Special Guest Expert - James Feldman: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Special Guest Expert - James Feldman: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
What does it take to create a vibrant, thriving life? First, the sad news is that Thoreau was right. Most people are leading quiet lives of desperation, lacking in meaning, fulfillment, and vitality. But we choose more. We choose to create extraordinary lives and the art of vibrant living. Show entertains you with inspiration, empowerment and education to create your life into a masterpiece. It's time. Let's vibe up. Hello. Hello my friends. Welcome back to the show. I am your host, Daniel Aaron. And as the name of the show indicates, the art of vibrant living. It doesn't tend to happen by accident. It meaning your vibrant, thriving life. So what we are all about on this show is bringing you the incredible guests and wisdom that will empower you to really get the education you need, the empowerment you need, and make the efforts and action in your life to create an amazing life. And I'm really excited for this show. In particular. My guest today, Jim Feldman, an amazing guy. He's been on the show before and it went so well. We had such good feedback and he tantalized me with some interesting information first. Now, I won't say a lot because I want you to hear directly from Jim. One thing to know, though, is he is a very interesting, wise Renaissance man named as one of the most innovative people of the 21st century, along with Michael Dell and the founders of Google. He's a certified public speaker who's given more than 1000 presentations, founder of Shift Happens, the author of 16 books and a wise, generous and caring man who is a little bit like me, though maybe ten times more. An incredible learner. So he's got so much to share in. Today's show. Specifically, is getting into a realm that I didn't even know was important. You'll hear more about that in a moment. So on that note, Jim, thank you so much for joining us and being willing to share about this sensitive, juicy topic today.

James Feldman:
Thank you for having me, Daniel.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Awesome. A total pleasure. So and I'll just say quickly for the for the audience here, whether, you know, whether you all are listening with us live or by rebroadcast. When Jim and I were speaking last time and he came on and shared about AI and ChatGPT, and that's a great show. So I'll you can look below at the reference for that show and go back and watch that one. Highly recommend it. As we were talking about that, Jim told me about another area that he's done an immense amount of research into, which is romance scams. And when he first told me that, I was like, well, okay, that's interesting. But, you know, and before I say any more, Jim, will you say a little bit like you did with me? What really got my attention with some of the statistics you put forward around that or just in general, why this is such an important topic?

James Feldman:
So, Daniel, during Covid, most people were not meeting anyone and so they started turning to dating apps. They started turning to social media to meet people online. And what this did is it opened up an entire cottage industry of scammers. Now, that's not to say that the scammers weren't out there before. So let me give you some ideas. The FBI and the United States set up an actual division for people to complain if they had been scammed out of money. So from 2021, going back five years, it was a little over $2 billion. That's B billion. In 2022 it went to almost $6 billion. And here we are in 2023 and it's already surpassed $10 billion. Now, the first question I asked myself was, are these people just stupid? Are these people not paying attention? And then I found myself in the middle of some of these dating scams because people were sending me catfish pictures. Catfish is when a picture of someone else is being used to create the profile, and they express romantic intentions that ultimately lead to lead to some kind of request for money. So here I am in my Batcave, talking to a beautiful woman who ultimately says, you know, you're the love of my life. I'm so happy to have met you. I would just love to come see you in person. Can you send me some money to get my medical exam? Because I live in England and you have to have a medical exam before you can get your passport. And then I need to borrow the money for the passport. But once I come to the United States, I'll earn enough money to pay you back. Now. The first time that happened, I was flattered. The second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh started to create a pattern. And because I had time on my hands, I decided to see how far this pattern would go. And I became the dating romance scam expert and I started answering ads. I started talking to people and I started to create a database, and I noticed that there was a very definitive progression of what the conversation would be, where it was going, and then how they would start to ask for money.

James Feldman:
Oh yes, the money. Gift cards, Venmo, Zelle, ways that can't be redacted, ways that are difficult to track. If they ask for it. In PayPal, they always said friends and family because friends and family can't be returned. So here is the first part. The financial side. And then doing more homework, I started to realize that this really affected everybody from young teenagers 1213, all the way up through senior citizens 80, 90 years old, the young people obviously not being scammed for money, but often being led into compromising situations where they were verbally, physically or sexually abused. And the college students found themselves in not only the physical, sexual, but financial as well. And typically the older people, strictly financial. So it does affect everyone. When you just look at dating apps, there's over 75 million people in the United States alone using dating apps. And it is now a worldwide epidemic. Hong Kong has a complete division. 60 people just trying to help people from getting scams here in the United States. Aarp has a complete scam division, etcetera. So whether you're on dating apps or you know someone who is on dating apps, or you have children or grandchildren who potentially are on dating apps, pay attention and advise them how not to be scammed.

