Because everybody who's got a question, that's equal importance, because if we
don't learn together...
What I learned today, I stopped in at the bank before I got here
just in case I needed to pay everybody off.
But what ended up happening is I'm listening to the tellers who we've become
friends with over the years.
Only 40 years later, and I still have the same teller.
Wow.
I said, "Aren't we getting old?" She said, "We are, Lucito."
But she told me about a scam today.
Oh.
And she said, "We have an elderly woman
who wanted to help her son pay for a brand-new roof."
The son didn't have all the money,
and so she made the call
and they said,
"We're going to send a courier service over, but we only do cash, no checks."
Oh, that's no good.
And she wanted to surprise her son.
Yeah.
So she went to the first bank and got 10,000 out.
Oh my gosh.
They must have told her to do it this way.
And then went to the second bank, and by the time the teller opened
up the account, they saw the other 10 that was already
taken. They stopped everything. They grabbed the number.
They called them and said, "What time is the courier service coming?"
Click.
Truly.
So she got her money back in the bank.
Otherwise, it would've been $20,000 goodbye Jack.
Goodbye. Jesus.
So if you guys give me a chance, my name's Pete Lucito.
I'm the county prosecutor, and I've been a blessed man, and I mean it
sincerely. Those that are coming in, Heather, have them sit on the floor
all around us.
It's like church in here.
Church.
Go sit on somebody's lap like we're in church.
Oh, the Lord forgives. So here's the story.
I grew up-
Once again
... in a small Italian family, eight children, Mom and Dad make 10.
Just a tiny little family. The first four Lucitos were born in
Detroit,
and then my father
went ahead and moved the family to St. Clair Shores.
I grew up on a street called Lakeland at 10 and a half in Harper.
Yeah.
All of us were born at St. John Hospital, and there's a reason I'm giving you this
information, because there'll be a quiz at the end of it.
If you don't get an 80% or more, you're all going to summer school.
Anyway, what ends up happening is I went ahead and I got my first job.
My dad was a produce man. That's on the exam.
That's how he fed us all. And anyways, I got this job at
this Dairy Queen next door to my house. That's where I lived.
Eight years old, they gave me this rotary, whatever
they call it, lawnmower. Two wheels and the blade would go around.
I cut the grass. I dumped the garbage every day.
I cleaned the windows, and at the end of the week, she gave me $5.
Oh.
And she gave me a bonus, all the broken ice cream sandwich cookies.
You don't really do anything with them.
Now they make blizzards or something out of them.
But think about this. I'm eight years old, I go down to Standard Federal Bank,
which was two blocks away, and I'm going to bring it right down to
memory lane with you. What I did is I opened up my own bank
account, my passbook savings.
With 5% interest.
With 5% back then, yeah.
Yep.
So hear me out. What happened was they gave me the passbook, and Mary was
my teller, and she gave me a three by five card, and she said, "Lucito,
put your name,
your date of birth, your social security number." And my mom
gave me the card knowing I was opening up a bank account.
"I need to know your address so we can send you your statement every single month,
and we're going to need your mother's maiden name for the secret
password." You guys remember that?
Yeah.
Yeah. And then all of a sudden, they gave
me this passbook that I'd have to bring in, and she'd put it
through the, what's called the word
processor, put the $5, and then she'd sign something with
a kerchunker. Kerchunk and sign something that I put the $5
in the bank.
Now, that three by five card was in yellow.
That three by five card at night would go into a file cabinet.
That three by five card would get locked in that cabinet so the lady that came at
night to clean the bank wouldn't take my three by five card.
I tell you, three years ago, I went over to this place called
Standard Federal... No. Comerica Bank. You remember?
Standard Federal closed and went to this one and went to Manufacturers.
And it's now Comerica, but Comerica is now Fifth Third.
So Mary was her name, that's on the exam, and was
over there, and Mary would always do my telling
because she was the one that liked my name, Little Pete, because my
dad was Big Pete. And guess what? I went to go open up an account because
they were still giving 5% about three or four years ago.
They were. And my banker, he was a vice president because they
don't have any presidents in these banks or credit unions.
They always have vice presidents. I don't know where the presidents are.
But be that as it may, he said,
"Pete, go down to the kiosk." Kiosk?
What the hell is a kiosk?
"No, no, it's right over there. Just go to the kiosk and you can open up the
account."
Okay, so I go to the kiosk. How do you work this kiosk?
"Pete, it's a computer."
I said, "Yeah, but where's the customer service at?"
I
know I'm a senior citizen and everything, and I do like customer service because
that's the way I grew up.
If they have one.
So here's what it was.
He says to me, "Go ahead and fill out what you can." Well, there's
26 pages.
Oh my gosh.
And they ask me this, name, address, social security
number, date of birth.No mother's maiden
name. They asked for a copy of the driver's license now.
Mary must've known I didn't have a driver's license when I was eight when I opened
that account.
Although they were selling phony driver's licenses back then.
At any rate, what ended up happening is I filled out what I needed to
under the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act was an act that Congress
did because of terrorist actions, and they went
ahead and they said, "We don't want money flowing in and out of the United
States,
or we don't want terrorist effects of the money, so these
things are necessary under the Patriot Act.
You must give your name. You must give your date of birth, Social Security
number, your address, and a copy of your driver's license."
That's all you owe anybody, guys.
You know why?
I wanted to ask the banker, the vice president, because there's no president,
why am I putting on here if I own a home, and if so, how much I have
to pay on it? Why do I put if I own a summer home or a winter home?
Why do I have to tell you what kind of car I drive and if I owe any money?
What about my stocks, bonds, mutual funds, IRA,
annuities? How much cash value in my life
insurance?
Do you know why they're asking all these things?
Because
they can scam.
So they can sell your information, you see.
