Scams & MLMs

We trade real scam stories, from a dating app crypto pitch to classic IRS impersonation calls, and pull apart the red flags scammers rely on to trigger urgency and secrecy. We also connect the dots between AI voice cloning, fake grandkid cons, MLM recruitment pressure, and timeshares that never stop charging. 

• FTC romance scam losses and why dating apps are a target 
• Fake grandchild scams using AI voice cloning
• How a “financial guru” romance scam moves into crypto and fake websites 
• The telltale lines scammers use, including “don’t tell anyone” 
• How to verify URLs, domain age, and official support channels 
• Teen prank-call “scams” 
• MLM recruiting tactics and the sunk cost trap 
• Timeshares, maintenance fees, and the secondary scams  
• Practical rules like hanging up on the pause, avoiding gift cards and crypto, and calling companies directly 
If you have a story you'd like to share or have any comments, we'd love to hear from you.

Email us at info@thewomenareplotting.com, and find us on all the socials. Be safe and be excellent to each other.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jane: But because my husband didn't know what was happening, what he saw was me pick up the phone and be like, "Mm-hmm. Listen, motherfucker. No. I know that you are full of shit." And then he started yelling at me back. Like I remember saying... And he was yelling at me back in this really thick Indian accent, and he was trying to also curse me out, but with the weird idiom that he was using, 'cause I remember him telling me like, "No, you, fuck your mother. Fuck your mother so hard. I'm going to shit down your neck." And I just remember laugh- and then I just, then I 

[00:00:31] Heidi: You just, shit down your neck 

[00:00:32] Jane: then I just started laughing so hard, like maniacally. So my poor husband just sees me just answer the phone, lose my shit. He can hear someone screaming at me. And then I sat down after he told me to fuck my mother so hard and that he was gonna shit down my neck, that I just, I sat down and I was just laughing. 

[00:00:56] Etienne: Welcome listeners. This is Women Are Plotting. I'm Etienne Rose Olivier, and I'm here with my friends and co-hosts, Heidi Willis and Jane Gari.

[00:01:11] Etienne: On today's episode, we're gonna be talking about scams and multi-level marketing organizations.

[00:01:17] Etienne: Mm. So sexy. And my fun and/or interesting fact for today, which is not fun, again, 

[00:01:25] Etienne: I swear mine are never fun, it comes from the Federal Trade Commission, some terrible numbers here. The reported victims in a single year, 64,000 people formally reported falling victim to romance scams in a single year.

[00:01:39] Etienne: So this is through, like, dating apps and dating websites. The financial devastation, annual reported losses from these scams exceed $1.14 billion. The per person impact, the median loss per victim is $2,000, which is the highest median loss of any FTC fraud category. So, super sad. So sad. And actually, yeah, we'll talk about it later, but I've had somebody just yesterday was saying, "There's so many scammers out there. You never know if you're talking to a real person, a bot," like who the fuck knows? Especially the men, because I think there's more scamming people or scam,

[00:02:17] Heidi: lot of

[00:02:17] Etienne: catfishing pretending to be women, and yeah. So sad. So Jane, I think, was gonna go second today for our fun fact.

[00:02:25] Jane: Yes, and my fun fact isn't fun either, and it's also about financial loss. So we must've been like on the same hunt. But I was looking at like just how much money have people lost to these kinds of fraudulent thing, you know, like the scam thing. But Americans obviously lose billions to scams every year.

[00:02:43] Jane: But the largest year, where we topped off, like for the first time that the losses hit double digits in billions was 2023. So that was the first year that the Federal Trade Commission reported that consumers lost over 10 billion to fraud. But that includes, the scams and one of them that was really big that year, the big scam of 2023, 'cause the reporting of this actually is behind a year or two by the time they collect all the data properly. But one of them that started really hitting big that year and continues, unfortunately, is the people saying like, "Grandma, it's me. Can you send me money?" And like people, uh,

[00:03:23] Heidi: And they use AI

[00:03:25] Jane: yeah, to to mimic their

[00:03:28] Heidi: sad

[00:03:29] Jane: voices and, yeah, so fake grandchildren remain a growth industry, unfortunately. So it's like catfishing, but with your unknown entity. Like, "Grandma,

[00:03:39] Etienne: so sad. Aw

[00:03:41] Jane: I'm at college and I'm need money." You know, they just get these voices and record them and scam older people into thinking someone in their family is in need of their help. Very, very sad. So Heidi, do you have a fun fact or no? Is it

[00:03:53] Heidi: no.

[00:03:54] Etienne: Oh.

[00:03:57] Heidi: I mean, ah, yeah. I probably could have looked for, the most craziest scam ever pulled off in history, but, no, I went down the rabbit hole like you guys. 

[00:04:06] Heidi: So AARP had a recent article, and it was talking about the scams to look out for in 2026, ... So I've got five scams, and they go more in depth on these scams and what to do. So check out this AARP article that came out April 23rd, 2026. So number one, employment scams, 'cause everybody's so desperate for jobs that,

[00:04:30] Jane: Oh,

[00:04:31] Heidi: say, "Oh, this is a remote job," and need money to, you know, like, yeah. So employ-

[00:04:37] Jane: to me every week on LinkedIn.

[00:04:38] Etienne: Oh my God

[00:04:39] Heidi: Employment scams, recovery scams, which is we'll get your money back for you. So, like, they're pi- like, they're

[00:04:46] Etienne: us money

[00:04:47] Heidi: they're scamming the victims twice. It's insane. So yeah, that's another one. Digital arrest, which is we're about to arrest you, you need to send us

[00:04:57] Etienne: Oh, okay

[00:04:58] Heidi: And then hello pervert scams, which is I know what you did on Pornhub, kind of blackmail, like...

[00:05:04] Jane: Wow

[00:05:06] Heidi: and then the romance scams, which is catfishing, crypto and investment scams through these romance scams. So, so Etty can speak on this 'cause I thought, oh, this is perfect to end on this one 'cause you have a very interesting story that

[00:05:23] Etienne: I do. This just happened, with in a month actually, or maybe it was five weeks ago. It's not been very long when this started. I matched up, I think it was on Hinge, with a guy who supposedly was from Finland, and he's a financial guru working for JPMorgan, as a consultant he said.

