Speaker 1: Pushkin, this is solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg. There are only
Speaker 1: a few real cons that exist, and the bones of
Speaker 1: the story are the same, and they've been the same
Speaker 1: for centuries. Author Maria Khanikova has been writing about these
Speaker 1: stories for a number of years. Her book The Confidence
Speaker 1: Game explores stories of con artists, opportunists, the people who
Speaker 1: build up our trust and then take everything we have.
Speaker 1: I think Bernie made off the late investor who destroyed
Speaker 1: countless lives with false promises and financial theft. But before
Speaker 1: we pledge to fight to abolish all scams, remember this
Speaker 1: another side to those familiar stories too, The flip side
Speaker 1: of our vulnerability too, cons is human connection and trust
Speaker 1: and all the good stuff. So how do we protect
Speaker 1: our loved ones and ourselves? Will scams be an enduring
Speaker 1: part of society forever because we refuse or are unable
Speaker 1: to learn from our mistakes Rather than admitting, Yep, I
Speaker 1: was dumb. I fell for a scam. You say, oh no, no,
Speaker 1: Here are all of the mitigating circumstances and it probably
Speaker 1: wasn't even a scam. So I think that it takes
Speaker 1: a strong person because it's embarrassing, it's embarrassing, because embarrassing
Speaker 1: to admit it. So can scams be solved? Maria Kannakova thinks,
Speaker 1: so being victimized by a scam is actually a solvable problem.
Speaker 1: Maria has gone from investigating the lies we tell ourselves
Speaker 1: to mastering the bluff herself by learning to play poker
Speaker 1: at a world class level and writing about that too.
Speaker 1: So I started by asking her why she's so hooked
Speaker 1: on these concepts of big and small manipulations. My first
Speaker 1: book was about Charlock, So I've kind of traveled this
Speaker 1: gamut from you know, how do you be a detective? Too? Okay,
Speaker 1: what are the what are the bad guys doing? To
Speaker 1: kind of being the bad guy myself but within a game, right, so,
Speaker 1: so there are rules. And one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: I've that it's been such a passion of mine is
Speaker 1: that I hate to see in reality, not in a game.
Speaker 1: I hate to see people being taken advantage of, and
Speaker 1: how often that happens, and how scammers often will target
Speaker 1: the most vulnerable parts of our population, the most vulnerable people,
Speaker 1: and then we as a society target them again by
Speaker 1: blaming them and by saying, oh, well, you were just
Speaker 1: stupid you were just greedy, you were just dumb. You know,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have fallen for it. I wouldn't have fallen
Speaker 1: for it, and that just gets me. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: was going to ask you because of your long standing interest.
Speaker 1: I mean, is this personal for you in any way?
Speaker 1: Have you been scammed yourself or people close to you
Speaker 1: been victim of scams? I personally have not been scammed
Speaker 1: that I know of, but one point I always make
Speaker 1: is that you know, the best scams are ones that
Speaker 1: you're probably not aware of. So I'm sure I've been
Speaker 1: scammed on small things. And when you're about to get
Speaker 1: on the subway, someone stops you and says, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I lost my wallet. Do you have
Speaker 1: the fare for the subway, for the bus, for the train.
Speaker 1: I need to get back to my family. And there's
Speaker 1: so many excuses, and you can do one of two things.
Speaker 1: You can say I think you're a con artist. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to give you any money and walk on.
Speaker 1: You feel kind of shitty, You feel like a bad
Speaker 1: person because what if they actually needed you. I've lost
Speaker 1: my wallet, I've needed help in the past, and I
Speaker 1: think we've all probably been on the other side of that,
Speaker 1: And so the trade off is, yeah, maybe you get scammed,
Speaker 1: but I'd rather take the risk of being the victim
Speaker 1: of a scammer and particular instance, and I'm sure I've
Speaker 1: been scammed that way. Well, that's interesting. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have an experience that still sticks with me from high school.
Speaker 1: I remember in Chicago, where I was growing up, walking
Speaker 1: through Lincoln Park and there was a guy kind of
Speaker 1: ragged looking walking with a gas can, and he stopped
Speaker 1: me and told me this whole sad story about how
Speaker 1: he was trying to get back to Florida to see
Speaker 1: his family and his card run out of gas and
Speaker 1: he needed the money for gas. Now, I was probably
Speaker 1: fifteen years old or something like that, but I think
Speaker 1: I gave him ten dollars, which would have been a
Speaker 1: lot of money to me at the time, and I
Speaker 1: felt kind of good about myself for doing that. And
Speaker 1: then a week later I was walking through the park
Speaker 1: and there was the same guy walking around with his
Speaker 1: gas can, and you know, it just it sticks with
Speaker 1: you because it's a sort of formative experience of misplaced trust.
