1. White men as victims
So who is most likely to be a victim of fraud? He is a middle-aged white man, educated, and financially literate. He also may be under some financial strain. That’s according to Stanford University psychologist Laura Carstensen, who co-founded a research centre aimed at protecting victims and preventing catastrophic incidents of financial fraud.
This makes sense, when you think about it. Someone who is financially literate and educated would consider themselves intelligent and not think that they could be a victimized. The American College of Financial services did a study in which they found that people with a graduate degree were the most likely to become victims.
Financial planners offer some theories why these people are prone to being victims. The belief is that very educated people may be fooled by their success and start thinking that they are skilled investors too. This can cause them to be overconfident and that can lead to vulnerability to frauds and poor investments.
2. Older victims
The elderly stand to lose more to scams. They are usually on a fixed income, maybe have retirement savings, but they are past their working lives, which means they have no way of replacing their savings.
Although generally scammers pick on them more, recent research shows that they are not as vulnerable as once thought.
3. Younger victims
Contrary to conventional wisdom, younger adults may be more at risk to fraud than older people, according to Better Business Bureau research.
One young lady in her late 20’s was a victim and in the process lost all of her investment money. She, unfortunately, is not around to talk about it as she subsequently committed suicide.
BBB Institute … surveyed 2,021 adults, asking whether they’d lost money to a scam in the previous year. Roughly 30% of those aged 25 to 34 were victims, while less than 10 % of those 55 or older were.
The article goes on to say:
All this time, boomers have been focusing on protecting their parents and themselves against scams. But it looks like we need to work harder keeping our Millennial kids from becoming victims.
Scam artists alter their tactics depending on the unique vulnerability of their targets, says DeLiema. A young woman might not fall for a “grandparents scam” (in which con artists pose as a grandchild in trouble). However she might fall for a weight-loss scheme or an anti-aging cream because she feels insecure about aging.
4. Lonely victims
A 2014 report by AARP, “Caught in the Scammers’ Net,” says that 66 % of scammed victims say that they “often or sometimes feel isolated.”
Dating sites are prime territory for fraud — and people who are lonely are especially vulnerable, says an AARP article on such scams.
Internet dating sites are a prime area for scams to occur. These sites can be feeding grounds for fraudsters. They prey on people’s emotional vulnerability along with a tailored fake persona to try and relieve the person of their money.
The emotional vulnerability can result in taking risks, thinking that their prayers have been answered. This, even when a “dream partner”, they met online, is too good to be true.
The article tells how Enitan, the name given to a former scammer interviewed for the article, worked:
Using stolen credit card numbers, the scammer would flood dating sites with fake profiles. Due to the Internet’s enormous reach, fraudsters canoe located anywhere and their victims can be found anywhere.
The Scammer copies profile photos from social media or other dating sites. To snare women, he’d pose as an older man, financially secure and often in the military or in engineering professions.
For male victims, he just needed a photo of an alluring younger woman: “Guys are easier to convince — they’re a bit desperate for beautiful girls.” The common thread between them: loneliness.
All his victims, Enitan says, described themselves as divorced or widowed. “The lonely heart is a vulnerable heart.”
5. On the internet
Telemarketers often are linked with fraud, and for good reason: People who listen to telemarketers’ calls are more likely to get hooked, DeLiema says.
And the digital age has produced a far bigger pipeline for fraudsters to contact potential victims: Through email, fraudulent online ads, online shopping scams and more.
Heimdal Security, which provides cybersecurity services and intel, offers a guide to the most common online scams and ways to spot them before you lose anything.
6. Victims who are part of an identifiable group
The Securities and Exchange Commission warns that some scams “prey upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, the elderly, or professional groups.” How it works, according to a consumer report from the federal agency:
The fraudsters who promote affinity scams frequently are — or pretend to be — members of the group. They often enlist respected community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scheme, by convincing those people that an investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster’s ruse.
In other words, scammers may seem like people you know, or someone who seems to be like you, including family, members of a religious group, or someone in a profession considered to be beyond reproach. It is this trust in the scammer that makes it more likely for the people to get scammed.
7. In debt
Being in debt makes you vulnerable to scam artists who prey on people looking for a way out of a difficult situation. Scam artists can be hard to identify because they pose as legitimate businesses.
Be particularly wary of businesses offering debt consolidation and help negotiating with creditors. Scammers also often insert themselves into the businesses of mortgage refinancing and foreclosure counseling.
8. Desperate people become victims
People in desperate situations grasp at straws. Con artists know this and show up looking for immigrants who need help with their legal status, for example, or for victims of natural disasters who are willing to pay for help filing a claim, finding a new home or getting home repairs.
One rule of thumb: Never engage a contractor who shows up uninvited to your home.
In the end, most of us are a bit vulnerable, in one way or another. Almost anyone can get scammed because scams are so widespread today. A few of the AARP report’s list of traits shared by vulnerable scam victims:
