#467 – Scams, Legal Challenges, and Data Privacy in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now I wonder Hello there all you expat wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started So what about gringos and expats who get scammed down here in Latin America? There's plenty of them and like I've said in many shows in the past if you're in Costa Rica or Panama or Cancun Anywhere on that gringo tourist trail the fact is as soon as you hire your lawyer expect to get scammed now

[00:49] You longtime listeners might remember the story I told a long long time ago when I first started this show some 400 shows ago I mentioned when I first landed in Costa Rica and picked up my first Costa Rica lawyer Because you're gonna need a lawyer eventually the guy had never actually ripped me off But he ripped a few of my friends off That is some of my gringo first-world buddies that wanted referrals because I was stupid and knew no Spanish back then and neither Did they but they figured since I was the first one down and had a lawyer already He'd have my seal of approval. Well, he did at first So then you might ask why didn't he rip me off when I was a stupid target way back when he certainly could have and could Have taken me to the cleaners. In fact, I think he really did rip me off here and there He used to have an uncanny way of phoning me up after I'd started something

[01:37] Let's say residency and saying well, it's taking a little bit longer and we're gonna need about $500 more to grease the skids So beware of professionals especially lawyers down here in Latin America who give you a price Then a couple of weeks later or whenever phone you up and give you some story about wanting a bit more sure There might be a good reason it might be justified. But for this guy every single time He added on some charges at a later date But back then I was glad to do it because initially things seemed so cheap in Costa Rica though They're not at all anymore. So then the reason why he didn't rip me off not an obvious way Anyway, later I found out was because his brand new British wife Happened to be a good friend of mine from when I did a stint in the University up in the UK In fact, she was one of the first persons I looked up when I got down to Costa Rica

[02:25] I didn't know anybody else and then you might ask how'd she end up down there? Well, her dad was a manager of a British gold mining company stationed in Costa Rica and his family had lived down there for many Years, so now she's married to this fresh young Costa Rican lawyer I think he was out of law school like two years. He spoke English She came from a respectable family His dad was a doctor and his sister a professional cellist in the Costa Rican Symphony Orchestra not to mention he looked like Antonio Banderes his shorter brother. So then why wouldn't I use this guy's my lawyer seemed a cinch, right? And back then he only had a handful of gringo clients, which of course for him turned out to be the best kind So in effect for him some 25 years ago when Costa Rica was first getting on the radar

[03:10] Still kind of budding and there wasn't a huge influx of gringos I was kind of a pipeline for him for referrals gringo referrals and later I found out little by little he had ripped off pretty much all the people I referred to him now as it turns out He never really ripped off anyone for big money. Nothing over 10 or 15 grand Nothing a gringo couldn't afford to lose or sue over tourist trail lawyers are slick that way you know and I don't mean he blatantly ripped them off by stealing money out of their transit account or just Walking off with a hoard of cash that they left with him The fact is he was an expert at Rearranging real estate deals so that one person in the deal the gringo always got stuck holding the short end of the stick though Because gringos are starry eyed at the tropical paradise. They've found when they first get to Costa Rica

[03:59] They generally don't find out for a couple years until they try to sell that property Let's say that they've been overcharged for the property or overbilled for the legal services or worse yet and more common that there's title problems Anyway, there came a time when I was doing some business with a Canadian friend of mine And we happened to have the same lawyer the guy I'm referring to so to eliminate the conflict of interest I went out and found another one now I figured at the time I just was gonna find another lawyer to do this one deal and then go back to the other lawyer And have everything else in the future done by him. So this new lawyer. I met somewhere at a party turns out He's a professor of law at one of the Costa Rican universities And then along the way, I realized he also wrote verse and had a couple of books of poetry published hardcover

[04:50] Now I'm not into poetry at all nor opera or ballet. So call me a culture slug if you like However in a past life I played in symphony orchestras myself So I know a bit about culture not that I have any of it, but like porn I recognize it when I see it and this guy came to realize after sitting down talking with him a bit and having dinner Here in front of me was a one-of-a-kind a real honest straightforward humble timid guy a poet a teacher and a guy Sad to say had a kind of a gimpy leg and he walked with a limp So he did lay on a few childhood stories that were pretty sad, you know, cuz kids are cruel and all that now I'm not gonna say he pulled himself up by the bootstraps cuz that would be in bad taste like that's never stopped me