Speaker 1: You know, the cure or can be worse than the disease,
Speaker 1: right if the cure is to be mistrustful of people
Speaker 1: and to be kind of hard shelled and not have
Speaker 1: empathy for people who seem to be in a bad
Speaker 1: situation because they might be scamming you. That's not a
Speaker 1: good outcome either. I couldn't agree more. I actually saw
Speaker 1: that sentiment phrased in the most beautiful way by Ricky Jay,
Speaker 1: who was a lifelong student of the Khan. He was
Speaker 1: fascinated by them, and he wasn't he wasn't just a magician.
Speaker 1: He was someone who really enjoyed kind of that dark side.
Speaker 1: And he said once in an interview, he said, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to live in a world where we can't
Speaker 1: get conned, because that's a world where you can't believe
Speaker 1: in anyone or anything. And I think that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of truth to that that the flip side of
Speaker 1: our vulnerability to cons is human connection and trust and
Speaker 1: all the good stuff. And so it's it's one of
Speaker 1: these things where, you know, do we want to solve
Speaker 1: all cons forever and ever? I don't actually think we do.
Speaker 1: I think we want to target it and be a
Speaker 1: little bit more specific and say, okay, you know, we
Speaker 1: can make ourselves invulnerable to online scams or two kind
Speaker 1: of different scams of that sort. But in terms of
Speaker 1: human to human contact, I think that we're always going
Speaker 1: to have to leave a window open for vulnerability. And
Speaker 1: that's okay, that's really interesting. I want to get into
Speaker 1: the types of scams in a minute, but first I
Speaker 1: want to ask you, just broadly speaking, if we agree
Speaker 1: on that that the solution to scams is not to
Speaker 1: go in mistrustful of everyone you meet, what is the
Speaker 1: way to avoid becoming a victim of scams by actually
Speaker 1: being smarter and a little bit more skeptical and a
Speaker 1: little bit less giving of information about ourselves. The modern
Speaker 1: day person has given up privacy in so many ways.
Speaker 1: You know, we have public profiles on all sorts of
Speaker 1: social media where we list really portant information about ourselves. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know you've got the big ones. You know your birthday,
Speaker 1: and every single network keeps wanting to know my birthday
Speaker 1: and keeps reminding me, don't you want people to wish
Speaker 1: you a happy birthday? And I say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'd rather not thank you, because the people who know
Speaker 1: me and who care about me can wish me a
Speaker 1: happy birthday, and I don't need the world at large
Speaker 1: knowing my birthday. But we also post happy things, you know,
Speaker 1: the birth of children, exactly when they were born, the
Speaker 1: date of the time, their weight, their eye color, all
Speaker 1: of these things, happy moments, sad moments, divorces, marriages, it's
Speaker 1: all out there, and this is all information that can
Speaker 1: be used against us by con artists. I always advocate
Speaker 1: and people look at me like I have twenty heads,
Speaker 1: especially when I'm talking to you know, high school students
Speaker 1: or college students, and they just think that I'm this
Speaker 1: complete monster when I say, you know, make things private,
Speaker 1: don't ever accept friend requests from people you don't know,
Speaker 1: don't share these types of things. And it's one of
Speaker 1: these things where I'm pushing against a tide that I
Speaker 1: think I'm going to lose. But that's kind of something
Speaker 1: really really simple that we can do to actually make
Speaker 1: ourselves less vulnerable. The other thing I would say is
Speaker 1: education actually works. So it turns out when you're looking
Speaker 1: at people's susceptibility to cons that if you teach them
Speaker 1: about specific types of cons and what the scripts are
Speaker 1: and how people get to you and what they say
Speaker 1: ahead of time before they're in that hot emotional situation,
Speaker 1: then they're not going to fall for it. So a
Speaker 1: great example is the grandparent scam. So you get a
Speaker 1: phone call. Your grandchild has been in an accident. They're
Speaker 1: in the hospital. We need money. You can't call their
Speaker 1: parents because they were on drugs. You know, they were
Speaker 1: in Mexico. And oh my god, your grandchild really was
Speaker 1: in Mexico on vacation. Surprise, surprise, Right, social media posts
Speaker 1: you can actually use real information, and so you get
Speaker 1: scared and you wire money. This happens all the time.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that if you actually teach people
Speaker 1: about this scam, they stop falling for it. They'll start
Speaker 1: asking verifying questions. So the old you know what I
Speaker 1: always keep coming back to is what we're taught as
