AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: Medicare Fraud and Scams

>> Any of those agencies that will be contacting you they, will contact you by letter. They will send you a letter if you owe back taxes. They will send you a letter regarding your Social Security benefits or your Medicare benefits. You will not get a phone call. So we urge you not to answer your call. Also watch out on your cell phone for text messages. And they are not going to text message you for many of those agencies. Another big scam going on right now is durable medical equipment scams. You get a call from someone that says Medicare wants you to have a back brace or a knee brace. Well, the first thing is, Medicare does not care whether you have a back brace or a knee brace. They will not call you and tell you that you are eligible well. If you need one of those medical equipment, we have to go to a Dr. For a face-to-face meeting, and the Dr. Has to fill out an order and you take it to a durable medical provider that is authorized by Medicare to provide that equipment. Anybody calling you saying that Medicare offers this for free, it's 100% a scam. You can count on that. Another big scam that's going on as genetic testing. Someone calls you or emails you to say that you are eligible for a scan to find out if you have cancer or some disease. Medicare does pay for those, but only in limited circumstances. The doctor fills out in order and age genetic testing agency authorized by Medicare will do the test. Anybody sending you something by email or phone saying We will send you a free test and you can be checked for cancer or Ms. Or some other disease, they are not for Medicare and Medicare will not approve it. You will get stuck with the bill. We urge you to be very careful. Your telephone is your worst enemy. Now, what can you do to prevent some of this? The first thing that AARP recommends is freeze your credit with all three credit reporting agencies. Experian, TransUnion, or Equifax. If you do that, you are going to really protect yourself from being defrauded by someone that gains access to your Medicare or your social security number, or a credit card or, something like that. We urge you to freeze your credit. It is free and it does not keep you from using your credit card. I've talked to a lot of seniors that think that if they freeze their credit, they lose their ability to use their credit card. That does not happen. We urge you to freeze your credit. Don't answer unsolicited -- unsolicited phone calls when you get a phone call or text from somebody that you don't know. That a go to vote smile. Delete the text. And delete the voicemail after you listen to it. Don't answer the phone. If you don't get on the phone, you can't be scammed. We urge you to stay away from that. I don't agree to receive any free devices. Again, Medicare will pay for these devices, but only after you go through a face-to-face meeting with your Dr.. That's the only way you will get these devices. See your physician if you think you need that. Say no to any added or free services. Anytime somebody comes along and tells you that medicare will give you free services, It's a guarantee to be a scam.

>> That is really important information, because, as we know, the sophistication with the crimes that are taking place, spoofing phone calls, things can seem very, very real. It can be hard today to decide for what is a legitimate purpose and when the fraudster is at the keypad or on the phone. I think your advice goes a long way. Terminate the phone call, just hang it up, then you can stop the portal from opening further, if you try to obtain your health information and your Medicare number.

>> Absolutely. With chat GPT, AI technology, it's making it harder for all of us to recognize these e-mails or text messages that come to our phone or come to our computer. Because in the past they used to look different with mistakes, all kinds of typographical mistakes. Now using the AI technology, they can make that text or e-mail look perfect and you think it is coming from Medicare or Social Security or your bank or credit card.

>> And of course, as you all know, we are going to be addressing artificial intelligence this spring, in March. So stay tuned as we uncover and learn more about how AI will impact our world when it comes to fraud. Shannon, thank you. That is incredible. The dollar figures that are attached to the Medicare fraud. Shawn I, know you've got a tremendous job steering the ship when it comes to complaints, being able to take a look into those, and help consumers, tell us about your role at Virginia SMP.

