00:00:17,519	S1:
Well, good afternoon everyone. I get everyone's attention. Thank you. I'm Mayor Ted Bettencourt, and it's great to have all of you here today for a very important message that we wanted to get out to everybody, and very grateful that all of you who are here braved the weather and joined us. We have an all star lineup of people who are going to be speaking about this particular type of fraud that's going on, and I'm certainly available to answer any questions you have. But again, very grateful to have all of you here. I'd ask that you turn down your cell phones if you if you have those, if you wouldn't mind doing that. Before we begin, we are going to be on Peabody TV. So this will be broadcast out to a lot of people that weren't able to make it here today. And we'll be able to watch it at home, uh, and be informed as well. So I'm always amazed by the level of fraud and scams and swindles that are out there. It's always amazing to me what the criminal mind comes up with and and things that take place. And I've often wondered, and I'm sure many of you have as well, if if those same people put their thoughts and efforts behind something positive, some wonderful things could really happen. But they don't. Uh, it's the criminal mind, and they're always looking for ways to take advantage of people and and to steal money and to take from others. Um, and it's dangerous. And oftentimes it's directed at the vulnerable people of society. And, uh, it's very scary in so many different ways. And thankfully, we have a lot of tools in our community, a lot of people looking out for our community, all the residents of our city, across our nation that are looking out, doing the very best they can with our police department, our district attorney's office, our state auditor's office. Uh, we have people here in the city with our triad council, here at our Council on aging that do an amazing job for people security across our city. But the best tool that we can use is information and getting that out to everybody. Making sure that you have information as to what's taking place, the scams that are out there, the phone calls you may be getting just to be on guard and aware of what's taking place. That's the best tool that we can provide. And that's why forums like this are so important to be able to come together and talk about what's out there. I wanted to thank our City Councilor, Julie Daigle, for helping put this together. Uh, Carolyn Wynne, our amazing director and the great team here at Council on Aging for hosting us and allowing us this opportunity to get the word out to everybody as best we can. Uh, and we'll be following up with this. We as a city council, just recently ban these crypto ATMs. And we're just trying to get that information out to everybody. So again, very grateful to have all of you here. And it's my pleasure to introduce somebody who's doing a great job and a true watchdog, watchdog for our community. And the communities across Essex County does an amazing job for us. Our district attorney, Paul Tucker.

00:03:01,319	S2:
Appreciate it.

00:03:03,439	S3:
Thank you. Mayor. First, I want to thank all of you for being here. It's pretty amazing. We've had the snowstorm that we did, that everybody is kind enough to come out and listen to what I think is an extremely important message. I do want to take a minute to thank Mayor Betancourt. And Councilor Daigle went when Julie was the council president last year. There was really true leadership at the at the municipal level to ban these machines. What I'm going to do today is to walk you through some of the more common scams that we see. And then I just want to spend some time on the actual Bitcoin machines themselves and tell you a little bit about about the issues that we're having with them. So we'll talk about the scams, and then we'll talk about the actual means by which these scammers are trying to separate you from your hard earned money. I also want to thank the Peabody Police Department Chief Griffin and his leadership, and the officers have done a fantastic job. And one of the cases I'm going to talk about is a Peabody case, where Peabody PD acted very, very quickly and in some of the more unusual events were able to get some money back. So I'm going to talk about the difficulties we have in terms of that as well. I also want to welcome our audience. Diane is a friend from my days in the state House, doing a great job at the state level. And here. Thank you for joining us today, Diana, as well. You've been a good partner to us, so thank you. We appreciate that.

