BFC Weekly Recap: Fake Bank Logins, Widow Fraud, and a $200 Amazon Refund

Foreign.

Sometime these subprime lenders actually put a device called a starter kill in the vehicle and you have to enter a code every week.

So when you, you have to make a weekly payment, if you don't enter that code, your car won't start.

So.

So a lot of these subprime lenders, that's what they were doing, and those folks got sued for those things before as well because they felt like that was predatory.

So basically what they were doing, and I understand it from the standpoint of the lenders, because they're giving people loans who probably don't qualify, who haven't been great with their credit.

What happened is you would go and make your payment every week and they would give you a code.

You would go out to your car and type that code in your car and would give you another week to drive.

So it's an interesting thing.

So some of that equipment, you know, they overcharge for that equipment and that sort of thing.

So it's a really interesting thing.

But it's all about this subprime market.

And as the credit tightens up, we start to see more of these subprime lenders coming out and saying, yeah, maybe we took advantage of people in this particular case.

Maybe, maybe, yeah, but they're going to.

Have to cough up a lot of money or pay or show a lot of these loans were no longer valid loans anymore.

Very true, Ralph.

Almway publishes its own official income disclosure.

What did the typical person actually make?

Yeah, this is really interesting because as a kid, I remember hearing about, well, you could go sell Amway.

And that was like this side hustle that you could actually make money for.

And what's interesting is that people who sign up for this and they were looking for greed, but they kind of been pushed into this.

But the average income, and this is from Amy's own document from 2023 says that the average income was $657.

Now, they were telling people, you can make upwards of $40,000.

That's crazy.

That's a huge difference.

And what the Federal Trade Commission said is most spent more than they got back.

That's the other problem here.

Last September, the ofTC Amazon for $2.5 billion over how people signed, got signed up for prime and how hard it was to cancel.

On Thursday, the FTC announced the refunds are getting bigger and reaching more people.

The maximum payment goes from $51 to $200, and automatic payments to newly eligible customers start October 1st.

So, Ralph, who is newly eligible.

Yeah, so basically, what we're talking about here is if you signed up for Amazon prime and you didn't realize you were signing up for because they're a little deceptive in how they do.

Oh, you want this delivered today?

Do you want this delivered for free?

You can sign up for Amazon Prime.

So here's the thing about this settlement.

Amazon already knows who they need to pay because they already see who was signed up.

So there's nothing to file here, but it's basically an anti scam warning.

Basically what they're saying is that Amazon was charging you for a service.

You didn't realize what you were getting.

You were paying more for it than what they disclosed and it was super hard to cancel it.

So you just kept paying and kept paying 86 doll dollars a month.

For some people, that's what they think they're spending.

But when we did the research, what we found was more like $219 a month.

That's a gap of $133 a month.

If you do the math, that's 15 $96 a year.

What we're talking about here is how much you're spending in subscriptions for streaming services for other things you have that you just have signed up for.

And they just happen automatically.

Yeah, nobody guesses high on this number, but when you guess low, you don't realize it because auto P means nobody ever decides.

It just keeps charging and keeps charging.

Because this is Ralph's truism on this thing.

It's a little bit of a Ralph rant.

If you're not putting in at least what the business is matching, you're leaving money on the table.

It is literally stepping over top of $100 bills.

And it's.

A lot of people don't think about that, but it's a huge one.

And if you compound that year after year after year, this number grows quickly.

So just make sure you're asking the questions, make sure you're talking to HR, looking at your payroll portal, making sure your 401k is being funded.

Sometimes you have a bump in the road, you got to get more cash in your pocket.

So maybe you turn off the 401k or you turn down the percentage sometime during the year.

Go check that.

Because you still have time to make up the difference, to make sure you're contributing the match.

It might make a little bit leaner paychecks for the next few months, but it's something that's going to pay you in dividends.

And like we talked about, I waited 20 extra years to get my Retirement funding.

And even at $500 a month, it cost me a million dollars and what I could have invested.

So that's, that's how this money, how this math and this compound interest really works.

You will not realize where your money's actually going.

I have never met a single person that said to me, I bet that I spend this.

And it was high.

It's never high.

It's always lower than what you expected.

The number one thing I say to them, it's usually not an income problem, it's usually a spending problem.

This is true of individuals and it's true of businesses.

It's where your money is going.

This is the big takeaway for today.

If you don't hear anything else I say, unassigned money usually gets spent by accident.

If your money doesn't have an assignment, it's going to get spent, it's just going to go away.

You're going to be like, what happened to my money?