[05:36] But he was a sensitive guy who conquered a lot of obstacles there in Costa Rica 25 years ago against all odds I found a completely honest straightforward humble timid lawyer who I knew was not gonna rip me off Now remember my first lawyer didn't rip me off either But I was lucky certainly due to the connection I had with his wife But soon enough along the way, I started hearing stories about how he'd been gouging people Specifically gringos yet back then 25 years ago when a Costa Rican lawyer on the gringo tourist trail gouged you You practically didn't know it or feel it I mean, let's face it if you don't speak Spanish You're at the complete mercy of what this guy says and tells you for example Back then I referred a gringo friend of mine to him who had left the US in a hurry

[06:25] After having a bad divorce some judgments against him and then a business failure bankruptcy and a few things he Never even told me about so he quickly voted with his feet kind of fled to Costa Rica You know back then it was the place to go Mexico and Costa Rica were practically the only places that a gringo could escape You know to get way under the radar and kind of disappear remember This is before 9-11, and it was pretty easy to kind of just drop out of sight back then anyway after he arrived I brought him to the office of my first lawyer introduced him, and I remember my friend telling him his story You know lawyer confidentiality and all that and I was his friend So he just blabbered away with me in the room So he said to the lawyer look one of the reasons I'm down here is I want to kind of disappear

[07:12] You know get off the radar eliminate my footprint if I can So I need you to do everything possible to kind of keep my name out of everything because you know there are some people in the states I kind of pissed off and I owe a lot of money to and Maybe just maybe they could come down and look for me and make some trouble in fact He said look I'm even worried about the embassy I don't need anyone tracking me and if I keep my mouth shut and don't correspond with anybody up in the states The only way I could possibly get tracked is through the embassy I just want to relax and live in peace forget about what happened up there and just start over We got the impression he owed people big money up in the states Maybe even the IRS But he didn't exactly say and that certain people or even the government weren't gonna easily forget about it though

[08:00] I remember him distinctly saying I think it's not out of the question that maybe Some days someone could come looking for me and he did take some good precautions that worked back then But now these days in the age of the internet, I think he'd have been snatched He said look I did not fly here directly from the states either I planned it to go through Mexico And then I took a bus through a land border through Guatemala El Salvador Nicaragua and on through to Costa Rica because I knew How lax the immigration people are and how sloppy the paperwork is when you walk through a land border now You got to remember back then there weren't even any computers at the land borders They had them at the international airports like Juan Santa Marina in Costa Rica But those land borders just a rat's nest of paperwork and they just would stamp you on your way in and out

[08:47] In fact, I remember going through Latin land borders many times where they never even wrote a thing down if you were a gringo They just looked at that passport like it was good as gold and hey they stamped you you were in even now You can cross through a lot of out-of-the-way Latin American land borders, and you just walk through There's just so many people hanging around and so much chaos that you can walk back and forth to each country's border station without Anybody giving you a second look however if you're in a bus or a car you'll have to go through the usual immigration process So then how's it possible you could walk across one border to another and no one give you a second look well even now Even the locals of bordering towns on either side could just walk across and just wave They didn't even have to show their paperwork You know just doing local commerce trading dollars selling coca-cola hot lunches snow cones

[09:34] Whatever turns out at every Latin land border there are throngs of local people going back and forth all the time And it's just kind of an unwritten rule that they pass through freely Meanwhile back at the lawyers office our gringo friend whipped out his passport and showed us the stamp on his passport from a land border And then our mutual lawyer said this to him So you think maybe your name's gonna pop up someday at the embassy and someone's gonna try to find you huh Well then let me throw this at you if you're worried about the embassy or Interpol or just what kind of dirt might come through By official channels on you well I have a cousin that works here at the American Embassy in Costa Rica And he occasionally does some favors for me And I can have a little talk with them and see if he could check the files

[10:22] You know the dispatch is in and out every let's say week or so for better or for worse to see if your name shows up That way you'll know way in advance if anybody's looking for you. Don't worry. He said yeah, right famous Latin lawyer last words Don't worry. He repeated. I'll have my cousin check He'll know if there's any inquiries out on you because he said you know even though It's the American Embassy things work pretty slow down here and with that my gringo friend's eyes just lit up Yeah, that would be great then a lawyer said of course We'll have to give him a little something here and there not much You know just to keep him on the ball and the gringo said sure sure that's only natural So anyway about six months went by and I was in and out of the country and I ran into my friend again I asked him of course how were things going he said oh man. I'm doing great

