The Expert Podcast

This is a story that gets into two or three subjects that we often talk about on this channel that have to do with online scams, crypto scams, and different types of frauds. One is what happens when this occurs? How do you get your money back? Uh how do you get recovery? Number two is how does it happen to sophisticated people? If you've been a victim, you might think, gee, am I stupid? How did this happen? You're not stupid. It has nothing to do with you. uh victim um dynamics is a very u curious part of this whole thing and we'll talk about that. But number three, very important is what are third parties who may have some liability that you might not even think of.

In this case, this happened just uh in the news this week. Hollywood, Florida had a former commissioner. They were an elected um political person, elected representative. They lost $2 million to an online scam. And we'll talk about how that scam worked. It kind of sound very familiar uh to um probably what's happened in your particular um situation. And they started out small. They got a few thousand, then 10,000, and then 2 million.

The victim was presumably somebody who knows how things work. They were in politics. Now, it doesn't mean they have to be a genius to be in politics, but at least they're not some lay person who has no financial sophistication. They handle budgets. They handled operations of government. This is how these scammers work. They have on staff psychologists, psychiatrists that tell them exactly how to structure their wording of their messages, how to structure the flow of their communications with you to get you to become complacent and send them money. No matter how smart you are, we've had attorneys, uh, accountants, government agencies, um, doctors, lawyers, all have fallen victim to this. So, it has nothing to do with you. It has to do with how clever they are to do Jedi mind tricks.

Now, that being said, this case is being attached to what we talk about many times on this channel, which is thirdparty liability. Part of the reason these scammers can get away with it is because the gatekeepers for money, the banks and some of the financial institutions don't have controls in place to prevent it. Think about how many times in the last year you received a text message or an email on your phone that said, "Hey, we saw that you spent $300 at Walmart. It's a suspicious transaction. Do you approve this?" I just had it happen to me yesterday buying something from Instacart, right? I did two Instacarts within five minutes of each other and my bank said, "Hey, is this legitimate?" So, they're they're watching for suspicious transactions. Well, if they can watch for that, how come they can't prevent somebody from sending $2 million to a crypto fraud, right? So, these third party liabilities are a huge opportunity to recover potential assets.

In this case, their attorney, your video will be back in 8 seconds. In the meantime, remember you have access to live one- on-one consultation, undivided attention of a licensed certified expert in this subject and many others. We want to listen to your story. We want to hear your questions and give you expert advisement of your options. We want to tell you what we know about your situation and what options you have. Now, back to your video. Has sued four banks. The attorney said the victimi they were victimized due to negligence of financial institutions who owe a duty to protect their clients from fraudsters. As a result of this neglig negligence, our clients lost 2 million. The lawsuit was filed on May 7th in Broward Court. Names four defendants, Bank of America, Regions Bank, UBS, and Fiser Investments.

Right. So granted, the victims did some things that were risky. However, the banks have already demonstrated that they're looking out for certain types of activity. When you buy something online and they think it's um suspicious, so why weren't they looking out in this case? In fact, in in this case, Bank of America had some indication and they should have recognized was actively being victimized. They should have escalated the situation to require further investigation. They didn't. And at that point, they sent 1.9 million from investments and $200,000 in savings to the scammers to Bitcoin. So, if you are a consumer customer of a bank and you're taking all your money, transferring it to Bitcoin, would that be more or less of a suspicious transaction than a $300 payment at Walmart or whatever you get your notices on.

Even at the bank, the region's branch manager asked why they're opening the accounts and he told them, the victim told the bank person, liquidating their assets and then buying Bitcoin. This should have been an alarming financial instit alarming for a financial institution to hear. They did not take any action. They just did the transfer. and they actually encourage the victim to do that. And what makes it worse is this didn't happen instantly where somebody could get it under the wire. This took over the course of one month the transfer of 2 million to various Bitcoin wallet platforms. So here we are as a bank. You're seeing $2 million come in and then over the course of a month going out to Bitcoin. Numerous transactions wiping out their retirement account.

This is where third-party liability comes in. So, as part of a as part of a um professional investigation, you want to make sure you're investigating the scammers, the fraudsters, the flow of assets, um also the activities of the scammers, but also try to identify potential third parties that may have liability. Look, it's not up to us or anybody to determine who has liability, but you do want to start to identify who might have liability to make sure you have all your options available to you to try to recover your funds. If you like this video, be sure to click on a few others on our channel to see if there's other information that might be helpful to you about this same subject or me maybe even other related subjects that could assist you with your resolution of your issue.