Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13347

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Publication type: news

Malvern J.
Clever people ‘are easier to con’
The Times Online 2008 Mar 17
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3564520.ece

Full text:

Doctors, architects, engineers and other white-collar professionals are
being conned by e-mail fraudsters who lure them into contributing to fake
ventures after taking their details from conference websites.

A report on e-mail scams indicates that the high-achieving professionals are
frequently defrauded, contrary to the widely held belief that the poorly
educated and financially desperate are most vulnerable.

The research, carried out by Ultrascan, an IT fraud agency based in the
Netherlands, also showed a strong correlation between white-collar victims
and a recent or life-changing family trauma, which appeared to have impaired
their judgment.

The review of 362 of the most serious cases, in which victims lost more than
£150,000, found that 85 per cent had suffered a parent-related trauma –
either death or an acrimonious separation.

The report concludes that those who have suffered a bereavement appear to be
more likely to be duped.

Advance-fee fraud – where the victim is asked to pay up before receiving
benefits – is the most successful type of scam in the world and was
responsible for victims losing an estimated £2.1 billion in 2007. There were
300,000 fraudsters active globally last year, a rise of 3 per cent from
2006.

One victim, whose father died in a car accident when he was 12, has lost
more than $500,000 (£250,000) over seven years despite having the
intelligence to gain a doctorate and help to run his family’s business. His
cousin and former business partner, who has requested anonymity, told The
Times that the victim continued to believe that the fraudsters were genuine.

The agency said that poorly educated or financially inexperienced people
were not so desirable to scammers because they did not trust their own
judgment and soon realised that they had been duped.

Frank Engelsman, Ultrascan’s specialist in advance-fee fraud, said that
doctors were especially vulnerable to scams that encouraged them to do good.
“They very often fall for a scam that starts with a request to help the less
fortunate in the world through good causes,” he said. “To do the bigger
scams you need the victims to trust their own capabilities and experience.”

A significant number of high-loss cases involved specialists such as
psychiatrists, psychologists and neuro-surgeons, the agency said.

“The 308 victims who said they had suffered child-parent trauma included two
police commissioners of large cities, respected entrepreneurs and 17
directors of companies listed on stock exchanges.”

Scammers boasted to one another on internet forums about the educational
calibre of their victims, he said.