00:04:32,819	S3:
So I want to talk about first about some of the types of scams that we're seeing and really how how difficult they are and why education is so important. Now, bearing in mind that the vast majority of people who are being scammed are senior citizens. And Unfortunately, these scammers have gotten very good at what they do. They're very persuasive, and when they get you on the phone or they reach you through the computer, they're really good at really kind of tugging either at your heartstrings. If they say this is a family emergency or really kind of preying on folks. So one of the first things we see, and we see it quite often, is something that we call the grandparent or family scam now. Oftentimes we get people that come to us and say, I would never fall for this. You know, this is just something I think I would know right away. A lot of those folks are the first ones that ended up getting scamming. So in this grandparent scheme in particular, this is insidious because they're calling and they're saying that they're a family member that you've got they've got some type of a family member. Usually a grandson or granddaughter is in trouble and that they've either been arrested or they're hurt or they're in the hospital and you've got to send money right away. And there's so persuasive in the phone that people actually follow their direction. We've seen this in so many different ways. There's also a takeoff on this, something we call the romance scam, where they'll call somebody, they'll befriend that person and develop a relationship either over the computer or by phone. Again, we say to ourselves, who would fall for that? You'd be surprised. We had somebody actually in the office this month that was sending money to somebody that they thought they were in a relationship with. They were in a common chat room on the computer, and they started talking about music. And this guy claimed that he was a drummer for a band from the 1970s. Happened to be a band that this the woman who was the victim liked. This went on for months and months and months. Finally realized it was a scam. The other piece on the the grandparent scam is something that was starting to see. Now you've heard of this artificial intelligence AI. One of the things that it can do. It can actually mimic a voice. If your voice is out there somewhere in the public, they can manipulate that. So it actually sounds like the real person you may have seen about a year or so ago. Um, somebody's got a Joe Biden, former President Biden's voice, and they put it in through this AI, and they were sending calls out. It was not former President Biden, but it sounded exactly like him. If somebody could get Ahold of your voice and there's different places to get it from, this is one of the things that they're using. Government officials, government officials are not going to call and ask you to send money. They're not going to ask you to go buy gift cards. We're going to talk about that in a minute. What we're seeing now is that people are posing as calling from Social Security, calling from the FBI, calling from the IRS, the FBI. One is interesting because we've had now a few cases where the number that comes up on your caller ID, you can read it, and what they've done is it's called a spoof. They've actually able to spoof the number. So here's what happened to a local resident. They get a call from person who says an FBI agent that they're being investigated for some terrible crimes, and that if they want to pay a fine ahead of time, they'll probably be able to take care of the case. So the person rightly said, this doesn't sound right. So they got the number that came in through caller ID. They put it in the computer. It came back to the FBI office in Atlanta, Georgia. Now the person thinks that they're dealing with it. Really dealing with a true FBI agent. It was a scam. They were able to spoof the number. How many times have you gotten a number come across that says Peabody. Danvers. Beverly. Salem. It's a scam and it's probably coming from overseas. This morning and Scott Delay from my office is with us. He just got one on the way here. I've gotten to this morning already. Scam type calls calling me. Wouldn't that be kind of interesting if I could do a little undercover thing with them and maybe try to pull them into it, but it's so pervasive. Think of it from the scammers standpoint. They're working in call centers. As I've said, most of them are out of the country. If they make 1000 calls a day and they have a 1% success rate, that's still a pretty good day. If they can get these people to put money into either gift cards or these Bitcoin machines. So let me give you an example, a real life example. There's a woman that from Salem, and she actually made a public service announcement video for us. Her first name was Becky and she talked about how she got scammed. She was a 30 year state employee. Went to law school and graduated. And one day she's home on her computer and she gets an alert that comes across. Call this number. Very important federal law enforcement agent. She called, but the person convinces her that somebody is using her ID, and they've got to try to catch this person. So what? What they need to do is to get some type of information back and forth, say like a bank account. So if they would give the bank account number, they could really try to pull this other person in that's using her information. Well, it's a scam all the way through. Here's what ends up happening. Becky, who said to herself a hundred times, this doesn't sound right. Ends up calling the number that came across on her computer. The person was so persuasive on the phone, convinced her to go to the bank and take $13,000 out of the bank, and then to go to an ATM Bitcoin machine at a gas station in Salem. Now, here's what's really difficult about this to understand. And Becky talks about this when she when she did the video for us, she's got this person on the phone who's very persuasive. And along the way you're going to see these certain touch points where maybe, maybe this person could have been stopped. First off is to go to the bank. She's got the phone up to her ear, and she's talking to the teller, saying she wants to take $13,000 out of her own account. Now, here's where it gets a little difficult. That's your money. That's in the bank. And the bank tellers can't tell you what to do with it. But we've we've done some pretty good educational outreach. So the teller starts questioning Becky. Well, what's it for? Scammer on the phone says tell you about. Becky says I'm buying a car. And then they ask a few more questions, and the person on the phone walks Becky through all the steps. Becky gets her $13,000. She's then directed to go to a Bitcoin machine at a gas station. I said in Salem. She goes to the machine and starts feeding hundred dollar bills into the machine. Somebody comes over and says, you know, these things are involved in some scams. And the scammer says, I'm a federal agent. Do not talk to that person. Continue to put the money in. We've got we need this to make the case. She puts $13,000 into the Bitcoin machine and that's not enough. The scammer then directs Becky to go to Target on Highland Avenue in Salem, and purchase several hundred dollars worth of gift cards. Then what they do is they tell her to scratch the numbers off. The scammer takes the number. Becky does it. And the whole time when she's doing her service announcement for us, she tells how she sang to herself, this isn't right. This isn't right. This doesn't seem right. But the scammer was so persuasive. She did it. It wasn't until she got home that her partner said, where have you been? And she said, you're not going to believe it. Somebody was impersonating me. I had to work with federal law enforcement. I was able to do this. They're going to reimburse the bank account for me. I hope they catch the person well. Day one, day two. Day three goes by. She calls the number back. Of course, it's there's nobody there. And then she finally realizes she's been scammed. And what's so difficult about this is she's a senior citizen on a fixed income, and that money is now gone. The chances of recovering actual cash after one of these scams is pretty close to zero. My office has been very aggressive about trying to get money back for people. And I'm going to say our success rate might be 10 to 20%. And that's really good compared to other law enforcement agencies who have had not much success at all. The scam that that Becky ended up following through on, and being a victim of was a message that came through her computer, and part of it also said, be careful with looking out for your best interest. There also may be a virus if the person who is is impersonating you, if they try to reach you. And through all of that. And that's all it took for Becky to fall for this. She withdrew the money and it was gone. Second scam from Salem, over $100,000. Person who's retired has a fidelity account, gets the virus alert through his computer, starts to get the messages. The money's been moved. You've got to move this money. And it was really, really a terrible thing, they said. They said, you've been accused of being involved in child pornography. We don't think you did it, but we need to make sure. And as a sign of good faith, you've got to start moving this money around. Fell for it completely. This gentleman is out over $100,000 in all of these. Many of us say to ourselves, I would never, ever fall for that. I if you're if you've got to admire one thing about the scammers, they're good at what they do. And I say that in a backhanded way. They're really very good at what they do. Let's talk about the machines themselves. These machines are designed to look just like ATMs. We all go to the ATM sometimes. My wife says I actually go to much, but what does it do? It gives us a comfort level. We use the ATMs, we trust them. We put our card in, we get our money, we get a little receipt. So it's by design that these machines are made to look like that. Now here's the problem. Once that money goes into the machine, they tell you it's a Bitcoin wallet. You'll be able to access it. We'll give you a receipt for Bitcoin. Once it's in there, it's pretty much gone because it travels through these wallets. And not to get too deep into the technology, but there's a series of transactions that take place. So when my office gets involved we might be able to track the first one, maybe the second, but there's so many multiple transactions that go on. We pretty much do not have much success at all in trying to track them down the way these machines operate. The the owners of them put themselves out as legitimate business people, and they are to the extent that they're in the bitcoin machine business, they'll approach stores, usually retail stores. Usually it's a 7-Eleven, a rich Dale, a gas station and we've seen them all across. There's about 700 machines that we think in Massachusetts. And let me just give you a percentage of an investigation that was done in the state of Iowa. In Iowa, there were multiple of these machines. They did a study, and they found that over the course of several years, 98%, 98% of the activities that took place with these Bitcoin machines turned out to be fraudulent. Only 2% were legit that somebody went in and actually wanted to buy or invest in Bitcoin. So in my office, we were very aggressive in Essex County about trying to, number one, educate folks, which is what we're doing here, to encourage people to come in if they think they've been scammed, to come in right away. The quicker that we can get on this, the much better success rate we would have. One of the things that that we've also done is we have been looking to go city to city by municipalities, and I have to give Peabody great credit. Leadership by the mayor, by Councilor Daigle and the council, Scott Delay, who's here with me? He's our chief legal counsel. Scott and I went to the Peabody City Council, made a brief presentation with Sergeant Betancourt and Chief Griffin, and the council acted quickly. What we're looking to do is to make it hard for these scammers to operate, make it hard to access these machines. I think the number in Peabody was somewhere, maybe over a little over a dozen, 12 to 15 of these machines. We've gone to Gloucester, where they did the same thing. They banned them there. Um, Ipswich. Marblehead is now looking at it. Now. It's not it's not the end all because you're still going to be able to go to a machine Somewhere, but what we're looking to do is to hit a pause button. So if you are in Peabody and you are directed to go to a Bitcoin machine now, there's no longer any machines in Peabody. You might be directed to go to another city. What we're hoping for is that pause time in between the alleged victim, the person who may be victimized may talk to somebody. They may say, I've got to go to Topsfield, or I may have to go to Methuen. This there's a better chance that we might be able to stop that scam from taking place. I mentioned earlier about folks that work in the in the banking industry, particularly tell us who are on the front lines. It's a tricky balance for bank employees. They can't tell people what to do with their money. I mentioned that, but they also don't want to be complicit in this and just kind of turn their head. We've had many cases where concerned bank employees have quietly reached out to family members and say, you know what? Your dad or your grandfather? Grandmother is here. They're trying to withdraw a substantial amount of money and that, thankfully, in some cases, has been able to stop some of these from taking place. We have some, some interesting cases where bystanders, we had one in particular at a 7-Eleven where a bystander went up to a senior citizen, a woman, and said, please don't put that money in there. She said, no, I have to. And they end up talking her out of it after she had put several hundred dollars in already. So what we're trying to do is to raise awareness that these if a, if a bank person asks you what's going on with this, to be honest with you about it, give them the opportunity to try to stop this. Now there's a few other things that, um, in terms of of statistics. So in Peabody since 2023, there's been at least a couple of hundred thousand dollars that has been reported, and I'm going to come back to that. Been reported as being scammed in Essex County last year. We have $11 million in documented losses. We suspect that number is probably twice that. And here's why I say that. When somebody is scammed and they realize it, oftentimes they feel a sense of shame that they were taken. They're afraid to tell a family member. They figure that the police might not be able to do anything about it anyway. And in some cases, people don't even realize that they've been scammed. We had a case where a woman put $245,000 into a fraudulent account. A woman who works at a business in Salem. We actually found out about it before she did, because we have we have investigators that we're trying to be proactive. We see money moving around. It goes through this financial center. We approached her and told her she was being scammed and she continuously denied it. This went on for several weeks. We kept. We asked her bosses to talk to her, and it wasn't until weeks later that she realized that she had been scammed. If we had not gone there, that probably would have continued until she had nothing left. That's how pervasive and difficult this is. Just a minute to talk about the psychological toll on victims. When you reach a certain age of retirement, you've got your life savings invested, something that you need to live out the rest of your life. When that gets taken away, the impact is immeasurable. We had a couple from Beverly, and I used these stories just to show how this can happen to anyone. We had a couple from Beverly. They were both 85 years old. They lost $5,000 to one of these scams, they had nothing left in their account. The Beverly detectives did a great job. They chased it down as much as they could. We were unable to to recover any of it. Think about the psychological impact, the emotional toll that that takes on folks. This is just such a difficult, difficult topic. It's difficult for people to think about it. We all want to think the best of people. We want to think that people want to help each other. Unfortunately, there is now worse than ever these scams. It's worse than ever before. A couple more things. Um, the local ordinances, I think are a very, very good start. Secondary to that, there is some state legislation that's pending now prior to having the job that I do now. I had a long career in the police department in Salem, and then in between I was a state rep. I worked closely with your rep, um, Tom Walsh and Sally Kern to a wonderful, wonderful colleagues. So there is a bill pending in the legislature now, and here's what it would do. It would make sure that every one of these Bitcoin machines had warnings on the front of it. Basically, stop, take a pause from it. Be careful what you're doing. Don't put money in this machine unless you check with a friend, a family member, a relative. So the warning is the first piece. The second would put a daily limit on how much somebody could actually feed into these machines. I think $1,000 is more than fair. The industry, by the way, is fighting us on this. They have lobbyists working against this at the statehouse as we speak. So instead of somebody feeding the $13,000 that Becky had to or the $23,000, the one we had recently, a $1,000 limit, it's that pause. It's that pause button again. So that's the second piece of it. The third would say that the Bitcoin companies would have to refund anybody that suffered a fraudulent loss. Now they're fighting us big on that one. But I think that's fair enough. If they want to get into the business of putting these machines out there, knowing that these things are basically a portal for scammers, then there has to be a price to pay for that as well. The last piece, equally as important is the hidden fees involved. And this I think is is is just so awful as well. When you go to an ATM machine and it's not at your bank, it'll come right up on there. You still want to proceed. This is $3 a $5 transaction fee. You can hit yes and know what's happening with these Bitcoin machines. They'll tell you there's a 3 or 5% fee. What they won't tell you is that upwards of 33% is also a fee. And it's nowhere until after you put the money in. so 33% of that is going somewhere else and it's nowhere. So I think those fees should be lowered to what we would traditionally pay, which is a small fee for the use of, of the machine. Now let's talk for a minute about prevention. First of all, no government agency, whether it's the FBI, the IRS, Social Security, they are not going to come to you and ask you to participate in some type of a scheme, even when they tell you what's to try to catch somebody. They are never, ever going to do it. You know, I saw a public service thing that mass bankers put out not too long ago. Very simple. Had all it said was what a bank teller or a bank person really ask you to do that? Very simple. Would somebody in a bank really ask you to do that? What would a scammer really come to you? This is when you want to know what's a scam and figure out that you're being scammed? The banks, I think, have done a pretty good job for this next to under prevention gift cards. This is one of the major ways. And it's not just what I've talked about here, it's lots of other people that try to get in on this. They'll have you go up to a target to Kohl's. Places that sell these gift cards, they'll get you to buy them. They'll get you to scratch off the the codes and they'll use them immediately. We're finding we actually just interrupted one of these organized scam groups using gift cards. Um, it was from overseas, but it was based in New York City. And it was. It's in the millions and millions of dollars. Nobody in any government agency or legit place would ask you to buy gift cards and give them the number from it. Phone persuasion. This to me, is where it all begins if you answer the phone and somebody is asking you to do something with your money. Be aware. Be sensitive to it. And I say, make sure that the will of voice in the back of your head says, this is probably not right, and listen to it. You know, so many times I get I get on my phone, this is so-and-so from the the police, National Police Benevolent Association. I get that all the time. And I sometimes I kind of feel like I'm going to I'm going to try to get to the bottom of this with them. It's a scam. It's it's a scam. And what they try to do is they try to get you to say, you know what? Police and firefighters, they do a great job. Maybe I can help them out. These phone solicitations, some of them a very, very small amount, might be legit, but it's incumbent upon all of you, either yourselves or a family member, to do some research. There's a couple of different websites out there that'll tell you, yes, this is legit. No it's not. Don't be afraid to do a little bit of research. We're good people. We want to help others. You know we want. We want to help agencies that are doing really good work. Just make sure you know where your money is going. I call it stop, verify and report. If you are the victim of a scam. The police departments, I think, are doing some really good strong work now. They're very sensitive to this. They're being proactive. We have a great police department here in Peabody and the work that the investigators are doing there, but they need you to help. They definitely need the public's help as well. The Peabody case. We had a woman from from Peabody that was scammed out of out of her money, went to a local store. And once we started talking about these types of cases, the educational awareness, particularly to this group, particularly to our senior citizens. It's about education and it's about prevention. In the particular case, it was a virus alert that came through her computer again, and they tried to make it seem like they are a government agency, or this particular one was Microsoft, that it was Microsoft that they needed her to cooperate. So happy that everybody came here today. This is important. You live in a great city and the folks that come from surrounding areas. I see a couple of my friends from Salem as well. Um, apparently the draw here. I guess I should have come a little bit earlier. I'm told that the meals here are excellent for the price, so I may have to come a little bit earlier next time. Um, but from from my office and the work that we're doing, we need your help as well. Don't become a victim. You know, we we have we have so many good things and good programs that we have so many positive things, great things that are happening in the city of Peabody. But always keep in mind that there are some things that that may not be as they as they appear to you. So that's a bit of a warning for today. And I guess the way I would I would leave it with you is to be aware, be sensitive to these things that are happening. And there may be some good people, there may be some good agencies out there. Just be careful. It's your money. You earned it. Don't let somebody take it away from you. So I appreciate it. I'm happy to take any questions. And I think Julie we're going to move on. Next up I'll tell you I'm going to come back and take the questions. Um, may I introduce our auditor? So, um, let me just say a little bit of history. So I spent eight years as a state rep, and Diana was one of my my colleagues at the state House. She's moved on to bigger and better things as a state auditor, which is the watchdog. And it's fitting in perfectly with what we're doing here today. Um, she's quite a singer as well. Actually, I'm not sure if she's going to sing today, but she's great. I'm happy to introduce our artist, Diana Teasdale.

