Hello and welcome to WFHR's Rapids Report.
Everybody for this May 7th, 2025.
Have your host, James J. Mailov here.
We're spending our time today
with Wood County Sheriff's Department.
We've got an investigative lieutenant Scott Goldberg
and with us right now.
Scott, good to see you again.
It's been a while.
Yeah, it's been a minute.
Good to see you too.
I'm happy to report that the weather's finally
feeling like it's summer again and things are drying up.
And maybe I'll even be able to mow my yard this week
because it won't be so wet.
Yeah, here's hope of death.
I want to send a big shout out to our friends at Wisconsin
Rapids Community Media as well.
Do yourself a favor, go to YouTube,
subscribe to their page, keep up the day
and the amazing work that they are doing over there.
Got a lot of cool snippets and vignettes
and things that they're doing over there
and encourage you to check out everybody
who talked to a lot of our local businesses
and different people out there
that I think you're going to find really interesting.
Have you guys done this yet where it was so nice yesterday,
I was looking over my shoulder waiting
for Mother Nature to throw a snowball at me
or something like I haven't gotten over,
like I just look at over real quick just making sure
it's a nice weather hopefully here to stay.
We've got some other things that are here to say Scott.
We've got three new investigators coming to the area.
Can we talk about them, get to know them a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely.
So kind of exciting to announce some new investigators
due to some retirements and some reassignments,
you know, like any other business things change.
And the exciting part about these three new investigators
is they bring a lot to the table.
They, none of them are new to the department.
They've come with experience
and the first one I'll bring up is Alicia Brandage
who is in the division.
And her focus is going to be on that mental health piece
that we, and as you know from previous conversations
with Sheriff Becker is such an important part
to our Sheriff's department.
And we know that if we're going to help solve the problems
with people that are struggling in our community,
we have to have a person that's working in that capacity.
Doug Christensen, who retired from that position
just recently worked with Alicia for many years.
She's had tons and tons of training,
continues to train because that's a ever,
it's always changing.
So in the more training we can get the better.
So excited to bring her on board.
Dan Barris comes from a family of law enforcement.
His uncle actually, Dean Barris started our computer
technology lab at the Sheriff's department many years ago.
And he's since retired many years ago already.
His dad was also a police officer
from Marshfield Police Department.
And his brother is actually a cop
and Marshfield Police Department is an investigator up there.
So he comes from a legacy of investigators,
which is really cool.
The neat part about Dan is he's the exact opposite of me.
He is very techy.
He understands, he understands so much
about computers, apps on phones.
He can navigate through a lot of what
our investigations are now.
Technology, and having him on board for that
is super exciting.
He'll be partnering with Jeremy Keith,
who's an investigative sergeant already
with the department that's focused on computer crimes.
And we say computer crimes, but a lot of times
that is our cell phones now.
Because cell phones are a mini computer,
and that's what they'll be focusing on.
Dan is a general investigator.
And we'll be assigned all different types of cases.
But having that experience and capability
is really nice to have another person with that ability.
The third person who will be assigned to our Marshfield
office will be Cody Stry.
He'll be assigned to general investigations, too.
I'm not sure I've ever met someone
who works harder than Cody.
He is probably one of the hardest working individuals
I have met.
He's a mentally tough person, and I'm
super excited to have him on board due to his worth ethic.
And that's something that I'm happy about with all the people
in my division.
They are super hard workers, hard chargers,
but Cody takes it to the next level.
So I'm excited about that.
It's always nice to have hard workers on board.
With the mental health person you brought on, sorry.
Alicia Brunssha.
It was Alicia.
I couldn't have a place.
First off, all three of these individuals
welcome to the team and appreciate them
and appreciate what they've done with their careers
to be here and all that.
With the mental health partners, is her focus
going to be mainly on inmates, if you will,
or more on officers?
Or is she going to be doing a little bit of both?
That's a good question.
I think it's mostly going to be, I shouldn't say mostly,
it's going to be everything.
She's working with the community.
So if we have a person struggling in the community
with mental health, maybe they have some addiction issues.
