The 60-minute talk, speaker script

The long version. Use it when you have a real hour, a seated audience, and a room that can hold attention: a senior center program, a library session, a residents' meeting, a church hall.

Forty-five minutes of material, fifteen for questions. Those fifteen are not padding. In every talk this project has given, the useful part was the questions.

You don't need slides for this. If you want them, the existing 22-slide deck covers the first half, and the second half runs fine from your notes. Bracketed text is direction. Don't read it aloud.

If you use the deck, it runs in a different order from this script. The deck teaches the three steps before the signs; this script does the signs first. Jump to the slides as you reach each section:

Before you start

• Handouts in your hand, not on a table. You'll give them out personally at the end, which is when people will ask you the real question quietly.
• Water, for you, within reach. An hour is longer than it sounds.
• Find the light switch before you begin, not during.
• Plan the stretch break at 23 minutes and actually take it. People stop absorbing before they stop listening.
• Never ask who has been scammed. Not for a show of hands, not anonymously, not as an icebreaker. Somebody in the room has lost money and has not told their family. The most important thing you do is make sure they leave feeling capable, not exposed.

[0:00] Welcome

Good morning. My name is [name], and I'm a volunteer.

Before anything else: I'm not selling anything. I won't ask you for money, I won't ask for your information, and there's nothing to sign up for. I'm here for about forty-five minutes, and then I'll stay as long as there are questions.

[Pause. Let people settle.]

Two halves today. The first is about the phone calls, the texts and the people at the door. The second is about your accounts, your passwords and your computer, which sounds more technical than it is.

And one idea runs through both. You don't have to get better at spotting liars. You have to get better at waiting.

[2:00] The story

[Slow down. Don't rush this.]

Last month, a woman in a building not far from here got a phone call. It was her grandson. Crying. He said he'd been arrested, and please, don't tell Mom.

Within the hour, she had eleven hundred dollars in a courier's hands.

Her grandson was at work the whole time. He didn't know any of it had happened until she told him that night.

[Pause. Let it land.]

[If you have a real local story, use that instead. Local always beats dramatic. Never name anyone, and never use a story from someone in this room.]

I want to say something about that woman before we go any further, because it matters more than anything else I'll tell you.

She is not foolish. She did exactly what a loving grandmother does when she thinks a child is in trouble. That instinct is not a weakness to be corrected. It's the best thing about her, and it's the thing they came for.

[5:00] Why it works

Scams don't target stupidity. If they did, they'd be much less profitable.

They target three ordinary things: trust, timing and manners.

[Count them on your fingers. It helps people keep hold of them.]

Trust, because you have to trust people to live a normal life. The person who trusts nobody is not safer. They're just lonely.

Timing, because they call when you're distracted, or tired, or when something is genuinely happening. Nobody is sharp at 4pm on the day the plumber is late.

Manners, and this is the one nobody talks about. Most of us were raised not to be rude to someone who is being polite. Hanging up on a person feels wrong. They know that. It is the single most useful thing they know about you.

[Pause.]

So the aim today is not to make you suspicious. It's to give you permission to be briefly impolite, and a couple of habits that work even when you're tired.

[Optional, and worth including if you have the time. It answers a question people are too polite to ask out loud.]

There's one more thing they use, and it's the least fair of all of them.

Once somebody has paid something, stopping means admitting the earlier money is gone. Paying again keeps the hope alive. So the second payment is easier to ask for than the first, and the ninth is easier than the second.

That's why people who'd never have sent a stranger a thousand dollars end up sending forty. Not because they got more gullible. Because at each step, going forward felt less painful than stopping.

If that's happened to somebody you love, that's what happened. Not stupidity. A trap built specifically to use the fact that they didn't want to have lost the first payment.

[9:00] The five signs

Almost every scam has three things in common. Not clever details. Three plain ones.

[If using slides, this is slide 4. Check the back row can read it.]

One. It came to you.

You didn't go looking for it. The call, the text, the email, the knock at the door. It arrived.

That's not proof something is a scam. Plenty of legitimate things arrive uninvited. But almost nothing that arrives uninvited needs to be dealt with in the next ten minutes.

Two. It moved you fast.

