Understand How Scammers Think So You Can Avoid Being A Scam Victim

Empowering fraud victims:

Empower yourself so you can avoid being a scam victim, so you can be a resource for your friends and family who may be targeted. You may be in a situation where you know someone who is being scammed, and yet, incredibly, they don’t see it. No matter what you say, you cannot convince them otherwise. No doubt, this is an extremely frustrating situation to be in. It is impossible to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. And to compound matters, even if there is clear evidence of the scam they may ignore it due to what is known as cognitive dissonance.

Why it is hard to convince a scam victim that they have indeed been scammed:

Cognitive dissonance can be best understood as a collision within the mind. When a person makes a decision, they like to think they make a good decision. We have all be there, rationalizing a mistake because we do not want to admit it. Why? Because it is painful, a blow to the ego when we discover that we were wrong. And the higher the stakes, the more committed we may become to sticking to a bad decision. This is because the pain of admission becomes exponentially more painful as the stakes are raised.

Why am I telling you all this? Because if you find yourself the victim of a scam, or you know someone else who is, just know, it is not easy to convince someone, if they are not already aware. However, if you come with love, and armed with the information we will lay out here, you can increase your chances of making a difference.

How The Scammers Choose Their Scam Victims & Why

Scammers are looking for the ideal target. They try to think like a businessman might about an upcoming marketing campaign:

1. Who is my ideal “customer”?
2. What are they looking for?
3. How can I convince them that my product is real and will benefit them?

Scammers know that they are facing an uphill battle if they target experienced investors. Experienced investors are aware of scammers, and they are on lookout. An experienced investor will do research, check to see if they brokerage is licensed, what users are saying about them on the web, read reviews etc. So this would be a waste of time for a scammer. Instead, they target inexperienced investors. If you or your loved one are an inexperienced investor, be aware!

“Instead, they target inexperienced investors.”

The scammers are now faced with a problem. Most inexperienced investors also don’t have a lot of money for them to take. So who to go after? How to choose the perfect scam victim. If you are thinking what I’m thinking, you are way ahead of the game: Pensioners (and people close to retirement)! People who have spent their entire lives saving for their retirement are likely to be in a position where they have a lot of money in savings and are inexperienced investors. So that ticks off question number one above above.

But what about what their ideal “customer” is looking for? If you guessed security, you are following closely. High up on the list may be also be more liquidity, vacations, an inheritance. So these become the “selling points”. “Don’t you want to leave something behind for the children”, they say. Now we have identified how the scammers choose their victims and what motivations they will try to trigger when closing a victim.

“Don’t you want to leave something behind for the children”, they say.

But how do they get over the trust hurdle? I mean, if some stranger comes up to you in the street or over the internet and says, “hey guy, give me £5,000 pounds. I’ll invest it for you and make you thousands in profits.”, all the alarm bells go off. Who is this guy? I don’t know him. Why would I give him my money? So while you may be intrigued by the offer, it won’t pass muster.

But what if the scenario were different? What if the guy says, “hey, I could make you lots of money, but you don’t need to put in much up front. Let’s start small with say, £250, and we will see how you do” and so the red flags go away. Now a person may be permitted for thinking to themselves “this doesn’t sound like a bad deal” and “what do I have to lose? Just 250 quid”. And this where the scammers really sell their souls. They provide their victims access to a “trading platform” which is in actuality a demo account where no real trading occurs, like a video game. And within a week, the initial “investment of 250 becomes 1,000.

And this is the part where it gets really sick. The scammers know they have a fish on the line now. Then, the victim logs into the account and can see that they earned a 4X profit and the inexperienced investor is on a high. Now, the scammer now takes advantage of his vulnerable prey and tells them something along the lines of “see how well you are doing, now is the perfect time to add in 5k, 10k, as much as they can convince you to deposit in one go. And that is just the beginning

“The sad truth will only hit home when they make an attempt to withdraw”

You see, the scammer has just used a little psychological trick to overcome the final objection. By showing a profit, the initially skeptical investor (scam victim) who was unsure if they had made a good decision to invest in the first place, is given the opportunity to affirm their own decision making, to give themselves pat on the back so to speak. And that is when good judgement is thrown out the window. Riding high on their own cognitive resonance (“aha! It was a good decision after all!), the scam victim forgets to do any further due diligence and they deposit as much money as they can get their hands on in order to turn even greater profits. The sad truth will only hit home when they make an attempt to withdraw and the trading platform blocks it, or worse tanks their account (makes it go to zero balance).

If you know a trading scam victim (binary options, forex, cfd’s, or crypto). Tell them to read this article to the end. If they do, maybe, it will help. And don’t forget, to get a free consultation with a scam recovery specialist, click here and fill out the form and an agent will be in touch with you shortly.