In today’s episode, you’ll learn more about:
- How AI is making impersonation and other financial scams more convincing.
- Why retirees can be particularly vulnerable to large financial losses.
- How a security word or phrase can add protection to distribution requests.
- What a trusted contact is and what authority they do and don’t have.
- Why families should consider establishing their own verification process.
- Account alerts, multifactor authentication, credit freezes, and other financial safeguards.
- Warning signs that an aging parent may need more help managing their finances.
- Why powers of attorney and trusted professionals should be in place before they’re needed.
Listen Now:
The Smart Take:
Financial scams targeting retirees are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and artificial intelligence is making it harder to know whether the person calling, texting, or emailing you is actually who they claim to be.
The numbers are significant. Americans age 60 and older reported nearly $7.75 billion in internet crime losses to the FBI in 2025. But protecting yourself isn’t simply about learning how to recognize every new scam.
It’s about putting safeguards around your money before something happens.
In this episode, Tyler Emrick, CFA®, CFP®, explains practical steps retirees and their families can take to protect their retirement savings from fraud and financial exploitation.
You don’t need to recognize every scam. You need a financial system that makes it difficult for one convincing phone call, text, or email to undo decades of saving.
Go Inside the Episode:
0:00 – Intro
2:05 – How big is the problem?
4:27 – Scams have changed
7:31 – Build a financial firewall
10:30 – Do you have a trusted contact?
14:34 – Other guardrails to put up
16:27 – Final thoughts
Learn more about the Retire Smarter Solution ™: https://www.truewealthdesign.com/ep-45-retire-smarter-solution/
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The Hosts:
Kevin Kroskey, CFP®, MBA – About – Contact
Tyler Emrick, CFA®, CFP® – About – Contact
Episode Transcript:
Walter Storholt:
Tyler, I want you to imagine that your mom gets a phone call and the person on the other end sounds exactly like you, and you tell her that you’re in trouble, you need some money, and you need her to send it immediately.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah. And Walter, here’s the scary part. It may sound like me. It could even look like me on the video call, but it’s not me.
Walter Storholt:
And that is obviously a very different scam than the emails from the Nigerian prince and whatnot that we used to joke about.
Tyler Emrick:
Oh, it is. It is. AI is making some of these scams much, much, much more convincing. And when you combine that with someone’s life savings and their IRA, a brokerage account, the potential damage is a lot.
Walter Storholt:
Yeah. And so how do you protect against something when you may not even be able to trust the voice or even the face, as you said, that you’re hearing or seeing?
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, man, that’s what we want to focus on today. Not just how to spot the scam, but how to put some actual safeguards in place to protect your money so that one convincing phone call or text can’t undo 40 years worth of investing.
Walter Storholt:
Welcome to another episode of Retire Smarter, Walter Storholt alongside Tyler Emrick, Certified Financial Planner and Chartered Financial Analyst and one of the wealth advisors at True Wealth Design. Find us online at truewealthdesign.com.
Not a new topic today, Tyler. Fraud has been around forever, but boy, the sophistication is getting a little bit scary and you’re hearing more and more of these stories, or at least it feels like that. So maybe the scale’s even increasing as well.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, no, I mean, I think it’s becoming more and more important. I mean, I feel like 15 years ago we knew it was there. We had safeguards in place, but nowhere near to the degree of just thought and protections put in place to try to protect families and individuals from the fraudsters that are out there. These scams are getting pretty wild for sure, especially with some of the technology changes that we’ve mentioned in the lead in.
Walter Storholt:
Yeah. You talk about the potential as well for loss feels enormous now. I think about it from the standpoint of, I don’t know, the scam I’ve been taken advantage of before was somebody stops you and they’re asking for money for a bus ticket so they can get across town and you’re like, “All right, I’ll go pull out 20 bucks and give it to you.” And I may have lost my 20 bucks there and you’re just going to go get something to eat or whatever. But the scale, not the worst thing in the world. But now we’re talking about access to your accounts and just much bigger amounts too, which makes this even scarier.
Tyler Emrick:
Yes. Well, and this is not a small problem. I mean, it is a big problem and the numbers are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. When you get down into the weeds on some of the statistics here, the FBI puts together what they call an IC3 report. It’s an internet crime complaint center. And essentially it doesn’t catch everything, but essentially it’s these reported complaints and losses, not necessarily all the fraud that’s occurring, but it’s some of the best data that we have to show you how big and how big some of these numbers are.