Speaker 1: journalists from the very beginning. Trust but verify, Yeah, verify, verify,
Speaker 1: verify whenever you're making an important decision, whenever you're forging
Speaker 1: a new relationship, especially when there's money involved. But even
Speaker 1: if there's no money involved, verify. Don't take things at
Speaker 1: face value when it's actually important. Yeah, but verify, no
Speaker 1: matter how scared you are. The enemy of verification is convenience,
Speaker 1: I mean, slows you down and it's all the pathwords
Speaker 1: you have to remember and the two step verification you
Speaker 1: know to log on to anything, and you know, often
Speaker 1: it's a deterrent to just getting what you want to
Speaker 1: do on the thing you want to read or the
Speaker 1: thing you want to transact online, and of cour ninety
Speaker 1: nine point nine percent of times you'd be fine. So
Speaker 1: it's very tempting not to go through that step in
Speaker 1: the process. Absolutely, I think convenience is the enemy, and
Speaker 1: I will add to that, desire is the other enemy.
Speaker 1: That we often want to believe something is true so
Speaker 1: much that we don't want to verify it. I don't
Speaker 1: actually know the real origin of the phrase to I
Speaker 1: can help someone who might know. Well. Ronald Reagan made
Speaker 1: it famous when he was opening nuclear negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev.
Speaker 1: And there was a Russian scholars just something I happen
Speaker 1: to know because I wrote a book about Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 1: Suzanne Massey. She was a Russian scholar who his book
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan read, and he invited her in and she said,
Speaker 1: I want to teach you a phrase in Russian to
Speaker 1: use with Gorbachev. And I can't say it in Russian,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a Russian phrase, trust but verifying, and
Speaker 1: Reagan loved it, and so of course every time he
Speaker 1: kept repeating it and repeating it and every by the
Speaker 1: fifth meeting with GARBAGEV. Garbachev was like, don't say that
Speaker 1: trust verify. Think again. But it is a good it's
Speaker 1: a very good lesson to apply. And you know a
Speaker 1: lot of places, right So imagine we're talking about the
Speaker 1: online environment right now. A lot of scams online happen
Speaker 1: on dating websites where you meet someone and they're not
Speaker 1: who they say there they are, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of emotional stuff involved. And in that sense, you don't
Speaker 1: verify because of convenience. You don't verify because you want
Speaker 1: to believe in this. You want to believe that it's
Speaker 1: wonderful and it's great, and you're meeting someone who really
Speaker 1: cares about you, and so you're willing to overlook a
Speaker 1: lot of things. And so I think that if when
Speaker 1: you put those things together, they are a potent combination
Speaker 1: towards not verifying and towards just trusting. Has there been
Speaker 1: innovation and surely that is one of the oldest categories
Speaker 1: of scamming. Is is there any digital innovation around that,
Speaker 1: or is this simply an old form being distributed via
Speaker 1: new technology. Yeah. I think the answer to both of
Speaker 1: those things is yes, in the sense that there are
Speaker 1: only a few real cons that exist, and the bones
Speaker 1: of the story are the same, and they've been the
Speaker 1: same for centuries, and they just get kind of updated
Speaker 1: with the time and with the place. It's funny, I
Speaker 1: think that every single time there's a new technology, one
Speaker 1: of the first movers to adapt it is the con artist.
Speaker 1: So you'd probably soon after you've had the Alexander graham
Speaker 1: bell first phone call, probably the next one was a
Speaker 1: telemarketer or some sort of a scam phone call soon
Speaker 1: on its heels. So every new technology just invites its
Speaker 1: ease of access. The Internet is just kind of this
Speaker 1: absolute gold mine for con artists, not just because of
Speaker 1: the information we provide, but because there's such easy access
Speaker 1: to so many people and dating sites. You already have
Speaker 1: your victims pre screening themselves. They're going on there because
Speaker 1: they're lonely, they're vulnerable, they're looking for connection, they're looking
Speaker 1: for something. One of the things that we find about
Speaker 1: the victims of con artists are it doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: how educated they are, or how old they are or
Speaker 1: any of that. But what does matter is where they
Speaker 1: are in their life in terms of are you going
Speaker 1: through a moment of transition? Are you emotionally vulnerable? And
Speaker 1: it turns out that those moments of transition and change
Speaker 1: are the times when you're most likely to get scammed.
