When Identity Becomes More Valuable Than Cash

Drew Thomas  0:32  
Sometimes, sometimes there's good ways to start these podcasts, and sometimes there just aren't. Yeah, I don't. And I don't know. There, we're going to try okay.

Jeff Matevish  0:40  
So, let's see how, so, so yeah. How, how did we even start talking about this topic? We just came up with it today.

Drew Thomas  0:49  
We did come up with it today, and I think it was because you had said you were watching a movie. I was watching last night, and it was and it had an it had, well, I'll let you tell. You were watching what?

Jeff Matevish  0:58  
Yeah, we're going to reference this kind of at the end of the, end of the, this episode, but I was watching. I'm a big horror fan, film fan. Okay, and my wife and I were just going through one of the like many subscriptions we have for you know, streaming services that we've talked about that you need to kind of audit.

Drew Thomas  1:18  
The many, many, many subscriptions.

Jeff Matevish  1:20  
Yeah, this one was, this one was Prime. We don't think about Prime all the time, but so we were, we were going through Prime, and we, we came across a like originals or you know Prime only type thing, and it was Scream Seven. I thought, okay, I did see a commercial for this a few months back, so let's, let's watch it.

Drew Thomas  1:38  
Now, is this, is this, this how have there really been seven of these movies, or have there been more? But there have been like little satellite versions? I don't know, or something. I don't know.

Jeff Matevish  1:46  
It seems like there's been more.

Drew Thomas  1:47  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  1:48  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  1:49  
Because I mean, it's kind of turning into this generation's Friday the 13th, where there was just...

Jeff Matevish  1:54  
Yeah chapter one different you know versions or whatever.

Drew Thomas  1:57  
And yeah, so yeah, so Scream Seven.

Jeff Matevish  2:00  
So, Scream Seven. So, so the without like completely ruining the, the plot, the, the premise was that one of the original bad guys, yeah, that, that died in one of the original in the first movie, right, comes back to finish, you know, his his.

Drew Thomas  2:19  
So, it's like Stefano Demera, but like?

Jeff Matevish  2:24  
What?

Drew Thomas  2:25  
Did you, didn't your mom or whatever ever watch like Days of Our Lives back in the day? That he was like the main villain on Days of Our Lives, and that man, that man's character died and came back from the dead, I don't know how many different ways.

Jeff Matevish  2:37  
Yeah, my wife was, was, was Days of Our Lives. My wife or, my mom was All My Children. Okay, okay.

Drew Thomas  2:42  
but well, that fits. Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  2:46  
So, so, so this this character supposedly comes back in, in a video, and they're trying to figure out if it's like a deep fake AI type thing, or if he actually came back to life. Gotcha. Okay. Or he never died, and he you know he was hiding, and and now he's, he's come out of hiding to, to finish his, his killing spree.

Drew Thomas  3:02  
Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. So, and, and that conversation because you and I have conversations offline that you know we find interesting. Yeah. Or at least I do. But you know, and you pretend to. Got me thinking about how you know a lot of things have changed in the ways that movies and TV shows reflect modern society, right? So, when I was in college, I remember having a media communications class, and in that class, we were taught that from, from the days of theater, right, theater reflected the society that it was created by, okay, right. So, Shakespeare, his plays reflect a lot of the way that society was in his day, yeah, and that continues on through theater throughout the ages, and then finally starts getting into radio, and then those whole radio dramas and stuff that were out, and then you have television, of course, and movies, and so you know these medium they reflect the society we're in. So, this movie that you said is reflecting this new horror, this new, this new fear that we have right in a horror movie of, of not being able to tell what's real and what's not, and, and so forth, right? Yeah, so, but I was thinking that, that money and, and banking and things like that have changed a lot in the way that we perceive them in movies and TV and, and so forth. Because there's a new TV show that I keep seeing advertised when I'm watching football, and I, I how it's called it's called Cupertino. Cupertino. I have not watched the show.

Jeff Matevish  4:43  
So, neither have I.

Drew Thomas  4:44  
Yeah, so I can't tell you precisely what it's about. But the, the TV trailers online, or you know, when you're watching TV, the commercials for it give the impression that it's sort of a, a lawyer courtroom drama, sort of like the second half of every Law and Order episode. Okay, right. It's the, it's this courtroom drama, but it centers around the tech world and how you know these tech billionaires and so forth are, are doing things behind the scenes and scheming against us and all that kind of stuff, right? So, it's, it's really unique in that you know we now have a TV show that reflects this fear that we have of Silicon Valley.

Jeff Matevish  5:25  
Yeah, your CSI cyber type thing. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  5:28  
Yeah. You know, and but I remember like the, the very first, it was either the very first or one of the very first silent movies was the Great Train Robbery, which was about a bunch of bandits that robbed a train to get money, and now you've got you know other TV shows and movies out there that reflect how people are robbed or taken for their money that have nothing to do with robbing trains or anything like that anymore. It's all digital and cybersecurity and hacking and things like that, you know. So, it's, it's, it's crazy just how some of these have changed. You know.

Jeff Matevish  6:05  
The last, the last movie I remember that had any sort of train robbery was it was a Fast and Furious movie. I don't know if you're familiar with any of those movies.