And from the 2025 report, for adults over 60, more than $3 billion of fraud losses from investment fraud specifically in 2025. And that’s about half the total. The total fraud reported approached almost $8 billion, Walt, which is just-
Walter Storholt:
Wow.
Tyler Emrick:
… I mean, from a dollar amount standpoint is wild to think about. I think it was down into 600 million in 2020, 600 million of total fraud losses.
Walter Storholt:
That’s how much this has increased. Yeah.
Tyler Emrick:
And certainly tech has changed in the last handful of years as well. But these scams have just gotten much, much more intricate and much more in our face. I mean, you and I were talking before the pod here. How many of… Your phone picks up calls, just random spam calls?
Walter Storholt:
It’s constant.
Tyler Emrick:
I was saying like 10 a day it was, I think?
Walter Storholt:
I bet I’ll get one while we’re talking.
Tyler Emrick:
I would not doubt it. And that’s not including the texts as well. So you’re getting bombarded in your phone, your emails are getting there as well. So the numbers show that more and more individuals, and I’m just talking… The numbers I shared were families over 60 or individuals over 60. The numbers are the same below, right?
Walter Storholt:
It shows you how much they’re being targeted, right?
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah. Oh no, absolutely. So when we see numbers like that, and you get down to the nitty-gritty, it’s like, well, the whole like, “Hey, I got a scam email. It’s misspelled. The font’s funky, bad grammar. I mean, the link looks weird.” I mean, they’re not all that clear anymore. The new ones impersonate families, banks, government agencies, the technology company. I mean, all these are being attacked all at once. And it becomes very, very hard to differentiate the difference. I mean, the voice cloning is wild when you think about what AI can do. I mean, we’ve all seen some of the funny videos I’m sure on social media that AI is creating. I mean, these fraudsters are using the same stuff and can be very, very convincing for sure.
Walter Storholt:
They’re also able to prey on so many different types of emotions now where maybe they just… In the past, a lot of the scams felt like they preyed on your hopefulness or your excitement over maybe winning something or finding gold in your name or things like that. But now they can really hit the fear elements. “Hey, this is the sheriff’s office calling you.” “Hey, this is the IRS. If you don’t call us back, we’re going to come arrest you.” And they’re doing it in believable ways. So now you’re getting hit with hope, you’re getting hit with fear, you’re getting hit with a lot of different things.
Tyler Emrick:
From all different angles, right? I mean, when we get down to the numbers, that’s probably the most common type of fraud is these ones where it’s like they’re impersonating a family member or an agency and they’re saying, “Hey, there’s a problem with your account. We need to protect your money. Move quick,” kind of deal. So think bank security alert scams are huge. And the dollar amount that you’re getting hit with here is what kind of staggered to me. It wasn’t the, “Hey, 500 bucks, a thousand bucks here.” I mean, they were talking about some of these scams. They’re trying to get 20 grand, 25 grand, 30 grand from you. It’s not like it’s a $500 or $1,000 thing. These are big numbers that we’re talking about that these scammers are coming after for sure.
Walter Storholt:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s huge. There’s just so many different ways that you can get tripped up on this kind of stuff. I don’t know. It’s scary to think about because the bank one you mentioned gets me sometimes where I’m like, “All right.” I even searched the number and it’s like, this is a legitimate Wells Fargo bank number, at least according to this Google search. And it’s like, so how are they spoofing numbers and things like that? Because then I call the bank and they’re like, “No, we didn’t call you.” And it’s like, “What?”
Tyler Emrick:
Correct. Yeah.
Walter Storholt:
Google says it’s you, so what in the world?
Tyler Emrick:
What the heck, right? Well, we’ve had a situation where fraudsters had actually gotten access to a client’s phone so they could send text messages back and forth. When calls come in, they could reroute it and they took the calls.
Walter Storholt:
Oh, wow.
Tyler Emrick:
So I don’t know how common that one is-
Walter Storholt:
I’ve heard of that happening with email. I’ve heard that with email for sure. Yeah.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah. But I mean, when that happened, it was, I mean, we’re going on maybe almost two years ago now when that happened here at True Wealth Design. So thankfully we were able to catch it beforehand, but I think that kind of gets to the crux of this is like, hey, these are out here. They’re not going away. We’re only going to get bombarded with more and more of them. How should individuals and families be thinking about protecting themselves and what are some good ways to do it?
Walter Storholt:
I thought we were very safe with a very annoying two-factor authentication thing, but now even that sounds like you’re saying is in jeopardy if people are spoofing phones and ringing messages and all that.