Once upon a time, my first wife and I, okay, when
we got married, she wanted a house, and we had to go to a bank.
She's still my first wife, incidentally. I've only been married once.
What ended up happening is I sat down at the bank, local
community bank, First State Bank, I'll never forget it.
And they said... Well, Pete, I just got out of law school, so I had nothing.
I mean nothing.
And as a result, my wife, my first wife, that's on the exam-
... my first wife went ahead and said, "I'm going to get this working done." So she
went and got a job at General Motors, and she got up every morning
and went to work, and so we were using a lot of her credit because Lord knows I
didn't have anything.
And then they can ask you anything they want because you're borrowing the money.
But in my case, I was opening an account.
When I didn't fill the entire kiosk paperwork,
that vice president looked at me and goes, "I can't open the account.
They tell me I have to have all this filled out before I open an account." I said,
"Sonny boy, I'm a lot older than you." Oh, did you guys
know I'm over 65? I know I look great, don't I? Over 65.
Big-time senior. Anyway, what ended up happening is...
Come on in. Come on, we're just getting started.
What ended up happening is
he didn't know what to do. I said, "Well, why don't you call down to the legal
department and ask them about the Patriot Act?
I gave you my driver's license. Everything that's on there is what you need,
except my Social Security number." And as a result, guess
what? They told him, "Take the money." That was the first
line of business that I learned a long time ago. Grab the money.
You could always sort out the pieces later, right? Get the money in the bank.
At any rate, what ended up happening is they did take my money.
I didn't fill any of that crap out. But I want to know, all these years, that
little three by five card when I was eight years old,
did Mary take that home?
Did Mary throw that in the garbage when I left the bank, when it closed
or merged or whatever they do?
Think about how many pieces of paper you have filled out in your lifetime.
Oh.
Okay, so guess what? They didn't have an email address
on that three by five card.
No.
And they didn't have a cell phone, did they?
And everybody in here, my mom lived to 94, my dad,
96. They were nine years apart, and let me tell you something.
They never got scammed. Do you know why? They didn't own a computer.
They didn't own a cellphone. They did a rotary phone up till the time
they were forced to go ahead and get a push button, and that
came in four colors. Remember that, guys?
No.
It came in yellow, avocado, it came in beige, it came in
black, and if you were Batman,
came in red.
So we had things back then that they didn't ask you.
And now today, we're just little sheep.
We want to fill it out as fast as we can.
It's all on computer, all digital ties they call it.
I love going into my bank. You know why?
I always say to them, "I don't know my account.
Can you look it up?" See, they know everything about me, don't they?
Yeah.
They've taken a picture of your driver's license.
Yeah.
They got your Social Security card. They got everything that they need.
The problem is, I want you to listen very carefully.
The only money that all of us have is what we have in our pocket or we have in our
purse or what we may have stashed at home. And guess what?
That's a real problem because we put it all into these investments to kind of hedge
inflation and try to beat the odds on getting some interest or
dividend.
And what ends up happening is all these big, big
financials now are making the rules, but it's all of our
money. Imagine if the country took all their money out of the
financials, every nickel on the same day.
What would those big buildings do?
Crumble.
Crumble. But I was up at the capital.
I made some law along the way after 35 years of
practice and seeing a brother die and I said, "I'm going to go up to Lansing and
change all the darn laws that I thought stink." And when I got
up there, I learned the hard way because on those
applications that we've all filled out, you're automatically opted
in. Opted in means that you automatically
agreed to allow them to sell, convey,
assign your information. The interesting part is
who's buying it?
Mm-hmm.
How do they vet those individuals from buying that information?
Are they criminals?And you know what else that man told me at that
bank? I said, "Well,
so if I give you all this information, how is it
protected?" And he goes, "It'll be in the cloud."
And I said, "Come on out to the front door. Which cloud is it going to be in?
I want to know what cloud it's going to be in.
There's three clouds out there."
What did he say?
"Well, no, not those clouds. There's a cloud." I said, "I know what you're talking
about."
You can track it.
And then he goes into it and he says to me, "These are computer
protected."
I said, "Have you ever been to Las Vegas, Nevada?"
Haven't been there.
They broke into a casino that's heavily protected on the
computer and held them hostage for $20 million.
And he goes, "Yeah, they did." So your cloud is going to protect me better?
The next thing is, where is the person running this cloud?
Are they in this state, in this country?
And if so, can I talk to them and ask how my information's
doing every day?
I think so.
No.
Think about what we're doing, guys.
I went ahead and I noticed that we're already opted in, and when I brought the bill
up to the legislature,
they said, "Let's go pay a visit on this guy, Lucido."
Mm-hmm.
And you'd think Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and everybody else come in there,
because when they sat with me, you know what they said?
"You're not disturbing the money we make.
Years ago, we used to make it off the interest when you and the first
wife bought your house." Right? I think the mortgage rate was what back
then?
Five.
Yeah, five sounds good. Everything was fives, right?
5% they give you, 5% they take. At any rate, what ended up happening is
we got it on the business loans, we got it on the cars, we got it on the houses,
and everything else that we bought. The bank made their money.
They found a better way. And when I say bank, let's not discriminate.
I'm talking about credit unions, insurance companies, everybody that's in the
financial racket, world. World.
And as a result,
everything I've ever signed in my life had on there that they're allowed to
go ahead and share my information, sell my information.
I gave them permission. I was too worried about
feeding children and getting home on time and making sure
that we had enough in the refrigerator, freezer, so I signed
everything back then.
So clumsy.
Lord knows when I need the money to buy the house,
I had no choice.
So I signed without ever reading all that stuff.
Well, who has time to read it?
Nobody.
It's long.
Nobody. I'm going to tell you right now, there is an opt-out provision on every
form that you people are doing, everything that you do.
