About
Where this came from
This started as a 25-minute talk I gave in the activity room of the assisted living community where my parents live.
I work in data protection and privacy, which mattered less than I expected. Nobody in that room needed encryption. They needed a rule short enough to remember while a stranger was shouting at them on the phone.
The talk went well. People asked for something to hand a neighbor. Then it became this. More about me on LinkedIn.
This happens to families like yours
A great-uncle took out a reverse mortgage — $300,000 of his house, gone. A coworker's father was on the phone with "Microsoft," being walked into his bank account, until she caught the call in time. A coworker's daughter sent money for months to a boyfriend she'd never met, "working in Oman."
None of them are foolish. This project exists so you can catch it the way that coworker did — in the moment, not after.
The same patterns show up constantly in federal prosecutions: a Rhode Island romance scam that cost a widower $80,000, a "phantom hacker" case where scammers collected $500,000 in gold bullion. Every one collapses at the same point: a number looked up independently instead of trusted on the call.
Why "Trust But Verify"
Trust but verify translates a Russian proverb — doveryai, no proveryai — that entered American English in the 1980s. It doesn't say trust nobody. It says: keep trusting, just check first.
The rules this site follows
One rule beats a list of forty scams to memorize — hence the three steps, repeated everywhere. No shame, ever: someone who's already lost money should be able to read any page here without flinching. Free, no products, no sponsors, no affiliate links, nothing sold. No cookies, no accounts, no mailing list — see privacy for the one exception (anonymous pageview counts) and exactly what that means.
Use anything here
Everything on this site is free to print, copy, translate, adapt, rebrand, and distribute. Put your organization's name on it. Change the wording. Hand it out at a church, a library, a clinic, a union hall, a family dinner.
You do not need our permission and you don't need to credit us.
About the translations
Everything on this site that isn't in English was translated by AI and has not been validated by a native speaker. Every translated page says so at the top, in that language, and shouldn't be printed or distributed until validated and confirmed by one.
45 languages are drafted; almost none are validated yet. We need readers. One or two hours per language, no professional qualification needed, name on the page only if you want it.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, out of date, or unclear, we want to know. Statistics come from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center and the FTC, and get reviewed every April when the new federal reports come out.
Where the numbers come from
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Annual Report and Elder Fraud section
- Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Sentinel and Protecting Older Consumers
- Department of Justice, Elder Justice Initiative
We use federal data only, and we say the year.
Scams won't stop. The goal is smaller than that: someone standing in a kitchen, phone against their ear, glances at a sheet on the fridge and hangs up to call the number on their card instead. That's the whole ambition.