Tyler Emrick:
I think it’s a good step. When you go on ARP or you go through and look at some of these communications on the internet on what to do, two-factor authentication I think is certainly one of the things that’s very important to have put in place. But I think the big key is not the only thing. So we kind of think about it as building this almost financial firewall, if we could, around your investment accounts, your banking accounts and trying to make it a little bit harder to necessarily get access to them or putting some additional security in place. The two-factor authentication is one way to do that.
The other thing that we’ve implemented here with our families is if they want, we can put on a security word or phrase for any type of distributions out of the account. Because a lot of times we’ll just get emails. “Hey, I’m going to pull money from here. Hey, I had this come up. I need some cash out of there.” From our standpoint, it’s very important that anytime we get an email, there’s a check on that. So we’ll call and verify that distribution. But then we’ve gone one step further and said, “Hey, what’s your safe word or your phrase?” So that way we can have another authentication or step in there that a fraudster might not have if they had access to your phone or something like that where they could take the email. They wouldn’t have that security word or phrase there, especially on bigger distributions.
Bank wires are a big one. Whenever you do a bank wire, you got to be extra careful because that money, when it goes out, it’s out. Most of the time you’re not doing those, Walt, we’re doing just an electronic transfer from one account that’s linked to another typical two to three day transaction time. So you have a little more protection there, but you’ve [inaudible 00:09:32].
Walter Storholt:
Just did a house purchase. And so know all about that wiring. And from day one, you were getting bombarded by everyone involved in the process of the warnings of wire fraud and the proper procedures to take. And it feels like overkill on the day. It’s like, “I’ve got this thing I printed out five months ago or however long the process took. It matches up with what I have more recently and I’ve called the attorney and they verbally have confirmed every…” I felt like I was calling in launch codes of some sort.
Tyler Emrick:
It can be that way, right? But with those bank wires, to your point, I mean, it’s like, hey, once it’s out, it’s out. So very, very tough to kind of reel that back in.
Walter Storholt:
I was chuckling in the background, by the way, just a small backtrack on your security word or phrase. And I was thinking about The Office when Dwight sets up, “The tea in Nepal is very hot.” And they’re like, “No, not quite. You didn’t get the phrase right.” And he has to get steamed to get access into the office. So you guys have that.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah. Oh, no. Well, it’s even funny to get into some of the conversations because a lot of our couples, they’ll chat back and forth, “Oh, wish you had a better safe word.” So it’s always some type of memory or something that they’ve had in their life or they’ve gone through so it brings up some good memories or whatever. But it is, it’s, right, that extra layer of kind of protection there.
Now a lot of times, well, not a lot of times, but with our custodians that our family’s accounts are held at, I mean, we can’t just have someone send an email and send money to an updated bank account or anything. There’s normally paperwork and signatures and things like that that are put in place. So a lot of these protections are there. The question becomes is like, “Do you understand how they work? Do you want to add some more on top of them such as the safe word?”
I have some families where I brought this up to them and they’re like, “Yeah, we actually have a family safe word.” Going back to that whole impersonation-
Walter Storholt:
Makes sense. Yeah.
Tyler Emrick:
… thing where they’ve talked to their kids and said, “Hey, if you ever call me under an emergency, what’s the safe word?” And some people might chuckle and be like, “Wow, does that really need to be that way?” But certainly as you start thinking about the biggest place of the fraud impersonation, the whole, “Hey, your son or daughter’s in here, needs money sent,” whatever.
Walter Storholt:
And with an advisory group or a large corporation, like your outlining, you’ve got some already in place safeguards. The safe word’s just another level, but you really don’t have that in the family situation. So kind of even more important there.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah. And I think there is a little bit of an add advantage because we’re smaller firm. The reason why we were able to catch that fraud situation I mentioned up earlier is because the person in our office that answered the phone realized that the voice didn’t sound right and they mispronounced their last name. So when you have-
Walter Storholt:
Yeah. That helps.
Tyler Emrick:
Right? You have that relationship where the families are communicating with the team, you can catch these things and it just adds that extra layer of protection. So safe word is something that we do here. Might want to talk to your advisor and see if they do them as well if you work with somebody else. The other one would be a trusted contact, Walt. Were you going to add something there on the safe word?
Walter Storholt:
I was going to say for any scammers watching, my last name is pronounced Steer-holes. Steer-holes.
Tyler Emrick:
I like it.
Walter Storholt:
Tell anybody that, you’ll get away with it. Steer-holes.