[00:05:42] Etienne: And I was just like: Oh, that's cool. And, I saw on his profile, you know, when you start questioning how people present themselves and you point out how you are and they're like, "Yeah," like they just ignore you. Like they just... Because on his profile he said he was looking for a wife or a partner and wants to be monogamous.

[00:06:03] Etienne: And, the first thing I said to him was, " Um, yeah, I'm actually not looking for a partner. I'm actually just wanting to have casual relationships, not monogamous." And he was like, "Well, I just like to get to know a person first so we have something to talk about. Is that okay?" And so just didn't actually address my whole, like, "This is who I am. Why are you matching with me?" 'Cause he matched with me, not the other way around. But very, very, very quickly he asked me what my investments were. Like " Do you have retirement set up? Do you have retirement accounts? Like, what are they invested in?"

[00:06:39] Etienne: I told him that I was invested in the S&P, like just various S&P 500 securities and all different ones depending on which accounts company that I was with, 'cause I have different accounts in different places because of jobs or, like when I was married and et cetera.

[00:06:55] Etienne: So, he was like, "Oh, well, you know, like with the war and everything, that's just gonna go down in value. Not the best thing to be investing in right now." He also said that he had lots of experience investing in short-term gold investments. So, he said that he would help me invest my money.

[00:07:13] Etienne: And so he walked me through setting up. So there were two apps that he had me make accounts on, and these are two actual places. So it was Coinbase and, oh God, I can't remember the other one. Anyway.

[00:07:27] Jane: Like

[00:07:27] Etienne: No, it wasn't Robinhood. Shoot. I can't believe it's out of my mind right now. Coinbase is one. Of course, that's the first one I see when I'm scrolling through my phone right now.

[00:07:36] Jane: I thought Coinbase was for

[00:07:37] Etienne: Yeah, so Coinbase, it was like to buy the crypto and then you transfer it over to this other account that was a real app, and I had to create an account on there. But the weird part was...

[00:07:48] Etienne: No, it's not Kraken. I know we're gonna keep trying. I could just sit here and look through it all. But, the thing on that second one where you actually invest your money, there's like a third-party web bar, so you can type in anything that you wanna go to from there, and that's where I think the scam happens with this guy, or if this was even a person.

[00:08:06] Etienne: This could have been an AI bot, who knows? I have no idea. But when I started thinking this is probably a scam, I took that address that he gave me and put it into, there is a website that you can go to where you can verify, you can find out how old a web address is, when it was created.

[00:08:25] Etienne: And then I also, because it looked exactly like a real company where you do do investments, but it's not the same address. So, when I put in his address that he gave me into this website to see how long ago this was created, and it can give you more information if it's available, like what country it was made in, all that.

[00:08:42] Etienne: Turns out that address was made like three weeks before. Yeah. And then when you go to the real website that it looks exactly like, that shit was made in like 2020 or 2015. It was like a long-ass time ago. But when I finally did this research, this was after he'd already shown me like, "Oh, do this now.

[00:09:00] Etienne: Do this here." And he was showing me with fake money, 'cause you can set up fake money on his account, we used like $10,000 of fake money, and he made me $3,000 in four minutes or something, and I was like, "This is insane." Like how can this, this, I, yeah. Like it was in- crazy.

[00:09:17] Etienne: And he's like, "I think you're ready to put some real money in there if you want to sell some of your stock."

[00:09:22] Heidi: Wow. I wonder how many people he got with this? 

[00:09:25] Etienne: So I did. I sold some stock. I transferred, I like bought the crypto, transferred it into the secondary app, and then went to that address, that third party address that I should never have gone to.

[00:09:36] Etienne: And I think I put in, I can't remember now. But it was like maybe $5,000 or something. It was quite a bit. And then he walked me through making another purchase, and within four minutes I made like $1,800 And then he walked me through like, "Okay, well now we're gonna transfer that out."

[00:09:55] Etienne: But he didn't actually tell me when it was time to actually transfer the money out of this account, this third party account that I don't think is an actual real thing. I think it's controlled by people he works for, or if he's actually a person or the AI, I don't know. Whatever AI per- you know, whatever the fuck is going on, I don't know.

[00:10:14] Etienne: But, he didn't tell me like, I should take all of it out. I actually only took the profit out. I was leaving like the original money that I put in there, and I just took the profit. And it was after that point that I started going like, I-- he's just weird. Like the way that the texting was going on, outside of the investments, he was just such a strange person.

[00:10:34] Etienne: And, I finally just was talking to other people and he did say the words like, "Don't tell anybody what I'm teaching you how to do, that I'm not teaching anybody else to do this. I'm only teaching you. I don't want anybody to find out that I'm letting people know how to do this, or I'm exactly telling you what to buy," and all of that.

[00:10:50] Etienne: I mean, this is like how they set this shit up. So if you literally type into a Google search, "Am I being scammed?" What I did was I actually downloaded from our WhatsApp chat, I downloaded everything into a file and put it into Chat GPT and said, " Is Kevin," 'cause that's what he said his name was, "Is Kevin an AI bot or is this a real person?

[00:11:12] Etienne: What do you think?" And it said, "He might be a real person, but you can see the scam here." It literally pointed out like, "He's trying to gain your trust. He showed you how to make money really quickly, without even trying to do anything at all. He got you to put your own money into it. He then let you take that money out," it literally was going like, "And now he's telling you to sell all of your 401and put all of that in there." Yeah, he was trying to get me to liquidate my 401k work. 

[00:11:38] Jane: Oh my God, I'm so glad you didn't do that

[00:11:40] Etienne: And he was saying he was gonna give me like $100,000 of his own money. His like just lay around money that he has, $100,000 mind you.

[00:11:49] Etienne: And, let me use that to like bolster the profits and then I would just give him the 100 grand back when I had enough money. And he's making it seem like, "Oh, well, you know, I'm just so excited that I've met somebody like you, and we're gonna travel the world and be completely independent and do whatever we want.

