Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to behind the Scams. I'm Nick.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: And I'm Sue.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Today I want you to imagine a devastating scenario.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who has just discovered their life savings have been wiped out.
Maybe it's you, maybe it's a parent or grandparent.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: The money is just gone,
[00:00:26] Speaker A: completely gone.
So you do what we are trained to do in an emergency. You gather the paperwork, drive to the local police department and walk up to
[00:00:35] Speaker B: the desk because you're expecting action.
You picture detectives making calls, freezing accounts, maybe even recovering the money before it disappears. But instead, the officer across the desk glances at your printed emails, lets out a long sigh, and delivers four of the most soul crushing words in the English language.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: It's a civil matter.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: It's a civil matter that is an
[00:01:09] Speaker A: incredibly dark moment for a victim.
When you hear those words, it feels like a heavy iron door just slammed shut.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: The system seems to be saying that the devastation you're experiencing does not even qualify as a real crime, or even worse. It leaves victims feeling like the whole situation is somehow their own fault, which is just heartbreaking.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: It is. And that feeling of institutional abandonment is exactly what we're dismantling today.
After 25 years working financial crimes cases, I can tell you this.
Those four words are not always the end of the case.
Sometimes they are the beginning of the evidence problem. So today we're going to do 3.
Explain why law enforcement defaults to the civil matter label, show how scammers exploit that gap, and lay out the practical steps victims and families can take next.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: So instead of treating it as a civil matter, as the end of the road, we're treating it as the start of a very specific roadmap.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: That distinction matters because the label is rarely the final word. It is a threshold problem, not a verdict. Once you understand that threshold, you can start building the kind of evidence required to cross it. First, we have to look at the case from the detective side of the desk. It's easy to assume the police just don't care about financial crimes.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: I've heard that so many times.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: But from my days back at Treasury, I can tell you this initial dismissal usually is not about apathy. It comes down to a strict legal hurdle local police are bound by.
So when an officer tells you your situation is a civil matter, they are not necessarily denying that you've been harmed.
[00:02:59] Speaker B: They may see that you're hurting, but they still aren't treating it like a crime.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Exactly. They aren't saying your bank account isn't empty. They're saying that based on the report in front of them, they lack the immediate, tangible proof required to open a criminal investigation.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: That distinction is so important because to the victim, it sounds like rejection.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: The entire issue hinges on one highly specific legal intent.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Okay, let me jump in on behalf of anyone who has ever been ripped off. If I hire someone, give them $50,000, and they disappear with my money, isn't the intent completely obvious?
I mean, they took the money and ran.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: To the person who lost the money, the intent feels blindingly obvious.
In your gut, you know you were robbed. But in the criminal justice system, there is a technical chasm between a civil dispute and criminal fraud.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Okay, break that down for us.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: A civil dispute usually involves something like poor performance, negligence or a breach of contract.
Imagine you hire a general contractor.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Happens all the time.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: They take your $50,000 deposit. They come in and tear up your kitchen, Do a terrible job, run out of funds, and stop returning your calls.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Which is infuriating.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: It is. But as frustrating as that is, it may still be a civil issue. A business deal gone bad, even though it feels criminal. To cross the line into criminal fraud, prosecutors have to meet a much higher standard.
They have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the perpetrator knowingly and intentionally used deception to obtain that money from the very beginning.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: So applying that to the contractor scenario, Criminal fraud would mean proving the contractor took that initial deposit, knowing full well in that exact moment that they were never going to buy lumber, Never going to pull permits, and never going to swing a hammer.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Precisely.
And what makes this so difficult is proving a person's state of mind.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: How do you even do that?
[00:05:22] Speaker A: You have to prove what was inside their head when the money changed hands.
If you walk into a precinct with one isolated complaint about a failed investment or a broken promise, the detective has no way of knowing what the other party intended, because to them, it may
[00:05:38] Speaker B: look indistinguishable from a messy bankruptcy or just a negligent business owner.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Exactly.
Unless you walk in holding immediate, irrefutable
[00:05:49] Speaker B: proof of deception, like obviously forged financial
[00:05:53] Speaker A: documents or a documented pattern showing this person did the exact same thing to 20 other people.