Yes.
Okay? And I want you to know something.
When you give your email address and your cellphone, there's a spoof
app out there. By a show of hands, who knows about a spoof app?
It's got a few of you in here.
Yeah.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've tried to legislate
from the ground to get somebody up in the air and said, "Please,
please do me a favor. Take this off the market." "But it's a free market," they
said, "Lucido, if people want to buy this thing." So I can say,
I'll call your cellphone because I bought all the cellphone numbers for the city of
Warren. I'm going to assume you all live in the city of Warren, but maybe you
don't, and thank you, Warren, for the invite. I appreciate it.
And all of a sudden,
I call your cellphone on a spoof app, and it says
Warren Police Department.
And all of a sudden, you're picking that phone up because, uh-oh, trouble.
Something must have happened to my family. Maybe an accident.
Maybe somebody's in the hospital. Maybe something happened.
All of a sudden, I say, "Good afternoon.
This is Lieutenant Lucido from the Warren Police Department." It says right on your
caller ID, Warren Police Department.
That number goes in the spoof app and you're picking it up.
Speak.
And I'm telling you right now, I'm going to ask you questions, and you're going to
give me answers because you're talking to a police officer.
Uh-oh.
And here's the best part, and I really mean it.
See, they targeted the widows and widowers,
those that were vulnerable and of age. And they said, "You know what?
If you have a keypad on your garage door or a lock box with the
key in it, what we're trying to do is get a database together so that when
you call us for services, ambulance or fire, we don't have to knock
your door in, break your garage to get into there to save you."
Now, the vulnerable people are thinking, "You know what?
I should probably give it to them so they can get to me quicker," right?
"To save my life." I know a lot of you are saying no, but a lot of people said yes,
and this happened in Shelby Township. And guess what?
The vulnerable, the widow and widowers, were giving those codes, and guess
what happened? The break-ins happened.
They went in all the garages, broke into the houses.
They did.
So when you see a number come up in your cellphone, you will not answer
it anymore unless it's in your cell notebook, phone
book, whatever you want to call it.
That's it.
Okay, we got that? Because I'm telling you now, I always hear then, "Well,
Lucido, I get all these calls." I said, "Are they in your phone
book?" "No." "Then don't answer it."
2B.
I know my ma liked to talk to people with the eight kids.
She got a little lonely after we all growed up and got out of the house, so she's
answering the phone, "Hey, how you doing?"
Ma, knock it off. They're still calling on the rotary phone.
Here's the other thing. How about those emails? You like those?
No.
Okay. You got those insomniacs, they call them.
Any doctors in here that know about people that can't sleep at night?
Give them something to go to bed. All night long, they email me, and they want
to talk about this, and they talk about that, and the next day, I have to respond
to them.
Why? I'm an elected official. I have to talk to the constituents, which is
yous. And as a result,
what about all the scammers that want to go ahead, give me these
links that go to my email and open them up?
Don't open them. Do not open any links, everybody.
You know why? They want to get into your system to corrupt-We
saw scams years ago when they had a... What was the name of that computer company?
What was it called? It's in here.
Oh,
Geek Squad.
What?
Geek Squad?
I'll have to find it myself real quick. Oh, my God.
Here it is, the Geek Squad. You're right, Heather.
I got some time, or sometimes I remember, sometimes I don't.
Is that going to be on the test?
That is not on the test, and it's not my age.
I'm innocent. Anyway, what ends up happening is the Geek Squad was
emailing everybody saying, "You got a virus."
What?
So I said, "Talk to Dr. Taormina. He's my doctor.
He'll fix any virus you want."
"No, for the low price of 350 bucks, we're going to go
do this remotely." That's the first sign right there.
You're going to give your passcode to get into this thing.
They're going to take all your information out of that thing.
Right.
And they're going to steal from you.
So anybody that sends you something to the cellphone, because you've seen the ones
that said you didn't pay a toll.
No, we haven't.
I wasn't on no bridge. I don't know who you're talking to. I just delete it.
I could care less. Go ahead, bill me later if I did something wrong.
Here.
And that's the way I want you to feel from this day forward.
Here's the other thing. I go to my doctor. You guys go to doctors? Go to doctors?
Mm-hmm.
I wonder why they want to give you a pill to fix this, and then something else has
happened, they give you another pill to fix this.
Right.
I said, "Well, you guys are just fooling around with pills all day with me."
But I go to my doctor, and I go in, and my insurance has
never changed. It's still the same insurance I've had.
Where I lived with my first wife, that's not changed either.
My name hasn't changed. My date of birth hasn't changed.
But they gave me nine pages to fill out.
Oh.
Oh, wow.
And they gave me a clipboard. Like a clipboard's going to do something for me.
If they gave me a sandwich, it's about lunchtime, I'll feel good about myself here.
A year or two.
And all of a sudden, I said, "Here, you can keep this.
I'm putting my name down and the time I got here so you've got a record of me
reporting for duty."
Oh.
And she says, "The doctor will not see you." I said, "Why am I filling this
out? You have my driver's license scanned into your
computer. You have my date of birth and everything else.
I have not changed my insurance, and I want you to tell me why I'm filling
this out."
"Well, the doctor told me I..." Okay, watch. Dr. Taormina, Dr.
Taormina, are you here?
And he comes running out with his white coat on.
And why they wear those coats is beyond me.
Why don't they wear a sweatshirt or something?
We like the white.
You do like the white?
Yeah, because then I can tell if you dirtier.
Okay, that's good. I'm glad you can see dirt under the coat.
As a result, I'm going to tell you something.
Oh.
I says, "Would you tell her that I don't have to fill this out?
Because you have everything, and if it changed, I'd give it to you."
Uh-huh.