Daniel Aaron:
Holy moly. You. You said a lot there. And definitely for someone like myself or anybody listening, if we were ignorant to this realm or had the thought which we spoke about before, I think that's quite common. Which is I wouldn't fall for that. And, you know, and I love what you said, your initial approach to it was, well, what are these people stupid, right. And that's what I used to think until a friend of mine who's a very bright, smart, wise woman fell for something like this and that really opened my eyes, said, wow, if she could, if that could happen to her. Right. And I hadn't even thought about I have a 16 year old daughter. I hadn't thought about that side of things. So, so much of what you said is attention grabbing. And I love that you, you know, got into this realm a little bit, and then it opened your eyes and you started to follow down the rabbit hole to find out what's really going on. So, gosh, so many places we could go with this. I think the first one is what what do you advise? Like what should people know? And maybe we have to look at it in different categories for their different audiences and different approaches. But what's the first thing for us to consider and for the audience to know.

James Feldman:
The first one, which is applicable to everybody? If it appears too good to be true, it probably is. The second part is read the language. Most of these scammers, not all of them, but most of them don't have English as their first language. So you start to see words being misapplied. You start to see grammatical and punctual errors. Number two, you want to have a live video chat with video and sound as quickly as possible. And the more you push this, the more they will tell you, oh, loans are not working or my camera doesn't work or I have bad internet or whatever. The third one is when they start asking for money. The red flag should go up. Now I played the game when someone would ask for $25. I would say, okay, you know what? I'm going to look at this as entertainment. I'm never going to get my $25 back, but let's see where it goes. And often it started becoming a very intimate conversation. A lot of requests for photographs and many photographs sent unsolicited. If you send a photograph, you better be sending a photograph that you're prepared to have show up all over the internet. Don't send pictures of yourself unless you're prepared for what that picture may suddenly find being populated in Facebook, Twitter, or other dating apps. The last part is always, always tell someone when you're going to meet someone that you met online. Have the secret password. Have them call your phone. Protect yourself. You don't know who you're going to meet, because if they're using a false photograph and creating a false profile, which is referred to as catfishing, you may find that the woman you've been talking to are three men who plan to rob you or beat you up, or something else.

Daniel Aaron:
Wow. Okay. Thank you. Well, and I've certainly I'll reiterate a couple of things you said and ask a bit further because I've certainly seen where the language is a big clue. And I noticed that okay, you these things are being expressed in ways that are not grammatically correct or not what I would see in English. And that's a big indicator for me. And I've also done what you described earlier, which is like, okay, I'm pretty sure this is somebody that's trying to scam me, but now that I know that, I think I'll play along a little bit and have some entertainment here. And what I've found a bunch of times is I do that for a little bit, and then I end up just getting kind of bored with it because it's not going anywhere. But that brings me to another question. So I'll come back to my previous question, which is when when somebody discovers the likelihood that they're being scammed in the ways you describe the asking for money or the refusal to get on a video chat with the delays or whatever, what should somebody actually do at that point? Like, you know, because I think part of what you're into here is seeing how you can not only prevent individuals from this happening, but maybe make a difference in the overall epidemic in the world.

James Feldman:
So you have to understand that this has turned into a very large cottage industry. When you're talking about billions and billions of dollars being scammed, I once again ask the question how many people got scammed that were too embarrassed or the amounts were too small to actually complain about it? But on the other hand, I have become so immersed in this I've actually tracked people down using reverse image searches using IP addresses, and I've actually turned them over to the FBI and gotten 11 of them arrested, and five of them are now serving time in jail. So I'm the wrong guy today to do that to. But I'm one of millions and millions. How many people are going to take the time and spend the energy? And here's the other part. Daniel, I has given these guys better tools. They don't need to steal a picture from the internet. They can create one. They don't need to mimic a voice. They can create their own avatar. And if they need help writing it, they can go to ChatGPT and Jasper and some of the other AI tools out there and come up with some amazing language. So it isn't that you're just dealing with someone in a foreign country that doesn't understand English. They now have tools that can mask those deficiencies and make you believe that you're talking to the girl next door, or the captain of the football team, or whoever it is that you really want to have that relationship with. Trust but verify.