Drew Thomas  6:13  
Well, yeah, I mean, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  6:15  
Okay, well, yeah.

Drew Thomas  6:15  
I mean, I haven't watched probably the that's another one that has umpteen sequels.

Jeff Matevish  6:19  
Yes, there are like 10 right now.

Drew Thomas  6:21  
I think, I think I stopped watching whenever they started jumping off cliffs and parachuting down and things like that.

Drew Thomas  6:26  
Okay, so they're, they're, they're on 10 right now. But one of them, the, the opening scene was them robbing a train, but they were robbing the train for expensive supercars, so not your you know bags of money. Yeah, right. Thrown over your shoulder, you know, with the, the, the black and white, you know, striped, you know, bandit outfit. Yeah, you know, they're, they're high speed, you know, cars going up next to the train, cutting a big hole in it, and then catapulting old, you know, cars out and stuff. A little cooler, but yeah.

Drew Thomas  7:01  
Yeah, definitely cool. You see that anymore. Yeah, you know, and you know, so it brings up the, the question about, I guess, and we've talked about this in the past too, a little bit on some of these shows about, you know, this concept of what's valuable and what's not valuable. You know, like, you know, are you is, it more valuable to steal a supercar, right, or is it more valuable to steal the money to go buy a supercar? Yeah, true. Right. Yeah, yeah. And so you, you came up with a couple of things here. In after you, after you listened to me ramble about this, you actually found some verifiable examples that we could use to talk about how money has been portrayed differently.

Jeff Matevish  7:42  
Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  7:43  
Over the years, and how it has changed, right, right, over the time.

Jeff Matevish  7:46  
There was, there was like three main types of money, or three main ways that money is portrayed in movies over the years. Okay, one we, we just talked about was like the physical, like money bank robberies and train robberies. Yeah. Okay. Then we had, we had money like stocks and bonds and, and deception. You know.

Drew Thomas  8:14  
So, your Wall Street, Wall Street, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  8:17  
And then finally was your cyber, doing everything digitally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  8:20  
So, so yeah. Let's, let's go through some of this stuff. So, like, you, you, you, you, you pulled some titles here that I don't necessarily know.

Jeff Matevish  8:30  
No, I don't know all of them either. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  8:33  
I consider myself a movie buff. There are some here that I recognize and some that I don't. But we're going to, we're going to name them, and then for those of you that are better at movies than I am, you'll you might recognize it. For those of you that don't watch old movies, we're going to name some stuff from the 1970s and 80s, which to some of you is the late 1800s or 1900s. I can't believe that's, that's, that's been one of the things now that...

Jeff Matevish  8:57  
In this movie last night, yeah, they, they referenced one of the characters was wearing her mother's leather jacket, and she referenced it as vintage 90s.

Drew Thomas  9:07  
Man, that's, that's really rough. Yeah, I mean that's well, you know, okay, I'm not to get completely off topic here, but we're talking movies and time. The if you, if you go back and watch Back to the Future, which was filmed and, and set in, it was filmed in 19 it was set in 1985 but it was it was filmed I think in 85, 86 whatever okay came out in 86 but regardless he goes back from 85 to 1955 and the disparity between the way the town looks and how people dress and how people act and everything is just so crazy like you could. It was just such a completely different world, right?

Jeff Matevish  9:44  
Oh, everything, mannerisms. I mean, just everything. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  9:48  
But if you think about it, it's the same as if you did that same movie today and went back to 1995.

Jeff Matevish  9:55  
Wow. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  9:59  
So, you, if you remake if you did a remake of Back to the Future but said it based on today, you'd have to go back to 1995 for him to meet his parents. Wow, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  10:12  
Yeah, that's crazy.

Drew Thomas  10:13  
Yeah, and and honestly, I don't know that you. I mean, you would definitely see some differences. The 90s, the 90s had a vibe, but I would argue it might be the last decade where there was a vibe. I don't know that there's been a big change in the way that people dress or the way people act necessarily. At least not as an extreme difference. Yeah, from say like the early 2000s to today.

Jeff Matevish  10:35  
Yeah. Now, now people are going back to like the, the Jenko jeans and you know buying CD players because they were cool back then. Yeah, cassette players and, and stuff like that. But but yeah, you're right. There's not a major difference.

Drew Thomas  10:50  
Yeah, I you you may have hit on something I hear though. Maybe the difference isn't necessarily how people dress and act as much as how people interact with technology.

Jeff Matevish  10:58  
Could be, yeah.

Drew Thomas  10:59  
Which you know also speaks to money to a certain extent. I mean, you know, in the '90s, I was still largely carrying cash. I didn't have a debit card because they didn't really start coming out until like the mid to late '90s. Credit cards. I mean, I got one when I went to college, but before that, I didn't have a credit card or anything like that, so and even then I had one, so there was no online banking to speak of. You couldn't transfer money the way you can today. I mean, a lot of that has changed, you know, too. Yeah, you know, and I think maybe that speaks to why money looks so different if you go back and watch old movies. You know, you, you go back.

Jeff Matevish  11:38  
That's all you had.

