It can be agony when a loved one is a scam victim — but refuses to see it

Journalist April Helm, 49, makes her living reporting facts, but she had trouble getting her late mother, Sherri Tyson, to see the truth. In 2018, the widowed Tyson, who passed away in 2020

at age 72, met a much younger diamond magnate named Gerald online and became convinced that they were in love. She ended up losing $350,000 to the romance scammer, even as Helm tried her

hardest to make her mother see that Gerald was a fake. Helm is savvy about scams. The news director and anchor at the AM radio station KRMG in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she’s the founder and host of

the podcast _Scammer Stories_. That may have made it all the more excruciating to watch her mother lose her savings to a criminal while Helm tried everything she could think of to get Tyson

to stop. Helm showed her evidence that Gerald was lying. She asked other family members to intervene. She interviewed her mom on her podcast. She even arranged a visit from federal law

enforcement, so they could explain the scam to Tyson. “None of that worked,” says Helm, who had never seen her mom so happy. “She was giddy — just so in love.… She would not admit that she

was being scammed.” WHEN VICTIMS WON’T ACCEPT THE TRUTH Although most fraud victims eventually recognize when they have experienced a scam, chronic victims like Tyson are often so invested

in scammers’ lies that they’re unable to reject them. They also may have been manipulated by the criminals to distrust the people around them, which leaves them isolated. Any of those

factors can make someone extremely difficult to protect from fraud. A chronic victim might be someone who loses money to the same or different scams repeatedly, or is caught up in a single

scam over an extended period of time. In both cases, the person may be unable to see reality while being targeted by sophisticated techniques designed to stimulate their emotions — whether

fear, anxiety or excitement — in ways that prevent rational thinking. Many romance scams or investment scams (criminals often combine the two), in particular, are played out over months or

even years, with the victim becoming increasingly enmeshed with the scammer. It’s hard to determine how many people are chronic fraud victims, but certain characteristics and situations can

make someone more vulnerable to repeated or long-term scams, according to the 2021 report “Addressing the Challenge of Chronic Fraud Victimization,” commissioned by AARP and the FINRA

Investor Education Foundation. Interviews with victims and family members of victims found that isolation, a history of abuse, depression, cognitive decline and a lack of a sense of purpose

are among the potential risk factors for chronic victimization. PSYCHOLOGICAL MANIPULATIONS Like the “imagineers” who design immersive rides at Disney theme parks, scammers create worlds so

realistic that victims can easily lose themselves inside them, says social psychologist Anthony Pratkanis, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“It’s like being a character in a novel. You’re playing a role that the criminal has given you, and you think the story is going to have a happy ending. But it doesn’t. It has a very sad

ending.” Many chronic victims fall into what’s known as a rationalization trap, Pratkanis adds. When people who believe they are smart or capable fall for a scam, it contradicts their

perception of themselves, he explains. When that happens, they can either admit the scam or ignore it. One path leads to feelings of shame and depression, while the other leads to feelings

of affirmation and joy. When victims choose the latter — rejecting reality — it’s a subconscious act of self-preservation. Some victims may be influenced by the “sunk-cost fallacy,” says

gerontologist Marti DeLiema, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she studies financial scams and older adults. “It’s the idea that you’ve already

invested so much time or so much money. Accepting that it’s a scam means all that is a loss.”