Daniel Aaron:
Wow. Yeah. I hadn't thought of what you said in terms of the way AI is advancing the skills of these kind of scammers, and that's a scary proposition for sure. And I commend you and appreciate the fact that you've gone so far as to take the action to actually do something about it. And and that's amazing that you've turned over names like that and got people arrested. So super cool. Thank you for doing that. And. Well, you know, I want to I want to hear from you in terms of what you think is most important for people to to know or to do around this, because you might have more to say, better than the questions I ask you. But one of the next things that comes to me. So feel free to delay this and say whatever you feel like is more important. But what's going on in us as people that we tend to fall for these kind of things because lots of different kinds of scams out there. But it seems like from the level of growth of this particular romance world, there's a particular signature to it that makes us more susceptible to it.

James Feldman:
It's called loneliness. It's called Covid. You know, the fact that you would go to a bar. The fact that you would go to a networking event, that's where you met people. I used to call on my clients in person. I haven't talked to a client in person for quite some time. So you start to look for that attachment. It's very interesting. In May of this year, the US surgeon General came out with a report called Loneliness and Desperation is the biggest epidemic facing the United States today. And he came up with a number that was staggering. Corporate loss in productivity due to loneliness and desperation. $158 billion. As I started to do my research, I started to find out that 1 in 10 women have been assaulted. In some form or fashion by someone they met online. And of those 1 in 10 one of three was sexually assaulted. And of the 1 in 10, six out of ten were financially assaulted. There is a book that you can actually buy on the dark web called The Nigerian Romance Scam Handbook for $9.95. So you can actually learn how to do it. So you've got people that are in a poverty country, or they're out of work and they figure they can get online and scam 25 here and 50 here and 100 there. Pretty soon you've got a pretty decent income and you're not paying taxes on it.

Daniel Aaron:
Wow. Okay, so as you say that stuff, I can feel my, like, spine come up with some anger, indignation, protection. It's funny, I was speaking with a friend yesterday about a friend who's a very hard worker, super industrious, and and we were commenting on the phenomena that happens sometimes otherwise, which I heard someone else express recently. It's a full time job trying not to work, right. So the idea that somebody puts so much effort into doing something that is the opposite of industrious, helpful, service oriented to me is somewhat baffling. And I can have some indignation about that. But that's not going to get me anywhere, because that's obviously just part of the way it is in the world and know hopefully the work we're doing is is helping move the world away from that. But on the flip side, my spine comes up in a protective way to thinking of my own daughter and the potential there. So would you for for me and for the other parents that are tuned in here, go down that rabbit hole a little bit in terms of what the particularities are for for children and teenagers especially.

James Feldman:
I think you as a parent, you as a grandparent, you as a friend of a young person must have the conversation. Now, while they are going to take a defensive posture, perhaps the easiest way to do it is to go to the website which I've created, which is called Romance Scam expert.com. I'll say it again. Romance scam Expert.com. And in there you will find all kinds of information, including some instructional handbooks that you can share with young people. Sit down with them, go through it and say, look, we don't want you to get hurt. We don't want you to put yourself in a compromising position. So here's some ways that we can protect you. One is there's an app that you can put on your phone that can ping back to that specific person, whether it's a friend or parents, to tell your location. That same app will allow you to have a phone call made to that phone, let's say 30 minutes after you get there, or 20 minutes after you get there, so that if you're in a position where you're uncomfortable, the phone rings and you can go, yes, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I have to go and you can run away because the phone distracted that person from doing something that they might have had in terms of their own intentions, in terms of sending the money. If for some reason you're going to send the money, then you want to send it in something that you can recant. So if it's PayPal, you want to send it not as friends and family, but as if it's a transaction. If you go to things like Zelle, it's gone. If you go to gift cards, it's gone. So my answer to you is don't send the money. But if you feel forced to send the money because the story was so compelling, maybe the answer is you say, listen, I'll help you buy some food. I'm going to send you a Walmart gift card that you have to spend at Walmart so it doesn't turn into cash, or you come up with a small amount, let's say $15, and they have to provide you with a receipt showing how they spent the money. But I can tell you right now I'm talking to Susie Q and she says, send me the money. But my PayPal account was hacked, so I want you to send it to Daniel at paypal.com. And suddenly it's not even going to that person that you're talking to. So those are all red flags. And on the website again, romance scam expert, I've got a printout that you can easily download with ten different tips on how to avoid these issues. But remember the money can be replaced. What you don't want is to find yourself in a position where you could be physically, verbally, or sexually abused.