Drew Thomas  11:39  
Yeah, yeah, you had physical cash, right? You know, the bad guy would show up with a briefcase or an attache case or something, and they would slam it on the ground on the, on the table and open it up, and there would just be these like blocks of bills inside of it, you know. Yeah, and that was how money was was exchanged between criminals. Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  11:58  
Yeah, or a big bag with a money sign on it, you know. Yeah, well, yeah, going back to the old stuff, you know.

Drew Thomas  12:03  
You know, go back and watch old like Warner Brothers cartoons from the '40s and '50s, or or even some Disney stuff, you know. And the bags were just these bags of coins and stuff, you know.

Jeff Matevish  12:14  
And your bandits had, you know, you know, face mask and like I said, the, the white and black, you know, like prison stripes, prison stripes, and everything, and now you're, you're, you know, your criminal in movies is sitting behind a laptop and is stealing people's money. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  12:31  
I mean that's absolutely true. You know, one of the, one of the other things. Well, before we get too, before we get too deep into like the 80s and 90s. Let's, let's make sure we, we didn't miss anything here. So, you, you were talking about cash being physical, required requiring physical theft, and like that was the other thing because cash was physical, you literally had to steal the money. You couldn't, you couldn't steal it really much of any other way. I mean, I guess you could do wire transfers and stuff, but for a lot of people in watching a movie in the '60s and '70s, even though wire transfers existed, I think for most people that was sort of an abstract concept. Unless you were rich, yeah, you weren't sending a lot of money that way, yeah, yeah. So.

Jeff Matevish  13:15  
I mean, and, and we've talked about it before. Banks don't carry a lot of cash or don't have a lot of cash on hand. Most of it's digital now, so yeah. This was weird googling these kind of questions that you know, want to make sure I didn't get in you know any trouble or anything. Yeah, really. How much money does a bank normally have? You know. Yeah. But I did find so today, small local branches usually only hold between 10 and $50,000 on hand in cash, in cash, in cash, right?

Drew Thomas  13:43  
Yeah, and that's crazy because you know, from a, from a regulatory standpoint, banks, you know, if I came in and I have, you know, $5,000 in my checking account or something like that, and I say I want my $5,000, like the bank has to be able to produce it, right? Right now.

Jeff Matevish  14:01  
Within, within a reasonable amount of time. Yes, yeah.

Drew Thomas  14:04  
Yeah. Within a reasonable amount of time, and largely they don't necessarily, I mean, I guess they can produce, they there's there is the possibility that the person could demand it in cash, but I think there comes a point where that becomes super, super unsafe. Yeah, you know, if I come in and say I want you know $40,000 in cash, I think that most banks, rightly so, would try to talk you into a cashier's check or something other than cash. Because walking out of a building with that amount of money puts you right back into the 1960s, where somebody can literally come and rob you and take your cash, and that's really, really dangerous.

Jeff Matevish  14:42  
On a different subject, but yet a casino will let you do that, no problem.

Drew Thomas  14:46  
That's true. I guess they figured there's no, there's, there's limited liability if you walk around with that much cash on you. But so yeah, I mean, and, and stealing that stealing cash, or stealing money that way, whether it was you know, I, I remember watching, I brought this up. I don't think it's in this, this list of stuff here, but the Italian Job. Yeah, there was a there was a movie called The Italian Job, which came out I think in the 60s or 70s, and then it was remade again in the 90s with Mark Wahlberg and a couple of people like that. And I didn't ever watch the original, although I am a vintage movie buff, I never saw that one. But I the, the one from the '90s was fantastic. I have it in my collection, and but in order to they were, they were stealing gold bars out of a, out of somebody's house. Okay, which again tells you like you know here are people that their wealth is tied up in physical gold bars in their home rather than whatever, and they had to, they had to acquire all these things. They had to you know they had to get past physical security barriers, and they had to they had to have cars that could fit in a sewer. So, they got these like Mini Coopers and stuff to be able to drive through the sewer system, and they had to you know they had to have somebody that could hack into the traffic light system, like that was the hacking. The hacking was hacking into the traffic light system to be able to guide the armored car that they were trying to steal from to where they needed it to be on the street, so they could cut a hole in the street and drop the armored car through it. Where now they would just hack the bank account. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean.

Jeff Matevish  16:21  
Username, password. Yeah, yeah. That's another common misconception that, that Hollywood gets wrong too. It's like the, the gold bar thing. Like you know, a robber steals you know a, a bunch of gold bars and they, they you know put them in a bag and they throw them over their shoulder. You know, not realizing that. Yeah, good luck with that. Yeah, that that amount of gold. You know, you'd never be able to move that amount of gold.

Drew Thomas  16:44  
Yeah, yeah. You're absolutely right. That's heavy stuff. I mean, unless you are Mr. Universe. Yeah, you're, you're not walking around with that much gold just slung over your back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy. So, so you get from this, this, this era of movies and TV that sort of focuses on stealing physical cash or gold bars or silver and tangible stuff to this era of, and let's just face it, it was the '80s and the '80s were all about money and wealth and power and all this kind of stuff. You don't remember that, but they were.

Jeff Matevish  17:19  
Yeah, I've read about it, you know. You know, saw a movie once.

Drew Thomas  17:23  
You're technically born in the 1900s, so you're...

Jeff Matevish  17:25  
Yeah, it was yeah the late 1900s.

