The key ideas

Scam Me If You Can: Simple Strategies to Outsmart Today's Rip-off Artists

Frank Abagnale, 2019

A scammer isn't interested in how smart you are, but in your emotions — fear, greed, haste, the urge to help. A once-famous con artist, now an FBI consultant, lays bare the moves from the scammer's "script": how they put you into a trance of trust and quietly steal your identity. This book teaches simple habits — stop, check, don't decide on emotion — that make you a hard target.

Who it is for

For anyone who uses a card, a phone and the internet and doesn't want to wake up one day to find their money or their name stolen. And for anyone who wants to protect their parents and the people they love.

It has never been so easy to become a scammer — or a scammer's victim.

It's not about how smart you are

Helen is sixty-four. She had paid off her house in full, paid her bills on time and took pride in a good credit history. Then a stranger, a woman, stayed in her home for a while. A few weeks later Helen was carrying debts that had come from nowhere, and at the bank they were asking her for an account number and a password she didn't know. "I felt as if I didn't exist," she said.

Frank Abagnale knows this story from both sides. At sixteen he passed himself off as a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer and cashed forged checks worth millions of dollars. Then he was caught, he served his time, and for more than forty years he worked as an FBI consultant. His main point is simple and unpleasant: it isn't the stupid who get fooled, it's everyone. A scammer doesn't aim at your mind, but at your feelings — at fear, greed, haste and the urge to help.

So what protects you isn't cleverness, but habits: stop, check, don't decide on emotion. Ahead: how the "ether" works, the one they put you into over the phone, why haste is always suspicious, how your identity is quietly stolen, and why the costliest deception strikes at the heart.

Since you're reading this book, you're already doing what makes a person a hard target. From here it only gets clearer.

Up high, where thinking stops

Kevin worked in a call center that preyed on people who wanted to sell their timeshare — a share in a resort property. He called Nancy, a woman in her seventies, from a number in her home state of Florida, and his voice sounded calm and friendly. Kevin said he had buyers from Canada and gave her their phone number. Nancy called — the "buyers" confirmed everything. Reassured, she sent 2,250 dollars "to process the deal" and never heard from Kevin or the buyers again.

Scammers call this being "under the ether" — the book's name for the trance of trust and excitement in which a person stops thinking clearly. It's like a current that carries you away from shore: while it's carrying you, you don't notice where. A skilled con artist asks friendly questions, feels for the sore spots and presses on fear, greed and haste so you have no chance to come to your senses.

One of them, called Rocky in the book, summed up the whole trick in a few words: the main thing is never to let the victim return to sober calculation. So the first move in your defense is to notice the state itself. Is your heart pounding, are you already dreaming of the payoff or afraid of missing it? Then you're under the ether. In that state you must not make a single money decision. And don't count on your education to save you: according to Abagnale, people with degrees are fooled even more often.

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About the author

As a teenager, Frank Abagnale passed himself off as a pilot, a doctor and a lawyer and cashed forged checks worth millions; his story became the film "Catch Me If You Can." For more than forty years he has advised the FBI and companies on how to defend against fraud.

All books by this author: Frank Abagnale

Terms from the book

  • Rocky
  • Caldwell
  • ether
  • Debit card
  • Kevin
  • Anderson
  • Identity theft: Using someone else's name, numbers and accounts to take out loans, buy things or get services in the victim's name.
  • Credit freeze: A block on opening new credit in your name. While the freeze is on, a bank won't give a loan to a scammer posing as you; in the US it has been free since 2018.
  • Shredder: A device that cuts paper so your data can't be pieced together from what you throw away. The safest is a fine, "confetti" cut.
  • Tax authority: The government body that collects taxes (in the US, the IRS). It first notifies you of a debt by letter rather than calling with threats of arrest.
  • Gift cards: Prepaid store cards. Scammers love them because the money on them is nearly impossible to recover; real agencies never take payment this way.
  • Ponzi: Charles Ponzi — a con artist whose name was given to the pyramid scheme: new investors are paid with old investors' money until the inflow dries up and the whole thing collapses.
  • Phantom riches: A move from the book: the scammer dangles a desirable but out-of-reach payoff — a jackpot, double profit, an inheritance — to stir up emotion and push you toward a reckless decision.
  • Spoofing: Faking the number or name on your phone's screen so the call looks as if it came from your bank, an agency or someone you know.
  • Phishing: Fake emails and websites with real-looking logos that fish out passwords, card numbers and other personal data.
  • Two-factor authentication: Signing in not only with a password but with a second confirmation — for example a code from a text message. Stronger protection than a password alone.
  • Affinity fraud: Deception through "your own crowd": the scammer wins trust as a fellow believer, a fellow local, a colleague or someone who shares your hobby.
  • Catfishing: Building a wholly made-up identity online with someone else's photos in order to start a fake relationship and coax out money.
  • Love bombing: A move where a partner showers you with affection and declarations from the first days to bind you quickly and lull your caution.
  • Nancy: A woman in the book whom Kevin swindled over the sale of a timeshare, taking a fee for a deal that didn't exist.
  • Romano: Michael Romano — a con artist who sold nearly worthless coins to elderly people as rare ones and coaxed out more than forty million dollars.
  • Lipski: Alice Lipski — a woman who, after staying in Helen Anderson's house, took over her identity.
  • Murphield: Megan Murphield — a victim of phone scammers who posed as government officials and demanded payment in gift cards.
  • Madoff: Bernie Madoff — a financier who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about twenty billion dollars.
  • Dix: Shanna Dix — a victim of spoofing: a scammer faked her phone carrier's number and ordered expensive phones on her account.
  • Melissa: A woman in the book who was fooled by a scammer pretending to love the mountains and to be her perfect match.

All terms

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