He doesn't have to fill it out. But we are sheep.
We fill it all out, don't we? We don't even question why we're doing it.
Oh, I hate it.
What?
I hate it.
I do, too, and I'm not doing it no more.
And I think-
And you know what? I can be that way because-
I just gave it to you last year.
There you go.
It hasn't changed.
And if it hasn't changed, you're not going to give them that.
What do they do with that paperwork at night?
Throw it away probably.
They throw it away. Well, if they don't rip it up or shred it, somebody can get in
your garbage and take it out of there.
And wait a minute, if they leave it on the countertop and the cleaning people-
Then they take it
... take that information. It's got my Social on there.
It's got my date of birth, my legal name, and it tells us where I live.
What's wrong with telling them?
Yeah. Oh, my God. Here's the other thing.
With the cellphone and the email opened up new opportunities to create
scams that we never saw or expected. Okay?
Yeah.
And I got to tell you,
every day in the prosecutor's office, what I do for a living,
I'm learning it because we have a senior
unit, and
that's mainly for vulnerables and seniors that get in trouble,
but also that have been taken advantage of.
And we have a consumer fraud unit. Those are the
busiest units right now. Somebody on the Facebook. You guys got Facebook?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. I do, too. Oh, wait a minute. I know.
People have to sit there and vent all day.
I tell them, "Go to work."
But at any rate, all of a sudden, people
are trying to tell me about the law.
I don't know who they are, but you know what?
Last time I checked,
I gave a citation of the... And it doesn't matter because they don't read, and
that's what happens. But I'll tell you something about Facebook.
Remember what I told you my dad did for a living? He was a?
Trolley. Yeah, trolleys.
Heather, where are we at here? We got A+ students in here. That's good.
No summer school for me. No way, Lucido.
So I don't know if you guys remember, but I had hand-me-downs in
this family. Did you have hand-me-downs?
Yes, I did.
Darn right we did.
Sisters that were older.
You did, huh? It went like this in the Lucido family.
It went girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, boy, girl.
We had eight.
So there was eight of us, and my brother, he was my older brother.
I had another older brother than him, too, because it went girl, boy, girl, boy,
and I was number six, girl, boy, boy, girl.
My brother had a wider foot, and he also had a larger foot
because he was about two years older. My mom was pregnant for 20 years.
I kid you not. She was pregnant 20 years.
So here I am getting these hand-me-down. We all went to St. Isaac Jogues.
You guys know where that is?
Yeah.
So I had the sisters over there. Sister Mary Holy Water was my favorite.
I called her Holy Water for short.
At any rate, I went ahead, and I got his shoes.
Triple Es,
big foot.
And my mom went into the produce truck, and she grabbed
10 of the green
crepe paper that cover the tomatoes so they don't get
frostbitten.
And brings five and five in, jams them into the
shoeAnd now I'm going to St. Isaac's.
I'm in third grade. We had to wear blue pants or
brown pants and blue shirt uniform.
Yeah, that's what they called it, with SIJ on the tie.
And all of a sudden, I'm walking down the hall like I got polio
because the shoes don't fit and the crepe paper's falling out of it.
Yes.
I ruined my feet. There's no podiatrist that want to touch these feet.
So one day I was home and I'm scrolling on my cell phone,
looking at-
Be sad. But suddenly we got-
... stuff on Facebook. Yeah, I did it.
And all of a sudden, some shoes show up
from Johnson Murphy, and I go,
"Oh my God, $99.99. I got to have these shoes."
I go ahead, I put all my information in, my size, everything.
The right size, not the hand-me-down size.
And I get everywhere except the credit card.
And I said to my daughter, she's a lawyer too now.
But at the-
Yeah. "Hey, lawyer, come here for a minute. Can you put Dad's credit card?
He needs his cheaters and he can't see.
I can put the number in and everything." And she looks and says, "Daddy, this is
not a good website."
Mm-hmm. So-
"What are you talking about?"
So I get on the phone, I call Lakeside. You remember where Lakeside is?
Yeah.
It's not going to be there much longer, right?
Yeah.
In fact, I think they closed it. They closed Montgomery Wards, Sears at
Roebuck.
Yes.
What else?
Extension.
Yep. Woolworths, right.
Penney's.
Penney's, right. Well, I don't know.
At any rate,
I'm calling them and I said, "Hey, is this Johnson Murphy?" "Yeah." "You got these
shoes for $99.99?" "That's not our shoes." "It says
Johnson Murphy on the website right here."
Yes.
"It's not our website." "Well, who in the hell's is it?"
"We don't know."
"But I wouldn't trust it." And I looked at my daughter, I said, "How did you know
that, honey?"
Because she's a lot smarter than her dad, I guarantee you.
But
she looked at me and she says, "Dad, is there a return policy?"
"No." "Is there a return address?" "No." "Is there a phone
number, Dad?" "No." "Did you Google about this company or..."
"Johnson Murphy, what am I going to Google?
It's Johnson Murphy." "The problem is, Dad, they don't give you any other
information. And if you were to put your information from your credit card in
there, what shoes would've shown up?"
Nothing.
So everything you do-- And you know what's funny?
I stood on that site for a little bit of time.
I go off the site, I open my Facebook back up,
and shoes are popping up like crazy.
Oh.
It's like there's somebody living in my phone, pushing this information.
"Hey, more shoes."
Definitely watch.
But the best part was,
I know when you guys look at purses and dresses, and you're looking
at things that men and women look at, guess
what? It shows up again and again, and again and again.
Even though you shut the phone down, it comes back at you.
Right.
So they're following you.
Right.
They're watching you.
You know that thing, what's it called?
What's the thing? The thing that turns the lights on/off. What do they call it?
Alexa.
Alexa. Who's got Alexa here?
