Greg's Corner

Scammers are master emotional manipulators

By Greg Collier

Scammers like to find victims who are in an emotional state. This allows scammers to take advantage of people who aren’t in the right mindset to assess a potentially fraudulent situation. Of course, scammers are not going to wait around to find vulnerable victims, so the scammers themselves will often put their victims in just such an emotional state.

For example, scammers will frequently try to make it sound like a victim’s loved one is in some kind of peril. To achieve this, scammers will pose as the victim’s loved one and claim they’ve been arrested. Most of us wouldn’t hesitate to try to help get a close friend or family member out of jail. That’s exactly what happened when scammers recently contacted a Virginia man.

The scammers posed as the man’s 40-year-old nephew when they called him. The phony nephew claimed her had been in a car accident and broke his nose. Scammers will say that in order to explain away why they don’t sound like the actual person they’re imitating.

The ‘nephew’ went on to say they got into the accident with a pregnant woman who was injured in the wreck. Again, this is done to get the victim into a worse emotional state. The victim was also told not to tell the nephew’s parents out of embarrassment. But, with all that said, the nephew claimed to need $6500 cash for bail. The victim was instructed to go to a specific ATM inside a grocery store to deposit the money. A security guard noticed the victim, but the victim was told by the scammers not to divulge to anyone what he was doing. Typically, scammers claim that a gag order has been placed on the victim. In actuality, that’s not how gag orders work.

Once scammers convince a victim to pay them once, they’ll almost always try to get the victim to pay again. In this case, the victim was told the pregnant woman’s baby died and an additional $5000 was needed, which the victim paid in the same fashion.

Then the scammers really twisted the emotional knife in their victim. This time, they asked for $16,000, which the victim didn’t have. It was at this point, the phony nephew claimed they were going to take their own life if the victim didn’t pay the $16,000.

The victim felt horrible and called his nephew a few days later. That’s when he found out the whole thing had been a hoax. Luckily, the victim was able to get some of his money back from the bank where he deposited the money.

There are no depths scammers won’t sink to try to get your money. This is what they do for a dishonest living, and they’re very goof at what they do. If you receive a distressing request for money, no matter who it comes from, always verify their story. If you’re being told not to tell anyone, that’s the scammers trying to discourage you from finding out the truth.