KELLIE NEWSOME: You can’t tell people to stop believing in a scam, but Cathy Wilson has some tips on how to help them change that apply to a lot of scenarios in psychotherapy.   Welcome to the Carlat Psychiatry Podcast, keeping psychiatry honest since 2003. 

CHRIS AIKEN: I’m Chris Aiken, the editor-in-chief of The Carlat Report.

KELLIE NEWSOME: And I’m Kellie Newsome, a psychiatric NP and a dedicated reader of every issue. We ended last week with the story of a bank CEO who embezzled – or in his mind borrowed – 47 million from his customers, his church, his friends, and even his daughter to fund a cryptocurrency scam he had been cheated into. Even the FBI couldn’ttalk him out of the danger, and when we’ve seen patients get robbed like this in practice, we haven’t been able to stop them either. 

CHRIS AIKEN: When you tell people they are wrong, it only creates a divide, isolating them in their false belief and giving them something to fight against. Cathy Wilson recommends a different approach: 

CATHY WILSON: I do not make a statement with people that, Oh, this is a scam, you need to get out of it. I use the words It might be, let's talk more about it. Give them a way to figure it out themselves. It is much more effective if yougive them information that helps them discover that rather than telling them, instead of saying, This is so obviously a scam. The way we should approach it is to ask the question: Have you thought about the possibility that this could be a scam? I know that might hurt to hear that, but there is a couple things that feel like red flags to me. Do you think they might be red flags? Have you checked into this person any further? So, you are empowering the person to figure it out themselves, if that makes sense. So, important to do that because, unfortunately, families will often alienate themselves from the person, and then obviously, you have no chance of helping them escape.  

CHRIS AIKEN: That's good advice for any change in psychotherapy. People are more likely to believe something when they discover it for themselves. You’re working against the forces of hope and fear here, the hope of perfect love or great wealth, the fear of betrayal, loss, and shame. 

CATHY WILSON: First, the fear comes up in a sense of, I might be a bit betrayed, it's a might be at first, and then the person usually comes to a point, they will ask a question and evaluate the scammer's response. They might just say, Oh, I'm done, and walk away. Then, the flood of emotions once they realize for sure that this has been a scam. That flood of emotion is full of the shame and the betrayal and the grief, plenty of anger too. A person kind of goes into shock, they go numb, they are frozen, and they isolate themselves typically because of the shame, and so that particular mix leaves them suicidal. It leaves them reluctant to ask for help because they're afraid of being judged.

KELLIE NEWSOME: In the past year, there has been a rash of suicides among teens who were targeted by scammers.

CATHY WILSON: So, they contact a teen through social media. They're pretending to be someone close to their age, and they get this teenager to send them nude photos, and then they extort money. You know, we're going to send it to your school, we're going to, whatever the threat is, you know, we're going to expose this unless you give us mone, and they sometimes can keep that going for a while. And unfortunately, there has been a few suicides in the news. 

KELLIE NEWSOME: When your patient becomes aware of the scam, the first step is to watch your language and avoid victim blaming. 

CATHY WILSON: So, victim blaming. The obvious ways that plays out is if someone says, How could you fall for that? 

But the more subtle ways that that might happen is word choice. When we say someone fell for or someone was duped, then that has the focus on the person it happened to. There's connotations with those words that sound like the person is stupid. Alternate words to use would be to refer to the criminals to refer to this as a crime. To say that you were targeted, not duped. People will say, you gave them this money. What I suggest that we say instead is that money was stolen from you or taken from you against your will. 

KELLIE NEWSOME: There is not much people can do to get their money back in these cases. Usually, the scammers are overseas, operating through mafia rings in poorly regulated countries, and attempts to recoup the stolen money often end in more scams. 

CATHY WILSON:  Like a second level or layer of scamming happens in money recovery searches. So, if I go search for how do I get my money back, I was scammed. Then what I'm going to get in my search results is a bunch more scammers. They're almost all scammers that they talk about being able to get your money back. There's plenty of companies that can help forensically track what they can as far as the scammer's location, IP addresses, things like that. But they are not guaranteeing or saying anything about getting your money back. In fact, the ones that are legitimate are going to say, I am not going to be able to get your money back. But it does give some people some closure, and it certainly can help too, if you have a family member who does not want to see it as a scam. I think they are talking to someone off the coast on an oil rig, but you get some digital forensics company involved, and they trace it to Cambodia. Then you can talk to the person and say That is not where they are, we got this report, and they are actually in this location, and it's a known scamming organization. 

KELLIE NEWSOME: You can direct people to report the scam to the FBI. They may not reclaim their money, but theywill help fight the scammers.  

CATHY WILSON: Ultimately, the place you want to report this to is to the FBI, and you do that through ic3.gov, it is the Internet Crime Complaint Center. That is what the C3 stands for. A report needs to go there because we get our best data from there, it is rare that people get a response because they have so many reports there's no way they can respond to them all currently. However, people typically will go to their local law enforcement first, this is getting better, but the typical response a person gets is that they won't take a report. They say This is not a crime. You gave the money to the person. They're not recognizing that the criminals are using psychological weapons instead of guns. Frequently, a person trying to report it to local law enforcement will be met with condescension, judgment, and dismissal.  

CHRIS AIKEN: The internet is awash with videos of people trying to beat the scammers at their own game, but before you follow that drive for revenge, know this. Most scammers are victims themselves. It is estimated that over a hundred thousand have been trafficked into remote Southeast Asian compounds and forced to scam others. They are usually lured by job prospects, only to be locked into compounds and subject to deprivation and physical abuse if they don’t perform.  

KELLIE NEWSOME: The new wave in scamming is artificial intelligence. Scammers can capture a brief audio clip by calling your children, run it through AI, and then call you to ask for funds to cover an urgent care visit. Here’s the only way around it: come up with an easy-to-remember password that your family can use to prove their identity if emergencies arise. 

CATHY WILSON: Have you heard of the grandparent scam? A scammer calls a grandparent and says, this person has gotten in an accident, and then they'll simulate the grandson, the granddaughter, son, daughter they'll simulate their voice with AI, and in that way, get the person to go send money in whatever form wiring it or gift cards. 

KELLIE NEWSOME: Last year, an executive at an international firm was tricked into paying out $25 million of his company’s money to fraudsters who used deepfake technology. The victim thought he was on a company video conference, but everyone at the conference was a fake of his colleagues, including an AI version of the company’s chief financial officer. 

CHRIS AIKEN: If you know someone who has been a victim of a scam, Cathy has built a website, ScamSurvivorHealing.com, and there are support groups through FightCyberCrime.org and through the AARP or American Association of Retired People – and you don’t have to be a member or be over 50 to access their free support groups through the AARP Fraud Watch Network. 

KELLIE NEWSOME: Here is a preview of the CME quiz for this episode. Earn CME for each episode through the link in the show notes.  

1. The best way to intervene when you first suspect a patient is a victim of a scam is to: 

A. Ask the patient to consult with local law enforcement 

B. Open up the possibility that it might be a scam 

C. Invite family in for an intervention 

D. Tell the patient that they are likely being scammed 

Cathy Wilson is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado. She offers online courses on helping victims of scams and is the author of The Emotional Impact of Being Scammed and How to Recover. It is here. The Carlat Medication Fact Book is now available as an app. Go to app.thecarlatreport.com to access our best-selling drug reference in an interactive form.