The Most Dangerous Blame Game: How Victim Blaming Uniquely Harms Fraud Victims

Several weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a text from an 833 number. Lighting up my phone screen, the word “urgent” jumped out like a well-timed Halloween scare. The sender claimed to be the United States Postal Service (USPS); would I like to know the status of my shipment? In fact, I was expecting a package—a fresh batch of COVID tests, recently ordered from the White House’s website. It certainly wouldn’t be out of the ordinary to receive a delivery alert from USPS; after all, I’d signed up for their text update service in the past. Without giving it a second thought, I clicked the link. What happened next made for a comical exercise in fraud victimhood: I watched as my idle curiosity morphed into confusion, then outrage, while the screen in front of me did its own morphing. No, I didn’t get the delivery status of my COVID tests, but I did wind up with a bizarre, indecipherable webpage covered in characters I took to be Arabic, surrounding a contextless picture of Hillary Clinton. 

Oh, Emma, I sighed to myself, seething with resentment. You’ve been had. Honestly, how could you have been so stupid? Hadn’t I been working as a fraud investigator for the last seven years? Hadn’t I cautioned multitudes of friends, family and even customers against the very thing I had just been guilty of? Hadn’t I berated my 70-year-old father for not calling me to check before opening a computer popup that promised to sweep for viruses but instead gleefully injected buckets of malware right under his nose? 
While, by no means, a terribly drastic scenario (total dollars lost: $0), this story stands out as a prime example of how pervasive -- even automatic -- the act of victim blaming can be among those who fall prey to fraud schemes (not to mention every member of society within their orbit). Indeed, family members and friends of victims, caregivers to the elderly, members of law enforcement, the government, the media, financial institutions and even consumer protection awareness advocacy groups, all find themselves, far too often, participating in the act of blaming the defrauded instead of the fraudster. 

This past June, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) published the results of a comprehensive study on the victims of fraud. The study, “Blame and Shame in the Context of Financial Fraud,” examined the impact of victim blaming as it pertains to fraud victims, and, perhaps more importantly, what actionable steps can be taken to help address the shame associated with being victimized by these types of crimes. A production of the AARP’s Fraud Watch Network, in partnership with the FINRA Investor Education Foundation and Heart + Mind Strategies, the aims of the study were simple, if its findings were fraught with complications: researchers set out to investigate the frequency with which the victims of financial crimes were obliged to accept the blame for the circumstances, as well as how this motivates the prioritization of prosecuting fraud cases within the United States. The study’s authors also reviewed numerous instances of shifting narratives around other types of traumatic events, such as sexual assault and suicide, and considered how these subtle-but-impactful changes have led to a revision in the way society regards victims in general. 

Over the course of three investigative phases, 16 interviews with members of law enforcement, news media, financial institutions, and consumer protection and government agency groups, plus a national online survey of 1,000 respondents, researchers were able to conclude that the perspective on fraud victims is somewhat bleak, if more than a little contradictory. For example, a whopping 85% of survey respondents said they believed fraud could “happen to anyone”; however, a majority of respondents surveyed also felt victims were responsible for what happened to them. Another interesting, if paradoxical, finding of note: while the majority of those surveyed felt that fraud victims were at least partially to blame for their circumstances, there is also a direct correlation between the language invoked by third parties to hold victims culpable and the empathy those same individuals feel towards those who have been victimized by fraud. In fact, according to the study: “…those who believe victims are culpable tend not to use blaming language, while those using blaming language (e.g., phrases like ‘he got scammed,’ ‘he fell for it,’ ‘he missed an obvious scam,’ or ‘he’s so gullible’) tend not to state they believe in victim culpability. This dissonance between sentiment and behavior reveals a desire to help but an inability to recognize the damaging language used to express such desire.”

