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Forbes
04-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
10 Careers AI Will Replace In The Next 5 Years
Experts reveal which jobs AI will and won't replace by 2030 and how you can pivot if your job is on ... More the chopping block. CEOs are already adjusting their hiring strategies as McKinsey projects that 30% of U.S. work hours will be automated by 2030. What skills do you lack? And what skills do you have that will sustain your career until 2030? There are 10 careers AI will replace, along with four skills AI won't replace. But if you find your job on the chopping block, learn how you can pivot and make yourself indispensable in the next five years. 10 Careers AI Will Replace By 2030 Statistics show that AI will replace 300 million jobs, and 41% of companies worldwide plan to reduce their workforce by 2030. The McKinsey Report reveals that acceleration of generative AI is expected to automate an additional eight percent of American workers' work hours across all economic sectors, increasing the overall percentage of automated work hours to around 30%. LiveCareerUK released its Jobs AI Will Replace Report, outlining the 10 careers AI is most likely to replace by 2030. If your job is on the list of those disappearing, the experts suggest a direction for you to pivot 1. Data Entry Clerks. How to pivot: "Re-skill in data analysis or data management Learn Excel, SQL, or Python to shift into roles that interpret and act on data, not just record it." 2. Telemarketers. How to pivot: "Re-skill in digital marketing or customer success Build skills in CRM tools, social media engagement and sales strategy to stay valuable in a human-centered sales role." 3. Basic Customer Service Representatives. How to pivot: "Re-skill in technical support or customer success. Focus on more complex problem-solving roles that require empathy, expertise, and relationship-building.' 4. Retail Cashiers. How to pivot: 'Re-skill in retail management or supply chain operations. Move into areas that require strategic thinking, leadership, or technical know-how in the retail ecosystem.' 5. Proofreaders and Copy Editors. How to pivot: 'Re-skill in content strategy or digital marketing. Leverage your writing instincts in higher-order tasks like brand storytelling, SEO and campaign planning.' 6. Paralegals and Legal Assistants. How to pivot: 'Re-skill in legal tech, compliance or litigation support. Apply your legal knowledge in tech-forward fields that blend law with AI and automation tools.' 7. Bookkeepers. How to pivot: "Re-skill in financial analysis or advisory roles Move beyond basic number-crunching to deliver strategic insights that businesses can act on.'" 8. Fast Food and Restaurant Front-line Workers. How to Pivot: 'Re-skill in culinary innovation or restaurant management. Creativity, leadership and operations knowledge will always be in demand, even if robots flip the burgers.' 9. Warehouse Workers. How to pivot: 'Re-skill in logistics coordination or warehouse technology roles. Learn to operate, oversee, or improve the systems that are replacing repetitive labor.' 10. Entry-Level Market Research Analysts. How to pivot: 'Re-skill in business analytics or data storytelling. Go beyond data collection by learning to turn insights into decisions with tools like Tableau, Power BI or Python.' A Final Takeaway On 10 Careers AI Will Replace As AI reshapes the workforce, there are smart ways to future-proof your career if it's threatened. One consolation is that the most in-demand skills will be human skills that AI simply can't replicate, not technical ones. SHL's chief science officer, Sara Gutierrez, believes skills that are harder to automate such as strategic thinking, creativity, acting ethically and the ability to deliver human-tech collaboration, matter most. 'We're seeing a sharp rise in demand for the ability to critically evaluate and analyze information, generate new ideas and to develop innovative approaches to problems, Gutierrez says. "These are the capabilities that underpin effective use of AI tools and distinguish those who can leverage technology from those who are simply exposed to it. Employees who can effectively use generative AI tools, interpret data outputs and integrate those insights into their workflows are quickly becoming indispensable.' Gutierrez explains that candidates can better demonstrate these skills by going beyond listing skills and showing them in the context of real work. 'That might mean highlighting projects where they had used AI tools to solve business problems or sharing how they adapted during an organizational change,' She points out. "Creating content (e.g., writing, posting, presenting) about how they're learning and applying emerging tools can be especially compelling.' Jon Hinkle, CEO of TRG Datacenters identifies four skills employers will prize most in the coming years that AI can't replace. 1. Conflict Resolution: AI Can't Build Trust. 'Disagreements happen everywhere—between teams, departments, even with clients,' Hinkle says. 'We look for people who know how to de-escalate situations, stay calm under pressure, and find common ground. That soft skill prevents small issues from turning into costly ones." 2. Adaptability: Learning Is the New Experience. 'The difference is how quickly they learn and adapt when something changes—which is almost weekly now.' 3. Leadership: AI Can't Inspire People. Hinkle explains that even with the best tools, people still want to feel connected to a mission. 'A good leader can explain the why, give clear direction, and motivate others when things are uncertain or chaotic. That kind of leadership builds loyalty and performance." 4. Systems Thinking: Connecting the Dots Is a Human Skill. 'Plenty of tools can run an analysis, but very few people can look at the output and say, 'Here's how this impacts our marketing, support, and ops all at once,'' Hinkle insists. 'That big-picture view is what helps us make decisions that actually work." Atalia Horenshtien, head of AI practice at Customertimes, told me by email that if you're concerned that AI will take your job, focus on what AI can't do . . .yet. 'AI will likely replace tasks, not whole jobs, especially those rooted in repetition,' according to Horenshtien. 'What it still can't replicate well: original thinking, emotional intelligence, ethical judgment and complex decision-making. If your role leans heavily on these, double down. If not, it's time to pivot.' To outsmart AI threats to your career, identify the job skills AI will and won't replace. If you find your job to be one of the 10 careers AI will replace, start thinking now how you can pivot so by 2030 you're still indispensable in a job that machines can't mimic.