Drew Thomas  17:27  
Yeah, you're a late 1900s kid. So, anyway, but um, but yeah, you have the Wolf of well, you have Wall Street, right? Which was probably the most well known sort of movie about just wealth and excess, and just getting money at any cost, right? You had a couple of other examples too of movies like that, that were, that were less about the tangible, physical stealing of money and more about sort of making money in a, in a in the stock market and things like that.

Jeff Matevish  18:00  
Boiler Room was another one. Billions was a TV show. Boiler Room, I had never seen it, but Seth Davis is a college dropout running an illegal casino from his rented apartment, driven by his domineering father, disapproval at his illegitimate existence, and his desire for serious wealth. Seth suddenly finds himself seduced by the opportunity to interview as a trainee stockbroker from a recently acquired Greg. His name is just Greg. Sure, Greg. Yeah, but, but a very similar yeah to the Wolf of Wall Street. You know, yeah. What you know, you know what, what's the line between you know like legal and illegal, and in in the terms. Well, that's the thing. Trying to manipulate people into buying stocks and, and stuff like that. You know.

Drew Thomas  18:49  
Yeah, that's, that's exactly it. So, it, it goes from trying to literally steal cash or gold or whatever from a person, right? And it, it sort of switches into this idea of reflecting society's fear, or, or and, and sometimes legitimate concern, right, of these, these Wall Street power mongers that are sort of tricking you into buying things that make them money but don't really make you money. The idea of you know you know calling people on the phone and, and telling them that there's this hot stock tip or something like that, and convincing them that they have to buy this stuff right now. And in in reality, the stock is the next thing to worthless. But you, as the stock trader, are making money on this, right? And, and making billions of dollars and, and bilking these people out of their money in order to try. So, again, you're not stealing directly from them, but it's, it's, it's the beginning of this, I think reflection of the change between directly stealing tangible money from somebody and using that person to make money. That shouldn't belong to you. If that, if that.

Jeff Matevish  20:04  
Yeah, that's security fraud is what that yeah that term is. Yes.

Drew Thomas  20:07  
Yeah, yeah. So, so you know, and that's where I think a lot of you know, we, we talked during one of our more recent episodes with Dave Finui, who is a Senior Vice President in or Executive Vice President in our Trust division, and a lot of trust companies or divisions like that within bank they are fiduciaries. So, the idea is that they only make money if they make trades and manage your money in a way that is beneficial to you. Yes.

Jeff Matevish  20:41  
Yes, first and foremost, yeah, you and in the best interest, right.

Drew Thomas  20:44  
Yeah. So, you know, and that's a lot of where that concept of fiduciaries, I think, really took off. The idea that hey, yeah, yes, we deal with the stock market, right? Just like these, the just like you know Martin Sheen, you know, or whatever. But, but in but in reality, like we're, we're doing it. We're the good guys. Like we're, we're working in your best interest, and that's how we make money. We don't tell you to buy a bunch of stock that's worthless and make money off of you, and then leave you out hanging to dry. Yeah, right. So, and then you start to see the you know the, the, the switch or the, the, the I don't want to say the switch, but the progression, I guess, into this digital revolution, right? This idea that you know people can steal money or get money from you digitally, right? And the way that money is portrayed in TV and movies changes again.

Jeff Matevish  21:38  
Yep, all digital. Yes, you know. Yeah, Mr. Robot was one of the examples that, that they had mentioned that I that I had found, and okay, that was a good one. I only saw a few episodes of that one, but same thing. It was you know a vigilante, you know, and that's another thing. You know, as we go from, from money to you know like physical money to manipulation to this this cyber-crime, we, we see a shift in how the, the person is portrayed. Like the, the, the physical money robber was always like the bad guy. Yeah. Now, now we're shifting to now you have a vigilante who's stealing money you know digitally for the good or to, to get back at yeah, yeah at this corporation. That's what this this Mr. Robot was. This this hacker that that was working for this company is now working against this company to try to, to shut this company down because he doesn't believe that it's a you know he's it's a good company.

Drew Thomas  22:33  
Gotcha. Yeah, it it sort of reminds you of the story of oh man, now I'm going to, now I'm going to blank, and you're going to have to edit. So, so Catch Me If You Can is the story of Frank Abagnale. Now it has since been a bit debunked, not really debunked, but he was exact, the story is about a guy who basically cons his way into all these different jobs, right? Okay, and kites checks all over the country. Oh, okay, okay, and all this kind of stuff, and then ends up becoming essentially a consultant for the FBI to go against all these to figure out who's doing it, okay, how to fight these things, right, now.

Jeff Matevish  23:22  
I think it's very common. Like ex, ex-hackers, you know, working, like changing sides and working for the government or FBI or whoever.

