Austin Joyce, a financial advisor with Edward Jones & Company, was the guest speaker at the March meeting of the Patrick County Retired Teachers Association. He presented an interesting program on protecting oneself from frauds.
Some common scenarios are a caller claims to be from the IRS, you are instructed to send money to a third party, you are pressured to pay a debt or someone will visit your home, you receive a call from someone who does not identify himself, a grandchild contacts you instead of parents to ask for money and plays on your emotions, caller asks you to wire money to a place you do not recognize, you receive a package you are not expecting and asked to pay taxes on it, or you receive a call from someone saying they have detected something wrong with your computer.
Mr. Joyce gave some tips to deal with different types of fraud. Stay alert, do not provide information the caller can use, be leery of people you meet over the internet, devise a code word that only your family knows to do research on calls, never click on a link in an email unless you are positive you know the sender, never give your computer information to anyone you do not know, do not give out credit card information, delete suspicious texts, and remember that anyone can be targeted.
The club also discussed some matters of business. Retired Teachers Scholarship will be presented in May, donations for senior graduation were collected, and the District E meeting of VRTA was held at Hunt & Company in Chatham on March 25.
The Retired Teachers Book Club meets every third Wednesday with “The Berry Pickers” discussed in March and “Hope Between the Pages” in April. Anyone who enjoys reading is invited.
Hostesses were Carol Vernon, Dee Nolan, Linda Wilson, Revonda and Dean Gilbert.
