The sophisticated world of scams

Ever since we were little, moms always told us not to accept stranger’s candy because they might kidnap us once we take it, or it is dangerous to walk on the street at night under the risk of robbery, so we need to keep at least twenty dollars in cash as safety money in the pocket. It transformed into our consciousness that we will be safe if we encounter or engage in these things. The rise of digital scams puts one in ten adults into fraud every year while other people who never experienced scams believe they will never be a victim. Therefore, the foundation of the scam is we are more vulnerable to scamming because we don’t consider ourselves to be victims one day. The scarcity of ethics can be presented through scammers showing no empathy toward victims because scammers in general are more impulsive than others due to psychiatric disorders. Another scarcity of ethics is people who leave hateful comments on social media platforms are inability to understand the psychology of victims falling into scams. At the same time, it encourages fraudsters to be more active and causes Americans to lose over a billion dollars on various scams. In addition, overconfidence can put us in a vulnerable position when facing scamming and people need to be more sympathetic toward victims, especially women who have gone through a romantic scam.

The world has become more sophisticated as digital technology has advanced. The new digital era allows fraudsters’ scamming methods to become more creative, from online romance scams to phone call/text scams. You could potentially lose from 5 dollars to a million dollars depending on what type of scam. The riskiest scams to look out for in the new year are AI-powered scams, student loan forgiveness scams, phone and Zelle scams, online purchase scams, etc. According to the Financial Cost of Fraud Report, developed by Crowe, Fraud losses equal a shocking US$5.127 trillion each year. The statistics show that more people fall into traps than we think. People are overconfident about their ability to identify a scam and think that only certain groups of people will encounter scamming.

On the other hand, credible sources speak different stories. Forbes, an American business magazine company, has been writing about smart people falling into investment scams since 1985 till now; according to The Smarter They Are, The Harder They Fall published on 1985, “The suckers, whether they are rich or poor, informed or ill-informed, seem to be willing to take the scheme on faith.”, and the paradox is “The more people know; the dumber and more careless they seem to get about their investments”. Therefore, smart and confident individuals who never expect them to be victims are the most vulnerable, partly because they don’t think they fit into the fraud victims’ profile. Another possible explanation can be through psychological techniques. Scammers often employ social engineering to manipulate strong emotions like fear, which leads people to make bad decisions when the emotion becomes so strong that their higher-level thinking mode shuts down. Emotions like fear, anger, and greed cause people to make wrong decisions according to Forbes, Why Sophisticated People Are More Likely To Be Scammed. Most fraudsters use these techniques to manipulate victim’s actions. In other words, anyone could fall into a scam when they encounter a scamming script that fits them.

In daily life, we overhear lots of scamming events that seem far away from us. “Other people’s circumstances” is a common topic being discussed at the family’s dining table. However, it is important to keep our guard up when we receive suspicious emails/messages/calls. Fraudsters are dangerous once you fall into their traps because they lack empathy. The study found that fraudsters commonly have two characteristics: a lack of empathy and psychological manipulation. First, personality scammers often lack empathy; they cannot feel the emotional damage that they have created on victims; researchers have found that people with psychiatric disorders have less gray matter in the region of the brain associated with empathy, which contributes to their diminished capacity for remorse. They also use all kinds of reasons to rationalize their immoral behavior. According to Thomas Plante, Ph.D., psychology professor at Santa Clara University, “they can easily justify their behaviors using various kinds of psychological gymnastics.” As more studies on the brains of criminals are conducted, the researchers found that alcohol abuse and illicit drug use can cause someone out of control and unleash a particular behavior. According to the study, the behavioral guidance system is not working normally in criminals. The researchers found among these syndromes, “Especially among convicted criminals, is an antisocial personality disorder, also called psychopathy or sociopathy, in which a person cannot discern or show regard for, right from wrong, and may behave violently.” According to the article On the Brain by The Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute. It concluded that antisocial personality disorder is leading fraudsters to hurt social morals and a lack of empathy toward victim’s feelings.

