How To Avoid IRS Tax Scams!

TRANSCRIPT

Mike Pine: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the Hidden Money Podcast, where Kevin Schneider and I are happy and excited to talk to you about tax and all things in that area. Today, we're going to talk about something that's very important this time of year- how to avoid getting scammed. Used to be kind of easy- you could see a scam when it comes.

You could see it walking down the street from a mile away. These days, it's getting a lot harder.

Kevin Schneider: It is getting very hard with the introduction of AI, with the technology and all these software that criminals have available to them. The emails, the calls, the texts, all these hits you're getting are looking more and more real, and we'll get into some logistics of how to protect yourself, but we really want to do this as a public service, just for everybody listening. We have people on our team that get phished, and we do that intentionally-

we have an IT company internally at our firm, and we intentionally send phishing emails, and if one of our employees actually opens the email and [00:01:00] goes through the process of putting in data, then we know about it, and then they go through training immediately. It is a very important thing that you are trained, as a professional, for sure, but anybody in any walk of life, that you're trained on how to spot this stuff, and IRS scams are huge, huge.

So, we really want to give you some information on how to better protect yourself.

Mike Pine: Yeah, these nefarious characters stealing this money, they've made a huge global business out of it, billions of dollars a year. I'm sure it's a lot more than that, but we don't really know. A lot of it goes unreported, but they're getting good. I just read this article earlier this week, Kevin- this finance worker out in Hong Kong was duped to give away 25 million bucks,

and he figured that guy must be an idiot. You read the story, and you can see how it can happen. He first thought, and he was suspicious in the beginning. He got something from the UK based CFO saying, 'Hey, we need to talk about this transaction, but keep it quiet.' --He said, 'That's kind of fishy..' --But it asked to do a video [00:02:00] conference.

He joined the video conference, and there's 10 people there, and he said half of them were coworkers he was very familiar with. They joined in and talked, and he'd heard the CFO's voice, and it sounded and looked just like him, so he got duped in because he saw other coworkers. They used AI to take publicly available videos of all these people and their voices and make a video conference call. This guy joined and he was convinced, 'Hey, my company needs me to do this. This is important.' --And he got duped out. That company lost $25 million. Even if those people, those criminals, spent a million dollars creating it- which they don't have to anymore with the availability AI-

but even if they spent a million bucks, they got a 25 X return on their investment. These criminals, I wish they would turn their efforts towards something good for the world because these guys are smart. You've got to be careful, and like Kevin said, people get hit. I've been hit by it. You've got to be super, super diligent.

Kevin Schneider: [00:03:00] Yeah, and as professionals, a lot of our clients will send us, 'Hey, is this real? Is this legit? Is this legit? We get a lot of those emails. The IRS's main way of communicating with you, it's just going to be good old snail mail. They're going to send you something in the mail.

It's going to have some sort of tracking. It's going to have some sort of way that you know it's from them. Now, do they fax? Yeah, IRS still uses fax machines, oddly enough. Do they call? Yes. If you're under audit and we're representing, yes, you might get a phone call from an agent in the event that you're under an audit, and you've already been introduced to the agent on your case.

So, until then, everything is going to be done by mail. They are not going to call you. They are not going to text you. They are not going to do anything of the sort. They're not going to put pressure on you because let's just talk about how these scams work, and how do they scam? What is an IRS scam anyway?

Let's define that.

So an IRS scam really is going to be someone who takes your social security number. They're going to put it on a fake tax [00:04:00] return and file it with the IRS. And so they're just going to say, 'I'm John Smith.' --And it could be some guy in India. 'I'm John Smith.' --He files a 1040 tax return.

He might have some sort of financial information to get it in the ballpark. Who knows? But he could just file a mock tax return and include a bunch of losses, include all these other hilarious, phony things on your tax return, but their bank account as the refund. So, they're going to ask the IRS for a significant refund under your social security number,

and it's going to a bank account that once they get the money, they're closing it and they're out. It's the IRS's job to make sure these phony tax returns are caught. It's also us, as a professional, to make sure we can guide you and protect your data, but that's basically the gist of the scam.

