Protecting your money from scammers

Commission estimates scams cost U.S. households up to $158 billion annually, from phony emails to impersonation scams, fraudsters are constantly finding brand new ways to steal your hard-earned money. The scams are also getting harder to spot, too. So what can you do to spot a scam before it's too late? Bank of America executive Evelyn Patino joins us to talk about Bank of America's scaminars, their free lessons on the latest fraud tactics and how to fight back. Great to have you with us. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Okay. Well, give us the whole idea of scaminar. What is that? Yeah. So scaminars are very interactive in-person seminars that are hosted by Bank of America. And they're hosted by teammates to give the tools and resources to everyone in the community so they can exactly identify, protect, prevent, and be able to ensure that they're fully aware of what's happening around them and not be at all scammed or be part of being a fraudster. Not only for your clients, but B of A wants to save money too, right? I mean, this has to be helpful on both sides, right? Absolutely. But it also, I think more importantly, it impacts the entire community because it's not only for clients. It's open to everyone, whether you bank with us or not. Give us a little primer. What are we going to learn at a scaminar? You're going to learn great things, but we focus on giving you the basics so that as soon as you leave the seminar, you're fully equipped and you can take action. We teach you how to identify any red flags, the type of scams that are happening out there, such as social media scams, even impersonators, things like that. We also ensure that you have tools and resources that are going to help you not only protect yourself, your accounts, but also your personal information. So I was talking off camera with you. I've gotten a number of phone calls from the same company. I keep blocking them, but they find ways to weed in. They're very diligent. What should you do, especially if it's on your phone and they're calling you? Should you answer the phone and say, stop it? Should you block them? What should you do? You should block them. I wouldn't answer the phone. You need to recognize the phone number at all. And I think you've taken the right, proper steps that you shared with me earlier. Yeah. Okay. And how has the public responded to these scaminars? My goodness. Oh, we're loving it. Positive. Very positive. Even in the early stages, we started with just a couple of seminars and now they've been scaling. Bank of America will have 2,500 by the end of 2026. It's a cottage industry, I guess, right? It is. And how do we get access to them? Where are they? Here in the Bay Area? Very easy. They're all around the Bay Area. So visit one of your local financial centers at Bank of America. Any teammate will be happy to tell you more, tell you when we're going to be conducting them. But I'll tell you, in the next two weeks, you'll be seeing more than a dozen in place and more to come. No kidding. And what is the most usual type of scam? How do they get through? You said social media, I guess. Social media. Yeah. And, you know, experts are telling us that last year there was over $2.1 billion in losses. So social media is one of the primary ones that we're really telling our clients about. And are seniors more, I guess, vulnerable because they're more apt to pick up their phone and that kind of thing? You know, that's why we also have very focused seminars for seniors as well to protect them from being a victim of that. Okay. And the next one, is there a website or someplace we can go if we want to find out if and when these are all happening? Yeah. So visit local financial centers. That's number one. But we can also find you the link so you can put it on your website. Okay. And what is that? Do you know? Off the top of your head? Not on the top of my head. Okay. Bank of America. And then you'll definitely see it. All right. Well, we will put it on our website. Evelyn, very nice to meet you. Pleasure as well. I'd like to put a stop to them as well.