[11:09] I'm living in aloe verla now got a nice apartment beautiful view four hundred bucks a month beautiful Latin girlfriend Live in the life of Riley man, then I said I guess that means you're not having any trouble I mean, it's all clear. Nothing's coming down on you right now, then huh? He said no no my lawyer's cousins all over that and nothing's come up. He said you know having an inside guy at the embassy That's the ticket really lowers the stress levels if you know what I mean, and I said have you met him yet And he said no no he says I don't want to meet the guy no no that wouldn't be cool I just let my lawyer handle it I give the guy a little money here and there a few hundred here a few hundred there You know to keep the guy happy and all that but no no I never want to see the guy I want to keep this thing at an arm's length. He doesn't know me. I don't know him

[11:57] Okay, so far so good for him then another couple months went by and I ran into him again Then we went through the house it going bit, and he told me a little story He said having a guy on the inside of the embassy turned out to be a lifesaver What happened? He said was that he got a call from the lawyer that the guy spotted his name on a query in the embassy That just came in and when I asked the lawyer what next he told me not to worry because his cousin pulled that notice Before anyone ever saw it anyway. He said they get so much paperwork over there things get lost all the time Sure, it cost me a grand to make the thing disappear He said if that's what it takes to save my neck. I'm okay with that now in the end I lost track of my friend don't know where he is today I don't think he's in the states, and I don't think he's in Costa Rica

[12:44] He really did slip off the radar, but here's the epilogue to that story well another six months Or so went by and I was at a party at the lawyers house and his British wife remember She's a friend of mine She introduced me to her husband's cousin and I said oh is he the guy that works at the embassy She said what embassy I said the US embassy. She said no he's studying architecture at the University Guillermo doesn't have any cousins working at the embassy She said except for the one at architecture school none of the cousins work. They're all too young their kids So that along with other little instances I heard about having to do with my somewhat shady lawyer Guillermo It made me realize that when you're on the gringo tourist trail like Costa Rica Panama, etc

[13:29] The big advantage for these lawyers out there is that you don't speak any Spanish The fact is they like to keep it that way sure they'll encourage you and say hey How's that Spanish going learning it yet if you need somebody I've got someone can help you The fact is as they encourage you they really want to keep you at the kindergarten level now remember earlier I mentioned there was another lawyer University professor poet suffered as a child that taunts and slings of his peers because he had a gimpy leg and all that So anyway I hired that guy to represent me in a deal. I did with a Canadian And one day and I'll never forget this we were sitting in his office And he was informing me that something unfortunate had come up on a property We were building storage units on he said the zoning board didn't want to give me an exemption for various reasons

[14:20] There were exactly five reasons five one hundred dollar bills one for each board member So he said look for five hundred bucks. You'll get your zoning variance. He said I don't like to work that way I don't like paying more Dita bribes. That's just the kind of thing that gives Latin countries a bad name Which is why I recommend every gringo and expat have a good straight upfront honest lawyer like myself and a sort of corrupt one And when people have to get paid off, and they do have to get paid off or things Just don't get done down here. We'll just use another lawyer for the sleazy stuff Then he winked and said you know sometimes I really think I went into the wrong profession My dad and his dad were honest lawyers, so I guess it's in the blood Then he looked out the window and pointed at his car, and he says look

[15:05] I'm an honest lawyer and it shows and out there on the street He had a ten-year-old zuzu trooper remember those then I said what are we gonna do about this zoning thing? He said we can use your other lawyer Guillermo so-and-so I'd rather not say his name right now though I should but I just don't want to kill that lifelong friendship. I've had with his wife then I reiterated So we'll use Guillermo then right and my straight arrow lawyer Chepe Said sure he'll do because you know Costa Rica is a small country and especially in San Jose all the lawyers know each other And they know each other's reputations, too So then you might ask how many good ones as a percentage are there in Costa Rica not many I'd say if you're lucky ten percent of them are straight up and on the level and even if you locate one

[15:53] You'll be paying gringo prices So again in the how easy is it for gringos and expats to get scam department? Here's a little story I just heard yesterday from one of my gringo expat friends who's been down here in Latin America now for I think about 18 years so you think he should have known better But as you'll see it's not all that simple now Let me set this up by saying this is a good friend of mine who's owned quite a few Makilas in his day. He's had Makila factories in Honduras Jamaica El Salvador Guatemala and Honduras and right now he owns three such factories So like he tells me he's always bringing containers in from guess where China That would be shipping containers full of raw material rolls of all different kinds of cloth cotton thread denim, etc