00:31:19,490	S4:
Good afternoon everyone. I said good afternoon, everyone. It's great to see everybody in Peabody here today. I am so excited. And first and foremost, I just want to say a huge thank you to Carolyn. It's Carolyn in the room today. Where is she? She's Carolyn. Can everybody please give a round of applause to your amazing director, Carolyn, for hosting us here today? We only have the opportunity to come together like this because you have an amazing, uh, director here at the Council on Aging. So thank you so much to all the staff, all the volunteers, everybody who helped put this together. I also see Maria Betancourt back there. I know we're going to be hearing from him shortly. And I do want to recognize one of your local city councilors, Julie Daigle, who also happens to work in my office. All right. Great to see folks out here in Da Tucker. Thank you so much for the gracious introduction. Um, Tucker and I did have the opportunity to work as legislators together. I served in the House of Representatives as a state representative for six years. I then served as a state senator for four years. I represented a district nearby, not too far away, and a place called the Merrimack Valley. And I come from the great city of Methuen, and I represented the communities of Methuen, Lawrence, Haverhill, North Andover, all the way up to Newburyport during my, my time in the legislature. And I want to thank Paul for his service in the legislature then and for his service now, as da da Tucker Has been really, really great when it comes to following the law and having his agency be audited, and we really appreciate that, friends. It is. Thank you Debbie.

