#887 – The Expat Files: Diplomatic Privileges, Adoption Challenges, and Expatriate Security

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 out to play and now I wonder Hello there all you ex-pat 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 All right. So how about this for a story yesterday? I was at a little get-together sitting next to this lady an older lady who just as she said escaped from Costa Rica I said what escape from Costa Rica and we're talking Spanish. She doesn't speak English. I'd say she's about

[00:46] 65 years old a real elegant lady. She carried herself Well turns out she was from Argentina and living in Costa Rica around four years. She said oh and not only Was she from Argentina? She was an Argentine diplomat She was second in command of the Argentine Embassy in Costa Rica And thus as I noticed was driving around in a really nice BMW with diplomatic license plates on it. I said nice car She said it's not mine. It's courtesy of the embassy By the way That's something that you probably won't see much at all in Latin America unless you are in a capital city where they've got all The embassies and consulates and of course, you know what that means if you have diplomatic plates You can get away with almost anything including murder. No joke. Yep. You have diplomatic plates It's like a wildcard in the deck cops will never pull you over and if they do my mistake

[01:31] They'll let you go in a split second. Oh, and they'll never search your car. In fact, I don't think they're allowed to It's like having one of those special diplomatic pouches when you travel by air could be carrying secret embassy documents So customs can't even look in it. Yeah, and if you have diplomatic plates You can park anywhere even double and triple park and they won't give you a ticket And if some rookie cop doesn't know the drill yet and does issue a ticket if you're the diplomat driving a car You can just tear it up throw it away. You could call them pussbag royalty That's what I call them anyway And of course all the high-end blood clot malignant politicians have something similar and easy to spot They usually have the first three letters in the plate G-o-b it might not make much sense to us because government starts with the three letters G-o-v But you see in Spanish, it's go bierno

[02:17] G-o-b same thing with websites, you know, if it's a US government website, it's something something dot G-o-v But a government website in Spanish is something something dot G-o-b as in boy in Some Latin countries the magnetist Congress and senators and representatives have car plates starting with the letters D-i-p dip short for dipshit Well to me it does anyway, but it really stands for dip you Taro Which is the Spanish word for congressman dip you Taro translation deputy, but I digress. We're only two minutes in How about that? Meanwhile back to the Argentine lady with the diplomatic plates on her car We were talking and I said to her so you're escaping Costa Rica. I did that some 25 years ago

[03:03] She said what I said, it was a thieves paradise back then and I watched all my gringo friends get ripped off I got scammed a few times myself not enough to cry about but I did get scammed So we started exchanging Costa Rica stories and for the first time in a long long time She topped some of my best stories. How do you like that? Oh, and the other thing? I didn't tell you was her husband's a famous Argentine pediatrician surgeon, which was the main reason they were in Costa Rica He had a contract for four years at a pediatric hospital Doing some really delicate kitty surgery and she was qualified as an expert in international relations And she spoke a couple different languages, but oddly enough not English She knew Spanish Portuguese French Italian, but no English. So we carried on in Spanish Here's what she had to say aside from the fact that she said almost every contractor her and her husband ever dealt with and building

[03:55] Their house and remodeling things etc. Lied about at least one important thing or another Then she said the topper came about two years ago, but her husband had a contract and they couldn't leave They really wanted to but they couldn't and here's what happened turns out even though her husband was a pediatrician They couldn't have any kids So they decided to adopt a little Costa Rican kid and of course since they're professionals and people with a little bit of class They did everything on the up-and-up went to an adoption agency Got quoted a price for all the red tape lawyers fees Government fees as well as paying for certain needs of the kid and the mother by the way She told me if the kids not an orphan you actually get to sit and meet with the parent She said parent because it's almost always and not what mother the man or more precisely the man child responsible for the deed

[04:41] Abandoned oh and she said the mother does get something out of it for her time. It's not really a payoff for the kid It's just that she's usually so dirt poor the new prospective adaptive parents will give her a little something along the way as a gesture of charity She said the process took around six months And they visited some orphanages and some schools for boys and girls run by Catholic nuns All of it was sanctioned and approved by the government or so she thought she said she was quoted a round price of around 8,000 bucks She said you put up half the dough you wait for the meetings the phone calls Document signings and the reams of red tape and when it's almost over a couple of weeks before you actually get the kid you pay The other half so they started out by paying the first half and they waited around to see what kids were available