Without that, the police are legally obligated to default to the civil classification.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: So they're essentially demanding to see the architecture of the deception, not just the resulting financial loss.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: That is the legal barrier.
Now, let's talk about the scammers playbook, because professional fraudsters have built an entire shadow industry designed to hide in that gray area. It is brilliant in the worst way.
In my work, I think of this as the vulnerability gap.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: The vulnerability gap.
That's a strong way to describe it.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Sophisticated fraudsters build their operations to sit in a space between what a victim knows happened and what a bank detective or prosecutor can immediately prove on paper.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: So it's basically like a burglar deciding that picking your lock with a crowbar is too, too risky. Instead, they put on a tailored suit, knock on your front door, and use high pressure sales tactics to get you to sign a confusing 30 page timeshare agreement for your own living room. And then when the police eventually show up, they don't see a shattered window or a dropped crowbar. They see a signature on a contract
[00:07:17] Speaker A: that captures the mechanism.
Modern scammers use professional looking contracts and polished websites that look indistinguishable from real
[00:07:26] Speaker B: investment firms with fake customer service portals and complex liability disclaimers.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: They even engage in partial performance.
They might send one or two small dividend payments from your supposedly massive investment just to keep you hooked and muddy
[00:07:42] Speaker B: the waters that makes it look like a real business.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: They engineer the interaction so that when the bottom falls out, their criminal intent looks like a market fluctuation or a business failure. That is the paperwork camouflage.
The second layer is geography. Picture this scenario because it shows why local police can be paralyzed almost immediately.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Okay, let's do it.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Picture a senior citizen living in a suburb in Arizona who gets targeted.
They wire money to a business entity that is officially incorporated in Delaware.
The broker they spoke to on the phone was calling from a Texas area code.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: But the money itself doesn't stay in
[00:08:28] Speaker A: any one place within 60 seconds. Those funds are routed through a shell company and deposited into an overseas bank account in Eastern Europe,
[00:08:39] Speaker B: which is just a nightmare.
To that senior citizen in Arizona, the crime happened right there in their living room.
But to the local responding officer, the case immediately triggers an avalanche of jurisdictional dead ends.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: In my law enforcement days, we saw jurisdiction jumping constantly. That local officer is looking at a case spanning state lines, international borders, and foreign banking institutions over which they have no legal authority.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Which puts that local Arizona officer in an impossible spot.
A badge issued in Phoenix doesn't grant you the power to demand business records in Delaware.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: And it certainly doesn't let you kick down the door of a server farm in Cyprus to seize stolen funds.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: They are fundamentally paralyzed by their own borders.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: That explains why the case stalls.
The next barrier is resources.
Complex financial crimes require specialized labor that many local departments simply do not have. You're talking about drafting complex subpoenas for out of state bank records and then waiting weeks for compliance. It can mean bringing in forensic accountants to trace cryptocurrency or wire transfers and navigating international treaties to coordinate with federal agencies. And the vast majority of local police departments simply do not have dedicated financial crimes units.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: They don't.
Many departments barely have the budget to keep patrol cars on the street.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: They often cannot justify pulling a detective off violent crime cases to spend four months chasing a digital ghost, Especially when the first complaint looks like a civil contract dispute. Scammers know exactly where local law enforcement's jurisdiction and resources end. And they deliberately set up camp one inch past that border.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: So that is the legal and logistical trap.
But there is also the emotional trap, the psychological warfare these criminals use.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: The emotional toll is staggering because modern scammers do not simply shout threats over the phone.
They build relationships. The grooming process is terrifyingly patient. Fraudsters will spend months, sometimes years, building deep, emotionally resonant relationships with their targets.
They don't ask for money on day one. They pose as sympathetic romantic partners on dating apps, deeply concerned financial advisors, or even helpful technical support workers just waiting
[00:11:23] Speaker B: for the right moment.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: They figure out what the victim is missing. Companionship, financial security, a sense of purpose. And they fill that void.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: That helps explain the underreporting crisis. When the illusion shatters, the psychological devastation is profound.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: It destroys families.
The victim realizes the person who has been saying I love you or I'm securing your grandchildren's future is actually a predator who just drained their retirement account.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: And the shame from that is completely disabling.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Victims may sit in silence for weeks because they are terrified their children will think they have dementia and take away their independence. Or because they are afraid the police will laugh at them.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: And time is the scammer's greatest asset.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: Yes.