>> Sure. It's a lot of good work We, have a great team of about 100 paid and volunteer staff. One of the key things we do is educating individuals we, go out into the community, provide resources. But answering the hotline is one way that we get a key or a feel about what is happening on the ground. The information that gets reported is information that helps us to hopefully help this Senior resolve the issues they might be having. Whether it is some fraudulent things happening on their bank statement, sorry not, their bank statement, and their Medicare summary notice or explanation of benefits, or maybe they get a bill they don't understand. -- however, the other part of that is, the information that we gather for seniors we are able to put that into our national database. Because responses by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of the expense or general, which is national law enforcement they, are able to see these things happening on the database. They start to look at patterns. They start to see a doctor's name come up on these fraud reports multiple times. Or they see a particular lab or clinic or hospital or whatever kind of medical facility start to show up more than once in these fraud claims. That helps them to be able to track those individuals down and hopefully believe prosecute them. And so, as fraud gets reported, it also helps us to track down the perpetrators of these frauds so we can catch them and hopefully prevent them from doing it to other folks in the future.

>> Shawn, if I make consumer calling you that I feel something's happened with my Medicare number or my statement, it just does not jive with my medical appointments, how long is that process on the phone with you to do the intake?

>> Sure. It could be as long as ten to 20 minutes. Basically, we use that time to gather information from you we. Ask you lots of questions about what your concerns are and why they are concerns. Sometimes we have to gather that information from you. We may ask for copies of your Medicare summary notice or your explanation of benefits, or whatever document that might be showing up as they concern. Once we get those copies, it helps us to evaluate them and figure out what the next steps are. Depending on the severity or the complexity of the case, we can get that resolved in a couple of days or it could take a couple of weeks, maybe a little bit longer depending on how much of the investigation has to take place. Sometimes, depending on how complex it is, we actually have a team of investigators inside Medicare that are not accessible to the general public, where we can send those cases to them when they do investigations and again of, course, if it's actual fraud that's happening, they send that on to the OIG. And in many cases that could take a little bit more time until they get it figured out.

>> Okay, okay. Really it's an easy process if someone feels someone -- something has happened. It is better to be proactive and address it rather than to wait and see, was it a glitch in the system? Those benefits statements are very, very important to open and comparing contrast your activity to what medicare shows.

>> That's what we find. When we tell seniors to look at all their account statements regularly. Most seniors will look at their bank account statements, they look at their credit card statements. But we find that they don't use those Medicare summary notices or explanation of benefits enough. That is the clearest way to detect whether fraud is happening on your account. When I first got hired ten years ago, there was a woman who had gone to the pharmacy every month, paid about $48 for her prescriptions. She went in July of 2020, the pharmacist charged are about $200. And so the question of course was, why was she being charged so much the? Pharmacist stated that it looked like she'd fallen into a coverage gap, which she'd never looked at her Medicare summary notices prior to going. She went back home earlier that year, she pulled at the Medicare summary notices, and she noticed in Louisiana someone had been using her Medicare or Medicare number in order to buy narcotics. And they used it in January. Once they got away with it in January, they bought more in February, March and, so on. When she got to July the, utilized all of the benefits. We were able to open a case for her, but for her, she had to continue paying that $200 until the case was resolved. And that could have been two weeks, could have been two months, could have been two years. Of course, she would have had chance to change plans before then, but still, an extra $150 out of her paycheck for five or six months, even two months could be more than what you could have handled because of being on a fixed income. All of this could have been prevented had she looked at her Medicare summary notice when it arrived we. Could have opened the case earlier, gotten the new Medicare number for her and, she would have been resolved in this issue long before it became more of an issue.

>> One thing I think you have mentioned just to underline and highlight that is that it's not just a necessarily an isolated incident. Where a fraudster gets a number, they can continue hitting that number time and time again. It is not just one time and it might be over. I think that thing of bravery comes in that if you get by with it you are likely to go after it again and again until you get caught.

>> Exactly. That is the fraudster mentality. They figure if they find a well, they can keep drawing from it, they will keep drawing from it until they tap it dry.

>> Okay. With both Shannon & Sean, what happens if you have done the investigation, you there is an issue? What recourse is available for an older adult to work with Medicare to get a new number is that possible that you can replace that card and get a new number to stop what activity is taking place or has taken place?

