We are suck­ers for fraud­sters. They try to steal your heart, take your mon­ey, and use your iden­ti­ty for their ben­e­fit. They can op­er­ate alone or as part of an or­gan­i­sa­tion of crooks. Some­times they are close to you, like a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber, or in In­dia or Nige­ria, with a give­away ac­cent. Why do we fall for their con­vinc­ing tac­tics? With new me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools, can we de­vel­op re­sis­tance to per­sua­sion?

Every­one has had a mo­ment with a scam­mer. Some­one ap­proached me re­cent­ly about rent­ing a small build­ing. A rel­a­tive quick­ly screened him as she was des­per­ate for rental in­come. I in­ter­viewed him to learn more about why he want­ed to use the build­ing. He sound­ed con­fi­dent, but his busi­ness mod­el did not make sense. I matched his words with his body lan­guage, and some­thing didn’t square. My rel­a­tive was hor­ri­fied that I de­cid­ed, on my in­tu­ition, not to en­gage him. A few weeks lat­er, I saw in the news­pa­pers that he was charged with 21 counts of fraud.

Lessons from the vul­ner­a­ble

Aus­tri­an aero­space sup­pli­er FACC re­port­ed in 2016 that it lost around €50 mil­lion af­ter an em­ploy­ee was tricked in­to trans­fer­ring mon­ey in re­sponse to what ap­peared to be in­struc­tions from se­nior lead­er­ship. The in­ci­dent be­came one of the best-known ex­am­ples of “CEO fraud.” The les­son is that scam­mers ex­ploit hi­er­ar­chy. A re­quest that ap­pears to come from the top should not by­pass or­di­nary con­trols.

In 2019, Toy­ota Boshoku, a Toy­ota group sup­pli­er, re­port­ed that one of its Eu­ro­pean sub­sidiaries had been tricked in­to trans­fer­ring around US$37 mil­lion through a fraud­u­lent pay­ment in­struc­tion. Scams of­ten tar­get sub­sidiaries, re­gion­al of­fices, or fi­nance teams where lines of au­thor­i­ty may be less vis­i­ble.

Toy com­pa­ny Mat­tel was re­port­ed­ly tricked in 2015 in­to send­ing US$3 mil­lion to a fraud­u­lent ac­count in Chi­na af­ter re­ceiv­ing a fake pay­ment re­quest. The com­pa­ny re­cov­ered the funds be­cause the trans­fer was caught quick­ly and banks act­ed be­fore the mon­ey moved fur­ther. The les­son: Speed mat­ters af­ter a scam. If you’ve sent mon­ey, con­tact­ing the bank im­me­di­ate­ly can be the dif­fer­ence be­tween re­cov­ery and per­ma­nent loss.

Types of scams

There are many flavours of crook­ery. Phish­ing scams: Fake emails, texts, or web­sites de­signed to steal pass­words, bank­ing de­tails, or per­son­al in­for­ma­tion. In­vest­ment scams: Promis­es of high re­turns with low risk, of­ten in­volv­ing cryp­to, forex, prop­er­ty, or “ex­clu­sive” op­por­tu­ni­ties. Ro­mance scams: Some­one builds emo­tion­al trust on­line, then asks for mon­ey, gifts, or fi­nan­cial help. Im­per­son­ation scams: A scam­mer pre­tends to be a bank, gov­ern­ment agency, de­liv­ery com­pa­ny, fam­i­ly mem­ber, or ex­ec­u­tive. In­voice scams: Scam­mers send fake in­voic­es or al­tered pay­ment de­tails to busi­ness­es to redi­rect mon­ey.

Tech sup­port scams: Fake warn­ings claim your de­vice is in­fect­ed, then push you to call a num­ber or in­stall re­mote-ac­cess soft­ware. Mar­ket­place scams: Fraud on plat­forms like Face­book Mar­ket­place, eBay, or clas­si­fieds, in­clud­ing fake buy­ers, fake sell­ers, and over­pay­ment tricks. Busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty scams: “Guar­an­teed in­come” sys­tems, or coach­ing pro­grams with un­re­al­is­tic promis­es. Iden­ti­ty theft scams: At­tempts to col­lect enough per­son­al da­ta to open ac­counts, take loans, or ac­cess ex­ist­ing ac­counts.

Reg flags

Fangzhou Wang, an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nol­o­gy and crim­i­nal jus­tice at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Ar­ling­ton, stud­ies on­line fi­nan­cial crimes. In a Sep­tem­ber 2026 Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can in­ter­view, she said AI is the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance mak­ing cons hard­er to spot—and eas­i­er to scale—to reach more peo­ple glob­al­ly and in­ex­pen­sive­ly. Con artists now have a new set of tools and are hard­er to trace.

We tend to think that poor gram­mar, es­pe­cial­ly from crooks from coun­tries where Eng­lish is not the first lan­guage, is the first thing to look for, but in the age of AI writ­ing, this can be mis­lead­ing. In ad­di­tion, pic­tures and videos can be deep-faked. The hu­man mind can be tricked by a beau­ti­ful woman’s im­age and a well-writ­ten bi­og­ra­phy on a fake web­site or Face­book page.

Live chat can al­so be faked. Fraud­sters of­ten use per­sua­sion tech­niques based on pub­lic search­es and things you may have post­ed and for­got­ten. There is much more out there about you than you think. We are gullible about our suc­cess­es and fall for praise eas­i­ly. They of­ten build trust be­fore they make their move. Like my rental scam­mer, who prac­tised his lines, but his body lan­guage said oth­er­wise. Man­ner­isms are hard to mas­ter un­less you have tak­en an act­ing class, so watch these signs.

Since con artists want you to trust them, they want you to act ur­gent­ly, with­out think­ing. When you drop your guardrails and re­act in­stinc­tive­ly, they can ex­ploit you. What can you do to pro­tect your­self?

Vac­ci­nate your­self

You can pro­tect your­self and your or­gan­i­sa­tion against these in­tru­sions. Scams work by build­ing emo­tion­al mo­men­tum faster than the vic­tim can ver­i­fy. Your brain avoids the cog­ni­tive load of fact-check­ing be­cause it drains avail­able en­er­gy, which makes you vul­ner­a­ble. You need process­es that pre­vent swindlers from by­pass­ing them, and you need to train your staff to fol­low prop­er pro­ce­dures.

A sim­ple ver­i­fi­ca­tion habit is to con­firm un­usu­al re­quests. Call the known phone num­ber on file, not the one in the email. Re­quire dual ap­proval for wire trans­fers and changes to ven­dor pay­ment de­tails. Train em­ploy­ees to pause with­out fear of be­ing blamed for slow­ing some­thing down.

Scams work when ur­gency over­rides judg­ment. Pause and let your mind rest; a ver­i­fied phone call and a clear in­ter­nal process can stop most fraud at­tempts be­fore they be­come loss­es.

Use a sim­ple rule: stop, check, con­firm. Stop the ac­tion be­fore mon­ey or da­ta moves. Check the re­quest against your records, con­tracts, pur­chase or­ders, and pre­vi­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Con­firm us­ing a trust­ed chan­nel, not the con­tact de­tails in the sus­pi­cious mes­sage.

If you hear a huge suck­ing sound, halt and pause; it could be your gullible side falling for one of the old­est tricks in the book. Scams suc­ceed when speed swaps judge­ment. Im­mu­nise your­self, think it through, and don’t let swift de­ci­sion-mak­ing cost your busi­ness mon­ey.

Saj­jad Hamid can be con­tact­ed at www.linkedin.com/in/saj­jad­hamid and at en­tre­pre­neurt­nt@gmail.com