[05:26] And about a month and a half later. She was informed by the adoption agency guy that it was going to cost $12,000 because of certain excess expenses and government policy changes They agreed reluctantly. They already had money in the game She wasn't happy about it, but it was a one-time deal one-shot payment and once they had the kid Well, that was it. They had the kid they always wanted and you know She said since people generally only go through this once the adoption process that is they really have no idea how difficult and time-consuming It is especially if you're a working person. There's meetings people don't show up things get rescheduled Paperworks incomplete paperwork's lost. Sometimes you're getting a kid from a mom that's pregnant So you got to make sure her diet and health care is all taken care of or you find a kid you like and you Think you're gonna get and then all of a sudden you can't have them because mother or grandmother changes their mind

[06:14] Yep she said they're even grandmothers having kids and giving them up for adoption because oftentimes a poor indigenous girl or girl out in the Boonies has her kid at 14 Then most often that kid grows up under the same circumstances and has a kid at 13 14 or 15 So out in the sticks, she said it's relatively common for a poor woman to be a grandmother at 30 Then she just might have another unwanted kid or two or three who also might get put up for adoption She said there are even cases of kids put up for adoption by a mother who's a great grandmother, too If a woman has a kid at 15 and that kid has a kid at 15 and that kid has a kid at 15 Then it put great-grandma Phil at childbearing age around 45 Then the Argentine diplomat told me about four months into the process

[07:00] After her husband had paid out around ten grand already She hadn't heard from the agency for around a month So she went into the office to visit the adoption agent slash case worker that she'd been dealing with all along and he wasn't there He wasn't on vacation either. He just disappeared. She was informed She said by the new case worker that the guy had disappeared and so had a lot of funds Yes, she had receipts and it was supposed to be a government-approved operation But unfortunately the agency said they were slightly insolvent and didn't have the money to reimburse anyone They told her the best they could do is put her on a waiting list and eventually she'd get a kid That was about two years ago Of course her and her husband went down there a number of times and they got a lawyer But you can't get blood out of a storm and like her lawyer told her they would probably win in court and get a judgment

[07:48] Against the adoption agency, but there was no guarantee They'd get their dough back the lawyer said it happens once in a while these adoption agencies come and they go and oftentimes when Irregularities occur they close up shop or change the corporate name or move out of town That's why she said Costa Rica has left a very bad taste in her mouth and two and a half years ago already They wanted to get out but her husband had two years left on his hospital contract So they had to tough it out Now when you think about it if that kind of stuff can happen to a diplomat to someone who works a high-level job at an embassy All I can say is those Costa Ricans have some balls Oh and the punchline is about six months ago She said about a year and a half after all this went down She actually saw the guy face-to-face in a food court in a busy shopping mall

[08:34] She walked right up to the guy and she was shaking. She said she was so nervous The guy was with a woman they were both dressed in business suits She walked up leaned over the table and said you you you're a thief then she said to the woman look out He'll steal your money too, or are you working with him? Her hands were shaking, but she was able to get that cell phone camera going He knocked this cell phone right out of her hand and it hit the ground then a rent a cop who was watching came right over He said what's going on here? What's the trouble then the thief turned to him and said I think this lady's crazy or drunk She's bothering me and my wife Then they quickly got up and left as the lady tried to explain to the rent a cop as much as she could What had gone down, but by then the couple was long gone and the rent a cop who's got no power

[09:20] He said there's really nothing I could do anyway. It's between you and them So in the end they got ripped out of 12,000 bucks plus all the time loss and the hoping and waiting But that's not all as mentioned her husband's contracts up right now And they're getting the hell out of that twisted version of Dodge They're going back to Argentina in spite of the social and economic problems that keep ramping up day after day They understand what's going down in Argentina, but they're still going back They've been back to visit the friends and relatives a few times and the police is falling apart Along with the 30 to 50 percent inflation year-over-year There've been a few bank runs and huge lines at almost every bank people trying to change their pesos over the dollars and many Argentinos say they would be happy to just get their pesos out of the bank to stuff them under their mattress

[10:09] Especially the over 50 crowd they've been through it before and know it's going to get worse our Argentine diplomat lived through it twice she said in 2001 the banks closed there was martial law and Vigilante justice just like what's happening in Venezuela right now But after they defaulted on their sovereign debt and went bankrupt they came back from it and now 20 years later It's deja vu all over again. In fact just this week. The Argentine government has instituted currency controls Exactly what they did 20 years ago, too Now the banks in Argentina just like the banks in most other Latin countries will let you have a dollar and a local funny money Account you could have a dual currency bank account dollars and pesos same bank same account Which of course this Argentine diplomat and her husband have she says almost everyone has a dual account like that because they learned their lesson