[00:12:07] Etienne: I thought I was gonna be alone." Like he's just going off about this and he's still not listening to the fact that I said I was not looking for a long-term primary partner at all. 

[00:12:15] Etienne: And so when I finally realized I'm fucking being scammed here, and so what I did was, when I realized 100%, when I was 99.9% sure I was being scammed, at like midnight one night, I went through the exact same steps that he had me do to get the money out, and I did the same thing.

[00:12:32] Etienne: And there's a point on that third-party website where it said, "Approval pending." Like I had requested the money, but the approval wasn't happening. And when I did it the first time around with him, the approval took like two hours. This time I did it at midnight. When I woke up at 7:00 AM the next morning... it still said pending approval, I'm like, "Oh my God, this is a scam.

[00:12:53] Etienne: I'm not gonna..." Oh, that's what it was. I think I still had $5,000 in there. I think that's what it was. I had originally put 5,000 in there. So I'm like, "Well, I guess that's $5,000 gone." 

[00:13:03] Etienne: I'm like, "Wait a minute. I wonder if there's something I can do to try to get him to let the money go." Originally, when I saw that the money hadn't been released, I was like, "Hey, I put in a request to get that, like, 5,000 back out. I just wanted to make sure that, you know, I can get my money out. I've requested from my work, to liquidate my 401k and send me the money. So $30,000 is coming, and I'm really excited about investing. But I wanna see the 5,000 come out before I feel comfortable putting in the 30,000."

[00:13:33] Etienne: I said, "I'm also getting money from friends to bolster up." Like, I, yeah, I totally was, like, lying about everything. And all of a sudden, within an hour, my money was released. So the 

[00:13:44] Jane: he was like, "Okay, I phished her." He had you hooked and he was like, "All right, I'll give her 5,000 now because she's gonna invest 30 and whatever." 

[00:13:51] Etienne: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the money was released, and I fucking got that shit out of there so fast. I was like, "Out, out, out." Like, I did all the things to, like, get it out. And then I was like... I just fucking attacked him. I'm like, "I hope you don't get in trouble with your superiors that you let that money go, 'cause I'm actually not gonna be...

[00:14:08] Etienne: I know you're a scammer. This is not real." And he was like, "I don't know what you're talking about. Like, I'm a real person. And why did you tell on me on Bumble or Hinge?" I can't remember which one it was. He's like, "You reported me. I didn't do anything but help you make money. I don't understand." And then I told him, this was so funny, 'cause, you know, 

[00:14:27] Heidi: Did you get to keep the profits?

[00:14:29] Etienne: I got to keep the profit. Yeah, so I, 

[00:14:30] Heidi: You scammed him 

[00:14:31] Etienne: made money. Yeah, I actually made money. That's why I was like, "Are you gonna get in trouble? 'Cause I, I actually got more money back than I put in." Yeah, that's what I was... I... 

[00:14:39] Heidi: That's amazing

[00:14:39] Etienne: this is the part that kills me, though.

[00:14:41] Etienne: So this is a man supposedly who doesn't know what I do sexually with my life, you know, like how I conduct myself sexually. He-- I've not said to him I'm polyamorous or whatever you want, or ethically non-monogamous. I didn't say any of that. I was keeping that quiet, 'cause I was like, "If this dude's real and I can just make all this kinds of money, cool," you know?

[00:15:02] Etienne: But then obviously as time was going on, I'm like, "This is a fucking scam." So the final straw for me was I told him this is how many people I've slept with in this many weeks. This is what I do with my life. I'm not interested in having a boyfriend or a significant other.

[00:15:16] Etienne: Any man who is a normal person, who says he wants a primary partner, who wants a wife, who wants somebody to travel the world with him, does not want to find out that she's fucking every person she wants to at all times. He was like, "Oh, so you like, you like a lot... You like rough sex?" I think that's what his answer was.

[00:15:35] Etienne: "Oh, so you like rough sex?" It was like rough. I don't even know where he got that from, because I didn't say anything about that at all. And I'm like, "Uh, what are you talking about?" Like, 'cause I'm... Yeah. I'm like, "AI." Like, "You're not a real person. You're not whatever." And I did actually get him to supposedly send me a picture of his driver's license too, when I was still, like, questioning everything.

[00:15:56] Etienne: Again, if this is a real person, it said his height was 5'5" and he weighed 125 pounds. I'm like, "That's the same as me. 

[00:16:03] Jane: you? Oh 

[00:16:05] Etienne: me?" Yeah. 

[00:16:06] Jane: That's so weird. I think that was pulled from your profile. So this sounds like someone trained an agentic AI, right? To... 'Cause, you can put all these like API cor- connectors together and you could have it just run these things. Like they set up the third party site that was like the holding cell for your money, right? Where that he could then access it. Or not he, but like the, well, there's a he on the other end of the 

[00:16:31] Etienne: There's some he somewhere, right? 

[00:16:33] Jane: Yeah, or maybe multiple people, like this is some kind of, someone's running 

[00:16:37] Heidi: there's humans out there 

[00:16:38] Jane: in the background, like to scour these sites, have conversations with unsuspecting women and have them trust them, like, you know, go to these legitimate sites and then somehow funnel the money to the holding pen site that they set up that they can then extract the money from and all of these things and like running it through like legitimate things, right, first.

[00:17:00] Etienne: it was legitimate, then it was not legitimate 

[00:17:03] Jane: it's that third party site where they could then access the money and funnel it off of that. And this, someone somewhere is making a lot of money doing that. And if that money gets funneled into like a blockchain ledger, like someone's rolling it into crypto, then like that's reasons why the government has like a issue with crypto because, you, you...