Speaker 1: Scams play on kind of primary emotions, you know, lust, loneliness, fear,
Speaker 1: and greed. It's interesting how many scams are openly from
Speaker 1: someone engaging in corruption inviting you to participate it or
Speaker 1: help them in their corruption. I mean, I think of
Speaker 1: that classically as the you know, the son of the
Speaker 1: Nigerian oil minister scam. You know where you get a
Speaker 1: text or an email saying this is money in a
Speaker 1: bank account and I need your help to access it
Speaker 1: and I'll share it with you. That is be a
Speaker 1: thief with me. Indeed. Indeed, and why not that Nigerian
Speaker 1: oil minister didn't get it fairly anyway, so they have
Speaker 1: it coming. It's wonderful what we can justify when some
Speaker 1: poor person is actually the son of the Nigerian oil
Speaker 1: minister and has I imagine he has very little credibility
Speaker 1: when it when he explains who he is. But you know,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this. Bernie Madeoff recently died, and
Speaker 1: one of the interesting subtleties of the Madeoff case is
Speaker 1: that an argument was made that many of his investors
Speaker 1: thought he was a scammer. They just misunderstood the type
Speaker 1: of scam. They thought he was involved in insider trading,
Speaker 1: and they were beneficiaries of it, because, of course, it
Speaker 1: was very un usual, unrealistic for a stock market investor
Speaker 1: to generate consistent double digit returns. So sophisticated investors either
Speaker 1: weren't paying attention or had an inkling that something was up.
Speaker 1: They just didn't realize that they were the victims. They
Speaker 1: thought they were, that he was victimizing other people and
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't need to know about it. Was
Speaker 1: that your understanding of what was going on there. It
Speaker 1: was my understanding of some of it, but some of
Speaker 1: it was also just people really being taken advantage of. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there were some sophisticated adventistors with made Off, but there
Speaker 1: were also people who just gave him their life savings
Speaker 1: because they'd heard from others who they trusted that this
Speaker 1: is someone who's good at what he does, and he
Speaker 1: ruined their lives completely. I mean, he wiped them out.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's important not to lump everyone
Speaker 1: in together, because I do think that there were people
Speaker 1: who really weren't sophisticated and who don't understand that those
Speaker 1: types of returns are crazy, and who just say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a great opportunity. Right. It's not actually
Speaker 1: crazy in the modern world to see these sorts of
Speaker 1: sometimes insane returns, And if you're not a sophisticated investor,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily greed in the sense of ha ha,
Speaker 1: he's taking advantage of someone on my behalf. It's the
Speaker 1: sense that I've worked really hard. These are my life savings,
Speaker 1: and I found a smart opportunity, so why not take
Speaker 1: advantage of it. Other people who are smart are doing it,
Speaker 1: so why not me. Let me invest in crypto. Look
Speaker 1: at the returns people are getting. That seems like a
Speaker 1: really great thing to do. Let me buy some of
Speaker 1: that coin. Oh boy, I'm a millionaire. I'm glad you
Speaker 1: brought up crypto because I wanted to ask you whether
Speaker 1: that qualified as a scam, or what part of it
Speaker 1: might qualify as a scam. I mean, you have simultaneously
Speaker 1: presumably a speculative bubble, which isn't necessarily made off type
Speaker 1: scam where someone is benefiting from it. People are all participating,
Speaker 1: and it's fueled by the greater full theory. And then
Speaker 1: there's just stupidity, you know, making investing a lot of
Speaker 1: money and things that are worthless. I saw recently a
Speaker 1: report about a Delhi and New Jersey that trades on
Speaker 1: the Penny stock exchange that has a market capitalization of
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten million dollars and had revenues last
Speaker 1: year of thirty seven thousand dollars. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's a scam, it's just a really
Speaker 1: stupid investment. And then you now have to have what
Speaker 1: looks a little bit like a new phenomenon, which is
Speaker 1: especially on cryptocurrency, things that are openly stupid investments that
Speaker 1: have no value, that don't even pretend otherwise doge coin,
Speaker 1: whatever whatever it is, and people participating in them knowing
Speaker 1: it's a scam or knowing it has no value. Is
Speaker 1: that all as old as time or are there actually
Speaker 1: some new things happening here? So it's a fascinating question.
