• This week’s Market Alert focused on a growing financial scam that has already impacted multiple RPOA clients, making this one of the most important client updates we have shared this year.
• While market conditions, interest rates, and global events remain important, protecting your retirement from fraud and financial exploitation is equally critical.
• The scam typically begins with a phone call from someone claiming to represent a bank, credit card company, law enforcement agency, or government office.
• Victims are told that their identity has been used in criminal activity, creating fear and urgency from the very beginning.
• The scammers then convince victims that they are under investigation and must cooperate in order to clear their name.
• As part of the scheme, victims are instructed to move money between accounts under the guise of helping authorities track criminal activity.
• These criminals often use encrypted communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Signal, making it difficult to trace or recover conversations later.
• In many cases, victims are introduced to multiple individuals posing as FBI agents, prosecutors, or financial investigators to make the scam appear legitimate.
• The sophistication of these scams has increased dramatically, including the use of AI-generated video and voice technology that can mimic real people and government officials.
• Scammers frequently provide convincing looking documents, credentials, and legal paperwork designed to gain trust and create fear.
• One of the most significant warning signs is when someone instructs you not to speak with your family, financial advisor, or trusted professionals.
• In several cases, victims were coached on exactly what to say to their advisor in order to avoid raising concerns about large withdrawals or wire transfers.
• Wire transfers remain one of the most dangerous aspects of these scams because once funds are sent, recovery is often impossible.
• Thanks to the vigilance of our planning team, we were able to identify warning signs and help prevent additional losses in at least one client case.
• Our advisors are being actively trained to recognize these situations and serve as an additional layer of protection for our clients.
• If your advisor asks additional questions about a large withdrawal or unusual transaction, please understand that it comes from a place of concern and protection, not inconvenience.
• Remember, anyone who pressures you to act quickly, keep secrets, lie to your advisor, or isolate yourself from trusted people should immediately raise a red flag.
• At Retirement Planners of America, our responsibility extends beyond managing investments. We are committed to helping protect your retirement from anything that could jeopardize it, whether that is a bear market, inflation, or financial fraud.
• Our mission remains unchanged: helping you make your money last as long as you do, so you can enjoy living your second childhood without parental supervision with confidence and peace of mind.
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Transcript:

Ken Moraif 
Hello, everyone, and welcome to a very special and important market alert video, and that is for today. And the reason why it’s so important is because I’m going to be talking with you about a scam that is going around that is affecting it’s affected three of our clients so far, and so we’re very concerned about it, and we want you to be knowledgeable enough that you don’t get caught in this scam, and it’s, it’s sweeping the country, and it’s working very, very well, and we don’t want you to get caught in it. So we’re going to do that today, and so that’s why this is a mandatory client video. We want all of you to watch it. Also, you know, we’re going to, what the Fed is doing seems like, you know, secondary to protecting you from losing tons of money to a cyber security scam, or to a scammer. So, we’re going to not really talk about that, not much really. There, of course, the war in Iran has abated, apparently, for the time being, and so oil prices have come down, and all of those things we’ve talked about. So I don’t say it’s all ho hum, but it’s kind of – we already knew this was coming, so I don’t know that there’s a lot for us to talk about this week. So we’re going to dive into it, but before we do, I just want to give everybody an update. First of all, I want to thank all of you who sent me tips on how to deal with cats. After I told you last week that my cat had broken my heart, because you know he has a new younger brother, and the younger brother caused him to no longer like me, and so he was my buddy. He was everywhere with me, and suddenly he’s in a different room. He broke my heart. I fell in love with a cat. Who would have thought that I could fall in love with a cat? I’m a dog person, but I did, head over heels. So the update is that he’s gotten over it, and Toby is my buddy again, and you know he’s, he’s he’s got six toes, he’s a special kind of cat, that’s why he’s called Toby. And so Toby is my bud again, he follows me around, jumps on the counter when I’m shaving, you know, he’s he’s my companion, and he’s great. So, thank you all for all your tips, and you were right, just wait it out, he’s just got his feelings hurt, you brought a new member to the family, and I get it. It’s like a little brother suddenly appearing out of nowhere. So, yeah. Thank you for that. So, I want to dive into our topic today, and I want to bring Mark Clopton into the conversation. So, Mark, if you could join us. Mark Clopton is our retirement planner in Oklahoma City. Hey, Mark, how are you doing?

Mark Clopton 
Hi, Ken. Doing very well. Thank you for having me today.

Ken Moraif 
Good to see you. Yeah, so Mark personally experienced twice, right, this scam that has affected clients, and so, and unfortunately, I think in one of those cases it kind of happened before you had a chance to intervene, and, and that’s the danger here, is that it happens to our clients before we even know it happened, and so that’s that’s the thing that we want to educate you, so that you don’t get caught. So, can you give us kind of the 30,000 foot of what what is going on, and then we’ll dive into the details.