The first scam is just an IRS filing, and then, unfortunately, when you, as the taxpayer go to file your legit tax return, now you have a tax return already on file. The IRS is going to go, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa! You've already filed your [00:05:00] tax return. What are you doing filing this? We've already issued your refund.

Then that is when it gets frustrating.

Mike Pine: Very frustrating. That's happened way too many times to people that have not done anything dangerous. They protect their data. Just, stuff happens. Most data loss, or most of the times when people lose their identity, it's not because they were being dumb, or they were being foolish. It's these scammers are good at getting the data.

Now that everything's so digitized, it's almost impossible to keep someone from finding your social security number, but you've got to make it harder on people. You can't make it easier on them. Yeah, it just keeps happening, and we see it too often.

Kevin Schneider: Shred your trash, burn your trash. Don't let any information go out there, the Dark Web, or whatever it's called. People selling information- that's how they get paid. There's antivirus software that'll scrub that stuff- that might not be a bad idea- I don't know how well they work. But the second type of scam you're going to see, and then, Mike and I will get into- How do you protect yourself?

--because there are ways to protect yourself from these scams. The second [00:06:00] scam is just going to be like a call scam. They're going to call you and someone's going to be posing as an IRS agent, and pressure you into paying a phony tax bill, and threaten jail time. So again, remember, the IRS is not going to call you unless you already know the agent, and you're under an audit, or something like that.

If somebody calls you and claims to be the IRS, it is false, but what they're going to want to do is say, 'Hey, if you don't pay this outstanding tax bill...' --Everyone's already kind of scared of the IRS already, so this scam works. Puts a lot of fear on people, so it works. They put pressure on you to pay this bill, and threaten legal action,

and then, they're going to have you pay with a Google play card and the eBay gift card, a Walmart gift card target, whatever.

Mike Pine: Or wire.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah. Money wire. So, if you go to Walmart, and you go to Western Union, those Walmarts- they have big warning saying, 'Do Not Send to Money You Don't Know.'

--If you are paying a tax bill, do not do that. These scams are very common. So, just be careful of those people. The IRS is never going to threaten you. If you owe taxes, by law, they have [00:07:00] to give you an opportunity to question it, or appeal it. They're not just going to show up on your doorstep and put handcuffs on you.

You're going to be given opportunity after opportunity. It's not a quick, quick thing.

Mike Pine: Yeah, and it shouldn't come as a surprise.

But there are times like if you move, and the IRS sends you an IRS notice to your old address because you haven't updated it yet. They might send you a notice and say, 'Hey, look, you're under audit. This agent's going to be reaching out to you.' --But you never get that.

Then you can get a call, and you're completely unaware of it, and they'll sound legit, but your heckles should be up. You should be very cautious. If you get an unannounced call from the IRS, don't give them any data. You say, 'Look, I don't know who you are. I haven't gotten a notice.' --Don't give them your new address.

Just ask for a reference number from them. Say, 'All right, I am going to call the IRS and ask about this. I'm hanging up on you now, but first give me a reference number.' --They won't give you a reference number of some sort that you can call the IRS directly, then they're not real. If they give you a reference number, hang up still, and don't call back the IRS [00:08:00] by doing a call return, or use the caller ID, or take any phone number from the person that called you.

Go to www.irs.gov on the internet, get the right phone number, call them and check. And more often than not, you'll find out, no, that wasn't the IRS. But do not talk to the IRS, or someone claiming to be the IRS, unless you are certain you've received some mail, you know what it's about, and you know who that person is.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah, good point. And just thinking there's a third type. There's probably way more scams than this. We're oversimplifying it, but like a ghost preparer- you may hear of a ghost preparer. A ghost preparer is someone who's unwilling to sign a tax return. These are unethical preparers.