Daniel Aaron:
Absolutely. I mean, especially for for us as parents, right? That's the much bigger concern. And you said it before that oftentimes for children, the issue is not necessarily about the money. They're not being targeted for money. Right. And we've gotten a lot more education recently, or some of us have from the movie The Sound of Freedom, pointing out more to more to a global audience. I think what's happening actually in the sex slave and sex trafficking world. And is that part of what is going on in this? Yeah.

James Feldman:
And of course, for the young people, that's the biggest one. But on the flip side. Netflix ran a movie called The Tinder Swindler, and if you haven't seen it, it's about highly educated, white collar women who got taken in by a guy that was so smooth, so slick that they actually went out and got brand new American Express credit cards, maxed them out for him, and then he disappeared. Now the epilog to the story is what got me so upset. He got caught. They put him in jail. He got out in 15 months. He's back on Tinder and Tinder knows that he's done this because Tinder's general attitude has been. It's not our job to police these people. It's not our job to protect them. We're just a conduit of bringing people together. And I went to the Tinder. Tinder is social and Match.com largest provider. They have about 50 websites. And I said, how about I become your spokesperson to help educate your members? And the response came back, if we do that, then we're going to admit that there's a problem and we're not going to admit there's a problem. So even in corporate America, a publicly held company who's making a lot of money off of this doesn't see the obligation to help protect their members the way you and I would think. Now, they may be doing some things to protect them, but I don't think they're doing enough.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, absolutely. I'm completely with you. I mean, it sounds a little bit like the old days of when, when when the smoking industry, you know, first came out, the tobacco industry. So. All right, well, there's so many different directions we could go in, things I could ask, but what else would you say in terms of what? What do we need to know.

James Feldman:
To to your point, in the Surgeon General's report, he said loneliness and depression has more risks to your health, mental and physical, than smoking 15 cigarets a day. How's that for a comparison?

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Wow. So, boy. Boy, my head spins. My, my heart pulses with all of this. You know, my protection goes up. And again, I personally feel like I have to just say, hey, this is part of life. This is part of what's going on in the world these days. We need to one increase our awareness, which is a lot of what you're doing to help us here is increase the awareness, the protective measures. I think part of what this all points to for us, too, is the importance of finding healthy ways of creating friendship, love, community in our lives. So we aren't so susceptible to to these kind of scams.

James Feldman:
Let me be perfectly clear dating apps are here to stay. Dating apps have become the way we meet people. That doesn't mean the dating app is bad. But in all fairness, it doesn't mean that guns are bad. Guns don't kill people. People misusing guns kill people. The same thing happens with a dating app. That dating app may lead you to the right person. Match.com says 17% of their members got married through meeting on Match.com. That's a big number. But they don't want to talk about the other, let's just call it 6,070% that have had something bad happen. We need to be vigilant. We need to understand that no matter what the tool is, whether it's AI, whether it's a gun, whether it's dating, there's the good use and the bad use. And as I said, let me this used to say love is in the air. And you notice I've been sitting here and it now says love is in the eye, that AI has given big tools to the bad guys.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, because it's I mean, it's a great point you make, it's always the not the tool itself, but how it's used. And as we evolve in any one direction, it opens up a whole world of opportunities for people in other realms. Do you I mean, since you got yourself so much on the pulse of the way this is moving? Well, two questions come to mind. One is, what happened in you that this became such an interest because, I mean, you got a lot going on. I know you're a multi-passionate guy. You've got several businesses. So one, why did you engage with it so much? And where do you think it's going? Like what do you think the future is here.

James Feldman:
So so let me be as candid as possible. Prior to Covid, I had a very robust business dealing with a lot of sea level companies and executives. Covid kind of wiped them out. During Covid, they were basically told that you're going to get early retirement, mergers and acquisitions, etcetera. So my workload dropped dramatically as a public speaker. That went to zero because there were no live meetings. So other than doing zoom calls, I was bored. I had just finished writing my 16th book and I got online saying, you know, I've never been on a dating app. Let me see what this is all about, because I did have a few friends that said I met my significant other through Match.com or or some other dating site. And of course, the very first woman that responded was stunningly beautiful and very polite and very engaging. And I was flattered. And she started telling me the story about how she had been in a bad relationship, but I seemed like a nice guy, and she'd gone to my website and she'd read some of my materials and just thought I would be fun to hang out with. And we started chatting and the chat became much, much, much, much more into the romantic side of I'd love to come see you or why don't you come see me? And those were conversations that you wanted to hear. And then, of course, by the way, I've lost my job. I'm struggling. I have no money to pay for food. Could you send me $25? Because I haven't eaten in eight days, and Americans have got a soft heart. And you're saying, you know, $25, it'll buy her a meal or two? Sure. Why not? And then. Thank you so much. You know, you've been great, by the way. I haven't been able to see a doctor. I've got this problem. And then it starts. Because the moment they get their claws into you, it becomes more frequent and the asks become bigger and bigger. So the one lady that I have been talking to forever, forever. We got to the point where she was getting her health exam, getting her passport, and coming to see me.

