[BankingOnYouPod] Episode 4: Real Romance or Red Flag?

From Rom Com to Con Job

In this episode of Banking on You, host Josh Rodriguez sits down with Tasha, West Community Credit Union’s resident fraud expert, to uncover the real stories behind some of the most emotionally devastating scams: Romance Scams.

What starts as a fairytale connection online can quickly spiral into requests for gift cards, access to your online banking, or even involvement in financial crimes. Tasha shares not only the red flags to watch for, but the human stories behind them.

The Reality of Romance Scams:

Americans lost $12.5 billion to consumer fraud in 2024—a 25% jump from the year before
The #1 entry point for scammers is email, followed by phone calls and text messages
Victims often don’t realize they’ve been scammed until it’s too late, especially when love is on the line

🚨 Tasha’s 5 Red Flags to Watch For:

Asking to move conversation off social media. If someone wants to leave public platforms and take the conversation to Messenger, WhatsApp, or text…take a pause. It’s a setup for isolation and manipulation.
Promises too-good-to-be-true rewards or payouts. Someone you’ve never met isn’t going to send you thousands of dollars or pay you “just because.”
They send you suspicious links. Never click links from unknown sources. One click can give them access to everything.
You receive unsolicited messages offering jobs, toll notices, or surprise winnings. If you’re not job hunting or traveling, those texts about job interviews or toll fees? Scam city.
Money solicitations for orphans, mission work, or overseas emergencies. Pulling at your heartstrings is a classic move. Charity scams thrive on your generosity. Don’t fall for it!

If it feels off, it probably is. Stay alert, trust your gut, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. And most importantly—don’t click, don’t pay, and don’t go it alone. Learn more about fraud prevention and identity protection on our website.

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Banking on You is powered by West Community and Tigers Community Credit Union.

Transcript

Host Josh Rodriguez
Imagine this: The perfect partner, your perfect partner fell from the sky and landed directly into your heart. They like what you like. They know how to make you laugh. They’re a great listener. Everything you’ve ever hoped for. Perfect. You’re happy. They’re happy. It’s like the ending of a romcom, right?

Until it isn’t. The requests start coming in. Hey, things are a little tight this month. Can you help me out? Not a lot of money. Just enough to get me to payday. No biggie, right? But those requests are becoming more regular and for larger amounts and more varied and a bit bizarre. Buy a bunch of gift cards and send me the numbers, they ask.

It’s easier if you give me access to your online banking. Can you visit this Bitcoin ATM machine? Should be alarming, but love is blind, right? And this is true love. It doesn’t happen every day. Then suddenly…

Your true love doesn’t reply. You are coldly ghosted after you’ve sent them hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars, leaving you with an empty bank account and an empty heart. Because in reality, your perfect partner didn’t fall from the sky directly into your heart. They actually slid right into your DMs. I’m sorry to say, you just fell for a romance scam.

There was no true love, no true relationship, nothing true about any of it except you were truly taken for a ride. This is Banking on You, season one, episode four. I’m Josh Rodriguez.

Tasha
13 years ago, I was looking for a job. I was stay at home man for 10 years. Then I started at the credit union at the teller line.

Josh
Tasha is West Community’s fraud specialist. She has a nose for fraud and potentially fraudulent situations.

Tasha
And then I always had an interest in collections. I knew it was a path I wanted to get into and I always liked fraud. So I actually took it to our CEO wanting a risk or a fraud department. But then I ended up going from the Senior Teller to the Member Solutions Consultant.

Josh
So quick note, at other financial institutions, member solutions would be known as the collections department. But as a people-focused financial cooperative, credit unions do collections differently than others.

Tasha
And then from there, I kind of stayed in solutions, but I was doing more of the fraud side of things. Lot of repos.

Josh
Tasha’s life experiences have really equipped her with a deep empathy for those in financial difficulties.