National Post
23-06-2025
- Business
- National Post
Swindling salesman convicted in the U.S. for a large Toronto investment fraud
Article content Another swindling salesman who was ripping people off in a large Toronto investment fraud has been sent to prison in the United States, nearly ending prosecutions against a rapacious band of coloured diamond conmen. Article content Edward Rosenberg used the alias Ed Rose when working the phones in a telemarketing boiler room on Toronto's Finch Avenue West. The salesmen there for Paragon International Wealth Management, Inc. defrauded more than $21 million from hundreds of victims in Canada and the United States. Article content Details on the great Paragon swindle and the crooked life of one of its notorious Toronto fraudsters, Jack Kronis, is the focus of a long investigative feature in National Post published last summer, called Jack of Diamonds. Article content Article content Rosenberg was unaware he was wanted in the United States and was surprised when he was arrested at the border in Buffalo, said Mitchell Worsoff, his Toronto lawyer. U.S. authorities had not made any move to arrest or extradite Rosenberg over the years while he was secretly wanted. Rosenberg was among those originally charged with fraud by Toronto police in 2018 for Paragon's diamond swindles. Court heard that it stretched from 2013 until a Toronto police raid in 2018. Article content Charges against the men were later dropped in Ontario when the case was instead turned over to the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute, because many of the victims were Americans. Article content Article content While U.S. prosecutors proceeded with indictments against James Gagliardini, Michael Shumak, Jack Kronis, and Antonio Palazzolo — all Toronto area men who had agreed to plead guilty — Rosenberg was not prepared plead guilty to the allegations. After a voluntary interview with the FBI in Cleveland in 2022, Rosenberg was allowed to return to Canada without charge or restriction. Article content Article content The other Paragon men were told to surrender to U.S. authorities, which they did. Article content Nobody knew that another indictment was secretly filed under seal against Rosenberg and another man in November 2022. Article content At Rosenberg's next court appearance, his U.S. lawyer told the judge that Rosenberg was looking to resolve his case quickly. In courtrooms, that's usually code for negotiating a plea deal and that was confirmed in April when Rosenberg changed his plea. He pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Here's what readers had to say about incessant robocalls, robotexts and scams
Columnist James E. Causey May 31 wrote about his frustration with robocalls, robotexts and frequent scam calls. We asked readers to share their experiences and advice for coping. The most colorful comment came from Alan Mark of Watertown who advised: "I use a pocket-size air horn to send them away. It works…" Thanks to everyone who sent a comment. Here they are: No financial loss on this end, but yes frustration. I no longer answer any calls on my cell or landline; if it's important, caller must leave a message. That gives me pause because as a nonprofit founder, I receive calls from practitioners, researchers, industry connects, or patients in high anxiety. Why haven't the powers that be outlawed robocalls? My husband likes to play with them, leading them on through extended untruthful conversation. I keep telling him that just adds his name to more lists as reachable. In my opinion, the national Do Not Call Registry list is far less than a functional system. This issue should be addressed by government restrictions. I don't care if it's state or federal, someone please fix this! Sherrie Palm, Mukwonago I have fun with telemarketers. Whatever they tell me they're selling, I tell them that is exactly what I do for a living. I tell them I'll buy their product if they buy mine. They hang up on me! Jim Labradori, Oconomowoc I never answer phone calls of numbers that I don't recognize. If it's someone, or something important they will leave a voicemail. Speaking of voicemail. If I get a call identified as "potential spam," I answer and hit mute. The automated dialer on the other end will hang-up after 5 to 30 seconds. This stops the automated caller from leaving an unwanted voicemail that I have to listen to and delete. I reply "stop" to unwanted texts and this seems to have lessened the amount that I receive. David Mancl, West Allis I recommend every person listen to the podcast :The Perfect Scam" by AARP. It has been available since about 2019. The episodes are about 30 minutes each and feature real people who have fallen prey to scams. They detail just about every kind of typical scam people encounter, from old school romance scams, to calls from loved ones who say they're in trouble, to phony computer issues, or bank/government notices, to the ones you mentioned with the phony house sales, etc. Most were phone or email during COVID-19 times, but as the years go by, they become more and more geared toward texts. also, AARP websites provide lots of info about the same. They are very concerned with elder abuse and scams, which cause heartache and loss of entire savings. When my late husband was still alive, he got a call from a guy who said he had my (step) daughter in custody after an 'accident.' They demanded money to release her. I told him it was a scam, but he couldn't reach her on my phone, I talked him into going to the police department, and they reassured us it was a common scam. We finally got ahold of our stepdaughter. She had her phone off at work. The police told us to hang up whenever we get such a call, not to even be polite. Then call the person allegedly involved. People get rattled and do foolish things because the scammers are relentless. 