Work with legit CPAs, EAs, reputable tax companies, but if you see an ad on Craigslist, or on the side of the street saying, 'I will prepare your tax return.' --and they're going to charge you a fee based on your refund, they may falsify a refund, get a big fee, and then they're going to refuse to sign and put their P10 on the bottom.

Every paid preparer is required by law to put [00:09:00] their name on those tax returns. These ghost preparers, their whole job is to just file this phony tax return. Their name's not going to be on this tax return. If you don't know what you're looking at, they're going to file it, get the fee from you, and then, they're gone.

They're good- that's why they're ghost preparers. So work with ethical, reputable CPAs and tax

Mike Pine: One thing to note on that is- the IRS prohibits people from charging you a percentage of a refund. If someone's offering that, it's sketchy. It's not allowed. It's got a conflict of interest. If we could charge our clients 20% of whatever refund we get you, we might be a little looser with the laws, right?

Kevin Schneider: yeah,

Mike Pine: It's illegal to do that. They're, in some cases, are tax credit specialists will estimate your tax credit, and they can charge a percentage, but they're not your tax preparers. They're not signing the returns of paid tax preparers.

So, that should set your warning signals up- Hey, I'll get you a big refund, and only charge you 20% of it. -- No!

Kevin Schneider: And I'm not going to sign it.

Mike Pine: Yeah, and consider reporting that person to the IRS.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah. [00:10:00] So, not to be all doom and gloom and fearful- this is all informational, and you're going to come across this. Like Mike said, this is becoming more prevalent, and it's becoming way more sophisticated with the introduction of AI. So Mike, what would you say, for our listeners, what is a good way to start even protecting yourself from fake tax returns, identity theft, and things like that?

Where would you start?

Mike Pine: Unfortunately, even though there's paid professionals out there, there's the IRS out there, ultimately, your identity protection is up to you. You're the one in control of it. You've got to be careful.

You've got to be super diligent. It's incredibly inefficient at times to confirm it. Just this morning, I got an email from a manager at our firm.

I saw the email, but something looked funky about it. There was something weird about the header. I forwarded it to our IT and said, 'Hey, can you confirm that this is legit?' --I would rather have just responded to him and asked, but by opening that email, it could have put something on my computer. You've got to be [00:11:00] careful.

Don't email your social security number, tax ID number. Don't email documents unsecured unless you're using encryption. Do not send documents like your W2 or 1099 to your tax preparer or to your spouse. Use encryption on that. I know it's a pain, and it is inefficient, but those are the things you have to do to protect yourself.

And then finally, if you are at all concerned that your identity has been stolen, or you just want to be super uber-careful with the IRS for these false tax returns that are getting filed. I mean, we probably get 3.. 5% of every one of our clients, every year, 3% or 5% of them, sometimes more, we go to file their tax return that we prepare, and it's rejected because they say they've already filed a return. This happens a lot.

You can put a stop to that, and eliminate the possibility of it happening, if you get an Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN) from the IRS. How do you do that, Kevin?

Kevin Schneider: So, you can go online- and we could put this link in the show notes or description- it's called a [00:12:00] Identity Theft Affidavit. It's a Form 14039. You could just Google IRS Form 14039. You could do this online as well, and so, you can tell the IRS- 'Do not accept any tax returns on my social security number's behalf, unless I have this PIN.'

--So, every year, the IRS is going to send you a letter, and if you're married, you're going to get two. Each person, each taxpayer is going to have their own PIN number- it's like a six digit PIN number.

So, the IRS is going to mail you a letter, let's say in January of every year, with a unique PIN letter for that next tax filing season.

So, these criminals who are filing these false tax returns, hopefully, they don't have that letter too. The odds of that are going to be pretty low, but this letter is going to be the key that unlocks the acceptance of your tax return. If you don't have that PIN number, or you lose it, or you don't check your mail, there's ways to recover a PIN, but like Mike said, it's more work, but it's safer.

