Beau Friedlander:
Hey, Travis. You didn’t answer the phone call I just made to you, I was going to offer you a new warranty on your car.
Travis Taylor:
I’m sorry I missed that one.
Adam Levin:
I sold one to Travis just recently.
Speaker 4:
We’ve been trying to reach you concerning your car’s extended warranty.
Beau Friedlander:
My understanding is that these phone calls about extending warranties on an automobile might stop at some point in the near future, is that right?
Travis Taylor:
I’m not holding my breath.
Speaker 4:
See? And so, listen, you’ve been in front of the war against robocalls, and now the FCC is finally joining you, taking some new steps to stop the ads.
Speaker 5:
They are, but it’s a question of whether it’s going to work.
Adam Levin:
The FCC announced it’s going to block a massive auto warranty robocall scam campaign.
Beau Friedlander:
I think Travis is still going to hold his breath on that one.
Travis Taylor:
Right.
Beau Friedlander:
What do you think, Adam? You think that’s going to work?
Adam Levin:
You don’t know. But what it does is it forces all US voice service providers to take all necessary steps to make sure that robocall traffic doesn’t get to our cell phones. If they can’t do that, then they have to tell the FCC what steps they’re taking to mitigate that traffic.
Speaker 5:
For the last two years, complaints from consumers about those annoying auto warranty robocalls have been the top complaint coming into the FCC. So, finally, the Federal Communications Commission acting on this by naming about a dozen or so individuals and companies responsible for many, many of these calls.
Beau Friedlander:
I am going to just stop those calls one by one. I’m going to sit on a ridge with a pellet gun and I’m going to just knock them off. Bing, bing, bing.
Adam Levin:
I saw Top Gun 2, I don’t think you’re going to be able to do those.
Beau Friedlander:
Cyber pellet gun. Bing.
Adam Levin:
Ah, cyber pellet guns, so that’s different. Okay. I got it.
Beau Friedlander:
See? So now, that’s my new job. I now work for the FCC and I am their sharpshooter.
Speaker 5:
Here’s the problem. The FCC also acknowledges that the robocallers with the auto warranty calls have also purchased access to more than half a million phone numbers with over 200 different area codes. And what that means is each time one phone line gets identified as being a spam line, these guys just switch to another one, and on and on, and if you’re thinking, “Whack-a-mole,” that’s exactly the right message-
Beau Friedlander:
So, these robocall things aren’t going to stop. They’re not going to stop anymore than scammers are going to stop doing what our today’s guest had happen to her. They might, she had an out and it’s an interesting story, but it’s the same thing.
Adam Levin:
Welcome to What the Hack, a show about hackers, scammers, and the people they go after. I’m Adam, Cyber Centurion.
Beau Friedlander:
I’m Beau, Cyber lesser Greek scamp or scallywag.
Travis Taylor:
And I’m Travis, Cyber Goat.
Adam Levin:
And today, we talk with author, podcaster, and tarot card reader, Michelle Tea, about a scam she found herself in the middle of on Instagram.
Beau Friedlander:
Is there a tarot card, Michelle, for somebody who sees lethality in everything?
Michelle Tea:
Kind of. Yeah, there is. The whole Suit of Swords is really about our mental processes, and so there’s definitely some paranoid cards in there.
Beau Friedlander:
Okay, Michelle. So, then I’d like you to meet Adam, the Prince of Swords.
Adam Levin:
Yes. And I’ve always been terrified of tarot card readings and the like. I don’t want to know, because I will create a self-fulfilling prophecy, clearly,
Michelle Tea:
Really, there’s a little bit of a misconception about tarot that I’m going to be able to tell you all of this stuff about the future. I kind of can, but really, what tarot reading does is just really clarify what’s going on right now. It’s more like a really good therapy session than it is like sitting down with Madame whatever her name is from the Haunted Mansion at Disney, the floating, bubble head lady.
Beau Friedlander:
Can I tell you one thing, Michelle, because I think you’re maybe one of the few people I’ve talked to in the past few years who will understand what I’m talking about? Now, crystals are often lumped in with tarot card readings, and I used to buy crystals constantly. There was a store near my house and I would go in and I’d ask the guy, “What’s this rock do?” And he’d be like, “That does this,” and I’d be like, “Okay, I want that.” I was desperately in love with my neighbor and it was unrequited, and so I carried around a stone that represented unconditional love. It actually helped me not date anyone else until she came around, which she did, and we now live together.
Michelle Tea:
Stop it. That’s really great.
Beau Friedlander:
Totally true story. But here’s what I think the crystal did, I don’t think the crystal gave me unconditional love. I think it reminded me that I was interested in unconditional love. It was a touchstone, literally a touchstone. So, do tarot cards works in a similar way?
Michelle Tea:
They really might. I’m open to any possibility about how they happen. I don’t know how they happen, honestly. Wat I’ve really come to think about it is that when two people sit down with that openness to each other’s psyches, and to talking honestly and being a little vulnerable, and using these really ancient tools that are illustrated, that have all these pictures that illustrate all these very monumental events in a life, I feel like something magical happens and a communication occurs and you can get really deep with it. And I think even the cards that predict a future energy, that’s usually an energy you can see coming down the pike already. Sometimes it’s like, yeah, you keep shaking the table, the milk’s going to spill. You know what I mean? It’s that almost common sense.