Drew Thomas  23:30  
Yeah, yeah, being white-hat hackers instead of you know. But, but yeah, I guess you could argue that this was sort of like the precursor to that idea. This was a guy that was not a physical, like you know, computer hacker. This guy was hacking the money monetary system in a more traditional way, and you know, it's kind of funny that you know the guy. I don't know how they didn't realize this, but that the guy that conned his way into all these different jobs kind of conned the people making the movie into believing that he had done a few things that he hadn't actually done. Okay, or, or he had ,or he had sort of expanded what had happened, you know, beyond what had actually happened. You know, sort of build on the core of truth. But regardless, it was a fascinating movie, and, and, and he, he does do talks now, and, and has developed some of the leading sort of anti-fraud check devices that are on checks. You know, we, we said about you know the pens, yeah, yeah, and what pen to use, yeah, yeah, and when we said about like the practicing safe checks, you know, and the idea of like check washing and all that kind of stuff, like he invented a lot of that stuff as a, as a scammer, right? You know, and, and figured out how the MICR lines worked and how checks were moved across the country and how long it would take for a check to actually arrive at the bank that it was supposed to arrive in. And.

Jeff Matevish  24:51  
Yeah, you got to be pretty smart to be able to, I mean, now it's nearly impossible, but yeah, back then you had to be smart back then to even figure it out. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  24:58  
You know, but there again, you know, their money. Money is being shown in a way that you know there it was focusing mostly on the checks and stuff like that. You know.

Jeff Matevish  25:07  
And it was exploiting like the, the, the present day's vulnerabilities. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  25:12  
Right, yeah. And you know, there are some movies that I think most people probably still watch that are from an era where if, if you if you stop to think about it and you kind of don't get lost in the movie itself, and one example is do you, do you watch a lot of people watch Christmas Vacation every year National Lampoon's Christmas yeah, yeah, yeah it's, it's a staple,yeah right, right of of the Christmas season.

Jeff Matevish  25:35  
Right just like Harry Potter and Die Hard right?

Drew Thomas  25:38  
Yeah right you know. Die Hard is a Christmas movie. I will, I will die on that hill.

Jeff Matevish  25:43  
There is snow in it. You're right. You're right.

Drew Thomas  25:47  
But no, the, the, the scene when they're, when it's sort of a montage scene when they go shopping, and there's the scene where you know the credit card goes into the credit card thing, and then goes and comes every, like that was how every credit card transaction was made in the '80s and '90s, and now it's just you know sort of just like tap to pay, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  26:09  
Or use your phone or you know anything, yeah, right, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  26:11  
But I would I kind of try to imagine sometimes what some of these montages of like '80s movies would look like if you were doing the same thing but with today's technology. Oh yeah, yeah. Instead of this like big credit card machine coming out and, and going over and making a physical carbon imprint of your credit card on the receipt and then having you sign it like what it would look like yeah it's kind of interesting.

Jeff Matevish  26:33  
It would be different yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  26:34  
So, yeah so one of the other things I was thinking about too, because as we get into the, the sort of digitization of money, was ATMs and, and things like that. Like you, you don't have physical cash for a lot of these people on TV and movies in like the 80 in like the 90s and like getting into the 2000s. You had physical money. It's you did, yeah, yeah. But a lot of times it ended up being sort of like quasi digital. So, you had you oh I lost my credit card, or I lost my ATM card or, or something like that. It wasn't so much that I don't have cash on me, okay, it was I don't have a credit card. Oh yeah, right, or I don't have my debit card or something like that. And the, the one example that, that I said to you earlier, I'm going to bring up. Even though somebody who happens to be on camera at the moment doesn't watch Friends or never.

Jeff Matevish  27:28  
I know we can't be friends because of Friends. I've heard the joke before.

Drew Thomas  27:34  
To be fair, there are a lot of people out there that think that Friends now, in retrospect, is not the nicest show.

Jeff Matevish  27:41  
I never got, I just never got into it. Yeah, yeah. I think I've watched maybe one episode, and I was probably like eight.

Drew Thomas  27:48  
Okay, well then, yeah, that explains. I mean, you have you cannot identify with a bunch of 20 somethings when you're 8 years old.

Jeff Matevish  27:53  
Now it might be different, so maybe I'll watch Friends.

Drew Thomas  27:55  
Fair, but there's an episode, I believe it's in the first season where Chandler gets trapped in an ATM vestibule with a, a popular Victoria's Secret model of the day. Okay, right, and because there's a blackout in New York, so they're both in this ATM vestibule, and then the, the door locks.

Video Clip  28:25  
Oh great! This is just...

Drew Thomas  28:34  
When I started telling you the story, you said

Jeff Matevish  28:36  
I had never, I never seen one of these. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Drew Thomas  28:39  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  28:40  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  28:40  
So, you know, to me, ATM vestibules are just a thing that used to exist. There used to be this physical space that was either attached to the bank and then sort of like walled off, usually with windows at least on one or two of the sides. Sometimes they were standalone, glassed-in areas where the ATM...

Jeff Matevish  29:00  
Like a phone booth type thing, another antiquated thing.

Drew Thomas  29:02  
Kind of like, like an oversized phone booth, yeah, with a, with a locking door.

Jeff Matevish  29:06  
Okay.

Drew Thomas  29:07  
So, that when you used the ATM, you had privacy and security.

Jeff Matevish  29:10  
Okay.

Drew Thomas  29:11  
Right? So, you had to, you know, and a lot of times you had to have like some sort of like you used your ATM to like get a pass card to get into the ATM vestibule.

Jeff Matevish  29:17  
Yeah, so I wonder why they don't have that now. I mean, it's still a security risk. I mean, I yeah, most people, you know, a lot of people don't use ATMs as much anymore. But.