Urgency is the tell. A warrant today. A grandchild in a cell tonight. An account being emptied while you're on the phone.

Here's the part worth remembering: urgency is not evidence that something is real. It's evidence that somebody doesn't want you to check.

A real bank, a real police officer, a real government office, a real grandchild will all still be there in ten minutes. None of them will mind that you hung up to check. The only person who minds is the one who needs you on the line.

Three. It wants a transfer.

Money moving in a way that can't be undone. A wire. Cash in an envelope. Gift cards read out over the phone. Gold. Cryptocurrency at a machine in a grocery store.

[Slow here. This is the line people repeat to each other afterward.]

No real organization on earth will ask you to pay in gift cards. Not the IRS, not Medicare, not Social Security, not your bank, not the police. Not one, not ever.

And no real agency will send someone to your door to collect cash or gold. The FBI publishes that in those words, because it's happening enough that they had to.

Four. It wants it kept quiet.

"Don't tell your family, they'll worry." "This is a confidential investigation." "Your bank employee may be involved."

[Slow down. This is the one people repeat afterward.]

Of the five, this is the one that almost never has an innocent explanation. Anyone who tells you not to tell your family has told you what they are.

Five. It keeps you on the line.

Real companies hang up and let you get on with your day.

A scammer stays with you through the drive to the bank, through the store, through the machine. Because the moment you're alone with your own thoughts, you might tell somebody, and telling somebody ends it.

If you can't get off the phone to think, that is the sign. And you can always get off the phone.

[16:00] The three steps

So that's what it looks like. Here's what to do, and there are three steps.

Step one. Break the contact.

Hang up. Close the message. Step back from the door. You can't think while somebody is talking at you, and you don't owe anybody the conversation.

[Pause.]

And here's the line worth memorizing. No real police officer, bank, court, or family member tells you to stay on the phone and tell nobody.

Real agencies give you a case number and let you call back. A real grandson in trouble wants his mother told. So somebody working to keep you on the line and quiet has told you what they are. That's not a small clue. It's the whole thing.

Step two. Use a path they did not choose.

Not the number they gave you. Not the number in the email. Not the first result in a search, because those get bought.

The number on the back of your card. The number on your statement. The number you already had.

[This is the most important sentence in the talk. Say it slowly.]

The number they gave you is the scam.

And if it's about a family member, call that family member, on the number you already have. If they don't answer, call somebody else in the family. Even though the caller told you not to. Especially then.

Step three. Take all the time you can get.

Most of the time that means a day. Not an hour. A day.

Nothing real falls apart because you slept on it. And almost every one of these collapses overnight, because the story only works while you're inside it.

Some of them don't give you a day. A voice on the phone saying your grandson is in a cell doesn't leave you a night's sleep. So take what you can get: ten minutes, and one other person in the room with you. And whatever else happens, the money does not move today.

If you take one thing home today, take this: you are allowed to hang up. You don't owe an explanation. You can say one sentence and put the phone down.

[Read the next line as though you were saying it on the phone.]

"I'm going to hang up and call back on a number I look up myself."

Then hang up, whether or not they've finished talking.

[23:00] Stretch break

[Two minutes. Say it out loud, mean it, and don't fill the silence. Stand up yourself. People will come and ask you things during this break, and those conversations are often the reason the talk was worth doing.]

Let's take two minutes. Stand up if you'd like to. I'll be right here.

[25:00] The scams you'll actually meet

There are dozens. You only need to recognize five, because the rest are these wearing a different hat.

The family emergency

A grandchild in trouble. An accident, an arrest, a hospital. Then a second voice: a lawyer, a bail bondsman, an officer. Then a request for cash, often collected at your door.

The tell: secrecy arrives in the first minute. Don't tell Mom.

The fix: hang up and call that grandchild yourself. Agree a family code word this week, while nothing is happening. A word, not a fact. Facts can be looked up.

The tech support popup

Your screen freezes. There's a warning and a phone number, and the number is the only thing on the screen that still works.

Whoever answers will be calm and patient and will want to install something so they can see your computer. Then they'll ask you to open your bank account, just to check nothing's been taken.