00:33:16,960	S4:
I it's it's turning into a bit of a rarity these days in Massachusetts, but we want to thank him and his team for the cooperation. We did a recent audit identified some areas for improvement. That's what audits are there for. And Da Tucker staff and the Da were incredibly welcoming to our auditors. They help to facilitate all aspects pertaining to the audit. We were able to do our jobs, get in there, move on and make sure that there's transparency and accountability in our state government. So you know what? You actually said something. I just want to thank you for your work on this, too. Before I get into what my office does about these scam calls friends, it's not just the senior population, obviously, that's being targeted with us. I know you all know this, but I just got a call as the state auditor for Massachusetts on my cell phone with a person who was screaming at me, essentially telling me that my phone bill and my internet service was going to double if I didn't. Immediately, by the end of the day, call a different number and pay $1,000 with my credit card and immediately do this. And then the promise was that my bill, if I called in time to take advantage of this great deal, that I was going to only pay half of what my bill currently was. So I thought to myself, man, if I just pay in advance, I can get out of this and I don't have to have my bill doubled. Sounds like a great deal. I'm so grateful I picked up the phone. Uh, but as time went on in the phone call, it was able to be determined that this was a scam. But the truth be told. I mean, I was kind of falling for it at the beginning because, you know, you get nervous, you don't want your bill to double. We see what's going on with bills across Massachusetts right now. With our energy bills skyrocketing, cost of living skyrocketing, and if you see an opportunity to save money, of course the natural inclination is to take that opportunity and do what you need to do. And if they sound official, it can be easy to fall into that right for any of us. So I just want to thank the D.A. for highlighting that, because it's a really big deal, and it's happening to a lot of us right now. So what does the Office of State Auditor do with with respect to fraud? Well, we do a lot of stuff, folks. We look at in the office of State Auditor waste, fraud and abuse. The potential for it in roughly 200 state entities across Massachusetts. And we do so with the intention to help make government work better. Like I said, I'm a former legislator. I want to make sure that our investments Into our communities that our tax dollars that we are all paying into the system. Those tax dollars are being used efficiently and effectively. And before all of you run away from me. After I put this microphone down, I just want to let you know I don't audit any of you, okay? I don't audit any of you. I'm not the IRS. I'm not the Department of Revenue. We do not audit individual taxpaying residents. We audit state government for you, the taxpayers. Uh, to again, make sure those agencies are functioning at their best. And a recent audit that we conducted of the Executive Office of Elder Affairs actually looked at services for our senior population in particular, and looked at elder abuse and neglect cases in the Commonwealth. And we looked at how the administration was overseeing these cases of alleged elder abuse and neglect. Now, a lot of folks know as you age, you might start to lose some of the functions that you previously had, whether it be mentally speaking, physically speaking, or both. And a lot of folks, unfortunately have experienced abuse occurring or neglect occurring even within their own families, even from their own friends. Financial abuse, right? Folks trying to take advantage of people who can't get themselves to their appointments anymore and need to rely on other people for services, or might start forgetting things. Right? So we looked at how elder affairs, the state agency, the executive Office, has been overseeing these issues. And what we did is we looked at whether or not they were providing adequate oversight, and we found some significant areas for improvement. Improvement, namely, we found that they were not actually in accordance with what's required of them Reporting cases of suspected and alleged elder abuse and neglect to our district Attorney's offices. Our district attorney's offices are able to prosecute and are able to make sure that these cases get followed up with, and that you are defended against these types of abuses against you. But those cases were not actually getting reported, either in a timely fashion or at all to your district attorney's offices. And that presents a host of problems, obviously, because you're not getting the help that you're supposed to be getting. So we wrote a report. We called on the Executive Office of Elder Affairs to step it up, to make sure that they are doing better by all of you, and we are going to be going back in for another audit pretty soon. And we're hoping that they have improved their systems since that last audit that we conducted. We also have a Bureau of Special Investigations that looks into individual fraud cases. Individual fraud cases. Anybody ever heard of Medicaid in here? Right. Of course. So we want to make sure that Medicaid is as robust as it can be, that it is funded adequately so that those who are in need get these necessary services. We want to make sure that you have access to health care, that you can get what you need, and that that program is functional and it's funded appropriately. But in order for it to be funded appropriately, we need to make sure that the money that we're sending into that program isn't being misappropriated or misused when it comes to Medicaid, mass health, or any of these funds. Right. So we have a Bureau of Special Investigations that detects individual fraud cases with folks who may be taking advantage of the system, who are not supposed to be getting those services. And we go out, we recoup that. If somebody is fraudulently collecting, we make sure that the agency knows about it, that they can go out, they can take action. We refer it to the Attorney General's office. The Attorney General's office can make sure that they pursue recouping that money, and we make sure that we're promoting accountability in Medicaid and mass health. We do this as well when it comes to things like Snap benefits, right? Folks need to be able to have these resources. A lot of people are struggling right now. It's wintertime. It's cold. There are families in need. We also need to make sure that these programs are functioning again with a level of accountability. And people who are getting these services are actually the ones who are in need. So the people who are in need are not being robbed by people fraudulently collecting these benefits and maybe trading services for cash or engaging in inappropriate activities. So we have a fraud hotline, actually, and I'm going to just point really quickly. And if it's uncomfortable, don't feel the need to turn around. But we have a table back here. Someone say that right. Yellow table back there. And Councillor Daigle want to wave to everybody. So it has sunshine and suns everywhere. Uh, because our offices theme, generally speaking, is we want to shine a light on some of the dark areas, uh, so that we can know what needs to be fixed. We shine a light. Uh, to promote transparency, to promote accountability. And if you go over to that table after today, you'll find all of our contact information. Uh, and you can call our office if there's something you'd like to ask us to look at or to examine or to report something that's of concern to you. Uh, and we're happy to chat with you, but all that contact information is going to be back at that bright yellow table. We do those individual fraud cases. We also did a report of Medicaid actually, and we looked at, Medicaid payments that went out. Capitation payments is what they're called. And they went out to managed care organizations in Massachusetts. But we actually did an audit report a while ago, actually, that looked at these payments going out on behalf of out of state residents, out of state residents. Now, the individuals themselves, the audit report found they were not actually the ones committing fraud, abusing tax dollars or receiving services that they shouldn't have been receiving after they moved out of Massachusetts. They had moved to different places in the United States, and they had moved on, and they had actually enrolled in their state's health care program. They had enrolled in their state's health care program. But we in Massachusetts, we did not, unfortunately, in our health care system here, we did not go into our own system of record when they moved out of state and update the system to recognize the fact that they had moved out of state and were enrolled in another state's health care program. So what happened was our audit found that over $80 million taxpayer dollars had gone out in these capitation payments to these managed care organizations on behalf of residents who no longer lived in the state. And again, we were able to identify this because it was compared to a federal database which had all of these folks listed as receiving health care. So they did have access to health care. They were not without health care. Um, but it hadn't been reconciled with our Massachusetts system. So clerical errors, administrative errors in some of these systems can cost taxpayers big. And the office of State Auditor is able to go in to some of these systems that maybe haven't been examined for a while, or maybe outdated. And we can help agencies to reconcile those differences between, for example, the Massachusetts system and the federal system and ask questions such as why is this person listed twice? And why is this person being funded from both of these programs? And do they still live here? Right. So we can ask those questions and we can promote some accountability there so that the millions of dollars that are paid on behalf of folks who are getting health care in a different state now, we can reinvest those dollars appropriately and not send them out to these managed care organizations on behalf of people who don't live here. And make sure that the residents of the Commonwealth are getting these services right. So we are able to identify some of those challenges and to make recommendations. And we we are hopeful that mass health, Medicaid and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services is adopting a lot of these recommendations. But some of the stuff that we also look at is fraud pertaining to issues within our state agencies, within our state entities. We've audited the MBTA, we have audited the Department of Children and Families, and we've been trying to audit. And I'm sure none of you have heard of this before, but has anybody ever heard of an institution called the legislature?