That thing's listening to me all day, all night.
And I've said, "Alexa, do you hear what I said?" "Yes, sir, I did."
Funny how they put that crap on. Be careful everybody, because years
ago we used to have party lines. You remember that?
Yeah.
How about the long extension line, right?
Right.
Okay. So we also used to have, what did they call them?
One upstairs, one downstairs where-
Extention
... Mom did the laundry. Remember?
Yeah. One down-
It's called an extension? No. Right
... in one of the-
In the laundry room, right.
Laundry room.
I used to listen to my sister's conversations with their boyfriends.
Damn.
Never rat them out, though. Never rat them out.
I knew what time they were coming home.
That's clear.
I want you to realize this. Every single day, there's a new
scam coming through this county, and it's people that don't even live in
this county. They don't live in this state. They don't live in this country.
Yeah.
And how they got the information was?
The cloud.
The cloud, right.
They went ahead and bought the information.
Or better yet, let's say we got six criminals in here
and we all get together and we say, "Let's buy the list that deals with the emails
and the cell phones for Ray Township."
Or malice.
Ah, forget it. We don't need their cell phones.
Let's just get their email address, and let's send out a statement
that says, "Support your local fire and EMS."
That's something.
"And get yourself one of these embroidered shirts for the low price of
$24.95, regularly $39.95.
We're going to get you an embroidered shirt to show your support, and you can wear
it around town and show that you care about your local fire and
EMS."
Now check this out.
Okay.
These all went to emails because somebody bought them all in
Ray Township. That's here in Macomb. Everybody know where that is?
Yeah.
That's way north from here.
Yeah. Down here.
That's where the farm people live, right?
Yes, it is.
And you know what? I go up there, too, and I do these scams presentation.
I showed them the form that was showing up on their email address, and
they all remember it. You know what they said?
"Yeah, we read away." Buy one for your spouse and buy one for your
grandchildren. Buy one for your loved ones.
People are ordering these shirts like crazy. Guess how many shirts got delivered?
Zero.
Zero. So you know how easy it is for me to buy your email addresses?
They save this information, guys.
So anything you fill out in the future, opt out. Opt out. Opt out.
Opt out. Opt out. You all got my booklet that's inside
of these yellow bags.
Yeah.
In the booklet,
on page 22, Lara, L-A-R-A. Page
22. Heather, what color is that page?
Blue.
Dark blue.
It's a dark blue on page 22. Lara. If you haven't heard about it,
just remember when you walk out of here, Lara.
Lara is an agency that goes ahead and makes sure
that people are licensedThey regulate the
licensures in the state, and that's a good thing, and I'll tell you
why. Anybody that has HVAC, heating and
cooling,
plumber, electrician,
LARA. LARA.
We want to make sure people coming into our house that are working on our
furnaces or our electrical or our plumbing have a license, number
one. Also, LARA will tell
you on their little website
if there's any complaints against those individuals. Okay?
Okay.
There's complaints. So all of us have homes or
condos, and all of a sudden, you need some work done inside.
What do you do? You try to get word of mouth, "Is this guy any good?"
You go on LARA,
you protect yourself, and you see whether or not
there is any complaints, whether they're licensed.
Was it suspended? If so, how long ago?
Okay? Does this all make sense? After a big storm-- I live out in Shelby.
Okay?
They've got the big trees out there,
and what happens is a bunch of trees fell, and some guy shows
up in a white truck, knocks on my door, and says, "We're going to be
clearing in the area here. Your neighbors and everybody else, we're going to be
bringing a truck out here. We want to stage one time, and we're
going to give 25% off today if you go with us because your
other neighbors were going to get on board, too." The trees were all over the
place. And I looked at him and I said, "Okay." Now, there's nothing on the truck.
I says, "Come on, hold on a minute." I go down my
steps, and I said, "Hold on a minute," and I take a picture of his license plate.
I go to the front of the truck, and I take a picture of his VIN number
over the windshield. I said, "Get next to the truck.
I want to take a picture with you." He goes, "What are you talking about?" I said,
"You got no markings on this truck. It's just a regular white truck.
You got no equipment here. You didn't even give me a card.
Who in the hell are you?"
Yeah.
And he goes, "I told you, we're going to bring our stuff and..." "I know what you
told me."
What's-
"But are you licensed and insured?" "No."
Yeah.
"Have you ever done this before? You said you're going to bring your guys to help
out." I said, "If you go cut one of my branches there, watch this,
and it falls on my house and wrecks my house,
my insurance doesn't cover workmanship.
It doesn't cover negligence on your part.
Or the kid gets up there to cut it and falls out of the tree and falls on his
head."
Now I got a workers' comp lawsuit against me because he becomes my
employee, unless I got a certificate of insurance
for the work that he's doing.
So you got to be careful because here's why.
You know your homeowner's policy?
It says for hail, wind, sleet. It doesn't
say for somebody who doesn't have a license going up and
getting some kid to cut the tree and having the branch fall through your house.
You're on your own. That homeowner's policy will not cover it.
Did I do test one?
Any questions? I need to take a break.
I love doing this, you know that?
Authentic.
Does the Secretary of State sell your information?
At one time, I believe they did.
I'm glad you brought that up.
Oh.
So here's what the deal is. You need to go ahead
and ask that query to the secretary of state.
When I was up at the capital, though,
I was practicing law, like I told you before.
I went up there, my brother passed away, and I said, "Pete, you better reflect on
your life. You're on the back nine.
Maybe the back six, I don't know."
Back three.
Back three. Thank you. I appreciate that.
I hope you go home in one piece, too.
What happens is this, guys. Watch this.
I was up at the secretary of state when I was in the capital,
and I grabbed... Who in the hell was it? Ruth Johnson.
And I say, "Hey, Ruth, I got a question for you.
