Criminal Minds - Helping Electricity Customers Spot Scams

According to a recent survey by chartered professional accountants Canada 34% of Canadians have fallen victim to scams and frauds. Sadly, the energy industry is no stranger to the world of scam artists looking to make quick money from unsuspecting energy consumers. Here with us to discuss the criminal minds behind utility scams is Jared Lawrence, Vice President of Revenue Services and Metering at Duke Energy. He is also the founder and executive committee chair of an organization known as Utilities United Against Scams - a sort of Justice League for the energy industry. Tune in to learn how to protect yourself and your loved ones. Related Content & Links: Jared Lawrence - Vice President of Revenue Services and Metering at Duke Energy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredalawrence/ Duke Energy - https://www.duke-energy.com/ Utilities United Against Scams - https://www.utilitiesunited.org --- Transcript: Dan Seguin 00:02 Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of The ThinkEnergy podcast. Catch me if you can. Fyre festival, the greatest party that never happened. The Wolf of Wall Street and catfish. We love to watch movies about scammers, grifters and con artists, but we never want to be on the receiving end of their schemes. Yet, according to a recent survey by chartered professional accountants Canada 34% of Canadians have fallen victim to scams and frauds. And the Canadian anti fraud centre reports that in 2019, nearly 45,000 Canadians lost $96 million to scammers. It may or may not be surprising. But the energy industry is no stranger to the world of scam artists looking to make quick money from unsuspecting energy consumers like you and me. A scam is reported to the Better Business Bureau every 15 minutes. of the 30 different types of scams tracked and reported, the average financial loss to a utility customer is a whopping $500. And as we've seen firsthand in the energy industry, fraudsters are becoming more and more sophisticated. evolving with time. Scammers like to take advantage of opportunities throughout the covid 19 pandemic. We've seen an increase in their efforts through a call, text, email, and even show up in person at a customer's home and place of business to intimidate and threaten. A popular tactic includes posing as a representative of a local utility like Hydro Ottawa and demanding immediate payment for a supposedly overdue account. To add stress and pressure, they threatened to disconnect power within the hour if they do not get payment. Frantic customers already reeling from the pandemic and possibly economic hardships fall victim to these convincing criminals and their pressure tactics by purchasing prepaid debit cards, gift cards, any form of cryptocurrency, or third party digital payments mobile applications, utility companies have ramped up efforts to educate customers so they can be aware of the dangers of utility scams and avoid them. Hydro Ottawa for instance, has partnered with other large distributors in the province like Hydro One, Toronto hydro, and Alectra utilities over the last couple of years to help spread the word far and wide when a scam happens. So that as many regions as possible are notified. So here is today's big question: How can utility companies protect their customers from increasingly sophisticated schemes and fraud? Is the answer a united front? And on a personal note? Is this my first true crime podcast? We shall see. Joining me on today's show is Jared Lawrence, Vice President of revenue services and metering at Duke Energy, one of the largest electric power holding companies in the US. Duke Energy provides electricity to 7.7 million customers in Florida, the Carolinas and parts of the Midwest. Jared is also the founder and executive committee chair of an organization known as utilities united against scams - a sort of Justice League for the energy industry if you will. Batman. I mean Jared, welcome to the show. Now Jared, scams are such a big problem in our industry that there's a utility Scam Awareness Day. And National Scam Awareness Week. That's how big the problems gotten. What can you tell us about utilities united against scams and your vision when you started it? Jared Lawrence 05:25 Well, that's an excellent question. And there's actually a Hydro Ottawa connection that I will, I'll get to in a second, Dan. Really, utilities unite against scams started as a result of an internal investigation at my company, we were hosting our CEO, actually, in our call center where both our customer care agents as well as the back office employees report to me, we're having a q&a session with our CEO. And one of the customer care specialists raised her hand and said, Ms. Good, I'm, I'm really concerned, we have a lot of customers calling up about scammers. And they're convinced that these scammers actually have their information. What are we doing about this? and this was back in 2015. So this was on this was in the context of a number of high profile breaches with major retailers that were in the media. And so this was something we were definitely heightened, had a heightened sensitivity to. And she actually looked at me as as one of the two leaders in the room and said, \\"Yes, Jared, what are we doing about that?\\" I said, \\"Well, we're not doing anything, right now. But we're going to start tomorrow.\\" And so we had actually, we commissioned a SWAT team internally to make sure that there were no data breaches, no breaches with our vendors, no, inside bad actors who were sharing information with scammers. And it became apparent very quickly, that these scammers did not actually have customer information. They were just brilliant social engineers, and all of our information networks were completely secure. So we got to the end of that effort, it took about, you know, three weeks to do that intensive investigation. And then I said to the team \\"Well now what?\\" we're not going to leave these folks, you know, our customers out there to fend for themselves against these criminals. What do we learn from this? And what can we do about it. And it became apparent to me pretty quickly that, that this is a problem of international scale, but each utility was attacking it as an individual entity. And we would have so much more presence, so much more of a voice in the public policy space, if we joined together as the as the influential industry that serves the public, and use our clout to basically push for change and better protect our customers. So that's not the concept of utilities in order to get scams was born. I made the pitch to a number of attendees at CS week. And so for many folks in the utility industry are aware that this week is the the customer service focus conference for utility professionals. This was back in in the spring of 2016, then, and immediately the cause essentially sold itself there were 25 utility organizations represented in the room and every single one of them came up to me afterwards, and expressed interest in becoming part of this vision of this industry effort. But it was actually in a breakfast conversation, later on during the conference with Dave McKendry, who's retired from Hydro Ottawa, who's become a friend of mine through our board work on CS week. And he pulled me aside he said, Jared, I've been thinking a lot about your utilities united against scams effort. And I suggest maybe you consider a national campaign. And, and the fact that utilities across North America are coming together, to work together for this specific event, this specific campaign that's newsworthy in and of itself. And I think, Jared that if you if you take that approach, you you will be able to attract so much more interest in this cause, and, frankly, so much more membership, and he was spot on. I thought it was a fantastic suggestion. We made that kind of the centerpiece of our first few months of existence back in 2016, culminating with our national utility Scam Awareness Day and actually utility Scam Awareness Week in November of 2016. The US House of Representatives of course, recognized us with the declaration of national utility Scam Awareness Day. And we went from 25 utility organizations that expressed interest at that first conference to 89 members by the time we get to that campaign in November, and since then, we've grown to where we are today at exactly 150 across the US and Canada. So it's grown beyond what I honestly could have expected or hoped for, but certainly not beyond that vision of the industry coming together to protect our customers against us against this very important Scourge. Dan Seguin 09:58 Very interesting, Jared. What types of scams are appearing most often? Can you provide some real life examples? And has the global pandemic altered scam activity and its frequency? Jared Lawrence 10:14 Excellent question. And so at the core, the scam that was the main focus of utilities back in 2015, when I started our investigation at Duke Energy and, and it remains today, it's that classic disconnection threat scam. So a customer gets a call from out of the blue from somebody purporting to be a representative of the utility. And they state that due to some sort of problem with the account or some sort of problem with a payment being returned by a bank or some, you know, some fabricated excuse like that, the customer's account is now overdue, and there is a disconnection technician in route to turn off the customer's power. Usually it's power. Sometimes it's other utilities, but almost, it's almost always power within the next 30 to 45 minutes. And so the customer needs to act they need to go purchase typically a prepaid card and call the scammers back with that information within the next 30 to 45 minutes to prevent disconnection. That was their bread and butter back in 2015. It's still our bread and butter today. What's interesting is that we've seen little variations in scammers. They're attuned to what's happening

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