[00:17:23] Jane: There are ways, I think, to like figure out like who has that, but it's really hard. It's very easy to launder money using crypto and to hide it. I'm really, I'm so happy that you were able to flip that script and scam the scammer. I'm 

[00:17:37] Etienne: I really, I was really like, "Well, that five grand is gone." Like, I get 

[00:17:41] Heidi: a 

[00:17:41] Etienne: But yeah, I actually got money. I made-- You know, I t- obviously that money that I got that wasn't mine, you know, 'cause this was all a scam,

[00:17:49] Heidi: Mm-hmm

[00:17:50] Etienne: it must belong to somebody else. You know what I mean? Like, I must have taken money that belonged to somebody else, you know, because this guy thought, or the AI or whatever, was thinking, "She's gonna send me all this crazy money.

[00:18:03] Etienne: We have to give her this back like she said, and then she'll put all this other money in there instead." So yeah, I got somebody's scammed money, which is really sad. 

[00:18:11] Jane: Or they, or it was their money that they made interest on it. Like, they're certainly, you know, making this from lots of people. Like, they're all of this 

[00:18:19] Heidi: donate it to a victim's fund or something. I don't know. 

[00:18:22] Jane: There you go. That's actually a good way 

[00:18:24] Heidi: if you feel weird about having it. Yeah. 

[00:18:28] Etienne: Yeah. That I just couldn't believe it when I saw that the withdrawal request was approved. I was like, "Oh my God." I was so excited. I was like, "Holy shit." I was actually in the middle of like a date basically. I'm like, "Give me five minutes. I need to like do something 

[00:18:41] Heidi: Yeah. 

[00:18:42] Etienne: on my phone really, really 

[00:18:43] Heidi: I'm gonna jump on this 

[00:18:44] Etienne: exactly. I mean, that shit needed to happen 

[00:18:47] Heidi: That was so smart. Yeah. This is a tip for anybody that's in the middle of a scam. 

[00:18:52] Etienne: Mm-hmm. When you think it's a 

[00:18:53] Heidi: lure them back with bigger payday and then get your money back 

[00:18:58] Etienne: Yeah 

[00:18:58] Heidi: like Etty did, and yeah, scam the scammers. 

[00:19:02] Etienne: Yeah, anything that sounds like it's too good to be true, it really is too good to be true. Like, you cannot, you know, especially when they say something like, "Don't tell anybody about this. This is just a secret between..." It's like, no, that's ex- they don't want you to tell anybody so that you're gonna be a dumbass and, you know, give them all of your fucking money, you know?

[00:19:20] Etienne: I mean, this happens to a lot of people. It's not just, uh... I mean, you've heard the celebrities who invested with people who had the Ponzi schemes. I mean, that shit happens every, like, what? Five or 10 years you hear of another celebrity that got involved in a Ponzi scheme accidentally. 

[00:19:34] Jane: Yeah, there's been crypto stuff recently. Then a Bernie Madoff years ago, that guy ripped off a lot of people's money and I mean, things I...

[00:19:42] Heidi: Bacon in them, right? Like they lost everything to that guy 

[00:19:46] Jane: I can be very trusting, right? And I want to think the best of people, but I am very grateful that I do have kind of like a bullshit detector when it comes to...

[00:19:57] Jane: Like, I've never fallen prey to like a phone call. Like, I can sniff it out. I'm just like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. Like, you're not real." And, um, and I think it's-- All right, so I'm not proud of this, so 

[00:20:08] Etienne: Oh no, I can't wait to hear this. What's...

[00:20:11] Jane: But I think it's because when I was younger, right? And you have to understand, like, this was the '80s and I was in middle school, and this is when you used to be able to prank phone call people with just impunity. We would all pick up the phone. So if you're a millennial and younger, 

[00:20:27] Heidi: It was a freaking hobby in the '80s 

[00:20:29] Jane: You're just like, "Why would you just pick up the phone when it rang?" Because you just didn't know who's it gonna be. It could be grandma, it could be your aunt, it could be your friend. So I used to just call random phone numbers, or sometimes, like we would make a game out of it, and we would, like at a slumber party, we would bust out the Yellow Pages or the White Pages, mostly the White Pages 'cause we wanted to call residents.

[00:20:53] Jane: The White Pages, you young folks, was like an actual physical book that got delivered whether you wanted it or not, like every year from the phone company, and it was freaking enormous. Depending upon where you lived, it determined the thickness of it. But we would just call people at ran- like we would flip through the book and be like, "Tell me when to stop," and then we'd stop and then just like point to a number 

[00:21:11] Heidi: You know what we looked for? We looked for the teen phones 'cause they were under, like, there's the main phone and then there would be, like, under that it would s- it would just say teen phone, and we would know instantly, "Oh, it's a kid like us. Let's call it." And 

[00:21:26] Jane: I didn't do that. I was just calling pe- we would play different games, but the scam part, to stay on theme here, came from where I would say like, "I wonder if I could convince people..." This is mean, but whatever. I was in seventh grade. It was a bad time for most people. Seventh grade isn't the best, and, my awkward phase, and I had a little bit of a mean streak, I guess. And I said, "You know, 

[00:21:47] Heidi: we're... I think everybody's an asshole at age 13 

[00:21:50] Jane: you. Thank you. I feel a little bit better. But 

[00:21:53] Heidi: It's your asshole phase. 

[00:21:54] Jane: You might not feel that way when you hear what I did to these people. Okay. So I was calling people and telling them that they won a trip to Hawaii. 

[00:22:02] Etienne: Oh no.

[00:22:02] Jane: I was pretending to be... And I could make my voice sound very grown up, and I was just like, "You've been selected." And I told them that it was like from a local radio station that obviously I was not from, but it was a radio station that everybody listened to. And I had these people so excited, and it was like a production. I had a script I was following. I had my stepsisters and my sister in on it, and I had them making airport noises in the background.

[00:22:29] Jane: I was pretending to be from Delta Airlines, like... Or no, I was pretending to be the radio show host in working in conjunctions with Delta Airlines, and I was like, "We're giving away, you know, like a trip to Hawaii." And I told them where to go in the Atlanta airport.