Assigned money builds a life on purpose, but you can't give a dollar a job if you haven't counted it yet.

If you want to become financially confident, you've got to know where your money is going.

This is real work.

Here's my promise to you.

If you put in the real work, you will get real benefits from these things and they will happen quicker than you think.

I dieted most years of my life.

I've been on this diet and that diet and what they call it, the yo yo budgets work the same way.

I know why most of my diets have failed now.

I've been in great shape.

I'm in a great place right now.

I'm down £200 and I've kept it off.

For me, it's been almost a year.

That is the best I've ever done.

Well, the way I finally did that was not say, Ralph, you can't do this, and you can't do this, and you can't do this, and you can't do this.

Because that restriction is what fought me for so many years, why I struggled with that.

So when I built this dollar job frame, the whole point of what's my dream, what can I do?

What can I choose to do?

And that's why you've got to build joy into this, build that entertainment, build those hobbies.

Now, again, if you're in that survival, stability, future mode, you might have a very small amount that you can put in the joy.

Ralph, some of our listeners may have gotten check in the mail for money they never asked to borrow.

It looks like Free money, but it could actually be a loan that uses your home as security.

So that's dangerous.

What happens if, if they sign that check?

Yeah, this is one of those junk mail things that a lot of people aren't aware about.

What this basically is, it's a home equity loan that you're basically signing by signing this check.

It's a big deal because you're putting your home on the line.

I think that's the thing we need to understand.

But it's one of those things where if you're not paying attention, you might think it's just a personal loan or some kind of line of credit that isn't attached to your home.

But that's the sinister part of this.

So here's my direction on this one.

Go find that pile of mail that you were about to throw out.

But.

But if there's a check in there that you didn't apply for, shred it.

Don't just toss it because it might have some personal information.

Another thing you can do is you can dial this number, 1-888-5-5, opt out.

Again, it's 1-888-5- opt out.

And that gets your name off these mailing lists for good.

And again, like I said, Maryland had Senate bill number 582, which is banning unsolicited secure checks, effective on October 1st.

That's actually a Maryland statute, and if you do it in Maryland, it's going to be a misdemeanor, and they can charge the person up to 500 for the mailer.

So this is an area, again, this is buyer beware or signer beware.

Just pay attention to your junk mail because that stuff might need to be shredded.

So there's a, there's a thousand dollars, $1,000 that the government will put in your kid's name.

Is the thing that you're talking about a Trump account?

It absolutely is.

And my grandson Carson is the beneficiary of this because he was born in 2026.

I want to remind the audience, if you have a child that was born in 25, 26, 27 or 28, my son and my grandson are beneficiaries of this.

It's a beautiful program.

It's free.

It is absolutely cost you nothing.

All you've got to do is set up the account.

I've talked about this on the show before.

It's free money, and it's for any baby born 25 to 28.

So once July 1 came, my son said, you know what, dad, I'm going to go enroll him in this.

So if you've got a child born in 20, 25 or later, you can do this right now.

You go to trumpaccounts.gov and you open the account so that the government will put the money in that.

Here's the best part of it.

You don't have to put a dime of your own money.

Get that seed going.

My grandfather used to take me to the dump when we were kids.

Like, we would do a project around the yard, and he would take me to the dump.

Now, Julie, this is no lie.

My grandfather.

So the way it works is you load up your truck and you drive to the dump, and they've got this scale as you go in.

But here's the problem.

My grandfather would go find stuff at the dump.

So he'd look around and be like, oh, I could use that.

My grandfather was a tinkerer.

So this one day, he takes me to the dump.

Julie, this is no lie.

We go in, they weigh us.

So we leave the dump.

And the guy in a little booth, it says, I'm gonna go ahead and weigh it now.

And he looks at my grandfather and he goes, sir, I think our scale's broken.

And my grandfather's chuckling the whole time.

He's gone.

He goes.

And my grandfather says to me, he goes, watch this.

They had to pay him because he took money from the dump.

He took more weight out of the dump than what he took in.

So the law was they had to pay him the difference.

So here.

So it's.

It reminded me of the swap meet thing because basically he went into it with the idea of getting rid of stuff, but he came back with more.

And of course, my grandmother was not happy about.

About that.

Have you ever been at the airport, you're sitting there waiting for your domestic flight, and you hear that dreaded thing come across the loudspeaker.

Flight number 1234 to Tucson, Arizona, has been canceled.

Do you know that the airline is supposed to pay you cash, not just offer you a voucher when this happens?

But here's the deal.