Adam Levin:
But you have to be open to it.
Michelle Tea:
You do have to be open to it, that’s what I’ve experienced. When I’ve tried to read for people who thought it was just all a hunk of hooey and they wanted me to prove something to them, the cards don’t really work.
Beau Friedlander:
No. But Michelle, the best part is Adam just said, “You have to be open to it.” Travis, the man who would literally run screaming from the room if you were to take a tarot card back out.
Adam Levin:
Well, that’s why I say you have to be open. If you’re terrified, you may not be as open as you should be.
Beau Friedlander:
I think we have to do mini card reading right now. What do you call it when you do the three cards?
Michelle Tea:
Oh, I love a three-card reading. I really love a three-card reading with a goal, if there’s something specific to pick on.
Beau Friedlander:
I got it. I got it. I got it.
Michelle Tea:
What is it? What is it?
Beau Friedlander:
Ready?
Michelle Tea:
Yeah.
Beau Friedlander:
This episode, I can’t believe I just did that, we’re doomed, and Adam’s future bliss. Wait, we should only do one.
Michelle Tea:
Those are two separate questions.
Beau Friedlander:
We should do one. Adam’s future bliss. Ready? Adam’s future bliss.
Michelle Tea:
Adam, do you consent to this? You consent to me doing a vibe check on your immediate future via the tarot?
Adam Levin:
Listen, the whole concept of future bliss works for me.
Michelle Tea:
Okay. All right. Let’s see-
Beau Friedlander:
Awesome.
Michelle Tea:
… what is promoting/blocking your future bliss and see what we get.
Beau Friedlander:
Here it comes. Wait, he didn’t run screaming.
Michelle Tea:
You’re being very brave. Adam, what is your astrological sign? I often like to ask this of people whose cards I’m reading.
Adam Levin:
I’m a Libra.
Beau Friedlander:
It’s a security question. Adam.
Michelle Tea:
Oh, oh. Okay. You don’t need to answer it. That’s so funny, it is, isn’t it? It is a security question.
Adam Levin:
No, I’ve never used that as an answer to anything, so-
Beau Friedlander:
Okay, good.
Michelle Tea:
Your bliss looks assured, I’m here to tell you. Three-card readings present themselves to me in different ways, sometimes they feel chronological, sometimes the card in the middle feels a little bit like a centerpiece being flanked by their backup dancers. And so, the middle card I have for you right here is the Prince of Wands and he is a happy, happy guy. He is Leo, it is Leo season that we just entered into, astrologically. This is a time of great playfulness, fun, creativity, socializing with people, getting out and about, traveling. All these things that, if you’re a acrophobic introvert, maybe it doesn’t bring you much joy, but these are things that traditionally bring humans a lot of joy. So, if they bring you a lot of joy, you should definitely get out there and just take on the mantle of this Prince of Wands here, who is so… You just look at him, he’s just like, “Yeah,” he’s riding his chariot.
Adam Levin:
That even looks like me, same body type.
Beau Friedlander:
Adam, your whole face, when she said that your bliss is assured and started to tell you about the card, your whole face just blissed out.
Michelle Tea:
Aw, that’s so nice.
Adam Levin:
I did, I blissed out. And my son is a Leo, so this is-
Michelle Tea:
Oh, you know what that energy is like, that optimistic, magnetic, likes to give attention, likes to get attention.
Adam Levin:
Oh yeah.
Michelle Tea:
He’s pulled by the lion here, his chariot. And then on either side, the first card you have is this great… It’s the Two of Wands. I like this deck a lot because it has astrological reads on them, too, so it’s said to be Mars in Aries, so this is on fire. This is just what do you want your bliss to be? What do you think will give you bliss? Go at it. You might have to throw some elbows to get it, but don’t be afraid to shove yourself to the front of the line. Mars is what keeps us going, it’s our ambition, it’s our motivation, and Aries is very self-focused. So it can be a very selfish card, but usually, I see that as a good thing. Those times in our life where we’ve got to look out for number one, we’ve got to go after what we want, no one’s going to give it to us on a platter, but if you do put a little oomph behind it, you’re bound to get it. And then your final card here is…
Michelle Tea:
I was saying earlier about how the Suit of Swords, they are the minds, so there are a lot of paranoid cards in there, there’s anxious cards. You got one of the few really beautiful cards from the Swords. You got the Six of Swords, which is Mercury in Aquarius, and it’s about using the powers of the mind in a fantastic way to plot and plan for your own bliss, to make yourself safe to this… If you see all the lines on this, this card is based on a fencer’s map of where a fencer can stand and be invulnerable, so it’s about using logic to protect yourself and to win, really. But so, I just see this as what do you want, especially what playful and fun things and creative things, Leo, do you want? Because you’ve got the energy to go after it and you’ve got the smarts and the clarity and the analysis to be able to really secure it for yourself.
Adam Levin:
So, Beau, Travis, listen to that, energy, smarts, mm-hmm. There you go.