James Feldman:
But I required receipts and the receipts didn't match. The receipt was dated three days prior to her going for the exam. I called the place that issued the receipt. They had no idea where that receipt came from. So I went back to the person. I said, you know, this receipt was dated three days before he went, oh, it's a typo. And literally in 15 minutes the corrected receipt arrived. Now, I knew I had a catfish and I just started reeling it in. And I started getting more and more data and finally said, enough of this. Who are you? I know you're not this person, and if you don't come clean, you're going to regret it. And the next one was a picture of a woman that looked nothing like the woman I had been talking to in a location far, far away from the location I thought she was in. But she wouldn't let go of the story. She goes, I know when I started I was doing this, but I've grown to fall in love with you. It's cetera. Et cetera. So she didn't want to lose all the time that she had invested. Even though she was radically different than the person I had been talking to. And that made me angry at myself. For not listening to my own inner self which said too good to be true. So I now have my own. My own litmus test is the woman I'm talking to, someone who, if I was in a bar, would come up to me and start a conversation. And unfortunately, when I'm honest, I go, no, she wouldn't. And and that's where I start drilling down to find out who I'm really talking to.

Daniel Aaron:
It's. Well, and I mean, what you point to, that kind of litmus test is something that's challenging for a lot of us, because part of us wants to believe that this incredibly attractive and whatever different ways person would see me as the ultimate right. But yeah, maybe not necessarily true. So I appreciate that you're willing to share that experience and your vulnerability in that. And so it sounds like in that process, and this was probably early on in your experience, you didn't know to or you didn't get to the point of saying, hey, let's have a video call. Let me verify this. Is that right?

James Feldman:
I did, but the story was my phone is broken or my mic doesn't work. Or we had calls, but I could never get video and audio. I could get video, no audio or audio, no video. And I could never have the call instantaneously. It always had to be set up for later time. And I started to realize that setting it up for the later time gave them the chance to go online and find a video that might have been posted. So as it turns out, this was a video and all the other pictures was from an adult film star. That was about 20 years ago, 25 years ago. So that person is probably retired probably, you know, certainly out of the industry, but, you know, raising a family and living a life out of that spotlight because most of the people in adult film are there for relatively short periods of time to over overcome some kind of a financial issue. So she found this, let's call it treasure chest of Pictures and videos and started using those, but couldn't let the sound be played if she was showing the video and if she was playing the audio. Couldn't have the video playing because they wouldn't match.

Daniel Aaron:
Wow. Okay. Amazing. Again, to me, it's like, baffling the lengths people will go to to avoid doing something that's actually productive. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. So. And so the actual. Okay. So they actually went and got a video and played that as if it was them on a video call with you, but didn't have the audio working for some reason and so portrayed it. And but this is actually you believe now that this was actually a woman that you were speaking with. It wasn't like three guys in Nigeria who got the handbook necessarily.

James Feldman:
Well, in this particular case, once I really pushed it hard enough, that woman revealed herself. Now I honestly believe that she had help because there were some pretty clever technology issues that I'm not quite sure she could have overcome by herself. Maybe she could. But again, once I realized that the person I was really talking to bore no resemblance to the person that I was having this romantic conversation with. Then it just got me angry and mostly at myself, mostly at myself, for not paying attention and listening to all the signs. So again, when you go to the romance scam expert.com, I've got a checklist. Go through the checklist. It's not hard to follow. What's the language? How soon could you get a video audio chat? I say everything consistent. In other words, is the PayPal account using that person's name? Is the Zelle account. Using that person's name is is the account or the individual you're talking to trying to get you off of? Let's call it Match.com or Tinder and move you over to WhatsApp or Google Chat or something else, because the encryption and the ability to track it backwards is much more difficult. That's why they like a lot. Whatsapp and Telegraph, because it's encrypted at both ends and very, very difficult to get that. Footprints that digital footprint to track it down.