>> If you call Medicare, 1800 Medicare, and report a fraud, they will look at it and see how serious it is. They don't like to change Medicare numbers if they can help it. But if you've been greatly defrauded, They may give you a new number. You would have to call Medicare to explain what is going on. I always urge in any kind of situation like this to file a police report, so that you've got some background to show Medicare what's happened. Certainly, you want to do that. Call your -- not your durable medical, but your Mehdi gaps supplemental or your -- let them know what's going on. If you think there's been fraud. I always urge people to keep their medicare statements for two years. File them away and date of order, and a catch their Medicare summary notices from their Medigap plan or a Medicare Advantage. Keep them. A Dr. Can file up to a year after the date of service. You want to keep that just to make sure that nothing erroneous or some kind of felony is going on where a Dr. Might be trying to defraud Medicare. After it gets to be going on three years old, shred them. Get yourself a good cross country shredder and -- keep them for, at least two years and look at the data. You can also go on medicare's website and sign up under your name and get an account setup. You can look what the doctors are filing right away. Because Medicare does not send you a notice about every 90 days. By that time, you can forget what has happened. Go online and look at my right after I've been to a Dr.. If I see something right away that looks foot, I will collect hurting Medicare and say, there's a problem here. You can get that. You can also order your reports and get them within two weeks after they've appeared on medicare's website. You can order a paper a report and not waiting that 90 days if you want to.

>> That is simply going to medicare.gov That is correct? To set up that portal.? Yes wonderful wonderful. Shawn, you had mentioned the process that you take. What would you say, Statistic wise, are founded versus there might have been a coding error or something that through something aside, it didn't look right. It could have been, in all honesty, a coding error through the transcription at a doctor's office that got two digits transpose and it kicked it out or made it seem strange can you tell us about that?

>> Sure. I can talk about the calls that we get. I would say the majority of the calls we receive, 72 possibly 80%, are people that receiving Medicare summary notice or they receive a bill that is something on that bill looks funny or it doesn't look familiar. Most of those are going to be human error. Whether it is, like you said, it could be a code that is wrong or a double bill for something that should not be double billed, or a lot of times people don't even -- simply don't understand the notice itself. Meaning they get a bill, I've heard often the doctor's name they have on there is not the Dr. That I saw. And we know sometimes doctors work under other people's names, whether it's a practitioner or APA. Some of those things are not really errors or actual fraud, but it's people that have concerns about what they are seeing on their bill. We are grateful that they are looking at it, because that is the way to detect fraud. It's a very small percentage of people that are actually catching actual fraud happen. A lot of that fraud happens at a place where it's unbeknownst to the actual consumer. You can certainly detect some of that on your Medicare summary notices, but there are a lot of elaborate schemes going on that we figure out later on in the background, we start to see these things accumulate. They actually start to do the investigation once we turn them. Over to the investigative body at law enforcement, it's really out of our hands. Law enforcement has it, they will not divulge on a lot of information about Open Cases. And then we find out on the backend once they prosecute someone who those cases actually belong to and you know, as our group of presenters and myself, we sat down early this summer, we had some very strategic learning goals that I really want to share with you so that, as you continue with our fraud series, keep those in mind. You will hear it time and time again that has Shannon and Shawn have both mentioned, increasing awareness. Not just of what the scam is or the various types of scams, but knowing that phone calls can be spoofed, e-mails can look legitimate and not be. To continue to raise your awareness to think before you act, to save your financial, financial information, as well as your personal and health care information. Our group also really took a look at reporting. As you heard Sean mentioned, it's a very simple process. But we're importing matters, and you will hear our speakers over the course of the next several months, to really talk about not only how you can report, where you can report, but how that data stacks up to look at trends and see what is happening in our communities, our states, in our nation. Our group also really took a look at empowerment. It is quite sad to hear oh that continues to happen and is happening, like the story that Sean had mentioned with the prescriptions and getting narcotics. But you do have a voice. That is what we want all of you to leave with today. It is the empowerment factor. You do have the ability to stop the criminal, hang up the phone, do not continue with the email. Delete it. But you do have choices and you do have options. We hear so many times older adults feel victimized. I am embarrassed that I lost money. Or I cannot believe I fell for that. That will continue to be a frame of mind that we want you to think back to today in the lectures here today at Virginia Tech that you do have a voice. You do have the ability to take proactive steps and get help. And lastly, our group really took a look at community conversations. We certainly do not want any of you today to sign off and say, That was a good program. I learned a lot. The ability to keep going and moving are those community conversations. Literally taking it to the streets. Talking to your neighbors in your community, your coffee club, your civic groups, your places of worship. Our speakers today, Shawn and Shannon, have prepared some attachments that I'm going to be emailing after the conclusion of our program, which our resources. Print them, share them with friends. Email them onto others. Keep that community conversation going. Let's all work together to help each other when it comes to combating fraud in our communities and our nation. So I want to, at this point, I want to open up. We are about 30 minutes into our program. Shawn, Shannon, a question to ask you. It will be a summary. If you can really hit the bold points, what are your top five pieces of advice? Both of you together. How we can better steer clear of a fraudster when it comes to our Medicare program? What would you say are the top five?