So, if you have that- I want to be [00:13:00] proactive in my security. I would highly advise you do that 14039, and go ahead and file that with the IRS.

Mike Pine: I think that affidavit is if you believe or have reason to believe that you have been a victim of identity theft. You don't have to be in a victim, now. I mean, they've made it easier and online, and we'll put in the show notes. There's an online way to click a button and apply with the IRS online. You do need an www.irs.gov account, but those are getting easier to make. Usually, you can get one in 5 to 15 minutes. Create the account. Go to the link that we show for Identity Protection PIN, unless you think you've already been a victim of identity theft, but you can go here online and in five minutes, set it up, and then they will mail you the PIN.

And this works- we have clients after clients that forgot they got a PIN, or lost it, didn't give it to us, and we go to file a return and we can't file it without that PIN.

So, it works. It's one of the places where the IRS is actually good at being secure.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah. And yeah, sorry about that- that is, if you have been a victim. To be the proactive- you could do the tool, [00:14:00] or it's a Form 15227. Glad I gotcha. But yeah, that 15227 Form, Google that, or like Mike said, just do it online.

Mike Pine: And again, when you're applying for these things or checking these things out, make sure you manually type in, don't go to Google and search 'IRS'. Manually type in, or at least look at the HTML, and look, and make sure it's 'irs.gov'. I've seen scams like that where it looked like an email from the IRS, except I knew they didn't send it.

And they say, 'Click here to set up your Identity PIN.' --and I think what they would do at that point- it was an email supposedly from the IRS- 'Hey, we have reason to believe that your records might've been stolen. You might be a victim of identity theft. Click this link to come to the IRS and create an identity PIN.'

--What I suspect happens is you would click that link. It would probably look really official. You'd put in what you want your identity PIN to be, and then they would use that to go and apply for an Identity PIN for you. It's coming from everywhere. You've got to be careful.

Kevin Schneider: [00:15:00] Yeah.

Mike Pine: There's some other scams that happen. A lot of other scams that happen outside of the IRS. I bet you IRS identity scams, or theft scams, are one of the smaller ones out there. because there's at least some security. The big ones are like- this happens to me once every month or two- I'll get an email from someone from our office,

and you have to be really careful. They've gotten good at creating better headers, so it doesn't always look like an illegitimate email. You can go and click who's this from and you see the email. That's a good first start, but there are times where they can even mess with that, and tweak it to where it still looks real unless you have an IT background, and can go in and read the code and see if it's real.

And it looked like it's from someone in my firm that says, 'Hey, I need this expense paid so we can do X, Y, Z.' -- and sometimes I got to wonder if someone's listening to my Siri or something, because sometimes it'll be on a topic I've been thinking about or working with people at work about for the last couple of weeks.

You just got to be careful. And again, we have an IT support team. I send every one of those emails to [00:16:00] them and say, 'Confirm this is legit.' --and most of the time they come back and say, 'No, it's not.' --So, we have that option- you don't, necessarily. Just again, be careful.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah. Let's talk about a little bit about this reputable CPA because we put a really big emphasis on our team, and we try to train our clients as well, that we have, I guess, a emphasis on security, and that goes with not sending data over the email, and using our portal, and all this stuff, because there is actually a story.

I forget where I heard this story, and I'd have to actually look it up, where a small CPA firm- not more than 10 employees- got put out of business because they had pretty bad security measures. They were hacked and about 80% of their client data was stolen. Well, guess what happens when 80% of your client's data gets stolen? You're going to get sued!

And when you get sued to that extent, and if there's damages from, and they can trace it back to this [00:17:00] CPA and where, it's just common that all 80% of his client base was victims of this identity theft deal, that there were damages, and he got sued and got put out of business. So, we just don't want that to happen to any of our clients.

That client data security is so important. And we do that in a number of ways with a specified, cloud based system that has all of our employees have to have dual authentication just to get into the system.

Mike Pine: Which I got to say, I hate, but it's.. required. We need it.