[16:45] And containers full of all the doodads and spangles and cleats the studs and the flashy brilliant glitter stuff That's all the fashion these days I wouldn't know I'm not very fashionable by the way when you're dressed in fashion down here They say you're in la Moda which translates to the motor fashion Anyway, he has all that stuff shipped in mostly from China and Indonesia and brings it down to his factories in Central America where they produce garments or add the little touches and doodads to shoulder pads and belts and boots and buckles and Finished shirts and pants and coats too. Oh, and by the way, he's a real interesting character We always make a visit to one of his factories during the expat wisdom tour If you come down to my expat wisdom seminar in July

[17:31] You'll meet him yourself and hear his stories as part of our boots on the ground portion of the seminar He's such a nice guy He always offers to help expat gringos out in their endeavors in business and commerce import export, etc He's a real encyclopedia of doing business in Latin America and has a million contacts But you'll only get to meet guys like him if you come down to the seminar In fact quite a few of our expat wisdom people who've returned to Central America have had meetings and lunches with him To suss out their own business ideas. Now, like I said, he's a gringo But when he came down to Central America, he married a Latin lady who's a lawyer again with the lawyers, huh? Now remember we're talking way off the gringo tourist trail here And I know her and her work and some of her clients personally and she comes highly recommended by me

[18:20] But you'll find that all out for yourself if you come to the seminar So let me put in a plug before I finish this story. Just go to expat wisdom comm click on the seminar link Check it out all the information is there the seminar starts in about a month so you've got plenty of time to sign up and though as they say you'll be drinking from the fire hose a Pleasant time is guaranteed for all so again expat wisdom comm click on the seminar link and check it out So anyway, my Makila owning expat gringo friend told me a little story just yesterday That's sending a bit of a shot through the Makila manufacturing industry down here, especially in Central America He says just about a month ago He was signing off on a routine order to ship a container full of clothing material and supplies from China

[19:07] Destined for one of his factories in Central America and typically how these things go He said you send half of the value of the container by wire transfer in this case to a Chinese company's bank account somewhere in the Far East Then when the money clears in a day or so they fill the container The next step is they send you notice that it's ready to ship and it's sitting at the port and that's when you're to send The second half of the payment now just when my friend was about to send that second payment, which was 13,000 bucks He got an email from the Chinese company telling him to wire it to an alternate bank account not so unusual He said things like that happen all the time They gave him the Swiss codes and account numbers and all that and he did he sent it now He's not using a US bank to do the wire transfer

[19:53] He a long time ago became a five flagger if you know what I mean If you listen to my old five flags program or the new flag anomics program You'll hear a story or two about the very guy. We're talking about that said He's made it a point never to use US banks unless he absolutely has to So a day or two went by and he got another email from the Chinese saying where's the payment? He said well, I sent it to your alternate bank. Didn't you receive it? They said what alternate bank and he told them and they said that's not their bank and they never sent him an email Instructing him to change the wire transfer instructions Then as you might imagine more emails flew back and forth Then he frantically made a trip to his Latin bank and he immediately put a stop on the wire transfer and they said sorry

[20:39] It went through already and he said wait a minute. It was a scam. It was a ripoff In fact, I got hacked then he showed him the emails and said I was given totally false information And told to send a wire transfer to a bank and now I find out the email wasn't legit at all It wasn't from the company and the bank said naturally. Sorry, you gave the order the money went now He said that was about two weeks ago and he sat back licking his wounds ever since man was he pissed off He phoned a dozen or so of his Makila buddies and told him to watch out themselves because there was a hack around the loose Now he said none of them had ever heard of a story like that He was the first the unlucky first mark now as far as computer use he's just your average Joe He's got computers and smartphones, but he knows little about computer security for the individual

[21:27] I mean who really does of course he uses Google Facebook and what's up and all that just like 99% of the rest of the world and you know He likes so many other people put all kinds of personal and banking and credit card information out there In emails and thus got hacked But there is a bright if not totally ironic end to the story about a week ago He got a call from his bank, and they said guess what the money Reappeared in his account, and he said wow that's great, but how could that be well as it turns out most countries in Latin America Are on a money laundering blacklist meaning any wire transfer or transaction over ten thousand dollars can be heavily Scrutinized by your bank or any bank you make the way your transfer to the fact is they can