Daniel Aaron:
Gotcha. Okay. So I'm curious about this part. Jim, you mentioned a couple of times about being angry at yourself. And I think what you mean by that is like, well, that you fell for it, that you you overrode the signs that told you that. And I know when I think about my friend who ended up sending $10,000 of Bitcoin to somebody who she believed was in the special forces of something and was, you know, had just gotten shot and had to take care of his men. And, you know, the whole story. And she when she tells me about it now, she can laugh about it. But there was quite a while where she was embarrassed and felt foolish and I'm sure, angry at herself. But, you know, you're a smart guy. She's a smart woman. I feel like there's something that we might be able to offer that would be helpful to people to say, it can happen to anyone, right? It's not something to be embarrassed about or even necessarily upset about it at ourselves. Does that make sense?

James Feldman:
You know, there's an old adage that says the easiest person to sell to is another salesman. Now, those salesmen know all the tricks to it, but they're gullible. I'm not saying that you should beat yourself up over it. I'm just saying be careful. She lost $10,000. I didn't lose anywhere near that. And I looked at it strictly as entertainment. I looked at it as education. I looked at it in lieu of going to a movie. I looked at it in lieu of going on a date. I mean, today, if you took somebody out on a date, whether you're a man or a woman, I think it's probably going to be 100, $150 by the time you're through with the Uber and the cocktails and whatever it is. So if I could spend $25 and have some entertainment and some diversion from work, I was willing to accept that. But the problem was I was pulling myself into the rabbit hole. I wanted to believe. I needed to believe. You know, in the in the movie A Few Good Men, you can't handle the truth. I didn't want to know the truth until it started to hit me over and over and over. I couldn't see and talk to them. The grammar wasn't correct. Even the movies that were being sent, the woman's physical features were changing dramatically. If this woman who had been an adult star, let's just say, had been there for five years, she may have changed her hair. She may have had some plastic surgery, she may have done all kinds of things. And I'm looking at this. I'm looking at the fact that every picture of this woman, she's had very expensive manicures done. If you're not eating, how are you paying to have a manicure done? I'm noticing that she had her hair streaked. If you're not eating, how do you have money to get your hair streaked? And so forth? And so those were the signs that started to pop up the red flags. And I said, you know what? I'm just going to see how far this goes. And it got to the point where she said, here's my receipt for going to get my medical exam.

James Feldman:
Here's a copy of my passport. All you need to do is send me the money to buy the ticket. And when I said, I'm going to give you frequent flier miles, there was 50 reasons from Sunday why that wouldn't work. Oh, we don't do that here. Oh, I don't understand how to do it. There's nothing to understand. I'm going to take care of the ticket on frequent flier miles, because if you don't show up, I'll be able to get my frequent flier miles back. If I give you money. That money is long gone. And that's where it started to pressure her. And she finally just couldn't take it anymore and said, let me tell you who I really am, and then expected me to stick around. Even as we speak today, I'm still getting. Are you still mad at me? You know, I really fell in love with you. I'm sorry. I won't ever do that again. Yeah, you're right, because you're never going to have the chance.

Daniel Aaron:
Wow. That's amazing. I mean, and good on you for investing in it. For the payoff of entertainment. Right? And I love, like, part of what that indicates to me is you've become an expert in this realm in some way because you followed your interest and the entertainment factor of it.

James Feldman:
And I have dozens upon dozens of these conversations. I can document it, and I can show you in an Excel spreadsheet, almost the timeline. I can tell you from the time that we meet, here's how it starts. I'll get a text or I'll get a WhatsApp or I'll get something going. Hi, Daniel. How are you doing? And I write back. My name is not Daniel, it's Jim. Oh, I'm so sorry, Jim. I must have punched in the wrong number. But thanks for responding. You seem like a nice guy. My name is Claudia. Would you like to chat? Boom! Hook, line and stinker.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, well, I get those all the time too. And every now and then I start to play along thinking, all right, well, there's going to be some entertainment here. And then I eventually get bored of it, you know. And you described what where you were at earlier. Like in A Few Good Men. You weren't you couldn't handle the truth. You didn't want the truth. Right? Which, you know, the psychological principle involved there is what's called willful blindness, right? It's like, I don't want to see that. So I'm going to pretend that that's not there. And this can happen, of course, on a subconscious level. And then I also think of the great book by Malcolm Gladwell from a few years ago called Talking With Strangers. And he went through case study after case study of famous, famous cases where not just one of us and not just because of a romance. Hundreds, thousands, even millions of people didn't see something that was really obvious. If you were willing to look. And part of what it pointed to is that as humans, we want to believe, we want to trust people, and that's there's a benefit in that. That's part of who we are.