When I was in practice and there would be an accident and somebody would be knocked
out at the light or whatever else, they take you in an ambulance, they bring you to
the hospital, they can't work on you because they need a patient advocate, a
patient directive they call it.
So the copper set up on the house because they got my license out of my pocket.
So I went to my license already and I looked on the back and it's got a
bunch of barcodes and hash marks. Go take a look at yours
when you get home.
I see.
And those that do not have a license and just have a state ID, that has
the barcodes and the crap on it.
I said, "You know what? I called 3M." They're the ones that supply the
plastic for the driver's license, 3M Company.
And I asked them this question, "You got these barcodes on the back and you got
this other stuff. I don't even care what that is.
I want to know, can I get on the computer and can I go ahead
and have a site for emergency
contact information?"
"Okay." "Yeah, and I can change it at any time I want."
"Yeah." "And it would go to the secretary of state, so when the cop
takes my license and goes through the reader, it'll
tell, 'You call Anne Marie Lucido.'" That's his wife,
okay? He's in the hospital, so that if my wife is out shopping all
day or at her mother's house taking care of her, that she'll
be notified that they're taking me to Mount Clemens General or wherever they're
taking me.
Guess what?
"Yeah, we can do that." I said, "I'd like you to do that.
We're going to save the taxpayers a lot of money by what's called deploying the
police immediately from the scene, calling my wife, and getting her to the
hospital."
Hm.
This is my first case, Judge. How am I doing?
You're doing good.
Yeah. Thank you.
You're welcome.
So guys, today, when you go home, go on the secretary of state's
website,
stateofmichigan.org. Go to Secretary of State, Emergency
Contact, and if you got an ID, they'll have it done.
Fill it out. I have my first wife on there as my emergency
contactHopefully she'll answer the phone because you know what?
I told her, "Never pick the phone up if it's not in your phone book."
"Well, you told me not to answer the phone.
Well, you're telling me not to answer the phone?"
She don't-
They'll leave a message for you.
Ooh.
Isn't that something? You told me not to do something, now you want me to.
This is one time she listening.
Yeah, she's listening. She's been listening for-
You're going to be in trouble.
I've been getting in trouble since the day I was born.
So here's the reality, everybody. You can do that.
What about your houses?
Our clerk in this county did something smart.
We've had-- Really, this has just happened. We got the case now.
There was a caretaker that went into a guy's house, that he was single.
Mm-hmm.
And he went and had her take care of him until she
couldn't do it no more. He went into a facility because he needed
24-hour care. She stayed at the house because she was living there.
No. Mm-mm.
She sold his house while he was in the facility and sold his other house.
Well, yeah.
Well, how in the hell did that happen?
Well, she got the deed from the Registrar of Deed.
Right.
And what ended up happening is she phonized-- Phonolized?
Phony-ized?
Falsified.
Right. Right.
Right. You guys know about that kind of stuff.
Good, I'm dealing with the right people.
As a result, she went ahead and got the money, everything else.
The title company closed it. She had a fraudulent person
notarize it because it was her signature, trying to imitate the man that's
in the critical care,
and sold two houses of his.
My.
Now the brother comes in after the charges start and says, "What the hell kind of
crap is going on in this county?" I said, "You tell me.
This is ridiculous, isn't it?" He goes, "I know it's not your
fault." I said, "I didn't even know who your brother is." But as a result,
I'm going to let you know, you can put now an alert on your
homes, on your condos. It's very easy.
Macombcounty.gov, is that what it is?
It's clerk's office.
Macomb County, just go to Macomb County, get to their website, go to clerk's
office, and it say notification. Why?
If anybody files a lien on your property,
it'll notify you. If anybody
tries to sell your house, it'll notify you.
Why don't they do that automatically without calling?
Well, that would be an invasion of your house.
I'm telling you now, here's the bottom line.
You put it on there, not them. It was your choice to put
the alert on there, not them. They take no liability or
responsibility. But here's what I like.
If you guys don't have alerts on your bank accounts right now, Ms.
Heather, tell them. Come on up here.
You're going to go on now. I got to get a breath.
Yeah.
Alerts on your credit cards, your bank accounts, she's going to tell
you.
Yes, I do all my shopping online, and I have
another thing I want to add onto that, Kate.
Another never is,
since I do all my shopping online,
there are alerts that you can put on your phone,
your bank accounts, any of your credit cards.
Any time anything comes out of any of my accounts
or any transaction whatsoever, whether it's a fee or
whatever, I get a little click on my phone, and I look, and
whether it's 25 cents or my husband uses my card and go
buy something online, I can say, "You used the wrong card." I know instantly
what's coming out of any of my accounts at all times.
You can go on and just turn on all your accounts.
Another thing with me shopping online is,
I sat with my daughter one day. She came home from school, and we were watching a
movie. And the whole time we're watching a movie, she's scrolling on her phone.
And she said, "Mom, one of our packages can't be
delivered."
So I said, "Haley, do not click the link."
She says, "Too late." Like jumps up in a
non-dramatic way, she says, and shut her phone down, shut my
phone down because most of the accounts that we use to shop
on, we have both of our information in there.
Our cards are in the same bank, and they're linked through our accounts.
Two weeks later, our cards did get shut down, both of ours, because
they noticed some activity. The
bank caught it, and we were fine and everything, but any of your
delivery services, any of them, Big Box, Amazon,
UPS, USPS, FedEx, will never,
ever contact you.
Do you understand that? So when you get these emails, when you get these text
messages, do not respond. Do not click on that
link. I know we were all forced to buy online
during COVID. We were.
And it looks like Christmas time at my house when my kids were all home,
packages all over the place.
But let me tell you, I did something right in the capital again.