Beau Friedlander:
Adam, you are essentially that last card, especially with the choreography of the fencer. You could be Inigo Montoya.
Adam Levin:
Ooh.
Beau Friedlander:
I’m not saying you have to avenge your dad at this moment, Buttercup.
Adam Levin:
So, how did you get into tarot?
Michelle Tea:
I got into tarot card reading when I was a teenager. This was the 1980s and I was goth, as were my friends, and we were really attracted to goth music and black lace, widows weeds, and all things spooky. New England has such a great spooky history, and we would do little pilgrimages to Salem, where there are lots of actual witches, as it happens and witch boutiques that sold tarot cards and little spell kits and things like that, so I was really attracted to it. I liked that it was so old. I liked that you got so much for your money. You could pay, I don’t know, $20 or however much they were at the time, and you would get 78 cards and this endless possibility for enrichment, excitement, possibility, a way to interact with the great mysteries of life, the unknown, so I really loved it.
Michelle Tea:
My friends also started reading cards, my good friends, and we would read for each other and just learned how to do them, and they really spoke to me. They made sense in my life. I really loved them aesthetically. I liked the way that when I picked cards for myself, it turned the moment into this heightened, almost sacred moment where I was checking in with myself. I had a tool that helped me be introspective and think about things. There wasn’t anything about it I didn’t like, I really loved it.
Adam Levin:
Well, this is great. So, you felt it enriched you?
Michelle Tea:
Oh, very much so. Yeah, yeah. And I loved getting readings from my friends and practicing on them.
Beau Friedlander:
It sounds to me like the way that you described it earlier was that it has a therapeutic element to it. As a teenager, is that how you and your friends used it? Did it lean more in the Ouija board side of things, or did it lean actually more into being a teenager is hard and disorienting and this helps me center myself?
Michelle Tea:
It was a little of both. There was definitely a lot of, does that person have a crush on me that I have a crush on, picking cards, which people still love and romance is still a huge reason why people seek out the tarot, but I would use it for everything. If I felt something stressful was happening at home, I would pick cards to see how is this going to develop and/or what could I lean on emotionally, psychically in my world to help me out? So, I used it for all of the ways. And I do that in readings with people, as well. I’ll totally pick cards to see what the path looks like with this romantic interest, but I also love doing readings where people are exploring working through different emotional issues that have come up for them. You can really use it as a predictor and then also, as a deep, almost psychological tool.
Travis Taylor:
And how did you get started doing this professionally?
Michelle Tea:
Oh gosh. So, when I moved to San Francisco in the very early ’90s, I didn’t really know what I was doing with my life. I had just came out of a relationship and ran away to hang out with my best friend who had moved there. I didn’t go to college, not having a lot of saleable skills, I didn’t feel quite that employable. So, I started reading tarot cards on the street, on Haight Street, of all places, for donation, of all things, which is so ridiculous, because people were like, “Here’s a rock, man.” And I don’t mean like a crystal, I mean like a pebble from the gutter. Someone’s like, “I’ve got a tip for you, here’s how to get food stamps,” and I was like, “Great, that’s actually quite helpful.”
Michelle Tea:
I wasn’t sure if it was okay to charge for what was a spiritual service, and I got over that quite quickly. But a woman who owned a little shop that sold incense and candles, and it was not a witchcraft shop, it was more of a pretty things for your home boutique, but she really liked the idea of having a tarot reader in the shop on the weekends. So, she brought me in and then that’s how I started.
Travis Taylor:
And how does social media factor into this?
Michelle Tea:
Well, gosh, social media is incredible, because you get to advertise that you exist and that you offer this thing. Prior to that, it was really word of mouth, or I would post up sometimes at a bar or a coffee shop, and maybe the business would alert people, through their channels, that they had a tarot reader on site during these particular days. But now, it’s actually really fantastic. Most of my clientele do not live in the same city as me, they are all virtual readings that happen over Zoom. I actually figured this out years ago, I had a friend phone me. It was before the internet, even many, many years ago, I had a friend phoned me in San Francisco, who was back in Massachusetts, and they were desperate for one of my tarot readings. And I was like, “Well, gosh, I have never given a reading over the phone. I don’t know if it will work, but we can try.”
Michelle Tea:
I gave them this reading and they were completely helped by it, and I felt like the cards were very uncanny that were coming up and it just was great. It was exactly as fulfilling as a reading in-person, both for me as the reader and for my friend, the person getting the information. So, I was like, “Wow. Well, whatever this weird thing is, I guess you can do it over the phone.”
Adam Levin:
So, you mentioned that these readings can now be done online. Obviously, you’ve just done one for me online and made my day, week, month, year, and that sets the stage for today’s story.
Michelle Tea:
Yes, it does.
Adam Levin:
We talked about that social media has influenced your practice, but something happened to you on Instagram recently that brought you to our attention.
Beau Friedlander:
Now, do you have a big following on Instagram, Michelle?
Michelle Tea:
I do at this point, bigger than I ever thought I’d have. I have 17,000 followers right now.
Beau Friedlander:
And do you get business that way?