'If only' is a phrase of regret from people who don't pause to take a breather. Anyone can get sucked into scams. AI is going to make it even harder to discern what is real. Nancy Huber, New Berlin I just no longer answer the telephone (both landline and cell) unless I recognize the number or the name. I let everything else go to message. If it's a legitimate call they will leave me a legitimate message. Text I just never respond too. Perry Holzman, Two Rivers Several years ago I subscribed to a service called RoboKiller. For less than $100 per year, it intercepts every call placed to my cell phone number. As a result, zero robocalls get through to me. Non-robo callers can leave a message. Once I call a number back, the caller gets through to me thereafter. And the people I call frequently get through when they call me. Being free from receiving robocalls has been liberating. As a 'Senior citizen' at 75, I'm in the group of people most targeted by scammers. It seems odd in 2025 that the cell phone companies and our federal government can't figure out a solution to this plague. Peter Christianson, Pewaukee My new phone system allows me to block the phone number being used by the caller. After using it for a "possible spam call" I realized I had blocked the number of some friends. So I deleted all blocked numbers and started over, listening to each call before blocking. In the past three weeks, I have received over 50 spam calls that I have blocked. This is ridiculous. Whatever happened to the no call list? Leon E Burzynski, Waukesha I also get many calls and and texts asking if I want to sell my home. They know my address, which is creepy. I started replying no, but I might want to buy your home and ask them for their address. This usually results in stunned silence and ends the conversation rather quickly. Steve Stein, Oak Creek Replying STOP does not do any good because I feel most of the callers (robo or not) get their information from a third party and the third party does not get the STOP message. It's time laws are passed to more severely penalize those who call numbers on the do not call lists. It also seems to me that with all the great technology this country has, it could be used to block calls that emanate from the same general source, that's not a verifiable source. Lastly, it's time for do not call lists apply to political action calls. Joseph Streator, Oconomowoc Here are some tips to get your views shared with your friends, family, neighbors and across our state: Please include your name, street address and daytime phone. Generally, we limit letters to 200 words. Cite sources of where you found information or the article that prompted your letter. Be civil and constructive, especially when criticizing. Avoid ad hominem attacks, take issue with a position, not a person. We cannot acknowledge receipt of submissions. We don't publish poetry, anonymous or open letters. Each writer is limited to one published letter every two months. All letters are subject to editing. Write: Letters to the editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 330 E. Kilbourn Avenue, Suite 500, Milwaukee, WI, 53202. Fax: (414)-223-5444. E-mail: jsedit@ or submit using the form that can be found on the on the bottom of this page. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Readers share how they cope with flood of scam calls | Letters
Bloomberg
05-06-2025
- Health
- Bloomberg
Chasing Big Money With the Health-Care Hustlers of South Florida
Listen: Chasing Big Money With the Health-Care Hustlers of South Florida 00:00 36:33 ✕ 'Hi guys, it's Taylor Swift. Remember those stimulus checks? Well, there's a new thing going viral.' If you were poor and online last year, the ads were inescapable: flashing images of cash and Amazon boxes, narrated by AI-faked celebrities such as Swift, podcaster Joe Rogan or game-show host Steve Harvey. Each described a secretive government program that handed out money—all you had to do was ask. 'They're giving out $6,400 to anyone who makes the call,' intoned a fake Dr. Phil. 'If you don't act now, you're basically throwing away $6,400,' said a shirtless rendering of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate as he tossed something at the camera. 'That's just stupid.' Health-Care Hustlers This story is the second in a series about the shady side of health-care telemarketing. Part One: A Former TV Writer Found a Health-Care Loophole That Threatens to Blow Up Obamacare The ads were so pervasive that the administration of then-President Joe Biden had to deny the existence of a secret stimulus program. The government was offering valuable insurance subsidies, but not any kind of cash card and certainly not $6,400. That didn't stop the ads. The news outlet 404 Media was able to find hundreds of them, which had been viewed more than 195 million times on YouTube alone before being taken down. The ads were deceptive, but they weren't trying to con people out of their money—at least not directly. The goal was to sign them up for actual government-subsidized health-insurance plans, whether they wanted them or not. People responding to the ads were routed through a network of middlemen to call centers, many of them in South Florida. Telemarketers there would wave off questions about cash giveaways and sign up customers for health insurance instead, sometimes without their knowledge. The plans were free after federal subsidies, but they nevertheless upended many lives. Some people were switched off their old plan without their knowledge, finding out only when they were turned away by a doctor who didn't accept their new coverage. Others had to repay subsidies they hadn't actually qualified for. Hundreds of thousands of people complained to federal regulators that they'd been duped. One of the largest call centers selling the plans was outside Fort Lauderdale, in a three-story building flanked by palm trees and guarded by hulking men wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles. The Batmobile-esque motor trike belonging to the boss was often parked outside. Flush with cash, he commissioned a diamond-encrusted necklace with a saucer-size pendant in the shape of interlocking M's, for his nickname: Money Matt. Listen to The Big Take podcast: Telemarketers' New Trick to Sell Bare-Bones Health Plans His business, Enhance Health LLC, was in his telling one of the most prolific brokers of Affordable Care Act-compliant health plans in the country, collecting more than 1 million signups in 2023 alone. Money Matt, whose real name is Matt Herman, wasn't the operation's main financial backer, nickname notwithstanding. That was Bain Capital LP, the Boston-based private equity firm, which had staked him $75 million to create Enhance. As chief executive officer, Herman directed much of that cash to a former electronic dance music promoter turned online marketing guru, Brandon Bowsky, who connected him with internet advertisers. Together they turned the dull business of selling health insurance into a wild get-rich-quick scheme. The song opens with a woman panting suggestively over a staccato keyboard beat. 