‘Anyone Can Be Victimized’ Warns New Host of ‘Scam Squad’ Podcast

“It can happen to anyone.” That’s what all cops investigating internet scams say. This week, Kristina Perkins joined their ranks. For the past two and a half years, Perkins has worked as chief investigator for the Santa Barbara County District Attorney — the first woman in county history to ever serve in that role. As part of that job, she’s now hosting the weekly podcast Scam Squad, only recently vacated by her predecessor, Vicki Johnson, who retired.

Santa Barbara, with its large elderly population, has long been a foraging ground for scam artists of all varieties. But in recent years, there’s been a dramatic uptick in internet fraud in which the perpetrators and the victims only occasionally live in the same town, thus making actual arrests and convictions notoriously hard to come by.

Perkins, with three podcast episodes now under her belt, is taking to the airwaves and social media to get the word out.

“Anyone can be victimized,” she said, adding that the marks are often older and more vulnerable.

Last week, the show was about “pop-up fraud,” in which victims are “notified” something’s amiss with their computer and how it can be fixed. She spoke of a woman from San Luis Obispo County who got taken for $200,000 that way.  

Another popular scam, Perkins said, is called “romance fraud,” in which con artists scan social media posts for older users. Does the mark like dogs? Guess what, so does their new best friend. Friendship morphs into romance; text messages are exchanged, and phone calls and Zoom meetings, too.

But never, Perkins warned, will an actual face-to-face encounter happen. There’s always some excuse, she said, like the guy being in the military and having to ship out overseas. After that comes some urgent emergency; the suitor needs money and needs it now.

On the recent show was a woman whose mother got taken in by a scam artists purporting to be country western singer Vince Gill. Her bank account got drained.

Perkins inherited a podcast that started in 2017 by former prosecuting attorney Vicki Johnson and is joined at the hip with Young at Heart, a show produced by Patti Teel and accessible on KTMS Newstalk 990, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts.

For more information on scams, or to report a scam, contact the DA’s scam hotline at (805) 568-2442.