How You Get Scammed

Commentary

Sometimes it’s a phone call or a compelling email. Possibly it is a direct message that arrives on your phone. If it catches you at the right time when you have let down your guard, you get scammed. This is the most common way that digital media are used to rob people. You can describe this as user error, naivete, or just inattentiveness.

All of this is entirely understandable. Twice I was caught off guard, answering the phone while distracted and speaking with a very nice and erudite person supposedly from Google—this was before this racket became so common—concerned with putting me back in control of my mail app that had been compromised. In an instant, the caller shoots a message to your phone that you approve. I can see why people go along.

In both cases, I came to my senses and declined to grant access. But if I had gone along, I can easily imagine the scale of identity theft and bank robbery that would have ensued. I’m sure that it is successful very often, which is why this particular trick is so common. These things persist because they work.

I would estimate that 20 percent of the phone calls and texts I receive are from spammers and scammers. It’s depressing, when you think about it. These days it is common that these calls are made with robots and artificial intelligence, but a few years back, actual people had jobs doing this. I once chewed out a guy on the phone for choosing this immoral line of work. I doubt that it did any good.

These are common tricks; here is another and more insidious form of deception that results in your losing money. This kind relies on what might be called a confidence game. It reaches deep into human psychology to take advantage of our own unwillingness to admit that we’ve made a mistake. When a scammer can tap into this internal force, he or she can really make bank.

If the con man can get you invested in the con, there is no limit to how much money he can steal.

I had a friend years ago who was highly educated but also a very trusting soul. One day he was walking on the street when a well-dressed man with a posh English accent approached him for directions. He provided them and they struck up a conversation. Eventually the man confessed that he had left his wallet at home and needed help getting to his sister’s house. My friend gave him money, but there was more. He also gave him contact information.

The man called him not too much later, anxious to repay, but also with a longer proposition about an investment. By now, they had become friends of sorts. My friend sensed that something was off but he did not act on that intuition. Instead, he wanted to believe that he had not been robbed the first time. To confirm that he was not, he let go of more money, not just once but three more times. Eventually he ended up losing thousands of dollars before he could admit to himself that he was a chump.

This type of scam relies on a psychological state I described in an article a few days back called the sunk cost fallacy. The fallacy is the belief that once one has borne the cost of a behavior, one must carry the action through to the end. An example might be putting too much food on your plate. It’s a mistake. You only add to your cost by eating it to the point of discomfort. The lesson is to learn to cut your losses when you can by changing directions.

That turns out to be psychologically difficult because it means admitting an error and recognizing that the expense of time, energy, and money up to that point is a mistake and that there is no way to get those resources back.

Have you heard it said that people value something more if they pay for it? It’s true, and this is the reason. We want to believe that when we let go of our property we are going to get something more valuable in exchange. The evidence for this is the fact of exchange itself: We are already primed to believe that it was worth it. It takes special effort to shake this expectation. That’s why the sunk cost fallacy is so common.

Big-time scammers make bank on this fallacy. Once a person is psychologically invested in an action, even once he worries that it is a racket, it is hard to get that person to turn back. He retains a glimmer of hope that he was right all along and that everything will turn out just fine.

Here’s one I get daily. A high-profile venue such as CBS News or The Joe Rogan Experience will invite me on. But take a more careful look. The email comes not from a domain associated with these venues but from Gmail, as in CBSnews.producer@gmail.com. That’s the giveaway. It’s not real.

If I had answered, we would have set up a time for an interview. We would have booked a venue and arranged travel. They would have coached me on what to wear and how to approach it. Then, at some point, they would have subtly told me that I’m responsible for paying a processing or marketing fee. People will do this because they are so excited. Pay once, and they will keep dinging you for more.

Once I called my mother, who said she was headed out to buy some gift cards to send to her pastor, who had requested that she do so. Of course, his email had been hacked. My mother trusted. I told her to give him a call and confirm. She did. That saved her hundreds of dollars. Close call.

I’ve heard of famous men who get fake emails from film producers pitching a biographical film. People with a lot of money in the bank will lose three-quarters of a million dollars by chasing fame this way. It’s stunning, but when you combine a high net worth with a big ego, even highly intelligent people can get scammed.

Another path I get daily is someone who writes—using AI—a wonderful and loving email that celebrates a book I’ve written. At the end, he tells me that he would like to use his own amazing talents in getting more attention for the book. And he wants to be paid. If you pay, you get nothing in exchange.

The first step is not usually to pay. It is a request to add my book to a recommended list. Once the correspondence is engaged, the next steps come in later emails. For authors not getting much attention, this is excellent bait. They are just thrilled that someone cares.

During the time I’ve been writing this article, I’ve received three such invites! It’s easy to avoid these rackets. Just delete the email.

Hard economic times give rise to more rackets, scams, extortions, shakedowns, swindles, and frauds. When making an honest living becomes harder, and the times of easy money are no longer, this is where we end up. This is why so many movies made during the Great Depression featured everyday hustles; it became part of life. So it is in our times.

The best protection against them, aside from not being an easy target, is to avoid the mental state in which you believe that if you pay for something, you must be getting something valuable. Often it is not true. Be willing to admit mistakes quickly and back out on the slightest intuition that something is not right.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.