Dual Dual-factor authentication is the bane of my secure existence these days.

Kevin Schneider: Then they make you change your password. Every so often, like every 30.. 60 days, or whatever that is. All of our computers lock after you're idle for a certain specified amount of time. That was an IRS mandate that they put in a few years ago that if you're in a tax return as a paid professional, and you go leave your desk for lunch-

the software has to shut [00:18:00] down and you can't leave your tax returns open. So, there's measures that we put in place just like that, because data is important to keep safe.

Mike Pine: Going digital helps in efficiency, and going digital, if you do it correctly, it's a lot more secure than having paper documents around, or floating around, or getting lost and someone picking them up. But you've got to understand, it's only secure if you apply security to it. If you put everything on Dropbox with a password of 2468, that's not secure.

If you're sending stuff to yourself from your work office that you scanned- your W2, that's not secure, unless it's encrypted. So, you've got to work to encrypt stuff. Digital files with good encryption policies are very secure. Not saying they're completely secure- I'm sure the NSA, or some other people out of Iran or China, could get into some of those files, if not a lot of them, but most people can't. Use encryption services- learn about it, or get someone on your team to [00:19:00] help you with it.

There are IT professionals out there all the time that offer IT services as a solution. You can get a subscription. You can pay them one-time to do an audit. You ought to do that. It's important.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah. And a program that Mike and I both personally use is called Dashlane. There's many applications out there like Dashlane. Dashlane is a vault. It's a secure vault of random passwords. So, you memorize one password to get into your Dashlane, and Dashlane, when you create an account on Facebook or Google, or whatever website you're creating an account for, you generate this random 16 digit, 15 digit, whatever you want password.

That's going to have a mix of capital letters, lowercase letters, numbers, symbols, all this. Copy that into your account creation, Dashlane will then save the password. And so, when you log into Facebook, and you have this crazy password you're never going to remember- which is good- it's going to automatically link through a web [00:20:00] extension.

I see you're on this website- here's your login password. Then you just log, you use your one password that you memorized to log into Dashlane to allow that data transfer of the password.

Mike Pine: Your apps too. So, it's on my PC, it's on my iPhone where it uses Face ID so I don't have to enter in my very long Dashlane password.

It makes it a lot more convenient to use good password policies. I've paid for the premium version of it and it'll actually track how old all my passwords were.

It'll nudge me to change passwords. It nudges me if I use the same password on too many sites, and it has a tool that works with about half of the sites I have passwords on to automatically go change them for you, and you press the button and it'll work through that. But in the premium side, also, this is what freaks me out-

I don't really understand the Dark Web. I get it's a place that only really techno gurus can get to, and there's a lot of stuff out there, and it's got less controls than the world wide web, but in my subscription, Dashlane monitors the Dark Web for my data and I get [00:21:00] notifications every once in a while-

'Hey your password for Google was found in the Dark Web.' --I don't know how they know this and how they find out, but they say, 'Go change your password now.' -- and I set the notification. So, anytime it sees any of my data on the Dark Web, it sends me a text message and an email, and I get one of those every month or two.

I don't know where they get that data from. It gets stolen. The IRS is not great with data. There was just a court case two weeks ago, or a week ago, for the guy who stole 10,000 tax returns from Booz Allen, a government contractor, whose sole purpose, to go back to Booz Allen, was to work with the IRS so he could steal people's tax returns and publish them.

We know about that because it got published. How many of those do we not know about? Time and time again, the IRS loses data. Unfortunately, you have to give them that data (or you go to jail), the IRS, but they're not good at security. Hopefully, they'll get better at it. So, the data gets lost. It gets out there. It gets in the Dark Web.

I'm not saying you need to go buy Dashlane. We're not promoters of [00:22:00] Dashlane. We don't get any kind of commission or anything, but there are services out there that do this and you might want to consider it. Kevin, what do you think about credit monitoring? I tried that a couple of times, and I've kind of fallen out of it.