00:45:15,010	S4:
You have.

00:45:18,289	S4:
Friends, we have been trying to do the work that we do on behalf of taxpayers. Following a 72% voter approved mandate, making it law that our state legislature, our House of Representatives and our state Senate are required to be audited by the office of State Auditor. Not by themselves. By the Office of State Auditor. To promote transparency and accountability within our legislature. Now, little history on this. Massachusetts is frequently ranked as the least transparent state government in the entire nation. Now, we rank fast in a lot of areas and we should be proud of that. I'm a proud Massachusetts resident. I love my hometown that I still live in, and I love our communities, and I love the people of Massachusetts and not but and I also love transparency, accountability, accessibility. And I think that Massachusetts, for all of the wonderful people that live in this great state, can do a lot better in terms of ensuring transparency with how our tax dollars are being spent, and I believe that Massachusetts should be leading in the nation right now when it comes to some of these issues, especially pertaining to issues of basic democracy. Right. Because we hear about democracy being undermined at the federal level a lot. That's what makes the headlines. That's what makes the news. There are a lot of issues going on at the federal level. But as a state elected official here in Massachusetts, I can say that we have an issue with democracy being undermined as well right here in Massachusetts, because when you have 72% Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, everybody in between come together and voice their concerns, vote for something to become law. That's as simple as an audit being conducted and the powers that be. Block that from happening. Deny the results of the election. Deny the will of the voters and say that they're above the law. And if I might quote our speaker of the House with respect to the law, and I quote, compliance is in the eye of the beholder. I don't know how many of us could get pulled over by a captain after this and, uh, say, excuse me, officer, but compliance is in the eye of the beholder. But we have folks up at the statehouse right now who do consider themselves above the law. And there are a lot of people up there who are friends with each other, who have known each other for quite a while, who politically support each other. And that's okay. But what's not okay is that those relationships, those conversations that are happening behind the scenes, have allowed for some of the most powerful politicians in Massachusetts to get away with breaking the law right in front of all of us, brazenly and boldly, knowing that no one's going to enforce the law and that they're going to get away with it. And that's something that I think we all need to be very vigilant about. It's a nonpartisan issue that impacts every single person in the state of Massachusetts. And I, for one, would love to see us really make sure that we continue to voice our concerns about that and lend support for the law being followed, for the will of the people being followed, and for transparency and accountability to be paramount at our state House. That is the people's House. It's not the politicians House, right? It's the people's tax dollars. It's your money. It's not anyone's private money. It's the people's business. It's not private business that's getting conducted at the statehouse. And for those of us who are subject to what's known as the Public Records Law Freedom of Information Act. Anybody heard of that? If you call our offices, if you call Mayor Bettencourt, if you call Councilor Daigle, D.A. Tucker, any of us, we are actually all subject to what's known as the public records law here in Massachusetts. If you need a receipt, you'll get a receipt. If you want to look at what's been happening in our office and you want to review a state contract that went out, you are able to get access to that state contract and you're able to review that for yourself. You just need to submit a public records request. And by law, you are entitled as a resident to be able to get access to that information To make sure that we are promoting public trust in government. But right now we have a state House that exempts itself as exempts itself from the public records law. So they're not subject to open meeting law like your local officials are. They're not subject to public records laws, so you don't get access to the information that you might want. On any given day, like you can from every other government entity, and now they don't want to follow new audit law that you just voted for. So are we concerned about potential fraud, waste and abuse? Absolutely, absolutely. Because if you're not letting somebody into your home, what might be a reason why you don't let someone into your house?