Tyler Emrick:
But safe word. And then the other one would be trusted contact. So we do ask this for our families as well if they want to put it on. And this would be just someone where if we think there’s a fraud situation or if we think there’s something going on, it’s a family member or a friend or someone like that, that we can call, communicate, “Hey, have you talked to them? Is something going on?” That type of thing. It just goes back to that-
Walter Storholt:
“Is Bob really in jail?”
Tyler Emrick:
Correct, right? “Wait, have you heard from Bob in a while? Because he’s calling us from a boat saying that he needs a hundred grand. So have you talked to him?” That type of thing. And it could go as far as that trusted contact. We always say if something happened during a meeting in the office and there was a medical emergency or whatever. Now it’s very important to realize that trusted contact and the safe word, that’s something that our firm kind of does with our families. It’s maybe not something that at a custodian level or an account level that’s on at where all your accounts are. We find this very frequently to where, hey, you have a banking account at whatever bank and something happens, but you haven’t given them your power of attorney. So we might have a power of attorney on accounts at another custodian, but your bank might not.
So it’s not like your power of attorney can call in and do it if that appropriate paperwork has not been filed. Same thing for some of these custodians. They have trusted contact paperwork. A lot of times they might call it something different. Fidelity calls it trading authority and some other things to where you might give some access to your accounts in some way, shape or form under certain scenarios. So just make sure that wherever you hold your accounts, wherever you hold your money, that if you want these things in place, you’ve taken the proper steps to kind of get them on, Walt, to make sure that that doesn’t happen.
Walter Storholt:
So it’s more getting you guys an extra data point as you’re evaluating whether something’s legitimate or not.
Tyler Emrick:
You got it. Absolutely. 100%. And those guardrails, those are the two that we do, but there’s a lot around, “Hey, do you have account alerts set up to where you get alerted if there’s withdrawal requests or password changes and things like that?” A lot of us have that, but double checking, making sure those aren’t… You mentioned the two-factor authentication or multifactor authentication. Are you-
Walter Storholt:
As annoying as they may be-
Tyler Emrick:
They may be.
Walter Storholt:
… they serve a purpose.
Tyler Emrick:
Well, and for everyone who’s maybe working, maybe you’ve used the VIP where they have a code that you use or authenticator app or there’s all sorts of these systems now and apps that are put in place where you can kind of add some of those extra layers there.
Walter Storholt:
Security keys now, things like that.
Tyler Emrick:
You got it. You got it. I use password manager too because the old adage of like, oh, you have the same password for everything, change a number, whatever. Trying to just be a little bit more diligent around my personal accounts on that type of stuff as well. So those password managers can help as well. And then of course the old being diligent. I mean, our team goes through monthly compliance updates on fraud, so we kind of see it a lot. But going back to the email and the text, these things are very, they’re not immediately, “Oh wow, that’s fraud,” or, “That’s someone trying to fish for my information.” So just being cognizant of that and understanding and checking those emails and what to look out for, I think is just good housekeeping items as we kind of think about just trying to add some of that protection layer and putting it in place.
Speaker 3:
What would your life look like if you designed it around your True Wealth? It’s a powerful question and one that True Wealth Design helps individuals, families and business owners answer every day. With a fully integrated approach to financial planning, tax strategy, investments and business advisory, their team can bring clarity and confidence to every part of your financial life. Take the first step toward a stronger financial future with a no cost, no obligation discovery meeting. Just click the link in today’s show description to get started.
Walter Storholt:
All makes sense, Tyler. These are important things to be thinking about and I hope it’s something that everybody’s at least pondering a little bit. You don’t even have to take all of these steps. Every single thing we mentioned today, even if you just implement one thing, like a family password, it’s going to be helpful. So hopefully a few lessons from today can be taken. What I like to hear is that you guys as this advisor-client relationship take this very seriously, put these additional protections in place. And it’s just nice to know that that’s happening and that there’s proactive prevention of these things instead of just reacting to when the bad things happen. Let’s try to keep it from never happening in the first place.
Tyler Emrick:
First place. Yeah. Well, and I think you brought up the family password. I mean, I think this is another question of, well, when is the right time to bring your family, extended, kids or whatnot into some of your planning discussions and them understanding what that you have going on? I mean, I’ve had kids give me a call and say, “Hey, mom was almost subject to fraud. Be careful on this,” or whatever. And it’s not that always… They’re so convincing now. So it’s not like there’s a stereotype where this type of person would fall for it. I mean, anybody can be caught up in this type of stuff.
