Much of our work together concerns risk: how much of it you are taking, whether you are being fairly compensated for it, and how your plan behaves when markets don’t cooperate. This month we’re writing about a different kind of risk, one that sits outside your portfolio but threatens it nonetheless: the rise of increasingly sophisticated financial fraud, and what we can do together to protect you against it.
While we have not had a client lose money to fraud, we have seen the consequences of fraud attempts up close. The FTC reported that Americans lost nearly $16 billion to fraud in 2025, and the FBI placed total internet-crime losses closer to $20.9 billion, investment scams being the single largest category. Those figures leave out the fact that fewer than one in ten victims ever come forward. The true cost is far greater, and much of it goes quietly unreported.
Today’s schemes are dangerous because they are so sophisticated. These are not the clumsy emails of the past, riddled with spelling errors or written by a Nigerian prince. They are patient and personal: a caller who appears to be from your bank’s fraud department, an “urgent” security alert urging you to move funds “somewhere safe,” an investment opportunity that seems too good to pass up. Some begin as a friendly message or an accidental text and unfold over weeks. Increasingly, criminals use artificial intelligence to clone a familiar voice and manufacture a crisis. The common thread in these schemes is not technology but psychology: they engineer urgency, secrecy, and isolation, pressing you to act now, and to tell no one.
Falling for one of these is not a failure of intelligence or judgment. These schemes are designed by professionals to disarm careful, accomplished people, and they succeed every day. Which is why the single most important thing you can do for us in our partnership is this: if anything ever feels wrong, call us first, and call us right away. There is no embarrassment here, and there never will be. The first hours matter enormously; funds can sometimes be frozen or recovered when we act quickly, and hesitation is exactly what these schemes rely on. We would always rather hear from you about something that turns out to be nothing.
You are also not the only line of defense. Charles Schwab, the institution that custodies your assets, maintains safeguards built for exactly this kind of threat. For our part, we will never contact you to request passwords or security codes, and we will never ask you to move money to a new or unfamiliar account. Any instruction to change how your funds are wired or distributed will always be confirmed with you directly, by phone, using a number we already have on file. If a message claims to come from us but does not follow that practice, please treat it as suspect and reach out to us.
A few simple habits offer real protection as well:
- Pause whenever you feel rushed: Any demand for immediate action is itself a warning sign; a legitimate institution can wait while you verify.
- Verify through a channel you already trust: If someone calls claiming to be your bank, your custodian, or our office, hang up and call back using the number on your statement, never one they provide.
- Be deeply skeptical of secrecy: Anyone urging you to keep a financial decision from your family or advisor has told you something important about their intent.
- Never move money to “protect” it: No legitimate firm will ask you to transfer funds, buy gift cards, or send cryptocurrency to keep them safe.
Protecting what you have built is as much a part of our responsibility as helping it grow. Please think of us as a resource here in the same way you would on any question about your portfolio: if something gives you even a moment’s doubt, forward it to us or pick up the phone before you act. That is exactly what we are here for.
As always, thank you for your trust.