[10:59] From the last banking crisis in 2001 and as of this week She says no matter how many US dollars you have in your bank account you have to get permission written permission From the government and your bank if you want to take out dollars though She says if you've got dollars in your dollar account you can do an internal bank transfer to your peso account So you can spend pesos in the country but not dollars that is without permission and that could take days Weeks if everybody's doing it at once though the Argentine diplomat and her husband say they're not worried They've got all their dollars in the US dollar account in a bank in Costa Rica her and her husband are well protected She says unlike probably 95% of Argentines who don't have a US dollar foreign bank account So anyway, she says we're going back because anything's better than Costa Rica then she said again. It's a paradise for thieves

[11:48] So anyway, she told me they're leaving for Argentina in about a week and a half. They got their plane tickets They're all set. She said over the last few weeks. They sold everything on olx.com Except the car they held off selling that till the very end So she said two weeks ago, they put the car on olx.com It's a great site for buying and selling because you can post pictures and chat with individuals who you might be bargaining with So she put in the ad the reason why they were selling the late model Mercedes is because they were leaving the country permanently They posted some great pictures. They said it was neat. He though n-i-t-i-d-o That means mint state or perfect condition. The thing is anyone who's selling anything puts down Niti though, even if it's a rusted out bomb sitting up on blocks in a driveway It's neat. It'll what it is to me is an indication of the extreme optimism that pervades Latin society

[12:39] And optimism itself is a good thing. The problem is down here It often has a head-on collision with the truth and the truth always suffers That's why you'll often see an ad describing a real rattle trap as neat. It'll well One thing's for sure at least it runs. How do you know that because the rattle it has to at least start you getting it now Anyway in the first day or two of running the ad they had some serious bites and one well-dressed guy in a suit was Really hot on it came over gave him a hundred bucks deposit took a bunch of pictures. She was amazed She sold it on the first call the first day though. She said in retrospect. It seemed a little too easy He didn't try to haggle beat the price down, which is the usual custom in Latin America Meanwhile, he up the deposit to a thousand bucks and told her to take the ad down from OLX He was buying it for sure She said the next day he and his wife came over to the house

[13:27] They came with a briefcase full of cash in Spite of what you might think it's fairly common to pay cash for a used car in Latin America Hey, I've done it myself many times the other favorite method, of course is a cashier's check or a gyro Gyro but you have to go to a bank stand in various lines that could take well over an hour Plus you have to have an account in that bank, too Meanwhile, the guy came over to the house with his wife and a briefcase full of cash They were there a while making with the small talk and waiting for the lawyer who was on manana time He told the Argentine lady that he was a building contractor, which was a perfectly legit reason why the guy would have that kind of cash Meanwhile, he kept checking his watch checking his watch after about 20 minutes. He phoned him up turns out the lawyer wasn't at his office

[14:13] He was at a nearby mall doing some business with another client So he hung up and turned to the Argentine lady and said look I want to leave my briefcase here with you The lawyer doesn't know how to get to this place. He's at so-and-so mall. Is it alright if I take the car? I want my wife to see how nice it rides, too I'll leave my money and briefcase with you and I'll be back in 20 minutes Well in the moment she agreed she had the money. He never came back. The money was counterfeit She was from Argentina. What did she know about counterfeit Costa Rican money? In fact, what does anyone know about counterfeit Latin American money since it comes in all shapes colors denominations and forms? Listen, I've lived in many Latin American countries some for years at a time and man I don't think I'd be able to spot a good counterfeit in anyone's funny money But down here you walk into any mom-and-pop bakery or hardware store

[15:01] You will see counterfeit money that was passed on display even counterfeit US tens 20s 50s and hundreds Worse yet the con man shorted the Argentine lady on the counterfeit money count Oh and get this it took him a couple of days to even figure out it was fake money The whole thing baffled everyone even the cops. Well, I guess that's not so hard to do. Here's the real punchline Why do you think that guy wanted the car so bad because of those? Diplomatic license plates her big mistake was having photos of the car and the plates up on ol x.com Now remember in Latin America if you have diplomatic plates, you're like royalty. It's a get-out-of-jail free card Well, it's the same effect when you take a car like that through country borders In most all cases the cops just wave you right on through now

[15:47] Here's what goes on in the mind of an upscale car thief in Latin America Obviously you want to sell it as fast as you can but it's a big mistake to sell it in your own country No one will buy it because it's too difficult to change all the serial numbers paint it get it licensed legally, etc Etc. Plus most Latin countries have very small populations Guatemala Honduras Costa Rica El Salvador Uruguay, Nicaragua Panama they all have under 15 million people most single US states have more people than that That means if you can't get a stolen car across the border to another country You got to strip it down and sell it for parts Whereas the big money is in selling a luxury car in another country By paying off just a few people in the motor vehicle department and a couple of easy modifications The car can be registered completely legal The key thing here with this car was a late model Mercedes and those diplomatic plates