Michelle Tea:
Yes, absolutely, tons of it.
Adam Levin:
Tell us your story, because it’s a fascinating story.
Michelle Tea:
It was a larger story than I even realized as it was unfolding right before my eyes, and I didn’t realize that I would become so involved in it. It first happened because I have a mystical podcast called Your Magic, and I often reach out to other tarot practitioners, witchy people, brujas to see, “Do you want to do something on the show?” So, there’s this one really fantastic witch, her name is Sabrina Scott, and I really admire her. She has a book called Witchbody that I really like. I had been thinking, “Oh, I should ask her to be on the show,” and then in my Instagram DMs, I see a little note from Sabrina and it says-
Speaker 7:
Grand rising, beloved. Spirit has sent me to you. I’m feeling called to read for you. Would you like a reading?
Michelle Tea:
My first thought was, “Whoa, that’s very dramatic. I didn’t know Sabrina spoke in these melodramatic tones, but gosh, I guess I don’t know her that well. We’ve communicated on email a few times, I’ve watched some videos of her, Vice Magazine did a little thing about her. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person that puts on such, dare I say, hokey Wiccan airs about her. But whatever, I don’t want to yuck her yum.” So, I said, “Oh gosh,” and also, simultaneously, as I’m thinking, “That’s weird,” I’m also thinking, “Wow, Spirit talked to Sabrina about me. That means so many things. That means A, Spirit’s real.” Even though I partake in this all the time, I am always still so struck when the uncanny presents itself and seems to provide some evidence that there is something unseen and magical at work, so it was like, “Ooh, something unseen and magical is at work. Sabrina is so cool and powerful and Spirit’s talking to her about me, what could be happening in my destiny?”
Michelle Tea:
It’s all this ego. My ego exploded, it got very excited. So, I got back to her right away and I said, “Oh my gosh, I’m so honored. Yes, I would love a reading from you and also, do you want to be on the show?” And then it got weird, because it wasn’t Sabrina I was talking to, they didn’t know how to answer me about the show. The conversation got weirder, that weird language got little weirder, and all of my red flags started going up and my spidey sense. I just shot Sabrina a note that said, “We’re not actually talking on Instagram right now, are we?” And she said, “Oh Jesus, they got you, too.” And I learned from her that somebody had cloned her account and was pretending to be her, and was contacting people and asking them if they wanted readings and then hustling money out of them. And I was like, “Oh my God,” I felt like I’d really dodged a bullet and I felt so bad for her.
Michelle Tea:
She was furious. Her energy around it, she was pissed. And she was also so fatigued at her many followers contacting her and letting her know that this was happening, which I was really like, “Oh, that’s so weird. I would think you’d want to know that.”
Travis Taylor:
So, this wasn’t a account takeover, this was someone just assuming their identity, right?
Adam Levin:
It was a clone.
Michelle Tea:
Yes. And I guess what happened, and I didn’t really notice, is that this fake Sabrina account must have followed me and then I must have followed it back in that weird way thinking, “Oh God, I thought I already followed Sabrina. I guess I don’t. Oh, okay. I’ll follow back,” and then that opens the channels.
Beau Friedlander:
And what they often do is they’ll go on the Instagram account and they will actually grab all of the pictures from the real account, post them, and buy followers, so that when you look and you say, “There’s my friend who’s famous,” and there’s 30,000 followers or whatever, you’re good to go.
Michelle Tea:
Yeah. They never have as many as the original, which is a tip-off. I don’t know if this particular scammer is investing that much in buying followers, I’m not sure. I know that they do go and follow all of your newest, latest followers.
Beau Friedlander:
When you followed this fake account, did you look, did you care?
Michelle Tea:
No, I didn’t look at all, and this was before I even knew about the scam. And now, I won’t follow anybody back. A practitioner followed me recently and I looked at their account and I thought, “Oh, this person looks really cool. They’re doing really cool stuff with astrology,” and then I looked at their handle and there were all these underscores, and I was like, “Wait a second.” That’s a total calling card now, of these scammers, they’ll take your name or whatever your real handle is on Instagram and they’ll just throw an underscore in there, they’ll throw an extra letter, so those are the things now. And so, I actually searched for this person on Instagram and saw they had another account that actually had far more followers, no underscores, and that’s the real person, and I followed the real person.
Beau Friedlander:
But the scams, how much are their readings? I’m curious, how much are their reading?
Michelle Tea:
A scammer is trying to get a quick $60 to a $100 off of people immediately, through Venmo or Cash App or something
Adam Levin:
Well, if they would do it for $60, which you know they’re not doing, what do you do it for?
Michelle Tea:
My rate for an hour-long reading is $200.
Beau Friedlander:
Oh. So, it’s quite a difference.
Michelle Tea:
Yeah. It is a difference.
Adam Levin:
All right. So, Michelle, tell us how you got scammed.