[22:16] Refuse the funds and as it turns out the receiving bank in Malaysia or wherever it was saw the dough was coming from a Blacklisted country they wouldn't process the transaction until questions were answered about its origin You know it's that old know your customer BS So by dumb luck those normally intrusive and abusive big brother international money laundering laws Allowed the bank to stop the completion of the transaction, and he got his dough back How is that for a twist of fate? It's that one strange and rare case where those big brother money laundering laws actually worked in someone's favor Go figure, huh now it looks to me in this case. It was a very easy hack So then what does the average computer user do about all that how do you protect yourself?

[23:02] Can you protect yourself? I mean with Google and Yahoo and Skype and Facebook collecting every little thing on you as well as the NSA Even so guess what there are some very good ways to protect yourself And I'm gonna tell you about them right now And I know you've probably never heard this anywhere, but I'm gonna give it to you straight, and it's easy now You can stop 90% of that spying and data collection stuff with three easy steps First of all you set your Firefox, which is my favorite web browser. That's Mozilla Firefox Why because you can go into the settings and click off a lot of boxes that let you shut down data collection now You can do this with Internet Explorer any other web browser too, but with Firefox You got a lot of options believe me in settings

[23:47] You set it to delete your cookies when you log off now admittedly they buried it like 10 screens down in the settings Meaning they're making it hard for you to do that, but it's there. You'll find it click that box now I'm talking about the privacy settings on your browser So again click on delete my cookies every time I log out and there's another setting that I love that you can disable Just click the one that says do not allow cookies from Google And since there's about 15 or 20 cookies coming from Google you'll have to enter them all individually You'll see them there and deselect all of them individually Then Google will not be able to place those cookies on your browser in other words Google can't track you or store your search data and

[24:34] Finally go to a website called ghostery.com. That's ghosts like you know Ghostbusters gh-ost er y.com Now this is the coolest thing and it's free It's a very simple plugin that you put into your browser and what it does is it alerts you to all the trackers and people trying to check your information as Well as all the add-ons and bugs and web cookies that other sites are trying to place Basically it reports and blocks all the websites that are trying to get in and take pieces of your data and spy on you It alerts you instantly so one by one you could just turn them all off in other words Tell them to shove it where the sun don't shine So you tell ghostery to turn all those trackers off by default

[25:22] So while you land on a web page, it'll tell you exactly who's trying to track you right there And you know in some of the pages I've logged on there have been 15 20 even 25 different Places trying to track me from that site No wonder it's so easy for trackers and hackers to collect everything they want on you and you'll see that list It's a little purple box in the corner. You should keep it open Don't hide it at least at first let it pop up It's amazing to watch how other sites try to steal your info and track you and from then on on the right side of your screen When you're getting all that information about ads and such. Yes, there will be ads You can't stop that completely, but they'll be generic none of them tailored to you For example, if you recently went to Amazon and looked up baby pacifiers lawnmowers flavored butt plugs or double duty colostomy bags

[26:14] You'll get no ads for related items popping up on the right side of the screen. You'll not be tracked You'll get nothing directed at you or your past searches The only ads that will pop up will be those annoying generic ones that are intended for everyone But most of all the best advice is don't use Google use start page calm It's a site that uses Google but strips off all the search information and remember if you use Yahoo or Gmail Google will single out keywords in your emails and send you related ads That's why if you're gonna use Gmail or Yahoo Don't say anything you wouldn't want the world to know and for that secret confidential stuff You want to write use an anonymous encrypted site like start mail calm you'll have to pay for it But it's really secure. Just remember any email service. You don't have to pay for that. They say is for free

[27:04] How do you think they stay in business by collecting data on you and selling it? Oh, and by the way, if you have Firefox as your web browser in the settings There's what they call a cookie destructor Firefox has got a lot of cool things like that Oh, and by the way, did you know that every single app that you set up on your smartphone helps itself, too That is steals your contact list Yep, those trackers want all your contact email addresses and phone numbers and everything else you've logged in about your friends south of the border You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America coming to you twice a week from somewhere south of the border Email me the expat files at gmail.com And don't forget to check out expat wisdom calm to sign up for your free reports on Latin America

[27:52] See you next time. No sway most