>> Well of, course, you've got to look at your Medicare summary notices look at them carefully. And watch what's going on. And be careful if you go out to malls and such where they may have free diabetic testing or blood pressure testing. Anywhere you go, if somebody says we give you this free test or we need your Medicare number, and never give out your Medicare number to anybody but your Dr. Or a hospital that you are going to. Always protect that Medicare number. Don't carry your social security card around in your wallet or purse. It is good to keep that locked up. You don't need to carry that around. In many cases, if you know you're not going to the Dr., Don't carry your Medicare card with you in case your purse or wallet gets snatched. But always look at your Medicare statements. Freeze your credits. We always say that. And make sure when you look at your text messages and listen into your phone, if you don't recognize it, don't answer the phone. Don't click on the text message. The Federal Trade Commission just released a study that said that $330 million was stolen from seniors last year for fraudulent text messages. Everybody has a smartphone. They look at those text messages. If you don't recognize it, don't click on it.

>> Wonderful advice there.

>> I would add to Shannon, going back to what you said earlier, these unsolicited calls, please don't answer them. A lot of times, these scammers know, they are figuring out which numbers are legitimate, because they have stolen. They figure it out by who answers the telephone. What we also know is they've done studies to figure out if there is a profile of a person that gets scammed. There really isn't a specific profile. Old people, young people, rich, poor and, educated, educated. Everyone gets scammed. What scammers know as they scan people by catching them off guard. We hear a lot of people on the phone telling us that when they call us, they caught me off guard. I was doing two things at once, I was rushing out the door, I was dealing with my kids. They catch them off guard -- catch you off guard at some point. We say don't answer that telephone. Definitely continually look at your Medicare summary of this or your statements that come in. Because those are going to be really important for detecting whether or not a scam is happening on your account. And echoing Shannon, just make sure you protect your Medicare card. The only other thing I would add is, if people are trying to get you to pay for something by some obscure method, a wire transfer, money order, or gift card, you are dealing with a scammer. While those are legitimate ways to pay, people aren't asking for those types of payment and. They ask for a credit card, cash, or check. Sometimes still. If they are asking for a money order or a wire transfer or a gift card, especially a gift card, you know you are dealing with a scammer.

>> Just hearing both of you talk, the analogy really comes to my mind that your Medicare card is, in many ways, like a credit card. That number has an infinite amount of money behind it. It may not on the surface appear, well, I know it's not my credit card. But in reality, your Medicare number can hit a higher line of credit than any bank may ever lend someone. I think hearing both of you talk, that is a very important piece. Being able to -- if you will guard your cards. Think about that Medicare card as having resources and funds behind it. And that's why somebody wants that number. As you mentioned, they want it quickly. Once they get it, they get it to work. And that really came to mind hearing you talk. While it is not a credit card, it has a lot of cash behind it.