James Feldman:
Well, look at all the money that was lost a few years ago from the movie stars that were investing in the stock broker in New York who subsequently got caught. But these were smart people, and they were doing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of investing and lost every penny. In the meantime, he had five houses. He was living great, but it was when it started to spiral down and people were asking for their money back that he totally collapsed. So he was just much more sophisticated in a different way. Don't forget, there's hundreds. If you go on to AARP and you just say, show me the scams that you're tracking, you'll see over 100 different scams that AARP is tracking for senior citizens. And that doesn't mean it's not being done for younger people. It's just that AARP is typically focused on the more mature side of our population.

Daniel Aaron:
Absolutely. So now I want to go back, and I know we're going to need to wrap up pretty soon. But so this I think it was the first one where you really went down the rabbit hole. And eventually the woman's story collapsed and she said, okay, I'm not who I said I was. And and you're still getting messages from her at this point. Did you actually have a conversation with the the real person? And yeah.

James Feldman:
Amazingly so. Her phone and video and audio worked because she was trying to convince me that although she was not. The picture. She was the person that was having those conversations, and I just had to accept the fact that she wasn't physically the same person, but emotionally she was. That was her pitch.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay. And and forget about the part that she'd been lying to you and trying to scam you. Oh, yeah.

James Feldman:
That was like, hey, I won't ever do that again. I'm going. Of course you aren't, because I'm never going to let you. Right. Oh, yeah. It was, it was. I'm so sorry. I didn't realize I was going to fall for you. I'm so sorry. I didn't know I was going to hurt you. I'm so sorry. Can't you forgive me? Because I am in love with you. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay.

James Feldman:
Not going to happen.

Daniel Aaron:
Well, that's like a sort of a dark, twisted version of what was the movie with Steve Martin. Roxanne, based on the the old. Oh, gosh, I forget the original, but you know, where one person is saying the poetry and singing the songs. Yes. Um, wow. Fascinating, fascinating. Okay, well, as we're coming toward our conclusion for this conversation, which has been enlightening as well as entertaining, is there anything that I haven't asked you about this or that you feel like is worthwhile, entertaining, or important for our audience to know?

James Feldman:
I'm going to say it one last time for your audience. You're sitting there saying, how could anybody be that stupid? Forget it. We all are that stupid. We're just stupid in different ways. Number two, whether you personally are in the dating space, whether you personally are on the financial investing space, one of your friends is if you talk to a teenager, in fact, Daniel, talk to your daughter and ask her straight out, do you know anybody that has met somebody that they met online and they've met them in person, and you'll be shocked because the answer is yes. All the young people have got a friend who found themselves in that position of actually going out to meet the person that they thought they was talking to, and in most cases, it was not the physical person that was being represented, but someone else.

Daniel Aaron:
Okay, let me let me interrupt you for a second there because. So if we say just just to clarify this for myself here. Meet somebody online and then meet them in person. There's not not necessarily something inherently bad or wrong about that. There is, I think, an inherent danger to that, which is part of what you pointed out with the with the app, because if they're not who they said they were, they are, or if they don't have the intentions that we thought they had, then there's some danger to that. But in my accurate in thinking that meeting somebody online and then meeting them in person, that's not necessarily problematic. Is that right?

James Feldman:
It is problematic if you meet them in a place where you have no exit. So if you're going to meet them, meet them in the middle of a shopping mall. Bring your friend with you. Don't paint yourself into a corner because often they'll say, I didn't want other people to see us, so why don't we meet in the park, which is closed and there's no security? I mean, they're not telling you that, but in essence, you're going somewhere where you shouldn't go alone. So be vigilant. Listen, if you really want to meet somebody and they're interested in you, meet them in the middle of Times Square, where very little can happen because there's so many people there. So just be very, very protective of yourself. The first, second or third time you meet these people.

Daniel Aaron:
Absolutely. Well, that makes really good sense. And then the other scenario, if we take it to the next step, which is what you were just talking about, you, I interrupted you. Most teenagers, you would say, well, no, at least somebody who has met somebody online met them in person, but then they're not who they purported themselves to be online, correct? Yes. Yeah. And what what happens with that? How does that tend to play out?

James Feldman:
It could be anything from disappointment to trafficking to the emotional, physical or sexual abuse. And you don't want your daughter or your daughter's friends put into that position. There's a current lawsuit right now of a 14 year old who was on one of the sites, which caters to the Lbgtq community. He met what he thought was a love interest. It turned out to be several men that put him in the hospital. They beat him up so badly and he's currently suing the dating platform and their defense is, we said you had to be 18. You lied about your age. Therefore it's not our fault.

