,000.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

They purposely overpay sending a cashier's check for $4,000.

[Gary Gordon]

So then I contact them back and say the piano was 3,000. You sent me 4,000. And then they're like, oh, yeah, well, that's for the. My movers. I'm going to send my delivery people out to pick it up and just so I don't have to write two checks, whatever. If you just write them a check for the thousand dollars, then, you know, that'll. That'll take care of it. You'll be paid, and they'll be paid. If you're dumb enough, you. They take your piano and they take $1,000, and the check turns out to be bogus.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Gary says there's a message in all of this. Verify.

[Gary Gordon]

You know, you can usually verify things by asking questions, you know, asking for more pictures, or the serial number of the piano, things like that. That's what we always tell people to ask. Find out what the name of the piano is, the serial number, the model number, the size. Because when they bring that stuff into.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Me, Gary says he can just look up the serial number and tell you the piano was made in 1972, not 2022. If they claim it's a particular model, he can tell you it doesn't match the picture. It's supposed to have spade legs, not straight ones. Even in elaborate schemes like the one targeting Patricia and her son, there are clues, if only you're willing to look for them. The problem is, most people excited about getting their dream piano, dream job, or dream concert tickets, don't want to look twice. It's understandable, because even people who study and work on fighting these kinds of scams often don't, according to Selena Larson of Proofpoint.

[Selena Larson]

I think that that's really what's interesting and why I think fraud is a little bit underappreciated and undercovered from the cybersecurity perspective, because oftentimes us as security researchers, we have this bias to things that are. Are hackable.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Find the malware. What's buried in the code? Where was the network compromised? That's the stuff we tell you about all the time. But these scams are different.

[Selena Larson]

The only activity is the conversation and the money being transferred. So I think that this kind of exposes a bias in cybersecurity. Oftentimes you. You hear people say, you know, fraud isn't even a cybersecurity thing because there's no vulnerability, there's no malware, but there is this sort of exploiting people that we don't really think of as the same thing as malware, but it really leads to some very, very serious consequences.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Consequences that really aren't so different from what malware can cause. The loss of time and money and another chink in the armor of trust. Whether you're an artist like Gary, who has built a career around the music he loves, or Patricia's son Matthew, who was just learning to play. Once she knew she was scammed, there wasn't much Patricia could do. The money was gone, though Patricia said she did have a small way to get even.

[Patricia de Beer]

But I did have my fun with them in the end. I recorded, I think I got about five email addresses from them and I reported every single email address that they came across so that Zyl would block all those accounts.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

As for her son Matthew, he's still drawn to pianos when he sees them.

[Patricia de Beer]

We were in a thrift store and he was like, starting to play and it was like. Then people started to look and he's like, oh, I shouldn't be doing this.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Fortunately, there's a piano in their building, so he occasionally will go and play that, though Patricia says he's kind of lost interest.

[Patricia de Beer]

That's all I know. That's all you know?

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Yeah. I don't.

[Patricia de Beer]

You want to try more?

[Dena Temple Rastin]

No.

[Patricia de Beer]

No.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

That was part of our story. On piano scans, Patricia and her son Matthew caught up in a con that looked and felt real. Until it wasn't. It's a reminder that the weak link isn't always the technology. It's us. This episode comes from our friends at 1A NPR and wanna used daily talk show. When we come back, more from 1A and we take some calls from listeners. Stay with us. Support for Click Here comes from Claude AI. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing for your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. Who needs a regular search when you can have a conversation with Claude about what you're looking for? And unlike some of the other AI helpers I've used, Claude doesn't retain information from previous conversations, so it's private. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Sign up for Claude today and get 50% off Claude Pro when you use my link. Claude AI clickhere. That's Claude AI clickhere right now. For 50% off your first three months of Claude Pro. And that includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude AI Clickhere.

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[Dena Temple Rastin]

We're back with more from our conversation on WAMU's 1A News program. Here's guest host Elliot Williams again.