>> Yes. There is a recent scam called the Medicare plastic card. There is an organization in Florida that's been calling people around the country trying to sell them a plastic Medicare card. And they are not authorized by Medicare to do that card. We have no idea how they are protecting your Medicare number if you give it to them. To buy one of these cards. If you want to put your Medicare card and plastic, just go buy a staples or something like that, get one of the little emanating pouches and put your card in that. There is also a scam where they call and say Medicare wants to give you a free Medicare plastic card that is 100% a scam. If you get that call, hang up the phone. All they want to do is get your Medicare number. And they will not send you a free card. They will use your Medicare number to run up bills against your account. And be very aware of the plastic Medicare scam that's going around right now.

>> And Shannon, you've got, with AARP, they wonderful host of resources online that can be a great repository of information for folks to visit, to certainly learn more about the various types of scams. AARP does a wonderful job with their publications, and their magazine, and their newsletter. Even see it myself. It's about every issue, fraud is being addressed. That is one of the topics in their magazine and their newsletter.

>> They have an 800 number that you can call. You do not have to be a member of AARP to call that fraud watching network. And they will give you support if you think you've been defrauded. They will help you to decide what are the next steps for you to do if somebody has gotten your social security or your Medicare number, or even a credit card or bank account number. They've got online where you can go online to AARP and get lots of good information about all the fraud and scams that are going on around the country.

>> I'm going to take a moment and share your slide that you have prepared where you have mentioned the 800 number and the fraud watch network resources. So that everybody can take a look at that information.

>> One other thing that AARP provides wherever you are around the country, if you belong to a church, group or senior group that you want to have a personal presentation on Medicare or scams, you can contact AARP and they have volunteers like myself in the Roanoke area that can come to your church or senior group and do Medicare or scan presentations for your group free of charge. So contact AARP for one of those presentations.

>> Okay. That is wonderful advice. Shannon is certainly out there in the local Roanoke Valley area speaking to a lot of retirement communities, churches, senior groups, to really share what he is mentioning today. I would encourage -- I know some of you are online today that are from the Roanoke city -- Roanoke Valley area. I would definitely encourage you to email him and make good use of having a presentation in your community. I know Shannon there you are one of many with AARP. So they would be able to, if someone is in Northern Virginia or the Richmond or Lynchburg area, there would be resources there for those types of community programs.

>> Absolutely. There are volunteers across the country that can do these presentations free of charge. We bring a lot of good implementation to the presentations that most groups really find informative.

>> Okay. Thank you. I know Sean you've got some information that you would like to share with all of our guests today about SMP. And as I load this slide, I wanted both of you just to take a moment after we go through this information. We do have some guest out of state to briefly explain the resources if someone is not living in Virginia. What is available to them in other sites Sure of course the SMP Senior Medicare Patrol, has a website. You can visit our website. We have some resources available on the website that people can download or can request multiple copies of those things. We also have a fraud hotline, calling that fraud hotline will get you into our system so that we can help you resolve whatever issues you might have. The hotline as a free hotline. It doesn't ever cost you anything to call or get help. When you call us and we reach out for help, we are there to help you. When it comes to the point of how to resolve an issue, we can give you instructions on how to resolve those issues, or we can make phone calls with you. Weaken have the call with you and your provider or your pharmacy, whoever you are having an issue with, even 1800 Medicare. That way you have an advocate as well as extra ears to hear what might be going on. In many cases, I hear seniors will tell us that we don't want to sit on the phone for the next 20 minutes to wait for a Medicare representative. We can get authorization from you and we can make those calls on your behalf. And then we come back to you with what steps we might need to take to get some things resolved. We try to help in any way that we can. We get a lot of phone calls, we looked at triage seniors don't have to make 100 different phone calls to get to the right place. And we do our best to get you to the representative that you can talk to if it is something that we don't handle. In addition we, do presentations for the State of Virginia as well. You can call us at an 800 number, and we can set up a time to come talk to your group, talk to whether it is -- a sorority group, friends or family a, church group, even sponsors of interests for various events going on. The Senior Medicare Patrol is a national program sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services. And you can't -- provide grants to all 50 states. There is an SMP in every state of the Union, plus four US territories. You can Google -- you go on SMP resource and they can show you on there where to reach the SMP in your particular state.

