The Scams Among Us: Who Falls Prey and Why

Abstract

Not a week goes by without stories about scams appearing in popular media outlets. Given the ease with which scams can be circulated, they have become one of the most common crimes globally, inflicting high emotional, financial, and psychological tolls on millions of individuals. Despite their profound and pervasive impact, researchers know relatively little about why some individuals fall victim to scams but others remain immune to the techniques utilized by scammers to lure potential victims. For example, research thus far provides mixed results about the impact of demographic characteristics (e.g., age) as well as personality variables (e.g., risk taking) on individuals’ susceptibility to scams. Even less is known about how the nature or type of scam affects an individual’s susceptibility. Gaining a deeper understanding of these issues is the key to being able to develop preventive programs and reduce the prevalence of victimization. Here, we discuss some promising directions, existing gaps in current knowledge, and the need for decision scientists to address this important problem.

A Linguistic Analysis of Authorship Attribution in E-Commerce Scams’ Promotional Contents and Narratives

“…The main concern that led to this study was the alarming rate of e-commerce scams cases with astronomical financial losses, as reported by several studies around the world (Paintal, 2021;Hanoch & Wood, 2021;Sinha et al, 2020;Zahari et al, 2019). In Malaysia, statistics showed that approximately 5.2 billion (RM) of financial losses were recorded from 2018 -May 2022 due to e-commerce scam-related cases (Shah & Chudasama, 2021).…”

Correlates of responding to and becoming victimized by fraud: Examining risk factors by scam type

“…Prior research on fraud risk factors has a number of methodological limitations. First, while research indicates that different types of people are uniquely susceptible to different frauds, and many scams target certain groups of people more than others (Button et al, 2009; DeLiema et al, 2020; Hanoch & Wood, 2021; K. Pak & Shadel, 2011), many studies group victims of very different scams together in statistical models (e.g., Schoepfer & Piquero, 2009; Titus et al, 1995). This can obscure victim risk factors that vary by fraud type.…”

Internet Scamming and the Techniques of Neutralization: Parents’ Excuses and Justifications for Children’s Involvement in Online Dating Fraud in Nigeria

“…Globally, Internet scams have been acknowledged as one of the most common crimes, inflicting higher emotional, financial and psychological tolls on individuals worldwide (Hanoch and Wood 2021). For example, in the United States, the 2021 Internet Crime Report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) indicated that 847,376 complaints were received, a 7% increase from 2020, with financial losses exceeding $6.9 billion (FBI 2021).…”

“…In dating scams, a global loss of $547 million was reported in the year 2021, which represents an 80% increase compared to the 2020 figure (Fletcher 2022). This justifies research attention focused on Internet fraud in order to understand what motivates the growth of Internet scams across the world (Ogunleye, Ojedokun, and Aderinto 2020;Uroko 2021), to understand the factors influencing vulnerabilities to being scammed (Hanoch and Wood 2021;Kadoya et al 2021) and reporting behaviour of victims (Kemp et al 2020), and to determine preventive measures (Whitty 2019). Similarly, existing theories have been extrapolated to explain the rise and persistence of Internet scamming (Boman and Freng 2018;Dearden and Parti 2021;Leukfeldt and Yar 2016;Louderback and Antonaccio 2021).…”