I came up with porch pirate. You know when they steal your mail, that goes to
the federal government because the federal government runs your mailbox.
But when they put packages on your porch,
the porch is not regulated by the federal government, and those
packages were put there by private industry, UPS,
Amazon. Amazon? What kind of name is Amazon?
I got Amazon coming. At any rate, what I'm going to let you know
is we had no laws to regulate that, so we put it out there, a
five-year felony.
By itself.
But it's very difficult to go ahead-
It's so difficult
... and hold somebody accountable because they park three doors down from
where you live. They wear baggy clothes, baggy
pants, a hoodie, glasses, and they go ahead,
walk three houses down-
This is the next door
... where their car is, and guess what?
No.
They steal the package, and they go ahead-- They usually got sunglasses on, a
baseball cap. So we might be able to pick them up on a door ring
cam, or we might be able to go ahead and pick them up on somebody else's
camera-But the point being is, at least we have
the ability to prosecute them now, and we do find some,
because we get a search warrant and knock the door in, and we find Santa Claus'
workshop of all the packages they'd stole. And you know what?
If you want to go in the business, I'd just follow a UPS truck around or
an Amazon truck, wait for they get off the street, and then help yourself to the
whole street. In fact, get some kids from high school, pay them to do
that kind of stuff. Just go steal. This is what I see going on.
Mm-hmm.
I have to make a joke about it because it's costing us billions, would it be,
every day this is going on. And the other thing is this,
okay?
When you go give your card... Now, watch this.
I go shop at Sam's Club.
I gave my card to the young lady, and now it becomes my credit card when I give it
to her. Because Sam's Club, they used to have just that
ID, and now they made it a credit card for you.
Make it real convenient. They can get you going and coming, they tell me.
He's laughing back there. Anyway, I give it to
her. I don't know these clerks running these registers, and neither do you.
And I'm picking up the stuff from the buggy, and I'm putting it on the belt, and
all of a sudden, I see her take her camera phone out, shoot a picture of my credit
card.
Oh, wow.
Oh.
Now, I got three options here. One is give my card and leave.
Two is tell her, "I'm going to get your manager now.
You're going down." Three is get everything rung up, and when we're all done, I
said, "Now give me your phone." "What?" "Give me your phone now."
And I erased it, and I erased it again.
I said, "Lady, listen to me."
statement was one made yet
"I'm going to say a prayer for you, but you better go take care of yourself,
because this is not right what you're doing." What about giving your credit card to
the lady that waited on you as a waitress at the end of the meal?
They take it to the bathroom.
They take it... Well, mine went to Ohio once and- ... visited Ohio.
Went to SeaWorld.
What I'm trying to tell you is-
It's back to your budget
... why don't they have the machine to come out and do it right in front of you?
They used to have them.
They used to have those old machines where they would literally rip your card and
shred it and everything. We got the things at the gas pump.
Take a look at the gas pump. If it looks like it's coming out like this,
they probably got a reader in there, and they're going to steal your information.
Never let your credit card out of your sight.
I know we all live with this, but never let it out of your sight.
I know it's getting into that. On this booklet, everybody, if you don't have one,
get one before you leave. On page seven, it tells you how to remove your
information from the marketing list.
Oh.
Tells you how to opt out, tells you how to get off the Do Not Call list.
Very, very easy.
I'm going to give you another one. That's this.
Your mailboxes, are they locked?
No. Some of you got mail chutes that go into your house.
That's old school, okay? That's how Mom and Dad Lucido had it.
You got a little slot, goes in there, goes in the coat closet.
You get the stuff out of the coat closet.
Yeah.
But I'm going to tell you now, your
bills come in the mail. Your mail is open if the thing is
open. And on mine, I don't know, Banks of Comerica,
it has my ending balance, my beginning balance. It has the checks I wrote out.
And then on the last page, it has the little pretty checks with who I
wrote them to, with my routing number on the bank statement.
That's my account, everybody.
And my credit card statement comes in once a month, and it shows
the beginning balance, end balance, how much of credit available, and it's got
a bunch of numbers there. And if my credit card is paid out of my
bank account, like a lot of people, where you're not writing that 80 cent or
82 cents for a stamp. I remember my dad b******g and
saying this.
78.
What?
78 cents.
Oh, you must live on the good side of town. I live on the other side of town.
My dad went ahead and said, "Wait a minute.
I don't want my check electronically deposited.
I want it in the mail so I can see it and bring it to Mary."
I said, "Pa, they're not going to give you," but till this day, and then they're
not going to give you the check. Well, they owe it to me.
You have to show-
I worked all my... And I said, "Pa, you got to go ahead and let it go
electronically." But they didn't give me that program when I signed up, and I
paid in 50 years.
I said, "You're going to have to follow their rules, Pa.
They're a lot bigger than us Lucidos." Yes?
What page is it
on?
On page seven, to opt out. Yeah. Please read page seven.
Thank you.
Yes, ma'am.
Yeah, I got a home phone-
Mm.
And-
Hold on one second. Let's see
Hold on. Wait a minute. We got to get everybody.
Everyone, I beg your... One sec, Chase.
I got a home phone. And about eight times a day,
these people are calling me about something Michigan is sending
for Medicare.
Okay.
And I keep hanging up. Should I hang up?
Don't answer it.
Huh?
Don't answer it to begin with. Lines.
Yeah. You said hang on, talk to anybody that's not-
Don't pick the phone up. Here's why. My daughter lost her phone.
She was with her girlfriend. She texted me from her girlfriend's phone, "Dad,
this is Brianna.
This is the number I'm at. It's Mary's phone." Why Mary? Let's use another.
Suzy's phone. We already used Mary. It's Suzy's phone.
I'm going to call you from this number. Pick it up.
I got a 50/50 that's Brianna. Okay?