Michelle Tea:
I started getting messages from strangers, people saying, “Hey, is this you?” Screenshots of an account that was not mine. It looked like mine, maybe it was a little dated, it didn’t have have the most recent photos, it had a different name. But it was me, it was my pictures, it was pictures of my child. I don’t put a lot of him on, but I do every now and then, pictures of my husband. I just have one account for everything. And I was like, “That’s not me.” I would never troll people for tarot readings. I would never DM somebody and be like, “Hey, you want a tarot reading?” That’s not how anybody in this industry works. So, I was like, “No, please block them or report them.” I learned pretty quickly that they were blocking me so I could never find these accounts myself and do anything about them. So, it started as a trickle and then it became, oh my gosh, every time one maybe got taken down, two more would pop up. There were multiple people pretending to be me and just tons and tons of messages coming in.
Michelle Tea:
I really understood what Sabrina Scott was talking about, about how fatigued she was and frustrated by just having to answer these messages. Because you do, because these are people who are being kind, and they’re trying to help you. Even though I do charge for my services, of course, there is a sense of real community around me and the people who I read for and other tarot readers and the people they read for. I knew that these folks were just trying to look out for me and I didn’t want to blow them off, so I was always like, “Yes, thank you. I know that this is happening. No, I don’t know what to do about it. No, I can’t phone call Instagram on the phone. Please just block them. Please report them. Please tell your friends this is happening. No tarot reader will ever ask you for a reading.” It became a new project that I had, I would be spending an hour a day, at least at the peak, responding to these.
Adam Levin:
Well, because I was reading one story about your situation, where it talked about the fact that your husband said, “I’m talking to you right now, except I know it’s not you.”
Michelle Tea:
Yeah. One evening, me and my husband were sitting in bed, just on our phones before we went to sleep, and he was chuckling. I was like, “Oh, you get a good meme over there? What’s going on?” He’s like, “Oh, I’m just talking to you on Instagram. I’m messaging with you.”
Beau Friedlander:
Awesome.
Michelle Tea:
I was like, “Oh my God.”
Beau Friedlander:
That’s so good.
Michelle Tea:
Now, he was very funny, and he is very funny, and he has a very macabre sense of humor. So, he was really trying to bait the scammer being like, “I do need help. I’ve done very bad things, very bad things. Can you help me? I’ll tell you everything.” And she’s like, “Sure, sure, sure. 60 bucks, 60 bucks. Here’s the Cash App address.” And then I start just searching these addresses on the internet, seeing if I can find anything. I end up giving $25 to Spokeo to try to find… You know those sites that you pay them $25 and they try to give you information about people, and I got nothing except a weird Pinterest board. So, finally, I was like, “This isn’t going anywhere. Just give me the phone, let me talk to them.” And so, I was like, “Hi, I’m the person that you’re pretending to be.”
Michelle Tea:
I had communicated a little bit with them in the past when they contacted me as others and I would just be like, “I know you’re not this person. Why are you doing this? You could put all this energy into actually learning tarot, doing readings. You’re clearly drawn to this. Others would help you. You could have a career if you put this much energy into being legitimate, instead of just trying to rip people off,” but then they would just block me. That was me at my most generous, other times I would just be like, “Go to hell, you dirty rotten scammer,” and then delete them. But this time, I interacted with them again and I said, “I do a podcast about tarot and things like that and we’re actually doing an episode about you, and I would love to have you on it. Would you?”
Adam Levin:
Since we’re doing it about you.
Michelle Tea:
Yeah. You’re the-
Beau Friedlander:
They never say yes, though. Did they say yes?
Michelle Tea:
They did not say yes. First, they were like, “Oh, you’re just trying to set me up,” and I’m like, “I’m really not. Anything you want to do to protect yourself, keep your camera off, I don’t even care. I’m not even going to yell at you. I just want to know where you’re coming from, why you’re doing it, how you got involved in it.” And then they were like, “You have a lot more power than me,” which totally got at my little anti-capitalist, punk rock heart, because I’m not averse to knowing that sometimes people are in a bad situation and they feel desperate and think that their only out is to do a scam. I have way too much compassion and sympathy for the folks that are being taken advantage of in this way. These are people who are sharing real pain with the scammer, things they’re going through, and this person is just totally exploiting that and stealing money from them.
Michelle Tea:
So, it’s not that I think that it’s fine that they’re doing this, but I also just understand that people find themselves in really dumb situations and make dumb choices. So, I was open to hearing where this person was coming from, but then they were like, “I’ll do it for $60,” and I was like, “No, you won’t. You’ll take that $60 and I’ll never hear from you again.”
Beau Friedlander:
All right. So, if you’re listening and you’re interested in following Michelle, you can follow her on Instagram @michelleteaz, and that’s T-E-A-Z, that’s her handle. When you go and look her up, you’re going to see that she’s verified, and you may not know this, but it’s not that easy to get verified as a tarot reader, anyone doing what’s seen as a cult or spiritual work, am I right?
Michelle Tea:
Yeah, you’re very right. When I started investigating this and speaking to Sabrina and I spoke to other folks, Sarah Potter, Marcella Kroll, people who are really prominent and really respected in this tarot space and they’ve been getting massively scammed. They’ve all tried to get verified by Instagram and they all have high profile friends. Marcella has been on Busy Phillips podcast. They’re not in the shadows. Sarah is the resident tarot person for Cosmo Magazine. These are all people been profiled by Vice. They have all this wonderful press to back them up, and they’ve had even friends of theirs who are very high profile try to help and nothing has worked. What worked for me, I believe, is that I am a tarot reader and I do have this mystical podcast, but I’m also an author. I’ve written over a dozen books for adults, kids, young adults.