>> And both of you have AARP and Virginia SMP have wonderful social media facebook pages that I have joined myself, have a tremendous amount of information if you are connected digitally, you are on your phone, that's how you typically get the latest and greatest fastest. I would certainly encourage, look them up on social media. A lot of great content from scams that might be breaking out to -- as you know, we are getting ready to go into the holiday season. The needle moves forward or up quite a bit because scammers, as you both mentioned, know that we are busy. Our mind may not be in the right place as we are headed out to visit family. We are cooking, we are traveling, we are getting ready to hit the airlines. Scammers know that and they know that we are stretched tightly and if there is a chance to confuse, they are able to do that. And definitely for those of you out of state, you are welcome to contact both of these gentlemen, visit the RP website as well, Virginia SMP, they will be glad to connect you with programs in your area of -- states. We are right about 15 minutes till we finish. I wanted to thank you both for your time and your expertise and your vast array of knowledge which today. But we want to open up with questions. If any of you on the call today have questions that you would like to ask Shawn or Shannon, we would be glad to open that up so that you can have your own questions addressed.

>> Shannon, there is a question in the chat about a company that is asking to -- Medicare plans. Do they have to give out their number? Can they do the comparison without sharing that information? Good question.

>> Yes, This is the beginning of open enrollment. It starts October 15th and runs through December 7th for Medicare Part D plans. You are going to get an end dated with ads on TV about Part D plans for Medicare Advantage Plans. You will get phone calls coming in. Many of the phone calls are not from reputable agencies. If you want to review your medicare drug plan or look at a Medicare Advantage plan, you can go on to medicare.gov and do the Plan Finder and they will link you up with the agencies, the insurance companies where you will get a phone number. But just by reviewing the information, you do not have to give out your Medicare number. In fact, until you are getting ready to sign up for a Part D card or a Medicare Advantage plan, or even a Medigap plan, until you are with the insurance company and the agent, don't give out your Medicare number. There is no reason anybody needs who are Medicare number in order to tell you about plans that are available. And the phone, I'm getting calls at home constantly saying there for Medicare providers. They are not authorized by Medicare. Many of these scam artists use Medicare and their name to try to fool you. If you want to know good insurance companies, go to medicare.gov and they will link you with the plants in your estate that are available.

>> Okay. You brought up a very important topic there, Shannon. The open enrollment. That begins here mid month, correct? Yes it starts October 15th and runs through December 7th. If you don't change plans, you will have to stay with that plan for all of next year in your Part D plan. So you want to review it now. They are supposed to be sending out everything through them male. We know everybody gets busy with Halloween and Thanksgiving, but you cannot overlook that changes a Part D plan may have done to you. They may have dropped medicine, increased cost. So you've got to review them. There are local programs in each area of Virginia that can help you look at a plan to review to see. Or you can just go on the Plan Finder and do it yourself.

>> And Shannon and I have spoken so that if you are wondering, could we do a program like that? That is certainly one of our planes he has hit the tip of the iceberg about open enrollment with a Part D prescription plan review. Shannon has told me that he would love to come back and do a very broadened perspective on open enrollment, and how that works, what is your options. Again, that empowerment. You have a choice to make when it comes to your Part D plans. But I think Shannon's information I, see Shawn's head. He knows where I'm getting ready to go. The commercials are absolutely -- if a criminal has you online to give out information, like commercials want you to act to. You need to call, you need to get involved in this plan. It sounds wonderful. I mean, they are not doing something wrong. But the part that happens, they don't give you the full picture, not everyone needs a Cadillac prescription drug plan. Some folks may be better with a Chevy or a Ford. But they want to sell you their side of their plan. And then once you get it, it may not exactly be as bright and attractive as when the agent had you on the phone.