'Unnnhhhhhh, Money Matt,' she moans. Then Herman comes in. 'You know there's money in the building when I walk in this motherf---er,' he blusters. The track, Hate Us, was released in April 2023. Herman, then 37, had long wanted to be a hip-hop mogul, and with Enhance's profits he could at least act the part. He's tall and buff, with a beard so closely cropped it looks painted on. On Instagram, he amassed more than 1 million followers with photos of his jealousy-inducing lifestyle: his Bentley, Lamborghini and McLaren; his private jet flights, race-car team and parties with Paris Hilton, Rihanna and Fat Joe. He was also prone to posting hustle-bro aphorisms. In 2023 he shared a photo of himself wearing a suit and blue tie, shaking Biden's hand. Under it, he wrote, 'In order to become the 1%, you must do what the other 99% won't.' During a phone interview, Herman comes off much less brash. He defends his work at Enhance, saying that any misleading ads were the work of 'external vendors' and that he stopped doing business with anyone he caught making them. He says he reported some of those vendors to regulators but can't get into the details. 'I am proud of the work our team did to deliver real coverage to millions of Americans and to operate responsibly,' he adds later on in an email. 'Healthcare is a right and no American should be taken advantage of by predatory actors.' Before he hooked up with Bain Capital, Herman was just one of many hustlers trying to sell health insurance in South Florida. There are hundreds of call centers for this purpose around Fort Lauderdale alone. People who work there refer to them as 'rooms' and say they live up to the shady reputation that Florida has had at least since Charles Ponzi, on the lam after the demise of his namesake scheme, set up shop there a century ago and started pitching swampland as prime real estate to unsuspecting investors. The South Florida rooms tended to push what health-policy experts call junk insurance—cheaper, noncomprehensive coverage that often leaves customers stuck with giant bills. The sales pitch was generally that the insurance would cover almost anything, but in fact it covered almost nothing, according to Matt Panzer, a former salesman who worked early in his career at a room with Herman. Each sale generated hundreds of dollars in commissions. 'These terrible plans only benefit the agents,' Panzer says. 'Most of the people we sell to are broke. They're scraping together their last dollars, and it doesn't do anything for them.' By the time Herman was in his early 20s, he was in charge of his own sales team, according to two of its former salesmen. They say they worked out of a warehouse behind a strip club north of Miami, tricking customers by passing off junk insurance as major medical coverage. 'We're assassins, we're real killers on the phone,' recalls Gary McDonald, one of the former salesmen. 'It doesn't take us long to gain someone's trust.' McDonald says he dealt heroin and worked as a pimp before getting into insurance. He remembers spending lunch breaks with his sales colleagues at the strip club ('for their free wings'). But unlike others in the business, who'd blow their money on partying and drugs, McDonald says, Herman was focused solely on getting ahead. In a book McDonald self-published about his experiences in the industry, he describes Herman as possessing an almost preternatural confidence. 'I've rubbed shoulders with a lot of cocky, narcissistic, sure of themselves motherf---ers before, but nobody on the level of Matt Herman,' McDonald wrote in the book, Buyers Are Liars: The Untold Stories of Downlines. (A 'downline' in industry jargon is a smaller brokerage that sells on behalf of a larger one. Herman disputes McDonald's claims but declines to discuss the details. A lawyer for Enhance said in an email that McDonald 'seems more interested in producing shock value than verifiable and reliable substance.') After Donald Trump became president in 2017, his administration loosened insurance rules to make it easier to offer cheaper, skimpier plans, and the South Florida brokers seized the opportunity. A company called Health Insurance Innovations started selling junk insurance on a massive scale. Herman brokered deals between the company and Florida rooms. But in 2018 the Federal Trade Commission started investigating whether it was using deceptive practices, putting a chill on the entire junk insurance business. The company, which later changed its name to Benefytt Technologies Inc., eventually paid a $100 million fine to the FTC over what the regulator called its 'sham' insurance; one top broker was convicted of fraud last year and sentenced to 25 years in prison. (Herman wasn't an employee of Health Insurance Innovations and wasn't a defendant in either case. In the phone interview, he says it isn't fair to call the plans 'junk' and denies misleading anyone about them. Outside of open-enrollment periods, he says, the plans were the only option for many customers. 'It's not the greatest coverage, but it's better than having nothing.') By 2021, Herman was promoting a night club in Miami, still brokering deals between insurers and rooms, and looking for his next big thing. That's when Bain came along. 'All of life is manipulation. Social engineering is, like, the most basic thing as a human' Co-founded by Mitt Romney before he ran for office, Bain Capital is one of the most prestigious names in private equity, with $185 billion in assets. In 2021 it hired Matt Popoli, an executive with long experience in insurance finance, to raise a $1 billion fund for insurance investments. One area Popoli wanted Bain to get into was call centers, but the company needed an expert to facilitate the play. An executive at a Bain-owned company knew Herman and made introductions. Bain ended up buying Herman's brokerage business for $9 million, according to a person with knowledge of the deal who requested anonymity because the terms were private. But the company had bigger plans for Herman. It formed Enhance Health, put up the cash and named him CEO. The deal was the first for Popoli's insurance fund. The original plan was for Enhance to sell Medicare Advantage plans, which are privately managed alternatives to traditional insurance for retirees. The market was growing fast, and Enhance's pitch was that it could help customers find the best plans from a confusing array of options. Then it would earn money from the monthly commissions the insurers paid. 