Tasha
Like, I understand where life happens. I’d gone through raising these kids alone in a foreign country. I had traveled from England over here. We were nearly homeless. So I could relate to a lot of the reasons why people get delinquent. Life does happen and changes happen so quickly. What a lot of people don’t understand is the route that people get into when they hit delinquency. Because once you miss that first payment, then it’s going to spiral out of control and then you’ll feel like you’re in a well that you can’t get out of. It’s a horrible place to be. So collecting to me was being more personable and understanding what they really needed and not trying to criticize judge and take money from them.

Josh
Tasha was able to establish a deep connection and a closeness with members she was working with in Member Solutions.

Tasha
I had one young member called me and he was literally cooking hot dogs on a barbecue grill on the side of the road because he had broken down. But he needed to talk to me and let me know when he was getting his next payment in. So one guy called and I could hear water running and I said to him, are you seriously in the shower? And he said, yeah, I’m having a shower. But you called me, so I’m calling you back.

You don’t need to call me in the shower. They’re bizarre stories. But it was a bond that we had. So it became more of a joke, really. Our members called to pay me. They never paid West Community.

I think when you don’t fabricate and you’re honest, they really do understand that we’re generally trying to help them. And the goal is to get them back on track. And a lot of times we do. I always wanted to know how to help. And what we could do to help. That was all that it was ever about for me.

Josh
Alright, so after this stint in Member Solutions, Tasha was one of the inaugural members of our newly formed Fraud Department. The empathy she showed in collections was a skill she would find invaluable dealing with consumer fraud.

Tasha
Dealing with members on more of a personal level because now they lost their money. They’re not giving it away willingly. It’s been taken by somebody that they felt they trusted. And I have to come in and tell them that they should not trust that person that they’re wholeheartedly involved in romantically. And plus when you mess with someone’s emotions and they feel that they are in love with someone that I’m telling them isn’t real.

It can get very tricky. Once they get involved with that individual romantically, that’s when every other little scam comes off of it.

Nine times out of ten if it’s romance scam we’re gonna end up with cryptocurrency involved. Gonna end up with gift cards. And we’re gonna end up with fraudulent checks. I would still say that romance is the top.

Josh
Romance scams, criminals toying with one’s emotions to bilk them out of every dollar they can. It’s terribly sad, but it’s real and embarrassing. Victims of romance scams have a difficult time admitting they were duped. And you can imagine, it’s tough.

Tasha
Most of the victims I’ve dealt with are male. They haven’t told their spouse, partner or wife. A lot of the times it’s the women that want to believe. It’s the men that then become embarrassed, especially if I’m one telling them that it’s a scam.

Josh
Tasha told me about a case she worked on where not only was the consumer duped into believing she had found the love of her life, but the scammer also talked her into committing a sequence of financial crimes, crimes that she was held liable for.

Tasha
She tried to pass a hundred thousand dollar bad check, and she was told to open a business account that was for investment, which is another classic scam. So the scammer, who was the love of her life, he hacked a non-for-profit email, redirected funds from the nonprofit into the scammer’s account, then had her open the business, and then they took the money and put it in hers.

Josh
The innocent consumer, in this case an elderly woman, went from being defrauded and scammed to actively participating in felony-level crime.

You know, romance scams aren’t the only scams out there. are dozens of shady methods criminals use to prey upon the unsuspecting consumer. As a matter of fact, $12.5 billion was lost to consumer fraud in 2024. That’s a 25 % increase from 2023, which was already up 21% from 2022.

Here’s some good info for you to have: According to the FTC, the number one entry point for criminals to attempt to steal your money is by sending you an email. Hmm. A phone call is number two and text messages are quickly becoming more and more popular.

The question is, how can you protect yourself and your loved ones from those with heartless, sinister intentions?

Stay alert. These are pros and they’ll use every tool at their disposal. But don’t be afraid. Don’t fear. Tasha has some insider tips that will go a long way toward keeping the bad guys at bay and keeping your nest egg safe. We’re gonna call them red flags.

Tasha
There’s a lot of times it’s on Facebook and people talk through those sites. When someone wants to move you from the public platform of Facebook into something like Messenger, once you leave a platform, you’re more open to vulnerabilities. They go from there into their personal texts, messages. Now it’s over.