Mark Clopton 
Thank you. So this impacted three clients that we’re aware of, and because it’s a kind of a long run scam and technique they’re using, there could be other people that are affected, and we don’t know yet. So I’m hoping that hearing the details of this will spark, you know, someone realizing if they’re in the middle of that, and they can, they can exit safely. In each of these three cases that are quite similar, someone received a phone call. It started with a phone call of someone pretending to be with their bank or their credit card company, telling you, oh gosh, a credit card or line of credit was opened in your name, and someone used that money to do something, do something bad, buy guns online illegally, launder money, etc. So that right there sets them, you know, aback. They go into a detail that, okay, because your information was used, you may be involved. You may have been paid off for someone to use your information. So, we’ve handed this off to the authorities. Multiple people are involved. That’s what makes this complex. Go ahead.

Ken Moraif 
So, they’re trying to scare you into thinking that now they think you’re the bad guy, right?

Mark Clopton 
Exactly. They start by making you afraid. Oh no, someone’s law, you know, taking my identity, but now they’re saying, oh, but you might be involved, you’re scared of maybe prosecution or being in trouble, having stole

Ken Moraif 
your identity. You’re the bad guy, you’re the one that’s doing this. And so we’re investigating now,

Mark Clopton 
that’s right. So really puts people. Back on their heels, the multiple people involved, they are handed off, they’re made to or coerced into, into being involved in a video call, not Zoom, but the kind of video calls that can be deleted or disappear after a time. WhatsApp was used and signal was used in another case, and these are these

Ken Moraif 
are encrypted, so there’s no way that anybody could find it later.

Mark Clopton 
That’s right, they seem live and real in the time, but then they can’t fetch them later to prove they were there. As this goes on, they’re introduced to other people, pretending to be FBI agents pretending to be working in a prosecutor’s office. Both of these other cases happen to mention being out of New York, but really they were probably in another country. They’d happen to reference, like the Southern District of New York, is one detail they used over, you know, several times. They say that to clear your name in this investigation, they need your cooperation, and part of that cooperation will be moving money around, just like the bad guys did, so that they can track your money movements, and that will help catch the bad guys in some way, so they, they try to learn your assets, where they are, what accounts you have out there. If it’s in our case, let’s say they know you’re working with, you know, a professional, an advisor, a fiduciary who cares about you. So, for them to move money, they know that if a client of ours called, that we know so well, right there, you know our clients are like extended family to us, right, and we’re protective of our family, so they know that, and they train the person to make up an elaborate story about why they might need a lot of money in a hurry to not raise a red flag with us. A real estate transaction is common, they’ve had, they had the person practice this elaborate story with them, they prefer, they let them,

Ken Moraif 
they practiced with, with the, that with the client, and train them on what to say to you,

Mark Clopton 
that’s right,

Ken Moraif 
so that they could get you, because they didn’t want, because if you would stop it, then they’d then go to jail and still be in trouble. So, to clear your name, we have to train you to lie to your financial advisor.

Mark Clopton 
That’s right, that’s right, because they know we care. They know we’re listening. So, the first time this happened, it was our first go-around with this. A person called with a plausible, odd, but a little plausible, but a plausible real estate transaction they needed to make. We talked all the way through it. I felt like it wasn’t maybe best for them, and we talked a lot about that, but ultimately they said, “I need, you know, I need to do this, and it was plausible. They later called, and maybe a month later, and let me know it had been a scam, they’re okay, you know. There, there were hurt, of course. They were financially hurt by this, because once they received distributions from us, they were told to make a wire from their bank, and once you said to wire, that money is gone. You know, the everyone needs to know that there’s really no reset button, no undo with the wire transfer, so be very, very cautious about that. If you have one hint that something is off, do not go forward with a wire, but she was, but she was able to tell the details of what happened to her, and she wanted us to share those details with others, so that though she was harmed, that maybe her story would help someone else, and she’s going to be okay. Her retirement is safe, she’ll be just fine, but she is more wary, right, as a result. So, so weeks or months pass by. I have another phone call from a person, and all, and also unusually asking for a large distribution for a real estate transaction, somewhat urgently, another one again. It’s again, and, and so, obviously, my antenna, right, is particularly up, you know, on this. The red flag stood out that this is a person who usually likes to get very granular, you know, with how any expenditures are going to affect their retirement plan, and we go over that in detail. It’s someone who likes to meet in person, you know, very most often, and it’s quite thrifty. This, though, was initiated just with a phone call, wanting to make it kind of quick and easy, but a large sum of money to move to ostensibly buy a condo out of state, and perhaps move out of state, so all kinds of red flags were working for me, you know, this person. I didn’t seem concerned about the impact of this large money movement on their retirement plan. Had never talked about living out of state before that I knew of, and the, the, the one I knew, you know, took the cake. I know this person adores their grandchild, and, and, and looks after them twice a week, at the very least, and would never, ever, ever move out of state and see them much less often. Okay, so I knew I knew something was off, and I, and I said that, you know, I said, I’m, you know, I don’t want to be a hassle, you know, don’t want to put you off, but gosh, I, I, this feels very off to me, I’m very worried you’re being coerced, you know, or pressured, or part of a scam, you know. And we taught, we talked all through that, and they didn’t want it, they didn’t want to hear that initially. Okay. And then they put me off, but I said, if you would just please hear this story before we move any money around, if you just hear this story about another woman, and how she was impacted, and if any of the details of that speak to you, you know this may help you. And so we went through it, and some other details that mattered were that the scammers had asked both of them to sign a confidentiality agreement that they would be under penalty of fine or jail time, if they revealed this to anyone, to make them scared to share their story, to make them feel isolated. Yeah, also using the disappearing web, you know, calls from WhatsApp or Signal, they showed them false paperwork of being named a defendant in a legal case, and that that are always