'We like the economics of the business,' Popoli told the Wall Street Journal in November 2021. (A spokeswoman for Bain and Popoli declined to comment for this story.) The Medicare Advantage strategy proved challenging. It was hard to find new customers, and many of the ones Enhance did land would get pitched by other telemarketers and switch plans soon after. The company was losing money, according to a former Enhance executive who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters. Luckily, Herman had a connection elsewhere in the South Florida insurance rooms who'd found plans that were easier to sell: Bowsky, the marketing expert. In his own telling, Bowsky had hit rock bottom when he discovered the South Florida rooms. The worst moment came around 2016. He was living in his Honda Civic, so broke that he stole a dinner roll from Walmart, he said on the Digital Social Hour, one of several podcasts on which he's told his life story. On the same episode, he recalled being raised in a family of salespeople and learning, by the time he was 3, how to manipulate others. 'All of life is manipulation,' Bowsky said. 'Social engineering is, like, the most basic thing as a human.' His peripatetic career honed his ability to persuade people to do things they probably shouldn't. On the podcasts, he described hustling for real money in online games such as RuneScape, recruiting models for BangBros porn videos and selling 'a ton of drugs.' Bowsky said he started selling health insurance after seeing Craigslist ads dangling pay as high as $4,000 a week. Florida state business records show that, like Herman, he distributed plans for Health Insurance Innovations. Bowsky recalled rising quickly through the ranks to become the manager of a large call center, then starting his own small one. He sold the room to Enhance not long after it was founded, helping Herman get his operation off the ground, according to a filing in an unrelated lawsuit. The room had been a sideline for Bowsky. By then he was focused on a different aspect of the call center business known as lead generation. Lead generators place ads on Google or social media promising to help people find the best health plan. Anyone who responds to the ad is redirected to a call center, which pays a fee to the lead generator for each prospect. Bowsky's company, Minerva Marketing, acted as a middleman, paying the people who placed the ads for each call they generated and reselling those prospects to call centers. Minerva also made some ads itself. In 2021, Bowsky realized lead generators were ignoring a big new market. That year, as part of its response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Biden administration had boosted subsidies for Obamacare, making plans free for potentially millions more people who hadn't previously been able to afford health insurance. The plans didn't pay big commissions, but rooms could still make money if they sold enough of them. All Bowsky had to do was find call centers to try it out. 'Shit, I gotta find somebody who likes to sell poor people,' he recounted in 2023 on a podcast called The Affiliate Marketing Show. He spent months working to persuade Florida room owners to give his new leads a shot. Most weren't interested, he said, but Herman and Enhance were game to try. How the deepfake ads entered the picture is unknown. No one Bloomberg Businessweek spoke with for this story could pinpoint their origins. They're generally posted by fly-by-night operators who leave little trace. One person who worked for a US-based company that made some, including ones depicting Biden and Steve Harvey, remembers the ads being prevalent by late 2022. The man, who requested anonymity because he still works in the business, says they were based on a kernel of truth—on average, people who receive Obamacare subsidies get a discount on their insurance of about $500 a month. But the promise of free insurance alone didn't generate clicks. Advertisers competed by making their ads more and more misleading. 'The only ads that make money are like, 'Hey you get a $6,400 flex card,'' the man says. He recalls selling leads to Bowsky's Minerva, which he says they resold to call centers. Bowsky didn't respond to questions for this story. But a lawsuit he filed against one advertiser says that the terms of Minerva's contract prohibited misleading ads and that the company cut off the advertiser after seeing a proposed ad touting a 'spending card.' And Bowsky has criticized competitors for using false advertising. 'You've got guys that are running crazy, aggressive, borderline free-money ads,' Bowsky said on The Affiliate Marketing Show in 2023. 'It drives my costs up, and it doesn't look good for the industry.' But a former sales manager who worked at a downline affiliated with Enhance that bought leads from Bowsky, and who requested anonymity to avoid angering others in the insurance business, says almost all the prospects his call center got from Minerva expected cash cards. In an internal Minerva group chat that was quoted in a separate lawsuit, an employee joked about it, saying, 'EVERYONE thinks they're getting money… Which they are… In the form of a subsidy… Lmao.' Eliakim Brown, a former sales agent at an Enhance-affiliated call center that also bought leads from Minerva, says prospects would regularly mention seeing ads featuring celebrities. 'I saw the ad with Andrew Tate. I want that money,' Brown recalls more than one client asking. Armed with Bowsky's leads, Enhance's call center was buzzing. Herman hired more agents, who needed more leads. 