Because then they’re going to get into their online access. They’re going to ask for account info because they want to befriend them, but they want to build that trust up. And it’s going to take months. So it will be months of conversation.

Josh
Red flag number one. If someone asks you to move a conversation to a messenger app, like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, et cetera, huge red flag. Definitely never, ever give your personal mobile number to anyone you met online, even if they are sweet talkers and post provocative pictures, steer clear. The key is to keep social media communication on publicly viewable social media platforms. Avoid moving to direct messages.

Red flag number two. Your grandma used to tell you this all the time. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Tasha
But I think with anything, if it’s too good to be true, if you’ve been told that you’re going to get a check for $3000, go ahead and cash it. But then they send you a check for five. just keep the change. I wrote too much. You’re going to end up in a whole fraud situation with something like that.

No one is going to give you extra cash just because they’ve fat fingered the check amount. No one is giving away hundreds of dollars for free. It just doesn’t happen. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Click delete, avoid it, end the conversation.

Tasha
and if your tummy tells you or your heart says mmm something’s off

Josh
Move on as quickly as possible. Red flag number three.

Tasha
Don’t click on links you don’t know, just be aware.

Josh
Be very cautious about clicking links. Tasha says don’t click any links, but we all know we have to click some. Never click an unsolicited link embedded in an email, on a random website, or in a text message. Which brings us to…

Red flag number four. Be on the lookout for rogue text messages. This one is simple. If you don’t know who it’s from, if they’re offering you something for free or an unsolicited service, refer back to your grandma’s advice. If it’s too good to be true, yeah, you could finish the rest.

Tasha
I’ve also had one for, agencies or head hunting, delete and report as junk. That’s all I can say on those. Don’t click the link.

Josh
Use a little bit of common sense. If you haven’t traveled, you don’t owe for tolls. If you’re not looking for a job, they’re not looking for you. More than likely. Red flag number five.

Tasha
Sending money to help the orphans. That was a big one I had. He was sending money to buy tilapia, to put in the pond that they were building for the families and the orphans. He sent me pictures. I’ve got an entire email thread from one guy that sends money to the Philippines, because he’s actually building an entire house out there. And I questioned him. So he wanted to prove everything to me. So I have the building plans, I got photos of the kids, everything.

I can’t really stop him sending it but I’ve limited him and he’s not sending any more. I had a couple, they were heavy in the church, and it was mission work but it was a scam, and he wasn’t convinced because he saw it through WhatsApp but it is.

Josh
Requests to help orphans, charities, mission work, and the less fortunate. Similar to romance scams, these criminals are aiming directly for your heart and your emotions. It’s quite sad. Every one of these situations can be avoided by taking a few simple steps. By identifying these red flags, clicking delete, and moving on.

Countless lives have been destroyed by financial scams and fraud. Be aware, and looking for Tasha’s red flags, if something just doesn’t sound right.

Here’s a recap for you. Keep social media communication on publicly viewable social media platforms. Stay off of the DMs if you don’t know them. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t click on links you don’t know. Be very cautious. Be on the lookout for rogue text messages and be very wary of requests to help the less fortunate.

Lastly, I know. Everyone needs a little bit of romance and affection in their life. But the internet alone is more than likely not the place you’ll find the love of your life. Guard your heart and your finances. Both are definitely worth the time and effort.

Thank you so much for listening to the Banking On You podcast. Please follow us on all the socials at Banking On You pod. For show notes and additional info, visit our website, bankingonyoupodcast.com. And let’s not forget about our incredible team. None of this would be possible without you. JD Sutter is our producer and Gandolf of sound design. Graciously enduring all of my speaking errors was our studio engineer, Dave Powell. You’re a patient man, Dave.

Huge thanks to our marketing and branding team led by Kimberly Berzack, Ashley and Brian – you guys are awesome. The Banking on You podcast theme was composed by none other than Russ Whitelock. Thanks, Russ. Our executive producers are Jason Peach and Koren Greubel. The Banking on You podcast is powered by West Community and Tigers Community Credit Union, and I’m your host, Josh Rodriguez. Until next time, remember, we’re banking on you.