[Elliot Williams]

Let's get back to our series Cyber Monday with the podcast Click Here. Today we get into the latest scams and how you can best protect yourself. We're here with Dina Temple Rasten, host and managing editor of Click Here. It's a twice weekly tech news podcast from a quarter Future News and prx. Dena. Welcome.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Thank you.

[Elliot Williams]

And now let's add another voice to the conversation. Joining us now from Denver, Colorado, is Amy Nofziger. She's the director of fraud victim support at AARP and she runs the organization's free fraud helpline, the Fraud Watch Network. Amy, welcome to the program.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Hi.

[Amy Nofziger]

Thanks for having me.

[Elliot Williams]

Thanks so much for being here. So, Amy, we've heard a lot today about piano scams, a particular kind of scam with people offering too good to be true deals online for a small fee. But that's not news to anyone, that there are hundreds of kinds of scams out there. The Federal Trade Commission says fraudsters stole more than $12.5 billion billion with a B from people in the United States in 2024. What other kinds of scams are you seeing most often right now?

[Amy Nofziger]

A lot. So yeah, absolutely, there's a lot out there on the helpline right now. Our top five are identity theft imposter scams relating to like a business imposter. So someone pretending to to be from Amazon, PayPal, any large company. Number three right now, which actually just moved up, is online dating scams. That's still a real big problem. Tech support scams and then imposter government scams. And that's where people are pretending to be, whether from the FBI, irs, saying there's a problem with your taxes. But those are the ones that we're most often hearing about on the helpline right now.

[Elliot Williams]

Now, it's interesting, the helpline that you're talking about is aarp, but on the other end of the age spectrum in the United States, Enrique from Kentucky called in let's hear ENRIQUE I'm only 21.

[Enrique]

So I think I'm pretty good at looking for scams and online scams. But I kind of just got scammed about a month ago when I got a message from a number saying that I needed to pay a toll bill from a bridge that I crossed, which I had earlier in the year. And I don't remember paying for it. So I got really worried because the message said that if you don't pay it, it'll double in the next week. So I clicked the link and it was the Kentucky government website and it looked just like it. So I put all my information down. Then about a week later, I see that my debit card was hacked.

[Elliot Williams]

So Amy, as Enrique seems to indicate, there are elderly people who are scammed, but also members of, I assume Generation Z who are being scammed. So my question for you is, who's likely, most likely to be the target of a scam?

[Amy Nofziger]

Every single one of us, no question. And that's a myth that ARP is certainly trying to break down. When an older adult is a victim of a scam, they're going to lose more money because they have more money to lose. And they might have more targets on their back because it's the reason why banks are robbed, right? The criminals go where the money is and older adults hold the majority of wealth in the United States. But they will steal from anyone. If you have $5, they will steal it from you. And interestingly enough, even though we are aarp, about half of our calls to the helpline are from people under 5:50. And so I just the biggest thing to take away from this is it doesn't matter how old you are, if you have a dollar to your name, there is a criminal trying to steal it from you.

[Elliot Williams]

Along those lines, Charlie, the multi generational nature of this Charlie emails us I've been buying merchandise online since the 90s and have never been scammed before. Having two millennial kids certainly helped, but they grew up and moved away. Two months ago I received a pop up message from a company that I'd purchased clothing from before, promoting an incredible sale. Of course I jumped at the chance for the deals. Well, weeks go by and nothing. I called my credit card company and they handled it for me. I felt so stupid. It sounds too good to be true and it is now. Dina this idea of too good to be true, particularly when it comes to the kinds of money that can be made online, there's a rising prevalence of cryptocurrency as a way for scammers to take people's money. So your claim your team at Click here did another podcast episode on scams, this time about what? WhatsApp groups that invite people to invest in crypto. You profiled a teacher named Stephanie. She thought this group was a legitimate way to make money and pay off some credit card debt. Now, she saw some success early on, but then others in the group asked her to invest $50,000. Let's listen.