'We kind of scaled them to the moon,' Bowsky later recalled of Enhance. A former Enhance executive, who asked for anonymity because speaking about a former employer might affect job prospects, says that at times in 2022 the company's payments to Bowsky reached $1 million a week. By then, Enhance's office was packed with hundreds of agents fielding calls on headsets in their cubicles. More than a dozen former employees Businessweek interviewed said almost all the callers were looking for cash cards, not insurance. Top performers made as much as $5,000 a week. A barber who carried his clippers in a Louis Vuitton fanny pack would come by to cut Herman's hair. Less successful agents would smoke weed in the parking lot. As one of the former employees put it, 'Bro, it's Florida.' The armed guards were hired after an employee who'd been fired threatened to come back and shoot up the office, according to Herman. The guards ended up intercepting other disgruntled workers who really did try to bring in guns, he says. 'It became a common thing. We arrested several people with guns on-site.' One of the former agents, Andrew Lara, says fast money was what drew him to an Enhance downline. He was 21, still living with his mother and working at another call center, when he heard that top agents at Enhance could earn $3,000 a week. The gig seemed easy enough. All he had to do was answer the phone and sign up callers for health insurance. He soon noticed, though, that most of his callers were asking about some kind of stimulus program. One was particularly insistent, saying he'd seen an ad with Steve Harvey urging people to call and get the money. Scrolling through social media later that day, Lara saw the ad for himself. 'I've been telling you guys for months to claim this free $6,400,' Harvey appeared to say, wagging his finger. Lara could tell it was fake. He remembers asking his boss how to handle the issue and being told to deflect questions about free cash and sign up the callers for insurance instead. 'We weren't allowed to say they were going to get it, and we sure as hell weren't supposed to say they weren't,' Lara says, sipping a Sprite at a taqueria in Fort Lauderdale. 'You have to throw away a little bit of your morality.' Lara says he knew it wasn't right but felt conflicted because he wanted to earn money to help his family. He also made enough to buy his dream car, an Infiniti Q60, and move out of his mother's house. He convinced himself that even if customers were being misled, signing them up for free health care was harmless. 'The way I made my peace with it, some of these people don't have health insurance,' he says. 'At least I'm getting them something to help them.' Herman says the company trained agents to be honest, not deceptive, and those who were caught misleading customers were fired. 'We probably terminated more agents given how big we were than anybody in the country,' he says. Michael Faccibene, a spokesman for Enhance, says that the idea almost all callers wanted cash cards is 'demonstrably false' and that the company required anyone it bought leads from to conduct themselves ethically. Lead vendors caught violating the rules were blacklisted and reported to regulators, he adds. 'Our rigorous policies around enrollment have always required that lead vendors conduct themselves ethically in full compliance with the law,' Faccibene says. 'Whenever we received any incoming calls asking about cash cards, our policy was to ensure that callers understood they were enrolling in health insurance, and they were referred to the health-plan carriers who would have the accurate information about what they were offering.' The ads themselves, Faccibene points out, were made by companies Enhance didn't own or control. Former employees say the rules left room for maneuvering. Some insurers do in fact offer cash rewards of a few hundred dollars through wellness programs, though not cash cards worth thousands of dollars. Instead of setting callers straight, they recall, they would wave off questions about giving away money by saying the carrier would have the details. 'Half the time they didn't even know they were signing up for insurance,' says Jason Horton, who worked in Enhance's customer retention department and would field complaints from people who were angry they hadn't received cash cards. 'It's crazy to say, but it's true.' Some people who called Enhance already had ACA-compliant health insurance, which they would lose if they signed up for a new plan, even unknowingly. An unexpected change in coverage could leave customers unable to visit their preferred doctors or losing money they'd paid toward their old deductible. One woman from Georgia wrote in a 2024 complaint to the Better Business Bureau that she'd had to put off surgery to fix a detached retina after Enhance switched her to a plan with a deductible she couldn't afford. Another person from Georgia complained of signing up to get free cash and being surprised to find instead that their insurance policy had been switched. 'These guys are nothing but CROOKS who TRICK people,' the person wrote in their complaint. 'I was STUPID to believe them!!' To qualify for the subsidized insurance Enhance was pitching, callers generally had to earn at least $15,000 a year. Those who made less should have been referred to Medicaid, the government's insurance program for the poor. Instead, some former agents say, they would coach callers to put on their applications that they planned to earn at least $15,000 in the coming year and sign them up anyway. An unemployed caller would be asked if they thought they might be able to get a job. The agents say they didn't explain that, when the customers filed their tax returns for the year, they'd face penalties if they hadn't actually earned enough money to qualify for Obamacare subsidies. Enhance was structured so that many of its sales managers ran independent companies—the so-called downlines. Some worked in-house, others ran call centers nearby. But all were supervised by Enhance's quality-assurance department, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of the managers had come up in the Florida rooms. Others had more unusual résumés. One was a 6-foot-6, 330-pound former bodyguard. Another ran popular celebrity gossip accounts on social media. The jeweler who'd made Herman's Money Matt necklace, Johnny Dang, became a manager too. 'You want to make big money? Text me,' Dang said in a recruiting video he posted on Instagram, holding up a big chain outside Enhance's headquarters. (Dang didn't respond to requests for comment.) McDonald, the former employee who wrote about his experiences working for Herman, recalled in a sequel to Buyers Are Liars that he was shocked when he first arrived at Enhance's shiny new office and saw so many people from his old downline days there. 