Beau Friedlander:
Oh. So, they were like, “Oh, we can verify you, author Michelle.
Michelle Tea:
I’m a Guggenheim winner. They’re like, “Oh, she’s won a Guggenheim. She’s won a PEN America award.” I might have a book coming out next week on Harper Collins, so I had my Harper Collins publicist do it for me. And so, it was a really privileged experience, much, much different from somebody who is essentially self-employed and their whole world, what they’re focusing all of their study and all of their income generation on is tarot, it’s a lot harder.
Adam Levin:
Would you say getting verified, really, was a with tactic to help you fight these cloned accounts, and were you verified before these incidents, or after, or during?
Michelle Tea:
I was verified during these. This has been going on for about six months. So, I have a friend who works in the music industry and she shared with me her contact at Meta. I passed it to my publicist and I thought, “Maybe if it’s coming from somebody who seems really official,” and I think it really did do the trick. So, I am trying to help some of my other friends get verified by telling them to lean on whoever publishes their tarot cards, somebody who seems like they’re in an official capacity that they have already vetted you and know that you are legit and then-
Beau Friedlander:
Agents and stuff.
Michelle Tea:
Yeah, exactly.
Beau Friedlander:
It’s the same, my friends, they’ll have their agency do it or something like that.
Michelle Tea:
But it does make a really big difference. The way I can tell if there’s scam accounts for me is that I get all of those messages from everybody telling me, from friends and also from people who I don’t follow, but they come into my DM box, and suddenly they stopped. They just stopped and it was awesome. And then they’ve trickled in a little bit, I’ve gotten a couple lately. So, I guess getting verified is not foolproof, there’s still another person out there. But I think that, for me, it seems way less. Really, it does make a big difference. And now, I can say to people on my shows and stuff, “If you follow me, I’m verified,” it’s really easy. It’s a very easy thing to say, “Follow the verified account, it’s the only account,” and then we’re done.
Adam Levin:
So, did you find that scammers are really zeroing in on tarot readers and-
Michelle Tea:
100%. And psychics, people who are psychic mediums. I’m not a psychic medium, I don’t offer that. People who do offer that are also getting scammed. This is really funny though. Before I was verified, and I should continue to do this, but I was really doing it before I was verified, I was putting just alerts up on my account all the time, just saying, “Don’t get scammed. I will never ask you for a reading, no legitimate reader will, blah, blah, blah,” and people would comment and go, “Oh my God, I almost got scammed or I did get scammed.” And then one person says, “I feel really bad. The scammer gave me a great tarot reading.”
Adam Levin:
Which really meant they told you what you wanted to hear.
Michelle Tea:
It could have been that, who knows?
Beau Friedlander:
That’s so messed up.
Michelle Tea:
It’s so messed up, but it’s so funny. I was like, “Well, that’s good.” I’ve paid money to people offering these types of intuitive services and walked away feeling like, “That person does not have the talent they think they have. Are they scamming people, are they totally faking it, or do they believe that they have some sort of instinct that they didn’t have for me?” Who knows? I also went, on purpose, before these scams were on the internet, they were in those little storefront psychics huts that you see in most cities. I knew that those places weren’t really legitimate, but I really was curious as to how they operated. So, I went to one once in New York City and I paid $5 to have this lady tell me, “Oh, a spell has been cast upon you, it’s very bad. I see your photo and there’s powders on it and you’re being cursed and you need to rent this stone from me. If you rent this stone, it will break the curse.” Obviously, that’s all just a bunch of hogwash, so I was like, “No, I’m cool. Thanks.”
Michelle Tea:
But I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting, so renting it,” so then I would have to keep coming back and then she could keep me on the hook for more money. I know from one of my clients who sadly got scammed by this person that they were doing that to him. They gave him a reading and then they were like, “Oh, things are very bad for you,” they scare people. After my client had given the scammer $60 to be told that their life was terrible, which is so sad, and most people have something going on at some point, so you can get alarmed and anxious, and he did. And then the scammer was like, “Oh. You really need this potion now. This potion will take care of it for you. Give me another $100 right now.” So, they’re doing the same thing of trying to keep people on the hook.
Adam Levin:
I love the potion concept here.
Michelle Tea:
I know. And I would never do that, I would never be like, “Oh, here’s what I see your situation to be, let me fix it for you for another $100.” No, I’d be like, “Why don’t you go to therapy or a 12-Step program?” Sure, do a ritual, do these things if they feel compelling and helpful to you, but-
Adam Levin:
So, you have a podcast, you have Patreon, you give readings over Zoom, we know you’re on Instagram. As more and more of your practice moves online, do you feel this experience has impacted how you think about security and hacks?