>> I actually put a link in the chat. There is an organization that does a program called the SCHIP program, which is something that Shannon just alluded to. The SCHIP program is a program that's also sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services. Help seniors look at all the plans to help them choose the best plan for them. The difference between the ship agent and an insurance agent is that the insurance agent has an incentivized by each different insurance company individually. One insurance company might provide them $5 for each person they sign up or, $10 for each person they sign up. The ship program, their representatives are not incentivized by insurance companies and. They are able to look at your needs and look at all of the plans available and able to help you choose the best plan for you. They don't want to push you towards a specific plan. They want you to have as much information as you can have about each of the plants, so that you get assistance and choose the right plan and that's going to be the best fit for you.

>> Okay. We've had a couple of questions that have come into the chat. Shannon, I'm going to direct this one to you. One of our listeners, how do you freeze your credit?

>> Okay. You can do that either online or you can call each of the credit agencies, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. It is easy to do. There's absolutely no charge to do it. You just need to keep your pin numbers when you freeze them. If you freeze all three, what you should do, freeze all three, if you need to take out a loan, borrow money, or something like that, you find out what your bank or the Ford dealership is going to contact. That Equifax TransUnion, you call them back and say, unfreeze it for my bank so that I can get a new credit card. And then freeze it back after my bank has looked at my credit. That's all you need to do. But freezing your credit is an incredible tool to make yourself safe, should anybody get your Social Security or Medicare number. It's online or you can call each of the three agencies. Also, look at annual credit report.com. You can review your credit report yearly at each one of the agencies. You can do it online. If you don't feel comfortable, you can download the form and may lead into the agency. In a couple of weeks they, will send you your credit report back. You need to look at your credit report annually. You have to do that. Because if there are errors out there, then your fico score can be reduced and it can cost you money when you're looking at your insurance policies, like homeowners and the auto bill. Or if you want to get a loan somewhere down the road and your fico score is low. So review your annual credit report annually with each of the three agencies.

>> That's wonderful. And I'm glad that you shared that aside, Shannon. It has a domino effect. If somebody gets your information and takes off with it, we can work to get it stopped. But it can show up on a credit report. And things like getting a home or a home equity line, it can impact you down the road. What happens yesterday can impact today's world. On that, thank you for sharing that. We did have one other question. Is there an SMP like organization in the state of Maryland?

>> Yes. There is an, SMP and Maryland. Basically there is an SMP website where you can go and find out where all the SNPs or how to connect with each of the SNPs I will go ahead and put that in lincoln the chat. It's SNP resources.org. From that particular website, you can find the SMP in your state.

>> Wonderful. Thank you, Sean. Yes. As you get off the call today with us, if you have questions and you are certainly welcome to reach out to me organizing the program today. You are welcome to reach out to Sean and Shannon. We are here to help you. Resources and questions and answers are available out there. We will help get you where in the right direction you need to go.

>> Shannon.

>> Yes?

>> One of our guests, Rudy would, like to add something.

>> Sure.

>> How do I do this?

>> Just go right ahead, sir.

>> Oh, okay. I'm a retired US Marshall, for various reasons I've stayed on top of the scams and fraud awareness world basically day in and day out, practically all day long. I just wanted to say something that kind of adds onto what Shannon said about hanging up. If there's one thing I wish I could really hammer home to seniors is that you cannot trust what you see on caller ID. Those days are over. When it first came out, it was reliable and dependable. But it is very easily spoofed. Whether it is your bank or government, for your daughter calling, whoever, it can be spoofed. Same thing with the text messages we get from banks, the five-digit code numbers. Those can be spoofed also. It's not easy to do, but they can be spoofed. You simply cannot trust the caller ID type features. And then just really quickly, according to the FTC website, you can get a copy of your credit report every week until December 31st of this year as part of the whole COVID response rollout in, case you wish to avail yourself of that. Thank you for giving me a moment to make that comment about caller ID. It is what I see hurting seniors over and over and over. The blind trust they place in what's in front of them.