00:51:24,809	S4:
You're hiding something. And you don't want someone coming into your house if it's dirty.

Right. 00:51:34,590	S4:
So right now we have a state house who is not allowing us into their house. And people can only come to the conclusion. What are they hiding? Right. What are they hiding? Because I can tell you something right now. When we get to audit all these different state entities, it's not like we get pompoms raised for the auditors when they come in. A lot of people find it annoying, even though Tucker is smiling right now. He knows. You know, it's an arduous process. It's not always fun being the hall monitor. Okay. Going into these agencies. But they comply. We bring them through the process, and a lot of times it's not a big deal. We review the receipts, we reconcile any differences. We encourage people to do better record keeping things like this, and they do. And then we can move forward and we're all the better for it. But if you're not giving access to your basic financial receipts and state contracting information, why not? What's there to hide? Why is it such an awful thing to request financial receipts that allow our office to see if what you're claiming you spent your money on is actually what you spent your money on? And those are the only records friends that we've actually requested. We've only requested financial receipts and state contracts. Those are only administrative records and business records. They are not about legislative business. It doesn't interfere with the work of the legislature. My auditors are not walking into the House of Representatives and seating themselves in the position of state Reps or Senators and voting on their behalf. Certainly not. That's crazy. What they are doing is they're trying to get the documents and the records associated with their financial expenditures, and they're being told that it's unconstitutional for them to do so. And that's unacceptable. Friends, the Constitution is there to protect the people, not the politicians. Constitution protects you, the people, we the people. And we need to make sure that we're staying vigilant about that. So I would ask that as we pursue individual protections on ourselves with respect to fraud and waste and abuse, that we also keep it in mind what's happening in our state government right now with our state tax dollars, and that we hold our leaders to account with respect to following the law, following the will of the people and being transparent in our financial dealings and contractual dealings that I believe is the bare minimum. And taxpayers like you deserve that. I'm happy to answer any questions after we are done today, but I think that we are moving on to the next person and then we're going to stick around. And I believe there's going to be a Q&A time, which I'll be happy to answer any questions. So just remember those questions, write them down if you want and I'll come back. But right now I'm going to introduce. Thanks for that little clap back there. Deb I appreciate you a couple times today. Right now I am going to introduce a good Irishman, Captain Bonfanti.

Everyone. 00:55:09,190	S4:
You have a lot of Italian Americans in here. I just want to say you got diesel up here. So we're very glad to see you, captain. Take it away.

00:55:17,789	S2:
Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

00:55:30,639	S5:
So I want to first thank Chief Griffin. He sent me here today. My name is Dave Bonfanti. I'm a captain with the Peabody Police Department. Um, it's nice to represent the, uh, the chief and the department.

00:55:42,800	S5:
I'm not as good as these guys when it comes to microphones. Can you hear me about it now? All right. Good. My name is Dave Bonfanti. I'm a captain with the Peabody Police Department. I'm happy to be here today to represent, uh, Chief Griffin. Uh, he's busy doing, uh, accreditation process at the station. I want to thank Mayor Betancourt. Uh, D.A. Tucker, the state auditor, uh, Julie Daigle, the city council, and Sergeant Betancourt for, um, putting a lot of this stuff together, including the city ordinances. Uh, funny story. This morning, I was walking down my my stairs, and my wife goes, oh, she goes, what do you have caught this morning? Because I never have to wear a tie. And I said, no, no, I'm lucky I go, I get to. Julie Daigle called me. She said that I'm going to be at a, a scam, a fraud for the, for the elderly people. And I said, oh, so she goes, oh, I said, um, I'm looking forward to it. I really like listening to Mayor Bettencourt, and I like listening to District Attorney. Tucker would be nice. I agree, the food here is excellent, so I figured it'd be good. Never in a million years that I think I would be backing these speakers talking. I mean, all three of them. There is nothing that I could tell you right now that I can I could retouch on what they said. However, there is a few things. As a police officer, I have to say, every time that we get a call at the station, the first thing out of their mind, out of their mouth, is, I'm so embarrassed to be making this phone call, and I'm going to get back to that in a second, Because I want to, I want to I wrote this down. Give certificates. Bitcoin and other virtual currency are not cash and are not protected. They exist only on the computer. And once the money is sent, it is gone forever. That's why we have to be educated on this. It's gone forever. You could be the best detective in the world. You're not getting that money back.

00:57:44,869	S5:
Some of the common signs I want to go over again to, because I think it's very important, is urgent demand for money. Um, claims from being from the IRS or other government. Our social security, security and request for gift cards in Bitcoin. We do not, as a government agency take anything like that or nor does anybody else. I think the district attorney hit it the best, right? Whenever there is a bad call at the police department or there is a an issue at home. The best thing you guys can do is slow down, slow it down. If it doesn't seem right, it's probably not right. But the one thing that I'm going to ask you as a captain from the police department to help us, is call us. If it doesn't seem right, we'll send a cruiser, or you can come to the station and we will look into it for you. And then no one's going to be embarrassed, and you shouldn't be embarrassed. But let's get ahead of this. Let's be the community that we've always been in, Peabody. And talk to your neighbors. Talk to your mom, talk to your dad, talk to everyone and get it out because you could save someone's fortune. Um, in closing again, I want to I want to thank you for letting us talk. Please come to the station. If you have any questions, call us. We'll be happy. I'm going to say it again. We'll be very happy to send a car or we like visits at the police station. Rick, do you want to just.

00:59:15,420	S6:
Hey, everybody. I am Officer Cameron from Peabody Police, and I'm the elder affairs officer. As the captain said. Um, we're right in Peabody. We are your neighbors. We're all in this together. We're all trying to help each other out with the same things that we all face sooner or later. Scams and fraud. They target people over the age of 60, especially in certain circumstances. But it reaches everybody. It doesn't matter what your age is, sooner or later we're all going to be affected by it. I've been affected multiple times and as the captain said, the main thing you should do is never be embarrassed if you think something took place. If you think fraud took place at all, call us immediately. Let us know what happened so that we can help you deal with it. We're all in this together. Um, the last couple of years, as the Da mentioned, I have never had so much activity on my work phone, my cell phone, all my electronic devices. They are trying harder than ever in the last couple of years to get Ahold of us however they can and to tell us false stories. The only thing a scam or a fraud is, is a false story. It's a lie, and its intention is to separate you from your money, or your financial information, or your personal information. They want to steal from you somehow. So be vigilant. Check all your accounts on a regular basis. If you see anything that doesn't look right. If anybody contacts you in any way, if it's online, on the internet, if it's through email, if it's through the telephone, through regular mail, us mail that comes to your house, or even if somebody shows up at your front door trying to sell you anything or tell you any kind of a story. Please report it to us immediately so that we can help you. Deal with it. Figure it out. And as the captain said, the main thing to do whenever you think something doesn't sound right, whenever that little voice in the back of your head goes off, that voice is usually right. Listen to that voice and do the opposite of whatever they're asking you to do, and they usually ask you to do it at a fast pace. They'll try to make it seem like something negative is going to happen. If you don't act immediately. That's a red flag. The best thing you can do whenever you're suspicious of anything or anybody acts like that. Slow down. Stop what you're doing. Hang up the phone. Contact us. We will always help you figure it out. Contact the DA's office. Contact, um, the Council on Aging. Anybody? We'll all get in touch with the right people. The point is, don't act. Stop what you're doing and check with somebody you can trust with us, with your relatives, other people in the community. We all just want to help you figure it out. And that's the best way to protect yourself. Thank you.

