It is Medicare scam season when Medicare patients can change their insurance plan for the new year, and that means scammers are looking for victims. Cyber Protection Magazine was alerted to one particular scam — over-the-counter (OTC) benefit cards — by one of our readers.
The reader, a retired school teacher, was getting called two or three times a day from unknown but local numbers. She said she normally lets anonymous calls go to voice mail so she can spend some time listening to them and screening them. Most of the time there is no message left. This one time she answered.
What did you say?
Because she has hearing loss that is especially bad with background noise, she couldn’t understand the caller who also talked very fast in a monotone, like was reading a script. She said the caller was obviously in a call center from the background noise, which made understanding even more difficult.
The caller said she represented several Medicare Advantage health plans, and rattled off a bunch of names, including Humana and United Healthcare. “I told her we had Alignment Healthcare, and she said, “Oh, yes. We represent them as well, and then started talking about a ‘Healthy Food Card’ at no additional expense to you.”
When our reader said she couldn’t understand what she was saying because of the background noise, she was immediately transferred to a “licensed healthcare expert.” Whoever this was picked up the phone and started into the same spiel, minus the accent and background noise. “She said she just wanted to make sure we were getting all the benefits we were entitled to. I told her we already have and OTC card through Alignment, but she told me this was not the same. Then I said I would have to check through my broker before I went any further.”
That’s when the “expert” hung up.
Textbook scam
This is a textbook version of the Medicare flex card scam. A flex card is a type of debit card that provides extra benefits for certain health-related services and some everyday expenses. The schemes offer of free flex cards or other incentives to get personal information. Scammers may use fake ads, emails, or phone calls to trick people into providing sensitive information, such as their Social Security number, bank account information, or Medicare account number. They may also try to pressure people into switching from original Medicare to a Medicare Advantage plan without their knowledge.
The scammers send victims to a website where it asks for social security numbers, medicare numbers and other personal information. “I know enough about cybersecurity to know you just don’t give that out,” our reader said.
Brokers to the rescue
We contacted the reader’s broker, Julie Brajenovich, of Spark Advisors who said, “We, as agents, have to have Scope of Appointment forms, proving we have “permission” to discuss anything about Medicare, and we record every phone call, to make sure we are doing the right thing for our clients. This kind of scam makes our job harder than it already is.”
Brajenovich said while agents like her are constantly audited, call centers are not… even legitimate ones. “The fraudulent part is that most people don’t qualify for those extra benefits that they are marketing and pushing. It’s just the way they get you on the phone so that they can sell you a product.”
The good news is that Medicare Open Enrollment, running from Jan 1 – March 3, is designed to help these people get back to what they had before they got scammed.. These type of scams are also a good reason to sign up with a broker like Brajenovich. The brokers know not only the scams but can also help people navigate an increasingly complicated process of Medicare insurance.
Obfuscation by intention
But let’s get back to the call quality from the scammers. Its low quality is intentional.
The call centers mask where they are by spoofing local numbers and connecting through VoIP connections. They degrade the connection, masking background noise, and making it hard for victims to hear red flags in the caller’s script. The poor quality forces victims to repeat sensitive information multiple times, and creates frustration to make people less focused and more likely to make mistakes.
So, if you answer that anonymous call, and can’t understand them, best to just hang up and block the number.
Lou Covey is the Chief Editor for Cyber Protection Magazine. In 50 years as a journalist he covered American politics, education, religious history, women’s fashion, music, marketing technology, renewable energy, semiconductors, avionics. He is currently focused on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. He published a book on renewable energy policy in 2020 and is writing a second one on technology aptitude. He hosts the Crucial Tech podcast.