If they've canceled your flight or if there's a big delay, you don't have to accept a voucher.

You can ask for it by name.

Want a actual refund if the airline cancels your flight or delays it three hours or more on a domestic trip, that's the key.

Domestic, you're owed a cash refund to your original payment method.

Not a voucher, not a credit.

So here's what you say.

You be bold and say, I want the Automatic refund.

And they have to put that on the card that has to land within your account within seven days.

This is all Department of Transportation rules.

Again, it's a significant change or delay of three hours or more for a domestic flight, six hours or more for international flight.

This is a big deal and a lot of people don't know.

Now there is a refund window.

They've got seven days to put it on on your card.

20 Calendar days for other K. Do you come from a place where you were made to feel like spending money on yourself or doing things that weren't the routine was sort of like a no.

No.

Do you come from a place like that entirely?

It's just I'm very used to not always having money.

So when I did have it or when I do have it and I see something that I'm like, oh, well, I didn't have money for that before, but I have it now.

It's like, that's what's on my mind.

I want to get that.

And then after I get it, I'm like, oh, well, I probably shouldn't have done that.

I relate so hard.

Me too.

Absolutely.

And I'll share a story here on the show.

My parents split up when I was 8 and I lived in a very warped situation.

My dad was very wealthy.

Still is very wealthy.

My mom wasn't so much.

And listen, I'm not bad mouthing my mother, but there were times when I felt like.

Like we were so restricted.

And K, maybe that's what you're feeling too.

I just want to say something to you.

Kay.

It's okay.

It's okay to make mistakes.

It's okay to learn from this.

The whole point of this show is to help you make a better decisions.

On September 8, the Justice Department announced that it extradited.

Listen this.

It extradited a man.

It says to help run fake login pages.

So people found these pages through paid ads.

So Google was being paid to put these ads or sitting right at the top of the search results.

And more than 5,000 usernames and passwords were typed into pages that looked exactly like the real bank.

This is the.

One of the things about AI when you have 5,100 account takeover complaints, $262 million lost since last January.

That's crazy.

That's a big deal.

So here's your do for today.

Bookmark your bank's real login.

You can put it right into whichever browser you use.

This way you don't go in there and type into like I said, the Google, and use that.

And never log in from an ad.

This is just one of those things.

If you can avoid it, it's always a better thing to do.

The newest scam, and this one's hard to hear, people are calling from within prisons and asking you to pay bail for somebody on the outside.

They look up who just got arrested, which is a public record, and they call the family member pretending to be a bail bondsman or a court program, and say, pay now, and your son gets out.

One man, listen to this.

One man sent $12,000 through the cash app.

Through the Cash app.

And here's the thing you gotta understand.

No real agency is going to allow you to release somebody money by phone.

They're not going to allow you to do it with a gift card.

They're not gonna allow you to do it with a payment app, and they're certainly not gonna allow you to do it with cryptocurrency.

But here, if you get this call, hang up the call.

And if somebody really was just arrested, call the jail on the number from its official website and pay only in person.

A typical day would start like this.

They'd go to the ATM machine, they'd take $500 out at the casino, then they would take another 500 out.

Then they would take another 500 out, and then they would leave, and they go to a gas station down the road and take 300 out, and then they take 200 out.

And I asked him one time, I said, explain this to me.

Well, you know, we were getting money out of the ATM at the casino, but we thought maybe if we get money from over here, it'll be lucky money.

And because we actually left, we came back, and it's like, you know, and then what would happen is they'd be so far down, they'd be down $1,500.

And then they said, well, we'll just take $200 more.

And then now they're down $1,700.

Oh, I'm just gonna take $100 more, because if I win, I win all my money back.

A lot of people don't know this, but casinos, the casino payout percentages is.

Really low, isn't it?

It's like 90%.

When you look at most gaming regulations by the state, and this is where you have to be careful.

Gambled on the first dollar, the payback's like 90%.

But then when you put the second dollar in, it goes down and down and down.

Look, if you're in a casino gambling, the Odds are stacked against you.

This is an actual story that happened to a client of mine.

Husband and wife got a little baby with them.

They sit down in front of me and they show me this IRS notice.

And the IRS was asking for $10,000.

And I said, okay, did you file the return?

They said, oh, yeah, we filed the return.

We used TurboTax, and TurboTax actually got us the biggest refund we've ever gotten.

Ralph.

We got an $8,000 refund.

So here's what happened.

TurboTax talked them into deductions they didn't deserve.

And instead of getting an $8,000 refund, which they got, the IRS sent them a bill for 10 grand.