She's going to be a member of our, she
is a member of our mental health court, a drug court.
She also visits individuals in jail that are struggling.
And then she's part of our peer support.
So officers that are struggling with things
that they have seen or been through.
And I think Sheriff Bakker's talked about this in the past,
how the times are changing.
When I started in law enforcement
until 20 years ago, you didn't talk to anybody.
You've seen some of the worst things
that you can imagine, and we're learning that cops.
Just like people in the military, it's hard to survive
if you keep that all in.
So the more treatment and help we can get the better.
So yeah, she'll be, she's going to be very versatile
and doing a lot.
And a lot of it, she's just a member of the team
of these people that are working on that.
So like our peer support, there's
many people that are part of that.
And she's kind of just leading that team.
It's a brave world that we're in right now.
Where we're talking about this stuff
that we used to keep quiet.
And it's interesting.
Today would have been Gary Cooper's birthday.
And that's the first person I think
of with the strong quiet type and all that.
And learning that, you know, actually,
if you knew anything about Gary Cooper,
he had a lot of stuff going on, man.
He just didn't tell you know, he probably
sure would have been better off talking about it.
And we're realizing that now the actually,
it's the opposite of what we thought all these years.
The strongest, toughest people actually do face these things
and talk about them.
But now the real work really has to begin.
Now that we've all kind of gotten as a society,
it very much reminds me of recycling.
And I know that may seem like a weird comp and everything.
But there were as a time and age at our ages
where we never thought everybody'd be recycling.
We never thought we'd be where we are with it.
Now we don't even think twice about it.
We just recycle.
We're getting there with mental health.
But now the work comes in of, well, OK, how do I attack this?
How do I do this?
What do I do?
And having somebody in the area that's not just,
because I thought of you guys first.
And having somebody there for you guys
to go to the point of what you were talking about before,
certainly inmates, it could be very beneficial to too.
But the fact that she's doing this for the city,
for the community and everything, like that's,
that takes it another step.
And I appreciate it.
But I also want, I hope the audience is also hearing
and seeing what I am and the amount of things
that is put on our officers and the department and everything
and how to give that some understandings of empathy
and thanks and appreciation.
Because that's not something I know a lot of you
signed up for necessarily.
And I know what you signed up for was what
is going to help the community protect the community
and all those things.
And this falls under that category.
At the same time, like you said,
it wasn't something we thought about early back in the day,
no matter what field you were going into.
No, first off, I appreciate you recognizing that.
And it's all about having that support system.
And it's tough to take it home.
I don't want that burden to be on my wife
and my kids and it's not fair to my wife
to have to hear the gruesome things that we've seen.
So the old school way is you just didn't talk about it at all.
You moved on and to have that support group
and have somebody to go to if you're struggling,
it's so very important.
And we do wellness checks now yearly.
And it's gone really well.
So having Alicia in this new spot,
it's exciting for me because she has passion for it.
And it takes a special person to have passion
for that mental health spot because I'm not sure I could do it
and to deal with that every day.
So I appreciate her for that.
I second that.
I couldn't either.
I really admire the people that go into that industry
and do that.
And we're really thankful to have her around as well as the rest
of the team here and these new additions
that are going to hopefully not only help our community,
whether it's on a safe level, but also on an officer level
of maybe being able to take some things
that were on certain people's plates
and take them off or any of that stuff,
bringing new people into the business is always good,
especially in this industry that we're talking about.
Yeah, and Dan Barris is a good example of that,
because Jeremy Keith has had a lot on his workload
with the computer crimes investigations
because we get burglaries and thefts,
but they're pretty rare now.
And one, I'm proud of that because we solve them
and thieves and burglarers realize
that we're going to solve those cases.
So a lot of the crimes that we're dealing with
are our computer crimes, or sadly child pornography cases,
or sexual crimes that take place through computers or cell phones.
And there's a lot on the media about those sorts of things,
but that takes man hours to investigate.
Nothing is fast if we submit a warrant to, let's say, Google,
that's not like on TV where we get it 30 seconds later,
that could come back a month later.
And so tying these cases together takes time
and it takes man hours.