Every single day, a victim delay delays reporting out of shame. The stolen money moves through three more overseas accounts, and the digital trail degrades.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: So the entire psychological manipulation is deliberately designed to buy the scammer time to disappear.
So shame buys the scammer time.
Jurisdiction slows the police, and the victim is left frozen.
That means the response has to be immediate.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: You have to act.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Walk us through the first response protocol.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Step one, stop the bleeding. Act immediately. To protect whatever assets remain, do not wait until Monday morning when the local branch opens. You call the fraud department of your financial institutions immediately.
You explicitly ask them to attempt to recall any recent wire transfers. Place hard fraud holds on all accounts and freeze your credit.
The digital lockdown is just as critical.
Change all your passwords immediately and set up multi factor Authentication everywhere. MFA matters. Because scammers rarely stop at the bank account, they often compromise your primary email feature first.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Right? They want control of the hub.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: If they control your inbox, they can intercept and delete the fraud alerts your bank is trying to send you. Multifactor authentication puts a physical roadblock, like a code sent to your phone, between them and your inbox.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Once the bleeding is stopped, step two may be the hardest. Emotionally preserve the crime scene.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: In a physical bank robbery, the police immediately tape off the area so nobody tampers with the evidence. In a digital fraud case, your smartphone and your laptop are the crime scene.
You cannot delete anything.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: And this goes right back to that shame factor we discussed, especially with romance scams.
Your instinct is to delete those hundreds of manipulative, embarrassing text messages. Messages.
You just want to scrub the humiliation from your phone and pretend the whole nightmare never happened.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: But giving in to that instinct can destroy your case.
You must save every email, text message, thread, caller id, screenshot, voicemail and mailed envelope. Your memory of what the scammer promised matters, but the written record matters more. Those seemingly embarrassing text messages are foundational evidence.
They are tangible proof of the deceptive promises the scammer made to get your money.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: They are the exact mechanism you use to prove criminal intent. The very thing the police need.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Step three.
Build a timeline. Before your memory starts playing tricks on you, you need to sit down and write a clinical chronological list of events.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Like when was the exact date of first contact?
[00:15:32] Speaker A: What specific promises were made, and on what dates?
When were the funds transferred?
What excuses did the scammer provide when you asked for a withdrawal? You want to hand a future investigator a clean, indexed narrative, not a part pile of panic.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: And step four is multi channel reporting.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: The blueprint is emphatic. Do not stop at the local police, particularly if they give you the civil matter brush off.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: We have to escalate it.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Escalate the reporting to every relevant agency, state consumer protection officials, the state attorney general, and adult protective services. If the victim is elderly, and most importantly, federal databases.
File a detailed report with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint center, commonly known as IC3. And contact the DOJ's National Elder Fraud Hotline.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: I have to admit, this part of the protocol sounds exhausting from the victim's point of view. If the local precinct, the people whose actual job it is to protect my town, already sent me packing.
Why on earth am I spending my weekend filling out complex web forms for five different Alphabet agencies?
It feels pointless.
Isn't that just shouting My trauma into a bureaucratic void.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: It feels like busy work.
I get that.
But this is how one isolated complaint becomes part of a pattern. Your report may not solve your case alone, but when you upload a detailed timeline and evidence to IC3, you may connect your case to nine others.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Ah, so you're giving the system the pieces to build a puzzle.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Exactly. One isolated report in Arizona may read like a civil misunderstanding, but federal databases can scan for overlaps if the system flags that. The same Texas phone number, the same Delaware LLC, and the same emotional script have defrauded 10 different senior citizens across five states.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: The picture completely changes.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Yes. The system aggregates those seemingly isolated civil disputes into a much more visible pattern of criminal deception.
You haven't just filed a complaint. You may have provided the final data point needed to expose a syndicated criminal enterprise.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: That makes total sense.
You are bypassing the local jurisdictional limits by elevating the report to a system
[00:18:20] Speaker A: that sees the whole board before the final strategic move. There is one warning every victim needs to hear.
Recovery scams.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Yes.
Secondary victimization.