Speaker 1: And if I knew the answer, then I would know
Speaker 1: to either drastically short crypto or to invest everything I
Speaker 1: own in it. And I don't. I don't understand the space.
Speaker 1: That's why I actually have never invested in crypto myself.
Speaker 1: It has all the markings of bubbles of your It
Speaker 1: looks like John law and he had this crazy idea.
Speaker 1: It's the basis of markets now, where instead of having
Speaker 1: something that's backed in gold, you back it in you
Speaker 1: issue shares and you have kind of this partnership agreement
Speaker 1: and you can speculate in things then, and you can
Speaker 1: infuse the economy with more liquidity. And he ended up
Speaker 1: basically convincing the government of France that this was going
Speaker 1: to be a great idea, and everyone invested in this
Speaker 1: great opportunity in America that was going to buy up
Speaker 1: all sorts of land and do great things, and people
Speaker 1: became million errors overnight, and then that whole bubble crashed
Speaker 1: and everyone went broke and Law went to prison. That
Speaker 1: was that. But there's this kind of great debate. Was
Speaker 1: John Lawe kind of a brilliant economic innovator and I
Speaker 1: just didn't end up working or was he a con artist?
Speaker 1: I was surprised at how bitter the disagreement is between
Speaker 1: economists about whether John Law was a good guy or
Speaker 1: a bad guy. I feel like with crypto, you know,
Speaker 1: you have this situation where it's totally new once again,
Speaker 1: and it's also backed by seemingly nothing, and so I
Speaker 1: have no idea. I don't know if people are going
Speaker 1: to end up in jail. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a con or a bubble, or if it's going to
Speaker 1: be the future. And a lot of smart people that
Speaker 1: I respect say it's the future, and a lot of
Speaker 1: smart people I respect say it's a bubble. It has
Speaker 1: all the hallmarks of a scam. But well, one thing
Speaker 1: we can be fairly sure about is where you have
Speaker 1: that kind of financial hype, they're going to be scams
Speaker 1: around it. Yes, so bitcoin may not be a scam
Speaker 1: in any conventional sense, but there are surely scammers who
Speaker 1: see people's eagerness to profit from this phenomenon and are
Speaker 1: figuring out how to scam them around cryptocurrency. So to
Speaker 1: avoid being scammed in general, we are to a significant
Speaker 1: degree resisting human nature, which is really tough. So what
Speaker 1: are the Maria Conakova takeaways? The precepts to avoid getting
Speaker 1: in the situation where you're vulnerable to a scam. And also,
Speaker 1: you know, when you think aren't sure if something's a
Speaker 1: scam or not, to assess whether whether to misprust it,
Speaker 1: trust but verify. So the more you want something to
Speaker 1: be true, the more you need to actually ask questions,
Speaker 1: be skeptical, and know what you're going to say when
Speaker 1: people put up a fight and get indignant. Because oftentimes
Speaker 1: these conversations are difficult to have, and so we rather
Speaker 1: avoid having them, and so we end up not having them.
Speaker 1: And so I actually think that a lot of it
Speaker 1: comes from preparation, from actually figuring out ahead of time.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you know I think that this I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to have this difficult conversation. This person
Speaker 1: might tell me I can't believe you don't trust me?
Speaker 1: You know who do you think I am? They might
Speaker 1: yell at me, and this is what I'm going to say,
Speaker 1: going to say, I do trust you, I completely understand. However,
Speaker 1: you know I need you to be able to verify this.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can understand that it's a lot of
Speaker 1: money or whatever it is, and think about it ahead
Speaker 1: of time and think through things ahead of time. The
Speaker 1: other thing I would say is to never make decisions
Speaker 1: in the heat of the moment. And that's also easier
Speaker 1: said than done. But just think right now as you're
Speaker 1: listening to this, is it ever true that someone is
Speaker 1: going to die if you don't make a payment immediately?
Speaker 1: Is it true that the IRS is suddenly going to
Speaker 1: arrest you if you do not immediately do this or
Speaker 1: immediately do that. One of the things that scams often
Speaker 1: do is they create this feeling of immediacy, of pressure
Speaker 1: so that you act in the heat of the moment.