>> You know, it's a good point. It is for all of us. Any age. Today, you just don't know who's on the other end of the phone line. You don't know who is on the other side of the computer. I'm text messages, we are so used to it. It is quick, click a link, and it takes us where we need to go in very few steps. Criminals have mastered that. It throws us off guard. All you have to do is click that link. As I say, you go down a rabbit hole. Sometimes it is very hard to work your way back out of it. Either a malware gets installed, people can gain control of your devices. We are going to be looking at that as we go into the cyber crimes in January. How your smart phone, your tablets, your laptops, people can gain control of them without you knowing. And they have a playground at their disposal. So thank you for bringing that up really appreciate you. We are just about out of time. To make good use of your schedules joining in with us, I absolutely appreciate all of you being here today. I hope that by shaking your head you've learned some new things that you didn't know. You will be taking information back to your friends and peers out in your community and continuing the conversation as we've mentioned. I did want to let you know that we will be having our next session in less than a month. I will pull that up for you so that you can see that. But we will be examining charity and holiday scams. We are going to have special agents Susan Armstrong with the Virginia State Police Division. We are going to have -- the Western Virginia Outreach Coordinator for the Better Business Bureau. Both of these ladies are going to be talking, as I mentioned, the needle moving upwards. As we go into the holidays, how criminals are trying to get you in a panic. And they want you to do specific things. It is a high tide as the year that we are going into could not be better. November 1, from one to 02:00 P.M. again Eastern Standard Time. If you have not registered, you can visit this website link here and sign up for this particular program. After we finish with Special Agent Armstrong and Sloan, we will take a little bit of a break from the holidays. Everybody gets extremely busy. Then we are going to be coming back in the new year to start out with our cyber crimes. We are going to be taking a dive in February to the online dating and romance scams arch. We are going to look at this artificial intelligence. What does this mean for our world? And we're going to finish up in early April with a very uplifting message about empowerment and recovery. Our group really felt these can be scary. We want you to be alert and informed. But we want you to feel empowered. You have choices. You have resources. We want you to be able to make good use of those. Any last parting remarks or comments before we finish today? I appreciate Shawn and Shannon. You are dynamite. I thank you for giving us your time. I have to brag on Shawn a little bit. This was so important for Shawn. He made a drive in Richmond, Virginia to, be in Blacksburg today. That shows a level of commitment that we all work in partnership here at Virginia Tech and across the Commonwealth. So thank you for your long distance commute to be right here in Blacksburg with us.

>> Thank you for having me. We definitely want to be out there and sharing information wherever we can. Please reach out if you have any questions or concerns that we might be able to help with.

>> Thank you so much. We will be sending out a thank you at the conclusion of our program. We will drop in resources that Shannon and Shawn want to put at your fingertips. So there is information there that you can contact both of them. But certainly, thank you. We look forward to seeing you all here in about three more weeks. It's hard to believe November 1 is about three weeks away. But we are looking forward to having you back and continuing our discussion. Thank you and go hokey.

>> Shannon, there's one person who has one question.

>> Sure.

>> I believe it's me. I did ask for a question. When freezing your assets, when the credit report is -- Social Security Number on those reports?

>> To phrase your assets, the agencies would have to have a social security number. One year online looking at annualcreditreport.com, that is the correct website, annualcreditreport.com, you have to put in your social security number. But it asks you if you want to leave it off the report when you print it off. You could do that if you want to print it off. Or you can just view your report online. You don't even have to download it if you don't want to. But in order to freeze your credit or look at your credit report, you have to give the agency's your social security number your, address, and yes, a lot of personal information. Some people don't feel comfortable doing it, but you can download the form and mail it in to Atlanta, Georgia, and you can get it back from the mail, if you want to.

>> Okay Thank, you.

>> Yeah.

>> Any last questions before we finish our time together today? Thank you all ever so much again for your time. As we say here at Virginia Tech, go Hokies. Bye now.