Drew Thomas  29:26  
I guess there's that. I think there's also this idea that you know, like they've become so commonplace. Like back then, the idea was like, you know, you, if you were getting cash right from a teller, you wanted a certain amount of privacy. Like you were telling the teller at the teller line, like, hey, I want this much money. They were counting it out to you, right? Yeah. And so, we had this notion that you there was a certain level of privacy expected from that action. Okay. And I think that ATMs, in order to make people more comfortable with the idea of a machine doling out your money, I think a lot of banks sort of tried to give you that same feeling of privacy because they were sticking these ATMs in the middle of parking lots. Yeah, at times. Yeah, yeah. So, they wanted you to feel like you were safe and secure, and, and but they did, they took up a lot of space. Well, I mean, compared to today, where an ATM can live in a food court.

Jeff Matevish  30:18  
Yeah.

Drew Thomas  30:19  
You needed a lot more physical space to do ATM vestibules.

Jeff Matevish  30:22  
And you probably didn't have, I mean, I didn't use ATMs in the 90s. I wasn't old enough, but I couldn't imagine you had all of the same security features as you do now. I'm sure there was not like cameras and stuff like that. That.

Drew Thomas  30:35  
Probably not. And if they were, they were probably terrible.

Jeff Matevish  30:38  
Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  30:39  
You know, yeah. I mean that's it. Plus, like if you look at the, if you look at an ATM keypad from like back then, like the buttons were like this. Yeah, yeah. You could tell what everything. Yeah, like you could see your AT, you could see your PIN from a mile away. Yeah, true, true. So, yes.

Jeff Matevish  30:56  
No tap to pay or anything like that.

Drew Thomas  30:57  
No, no, no, nothing like that. Plus, I think to some degree, too, ATMs were so new to the operators that it took longer to do a transaction because you kind of had to feel your way through it and like learn how to do an ATM transaction. Where now it's sort of like old hat; everybody knows how to do that.

Jeff Matevish  31:14  
Yeah, even if different, different manufacturers, different banks, you, you kind of know exactly what the process is, regardless. Yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  31:21  
Yeah. So, um, so yeah, so I think I, I think it's definitely interesting when you start when you start looking back at old media and, and seeing just how it has changed and um particularly the way money has been portrayed and, and you know to the point of now you know you're seeing TV shows like we started out by saying that you know the, the, the, the, the theft is being done digitally, right, rather than physically. But now we're also starting to question: Is the money the most valuable thing, or, or is it your information?

Jeff Matevish  31:59  
Yeah, is your identity worth more than the money? Yeah. yeah, yeah. That's that's a big thing too. Identity theft in the movies. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  32:06  
And so it's like you know, why, why should I have to steal? You know, why should I bother stealing from you when I can just become you and get access to everything that you have?

Jeff Matevish  32:14  
Right, right. Yeah, I can make the money back. You know, I can't get my identity back. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  32:18  
I mean, that's I mean that's, that's scary.

Jeff Matevish  32:20  
Real fear yeah.

Drew Thomas  32:21  
You know, I would argue that I would potentially be, and I'm, I'm, I'm not going to hedge my bet. I'm going to honestly say I think I would be more upset losing my phone than I would be losing my wallet at this point.

Jeff Matevish  32:38  
Okay, why?

Drew Thomas  32:40  
Just because of the, the vast amount of information that's contained in my phone.

Jeff Matevish  32:45  
Okay.

Drew Thomas  32:46  
The fact that my, a lot of my MFA codes and everything like that are sent to that phone and things like that. Like I mean, if, if now my phone is protected and if yours isn't, why isn't it?

Jeff Matevish  32:59  
Shame on you.

Drew Thomas  33:00  
With a passcode, so I have to use Face ID or thumbprint or a physical pin code to get into it. You know, I mean, which everybody should be protected that way. But, but if somehow, some way, that were to be bypassed, the amount of information in my phone far surpasses the information that you can find in my wallet.

Jeff Matevish  33:19  
Yeah, true. I guess.

Drew Thomas  33:20  
In today's, in today's society.

Jeff Matevish  33:23  
I agree with you then. Yeah, yeah, I would hate to lose my phone then, yeah. I mean, I hate to lose my wallet. I mean, he's losing. I mean, I'm not.

Drew Thomas  33:29  
I'm not, yeah, I'm not advocating that people go out there and just throw their wallet in the river, but, but yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty crazy. So, so let's, let's spend just a little bit of time talking about what Hollywood sort of gets right about some of this stuff and what it doesn't. Okay. Because I think that much like a lot of these, these, these TV shows that show that oh like, like CSI was a big deal on this like where they say oh I, I'm going to do DNA testing and then it comes back an hour later and says, oh yeah, this person was in that, but like DNA testing takes a lot longer. It does not happen that fast, right?

Jeff Matevish  34:06  
When you look at the news and toxicology takes six to eight weeks or months or whatever it is, you know. Right?

Drew Thomas  34:11  
Yeah, you know that you just follow any real news story, and you know that this stuff doesn't happen that quickly. Yeah, you know. Now, you know, does it happen faster than maybe what we learn about in the public domain? I mean, maybe. Yeah. But I'm guessing it's still not one of those things where somebody can you know collect something at a crime scene and an hour later they have all the information about where this person lives. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, so what, what are some of the things that that Hollywood gets right about some of this stuff, and, and, and what does it get wrong?