Because here's the thing, they had to pay back the 8,000 they got in error and they owe 2,000.

Like the guy said, we usually owe around $2,000.

Yeah.

So this is a big deal.

About 45% of returns this year were self prepared.

That means the person prepared them themselves.

And the interesting thing is many of those filers aren't sure they got it right.

Scammers are mining obituaries to target widows.

Scammers are using AI to read obituaries and they're calling new widows claiming the late husband owed taxes and that they have to pay now to protect the inheritance.

But this is the problem with AI tools.

These AI tools can go crunch all this data all over the place and give these people.

And you know, here's an example.

Money Wise said on an article they wrote on August 24th, one widow sent $7,000.

Oh, no, she sent money.

Yeah, she said money because she thought that something was going on.

Older Americans in 2025 lost $7.7 billion.

That's billion with a B to Internet crime.

That's up 59% from 2020.

The average case, average loss, $38,500.

They're trying to manipulate emotionally and taking advantage.

And so it's always going to be gross.

But this one is gross on a definitely a different level to me.

Yeah, this is a big deal.

So here's my takeaway for this one.

If you get one of these calls, hang up on any unsolicited call about a deceased relative, taxes or estate, call back using a number that you look up yourself, not the one that somebody gives you.

And that's the unfortunate part of this.

So many times people are very trusting.

And this is going to sound like I'm being sort of age discriminatory, but older people a lot of times are really trusting.

I have a question, though.

I Have a valid question here.

Sure, sure.

Are you of the opinion that is it.

Is it better to take the lower pay now?

Because you don't know how long you will.

You'll be here and.

And, you know, is there some merit in, hey, let's just get that lower amount of money right now?

Because you can never get that money back that you don't take by waiting to get a few hundred extra bucks down the road.

Psychology.

What's the answer to that?

Well, I'll tell you this.

When a client asks me that question, I get that question at least ten times a week.

To be blunt, is I say to them, hold on a second, let me get my crystal ball out of the drawer, and I put my crystal ball on the desk because it's really that simple.

Most of the time, what I say to people is, tell me about the genetics in your family.

Tell me about how long your mother lived.

Tell me about how long your father lived.

Tell me about your current health situation.

If I've got somebody that's staggered into my office with stage two cancer and they're like, ralph, should I take my Social Security early?

I hate to be disrespectful, but yes, probably.

So it all depends on the individual circumstance.

You're not going to go watch a TikTok video.

You're not going to watch a YouTube video and get an answer to this.

And that's the thing that's really so scary, is so many people are getting their advice by the accountant named TikTok or the account named Claude or ChatGPT.

Every eighth of a percent, which is 0.125%, is only 16amonth for every $100,000 you borrow.

You can challenge me on it.

Get a mortgage calculator and put it in.

All right.

Right now, if your interest rate is 6.875% or seven and a quarter, every $25,000 you borrow is going to be about 175 bucks per month in your payment.

Okay?

So if.

If the consumer just has the philosophy of date the rate.

Okay?

Date the rate.

Is that what you said?

Date the rate and date the payment right now.

Okay.

Okay.

We can't control what we can't control.

Exactly.

We can't control what's going on in the world, okay?

But we know that conflict comes and goes.

We know that oil prices come and go, but, you know, if you just love your neighbor, love your family, and just go on and treat.

Treat your loved ones with respect and just move on, okay?

We just can't.

Don't get lost in the noise.

Ignore the noise, all right?

Just.

Just find the home that you love.

Move into the place that you want and find it.

Don't lose opportunity by sitting around and just waiting.

Because opportunity is going to go like this.

Boom, boom.

Okay?

If you sit and wait for the rate to come up, you're going to lose.

A new poll shows that 89% of people over 65 would rather raise taxes on younger workers than touch their own Social Security.

And younger people see it almost the opposite way.

Now, I'm not shocked by that, but the Cato Institute put out a survey.

This is all money wise.

On September 16, it said 89% of those 65 and older said that, hey, just raise taxes on younger people.

And of course, if you look at Those in the 18 to 29 frame, only 47% said that this is a big deal because the people who are older, and I get it, like they're collecting Social Security.

So their point now is I'll just push it on the younger people, push it on the younger people.

But it's almost like we're getting into this position of revolt right now where the younger people are saying, yeah, well, guess what, maybe we need to trim the.

The roles of Social Security.

I think this is one of the things you're going to see talked about a lot over the next year to, to two years, because the Social Security system is going broke.

It's just a true statement.

And they're going to have to figure out something.