[16:35] Let it breeze right through the frontier onto Panama. That's where that car ended up Panama The cops know that because it's a well-known pathway And that was about the only news the Costa Rican cops could give our Argentine couple Who'd just been swindled out of a $20,000 car and paid off with counterfeit money. Talk about a double slap Oh and the cops had it The reason why he took all those photos was so he could send him down to his chop shop bosses in Panama So they could instantly tell what it was worth and what they could sell it for So in the end is there any wonder why our Argentine couple hates Costa Rica with a passion? Oh and here's the final warning if you're selling a car online Don't post a photo with the plate number photo shop it out if you have to Why because you can go to a DMV website put the plate in and find out a lot about the owner including where he lives

[17:23] phone number, etc Alright, let's shift gears pun intended I talk a lot about privacy and how when you come to Latin America You can with some effort reduce your social and financial footprint so much It's as if you were back in the 50s 60s and 70s again In other words getting that plan be underway in Latin America is like having a second chance at reinventing your life In fact, some gringos and expats create a brand new dialogue and history for themselves For example, I know a guy who was a plain old fireman in New York City Meanwhile, everyone else in his new gringo circle thinks he's an accomplished writer Anyway, that's the line. He tells everyone when they ask him what he does Hey when you're in conversations with gringos, you know, a couple of things always come up within the first ten minutes Where are you from? What brings you down here to Latin America and what do you do or what did you do for a living?

[18:12] And really that's just a kinder gentler less crude way of asking. What do you make? What are you worth? Or lately people try to find out if you're a Trump supporter or not to figure out whether they want to buy you a drink Or throw theirs in your face Funny when you're way off the gringo tourist trail and run into a gringo Most all of them aren't much into dissing Trump yet when you're on the gringo trail where all the gringos are hanging gringo bars gringo Franchises and gringo meetups and get-togethers, especially if you're around retired gringo school teachers and government bureaucrats They absolutely hate Trump with a vengeance then when you run into ex-military and law enforcement guys They can't stand Obama and like Trump. I don't get it. But hey, there's a lot of stuff I don't get including why so many gringos and expats move down to Latin America They bring down all their twisted social and political baggage with them

[19:01] Meanwhile homegrown Americans up in the States complain when Mexicans and Central Americans come up and bring their social and political garbage with them The trick is when you move to another country You want to lower your profile get off the radar get off of lists and though it's impossible to have no footprint and get off Every list it's your second chance at getting out from under big brother. So I say why not pass Disinformation don't give people your whole name. Don't give me your whole phone number. Don't give me your email What I like to do is use my start mail account because you've got ten email aliases to create and destroy at will So create a few easy to remember throw away email accounts Then when you go into for example Like I did the other day a drugstore and they ask why you're checking out for your email and telephone number Don't give them your real ones. If you remember your own phone number, which I have a hell of a time doing

[19:51] Cuz I never call myself if you can't remember it just roll it off your tongue and flip two digits around I do that myself So I don't have to create an all-new phone number off the top of my head every time some pharmacy bank or utility or government Office asks me for one sure you could say none of your business dickhead, but that's not good for him And you're gonna ruffle some feathers. It's so much easier Just making up a fake one which brings me to this very interesting article about privacy from the master con man and identity thief Frank Abigail, you remember Leonardo DiCaprio played him in the film catch me if you can You know the guy who faked being a teacher airline pilot army captain surgeon Continuously flying around the world for free. He was an expert at identity theft until he got caught

[20:37] You might have seen the movie it was a good one But in real life after he got caught not really for identity theft but for writing bad checks The crazy thing was he got out of jail early because the US government and big US banks and the Federal Reserve Hired him to give in-house identity theft seminars to FBI CIA and banking officials And now he's on the lecture circuit because he just wrote a book in a nutshell Here's what he says your Facebook profile has all the information a fraudster needs to steal your sensitive Information and your ID if you're on Facebook, he says here's the only things you have to remember Never tell anybody where you were born or your birthday. He says if you do 98% of the time I can steal your identity

[21:24] I only need to know those two pieces of information and I'm off and running anything else I might need I can get without even hacking right off the Internet By the way, his new book is called scam me if you can simple strategies to outsmart today's ripoff artists He offers these tips number one Do not keep all of your personal information in the cloud or on one laptop Keep printouts of important documents in a lockbox or upload files to an external hard drive. That's encrypted Tip number two if you receive a call on your cell phone and the caller ID is someone you don't know Don't pick it up And if you do remain absolutely tight-lipped to give out no personal information because you're being recorded number three He says if you're online dating which almost everyone who single does these days

[22:10] Verify the person you are speaking with or planning to go out on a date with is real He says search that person online to confirm claims of their location employment and photo He says scams and frauds are a thousand times easier to do than when he started doing it way back When before personal computers iPhones and the Internet He says the best way for a con man to harvest information to be used for identity theft is in state DMV Offices and sites where they now have everything in one place with the new verified ID systems Which all government systems have access to they even have a copy of everyone's passport at the DMV What could possibly go wrong? Consider this in most all Hollywood suspense and action movies someone usually a 15 year old nerd

[22:56] Gets on a computer and hacks into a local DMV site. Oh and another thing I've never understood the requirement of keeping insurance and vehicle registration in the vehicle in the glove compartment Someone breaks into your car and now they have everything Everything to steal your ID your name address and quite frequently even your garage door opener now They have access to you your data at your house, and if you're typical middle-class person everything that's in your garage, too Bottom line don't put that stuff in your glove compartment Maybe the best place for it is under the spare tire in the trunk Then if you get pulled over you can pop the trunk latch hand the cop the keys and say be my guest All right me Johnny here, you know his good advice, especially about not posting your birthday, etc It's never gonna fly in Latin America where people just live for their birthdays

[23:42] In fact birthdays don't last a day down here They last a week and no self-respecting Latino or Latina is gonna miss out on posting 50 shots of their birthday party on Facebook and Instagram No I have to say it's slightly safer to post your birthday shots for attention then to take a selfie doing a yoga pose on a 12-floor railing or in front of a lion on safari or over the edge of a cliff What was that selfie death rate toll wasn't at? 167 people died taking selfies last year. Hmm. And who said Darwin had it wrong? Alright, since we're on the subject of privacy. Let's talk about passwords Here's a little excerpt from an article from the British rag the Guardian entitled your passwords are too easy It starts by saying Britain's are being warned that they're leaving themselves wide open for internet fraud and ID theft British government

[24:33] Cyberchiefs have issued a red alert to the nation's web users to upgrade their online security after revealing that Millions of Brits use the password 1 2 3 4 5 6 or just the password Password, it's gotten so widespread It says a survey by the National Cyber Security Center in Britain part of spy agency GCHQ found nearly one in two people in the United Kingdom Have had or expect to have money stolen from them online by 2020 Then it says the National Cyber Security Center estimates that only 15 percent of British internet users Know enough about the internet to know how to protect themselves online That leaves 85 percent of Brits wide open for fraud and unable to do anything about it

[25:19] In fact, it says people are so stupid about passwords that findings in a cyber uk 2019 conference in Glasgow this week organized by the government's National Cyber Security Center said that the logon password 1 2 3 4 5 6 was hacked over 23 million times worldwide And the logon password 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 hacked 16 million times All right, it's me again It's funny because so many times I've used an Airbnb and when you log on to the Wi-Fi the password is 1 2 3 4 5 6 Anyway, then it says for your password You should never have your name in there your local sports team or your favorite music group the best and easiest Password to use and remember are three random, but memorable words linked together

[26:05] Then they've got this guy a security researcher Troy hunt who's written a few books on the subject He's got a website entitled I have been pawned It allows anyone to check if their passwords or password accounts have been compromised in a data breach If you go there and look you'll see list after list of breached and compromised passwords All right, meet Johnny again for my money Latinos are the worst offenders I've got a gringle friend who owns an internet cafe and two small hotels He tells me every day in the little business center and in the internet cafe People would leave their machines and email sites wide open so that the next guy could log right into their email and imagine that damage They could do and you know when people leave their email even banking sites open You can change the password because you're in already

[26:51] Sometimes businessmen are the worst you go into one of those business centers in a hotel and you'll see Personal and corporate business accounts wide open with data reports Powerpoints and spreadsheets wide open and ready for you to sabotage if you were so inclined In fact many times have personally been in a hotel business center I touched the key and up pops one Martinez's email whoever that is along with his Twitter Instagram and Facebook account If I had a mind to it could really teach my new friend one Martinez a lesson Well, maybe if I was more Travie so you ever hear that word Travie So that means mischievous troublemaker Travie. So tell you what those are the guys and gals that are the life of the party You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan B

[27:38] We can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail dot com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week long expat insider seminar in Central America Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Send me an email the expat files at gmail dot com Nos vamos