Michelle Tea:
Yeah, it definitely does. It really has impacted. I’m a lot more suspicious of my online interactions. I’m not a very paranoid person, I can be maybe even careless. I had a client contact me, and they were from another country and they didn’t have the ways that I accept payment, they don’t have those platforms available to them they said, and they were going to have to use a friend’s platform to pay me and this and that. All my hackles went up and I just was like, “No, no, no, no, no,” even though I’m like, “Well, wait, how could this hurt me? What’s the scam? If this is a scam, what is it?” I didn’t even know, but I don’t necessarily think I’m smarter than a scammer, especially when it comes to tech, it’s not my forte. I don’t-
Beau Friedlander:
No, but you kind of are smarter than a scammer. Adam, most scammers, I think of them as bad dogs. They’re the dog that knows you’re going to drop some food and they’re really hypervigilant waiting for you to do it, but they’re not necessarily bright.
Adam Levin:
Well, is it possible the pitch they made to you was that, “We don’t really have the platforms to pay, but we can find a way to wire you money if you could give us your bank account information”?
Michelle Tea:
I was almost waiting for it to go there. And as it turned out, I looked up this person and they were a writer and they did have a Twitter account, but I thought there should be more followers, but then people think that about me, I’m just not really on Twitter. As it turned out, this person was totally legit, and it was really sweet to meet her and to read for her. I almost just blew it off in this very paranoid moment, which I understand why I was feeling like that. I think I actually just got scammed recently. I think I might have gotten scammed. There was a woman who was posting stuff up, she was like, “Oh, I’m a tarot reader from the Ukraine and I’m a single mom and these readings are all I’ve got going on right now.” And I was like, “Oh damn, the Ukraine,” and I posted it and I’m like, “I’ll have a reading from you.”
Michelle Tea:
I totally sent her $50 and I just never saw that reading, but is it a scam or is it this woman’s living in a war zone and maybe she had hoped to… She had said, “I’ll give you your reading in two days,” which is not how I work, but who knows how people work?
Beau Friedlander:
But you can also say, for those kind of things in this world, nowadays, maybe that is your pocket money for, “Okay, it might be a scam, it might not be a scam. Maybe it’s not.” I sometimes will do something, even though I suspect it’s not real because I really want that hilarious t-shirt or something like that, and if it doesn’t show up, okay.
Michelle Tea:
Yeah, totally. I’m like, “Okay, I’m taking a chance.” It was different than the normal scammers, I looked and it was a real account. This wasn’t some sort of glamorous account that would be worthwhile for anybody to take over, it was this women in the Ukraine who had a very, very small practice, but was just trying to get the word out. I’d rather get scammed right now and err on the side of helping somebody and believing in somebody, because the risk for this is is that you do get totally shut down and then you’re never going to lend a hand or take part in, I don’t know, the world around you. As somebody who’s interested in tarot and tarot community, that world is happening on Instagram, so I was like, “Every dollar counts, but $50… Okay, whatever. It went somewhere. I hope they needed it, I hope wherever it went.”
Adam Levin:
All right. Well, some major thank yous to you. First, thank you for making my day, my month, my year-
Michelle Tea:
My pleasure.
Adam Levin:
… with a positive reading. Also, thanks a lot for sharing your story, because it’s an interesting story and it’s something that, as you’ve said, is happening to a lot of your fellow tarot readers. And it’s a good reminder, frankly, for all of us to be aware, double and triple check, because a scam and hack can happen to anybody, and every day, it does happen to anybody, and in many cases, to everybody. So, if our listeners want to know more about you, and I know that Beau gave this away earlier in the podcast, but if they want to know more about you or your work, where can they go to find out more?
Michelle Tea:
You can go to Instagram, in spite of it all, I’m @michelleteaz. T-E-A-Z. I am verified, so there should only be one account with the blue check next to it. I have michelletea.com, I have a website has more about my books on it. I’d say those two places are the best. I am on Facebook and Twitter, but not that much.
Beau Friedlander:
Also, Michelle, you have a book coming out very soon called, what is it, Knocking Myself Up?
Michelle Tea:
Yes. It’s called Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)Fertility, and it’s about when I was 40 and did not have a partner or health insurance, I decided to try to get pregnant. I did have friends and I did have a lovely drag queen who said he would share his sperm with me. It’s just a book about everything that happened after I made that decision.
Beau Friedlander:
Okay. It sounds awesome. Thank you so much.
Michelle Tea:
You’re welcome. Thanks all of you guys. This was really fun.
Travis Taylor:
Thank you.
Beau Friedlander:
So, that was fascinating. Me, I like to try to break my arm patting myself on the back, I don’t think I would fall for that scam, because I do think I would look to see she’s cool, she does tarot, probably some of my friends follow her, yada yada yada. But it’s an age old scam. Again, Adam, it’s the same old thing, it’s relying on speed and people not doing their homework.
Adam Levin:
Totally. It’s, once again, impulse, urgency, and I wanted it now, instant gratification.
Beau Friedlander:
Like, “There’s a new stock I’ve been meaning to tell you about, and if you send me-”
Adam Levin:
No more stocks. I don’t want to hear stocks anymore from you.
Beau Friedlander:
… “$50. It’s just going to cost you 50 bucks.”