But if somebody needs to get ahold of you, they're going to leave a message or
they're going to text you, right? If they really got to get ahold of you.
Yeah.
Like the one Lucido, Lieutenant Lucido from Warren PD,
I'm going to leave a message, and it's going to be the real Warren PD.
Okay? I want to talk about guardian conservator before we leave here, because
that's too important to me.
When I was growing up,
my sister was nine years old, and she changed my diaper. Okay?
Because it went girl, boy, girl, boy. Anyway, she took care of me.
I don't know what my mom was doing. Probably having another baby, cooking, whatever
was going on in this house.
It was crazy. Well, I mean, it was a circus going on in that house.
And what ended up happening was
a guardian
takes care of the physical needs of somebody.
Physical needs, which is-
I know
... food, clothing, medical,
okay?Yeah, showers. Okay.
Food and-
Food. Anything to do with non-money. A guardian. A guardian takes care of.
It's in the book.
The guardian takes care of the physical needs, food, clothing, shelter, and
medical. The conservator takes care of the money.
So you can have two different people do this.
So my sister, because she changed my diaper and never stuck me with the pins
back then-
How do you know?
Well, she didn't, because I was looking.
And my mom used to clean them in the toilet, those cloth diapers.
There was no Diaper-Dry and all that other stuff.
No way.
Did you have a diaper service? I never did.
No.
No, none of us did. But it was funny because she had four in diapers at the
time, and she'd hang them outside. I don't know if you had clothes lines out.
No.
It looked like a Lacino circus out there in the backyard.
Yeah.
But that's what we did. So you got to find somebody who loves you,
loves you, loves you to be your guardian.
And don't get somebody older because they're not going to know.
And somebody to take care of the money.
And I do these classes, we've done 200 and some odd.
Hundred and-
And we've done over 200 of these classes in the county, and here's the other thing.
Somebody says, "I don't have anybody."
It broke my heart.
So I said, "Look it, you should probably talk to a lawyer, okay?"
Because you want somebody that knows you, that respects you, that
will look after you, and also not steal from you, so you really got
to trust them. Because the court will appoint a
guardian or a conservator, and you don't know them at all, and
that's a problem in this world. Lastly, this, and I think it's
just as important.
They can take money for services.
Right. But the bottom line is get some family member if you can,
if you still have family member you love, because I've seen a lot of families that
fell out of love with their family members, and it's sad. It's sad.
I want you to remember, though, that you put the alerts on your credit
cards, you go ahead and put the alerts on your bank accounts, and if you have
a spouse, then they'll know exactly when you're taking money out and when you're
using your credit card. And it's good conversation at night at dinner time, you
know what I mean? "So what'd you buy today?" "Oh, I forgot about the
alert on the credit card."
Be careful, guys. And the last thing is, look in the book
here, because this will take 30 minutes to read.
It's at every police department, every police department in this county.
It's in every library. Go out here. It's in your library right here.
It's in every senior center.
I want everybody to be on guard because I don't want you to lose any gold in
your golden years. I want you to keep your gold.
You worked hard enough, and you want to keep it till the day you die.
Lord knows we're probably outliving our money. And that's a problem.
But I want you to go ahead and keep your gold in your golden years.
So read the book. Forty-five minutes if you're a slow reader like me.
I'd rather have children in here with their family so that they listen, so that
they are on guard. And we got a question. Go ahead.
Before you wind it up. I get a million things on my
phone numbers and everything all the time with scams.
But yesterday was the first time I got it on my calendar.
Calendar?
On my calendar in my smartphone telling me about all the letters and
all this and that about something that's going to be delivered, and it's a
four-year plan, how much it's going to cost and everything else.
Yeah. So here's the bottom line.
It's in here. The
consumer protection through the attorney general, the state
attorney general. When in doubt, call them.
When in doubt, call them. They will look into it to see if there is some fraud
going on. We also have this.
You're going to see two pamphlets that you'll see all over this
county. These pamphlets were put together with me when I got home from
Lansing. One is No Excuse for Elderly Abuse.
We have the most aging population in this county.
We have the most diverse population of all different nationalities and
origins. I want you to be aware that
No Excuse for Elderly Abuse, when you got people going to hot Meals on
Wheels-
Right. Yeah
... this pains me when they see bruising on an elderly.
Right.
And it's not healthy bruises. Remember when we were kids, you fell off the monkey
bars or the-
Yeah
... pole or whatever you're doing, get hit in the head with a baseball.
Those are healthy bruises, my mom used to say.
"Oh, yeah, Peter, those are healthy bruises." I said, "Healthy?
What the heck she talking about?"
But with our elderly, you know somebody is--
They've abused them. And you should report it to the adult protective
services. The same with children.
We have mandatory reporters in the state, like doctors, and they
have to mandatorily report to check it out.
Let's all work together because you know what?
We got one shot at life, and I want to make sure we're taking the
best shot we can and helping those that can't help themselves.
So I love you guys. If you need one of those
seminars like this, I'll come to your church.
Heather and I go to churches. She put me in the-- What was it called
again?
The Sailing Single Seniors.
The Sailing Single-- Do you guys know about that?
No.
Whoa. I said, "Heather, what kind of organization is this?"
They're fun.
"Oh, you're going to fall in love with them." I said, "Yeah, but wait a minute, I'm
married."
We went in the back of Ike's, and it was a heck of a-- It was a really great
presentation. But
they were drinking during it, so that might make a difference on how they perceived
the program. But I will come to you.
I will do this, and I'll make it my mission.
You set the time and the place, and I'll be there, and we'll make sure you all have
a booklet. If you need some booklets, take some more before I leave today.
We are there for you, and that's what I want to do. You had a question?
Yeah. I have both of them.
Both of us.
But we each have a question.