01:02:33,900	S7:
Thank you. Captain, we, uh, ran a little bit over our one hour window, but whoever's willing to stick around, we'll open up to questions and answers. If you have a specific case. I would suggest that you reach out individually to police or the DEA or the Council on Aging or the mayor. But the mayor was kind enough to to come up and offer to to emcee the Q&A. So if if anyone does have any general questions, we'll open it up for a few minutes to that. I see Marie Bishop with her hand raised.

01:03:10,119	S2:
I got a call. I got a text. Would you like the mic? My parish priest. There you are.

01:03:16,400	S8:
I got a call from. I got a text from my parish priest who asked me to get gift cards for a parishioner who is in the hospital. And five years ago, I respected my parish priest. So of course, I went right down to stop and shop and bought the cards. I did call the rectory and they said they the father, John, was not available. But then when I called back again, they said, oh, we've all got those calls. Don't buy the cards. So even your parish priest can be, can be, can they can pretend that they're someone that you need to trust.

01:03:54,800	S7:
Thank you, Mrs. Bishop. Any other questions?

01:04:01,719	S7:
Sir, you were first, but she's closer. I'm sorry. I'm going to take her.

01:04:06,769	S9:
About three times this month, I've gotten phone calls on my cell phone from Chase credit card asking if I had made certain purchases, which I had not. And that's as far as I let them go. Before they asked me anything else, I said, I will contact Chase myself and they hang up on me. So you know, it's a scam.

01:04:28,849	S7:
Thank you very much for that.

01:04:35,090	S7:
Sir, thank you for your patience.

01:04:38,610	S10:
So, uh, I'm concerned about, uh, veterans fraud. Uh, I represent about 25 or 30 veterans here in the center. Uh, we have an annual meeting, uh, the monthly meeting. And, uh, we have been aware of some of these, uh, 501, uh, organizations who have, uh, represented themselves as friends of veterans and taking money, and then used them for other purposes or just stole the whole thing. So I know there's a couple of cases in the in the state here. Um, I don't know what their status is, but, uh, that's one of the areas that we're concerned about.

01:05:23,139	S2:
Um, so we actually get a lot of folks on. Thanks so much for the great question. We should use this area.

01:05:29,420	S4:
We get a lot of calls about, uh, nonprofits potentially breaking the law, committing fraud, misusing funds. Uh, and our office, generally speaking, refers them to the attorney general's office. The attorney general's office has a division specifically dedicated to rooting out fraud in nonprofits and making sure that there is accountability with respect to those nonprofit organizations. So I know, you know, Da Tucker is on this as well. We're happy to, uh, take some of your information back here about which ones you have concerns about, and make sure that we refer those cases to the Attorney General's office, and make sure you get followed up with.

01:06:07,719	S11:
I believe there's one case that's been investigated, but going on for like two years now, it's just Murphy.

Yeah. 01:06:16,960	S4:
Because it's not my office. I can't speak to it, but if D.A. Tucker wants to.

01:06:21,000	S3:
I'm actually familiar with that case. This gentleman that that Joe is talking about actually set up a company, and he was a convicted felon previously. He set up a company. He had people in front of stop and shops down market collecting on behalf of veterans. It was a scam. That gentleman has now served a prison sentence. I will add one other piece. Um, when I was in the legislature, I think you might have been when we did the Stolen Valor Act. So there's some good protections for our veterans. We did the Stolen Valor Act. If somebody holds themselves out illegally as a veteran tries to get some type of benefit, it's a it's a pretty strong law we put in place. We are seeing a lot of it. We see a lot of folks that claim to be representing veterans organizations, and we're very aggressive about making sure that they are legit because some are, but many aren't.

01:07:14,889	S7:
Missed with the beautiful sweater. Did you have a question?

01:07:18,369	S8:
Yes. I don't know if this is when I read about what this meeting was going to be about. I'm not so much. I'm not so much concerned about the money pot. I'm. I'm concerned with the spam calls coming into the home. I'm retired from Verizon, and I work for many years as an investigator. And naturally, it doesn't even come into play because everything's digital today. Before, you know, we did everything manually. But the point I'm getting at is, and I'm wondering a few people with with the complaints that you take are people that are sitting here, um, like people my age say, I just hang up, just, you know, and then what happens is nothing ever gets followed through. I have something right now. Uh, I'm retired from Verizon, as I said. And what they did was they put us in our health care. They put the prescription pot in CVS when CVS comes into my house because I have automatic refill, it always comes in on a spam. Now I've tried to follow it through and it might seem minor to somebody else, but there has to be somebody here that also has, you know, and it comes in and, you know, the question mark is either before or after I wrote some of them down, like Chattanooga 413. I know that's the Springfield part of the, you know, Massachusetts. But my question, I guess, would be, uh, I have called several times. Uh, the last time was a couple of weeks ago. I asked for supervisor. This is for what's going on. And I guess my question to you is not so much the money, but where do I go to? Like you don't go to the telephone company, you know. And so when I that my answer now was with the CV, I never can get a supervisor. And the last one said to me, all I can tell you is don't you worry about it, because we have a three day turnaround time. We all know what turnaround time is like. You can't just fluff it off. Well, now it's about 1315 days and I know I'm not going to get one. But I guess my quick question maybe I should have asked it individually is where do you start when you know, I, I did have the call a couple weeks ago with the voice that was trained to sound like a great niece of mine. The story was she had a lawyer with her, she was in the jail and she had a lawyer, and the lawyer came in and told me if I paid the money for her. She could get out that day. Now, the voice was perfect. And so I was interested when you said that. Obviously I didn't do anything, but they said they wanted $12,000, and at the end they'd take 500. And I'm retired from Verizon. So they say you have a good pension and Social Security. They even told me that. But I did just wanted to do. Would you? Who would you call be? You know it. Like I said, it's not the telephone and they're not asking for money. But they did ask me for money. But it was supposedly a relative.

01:10:27,689	S2:
I know it.

01:10:28,170	S8:
Wasn't.