And having another person like Dan,
who really understands the technical piece of it
is super important and super exciting.
Yeah, I wasn't until talking to Sheriff Becker
that I realized that you guys don't solve every case
by playing some techno music and having a montage.
I thought that's how it was done.
I thought that's what you did.
That's CSI show, it's a great point that you bring up there.
And it also, I hope, brings home all the more of like,
when we see these finished products,
IE, you know, seeing a core case in the paper
or something like that or in the news,
the all the time and work and effort
that goes into that happening.
Anytime we can note that, I think is a good one.
I appreciate that, Scott.
And you brought up another subject
that I think is a perfect segue into the crypto troubles
that we have been having and what's been going on
with that in our area.
I know that you guys had a recently oppressed release
about this.
Yeah, so this is really a hot topic across,
not only in the state of Wisconsin,
but really the nation.
And I wanted the listeners to really understand
what is taking place.
So, because there seems to be some confusion about
what the scams are or how people are getting scammed
or tricked into losing a lot of money.
And so what we're dealing with traditionally
and with the traditional scams,
just so everybody has an example.
That's the best way to hand this out,
this information out is a lot of times people
will receive either a message on their computer
or their phone and there are a lot of times given,
they're basically showing that their bank accounts
have been compromised.
So, somebody's gonna steal money from them.
And a lot of times one way or another,
the scammer will get on the phone with them
and save there from XYZ's bank.
And it'll be a local bank and a lot of times
they figure out which bank that the individual's bank with.
And they say, I'm this bank and you bank with us
and we need you to come in and secure your money
because your bank account has been compromised.
And people unfortunately fall for it.
And some of these people are sharp people.
There, you know, a lot of times people are like,
that won't happen to me because I know not to do that.
But it's a lot of these people are pretty sharp
and they still fall for it, victim of it.
And so, what'll take place is that person
will stay on the phone with you traditionally.
You'll go take that money out of the bank.
And traditionally, we're seeing money
anywhere from 2040.
I know we recently had one in the county
and excessive $60,000 taken out of the bank account.
And then you're asked to go to,
it's a public place always.
They're traditionally in gas stations
or a convenience mart, some vape shops.
They're called the cryptocurrency kiosks.
They look very similar to an ATM machine.
And there's all different types of makers
and brands of them.
And then you're basically given directions
by this scammer over the phone how to create an account.
And they'll say it's to secure your money.
It is, so you don't lose your money.
But what'll end up happening is you'll end up
putting that US currency into that machine.
And what you're doing is you're buying cryptocurrency,
a very small piece of cryptocurrency.
And then that scammer's gonna say,
yeah, I need that information
to what they call a digital wallet.
So when you buy that cryptocurrency or,
they'll put that cryptocurrency into a digital wallet.
And then you'll hand over that information.
And as soon as that happens, that money's gone, unfortunately.
They'll hang up the phone.
And the cryptocurrency is then stolen by the scammers.
And what we're finding is traditionally very quickly
that money is moved overseas because it's digital.
It's not an actual hard copy of money.
It's moved overseas.
And there's nothing we can do to get that cryptocurrency back.
I mean, we're working on trying to get results
so we can get that money back.
But traditionally, it's very difficult.
So what we're doing, and we have been doing
for basically the last two years,
is we've been writing search warrants for those machines.
And we've been seizing the US currency
out of the machines and holding that money.
And recently, what we've been doing is
holding that money in our evidence.
And then we let interested parties.
The interested parties are the individual who got scammed.
And traditionally, it's that crypto company
that sold that cryptocurrency to that person.
And at that point, we're letting those interested parties
take proper court procedures to determine
who should receive this money.
And we're getting a lot of pushback
through not from the community.
I think the victims locally and across the state
would recognize the fact that this person's being scammed
as soon as they pick up the phone,
they're not legitimately purchasing this cryptocurrency.
So they're being scammed right away.
As soon as they pick up that phone,
and we're getting pushback from the crypto companies.
And not all of them, some have been great to work with.
They understand they're trying to prevent the scammed too,
because they're losing money too.
And we recognize that.