[00:22:43] Jane: I was living outside of Atlanta at the time, and I used to fly out of Atlanta airport several times a year to go see my dad, 'cause my parents were divorced and he lived in New York and stuff. And so I was just, I knew that airport like the back of my hand. So I was telling them what terminal to go to, and like go to the Delta gate, like at this particular thing. And I w- and so, so here's what happened. Like, so people were doing it. So I actually convinced a couple of people and they went to the airport, 'cause I ga- them like a confirmation number and like all these things. And they reported it to the fraud department for BellSouth at the time. So what ended up happening 

[00:23:23] Etienne: Oh no, Jane

[00:23:23] Heidi: You are an outlaw

[00:23:24] Jane: Okay, so here's a full circle moment for the podcast if you've been a long time listener. So the people who lived up the street from us worked for BellSouth and they had a prototype of caller ID 'cause nobody had caller ID, at this time. 

[00:23:41] Heidi: trace it. Oh, 

[00:23:43] Etienne: Oh, 

[00:23:43] Jane: I'm thinking I'm calling random numbers, but somewhere in my brain was their number, you know, because we were friends with their younger kids, but not their oldest kid, who was a jerk named Greg that you might remember from an earlier podcast as 

[00:23:59] Heidi: Oh, the Greg, the the, the 

[00:24:02] Etienne: Greg 

[00:24:02] Heidi: babysitter with 

[00:24:03] Jane: yeah, who licked the TV and, and wielded 

[00:24:06] Heidi: It comes full circle 

[00:24:07] Jane: Yes. So anyway, so his dad, Greg's dad, I was just like: "Hi, this is Susie from WR whatever." And I was just like, "And in conjunction with Delta Airlines, you just won a trip to Hawaii." And he was just like: "No, I haven't, Stephanie." And I was just like, which is my first name, everybody. I go by, 

[00:24:24] Etienne: Oh. 

[00:24:24] Jane: I go by Jane now, but I was just like, "What?" Like hanging up immediately, okay? 'Cause we had a, we also had in our neighborhood, a roster of a phone book of everybody on the street and their phone numbers, right? 'Cause we had a homeowners association and everybody knew each other. Dude, this man walked down to my house. I almost shit my pants, and he's banging on the door, "You open up right now or I'm gonna tell your parents what you did. This is very serious. This is fraud." And, he was like, "People are going to the airport." And I was like, "Oh my God." 'Cause I really didn't think anybody really believed me. I thought that they were excited at the time and hung up and gave in to the eventual disappointment in life.

[00:24:59] Jane: Like they realized like that that had to be a kid, you know? No, I was convincing and people reported it and I was in deep shit. He was like, "Open the door." I'm like, "I'm not opening the door." And I did not. I set the alarm just like I did with Greg. And I was just like, "Nobody is getting in my house right now."

[00:25:14] Jane: But my parents came home like, yeah. So anyway, because I was a minor, and because there was other beef between our parents that I won't get into, like I don't know what kind of agreement went down between like the adults, but I do know I had to write letters of apology to the people who went to the airport and everything. And, nowadays they probably would've jailed my parents or something, I don't know, or fined 

[00:25:36] Etienne: Or you would've gone to juvenile detention or something like, yeah, or community service or something. I don't know 

[00:25:41] Jane: Nothing happened to me that was off. I seriously just had to write letters of apology. But, I felt terrible. That was, like, the more serious ones. Like, I also pretended to be a radio show host and call people and I would be like, "Spontaneous trivia time." And I would be like, "If you can guess the answer to these questions, you win $100." And I would just make up, like, ridiculous questions. 

[00:26:02] Jane: Um, and, and people would be like, "Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay." And I was just like, "Oh, time's up," you know? And they would be like really doing it, and I just got off on it.

[00:26:11] Jane: I thought that this was, like, amazing. And, it was so funny to me. And we had a mute button, thankfully, because I would start sometimes, I'm like, "Okay, get it together. Get it together." You know? And I would go back into it. Like, one time, this guy was thinking, he actually won my game, and I thought my game was impossible.

[00:26:24] Jane: I was like, "What are the top three rules of bicycle safety?" And he actually guessed them. And I was like, we had done a unit in health about bicycle safety. These are the things that I was doing. So those were my scams. And, I'm not proud of it, but I can at least... It's funny now

[00:26:37] Heidi: But you know what's sad? It-- You can't really prank call anybody nowadays. Like, it's just not a thing. 

[00:26:44] Jane: You can't 

[00:26:45] Etienne: Mm-mm. 

[00:26:45] Heidi: We used to be terrible, too. And you know our scam as teenagers? We would do that, I don't even know how. Y- you know how you can, like, charge for 

[00:26:55] Jane: Oh, reverse the charges. Collect call

[00:26:57] Heidi: d- well, we could do... you could, you could, 

[00:27:00] Etienne: charges, right? Yeah, 

[00:27:01] Heidi: not reverse, but, you could say, "Hey, I wanna charge this call to this phone number." Like, just a random 

[00:27:09] Etienne: really bad. Like, you could call them anywhere if you do that 

[00:27:11] Heidi: We did it so much to call our boyfriends, 'cause, you know, everything was long distance outside of Des Moines, so it was like... so we were charging the call to another number. Just all kinds of crazy numbers. But because I was using a number where I was babysitting for something and then calling a boyfriend, like those numbers were on their phone bills, so they were calling, saying, "Why are there charges on our bill from these two numbers?" So we eventually got caught. 

[00:27:43] Jane: What happened to you? Letters of apology.

[00:27:46] Heidi: N- I, I don't even remember. I think it was just like, "Yeah, the jig is up and can't do it anymore," but got away with it for a few months

[00:27:55] Jane: My God 

[00:27:56] Etienne: That's crazy

[00:27:57] Heidi: So yeah, we were both scam artists as teenagers.

[00:28:00] Etienne: I 

[00:28:01] Heidi: Not proud. 

[00:28:01] Etienne: I n- I never did any of that. Maybe that's why I got my money back, like was my karma that I've never scammed anybody?

[00:28:09] Jane: Exactly. That was your good karma. 

[00:28:13] Jane: That's how I know that my daughter is a better person than I am because she did like where she wanted to see. She called, but see what she did is she called people that she knew. But she called them from my phone number so that they wouldn't recognize it.