'All those crooked ass motherf—ers under one giant umbrella,' McDonald wrote in Buyers Are Liars 2: American Greed. He says Herman recruited him to run teams of agents who canvassed malls and went door to door in poor neighborhoods to sign up customers. McDonald remembers that his field agents would hand out $20 Subway or Burger King gift cards to encourage people to enroll. The plan worked so well that he was soon managing 150 people and making $10,000 a week, he says. He was fired after some of his field agents signed up homeless people who didn't actually earn enough to qualify, he says, adding that there's no way it could have been his fault, because he was in jail for driving under the influence when the problematic signups happened. McDonald wasn't the only one who'd been earning a large paycheck. Herman's terms were extremely favorable for the downline managers. One of them says a single agent could generate $6,000 a day in commissions. A former employee recalls a 19-year-old manager bragging about being able to afford private jet flights. The 23-year-old son of Bain's Popoli secured a downline, too, according to people with knowledge of the matter. 'It turned into literally thievery. South Florida can ruin anything' Enhance's growth helped Popoli finish raising Bain's $1 billion insurance fund. New Mexico's state employee pension fund committed $60 million in 2023, after officials were given a pitch that mentioned Enhance's success and said Bain was targeting 20% annualized returns. The California Public Employees' Retirement System put in $125 million. Bain also cited Enhance's hiring of minorities as an example of its investments in diverse communities, writing on its website that 'Enhance Health's rapid success has proven it's possible to do well by doing good.' Enhance's success was also allowing Herman to live out his dreams of celebrity, captured in a stream of posts on his @MoneyMatt305 Instagram feed. At the company's Christmas party in 2022, the rappers Jim Jones and Fabolous performed. A few months later, Herman sat next to Floyd Mayweather Jr. at a press conference promoting a fight with John Gotti III, the mob boss's grandson. (After Mayweather beat Gotti in a controversial decision, guards wearing Enhance hats got into an arena-clearing scuffle with Gotti's entourage.) In July 2023, after an Enhance-sponsored team won a Nascar race in Chicago, Herman celebrated in the winner's circle, then posted a photo of himself on a private jet. The next month he posed for a picture with Vice President Kamala Harris at a party to celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. And that November, Herman helped sponsor an awards show in Los Angeles. When he took the stage in a Louis Vuitton dinner jacket, the comedian Tiffany Haddish looked him up and down. 'You got a wife? Mmm hmm,' Haddish said. 'Lookin' like a snack!' Herman says the sponsorships weren't about self-aggrandizement. Instead, they were part of a plan to move away from paid digital marketing, which had proven to be rife with misleading ads, and find other ways to reach low-income consumers. 'The digital ads were the problem,' he says. 'You have to figure out other solutions.' A former Enhance executive says the company stopped doing business with Bowsky in late 2023, though not because of any misconduct. By then, Enhance wasn't Bowsky's only client. His reputation for marketing Affordable Care Act plans had grown to the point that other lead generators were calling him 'the King of ACA.' He began driving a $1 million blue-and-white Bugatti Veyron and bought a mansion in Las Vegas, decorating the exterior with a brightly colored, geometric mural. The Las Vegas Review-Journal said the house looked like 'a lava lamp had a baby with a box of crayons.' As word spread around South Florida about the money to be made in Obamacare, the competition for signups became increasingly cutthroat. Some brokers at other agencies realized they didn't need to talk to customers to earn a commission. The online portal they used allowed them to switch someone's insurance with only their name, address and birth date, according to several brokers familiar with the activity. Data released by federal regulators shows that policies were switched by the tens of thousands. 'It turned into literally thievery,' says one health-insurance call center executive who asked not to be identified because he does business with some of the people involved. 'South Florida can ruin anything.' When it came time for the annual open-enrollment period, Enhance fought back. Several former employees say the company assigned a team to go through the computer system, find customers who'd left and switch them back. Jimmy Fitzsimmons, who worked on that team for a few months, says his group switched thousands of people a day, without speaking to any of them. 'I kinda felt like from the beginning it was just wrong,' he says. 'I kept getting told and trained that these guys are already approved to be reenrolled this year.' (Enhance wrote in response to one complaint filed with regulators that the customers consented to being reenrolled when they originally signed up. The company didn't respond to questions about policy switching.) Agents across the country started noticing their customers disappearing, according to the trade group Health Agents for America. John Stanton, an independent insurance broker in Mesa, Arizona, says Enhance swapped the plans of several of his clients. When he wrote to the company to complain about one of the switches, Enhance wrote back saying it had spoken to the client. Stanton says the man was in a coma at the time. In January 2024 a man who'd had his policy switched by another brokerage, TrueCoverage LLC, contacted a team of class-action lawyers. The lawyers, Jason Doss and Jason Kellogg, had grown accustomed to tips like this after winning a $27.5 million settlement for people who'd allegedly been scammed by Health Insurance Innovations. They didn't think much of it at first. Then, a week or so later, an agent who'd recently left his job at TrueCoverage contacted them and said the company was involved in misconduct. Two leads suggested to Doss and Kellogg that something was up. They put out a press release saying they were investigating TrueCoverage for allegedly misleading consumers with deceptive ads that offered cash cards, and tips started rolling in. Some of them were about Enhance instead. (TrueCoverage didn't respond to a request for comment.) Some days, Doss recalls, he'd line up back-to-back meetings with agents on park benches or at Starbucks coffee shops around Fort Lauderdale. 