We've had some troubles with recently
with a crypto company called Bitcoin Depot
and they've unfortunately been pushing back quite hard.
And they did end up complied with the search warrant
but unfortunately, they haven't been working
with other agencies and they're indicating
that's because of us
through the Wood County Sheriff's Department.
We are more than happy to work with any of these
crypto companies.
We want a solution and we've been working
towards a solution with our local representatives
throughout the state.
So we're trying to get a law, share backer
and many members of the Sheriff's Department
have been working with, and that's just our Sheriff's Department,
the Department of Justice, other Sheriff's Department
have been working towards getting a law
that can put some restrictions on these machines.
It's the internet, the World Wide Web has been the Wild West
for a while and it's going to be.
And we're kind of in the early,
I know it's been around for a while
but we're still in the early days of figuring this out
whether it's our judicial system or just us as a society
and how to deal with these things.
I'm only repeating what I've said
on the year many, many times.
Anytime I hear the word crypto, you lose me.
Like I have no interest, everything I know about it
and every time we hear about one of these crypto companies
something negative is attached to it
or some kind of scam or something like that.
Now I've done my homework and I've also been privileged
in a job that I get a lot of information about this stuff.
So for me, when I immediately under,
to me, whether it's fair or not,
I hear the word crypto, I think scam
and I'm staying away from it and everything.
But I'm in such a privileged situation in a place
where I'm in a middle ground of understanding enough tech
to where I don't get hustled on these things sometimes
although I have been, you know, worried some about it
and I've been close to getting caught even with that.
And I also have enough people that I can talk to.
I have reached out to all those things.
So many of the victims of this are in isolation.
So many of the victims of this, these companies,
while you think of a big conglomerate or something like that,
it's a bunch of, I'm sorry, my words,
scumbag individuals getting together
that have made a lifetime of being able to look for the weaknesses
or what they see as weakness in people
or see people that are in a vulnerable situation.
They are no different than the back in the 1920s
or hundreds of snake-oilment salesmen that came to town
and could read and knew the audience,
oh, there's my sucker, oh, there's my person.
And it doesn't make you a sucker,
it doesn't make you those things.
It just means that you have usually a good heart
or you're trying to do something new with your, you know,
you have some fears about the economy.
And so, you know, crypto seems tempting
or something like that.
I don't think that there's anybody on that side of it
coming to it from a bad place, an understandable place even.
But when it comes to the scammers
and these people and everything,
this is why to me, that industry will never accomplish anything.
They've got too much negative
and not nearly enough positive to it.
All that being said, when you are in this situation
and you are curious, hey, you know,
I wanna give this a try, I wanna check this out.
Are there telltales, are there, you know,
quote red flags that like, hey,
this is not a legitimate crypto company.
The things that you and your team are seeing
that kind of can give people a little bit of a heads up,
maybe of that.
Yeah, so number one, number one thing is
it's very important to know that your bank
is never going to call you and tell you to come
withdraw money from your bank account to secure it, okay?
Because banks, they're insured.
And that's the big difference between a crypto company
and cryptocurrency and a bank is a cryptocurrency
is not insured like federally.
So, but if somebody is telling you to come
withdraw money and take it out for security reasons,
like your banks, like you're gonna lose money
from your bank account and that money
needs to be withdrawn, the bank is not gonna call you
and tell you to do that.
So as soon as that would occur at any point,
you need to hang up the phone
and then my suggestion is actually call
your local PD or sheriff's department.
And then the next call should be to your bank
to say, hey, this is happening.
I need to make sure that my funds are froze
so the money can't come or go from it.
That's the number one thing is to actually physically
call your bank.
Your bank is never going to tell you to come take money out.
I will say this, our local banks have been working
very good with people.
They've been asking a lot of questions.
So people that are falling victim of this
are coming into the banks and trying to withdraw.
Let's say $10,000 and they're asking questions.
Why do you need $10,000 cash?
Again, the scammers are very good.
They're gonna give an excuse like tell them
that you're buying a car.
Tell them that you're having a rough job done
and you're gonna pay cash for it or whatnot.