Speaker 1: And the number one thing that you can do is
Speaker 1: to step back and reflect and actually have time, because
Speaker 1: time is the great and to emotion and to kind
Speaker 1: of the heat of an emotional moment, and it cools
Speaker 1: it naturally cools you off and helps you reflect and
Speaker 1: helps you figure things out. And so if you can
Speaker 1: pause and not act immediately, I think that's going to
Speaker 1: prevent a lot of scams. And the funny thing is
Speaker 1: that these sorts of safeguards do exist in a lot
Speaker 1: of infrastructure, and we tend to ignore it and try
Speaker 1: to push through it so that we can act right away.
Speaker 1: It's like a bank, you know, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: perform a suspicious transaction will often say you know, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, pause, we don't want you to actually do this.
Speaker 1: It might be a scam and you get mad at
Speaker 1: the bank rather than say, oh, maybe they're actually doing
Speaker 1: something that's good for me. But that's I think finding
Speaker 1: moments of reflection, I think is a really important way
Speaker 1: that we can avoid being scammed. And the final kind
Speaker 1: of psychological tool that I have that I think can
Speaker 1: be incredibly useful is if you think something might be
Speaker 1: a scam, or if you really want to believe something
Speaker 1: or kind off you are about to make a decision,
Speaker 1: think about what you would tell someone else if they
Speaker 1: were in that situation. Try to imagine that it's not
Speaker 1: actually you. Try to imagine that it's your best friend,
Speaker 1: your brother, your neighbor, someone who isn't you, and just
Speaker 1: walk through that scenario. Is it believable? Imagine they're telling
Speaker 1: you that they have this opportunity, or that someone's calling
Speaker 1: them and telling them that this is happening. What would
Speaker 1: you tell them? What advice would you give? Would you
Speaker 1: say this is amazing, transfer money immediately, or would you say,
Speaker 1: wait a second. Here are the questions you should be asking,
Speaker 1: Here are the red flags you should be looking out for,
Speaker 1: because we're so much better at being objective when we're
Speaker 1: talking about someone else. There's one more question I want
Speaker 1: to ask you, which is whether some societies are just
Speaker 1: more written with scams and prone to scams than others,
Speaker 1: and also whether the same society at different points of
Speaker 1: time are more afflicted by scams. You know, when patent
Speaker 1: medicine was all the rage, where there just more scams
Speaker 1: in America than there are now, or you know, to
Speaker 1: bring it a little closer to home, when we had
Speaker 1: a kind of amazing scam or as president, is that
Speaker 1: tone set at the top and does it trickle down
Speaker 1: to scamming elsewhere as opposed to when you don't have
Speaker 1: someone like that office. Absolutely, yes, the tone is set
Speaker 1: at the top. There are societies with more scams than others.
Speaker 1: There are times in a society where there are more
Speaker 1: scams than other times, and it's not something that's innate
Speaker 1: to the humans there, but it is something that is
Speaker 1: created by social circumstances. So if your president is a
Speaker 1: con artist, yeah, absolutely, there are going to be more
Speaker 1: scams and more cons not just because suddenly there are
Speaker 1: more scammers, but because the norms change because people who
Speaker 1: might be more law abiding in normal times suddenly feel
Speaker 1: empowered to cross that line. So a country like Russia today,
Speaker 1: which has had such a long history, you know, as
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, as Russia, and where people have pretty
Speaker 1: low levels of trust, one of the countries with the
Speaker 1: highest levels of scams. There's just so much to take
Speaker 1: advantage of and so much is broken. And whenever you
Speaker 1: have a society where informal organizations have to step up
Speaker 1: to provide any sort of services, that also opens up
Speaker 1: the possibility for scams. But this idea that if scams
Speaker 1: are flourishing, people will same people will get scammed and
Speaker 1: scammed again is a little at odds with the idea
Speaker 1: that once people are scammed, they can be disillusioned and
Speaker 1: become savvier and more skeptical. I mean, we recently did
Speaker 1: an episode of True Yeah, we'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: We just did, and you can tell me why it
Speaker 1: doesn't apply. We recently did an episode of Solvable about
Speaker 1: cults with a woman named Diane ben Scoter who was
Speaker 1: a mooney in the seventies, and I would wager that
Speaker 1: she is the least likely person to fall for a
Speaker 1: cult scam. Ever, again, because she's devoted her career to
Speaker 1: figuring out how it works. Right, So you're saying that
Speaker 1: isn't it isn't common to learn from the experience in
Speaker 1: that way. She is actually not unique but rare in
Speaker 1: the fact that she knows she was the victim of
Speaker 1: a cult, and she, as you say, she's devoted her
Speaker 1: life to trying to figure out how it works and
Speaker 1: how to avoid something like that. Most people, when they
Speaker 1: get scammed won't admit it because they would rather lie
Speaker 1: to themselves and say, oh, it wasn't really a scam,
Speaker 1: you know, let's make excuses. That was just a failed opportunity,
Speaker 1: It was this, it was that, And the cognitive dissonance
Speaker 1: is so high that they just go through all of
Speaker 1: these hoops of rationalization about why I'm not the type
Speaker 1: of person who normally fall for a scam, but this
Speaker 1: was a unique circumstance. But the fact that you've rationalized
Speaker 1: so much of it away actually leaves you quite vulnerable,
Speaker 1: because rather than admitting, yep, I was dumb, I fell
Speaker 1: for a scam, you say, oh, no, no, here all
Speaker 1: of the getting circumstances, then it probably wasn't even a scam.