I wonder if that's a scam in itself.. But what do you think?

Kevin Schneider: I have credit monitoring through my bank, all my credit cards, but I don't pay for a specific service on it. Of course, now take this with a grain of salt because I'm an accountant, but I do check my personal bank statement and my personal credit card statement, fairly routinely, and probably annoyingly routinely.

I have a good finger on the pulse of where the money's going, and if something sticks out, banks are getting really good at calling on that stuff. And so, with me personally, I kind of take control of that area of our finances, but also I trust the bank. I don't know if I should or not, but there's been times, me and my wife- weird story, but this is why I like my bank for my birthday-

we went up to WinStar- we live in Texas and WinStar's in [00:23:00] Oklahoma- so it's another state away. It's a casino. WinStar is a casino. So, I don't gamble much, but that's just something- it was my 40th birthday, me and my wife wanted to go up and just spend some money on some slots, play some games, just spend the night out there and have some fun.

Well, Chase puts a limit on how much cash you can take out in a day, and so, the very first day I was like, 'Okay, this is the amount of money I'm willing to lose.' --because casinos, they don't gamble. They just do Math, right? So, casinos are going to take the money. We just parted mentally with the money that we're willing to accept gone, and code that to entertainment in our mental books.

So, at the casino, took that out. I got a call probably a minute or two later asking if it was me, and they're like, 'Mr. Schneider, are you at WinStar Casino? You don't go to the casino..' -- and there's all these.. buzzing, and all this.. and I'm like, 'Yep, that's me.' --and they're like, 'Yeah, I can tell you're in the casino.'

-- So, they approved it. So, there is safety measures because who's ultimately at risk is the banks because they're on the hook [00:24:00] for that, and they have to make sure that their policies and procedures and their processes are in control, because if you get stolen from any sort of identity theft, guess what?

Kevin Schneider: They reimburse you, and that has to come out of their pocketbook. So, it's in their best interest.

Mike Pine: That's a good point. A lot of people aren't aware of that. There's something called the UCC- the Universal Commercial Code, and it's kind of a fabric of law that most of the states, if not all of them, have adopted, and for financial institutions, it has rules.

It says as long as you check your bank statement once a month, and notify a bank of anything stolen out of your account within once a month, it's not your fault.

The bank has to cover it. Same thing with credit cards. If you don't check your stuff, or if you leave your checkbook out facing up, where anyone can go see your checking account, then it's on you, but if you're secure with your stuff, it's on the bank. It's on the credit cards. Yeah, about that credit monitoring,

so I tried LifeLock about 10 years ago, and I paid the extra to have them lock down my credit, whatever that means, and then I went [00:25:00] to go buy a car and that became a major problem, but thankfully I was able to call LifeLock, and instead of taking a couple hours, the dealership took two days, but they got that worked out. I never turned that back on, but I do, like you said, with some of the banks and credit cards I have, almost all of them- you have free credit reports. I get free credit scores, and I get free alerts, kind of like that. So, I use that, but I don't pay for LifeLock anymore. I wonder if I ought to.

Let's talk about another big area of fraud that we're seeing, and it's just grown out of control in my opinion, credit card fraud. I hate it. It's so ridiculous, but man, these credit card thieves, I don't know how they're so good at what they do. Two experiences I've had in the last three months- I use one main credit card for all my personal purchases. I've had that same credit card for more than a decade and never got stolen.

I had the same credit card number that I've been using for a decade. I made this mistake. This is all on me. Thankful for the bank- it was Chase Bank. They hooked [00:26:00] me up, but I went up to Walmart in Joplin, Missouri to get my mom something at the time, and I was in a hurry or rush, and somehow, I left my credit card there.

I didn't realize it. 10 minutes later, I am back in my car, heading to my mom, and I get this call on my cell phone, and it's Chase Credit. They're like, 'Hey, we're seeing some suspicious charges.' --I was like, 'I know I was just at Walmart. I'm in Joplin.' --'Okay, but have you used it since Walmart, Joplin?' --Like, 'No, I said.' --'Sir, it's been used seven times.'