[00:28:25] Jane: This was like when she was also in middle school and also in seventh grade. Hmm, full circle. It's just something about that age, you know? And I think I had told her, I'm like, "Yeah, we used to be able to prank people and you can't do it anymore 'cause they'll know your number." And she goes, "Well, what if I called from your number and then they wouldn't know, and I just called my friends and see if I could get them to pick up and then play a joke?"

[00:28:43] Jane: And I was just like, "Okay, what are you gonna do?" I shit you not, okay? And I didn't tell her about all the stuff I did. Like she still doesn't know about the Hawaii people. I'll tell her. But, she's like, "I'm gonna pretend that I'm on like a game show." And I was like, "You've gotta be kidding me.

[00:28:59] Jane: This, is this genetic? Could this be genetic?" But her game show though, th- and this might also be genetic, like it's poop humor because she had-- We were joking, like sometimes when we'd fart, like, like really it was just, I mean, like a loud reverberation. We had a running joke in our family like, "You should freaking check your pants."

[00:29:15] Jane: And then she was just like, "That should be a game show, like 'Check Your Pants.'" And you decide is that a fart that you got away with or did you probably just have a little bit of a shart situation? 

[00:29:24] Heidi: Yeah. Did you leave a stain? 

[00:29:26] Jane: Yes. So she was calling her friends and seeing if she could get them to not think it was her, and make crazy fart noises and tell them that they were on a show called "Check Your Pants" and be like, "Was that just a fart that was safe or did I just crap my pants?"

[00:29:41] Jane: And um, she had her friend play along with it, but then her friend at the end was like, "I know this is you." Right. So then she played it on my niece, and my niece did not know that it was my dau- at all, and played

[00:29:55] Heidi: Oh, she's so sheltered. 

[00:29:57] Jane: all the way to the end. And she was just like, "Okay, this is really weird, but fine, I'll do it." Okay. So fast-forward to like three months, and my niece is 'cause there's two sisters, my sister's daughters, and they were all teenagers at the same time. They're all hanging out at my house and out of nowhere, my daughter decides she's gonna let her in on the joke. It's been months, and she farted really loudly and then just went, "You wanna play check Your pants?" My niece lost her shit. She's like, "Oh my God, that was you?" She was like, "That's been haunting me for months. Like, what was that? 

[00:30:33] Heidi: that? 

[00:30:34] Jane: It was so random and weird. But, you can still get people to answer, but it's just not... it's harder now. You gotta really work for it. But my daughter was very creative. But, yeah, it's definitely-- Like they're better people than us. But then, you have people programming AI agents to try to steal people's retirement accounts. So it's just kind of like maybe it evens out. I don't know. But Heidi, you had a, like to kinda switch gears, like, 

[00:31:01] Heidi: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, So I had a boyfriend that was part of this, and I don't remember the name of it, but it was, like, some kind of cellphone, no, it was a telephone company. It was back when they broke up BellSouth and stuff, and so all these different small-timey phone companies were jumping in and giving you long distance plans or whatever.

[00:31:23] Heidi: So this thing was a phone plan, but MLM phone plan, so you had to get people to be under you to be able to make the m- it was ridiculous. So he wrote me in on that, and I got, like, one person, and I felt terrible while I was doing it. I was like, " I don't wanna do this." Like, I felt icky the whole time doing it, 

[00:31:45] Jane: You're asked to recruit other people and now you get commission to get someone under you, and then eventually you don't pay any money and you're the queen of phone town, like, what was the ultimate

[00:31:54] Etienne: You're the queen of phone town, is that you? 

[00:31:59] Heidi: It's just, I guess eventually you get enough people that are buying up the phone plans under you that you've recruited. 'Cause it's like you're buying the phone plan, right? 

[00:32:09] Etienne: I'm so confused. 

[00:32:10] Heidi: Your commission or whatever is going to the person above you. I don't know. It was very scammy. Very, very scammy. And I've been to like a, yeah, couple other MLM 

[00:32:20] Etienne: I mean, I feel like the... Have you guys ever been to one of those, like, sex toy parties? I feel like that's an MLM thing. You know what I'm talking about? 

[00:32:27] Jane: Yeah. And I've been to like Pampered Chef where like your friends are inviting you and you're supposed to buy something there, and then the person who... They're like, "Now you can throw a party." I'm like, "No, no, no. It ends here. This is not like the chain letter of Pampered Chef parties.

[00:32:40] Jane: I'm not inviting someone to my house." I've been invited to candle parties, sex toy parties. Now I went to a sex toy party and it was actually a lot of fun. But, and then they, and then they, but they were definitely trying to recruit me to be like, "Now you have a sex toy party." I was like super pregnant when I went though, so I was laughing at them.

[00:32:57] Jane: I'm like, "I'm not having a sex toy party. Like, like this is like an exit only situation right 

[00:33:03] Etienne: An exit only situat- 

[00:33:05] Jane: But yeah, that's definitely an MLM of sorts. And then 

[00:33:10] Etienne: Amway 

[00:33:11] Heidi: Oh, 

[00:33:14] Heidi: and then Amway. Oh yeah, so my ex's parents were deep into Amway for years and years and years. And I think it was that sunk cost fallacy. Like, you put so much time and money into something and you just keep it going, keep it going, keep it going. I can't believe people are still falling for it.

[00:33:28] Heidi: There was a girl, I think I sent you guys her YouTube video, but it was her story of how much she had lost in Amway, and it was like almost $200,000 

[00:33:39] Etienne: Yeah. Wasn't it almost 100,000 in one year? It was crazy. Yeah 

[00:33:43] Heidi: I can't believe people are still falling for it 'cause it's sucks the money out of you. And she said that she was working at this, like she would get done with her regular job and be at these nighttime meetings trying to recruit people. That sounds like hell. And they would be there until 2:00, 3:00 in the morning 

[00:33:58] Jane: Then you end up with a garage full of products. I know people who did that with supplements too, and they're like, "You wanna sell these supplements?" And I'm like, I don't know 

[00:34:06] Heidi: Timeshares are a scam. Uh, we could go into 

[00:34:09] Etienne: a scam. Oh my God. Oh my God. And you can't even sell those. 