[Stephanie]

This is money I never touched for the rainiest of days, but this was different.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

This felt like a sure thing.

[Stephanie]

So that was really enticing to think, okay, if I take money out of my teacher retirement system, this will help me pay off the credit card debt that I have and all the other debts that I have, and I'll end up coming out on top.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

So Stephanie withdrew $50,000, converted it to crypto, and transferred it into her XMed coin account. And then she sat back, biding her time until she became just like the other happy investors in the group.

[Stephanie]

They are all talking about how much money they make and how excited they are. We're going to pay off debt. I'm living this new lifestyle. I was able to buy my wife a new car. I was able to go on vacation with my family. Then you're like, oh, my gosh, I want those things, too.

[Elliot Williams]

So, Dina, of course, Stephanie eventually loses the money she invested. Now, what did you find out from your reporting about how scammers are using crypto to steal from people like Stephanie?

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Well, crypto's faster, so it allows them to sort of have a scale that they wouldn't necessarily be able to have generally. I mean, in her particular case, it was quite interesting because her retirement account had actually had offered her a legitimate sort of education system to help her invest, and she thought this particular scam was part of that. So she was sort of open to it, I think, as a general matter, because crypto is really hard to trace, really hard to get back. If someone's asking you to pay for something in crypto, your hackles should be.

[Elliot Williams]

Up now, Amy, what should people know about how cryptocurrency can be a method for scammers to steal their savings?

[Amy Nofziger]

Oftentimes, these opportunities come in. In what we call a raw number text message. It's where you'll get a text. Text message saying, hey, are you coming for dinner tonight? And you're thinking, oh, my gosh, I don't remember having plans. So you write back, sorry, I think you have the wrong number. Conversation ensues. Next thing you know, their cousin's uncle is a famous crypto investor. And that's how a lot of people are getting involved in these crypto investment scams, and they are stealing millions of dollars. The other way on the helpline is we're seeing that the criminals are using whether an imposter scam or a romance scam, but they're directing their victims to a crypto ATM machine. And right now there's about 45,000 of them located in the United States at convenience stores, liquor stores. And these machines are a conduit for people to lose tens of thousands of dollars. And there is actually a lot of great legislation going on to put better consumer protections on these machines. As you said, I'm based in Colorado and ours just passed last week. So you can only a new customer can only put $2,000 in at one time, whereas before, before people were putting in $80,000 and sending it directly to the criminal.

[Elliot Williams]

Now, Dina, what's fascinating there is that what's being played on here is basic emotions, emotions like hope, guilt, anguish. How do those emotions play into the hands of scammers?

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Oh, well, it's been con artists our whole life long have always used those emotions against us to get what they want, whether it's a shell game where you think you're following it or whether it's crypto. And I think that the adage people say it all the time, but it really is true. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. So you should verify and check it out.

[Elliot Williams]

That's Dina Temple Rastan, host and managing editor of the tech news podcast Click Here. We're also talking to Amy Nofziger. She's director of fraud victim support at aarp. I'm Elliot Williams. You're listening to one A Foreign.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

You've been listening to a special episode of Click Here, an edited version of a show we did with WAMU's 1A news magazine. You can hear the full segment with more listener calls and questions [e-mail].

[Enrique]

Foreign.

[Dena Temple Rastin]

Future news and PRX. I'm Dena Temple Reston. Our producers are Megan Dietre, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, and Zach Hirsch. And special thanks this week to one A guest host Elliot Williams and producer Michael Forlero. Click Here is edited by Karen Duff, fact checked by Darren Ancrum and contains original music by Ben Levingston with some other music from Blue Dot sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, and our illustrator is Megan Gough, Jesse Niswonger and Jake Cook. Are our sound designers and engineers. Tune in Friday for Mic Drop, which features our favorite interview of the week. We'll see you then.

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