Jeff Matevish  34:44  
What it gets right is social, social engineering is a real threat, and we've talked about that before, and we will again, and we will again, we will continue. Yes, yes. People are always getting manipulated. They're, they're always getting persuaded to, to act quickly. Human error often causes breaches. So, I mean, not always, it's not always the computer's fault that a breach happened.

Drew Thomas  35:11  
No, and as a matter of fact, some, some things that you read, some studies that you read suggest that upwards of 80% of online cyber-crime could be just wiped off the map if people would just change their password and not give it out, or use a strong password, or not be manipulated into giving their information away. Right, right.

Jeff Matevish  35:35  
Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Avoid the social engineering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And technology continually changes criminals' method, and we've seen that. We've just said we went from physical bank robberies to manipulating people to you know buying and selling stocks to for their own gain, and then to cyber-crimes. So, yeah, what's the next one?

Drew Thomas  35:55  
Yeah, and now, and now you could argue there might be a fourth one on the horizon. We're using AI to manipulate people and stuff too.

Jeff Matevish  36:01  
I mean, just like that movie that, that I just mentioned. Yeah, beginning of this. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  36:05  
Yeah, exactly. Yep. All right. So, what is it, so what else? What does it get wrong?

Jeff Matevish  36:08  
What does it get wrong? So, like you had mentioned with, with the, the crime scenes, hacks don't usually happen in seconds. Yeah. Though we can argue that you know AI would probably speed that up a little bit, but yeah, they, they, they don't happen as quickly as the movies make it, make it out to be.

Drew Thomas  36:25  
Yeah.

Jeff Matevish  36:26  
They don't give you instant access to everything. Yeah, you don't put in one password and, and you get it into you know the FBI's database.

Drew Thomas  36:36  
Well, that depends. There are people out there that use one password for everything, and they really shouldn't no, no yeah no, no they really shouldn't do that but some people do so yeah but, but yes I, I in principle I understand you're right yes can't yeah. I, I find that interesting because I, we like watching Tracker, Tracker it's, it's a it's a show on I think it's CBS it's on Sunday nights, but we usually stream it because I'm usually watching football. But, but it's a good show. It's got Justin, Justin Hartley in it, and he plays the lead. But he basically he, he tracks people down, and he's totally not a private eye. But it sure feels like a private eye type show, right? And you know, in most of these shows, there's usually some tech wizard in the background that this person uses because they're sort of the brawn of the, of the show, and then there's the tech wizard in the background that's you know that that's supplying them with information, right?

Jeff Matevish  37:35  
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  37:36  
And there are times in that show whenever I get taken out of the show a little bit because he will call his tech friend and be like, okay, well, I have a partial license plate on a, on a car, and you know, 45 seconds later, this guy is coming back and saying, oh, well, here's the car, here's the make, here's the model, here's where it was bought, here's where they live, here's where they live. Yeah, you know it's, it's a little, it's a little much. I mean, I'm not saying that you can't find that information online from people because you absolutely can. But the speed is, is what I get. Now I get that there's a contrivance. You know, the show is only 40 minutes long. Sure. So, you can't do things in real-time. But it does make it a little bit unrealistic, yeah. You know, especially because a lot of those shows also have some sort of, you know, time frame-esque plot device that you know, if I don't find this person within the next half an hour, they're going to die. Yeah, right. So, there's not even the sense of like, well, you know, I called this guy, and then a day later he got back to me, but we just cut out that middle part. Yeah, yeah. It's literally I'm on the phone with him, and he's giving me the information. Yeah. So, yeah. So, all right. So, anyway, continue. So.

Jeff Matevish  38:48  
Unrealistic visualization of cyber-crimes.

Drew Thomas  38:52  
Yeah. So, is that? So, I'm guessing that's the idea that you have some like black hooded guy just typing furiously away and looking at a bunch of random characters on the screen. Yes, and that's, that's not yes. Like that's where your real

Jeff Matevish  39:07  
hacker could be sitting at a table at McDonald's using the free Wi-Fi, and you know, yeah, that's your hacker.

Drew Thomas  39:13  
And, and I think there's something to be said for that because again, we're talking about how this stuff is portrayed in movies and TV, right? Yes, we like we said at the beginning of the episode, TV and movies and theater they reflect society, but society also learns from what they see, right? So, if you constantly watch TVs and movies and you believe that the bad guy, right, is the guy that's wearing all black with the prison shirt on, right? And I remember, you know, we had to be taught this stuff. I remember, I remember teachers and stuff teaching us this stuff when we were kids in elementary school. That like the bad guy wasn't always the guy that looked like on TV. He wasn't always wearing a ski mask. He wasn't always like you could have a bad guy that looked like your dad that pulled up and said, hey, your mom's been in an accident. I need you to get in the car. Right. Yep. So, we had to be taught that. Right. And it was because of what we saw on TV and, and, and movies.

Jeff Matevish  40:09  
Right. Right.

