Grooming techniques used in various frauds are getting more common and more elaborate. Fraudsters are coming up with narratives that involve complicated lies and may have different stages, depending on the type of fraud.

Often, different actors are brought into the story. These actors also lie to the victim, in order to support the narrative. The purpose of expanding the fraud in this way is to groom the victim to dismiss their doubts or concerns and comply with requests. These lies are spread over months of intense contact with the victim, making them easier to believe. But their higher purpose is to groom the victim into accepting grander lies and more ludicrous narratives down the line, which ultimately leads to loss of funds.

In this article, I will focus on Sam, a victim of financial fraud, to illustrate how fraudsters utilize lies and deception, in order to groom the victim to comply.

Sam’s story

Sam was contacted by fraudsters pretending to be agents from the Financial Conduct Authority. She was told by them, that there have been cases of inside fraud involving several members of staff, and her account was affected. They told her that they are investigating this and asked her to help the investigation, for which she was going to receive a payment. They appealed to her sense of duty by telling her she would be helping other people whose accounts were affected also.

Sam spoke to two people, Chris and Brian, quite regularly, although she spoke to Brian more often. Both would ring her regularly and frequently to let her know how the investigation was progressing. In these conversations, Sam was repeatedly told not to tell anyone about this communication, because it may jeopardize the investigation, since they were not sure which bank staff members were involved (Read more...)