Daniel Aaron:
Wow. That's. Yeah. Okay. So it's I mean, what you said. Then it takes me a minute to catch up to that, because that's just another one that I wouldn't have thought of the potential outcomes or dangers with these kind of scenarios, which I think points back to the main lesson, which is be smart, be vigilant, be careful. Whatever you pursue, make sure that you're doing it in a way that provides a platform of safety.

James Feldman:
Well, again, if you think about the LGBTQ community and I'm not trying to start an argument or be controversial, but typically there were limited places for them to make and meet comfortably during Covid. Those all shut down, so their only way of meeting was online. Now, when you go to meet that person who you thought was X and it turns out to be dramatically different, you have now put yourself in a position where maybe you're in danger in more ways than one. So once again, meet in a public place. Bring a friend. Make sure that you've got an exit. Make sure that you put yourself near the exit, the doorway so you can leave if you feel threatened.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Well, and, you know, this is a little bit of a strange segue, but when I was a kid in my family, I learned the language of sarcasm. Right. And that's the way everybody in my family communicated. When I got to young Adulthood, I realized this is not working for creating good relationships or psychological emotional health for me. So I a lot of therapy stopped myself from sarcasm. And I've realized that one of the outcomes of that is I tend to think of things kind of literally. So as you describe this scenario where the guy, you know thinks he's going to meet a love interest, he meets a group of guys who put him in the hospital. It takes me a minute to track that. And what you're saying is these are people that targeted him because of their bias, their hate and inflicted violence on him because of that. Correct? Correct. You know, I know that seems kind of obvious. I'm a little bit slow. But again, to me it's like, wow, the the level of industry or activity to do something destructive as opposed to what could be done constructively is phenomenal to me.

James Feldman:
And it and it's growing. It's not getting better. I mean, think about what's going on in the rest of the world. And I'm not, again, trying to create controversy, but think about what just happened in Israel. Think about what's going on in the Ukraine. What if you're on one side or the other? You may want to manifest your anger by taking it out on that other person. And so you're on one of these apps, whether it's a social app or a dating app, and you're just wanting to vent by getting back at that person because he or she is part of that community.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, again, I have to just surrender in some way to say this is the way the world is at the moment. Yes, I'm going to do everything I can to help it evolve in more conscious ways, and I need to accept the reality of that's the way things are and be at peace with that, and also be protective about that for myself, my friends, my clients, my family. So all that said, Jim, it's been super generous of you to invest this time with us to help people be more savvy, right? And to be able to protect themselves more, to know what's going on. It's been entertaining, but also really useful. So what else, you know, for people that are seeing this show and want to get in contact with you, there's other work you do. What? How can people get best in touch with you?

James Feldman:
Well, all that information is on the romance scam expert. There's links. All my contact information is there. Feel free to take a look at it. There's a lot of information that you could share with other people as well as yourself.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. Thank you. Well, again, I appreciate you, your interest and endeavors to find out what's going on here and to actually take some proactive steps to help to help fix this situation.

James Feldman:
And my my email is simple. It's either James at Romance Scam Expert or Jay Feldman at Romance Scam Expert.

Daniel Aaron:
Perfect, okay. And I will put those in the show notes and in the comments and the different platforms so that we have that written down for people. And, you know, Jim, you'll remember because you've been on the show with me before. Usually at this point I say, are you ready for the big question? Which is a surprise. But since you've been on the show, I'm still going to ask you the question, and perhaps it'll be slanted a little bit based on the topic that we've been exploring a bit today. So is it okay if I ask you the big question? Of course. All right. So all with all that's been said and with all of your experience and wisdom here, what is the one thing you would offer to our audience for how they can create their most vibrant, thriving life? And that can be in this particular topic or however you like.

James Feldman:
Don't let what you think you know. Prevent you from learning what you need to know.

Daniel Aaron:
Hallelujah. Super simple. Super powerful. Goes right back to the ancient philosophical wisdom. The one thing I know is that I don't know. Really powerful sage advice. Thank you. Yeah.

James Feldman:
My pleasure.

Daniel Aaron:
Awesome. Well, Jim, thank you so much for being with us today. For the audience. Thank you for your interest and not just your interest, your actual activity here to learn, to grow, to create your vibrant, thriving life. You doing that makes a difference in the world. I appreciate you, thank you for letting us be a part of it. We'll see you soon. Aloha. Mahalo for tuning in to the Art of Vibrant Living show, y'all! I'm Daniel Aaron and may you live with great vibrancy.

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