This is often called a recovery scam.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: They are brutal fraud. Networks share data. They know who has recently been victimized, and they know those victims are desperate to recover stolen retirement fund funds.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: So the original scammers or their associates will reach out a few weeks later.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Exactly.
They put on a new mask. They may pose as a private investigator, an elite hacker group, or a specialized law firm, claiming they have successfully tracked down your lost funds.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: But there is a devastating catch.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: To release the funds they supposedly found, they require you to pay an upfront administrative fee or taxes.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: It is unimaginably cruel.
They victimize you, wait for you to process the grief, and then victimize you again.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: It is evil.
So remember this.
If someone says they can recover your money but needs money first, that is not recovery. Recovery.
That is round two. Legitimate agencies do not charge victims to return stolen funds.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: Okay, so with that critical warning in mind, we reach the final and I'd say most aggressive tool in this blueprint.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Yes, the offensive play. You have locked down the accounts, preserved the evidence, and reported everywhere.
Now the strategy shifts from reporting to building leverage.
This is the civil advocacy strategy.
It is not about giving up on the criminal system. It is about building the evidence the criminal system says it needs. The idea is to hire a civil attorney to move the evidence gathering forward.
To see why that matters, look at the friction victims face when they try to gather records on their own.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Okay, set the scene for us.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Let's say you realize your parents new Caregiver may be financially exploiting them, perhaps by misusing a power of attorney. If you walk into your parents bank and demand to see the last six months of statements to prove the theft, the teller is going to immediately tell you no. And they aren't being rude.
Federal privacy laws, including the Gramm Leach Bliley act, restrict a bank employee from handing over financial records without authorization.
The bank's hands are legally tied.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: So the local police will won't intervene without evidence. And you can't get the evidence because of privacy laws.
You are completely trapped.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: Exactly.
This is where a civil attorney becomes the skeleton key.
A civil lawyer has a legal tool that you as a private citizen do not.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Subpoena power.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Subpoena power.
By filing a targeted civil law lawsuit, the attorney can legally obtain records the victim cannot access alone. They can serve a legally binding subpoena on the bank, forcing compliance.
The bank is then compelled to hand over restricted account records, IP login histories and wire transfer destinations.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: And a civil attorney can seek emergency protective measures from a judge. Right?
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Right. That can mean freezing the suspect's assets or revoking the power of attorney while the slow moving criminal reports are still sitting on someone's desk.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: So the civil attorney effectively becomes a private investigator with court ordered authority.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Exactly. They gather the restricted bank records, combine them with your preserved text messages and chronological timeline, and turn all of it into a polished evidence package. That is the irony.
You used the civil legal system, the very system that first sounded like a dead end, to build a case documented well enough for the criminal system to reconsider. You are also removing the resource excuse.
You are not asking a detective to spend three months gathering evidence.
Your attorney has already done the heavy lifting.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: So you can walk back into that precinct, hand the detective a neatly organized binder and say, here is the proof of deception. Here is the pattern, here is the intent.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: You make it easier for them to review the facts, recognize that a crime may have occurred, and forward the case for prosecution.
You are handing them the closest thing possible to a silver platter criminal case that strips power away from the the scammers, bypasses institutional bottlenecks and puts leverage back in the hands of victims and their families.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: That reframes everything.
The system may feel immovable, but there are levers if you know where to look.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Here is the core takeaway.
When an officer says it's a civil matter, that is not a judge banging a gavel. It is not the end of the road and it is not a final verdict on what you endured.
It is a temporary classification based on the evidence available in that overwhelming moment.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: And the point is that classification can change if you know what the system is really asking for.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Exactly. You know how to lock down accounts. You know why you must preserve humiliating text messages.
You know how federal databases can turn isolated disputes into criminal patterns. And you know how civil subpoena power can bypass privacy barriers and help build your own glass break kit. Complex fraud cases are rarely found sitting neatly on a desk.
They are reconstructed piece by piece from the ground up.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: And maybe that is the question for another episode.
If our phones and and bank accounts are now crime scenes, what role should banks and technology play in stopping the next theft before it happens?
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Until next time, keep your guard up, document everything and never let it's a civil matter be the end of your story.
Thanks for listening to this episode of behind the Scams.
Please like and subscribe to our podcast if you haven't already. Bye for now.