[00:34:13] Etienne: My ex-husband and I bought a timeshare in Charleston, and lucky for us, for some reason, his dad, so my father, my, well, now ex-father-in-law, but at the time father-in-law, wanted to buy it from us. And I'm like, "Oh my God, yes, let him have it."

[00:34:27] Etienne: Like, "Please, please, please." And we got rid of it. I think we'd been paying on... Yeah, I think we'd been paying on it at that point for, like, four years or something when his dad bought it from us. Yeah, 'cause why have a timeshare in the fucking town that you live in? We went to Charleston to see if we wanted to move there, and then we did move there, but while we were there visiting, we bought a fucking timeshare like an asshole.

[00:34:50] Jane: So were you able to then rent it out or no?

[00:34:53] Etienne: I mean, we just were paying on it, paying on it, and I don't think we... We might have used points to go somewhere else. You can give your week back and use a week somewhere else, 'cause you obviously don't wanna be using a hotel room in Charleston when you live in Charleston.

[00:35:09] Etienne: Like it's just not... And, we have a house, so if we have guests, they can stay in the guest room. Like, they don't need to go to stay downtown in Charleston. Like, that's stupid. So yeah, his dad bought it, and I don't even know if he ever stayed there either. I think he did the whole points thing.

[00:35:23] Etienne: But the thing about timeshares is, the contracts are ridiculous. Like, when you actually read the fine print of the contracts, they're allowed to charge whatever they want for those yearly fees.

[00:35:33] Heidi: Mm-hmm. 

[00:35:34] Etienne: So you could even just buy the timeshare outright, but then you're paying thousands of dollars a year in fees

[00:35:40] Heidi: It's, yeah, it's s- it's so

[00:35:42] Etienne: And there's something too about, so let's say somebody dies who has a timeshare. I think that they can then, whoever inherits that person's possessions now has the fucking timeshare. So it's passed down, you might acquire a timeshare that you didn't even fucking want because your relative died with no will or whatever, so the timeshare is now like 

[00:36:03] Jane: Oh my gosh, and you're paying thousands 

[00:36:05] Etienne: Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, and then you're like, now you gotta pay the yearly maintenance fees on that, on a timeshare that wasn't even yours. Like, you never signed a contract. How can this be legal? It should not be legal. I'm pretty sure John Oliver did a whole episode on 

[00:36:18] Jane: He did, and then it, there he talked about the whole cottage industry that has built up around helping people get out of it, and then how some of those 

[00:36:26] Etienne: scams. Yeah. 

[00:36:28] Jane: Like you've got to be shitting yeah 

[00:36:31] Etienne: All these people, I really hope there's a hell so all these people can go there. They need to all go to hell

[00:36:39] Jane: I 

[00:36:40] Heidi: Well, if they're all living together in one place, 

[00:36:43] Etienne: my God. 

[00:36:44] Heidi: that would be hell. Like everybody is legit a scammer. Like what a hell hole 

[00:36:50] Jane: Dude, I just feel bad. Like I said, I can smell it, when someone calls me, I'm just like... At least nowadays if someone's calling you, there's like this weird pause. And in that pause, 

[00:37:02] Etienne: Mm-hmm. Yep, I hang up every time. If there's a pause, I fucking hang up. Like 

[00:37:07] Jane: that's how you know. But before there were pauses, sometimes people immediate- they know your name 'cause it's on a list somewhere, and they're just like, "Hi, how are you?"

[00:37:14] Jane: And I would usually know, like the way they said my name, I'm like, "You don't know me." But I don't know. Sometimes, maybe it was a new doctor's office calling or you just don't know. And I do remember just there was... I don't know if you guys had this happen to you, where people were impersonating IRS agents and telling you they were calling because you owed. And 

[00:37:32] Etienne: me, but I've heard of that, yeah 

[00:37:34] Jane: I knew immediately it wasn't them. But what was hilarious is that my husband did not know that I was on the phone with a scammer, and I had to kept answering the phone because I was waiting. I was looking for a job, and so I was waiting for people to call me back, from various places, and so I had to keep answering the phone.

[00:37:51] Jane: And I was losing my mind because it was also election season, so it was just robocall after robocall, and then it was this IRS scam thing. So I wasn't in the best of mood, and I just lost my shit on this guy. He was like... He, he was a scammer, so I don't feel that bad, but because my husband didn't know what was happening, what he saw was me pick up the phone and be like, "Mm-hmm. Listen, motherfucker. No. I know that you are full of shit." And then he started yelling at me back. Like I remember saying... And he was yelling at me back in this really thick Indian accent, and he was trying to also curse me out, but with the weird idiom that he was using, 'cause I remember him telling me like, "No, you, fuck your mother. Fuck your mother so hard. I'm going to shit down your neck." And I just remember laugh- and then I just, then I 

[00:38:37] Heidi: You just, shit down your neck 

[00:38:39] Jane: then I just started laughing so hard, like maniacally. So my poor husband just sees me just answer the phone, lose my shit. He can hear someone screaming at me. And then I sat down after he told me to fuck my mother so hard and that he was gonna shit down my neck, that I just, I sat down and I was just laughing.

[00:39:03] Jane: And he was like, "Are you okay?" And I was just like, "It's a scammer. It's a scammer." I was like, "He thinks he's from the IRS." And I was just like, I, I... And he was like, "I am from the iRS." I'm like, "Oh yeah, because 

[00:39:15] Etienne: You're not for... Yeah, 'cause you're gonna say, "fuck your mother, I'm gonna shit down your throat." That's totally what IRS agent says all the time. 

[00:39:22] Jane: I know. I'm like, "If you did work for the IRS, you don't now because they're definitely gonna listen to this." 

[00:39:27] Etienne: You don't now. 

[00:39:27] Jane: Uh... 

[00:39:29] Etienne: You just got fired.