So the banks are, you know, it's your money.
So they will give it to you, but at the same time,
they are doing a good job preventing a lot of these.
And I appreciate that.
And I will say a lot of our local gas stations
or vape shops wherever these machines are being held.
They're trying to do their part of it too.
And they see traditionally, traditionally,
it's an elderly person that doesn't understand
the cryptocurrency and how it works,
putting in a large amount of creos currency,
they're trying to stop these people from doing it.
So we appreciate that and the community's effort
and trying to prevent these crimes too.
But to touch on the victims itself, you know,
and I don't blame the victims at all in this case,
because a lot of it is just no different.
We're all gonna be in that position.
Like we talked about before, I'm not as techie
as like our new generation.
And my parents are less techie than me.
And then my grandparents, God rest their soul,
they've all passed.
But, you know, they didn't have the ability
to understand the internet like we all do
or understand how a digital currency works.
And so very understandable why there's some confusion.
We didn't go to, when I was in grade school,
we didn't have computers until I got to junior high
where we started to learn how to type.
Now, my six year old in kindergarten
already has computer time at school.
So I mean, it's just a different world and these scammers,
it's not a single person that does this.
This is like a business that they're running to scam people.
So some of the restrictions we'd like to see
on these machines.
And we're suggesting this to our local lawmakers
and at the state level.
Is it so important to get the restrictions?
And a lot of other states, we're one of the few states
that don't have any laws on these machines at this time.
And that's what we're learning
and it's causing, we're being targeted now by scammers
because they know other states have law in place.
And so the biggest restriction that we would like to see
is a maximum amount, a daily amount
that could be put on these machines.
Let's say like $2,000.
The scammers don't want $2,000.
They want $40,000.
So $2,000 would be enough to limit it.
The other part of this with these machines
is they have a very high fee.
Usually it's 20 to 30%.
They take off the top.
You can buy cryptocurrency for free
with through the stock market or I have an app on my phone.
It's called Robinhood.
You can connect your bank to it.
And I'm not promoting any of these,
but at the same time, you could buy it for free.
Why would you spend 20 or 30% and lose that?
So it's important for the public to understand
that if you want to buy cryptocurrency,
I'm fine with that.
Just do it safely.
Yeah, and that's so important.
The other restrictions we would like to see
and love to see would be similar to like,
if you put a check in the bank, a large check,
which unfortunately I don't get a lot of those in my life,
but if I had a $10,000 check
and I was going to go ahead and put that in the bank,
they're going to put a hold on that check
for up to five to seven days.
And that's a law that they can do that.
And the reason why is they want to make sure
that money's good is the check in a clear number one,
or is there a problem with it?
Is this part of a financial scam?
And the reason those laws were made
were to prevent scammers from stealing.
So we would like to see some type of regulations
on these types of machines similar to that.
The last thing that a lot of other states are getting
is if law enforcement's able to prove
that that money is scammed and moved out of country,
and a lot of times that is the case, almost always,
that the cryptocurrency companies are on the hook for it.
The reason why is we want to work as a team
with these companies and they should want the same things
as us.
And we understand that they're in the business
to make money, but at the same time,
we don't want it to be off the hands of vulnerable subjects
that don't understand how cryptocurrency works
and through these scammers.
So when they take that money and they take that fee,
that 20%, let's say it's 15,000 bucks
that you put into that machine,
they're going to take close to $4,000,
and that goes into their pocket.
And it's so important for people to understand
that they're in it for a business.
And when I understand that, but at the same time,
they have to put the protections, the warnings,
for people to understand what's taking place.
Well, and asking yourself, if you're in this situation,
think about any time you've dealt with a salesperson
or dealt with a business, even though over the phone,
they're patient, they want to make the sale.
So they're going to do what they can to work with you
and all that.
They're not rushing you to make decisions.
They're not asking you to physically go to the bank
and take things out, no legitimate business
is going to do certain things like this.
And I think one of the things that,
and this is something to chair back on,
I have talked about a lot, trusting that old fight
or flight instinct, nine times out of 10,
your gut is going to be telling you something.
And listen to it.