Speaker 1: So I think that it takes a strong person because
Speaker 1: it's embarrassing to it's embarrassing, to embarrassing to admit it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a hit to your reputation and to our
Speaker 1: sense of self. You know, I'm not the kind of
Speaker 1: person who falls for a scam like that. A lot
Speaker 1: of times people don't even report it because it's heartbreaking
Speaker 1: to their families and they know it, and their families
Speaker 1: had sometimes even warned them, and they did it anyway,
Speaker 1: and so they feel just they feel like they've let
Speaker 1: everyone down, and so they just they won't even admit it. Marie,
Speaker 1: you've been talking about ways that individuals can make themselves
Speaker 1: less susceptible to scamming, But what about the role for
Speaker 1: government and institutions in protecting people against scams. I do
Speaker 1: think that there's certainly a role to be played by
Speaker 1: institutions that get used as friends for scams, and there
Speaker 1: as simple as actually using some of these same psychological
Speaker 1: tools that we've been talking about on an individual level,
Speaker 1: but ratcheting it up to an institutional level. It doesn't
Speaker 1: even have to be a bank, if you're a dating website,
Speaker 1: if you are a place where you know that scams
Speaker 1: take place, and scammers take advantage of your infrastructure. Also,
Speaker 1: try to have some safeguards in place. Now there's some
Speaker 1: really great new AI capability to try to scan images
Speaker 1: and figure out is this a stock photo? Is this
Speaker 1: photo appearing in more than one profile. I don't actually
Speaker 1: know if a lot of websites are using that sort
Speaker 1: of capability, but it exists, and I would argue that
Speaker 1: it's on them that they should actually be trying to
Speaker 1: protect their users by doing things like that and trying
Speaker 1: to flag proactively people who might be scammers. So yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think on all of those levels there's room to
Speaker 1: try to protect the consumer, to try to protect us.
Speaker 1: Ya Kanakova is the New York Times bestselling author of
Speaker 1: The Biggest Bluff, The Confidence Game, and Mastermind How to
Speaker 1: Think Like Sherlock Holmes. To learn more about scams and
Speaker 1: how to protect yourself, check out the links in our
Speaker 1: show notes and Solvable Fans. As we mentioned recently, we
Speaker 1: have a great news to share with you. Host Ronald
Speaker 1: Young Junior is joining our team. Some people I think
Speaker 1: are very good at being a host, but for me,
Speaker 1: it's just it's hospitality, creating that warm sense of environment.
Speaker 1: It really comes from like a genuine place inside and
Speaker 1: I think most people that talk to you will tell
Speaker 1: you that this is who I am all the time.
Speaker 1: More from Ronald coming soon. Solvable Senior Producer is Jocelyn Frank,
Speaker 1: Research in booking by Lisa Dunn. Catherine Giardo is our
Speaker 1: managing producer, and our executive producer is Mia Loebell. Solvable
Speaker 1: is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show,
Speaker 1: please remember to share, rate, and review. It really helps
Speaker 1: us get the word out. You can find Pushkin Podcast
Speaker 1: wherever you listen, including on the iHeartRadio app and Apple
Speaker 1: podcast on Jacob Weisberg