Ken Moraif 
also had like documentation of why they’re a member of the FBI or they’re a member of the bank or the prosecution or whatever, right.

Mark Clopton 
That’s that’s right. So one more detail, the scammers claimed they said their name and their position, they were claiming to be real people who existed, who you could look up, so if you looked up this particular name, they were a in the prosecutor’s office in the Southern District of New York, you could look up their likeness, but on the video calls, these scammers were able to use AI to take on the likeness of the people they were pretending to be.

Ken Moraif 
Wow, okay. How

Mark Clopton 
powerful, right? And so, so you’re you’re

Ken Moraif 
talking to somebody on a video call that looks exactly like the prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and so now you’re thinking it’s really them. You have no reason to think not. It doesn’t occur to you, right? This is an AI-produced image

Mark Clopton 
that’s right, that’s right. Audio is able to be faked as well. I, you know, it, that’s the scary part of this of this technology change, right? So people just need to be so much more on their guard,

Ken Moraif 
you know. I think the important thing here is that anytime somebody, you know, I remember, and nobody misunderstand this, but I remember when my, when my daughters were little, I told them that anybody who ever tells you not to talk to your parents, the first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to come and talk to me, that’s right, because that person is a bad person, okay, that’s right. So, anybody, ladies and gentlemen, that tells you that you should lie to your financial advisor is a bad person. Okay, anybody that tells you that you should, you know, do all you need to think about it, and they try to scare you by thinking you’re going to go to jail, you know, they start off with your account was has been, you know, accessed, or and so you’re like, oh no, have I lost money? And then they pivot to no, you haven’t lost money, you’re going to jail because you’re the bad guy. Now you’re terrified, and to be able to do all this, they got to make sure they have all your information, and next thing you know, they’ve stolen $150,000 from you.

Mark Clopton 
That’s right, that’s right. So I want to, what does say, just a huge heartfelt thanks to the person who shared their story and the details with me, so that we could help someone else from from being impacted and share this with others.

Ken Moraif 
So, ladies and gentlemen, one other thing that I want to say is that we are training all of our planners to recognize these things, and if your planner does what Mark did, which is say, you know, this sounds fishy to me, mr. and mrs. Client, don’t get mad at the at the planner, you know, because these other people have trained you to think that you got to lie to us, you know, think of it as we are your gatekeepers, we’re your sanity check, and you know, in the case of what Mark just talked about, that that client was ready to give them a large sum of money, and you know, because we were able to, Mark was able to talk it through with them, we were able to avoid that happening, and we want to do that for you, so. There’s two parts to this. One is we wanted to make you aware of this scam that is going around, so that if it happens to you, you don’t get caught. But on the off chance that you still, even after knowing all this, you still want to do it, you know. Know that we are also trained, you know, to recognize this stuff, and we’re going to do our best to talk you out of it, and please listen to us, you know. So, Mark, do you have any other thoughts that you want to share with everybody before we sign off on this?

Mark Clopton 
I think that’s all I had today. Ken, the honor to be included. Thank you,

Ken Moraif 
and thank you to your client who wanted this to be shared. Unfortunately, it happened to her, but it shows that she’s a really good person, you know, that she wanted to make sure nobody else has this happen to them.

Mark Clopton 
That’s right.

Ken Moraif 
So, all right. Thank you, Mark. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Kind of a sobering topic this week, but an important one, you know. Again, when it comes to protecting you, we want to protect you from big bad bear markets, but we also want to protect you from scammers, anything that can take your retirement away from you. We want to protect you from that’s our job, that’s what we want to do. And I hope this video helped in that regard. So, as always, I hope this found you healthy, wealthy, and wise, and we’ll talk soon.

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