'There are people who are tired of the unlawful conduct, who are good agents or good folks who happen to work in maybe a bad place,' he says. Several of them signed affidavits describing what they'd seen. That April, Doss and Kellogg sued Enhance, Herman, Bowsky and TrueCoverage, seeking damages on behalf of consumers who'd allegedly been deceived and insurance agents who'd allegedly had their clients stolen. They later added Bain Capital to the ranks of the defendants. One woman in Texas alleged in the lawsuit that she'd been switched at least 22 times without her consent by various brokers, including Enhance, after she responded to a cash-card ad. All the defendants denied the accusations. The allegations reverberated throughout the industry, where the misleading ads had been something of an open secret. Soon after the suit was filed, former Enhance agents say, they were told to gather at the call center for a meeting. With a lawyer by his side, Herman told everyone they had nothing to worry about. Within a few weeks, though, he'd stepped down as CEO. He sold his $3 million house near Enhance's office in December. This March, Herman posted on Instagram that he was retiring his @MoneyMatt305 username to show a 'more professional edge.' The following month, he, Enhance, Bain and Bowsky settled the lawsuit. Faccibene, the Enhance spokesman, says the company paid 'a de minimis amount funded almost entirely by our corporate insurance coverage' to make the 'meritless' case go away. Ryan Lehrer, an attorney for Bowsky, says his client 'denied all wrongdoing' and is pleased to be moving on. TrueCoverage said in a May 27 court filing that it had also reached a settlement, on undisclosed terms. Enhance has shut its Fort Lauderdale headquarters and now operates out of a smaller office across the state in Clearwater. The new office has no armed guards, according to someone who's visited. 'Enhance Health helps millions of Americans access affordable, quality health-care plans, and we will soon be announcing a significant expansion of our offerings,' Faccibene says. The free-money ads did help boost Obamacare enrollment: The total number of insured people jumped by about 67%, to 20 million, during Biden's term. Both Biden and Harris bragged about the increase during their presidential campaigns. The federal agency that oversees health insurance, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hasn't sanctioned Enhance or any other large call centers, even though it received more than 270,000 complaints in 2024 from people who say they were either switched to or enrolled in plans without their consent. (The agency declined to provide any of the complaints or to comment.) As of last year, though, federal regulators have stopped allowing agents to switch a new customer's insurance directly through the computer system. Instead, they have to ask customers to do it themselves or get on a conference call with a government representative. Regulators have also proposed requiring customers to provide at least a token payment for a new plan, making it more likely they'll understand they're buying something and not just signing up to receive cash. But the rooms need to keep selling. Some are pushing new types of junk insurance, according to people in the industry. They expect demand for low-cost, low-quality plans to grow during the Trump administration, which has talked about creating more exemptions to Obamacare rules. Others are still using the free-money ads. Ronnell Nolan, president of Health Agents for America, the trade group, says regulators have failed to punish the agencies responsible for the problem. 'They haven't been stopped,' Nolan says. 'They haven't been slowed down.'
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Robocaller behind millions of illegal calls in Ohio permanently banned, attorney general announces
A robocaller responsible for billions of illegal calls has been permanently banned in seven states, according to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. [DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Texas-based robocaller John Spiller previously offered telemarketers robocall dialer and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services through his companies Rising Eagle Capital Group, JSquared Telecom, and Rising Eagle Capital Group-Cayman. TRENDING STORIES: Man with filet knife arrested after standoff in Mercer County Local spa accused of operating as brothel; 2 arrested Popular music center gets a new name, $60 million gift to transform the venue Yost said this led to massive amounts of robocalls and often targeted numbers on the Do Not Call Registry. Spiller received a court order that barred him from making or facilitating robocalls in 2023. However, he used different names to create new companies that would continue facilitating the same types of illegal robocalls, according to Yost. These violations prompted eight attorneys general, including Yost, to seek a contempt of court order. Yost announced that a federal judge in Texas found Spiller in contempt of court on Thursday. Spiller is permanently prohibited from launching future telecommunications companies or operating in the telecom industry and must pay $600,000 in fees for violating the 2023 court order. He also cannot collaborate with the people who helped his operation, use aliases in government filings, or make deceptive statements, according to Yost. 'This scammer's line is dead — and it's not coming back,' Yost said. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost was joined in this effort by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota and Texas. 'The judge's latest ruling sends a strong message that bad actors cannot evade court orders by simply operating under different business names,' Yost said. [SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