Some other notable key findings from the report include:

• 53% of respondents surveyed expressed belief that the victims of fraud were responsible, in some way, for their circumstances.
• Among 36 fraud examiners who participated in a corresponding lab session, 74% advised the study’s authors that they thought victims deserve at least some of the blame for being defrauded.
• 47% of respondents felt that attempting to report a scam to law enforcement was futile, and another 36% thought that police are unable to help in such situations.
• In a separate study cited as supporting evidence, researchers Laura Niemi and Liane Young investigated the dichotomy between media narratives that focus on the victim’s experience versus those that put emphasis on the perpetrator. They found that, “when the perpetrator was the subject of the sentence, participants’ ratings of victim blame and victim responsibility went down significantly.”

What could be driving these numbers? For one thing, there’s the collective subscription to “just world theory”—that is, the prevailing social belief that the world is, essentially, just and good. Therefore, any misfortunes that may befall a victim must be of his or her own making. Imagine a relatively young, seemingly healthy person, who quite suddenly drops dead of a heart attack: friends and family members of the victim, even while swept up in grief, have been known to make statements like “well, that’s why annual checkups are so important.” The implication there, of course, is that as long as they are still getting annual checkups, certainly the same fate will never befall them. (Unlike the unfortunate victim, who clearly wasn’t as fastidious about their health as they should have been). In short, just world theory paints a comforting, reassuring picture for survivors, creating an unconscious coping mechanism that allows for a kind of magical thinking—one that precludes the harsh reality of a world in which far too often, bad things happen to good people for no clear or discernable reason.

Another culprit in the victim-blaming-blame-game could be a psycho-social phenomenon called attribution bias. From the report: “In social psychology, attribution bias explains how individuals attribute others’ circumstances to their choices, actions, and perceived traits. For example, when it comes to financial fraud, one may believe a victim was not smart enough or was not paying close enough attention rather than considering external factors such as having been intentionally targeted. Our survey data show a third (32%) of Americans agree with the statement, ‘Honestly if you fall victim, a lot of that is on you.’” Particularly in America, where emphasis on idealized tropes of rugged individualism and boot-strap achievement factor heavily into small and large decision-making, it can be difficult to convince anyone that you can ostensibly do everything right and still be the victim of a crime. 
When it comes to fraud and financial misappropriation cases, the challenges of holding perpetrators accountable over their victims can be especially vexing. The anonymous nature of myriad online scams—be they crypto-related, digital wallet-adjacent, or just a good old-fashioned cases of identity theft—often leaves both the victim and their surrounding support network without any direct offender to shift focus on. This frustrating lack of a face to put on the fraudster contributes to differentiating the crime of financial fraud from, say, armed robbery, or even rape—a crime historically entrenched in the social practices of victim blaming. 

So, what exactly can be done to help combat the scourge of victim blaming? How can CFEs, as well as the entire culture in general, fight back against these intrinsic tendencies that too often render those preyed upon by fraudsters victimized twice over? Would fraud victims benefit from their own version of a #MeToo movement? Should members of law enforcement, financial institutions, CFEs and even elected leaders revisit outdated approaches when it comes to fraud cases? After all, consider, as The Guardian points out, that as digital forms of payment have grown exponentially, the unspoken agreement between consumers and banks was that, with increased banking transactions and decreased use of cash, banks would in turn step up anti-fraud protections. Instead, banks have demonstrated a tendency to blame their own customers when fraud is reported, often arguing that the victims should have known better than to trust external sources with their personal account information.

In writing for an audience of CFEs, one hardly needs to stress the point that the true impact of financial fraud is largely unknown, due to under-reporting by victims and lack of investigative resources or  interest from law enforcement. One might imagine a world where victims feel not only empowered to come forward with their stories, but also confident in the knowledge that the institutions charged with protecting them are guaranteed to do exactly that.

Returning to the personal anecdote about the bogus USPS text: instead of calling myself stupid for clicking on a well-timed and sophisticated-looking piece of malware, I wish I had allotted blame where it belonged. If every victim of fraud turned the tables on their victimizers, the world of financial fraud might look very different.
“Nice try, dummy, but it’s going to take a lot more than a spam text to take me down.”