Florence Puana at her deposition Last week, I told you about Florence Puana — the 99-year-old woman who ended Honolulu’s biggest law enforcement scandal ever. Puana, you might recall, moved to Hawaii right before the Pearl Harbor attacks, raised nine children there, and lived to see her 100th birthday. She [Keep reading]
Some scam stories hurt more than others. In this one, Janet lost her husband of 52 years, and days later, got a call from someone who claimed she worked with her husband’s former employer. There was a life insurance policy, the caller said, but there were unpaid premiums. As anyone [Keep reading]
INTRODUCTION Perhaps in no field do innovation and privacy collide as dramatically as healthcare. Treatments, medications, therapies — these might be the most intimate details of a person’s life, secrets that need safekeeping. At the same time, the wonders of modern medicine and the power of artificial intelligence promise to unlock [Keep reading]
Romance scams cost Americans $500 million each year, the FBI says. And the crime is soaring fast. Lonely people isolated at home during the pandemic are an attractive target for thee criminals. We’re currently exploring this awful phenomenon in a two-part podcast series at AARP’s The Perfect Scam. In last [Keep reading]
You live with someone for 50 years. You do everything with them. Eat, sleep, cry, laugh, suffer. Then one day, you’re alone. Just thinking about that void can take your breath away. Now imagine someone steps into that void and manages to …ease the pain, just a little. Anyone would [Keep reading]
INTRODUCTION Americans have become less trusting in recent decades, plenty of surveys seem to agree. Yet trust is a funny thing. People say they don’t trust tech companies, particularly social media companies, but they hungrily gobble up Tweets and Facebook updates all same. Still, lack of trust in … seemingly everything…is hurting us, a [Keep reading]
Wire fraud scams during real estate transactions are perhaps the most believable kind of digital con I’ve ever seen. Buying or selling homes is already an incredibly stressful time. Consumers are classic “tourists” in the land of title companies and wire transfers, vulnerable because everything feels unfamiliar. Add to that [Keep reading]
Almost 20 years ago, I wrote a book called Your Evil Twin – Behind the Identity Theft Epidemic. At the time, many consumers hadn’t even heard of identity theft. Criminal imposters were just getting started. Today, it feels like ID theft is everywhere, hitting millions of consumers every year, roughly [Keep reading]
INTRODUCTION Perhaps you were a holdout against the notion that something is terribly wrong with the Internet. The events surrounding Jan. 6 — both the plot to attack the Capitol and tech giants’ reaction to it — surely make that position harder to defend. The argument that democracy is under [Keep reading]
As most readers know, I have a dog named Rusty. I’m on my third rescue dog now. Lucky, Rusty’s older brother, played a big part in a lot of stories I’ve written, so I was really excited to talk with today’s guests in The Perfect Scam podcast, Danny and Alison, [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan