As wealth transfers across generations, cybercriminals are positioning themselves to intercept it.
In this episode of The Agent of Wealth, host Marc Bautis is joined by Robert Siciliano, one of the nation’s most trusted authorities on cybersecurity, identity theft, and fraud prevention.
Robert is a private investigator, Certified Speaking Professional, bestselling author, and the creator of The Strategic Human Firewall™. You’ve likely seen him on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or The Today Show, helping millions understand how cybercriminals think — and how to stay one step ahead of them.
Together, Marc and Robert explore why affluent families are increasingly targeted by fraudsters, how denial and misplaced trust make people vulnerable, and why AI-driven scams like deepfake voices and impersonation are changing the threat landscape entirely.
In this episode, you will learn:
- Why “It won’t happen to me” is one of the most dangerous mindsets in cybersecurity — and how denial quietly increases risk.
- Why affluent families and older generations are prime targets right now.
- How modern scams actually work, including wrong-number texts, romance scams, and long-game trust-building tactics.
- What practical steps can be taken to reduce risk immediately.
- The role adult children and trusted advisors play in protecting aging parents without taking away independence.
- And more!
Tune in for a candid, eye-opening conversation about why situational awareness — not paranoia — is the new baseline for protecting wealth, identity, and family legacy in a digital world.
Resources:
https://protectnowllc.com | Bautis Financial: 8 Hillside Ave, Suite LL1 Montclair, New Jersey 07042 (862) 205-5000 | Schedule an Introductory Call
Disclosure: The transcript below has been edited for clarity and content. It is not a direct transcription of the full episode, which can be listened to above.
Welcome back to The Agent of Wealth Podcast, this is your host Marc Bautis.
Today, I’m joined by a special guest, Robert Siciliano – one of the nation’s most trusted voices on cybersecurity, identity theft, and fraud prevention.
Robert is a private investigator, Certified Speaking Professional, bestselling author, and the creator of The Strategic Human Firewall™. You may have seen him on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or The Today Show, helping millions of people understand how cybercriminals actually operate — and more importantly, how to stop them.
In this episode, we’re tackling two critical threats facing affluent families today: why wealthy individuals are prime targets for cybercrime, and how AI-driven scams (like deepfakes and voice cloning) are making fraud more believable and dangerous than ever.
Robert, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Marc. I’m happy to be here.
You often talk about the myth of “It won’t happen to me.” Why is that mindset considered dangerous?
So, we as humans, right, are what is considered an interdependent species. And what that means is we need each other. We depend on each other for our survival. We would not survive unless we procreate and continue the species, right?
That said, as an interdependent species, in order to function, our baseline needs to be trust — which means that we have to trust each other. There’s an underlying trust that we all have for each other that says, “Hey, I am good. I expect you to be good, and therefore we can trust each other, and we can procreate.” That’s just kind of how it works, right?
Knowing that there is about two to three percent of the world’s population — and I’ve been doing this now for 30-plus years — I’ve come to the conclusion that probably about 97% of all the people that you ever meet in your life are worthy of your trust.
Ninety-seven percent are trustworthy. They’re good people — good-natured, good-hearted. They’re essentially normal. And then there’s about two to three percent that are what we would consider sociopaths, psychopaths, essentially hardcore narcissists that don’t experience empathy, sympathy, guilt, or remorse. The medical community considers them antisocial personality disorders.
And so, knowing that this is what’s going on — and this is what I speak to — there is a significant portion of us, that 97%, that don’t really truly understand that 97% versus 3%, the bad actors out there. And even if they acknowledge it to a certain degree, they’ll say, “Well, I don’t really think that that’s ever going to happen to me. I don’t really want to think about those things. I just don’t want to have to worry about that.” And essentially, harm is not going to happen to me. They function in a certain level of denial.
A lot of people do that because security is kind of a thing that makes you worry. It’s fearful. It means bad people might come out to get you. And nobody ever wants to think, believe, or even frankly acknowledge that bad things would ever happen to them.
Denial is one of those things — it’s kind of this wonderful human trait that we possess that works with us when it comes to living in a relatively topsy-turvy, chaotic world. Denial allows us to function. It just does.
But when it comes to security, I don’t know that it really helps us all that much. Meaning, if we deny the existence of bad actors, and if we deny that we have to recognize risk to a certain degree, then you’re making yourself extremely vulnerable to that three percent. You’re making it easy for them.
And what you’re supposed to do is engage in basic security awareness training. Engage in recognizing risk. Engage in doing these basic things to reduce that risk and protect yourself and your family.
And if you understand all that, then the likelihood of something bad happening to you significantly reduces, because you become what we call a hard target.
So, long answer to your very simple question.
But then how does that person — the one who is in denial — how do they go about knowing that they’re in that group that is in denial? I guess you could say the training or understanding everyone should have — but how do they even know that they’re executing behavior that actually makes them more at risk?
So that 97%, I usually qualify them in my live presentations in front of my audience by asking them a series of questions.
The first question might be: How many of you lock your doors? Right? And not a lot of people lock their doors.
It’s interesting — I work with realtors all the time, and realtors will tell me that some homeowners, when we sell their houses, don’t even know where their house keys are. They’ve never even seen their house keys. They haven’t seen them in 30 years.
Then I ask, how many of you have a home security system? And you’d be surprised — less than 20% of the population has a home security system.
Then, when I start probing them regarding various questions like, “Well, why don’t you have a home security system?” the answer is often, “Well, I don’t have a home security system because I don’t want to live like that.”
I say, “Well, what does that actually mean?” And they say, “Well, I don’t want to live in fear. I don’t want to have to worry. I just want to be free.”
And that right there is a telltale sign that you might be in denial.
Because in that same line of questioning, I might say, “Well, how many of you think you live in what is considered a safe neighborhood?” And usually I get 95% of the room raising their hand and saying, “I live in a safe neighborhood.”
Here’s the reality behind that math. I’m not here to say you live in a violent neighborhood — that’s not what I’m doing here.
If you understand the word safe by itself — safe in baseball — you’re either out or you’re safe. It’s an absolute, right? And if you live in a safe neighborhood, that means that nothing bad has happened, does happen, or ever will happen.
“I live in a safe neighborhood. It’s safe.”
Well, not really.
I mean, it’s like every neighborhood. Something bad happens eventually, right?
When you watch the six o’clock news and something bad happens in a neighborhood somewhere — something tragic, violent, whatever it might be — and the local news channel comes in and knocks on the neighbor’s door, and the neighbor comes out onto the front porch, and the journalist puts the microphone in her face and asks, “So what do you think about what happened?” What does that neighbor often say?
And that was the question: What do they often say?
“I wasn’t expecting this.”
“I didn’t see this coming.”
“This doesn’t happen here.”
Exactly. This doesn’t happen here.
They always say the same thing. They say that because nobody ever wants to think it can happen here. Those things don’t happen here.
Well, they do.
Living in denial is very natural. It’s very normal. It’s what most people do. It’s the reason why I have a job.
Once you understand that about yourself, you realize, “Okay, I might be functioning in a bit of denial.”
And then I ask another question — and this is actually true. I have 22 security cameras.
So when you hear, “Okay, this guy’s got 22 security cameras,” what might be your understanding of what my disposition might be? My worldview? My outlook? How I navigate the day? Guy’s got 22 security cameras — he must be what?
Skeptical? Nervous? Negative about things that could happen to him?
What else? What’s another word?
Paranoid.
Because when it comes to security, most people look at security as a form of paranoia. “Oh, he thinks people are out to get him. He’s worried. He lives in fear. That’s why he does that.”
We equate security and paranoia in our culture to the degree where we resist security because of it.
But paranoia is a mental health issue. And when somebody possesses that — if you’ve ever spent any time with them — their life is essentially out of control. They are at odds with their universe. They truly believe people are out to get them. And that’s a horrible sense, a horrible feeling.
I have family that has experienced this, and it’s a very difficult way to live. That’s a mental health issue.
But we equate security with that. And so, as a result, most people don’t engage in the basic practices of locking their doors, having a home security system, setting up something called a password manager — doing all the basic things that you’re supposed to do to become a tougher target.
And just kind of going back to that, to use an example I know in my area: there’s a lot of car theft, car burglaries, and a lot of times it’s because the person leaves their key fob in the car.
You hear about it — “Oh, my car got stolen. I left the key fob in the car.” Yet this is not new. It’s been going on for a while, and people still leave the key fob in the car.
Is that an example of denial?
That is truly denial.
It’s just like how many cars are broken into — because the car is not actually being broken into. It’s just unlocked.
Everything’s stolen out of the glove compartment, out of the center console.
And what it boils down to — and I don’t mean to offend anybody — is it’s essentially irresponsible behavior. That denial leads to irresponsibility.
Look, I don’t put my seatbelt on because I’m paranoid or because I worry. I put my seatbelt on because it’s the smart thing to do. I put my seatbelt on fundamentally because it gives me control over that vehicle.
If something swerves, or someone swerves in front of me, in order for me to maintain control of that vehicle, I’ve got to stay tight in that seat — in front of that steering wheel, in front of that gas and brake. That seatbelt is my security in that vehicle.
And most people don’t engage in much more security than their seatbelt because they don’t want to think it can happen to them.
But we put that seatbelt on primarily because we’re forced to. The car won’t stop beeping at you unless you do.
Automobile dealerships and our government know this, and they’ve forced it upon us — which I think is a good thing.
The car won’t stop beeping at you unless you do. And automobile dealerships and our government know this, and they’ve forced it upon us — which I think is a good thing. Because if something swerves in front of you and you lose control of the vehicle, and you end up on the sidewalk and there’s a family of four walking on that sidewalk because you couldn’t control your vehicle — because you swerved and got thrown into the passenger seat since you didn’t have your seatbelt on — that’s a horrible thing.
So we do these basic things often because we’re forced to, not because we want to or we think we need to.
When we say that wealthy individuals — high-net-worth people — are targets, what does that actually mean in practice? What kind of scams or frauds are they being exposed to?
Yeah, excellent and important question.
So I’m sure, as a wealth manager, you have some basic understanding of the hundred-plus trillion dollars of wealth that is being transferred between the baby boomers, the greatest generation, and the rest of us.
If anybody wants to Google it — a hundred, say, twenty-four trillion dollars of wealth being transferred — it’s the greatest transfer of wealth that’s ever occurred in the history of mankind. And that’s essentially between our parents or some of our grandparents and us: Gen X, Gen Y, millennials, Gen Z, and so forth.
So take my dad, for example. Seventy-eight years old. Baby boomer. Worked his entire adult life in a union. Blue-collar guy. Pension, annuity, compounded interest, all his investments, Roth IRA — the whole thing. Put his money away. Worked, worked, worked, worked, worked, right? Early on when he was growing up, that’s what they were taught.
That’s what they did. They put that money away. He paid off his house. His house is maybe twenty-five minutes north of Boston where I live — worth probably a million and a half dollars. Twenty minutes north of Boston, that’s the market.
And so between that pension, annuity, his investments, compounded interest, he’s probably worth three to four million dollars. I’ve never actually had that discussion with him, but based on what I know, yeah.
That money eventually transfers — hopefully to me eventually — because he’s not going to live forever. Neither am I. Neither are we.
And so that transfer of wealth is happening right now. That money is the target of the bad actors. That’s the money that they’re going after.
So understand that my dad — baby boomers, the greatest generation — they are the most moneyed on the planet. They are the most trusting left on the planet. They are essentially the least technically savvy when it boils down to it. No offense.
And like all of us, at some age, cognitively declining.
So they’re the biggest target right now. They have the most money, they’re the least technically savvy, cognitively declining, and the most trusting.
And on top of that, human beings — 25% of us experience loneliness from the moment we wake up out of bed, and throughout the day we experience loneliness. That is our default. Twenty-five percent of us. That’s normal. That’s natural. Google it. It’s always been like that. It will always be like that.
I know in my own life, I experienced a lot of loneliness when I was really young — in my twenties, let’s say. And then I met my honey. I’m happily married. I’m lucky enough that we have a good relationship, and I don’t experience loneliness.
But let’s just say your spouse passes away, right? Let’s just say something happens.
Loneliness is a normal, natural thing. And when we are lonely, we sometimes make bad decisions that lead to risky behaviors.
And that might mean getting one of those wrong-number text messages.
We get them all the time: “Hey, Robert, are we meeting for lunch today?” And I’m like, “I’m sorry — are we supposed to meet for lunch?” “Oh, I’m sorry,” she responds. “This is Janet.” And she sends a pretty picture of “Janet.” “I’m sorry — who are you?” I say. And the dialogue begins.
That wrong-number text message — if you don’t already know — is a scam. It is designed to lure you in, to send you down the rabbit hole.
And whoever you’re communicating with on the other end, they know that 25% of us are lonely. And they know that a good portion of us — the baby boomers and the greatest generation — have a lot of money.
And all they have to do, starting with this, is engage you in a dialogue.
That dialogue might go on six, eight, ten communications back and forth a day.
And they know that after a week or so — when they’ve been building that relationship with you, building rapport — just basic stuff. They’re not even talking about love or money or anything.
They’re just talking about, “Hey, how did you sleep last night, dear?” “What are you doing today, dear?” And throughout the day, they’re sending you pictures of them at yoga, what they’re having for dinner, grocery shopping — basic, basic stuff.
Just to build that relationship. Just to build that trust.
And what happens after a week or two of engaging with “Janet” over here — if you’re lonely — the walls go down. The trust goes up. The loneliness dissipates.
And now Janet says, “Hey, what do you think about cryptocurrency? I’ve been investing in it. I’m making 80% on my money. Would you be interested in me teaching you how to do that?”
And before you know it, Janet becomes the puppet master — and you, that lonely individual, maybe wealthy, become the puppet.
That’s why wealthy individuals need to pay attention. Because this is a real thing.
And it’s not just people who are single or solo.
I’ve seen married couples fall into this. Because in some situations, you could be lonely even in a marriage — or just interested in making some additional money.
And when you see this opportunity — because somebody texts you or emails you — you’re like, “Hey, let me give that a shot.”
You might even tell your spouse about it. And before you know it, the two of you are into it.
I met a couple down at The Villages in Florida that this happened to. I was hired by a wealth manager to do a program because his clients were getting bombarded by various scams — and some of them were falling victim.
One couple lost $600,000 to that scam.
And when I met them — when I met the wife — just looking at her, she was broken. You could tell. They mortgaged their home. They lost everything. They were going bankrupt in their mid to late seventies. Just brutal.
How does it go from — maybe ten, fifteen years ago — getting an email from a Nigerian prince, where you look at it and you’re like, “That’s pretty funny,” to sophisticated schemes?
AI, man. A couple things. Number one, people often say, “If these criminal hackers would just take what they knew and use it for good, they could cure cancer.” And I’m like, yeah — no.
Here’s the deal. These criminal hackers — first of all, they’re sociopaths, psychopaths, hardcore narcissists. They could care less about curing cancer. That’s one thing for sure.
And on top of that, they make more money — sometimes in a day or a month — than many of us will make in a lifetime.
So there’s just so much money to be made by people who are gullible, vulnerable, lonely, moneyed, not technically savvy, cognitively declining, and so on.
And then the big part of it is that over the past fifteen to twenty years, fraud, scams, and crime have become organized.
They’re sophisticated to the point where they look at fraud as a business.
They recognize that there’s just so much money to be made in scams and fraud when you organize to that degree and use all the technology at your fingertips as a fraud organization.
There are just so many victims out there.
And coupled with the fact that in the past twenty years, there have been about 175 billion records compromised in data breaches — all of our names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and billions of our passwords are in the hands of criminals.
They have databases of who we are. They have access to our social media pages.
They know that you are a mariner. They know you like boating. They know you might be a member of BoatUS. So they’ll send you an email that looks like BoatUS. They’ll get you to click links, download stuff, compromise your passcodes. They infiltrate every aspect of our lives. They pose as all of these entities that we may do business with or that we’re interested in. And then they use our phone numbers and email addresses to come at us with all these various ruses.
And with artificial intelligence — voice cloning — which is perfect, you cannot tell the difference between real or fake. Voices? You can’t. It’s impossible. Humans don’t have that ability.
On top of that, cloning our likeness with face overlays — whether it’s a prerecorded clone of us or a live feed where it takes my face and video and adopts it and puts it over somebody else — there’s no telling the difference.
In most cases, the technology isn’t 100% as far as face overlays go, but it’s really good. And most of us would not be able to tell the difference.
The technology exists. It’s not yet consumable at scale — like an app on your iPhone — but it’s there.
And all of that, coupled with being organized and treating fraud as a business, makes us extremely vulnerable.
Because the majority of us don’t want to think it can happen to us. We aren’t doing the basic things to protect ourselves or our families. And we’re looking at these frauds all day, every day, without really knowing what to do — because we haven’t thought it through.
I’m going to talk about a person who’s lonely, not tech-savvy, maybe starting to experience some cognitive decline.
How do they combat this? How do they prevent some of these things from happening?
The question is kind of two-part. You gave the example of someone being targeted over text and having trust established. How do they combat that?
And then how do they combat voice deepfakes or video overlays?
I hear a lot about the first type — someone building trust over text or impersonating a bank or a credit card company and saying, “I need to help prevent fraud.”
I haven’t heard too many deepfakes yet, but I’m sure that’s coming.
How can someone prevent being a victim?
Yeah. So I think certainly consuming this podcast — just talking about it — incoming information that makes us aware of these various risks is really important.
And then sharing that information with others.
Because while you and I are having this dialogue and people are consuming this, they’re coming to realize that there is risk out there that they need to be warned against and cognizant of.
So that when the phone rings, when emails come in, when text messages arrive, you have a basic understanding of what that risk might be — and what the intentions might be of the person on the other end.
Understanding that it is highly unlikely that you’re going to get a wrong-number text message and develop an intimate relationship with that person — and that it not be a scam.
It is a scam. There’s no getting around it.
It’s highly unlikely that you’re going to be on Match.com or any dating site and, on the first day, find your soulmate — and after a week, they profess their love to you — without physically meeting them.
That just doesn’t exist.
Scammers are on these sites 24/7, 365 — as bots, as humans — and they know exactly what to say. They know how to pull your heartstrings. They know how to lure you in.
And after a week, you’re head over heels.
That didn’t happen accidentally. That was strategic. That was professional.
They did that on purpose so that you would eventually fork over your investments.
So recognizing “too good to be true” is critical.
I need to be cognitively aware because I am one of those targets — maybe I’m single, maybe I have investments — and I need to protect not just my investments, but my heart.
Recognizing risk starts with understanding what those risks are.
All inbound communications should not be trusted by default — even though that’s what we do as human beings.
And if you understand that about yourself — that you’re part of that 97%, that you’re good-natured, that your default is to give the benefit of the doubt — then you need to sit back and be a bit more skeptical.
That’s not a bad thing. That’s situational awareness.
Situational awareness means paying attention to your environment — whether you’re walking the dog, driving, out on a boat, or online.
It’s your responsibility to pay attention so you don’t trip, don’t get hit, don’t get taken advantage of.
It’s the same thing online — texts, emails, phone calls, people knocking at your door.
Be aware of what’s going on.
It’s like that seatbelt. It gives you control.
Don’t default to trust, gullibility, or vulnerability.
And all of this is natural and normal.
Risk management may not feel natural — because for most of your life, nothing bad may have happened — or you’ve never had a conversation like this one.
But this is your opportunity to pay attention so you don’t become a target — so you become a harder target.
That awareness, that skepticism — who spearheads that for someone in their seventies or eighties?
Is it the child who goes to the parent and says, “You can’t do this, you need to do that”?
Because I don’t know if a 70- or 80-year-old is listening to podcasts or Googling how to be more vigilant.
How do they get that first dose of awareness?
Yeah. There are certain people in our lives where we need to have uncomfortable conversations.
Those conversations might sound like: “Hey, I know you spend a lot of time online. You’re on social media. Sometimes you’re on dating sites. I know you generally know what you’re doing.”
And being supportive — not hammering them — just having a tactful conversation that leads to awareness.
Have them listen to this podcast. Talk about what these scams look like.
And for certain people who are more vulnerable, monitoring becomes important.
I have a 94-year-old mother-in-law. We pay very close attention to what she’s doing — who she’s donating to, what she’s purchasing with her credit card, how she handles snail mail, what she does when the phone rings.
We have ongoing conversations.
We monitor. We stay involved.
Maybe that means being a co-signer on checks, loans, or having visibility into finances — not to control, but to protect.
So they’re not wiring money, writing large checks, or giving out sensitive information that could devastate them — and eventually impact the family.
We need to function as protectors of those we’re responsible for.
You mentioned earlier the dark web — all our information, passwords — it’s all out there.
How does someone approach that? Is it just “it is what it is”?
There are two parts to that.
First: yes, your data is on the dark web. That’s just reality. Like water is wet.
But there are things you can do.
If your password is on the dark web, how do you make it useless? You change it.
How else? Use a different password for every account.
And one more: two-factor authentication.
Two-factor authentication makes stolen passwords useless.
Change passwords. Use unique passwords. Enable two-factor authentication everywhere.
Your Social Security number is likely on the dark web too. How do you make that useless?
Identity theft protection — and more importantly, a credit freeze.
A credit freeze means contacting Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax and freezing your credit.
If you need a loan or credit card, you temporarily unfreeze it — then it refreezes automatically.
That makes your Social Security number useless to a thief.
Password managers help with all of this. They’re not the weak point — the dark web is.
Why isn’t credit frozen by default?
Money.
Instant credit drives commerce. Retailers and lenders don’t want it frozen.
I don’t care. I want everyone protected.
It always comes down to money.
Well, Robert, this has been an eye-opening conversation.
The reality is, wealth today doesn’t just need to be grown and preserved — it needs to be defended and protected.
For listeners who want to learn more about you, get a copy of your book, or contact you directly, where should they go?
Marc, I am online at protectnowllc.com.
Great. We’ll link to that in the resources section of the show notes. Thanks again, Robert. And thank you to everyone who tuned into today’s episode. Don’t forget to follow The Agent of Wealth on the platform you listen from and leave us a review of the show. We are currently accepting new clients, if you’d like to schedule a 1-on-1 consultation with our advisors, please do so below.
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