And if you have follow-up questions,
if you are not sure about something,
go ahead and pause and wait before you make some big decision
or anything and do your homework on this stuff,
I've talked to a lot of people about this,
having nothing to do with scams,
just in crypto in general, in learning about it.
And I think that it's really important to
and seeing what these crypto farms are doing
to our environment and some of these things,
I think it should be common knowledge.
I think if you're going to be investing in something
like this, you should know about it,
take the time, do that.
And when you're doing that and have that breath,
if it's a legitimate business, they'll still be there.
They want your business, they'll wait for you.
If it's a hustler, they gotta move now.
They gotta go now.
No, no, no, no, no, that's how that works.
That's how every hustle and human history has ever worked.
They gotta get you going now.
They don't want you to think about this.
That's when you make decisions that don't help them.
They want you to do this fast.
And they're gonna go that route with it.
Just one quick thing before we let you go, Scott,
and thank you so much for the conversation today.
I did want to say, and piggyback in what you talked about,
to all the people that have come forward,
who have been in this situation, thank you.
Thank you for coming forward.
Thank you for being so brave about this.
Not every, there's certainly, you know,
there's better than I do, man.
There's certainly a lot of crimes where you can't really
hide that.
We know what you did.
This is one that unfortunately,
there's so many, for every person we know about,
there are so many individuals out there
that we don't even know that they were hustled,
that they went through this, or they were scammed,
because of shame or fear,
or they may be even fear that they did something wrong
or something like that.
Just like I was talking about mental health,
I think it is, I'm not overusing this word,
it is brave to do that, to come forward with that.
You have no reason not to.
You didn't nothing wrong.
You were not hustled.
You were not, it wasn't like you had something in your brain
that didn't work or something like that.
Like we've all been there.
We've all had these things happen.
And I admire that.
I admire the people that have come forward about this
and appreciated, because that's how we can help others.
And that's how Scott and his team can do the good work
they're doing and prevent more of these.
Yeah, if you have any chance to get your money back,
in these cases, you have to come forward.
And there's no shame.
We don't spread the victims' names around.
We keep it in-house.
And it's important to know that all of our employees,
that the share spender are going to be sensitive
to these types of crimes.
So don't be embarrassed.
It happens.
I've picked up the phone just like you were saying,
picked up the phone and said to myself,
is this real or is this not real?
And I've had to do that.
I've gotten a text before saying,
hey, did you make this charge on my credit card?
And it actually was from my credit card company.
But I actually pause, take a deep breath, logged in,
checked my credit card.
And then I actually called the company themselves
and said, hey, I called them and their number.
And then I found out that, yes, somebody
was trying to use my card.
And so it happens.
So it can happen to anybody.
There's no embarrassment to it.
So it's important.
We can investigate it if we don't know about it.
Please come forward.
And we're going to help you in any way we can.
Scott, if people do have information like that,
or they just have follow up questions,
want to reach out and get to talk with you,
is there a way to do that?
Yeah, absolutely.
So number one, you can always call our Dispatch Center
and ask for me.
And that phone number is 715-421-8700.
And I think it's important for people just to know
that that's going to be to our Dispatch Center.
Ask for Lieutenant Scott Goldberg.
And they'll transfer you to me at that point.
And I'll help you in any way I can.
And or if I can't, I'll try to find the answers
or get you to someone who knows them.
We've been speaking with Investigative Lieutenant Scott Goldberg
with the Wood County Sheriff's Department
and really do appreciate the time Scott
good to see you again and hang out,
and say hi to the team over there for us.
Sure well.
We appreciate it.
I mean, be safe out there.
Yeah, thank you.
And a big, big thank you to our friends
over at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media.
Do yourself a favor, go to YouTube,
type into your search bar, Wes,
Wisconsin Rapids Community Media,
subscribe to their page.
I'll wait.
OK, good.
You did it good.
And keep up the day with all the cool things
that they're doing over there.
Big thank you to them for joining us in all of you
for joining us.
We'll have new episodes of the Rapids Report
every day streaming live live and direct for you
at two o'clock right here at WFHR.com.