--And by the time I got off the phone with him, it was used 14 times. Someone picked it up and they went to a bunch of stores and paid 20 bucks, 30 bucks. They knew they were on the clock. And then, we locked it down. I had to get a new credit card. I got much more careful about not losing my credit card... physical card again.

It's only happened once, Kevin, so don't make too much fun of me, and anyways, the credit card company worked with me. I asked, 'Okay, what's going to happen to this thief?' --They're like, 'Well, we don't even file police reports anymore unless it's over a certain amount.' --I was like, 'Well, someone is using my credit card.

They know it's not theirs. We know where they are. [00:27:00] Can't we try to file a report?' --And he's like, 'Well, you're welcome to call the police.' --I called Joplin Police Department. They're like, 'Yeah, honestly, we don't have the resources to deal with it. You can come file a report if you want, but this happens all the time, and we don't have the resources.'

--So, we just let them go. And the banks and the credit cards assume that they're going to lose a certain amount every year, and they're not even after it. They're just trying to control the fraud and reduce the fraud. But again, there's billions and billions, maybe hundreds of billions of credit card fraud every year.

So, that was my fault. One month later, after I called all the institutions I have auto-charges every month for to change my credit card number, I get a call again from Chase. 'Excuse me, sir. We're seeing some weird transactions in Oklahoma. Are you in Oklahoma?' --'No.' --And it was the new credit card number. I hadn't lost the new credit card.

I think I only used it half a dozen times at that point. So, I'm going to get that credit card number for stealing again. So thankfully, whatever AI they're using to track the spending it's hopefully going to put a dent in it, but the police they're too [00:28:00] overwhelmed. It's happening so many tens of thousands of times a day in this country.

They don't even go after it unless it's millions of dollars. And that's got to stop, man.

Kevin Schneider: Yeah, it's frustrating. My oldest daughter plays softball. We went to a tournament, and my wife, we were in a rush for the tournament. We were late. I got two kids, so we're late to everything, whatever. We were just going and going, and so, we're hopping out the car.

We're getting the bag. We're getting the water. We're getting everything. We're rushing out. My wife left her makeup bag and her phone on the front seat. So, someone just came by, popped the window, took the phone, took the makeup bag, which also had some medication in there.

So, I tracked the iPhone and so I have a location, not but two miles away to an address- Called the police- 'Hey I know exactly where my stolen iPhone is.

Here's a picture of my car. There's glass everywhere. Everything was stolen. They say, 'Sir, we don't have a warrant. We can't even go to the house.'

--Yeah. So, it's very frustrating. This small crime

Mike Pine: Was that

Kevin Schneider: the

Mike Pine: [00:29:00] Dallas? Is that Dallas? of Dallas?

Kevin Schneider: Grapevine, by the lake,

but they go quick, man.

They just like, they pop the glass, take it, and they're out in like 5.. 15 seconds.

Mike Pine: Yeah. That's who knows what the cause is, but defunding the police in those cities didn't help. I can promise you that.

Kevin Schneider: No, no. Hidden money- Don't leave your bags out on your car seats, or..

Mike Pine: Yeah.

Kevin Schneider: ..Leave your credit card in Walmart.

Mike Pine: So, I mean, crime in this world. We're not going to be able to stop. It's going to happen until Jesus comes back. We're going to have crime. It's so rampant that the police aren't even doing things about it now.

Not that the police don't care. It's that they're underfunded, there's not enough of them, and in a lot of cases, even if they go arrest the people, they get out on no bail. So, the crime is running rampant.

We're not going to be able to stop it. We can hopefully add some policies, work with our governments to get things a little bit better. But Number 1- to avoid being a victim of a crime, you've got to be diligent. You've got to make the choice not to be a victim. [00:30:00] Sometimes that's not enough, but that's the first start-

choose not to be a victim. Be proactive, be diligent.

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