[00:39:31] Heidi: Yeah. Is this being recorded

[00:39:33] Etienne: Oh, yeah. Oh. 

[00:39:35] Heidi: purposes? 

[00:39:36] Jane: Yes, could you imagine? Like, and they play that back like, "Don't do this. Don't do This They're...

[00:39:41] Etienne: This is an example of what not to say when somebody thinks you're scamming 

[00:39:47] Jane: Yeah. Just, I mean, I think that was the closest to your Etty scamming the scammer I got. I didn't scam the scammer. I just cursed out the scammer, while he also cursed at me, and it was somehow after my blood pressure came back down, um, it was a very rewarding experience 'cause I'd had a very stressful week, and I was just going at it with a real-life person. Just I've never screamed at anybody like that before in my

[00:40:12] Etienne: I had a recording of 

[00:40:13] Heidi: But yeah, that would, that would've felt cathartic 'cause you're 

[00:40:14] Etienne: like 

[00:40:16] Heidi: just like, Let me unload on you 'cause you're a bad person 

[00:40:21] Jane: I did. I was just like, "what a..." Yep. I was just like, "What a terrible job this is." But, I was like, "I hope you're making some kind of money." I'm like, "This is ridiculous. This is shameful. You're not from the IRS." "I am from the IRS." I'm like, "Oh," you know, and then it then it just escalated very 

[00:40:34] Etienne: my God. I am really, I'm really 

[00:40:36] Jane: Very quickly 

[00:40:37] Heidi: I will shit down your throat

[00:40:39] Jane: Dude, 

[00:40:39] Etienne: did he have an american accent or what 

[00:40:41] Jane: No, very, very thick Indian accent, and I don't know why it made it funnier. 

[00:40:46] Etienne: We can tell. It's just, yeah

[00:40:47] Heidi: Well, not everybody. 'Cause it's working for some, 

[00:40:50] Etienne: N- not everybody. I mean, if they do it through text, they can be from anywhere. 

[00:40:54] Heidi: yeah. There was one scam, when I was doing the research, top scams of the year. One year there was like the toll road, 

[00:41:03] Etienne: What? The Toll road scam? 

[00:41:06] Heidi: Yeah. There were texts saying, "Hey, you owe money for the E-Z. pass."

[00:41:11] Jane: I got that one

[00:41:12] Heidi: You didn't pay for your tolls." Yeah, that was getting a lot of people. But I remember seeing it going, "I wasn't there." Like, I'm not... 

[00:41:19] Etienne: Yeah, I haven't actually, yeah, I've never passed through a toll road. So, how can I owe money? 

[00:41:24] Heidi: been going through toll, so I did almost take it seriously 'cause... But I was just, when I went in, it said New York or something, and I'm like, "I haven't been to New York in years." So 

[00:41:33] Etienne: Makes sense to say New York 'cause there's more people there, so they probably have better luck of getting somebody

[00:41:38] Heidi: Yeah, when I did the search, I saw that it was a scam, so I'm like, "Okay, disregard all of these 

[00:41:43] Jane: Yeah, so some lessons here as we wrap this up is that do what Etty did. The second you smell something, and Heidi, you were just hinting at it too, if you smell a scam, just start, literally whatever's happening to you at the moment, write it into a Google search and be like, "Is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah a scam?

[00:42:01] Jane: Is getting a job that sounds like remote work, blah, blah, blah on LinkedIn and they're texting me, is that a scam?" Just talk to your friends and be like, "Is this happening to you?" It probably is happening to people and, but definitely just do a quick search. Don't give anybody any information. Cold calls are just not a thing anymore, not legitimately. Very, very rare, so just don't, just 

[00:42:23] Heidi: And if they're threatening you or they're impersonating somebody, double-check and don't send anybody gift cards or crypto. 

[00:42:31] Jane: No gift cards. Don't fall for anything that says like, "Act now, your account is locked. We need this information to unlock it." No one ever does that. Check the URLs on the end of any kind of email too before you click on any link. And if you're ever in doubt, just call the actual company. If it's someone that you actually have an account with and do business with, like Apple Support type of thing, there's a lot of Apple scams that go around. Apple doesn't text people saying like, "Oh, your ID is gonna be locked if you don't do this," and "Click this link." That's not how they operate. And if you're ever in doubt, just go not in the link in the email, not the phone number in the text or the email. Go directly to the site that you know and trust, the .com, not the dot whatever is like, you know, sketchy. Go to the legitimate site and call that customer service number and then ask them like, "Hey, did you send me..." You know? And, most of the time you're gonna find out no, they didn't. So please just be wise because with AI, this stuff is only gonna proliferate, and we all have to just help each other and help our parents who are unfortunately are a little bit more susceptible to this 

[00:43:35] Heidi: Yeah. When I looked at the stats, it's young people and old people. Like, it was 

[00:43:39] Etienne: I guess I'd be in the old category 

[00:43:41] Heidi: to 27 and then over 60. What'd you say? 

[00:43:45] Etienne: I think I'm in the old category. Unless it's el- Oh, oh, okay, I just got under that by six years. 

[00:43:51] Jane: still, you're still young, Etty. You're still young 

[00:43:54] Etienne: I'm still young

[00:43:57] Jane: But yeah, it could happen to any of us. But , just have your guard up, that's all. Let's all watch out for each other 

[00:44:02] Etienne: Yeah, no man's gonna hear that you've had sex with so many ridiculous numbers of people in the last so many weeks and be like, "Oh, so you like rough sex?" I'm sorry, what?

[00:44:12] Jane: Yeah, the non-sequitur response. Weird. That, that was 

[00:44:14] Etienne: That, that did not... No. No, bud. You're not a real... You're not, no. No man. No man's saying that.

[00:44:23] Jane: Just let's all just refine our bullshit meters 

[00:44:26] Etienne: Yes, please. 

[00:44:27] Heidi: And that's our show. You've been listening to The Women Are Plotting. If you have a story you'd like to share or have any comments, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at info@thewomenareplotting.com. And of course, you can find us on all the socials. Thanks, and until next time, be safe and be excellent to each other