So the more individuals and family members that are kind of looking out and know how things are set up and what’s going on, I think the more protection that it adds in because it is. It’s always a unique dynamic, right? I mean on when do you start bringing in kids? How do you bring them in the conversation? Do you want to keep that separate?
Walter Storholt:
And there’s a way to still maintain privacy here, right? Yeah.
Tyler Emrick:
Yes.
Walter Storholt:
There’s a way to still keep your privacy, but also have just that extra person who can be a backstop to say, “This doesn’t sound right,” or, “I need to check with somebody here.” It never hurts.
Tyler Emrick:
Absolutely. Well, and whoever… the professionals that you’re working with, the ones that are kind of in the loop on how you’re using your money and can be looking for outliers that are, “Hey, you weren’t planning $100,000 distribution this year. Huh, what came up? I’m going to give you a call and just check in and say, ‘Hey, what’s going on?'” So that extra layer I think there can be all helpful as well.
Walter Storholt:
You mentioned that personal relationship, right? You know your couples, you know the families that you work with. And so if somebody’s asking for something out of the ordinary, instead of just signing off on it and saying, “Sure, here you go.” Or whatever the case may be, you might say, “Hmm, the Johnsons don’t usually request that $100,000 one-time distribution out of nowhere.”
Tyler Emrick:
New banking info, new banking account, what’s going on? Right?
Walter Storholt:
Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like common sense, but this stuff still happens all the time as evidenced by those numbers and it’s only going to get worse, I think.
Tyler Emrick:
I agree, especially as tech changes and the videos get more and more convincing. I saw the, I don’t know, the Will Smith video where he was eating and AI did it a few years ago and it was all mumbled jumbled and then it did the same video and it’s like, “Oh wow, it’s real.” You seen that one?
Walter Storholt:
The Will Smith spaghetti test, I think is what they-
Tyler Emrick:
Yes, yes.
Walter Storholt:
Every new AI iteration, they give it a video… For those who haven’t seen it, they give it a video. Like, “Make Will Smith eat spaghetti.” And now we have all these iterations of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti and it’s super weird in the first couple as it shows how the technology is still pretty bad and now it’s getting scarily good watching Will Smith eating spaghetti.
Tyler Emrick:
I don’t know. Could you tell? The last one… The one that I seen in the last one, I was like, “I don’t know if I could tell the difference.”
Walter Storholt:
No.
Tyler Emrick:
We’re definitely-
Walter Storholt:
It’s getting harder.
Tyler Emrick:
… there.
Walter Storholt:
It’s definitely getting harder. Especially on a phone, I feel like you’re not seeing all the minute details and differences as you might on a bigger screen. So that makes it even easier to pass off.
Tyler Emrick:
Sure. So a FaceTime call can be very convincing. Very, very convincing.
Walter Storholt:
Yeah. You’re not going to see maybe that mole that you would always pick up on or something.
Tyler Emrick:
Or something.
Walter Storholt:
I don’t know.
Tyler Emrick:
Right. Absolutely. I think it’s just good to have it on your radar, be on the lookout about it. Talk to the family or the individuals and professionals in your life that are looking over accounts or would be a backstop there to help protect you against some of this stuff that might come up.
Walter Storholt:
Usually when families work with True Wealth Design, they’re not only talking about fraud protection, but it illustrates that this is the comprehensive level of the relationship and that this is how in depth of a planning and conversation you should be having when it comes to planning for retirement and your financial future. And so if you’d like to engage on that larger level, it’s very easy to reach out and have a conversation one-on-one with the team. All you do is click the link in the description of today’s show. It should be easy to spot, or you can go to truewealthdesign.com, the main website. You’re going to see a let’s talk button. You’ll be able to schedule a 20-minute discovery call with an experienced wealth advisor on the team and be able to have that conversation about your plan, about your goals, where you want to go into the future and how to accomplish it all, and ultimately just see if you’re a good fit to work with one another.
But this is the kind of comprehensive planning and conversation that’s going to happen and that should be illustrated hopefully for you on today’s show. Tyler, thanks so much for the help and we’ll catch up with you again next week.
Tyler Emrick:
Absolutely. It was fun.
Walter Storholt:
All right, take care. That’s Tyler and Walter. We’ll see you next time on Retire Smarter.
Speaker 4:
Information provided is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax or legal advice. Information is obtained from sources that are deemed to be reliable, but their accurateness and completeness cannot be guaranteed. All performance reference is historical and not an indication of future results. Benchmark indices are hypothetical and do not include any investment fees.