Drew Thomas  40:10  
Same thing with this. You know, I think there's a there's this sense that people have that oh well, as long as I'm not sitting next to somebody in a black hoodie that's furiously typing away at a laptop, I'm safe, yeah, yeah, you know, that's not really how, how it goes. Yeah, you know, you could be sitting next to somebody at Starbucks that is no offense to Starbucks, but at any cafe or something like that, that is doing something like that, you'd never know.

Jeff Matevish  40:34  
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the movies. It's the thrill factory. I mean, you, you have to, you have to do something like that. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  40:38  
Yeah, yeah. What about the banking perspective? What do we have there? That's you know, what, what is what does it get, what does it get right about some of this stuff? Like, I think is strong, strong security controls. I think are, are real. You know, most banks have strong security controls as long as you opt into them. MFA, multi-factor authentication, but sometimes in the interest of storyline, that kind of stuff gets sort of swept under the rug too. Like, oh, I logged into my online banking, but I didn't have to wait for my PIN code to come and then key that in separately, and you know all that kind of stuff. You know, yeah, and, and sometimes you know that, that shows like you know these hackers like you know you watch these TV shows that oh well now that I have this guy's partial license plate I also can see that he spent money at wherever because that gave me access like you said universal access right so now I have access to his bank accounts too like it doesn't work that way. You know somewhere, somewhere out there, there's this guy that's getting a pin code sent to his phone, and going, why am I, why am I getting a pin code to my phone? Because somebody's trying to hack into my bank accounts, right? You know, so yeah, even though they're the good guys, they're still yeah.

Jeff Matevish  41:54  
And, and Hollywood got fraud monitoring and cybersecurity teams right. So, banks do have a fraud department, and they're, they're constantly looking for any abnormalities in your transactions, and they're letting you know, hey, this could be fraud. Is you know, if you get a phone call from your bank, remember call the bank back and make sure that what they're saying is legitimate. Yeah, you know, but there are people looking after your best interest.

Drew Thomas  42:18  
Yeah, yeah, and call the bank back from a number that you already know, or that you find on their legitimate website, don't, don't call the number that's been in an email, or yeah, or hit redial, redial or something like that. Make sure that it's the right contact information.

Jeff Matevish  42:33  
Yeah, but there is there are there are teams looking out for you. Yes.

Drew Thomas  42:36  
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So, all right. So, you going to watch any more horror movies? We are coming up on Halloween here soon, at least according to when we're recording this. Anyway, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  42:45  
Yeah, yeah. This is um, this is my time of year. Um, my wife um from, from like October 1 till, till after Halloween is um it's like Michael Myers and Friday the 13th and stuff like that. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Drew Thomas  42:59  
So I remember watching Jason X, and I think that's the one.

Jeff Matevish  43:01  
Is that the one that ruined it for you?

Drew Thomas  43:03  
Yeah, that's the one that ruined it for me. That's the one where he's in space. Yeah, yeah, and he's just freely floating around outside the capsule, just perfectly fine murdering people.

Jeff Matevish  43:13  
Yeah, liquid nitrogen face smash. You know, yeah.

Drew Thomas  43:16  
Yeah. Is that Terminator Two? I think that was no. That was in. Oh, was it in that one too?

Jeff Matevish  43:21  
It was in that one too. Yeah. Okay.

Drew Thomas  43:22  
Yeah, I just remember Terminator Two was the one where he was like the liquid metal.

Jeff Matevish  43:26  
Oh yeah, no, no, no. This was Jason put the, put someone's face in liquid nitrogen and then smashed it. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  43:31  
Oh yeah, I do think I vaguely remember that.

Jeff Matevish  43:34  
Yeah, but so this is a we thrive during this this month in my house.

Drew Thomas  43:38  
So, you're not, so you so you're not the Hallmark movie household is what you're saying.

Jeff Matevish  43:42  
Well, we are too. Yeah, we do Hallmark. Yeah, we, we have extremes. You know, Chucky to, to Hallmark. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Drew Thomas  43:48  
So, yeah, you go from, from, from Chucky to watching any number of...

Jeff Matevish  43:54  
Love story, and they all they're all the same. Yeah. Some, some, some guy comes home for, for Christmas and falls in love with someone he knew in high school that never you know never moved away, or there's a dog involved, or snowed in, they can't leave, can't go back home to my family.

Drew Thomas  44:11  
And they fall in love in like a day or two. Yeah, yeah, you know. Hey, to be fair, sometimes the plot the, the, the plot is different. Sometimes the woman comes home. That's true, and finds the brawny locksmith slash lumberjack. As long as I say, yeah.

Jeff Matevish  44:28  
It's always some good-looking lumberjack, you know, handyman, you know, yeah.

Drew Thomas  44:32  
You know, who's secretly rich. Yeah, somehow, you know, he has a, he has a, he has a tiny little wood making shop off of Main Street, and she thinks that he's like a poor pauper, but he's actually got millions of dollars because he invented some new birdhouse or something. All right, that's enough. That's good stuff. All right.

Jeff Matevish  44:58  
This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts, with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics, as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended and should not be understood or interpreted to be financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. Thank you for listening. Please check out our full library of episodes, which can be found on the Ameriserv.com website. You can also download or stream the podcast from your favorite podcast app.