The tell: a real security warning never includes a phone number.

The fix: turn the machine off at the power button. You can't break anything by doing that. The frozen screen is just a web page.

The bank fraud department

A text asking if you authorized a charge. You reply no. The phone rings, and the number on the screen is your bank's own number, because that can be faked.

They'll tell you your money has to be moved somewhere safe.

The tell: there isn't a good one, and I want to be honest about that rather than pretend otherwise. The number is right. They know your address and the last four digits of your account. The text arrived before the call, so the call feels like a response to something rather than a cold approach.

The one thing that gives it away is the instruction itself. Watch for the moment the conversation stops being about protecting the account and starts being about moving the money.

The fix: one rule covers all of it. Your bank will never ask you to move your money to protect it. Never, under any circumstance, in any wording.

If somebody calls and eventually says that sentence, you don't need to work out whether they're real. You already know. Hang up and call the number on the back of your card.

And one smaller thing. If a text asks you to reply yes or no about a charge, don't reply either way. Replying tells them the number is live and starts the conversation on their terms. Open your banking app instead. A real problem is visible there.

The romance or investment

Someone starts talking to you. A wrong number, a dating site, a message that seems meant for somebody else. They're kind, and they're patient, and for weeks they ask for nothing.

Then there's an opportunity. A real exchange to start with, then a platform where the number on the screen goes up. A small withdrawal works. The big one needs a tax paid first.

The tell: you have to pay a fee to get your own money out.

The fix: never invest on the advice of somebody you've only met on a screen. And know that the small withdrawal working is part of the design.

The prize

You've won. Now there's a tax, or a shipping fee, or customs.

The tell: a real prize is free. If you have to pay to collect it, it isn't a prize.

The fix: ask one question. Did I enter anything? If not, you didn't win.

[If you're running short, cut the prize scam. It's the least common of the five in most rooms. Never cut the bank one.]

[33:00] The second half: your accounts are the keys

Now the part people expect to be complicated. It isn't, and you don't need to understand how any of it works.

Think of your accounts like the keys to a house. Some keys open one door. One key opens every door.

Your email is the key that opens every door

If somebody gets into your email, they don't need your bank password. They click "forgot password" on your bank, and your bank sends the reset to your email, where they're sitting.

So of everything I'll say in the next ten minutes, this is the part that matters: protect your email more carefully than anything else.

Passwords: length, not punctuation

You've been told for twenty years to use capitals and symbols and numbers, and to change them constantly. Most of that advice was wrong, and it's been quietly dropped.

What actually makes a password strong is length.

Three or four unrelated words are better than one short word with symbols jammed in. Something like "harbor-candle-thirty". Long, and easy to type.

[Don't use a real example anyone might actually adopt. Make one up on the spot.]

And one rule that matters more than the words you pick: don't use your email password anywhere else. That one is the front door.

The six digit code, and the one rule about it

Your bank or your email may offer to text you a code when you sign in. Turn that on, for your email first and your bank second. It's the single biggest improvement most people can make in five minutes.

And then one rule, and it never has an exception:

[Slow down.]

Never read that code out to anybody.

Not to your bank. Not to the fraud department. Not to somebody helping you. That code exists to prove you are you. Anybody asking for it is trying to be you. Real institutions never ask.

Updates are not nagging

When your phone or computer says there's an update, that's usually somebody closing a hole that criminals found.

Turn on automatic updates and stop thinking about it.

Never type a password into something you reached by clicking

This one sentence prevents most of what happens online.

If a message says there's a problem with an account, don't click the link. Open the app you already have, or type the address you already know. Then look.

If there's a real problem, it'll be there. If it isn't there, there wasn't one.

[Pause here and let people write, if they're writing.]

That's the whole cybersecurity half. Five things. Protect your email hardest, make passwords long, turn on the code and never read it out, let things update, and never sign in through a link somebody sent you.

[39:00] If you came here for somebody else

[Some of the room is here for a parent, not for themselves. Say this section even if you're running behind. Cut the prize scam instead.]

Some of you are here because you're worried about somebody else. A parent, a neighbor, someone you look in on.

Three things, from people who've tried it and got it wrong first.