Adam Levin:
Well, there is a very well-known investment site where they start with, “This $5 stock is going to be the next Amazon, and just give us your email address,” which you do, and then it’s a 35-minute presentation. By the time you get to the end, you don’t even care what it is anymore.
Beau Friedlander:
That’s too funny. Oh, I do know those ones. 20 minutes later, they’re like… They think you’re going to buy it because I’ve just spent 20 minutes listening to this crap.
Adam Levin:
That’s true. And in some cases, you do buy it and then you really regret the fact that you did. It’s like my mother used to say when she would go to a movie, after the coming attractions were done, they took so long, she forgot the movie she’d gone to see in the first place.
Travis Taylor:
It sounds a little bit like a timeshare.
Beau Friedlander:
Huh? How so?
Travis Taylor:
Oh, just they will give you a intro, then a whole spiel, and then you end up finding out about 45 minutes in like, “Oh, that’s what this is about.”
Beau Friedlander:
Oh, that one. But what about if someone calls you up and goes, “Travis, I have found the perfect purveyor of beautifully marbled ribeye in Portland. I will tell you where to get it for $10.”
Travis Taylor:
I would hang up.
Beau Friedlander:
You thought about it, though. He did, he thought about it. He was like, “Portland-”
Travis Taylor:
Yeah, I was like, “Ribeye? Hmm.”
Beau Friedlander:
Hmm, ribeye.
Travis Taylor:
I don’t answer my phone for that reason.
Beau Friedlander:
Because it’s always someone trying to sell you some wagyu beef?
Travis Taylor:
Yeah, 9 times out of 10.
Beau Friedlander:
Come on.
Adam Levin:
Oh, I thought I’m the other one that you don’t answer the phone for, which is, “Not again, he’s not going to ask me tech stuff again, leave me alone.”
Beau Friedlander:
But Adam, speaking of tech stuff and being paranoid, we have a new thing here at What the Hack.
Adam Levin:
Yes, we do. And for those people who remember the good old days when you would go to a restaurant and they would say, “Would you like to take something home?” You would say “Yes,” and they would give it to you in a tin foil swan, it’s sort of like the takeaway. And this new segment is the Tin Foil Swan.
Beau Friedlander:
And it’s tin foil because we actually wear tin foil hats.
Adam Levin:
Travis and I, we are, but you’re not.
Beau Friedlander:
No, I’ve got a tin foil hat that has hair implants on it, so it looks like it’s my hair, but it’s actually a hat.
Adam Levin:
Oh.
Beau Friedlander:
For 60 bucks, I can tell you where to get one.
Adam Levin:
That is a very familiar number. Anyway, without further ado, this is the Tin Foil Swan.
Beau Friedlander:
Travis, this week on adamlevin.com, you wrote an article, what was it called? Oh yeah. Who’s Selling Your Email Address? Here’s How to Find Out.
Travis Taylor:
Yeah. If you ever get an email from a mailing list or a company that you did not sign up for, there’s a way to find out who did it, who shared it, and how to stop it.
Adam Levin:
Anytime you enter your email address anywhere online, that website can infinitely share it with anyone else.
Beau Friedlander:
So, our email addresses are a commodity and it’s not uncommon for a website to sell your email address to another company to make extra money.
Adam Levin:
Let’s say you buy a basketball from an online retailer, my son being a basketball fanatic. They could sell your email to a local basketball arena so they can email you marketing messages about tickets to the game.
Travis Taylor:
Some companies and organizations do this a lot more than others. But if you want to find out who is actually sharing your email address, there’s something that you do, which is a really easy hack, it’s just called plus addressing.
Adam Levin:
What’s that?
Travis Taylor:
Well, a lot of the really big email providers like Gmail and Outlook allow you to add a plus sign in any suffix after your username. Say that your email address is example@gmail.com, my apologies if that’s actually someone’s email address, you can instead enter in something, like example+chainsaw or example+basketball@gmail.com. So, when you start getting a bunch of unsolicited spam email and someone’s trying to sell you something or hit you up for a donation or what have you, if the email is actually addressed to example+chainsaw@gmail.com, you know that it was the hardware story you brought your chainsaw from that is sharing your email address.
Beau Friedlander:
So, I have to stop buying my chainsaw from wherever this place is that’s selling my information?
Travis Taylor:
You can, but they still have your email address. But what you can do through your email client is just set up a filter, so if you get anything from address to +chainsaw, you can just send that directly to the trash or directly to your spam folder.
Beau Friedlander:
Yeah. It’s a good tip to help keep your inbox free of junk, but it’s not foolproof.
Adam Levin:
Because for every tip, there’s some guy that figured out a way around it.
Travis Taylor:
So, if you have any questions for us, just feel free to shoot us a email or fill out the contact form on adamlevin.com, and we’ll cover it in the next Tin Foil Swan. Otherwise, please give us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your audio.
Beau Friedlander:
What the Hack with Adam Levin is a production of Loud Tree Media.
Adam Levin:
It’s produced by Andrew Steven, the man with two first names.
Travis Taylor:
You can find us online at loudtreemedia.com and on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @adamklevin.
Speaker 8:
Loud Tree.
