What I read
According to “Hidden 'shame' of elderly scam victims” By Sean Coughlan (2018), many elderly, who were tricked by fraudsters, decided to keep the incidents to themselves and not tell anyone, including their families or friends. This eventually leads them to live with shame and have long term impact on their social behaviors such as isolating from society, or fear of being defrauded. To help the elderly victims overcome such difficult situations, there is a helpline called Reassura that gives them advice about how to deal with fraud. Most common types of fraud are identity theft, fake service fees, and online shopping scam.
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My response
Fortunately, I have never been a fraud victim or encountered any kind of fraud, but I have heard many fraud cases from news involving many victims who lost a lot of money. Many of them were investment frauds that shared similar pattern. It usually begins with fraudsters offer victims an investment opportunity with ridiculously high return to lure them into their scheme as many as possible until they accumulate enough victims money. Then they close the company and run away with all the money. Whenever I know how much the fraudsters offer to the victims, I always think if those fraudsters are sort of stupid to offer unbelievable return rate e.g. 20-30% per month. With such very high rate of return, who are going to believe them. And yet, there are still many victims being tricked. This cycle keeps repeating with just new group of fraudsters and victims. Moreover, the victims are from many different backgrounds, including highly educated people such as doctor, engineer, pilot, etc. So, it is not the case that they are cheated because they are fools, but they are blinded by their greed. Any reasonable person would notice immediately that this kind of offer is impossible. It is just too good to be true.
I understand that everyone want to be rich. But in order to succeed in investing, you should control your greed, not the other way around. I think the first question to ask when it comes to investing in something is not how much you are going to get, but how likely the risk of losing money is. If you start with the right question, it will lead you to next follow up questions such as what kind of business they are doing, how they generate income, who are the customers, how about the competition in the market, and so on and so forth. At some point you will catch a glimpse of how business work and be able to answer whether or not you should put your money into this business. Though I don’t know how fraudsters approach their victims, but if I was approached by such fraudsters, I would ask them a lot of questions considering the risk of business. I would like to know if I am capable enough to deal with fraud.
I understand that everyone want to be rich. But in order to succeed in investing, you should control your greed, not the other way around. I think the first question to ask when it comes to investing in something is not how much you are going to get, but how likely the risk of losing money is. If you start with the right question, it will lead you to next follow up questions such as what kind of business they are doing, how they generate income, who are the customers, how about the competition in the market, and so on and so forth. At some point you will catch a glimpse of how business work and be able to answer whether or not you should put your money into this business. Though I don’t know how fraudsters approach their victims, but if I was approached by such fraudsters, I would ask them a lot of questions considering the risk of business. I would like to know if I am capable enough to deal with fraud.
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My question
What would you do if you encountered a fraud ?
___________________________________ Reference
- Coughlan S. (2018, June 28). Hidden 'shame' of elderly scam victims. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/education-44629881
I heard frauds of various types. For me, I don’t think the greed is the most main reason. Why can fraudsters cheat lots of people? Everyone has weaknesses. Most victims are elder. why? Sometimes I think elder and children are same, because they don’t have deep thinking abilities. My grandfather often trusts fraudsters, such as medicine seller, call fraud. I hate the fraudsters of they focus on the elder. Because sometimes elder’s mind is not flexible and thinking slowly, some questions they can’t think thoughtful. I don’t think my grandpa was wrong, I just hate the fraudsters.
ReplyDeleteI heard many news about a fraud but I never encounter the fraudsters before. I think if I encounter the fraudster, I will not trust them suddenly until I check information thoroughly. In my opinion, many frauds occur with the children and elders because the children have low experiences and the elders think slowly. So, we should tech them about trick of the fraudster for protect themselves.
ReplyDeleteI have been call from unknown number so many times. Sometime I just ignore them because I don't know whose calling me. Sometime I answer the phone and listen what they say, but in the end I cut the call and ignore them because they try to sell me the thing that I don't need and I don't trust them. We don't really known who are those people and what they try to do, so I'm not going to answer the phone with the number or who that I don't know.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, fraud has many kinds of types,although most fraud types utilize people's greed to get successful, but some frauds obtain successful by using people's sympathy,they pretend to encounter all kinds of difficulty and ask people to give him money.this fraud is the kind of fraud type that I hate most, because it consume people's reliance each other and the person who meet trouble indeed can not get to help, it seriously destroy the trust between people.I think you should keep calming when you encounter fraudster and think twice about present situations.Maybe it is easier to say but it is difficult to do for most people.
ReplyDelete