Ask, don't warn. "Be careful, there are a lot of scams about" produces nothing. "What would you do if somebody called saying I'd been arrested?" produces an actual conversation, and you find out the answer while everybody's calm.

Set something up together, today, rather than checking on them later. A family code word. The number on the fridge. Agreeing that either of you can call the other about anything involving money, at any hour, with no embarrassment either way. Those take ten minutes and they work on the day it matters.

And if it's already happened, be careful how you arrive.

[Slow down here.]

The instinct is to take over. Take the checkbook, take the phone, handle it. And people who've researched this find the same thing: when families do that, the person stops telling them things.

Then the next approach arrives and they deal with it alone, because telling you costs them their independence.

So the useful thing to say is not "why did you do that." It's "thank you for telling me." You want to be the person they call the next time, and that is decided entirely by how you behave the first time.

[41:00] If it's already happened

[Change your tone here. Slower and warmer. Somebody in this room is listening to this part specifically, and they will not make eye contact with you.]

I want to spend a minute on what to do if some of this has already happened, to you or to somebody you love.

First, the thing that matters most. This is not embarrassing. These are staffed operations, with scripts and quotas, run by people who do it all day and have practiced on thousands before they got to you. Losing money to a professional is not a character flaw.

And they count on the shame. The shame is the reason most of it is never reported, which is the reason it keeps working.

If money has moved, the first hour matters more than everything after it.

[Count these off. People will want to write them down. Slow enough for that.]

One. Call your bank and use the word "fraud". Ask them to try to recall it. Speed matters more than having the whole story straight.

Two. Report it at ic3.gov. That's the FBI. It sounds like a formality and it isn't: it's what lets them freeze money that's still sitting somewhere. In the cases their rapid freeze team took on last year, for people 60 and older, they froze about half the money. Frozen isn't the same as back in your account, and they only get that chance if somebody reports it fast.

Three. Call the National Elder Fraud Hotline. 833-372-8311. Monday to Friday, 10 in the morning to 6 in the evening, Eastern time. Real people, free, and they'll walk you through what to do next.

Four. Tell one person you trust. Isolation is what every one of these schemes needs to work.

And one warning. If someone contacts you afterward offering to get your money back for a fee, that's the second scam. It targets people who were hit by the first one. The FBI does not charge to investigate.

[45:00] Close

I'll stop there and take questions.

If you remember nothing else from the last hour, remember that you don't have to get better at detecting liars. Nobody is good at that, including me.

You have to get better at stopping. Break the contact. Use a path they did not choose. Take all the time you can get.

[Pause.]

Everything else today was that, applied to a specific situation.

There's a sheet coming round with the three steps and the two phone numbers on it. Put it by the phone. The point is that it's there on the day you're tired and something arrives and you're not at your sharpest, because that's the day they're counting on.

[Hand the sheets out personally now. Don't leave them on a table by the door. This is when people tell you things.]

[46:00] Questions

[Fifteen minutes, and let it run over if the room is still going.]

A few that come up almost every time, with short answers:

"What if I already gave someone my Social Security number?"

It's less catastrophic than most people fear. Open an account at ssa.gov so nobody else can open one in your name, and put a fraud alert on your credit with the three bureaus. I'll write the numbers down for you afterward.

"Should I just not answer the phone?"

You can, and plenty of people do. But you don't have to live that way. The rule works even if you answer: you can always hang up.

"My bank says it was my fault."

Sometimes they're within their rights, unfortunately, and it depends on whether you moved the money or somebody else did. Ask them for the decision in writing, then file with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Don't let the first answer be the last one.

"How do I talk to my father about this without insulting him?"

Ask him what he'd do, rather than telling him what to do. "What would you do if someone called saying I was in jail?" gets you a real conversation. "Be careful, Dad" gets you nothing.

"Is it too late to report something from two years ago?"

No. Money is rarely recovered that long after, but the report still matters for catching them. Report it.

[If you don't know an answer, say so and take their name. Then send them the answer. Never guess about somebody's money.]

[The volunteer answer sheet has more of these: /talk/volunteer-answer-sheet]

Related: The 25-minute version · The 5-minute lobby talk · How to give this talk