01:10:29,770	S7:
Oh, dear. Do you have an answer? Okay.

01:10:32,250	S3:
And this is very common. What happened to. And there's really two ways to look at it. If it's an individual fraud, individual crime attempt that would come through, the local police department would come to me on the spamming that we're all getting. I would suggest the attorney General's office. They have what's called the Consumer Fraud Protection Unit. And if it's overarching like I've already gotten two spam calls this morning. So the AG's office is better equipped because they can handle it statewide. And if they get thousands of those complaints, they can do something about it more than just if I got a few individual ones. But in terms of the individual fraud, ask local police department. Then it comes to me.

Okay. 01:11:13,949	S7:
Thank you. Thank you. Hold on miss, let me let me get you the mic. And then we're going to go to the chief and I think we'll wrap wrap up.

01:11:24,029	S12:
I'd like to know about the company. I can't hear myself on this. That call you and say they can sponge your student loans, which I have, or your IRS payments. How do you get rid of them? They come in, and by the time they I have answered them, they've got my personal information and that's out there. So how do you stop it sounds. They sound very legitimate. And they want. They don't want much money up front, but they want monthly payments to sponge my student loan or help me settle an IRS.

01:12:08,079	S7:
While the the Da and the auditor discussed this, I think this is this is clearly a very popular topic topic and we've gone over our time. So I think we will continue this, but I we might have a short term answer.

Auditor. 01:12:21,600	S4:
The consumer protection aspect of the Attorney General's office would be the place to report that. And just individually friends, how many people here get spam calls? Okay. All of us. Right. Um. My number. My cell phone is constantly, constantly, constantly pinging. Not just with these fraudsters, but just with even just spam, right? Which is just vote for so-and-so, vote for this, donate money to that. You know, all of these things, right? And when you're civically engaged, you you know, you get this stuff too, right? So I know there are a lot of civically minded people in this room, and participating in different things gets you on different lists, right? Lists are shared. Your number gets out there, your emails get out there, and then folks have it. You can report it to the AG's office, to that consumer protection division, but also just yourself. This is just me personally talking to you. You can also delete and block. If it's on your cell phone, swipe it over, delete block. Yes, you can press end to end. Yes you can press stop to stop, but also you can delete and block and report it as spam sometimes as well. So, uh, just make sure you're doing that too, just because, you know, yes, they can get around it and they can try to hound you again, but it flags them and hopefully makes it a little less incentive incessant, so hopefully that'll help.

01:13:52,510	S2:
Yeah.

01:13:54,750	S7:
Thank you. I'm going to give one last question to our former fire chief. But I think before you give your question, I think there's some interest in this. So if if we want to have another one of these seminars, the Essex County Sheriff's Office also wanted to participate. They're ironically doing the same presentation in Andover today. So if you have questions, I would encourage you to send them to. Sorry, mayor, the mayor, me, the auditor, the D.A. and perhaps we can focus on those in a future session.

Chief. 01:14:25,949	S13:
I just want to thank all of you, especially our auditor, for coming and trying to work this out, because it's it's really, really sad when you get at my age, 85, you know, the memory starts to slip. And, you know, as you know, you forgot all these things. And it's very hard to deal with all this. And I think, uh, one of the comments I would like to say is, uh, I think we need to do more auditing of all these nonprofits because I get all these, uh, people looking for money, and I have no idea for legitimate or not. So I, you know, there has to be some legislation passed so that we can do that. And, and, and one one other thing about it is anyone that run for office, I think they should we should try to pass a law that we everyone get a report on what this person does, what he did in the past, and so that we keep voting the same people and some of them shouldn't be there should have never got there in the first place. You know. And we know we're all there's nobody perfect in this world. We'll all need to be checked. So our legislation needs to be checked like everyone else. So anyone that serves. So that we can correct and make sure that we are doing the right thing if we're ever going to make our planet last a little longer, because at the right we go on, we actually not going to have a planet planet left because we we are using up a lot of resources and we trying to destroy each other all over the world, which is a sad, sad commentary for especially for education that we have today and that things we have available to ourselves. So I want to thank all of you that came over here and try to help to make a world a better place, because that's my objective, is trying to make it a better place before I leave it, because I don't have that much time left. Thank you very much for being here.

01:16:32,100	S4:
Did you want to respond really quickly to the audit question? Um, I think you really summed it up, chief. So thank you so much. I appreciate that final comment, I just with respect to the question regarding the auditing and wanting a lot more of these nonprofits to get audited, we can audit state tax dollars as it pertains to from time to time if they are expended in some of these different entities. The issue comes with actually our offices, mandated by law to audit over 200 state entities at least once every three years, even those that are low risk. So sometimes we're making a trade off for auditing a very low risk entity and having to, unfortunately, pass on the high risk entity that's not under the mandated requirements for our office. And that's why we are grateful that the AG's office does have that division for these nonprofits that specifically focused on that. Again, if you have anything that you want to pass on, we'll pass it on to the AG's office. With respect to wanting audits, technically speaking, rather than, you know, investigations that might be needed. I would say if you want us to do more audits, please do your Office of State Auditor a favor. Call your local reps and senators and tell them to please vote for a budget for us that affords us the opportunity to start doing more budgets. You might have heard our office hasn't been really in favor up on Beacon Hill at the moment. Uh, we're not seeing the level of funding that we need to be able to really augment our efforts. We are hanging on. We are getting a basic adjustment. I know our DA's are getting kind of this lower level adjustment as well. Um, but if we're going to help to save taxpayer dollars, we do identify millions in cost savings for the Commonwealth every year. We do want to see some investments in that fraud, waste and abuse detection. because whatever dollars we're identifying and able to save that money can go back into the state budget. And when we have audits that are identifying millions of dollars, for example, those millions of dollars can go back in. So certainly we're saving for the Commonwealth, potentially any much more than any investment that's made into the office. The rate of return is really, really great when it comes to offices like ours. So thanks for the support. Thanks for mentioning that. Yes, even the legislature needs a check. Um, friends, absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? The age old adage absolute power corrupts absolutely. We live in a system of checks and balances where, you know, we have checks on each other, and there are these independent offices that provide reviews, and we're all doing our best to make sure that occurs so that no one politician or no one agency or department or branch of government gets too powerful. So checks and balances is something that needs to be said more. Thank you. We have a fan right here. We appreciate that. Um, but we need to have checks and balance in government. And you're going to hear a lot about separation of powers, constitution, all these things when you have these types of discussion. Uh, but I would go back to what you said, sir. Chief. Checks and balances. Right. Uh, so thank you so much for that. I hope you all have a great day. I'm going to hang out at our table if you want to stop by and say hi. Thanks so much. I'm going to turn it back over to Julie.

01:20:06,199	S7:
Thank you everyone. Yeah. We'll be around for questions and comments. Thank you for coming. I hope you'll come back for another session. Be safe out there.