The second characteristic is psychological manipulation. Notorious examples like The Tinder Swindler and “Pig Butchering” all use psychological techniques on the victims to get what they want. For instance, in the documentary The Tinder Swindler, a man named Simon Leviev, posed as a son of Lev Leviev who owns an Israeli diamond magnate on dating apps, particularly Tinder, to deceive and defraud women. He first used charm, charisma, and an elaborate web of lies to manipulate his victims emotionally. He made them feel special and valued through compliments and attention, as well as purchased expensive gifts for victims so they feel a sense of relationship security and helplessly fall in love with him. Simon led victims to dup life savings or even take out large amounts of loans for him through understanding human emotions and greediness. In this case, we certainly cannot describe these women as foolish and unintelligent because the three victims in the scandal are all smart and have successful careers within their industry. After the documentary was released from Netflix, Simon claimed “I never presented myself as the son of anyone, but people use their imaginations… I never took a dime from them.” He also threatened Pernilla while in prison and told her she would pay for what she’d done, who got him to the jail. His action supports the characteristics of a lack of empathy and using psychological manipulation on victims.

Moreover, the scarcity of empathy shows through the blame that other people have on these three brave women from Twitter after the documentary was released. There are overwhelming sentiments from social media that label these women as “Gold Diggers,” “Stupid,” and “lack of world experience.” According to the refinery, We need to stop blaming the victims of the Tinder Swindler. Romance scams are probably one of the most hurtful types of scams because victims are not only losing their money to this swindler but also facing pressure from society, people who have never gone through a scam often use words to describe victims like “foolish,” “naïve,” and “too trusting people.”

Furthermore, “Pig Butchering” is when the scammers practice “fattening up” their victims by building trust over time before “slaughtering” them and stealing their money according to Investopedia. A fast-growing scam involving online romance, fake crypto returns, and human trafficking that is stealing millions of dollars from U.S. citizens. it is one of the most pernicious Crypto Scams up to date, according to Forbes. Victims are promised well-paid jobs but are transported to abandoned buildings in Cambodia and they will receive training on how to deceive women in their mid-age and lonely overseas. Now the question is, why are they making women the target? Therapist Marisa Peer explains, “We’re naturally susceptible to romance scams because of our desire to fall in love.” For this reason, falling in love can trigger our emotional vulnerability; we let other people manipulate our emotions under these circumstances, as I stated in my first point of view. This article further introduced the phenomenon of “Prince Charming syndrome” that women are more likely to have the desire to save their prince charming using their credit cards and money, even if they don’t feel real, but their emotions overdriven them. Unfortunately, some people are unable to sympathize with victims of romance scams compared to other financial frauds because they are using their logical brains to analyze the victim’s behaviors when watching from far away and think they should’ve seen the red signs according to therapist peer. Moreover, Romance scams are a great representation of other types of financial scams because we can learn a lot about fraudsters using people’s vulnerable emotions to get their money. People’s criticisms of victims of romance scams share similarities with society’s perception of older people and the more naïve ones are likely to fall into a scam, the outsiders always use the logical brain to judge what the victims have gone through. It discourages victims from speaking out about their experiences due to embarrassment, but our silence protects the exposure of fraudsters.

In transition, I am one of the people who think that I would never fall into a scam because I am confident that I can spot a scam easily. Therefore, I hardly understand why people would fall for any scam until I encounter one. As a young college student with very little work experience, we do want to try our best to fulfill the assigned task from our boss immediately, which I recognized as the pressure that drive my emotions over my logical reasons. As I recall my experience during scamming, an email that I received from the fake boss led me to drive to the Apple store in downtown LA and run inside the Apple store with an unclear mind and bought worth $1500 gift cards, then sent all the gift card barcodes to the fake boss. As a result, the psychological activity of victims of romance scams was somehow similar to mine at that moment; I was inflicted by my logical reasonings and fear emotion, which I was afraid I couldn’t fulfill my boss’s task on time when this person created a sense of urgency in me. Therefore, I went along with the “script” the fraudster provided and fell into the trap.

Everyone will encounter a scam once in their life. Sometimes, we might feel ashamed of ourselves for falling into a scam due to social pressure or self-doubt intelligence. Therefore, we decide to hide the scamming event from others and silence ourselves. However, it protects the scammers. As we get a chance to share to alert others about different types of scamming events, please do so. When we take to a bigger picture of the reasons why we choose to be silent, we selectively ignore our flaws or the areas where we are emotionally vulnerable, and just accept whatever the scammers do for us. However, we ignore how we are feeling and avoid the responsibility of taking care of ourselves. This led us back to my own experience, as the graduation season approached and under peer pressure where a lot of my classmates already had a full-time job offer, I realized my emotional vulnerability through falling into a work scam because I care about my job and I want to do great to impress the boss, so I increase my likelihood of having his referral to other companies. However, the scamming event was like a wake-up call to me that I should enjoy the present moment and work hard on my own. Lastly, every horrible event gives us a valuable lesson, it is priceless because it shapes us to be a better person.