Grooming is a method of establishing a connection with a person to perpetrate a crime against them. Grooming is becoming more common in fraud, both online as well as in interpersonal interactions. What’s more, scammers are getting more sophisticated in their techniques. There is a mistaken belief that scammers are forceful, arrogant, and therefore easy to spot, but many play a long game, carefully and patiently grooming the victim before asking for money. In some cases, they don’t even ask for money. Instead, they carefully orchestrate events, sometimes using other actors to get the victim to offer help. This is a frequent occurrence in romance scams, but there are others, too. Financial and clairvoyant scams can also include a component of grooming, and this grooming serves a different purpose for different scams. Sometimes, it is to stop the victim from reporting the scam, and other times, it may be to facilitate long-term cooperation and financial abuse.
Romance Scams
In romance frauds, scammers typically groom the victim for months before a request for funds is made. In such romance scams, victims typically lose very large sums of money and sometimes even their whole life savings. However, there are also quick methods used in some romance scams. Some instances work by establishing a quick romantic connection and asking the victim to help with a plane ticket so the two can meet. Typically, the scammer doesn’t show up, the victim realizes they were conned, and they eventually move on.
It is impossible to believe that a person would give someone a large sum of money to a person they never met, but grooming techniques can be very powerful in preparing the victim. In the early stages of the ploy, the scammer establishes a deep connection with a victim by mimicking the victim’s (Read more...)
