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When Trust Becomes the Attack Surface: Building Scam Resilience in a World of Manipulation, a conversation with Tracy Hall
167 Plays2 days ago
What makes someone vulnerable to a scam?
Many people assume scams only happen to people who are uninformed, careless, or less tech-savvy. But what if the real attack surface isn't technology at all?
What if it's trust?
In this episode of Scam Rangers, Ayelet Biger-Levin sits down with Tracy Hall—author, advocate, and survivor of one of Australia's most notorious romance fraud cases. After losing her life savings to a professional con artist who spent eighteen months building trust and creating a false identity, Tracy transformed her experience into a mission to educate, advocate, and drive change.
Together, they explore how manipulation works, why intelligence alone doesn't protect us from scams, the dangers of victim-blaming, and what organizations, governments, and individuals can do to build scam resilience in an increasingly digital world.
This conversation goes beyond romance fraud. It's about the psychology of trust, the human side of scams, and why resilience, not fear, is one of our most powerful defenses.
In This Episode
- How professional scammers build trust over time
- Why scams are fundamentally about manipulation, not technology
- The "long con" and how criminals create believable worlds
- Why intelligent, successful people can become scam victims
- The role of vulnerability, life transitions, and emotional context
- Tracy's journey from victim to advocate
- The impact of victim-blaming on reporting and recovery
- The importance of lived experience in shaping scam prevention strategies
- How organizations can improve scam awareness and education
- Why trust has become the new attack surface
About Tracy Hall
Tracy Hall is an author, speaker, scam awareness advocate, and survivor of one of Australia's most high-profile romance fraud cases. Following the publication of her book, The Last Victim, Tracy has become a leading voice in scam awareness, victim advocacy, and consumer education, working with organizations, governments, and communities around the world to improve understanding of scams and fraud.
Key Takeaway: Scams don't target intelligence. They target trust.
And in a world where trust has become the attack surface, awareness alone isn't enough—we need scam resilience.
Resources
- Learn more about Tracy Hall and The Last Victim: https://a.co/d/08gE6hm4
- Connect with Tracy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyhall1975/
About the Host
Ayelet Biger-Levin is the Founder and CEO of RangersAI and the host of Scam Rangers, a podcast exploring the human side of scams and the people working to protect consumers from financial and emotional harm.
Through her work at RangersAI and her leadership within the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, Ayelet partners with financial institutions, policymakers, and advocates to elevate scam prevention beyond controls and technology toward trust-based, customer-centric protection.
Be sure to follow her on LinkedIn and reach out to learn about her additional activities in this space:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayelet-biger-levin/
RangersAI: https://www.rangersai.com/
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Transcript
Controlling the Narrative
00:00:01
Speaker
I woke up one morning and I thought, if I don't tell this story, it's going to happen to someone else. If I don't use this for something positive, then I'm going to disappear under the weight of the shame and the depression and the anxiety that had essentially gobbled me whole for two years. I'd never heard a story like this. And someone once said to me, there's a point in time where you will realise or come to accept that you own the story. The story doesn't own you.
00:00:33
Speaker
If scams were obvious, they wouldn't work. As Tracy Hall says in this episode, it's not the one thing that makes you believe someone is who they say they are. It's the thousand things that all match up and paint a picture. And that's what makes scams so dangerous.
00:00:46
Speaker
Many people imagine that scam victims are gullible, careless, or somehow different from the rest of us. But the reality is far more complicated. The most sophisticated scammers don't just steal money. They build trust. They manipulate emotions and create a reality that feels completely believable until the moment it all comes crashing down.
Tracy Hall's Scam Experience
00:01:06
Speaker
Today's guest, Tracy Hall, knows that firsthand. Tracy was the last known victim of one of Australia's most notorious con artists. Over the course of 18 months, he built a false identity, gained her trust, and ultimately stole her life savings.
00:01:20
Speaker
But this conversation isn't just about what happened to Tracy. It's about how manipulation works and why intelligence alone doesn't protect us, how victim blaming prevents people from speaking up, and what organizations, governments, and communities can do to better protect people from scams.
00:01:37
Speaker
Since sharing her story publicly, Tracy has become an author, advocate, and educator, helping people around the world understand the human side of fraud and the importance of building scam resilience.
00:01:49
Speaker
In this episode, we talk about romance fraud, coercive control, victim advocacy, scam prevention, and why understanding trust may be one of the most important tools we have in the fight against scams.
00:02:04
Speaker
Welcome to Scam. This is a podcast about the human side of fraud and the people are on a mission to protect us. I'm your host Ayelet Bigger Levine and I'm passionate about driving awareness and solving this problem.
00:02:23
Speaker
Welcome to Scamrangers. Today we have a very special guest who I can think call a friend of mine to at this point. We definitely met through our scam advocacy and activity work, but we've really learned that we share a lot of the same values and perspectives on this fight. I'm so happy to have Tracy Hall today as a guest on the podcast. Welcome, Tracy, and thank you for your time today. Thank you for having me. So nice to see you Likewise. So let's start maybe with you sharing a little bit about yourself.
Impact of Fraud on Tracy
00:02:55
Speaker
You know, who is Tracy? Yeah, my name is Tracy. I i just had a 50th birthday, so I'm halfway through my life. Happy birthday. Thank you. I spent 25 years in corporate marketing, mostly for big tech. So I had a high level marketing roles with companies like eBay and GoDaddy, Afterpay, Block, Cash App.
00:03:14
Speaker
ah Virgin, lots of lots of different big brands that most people would hear about and loved, loved, loved my career, had the most fun. And I guess my career shifted. A few years ago, i was um i experienced something that most people hopefully will never have to experience and it has taken my career on it on a different trajectory. I was a a victim, I am a victim survivor of intimate fraud,
00:03:41
Speaker
I was the last victim of Australia's most notorious con man, Hamish McLaren. ah Hamish was ah arrested in 2017 for swindling 15 Australian victims out of $7.6 million. dollars And subsequently, there was a pretty big podcast that the Australian newspaper released called Who the Hell is Hamish? And through the investigative journalism of that podcast, It was it was uncovered that it was likely to be $80 million dollars globally that Hamish had stolen from people over the last 30 years. So this is a serial a serial fraudster that we're dealing with. I was in an intimate relationship with him for nearly 18 months. And I did not even know his real name the day he was arrested. I saw it playing out on a Crime Stoppers ah article online. And that then kicked off sort of ah ah a long process with law enforcement and detectives. Hamish stole my life savings. So he stole $317,000 from me And i found myself to be years old, a single mother with nothing. and had to start again from that point.
00:04:45
Speaker
So ah yeah, that's that's where things really changed for me. But I did go back to corporate for about seven years after he was arrested to try and rebuild what I had lost financially and get myself back on track. And it wasn't until 2024, published my book the last victim that things really started to take a different turn for me and I was being asked to speak a lot our companies were bringing me into their organizations and and now this is what I do full-time so i travel the world I tell my story i
Advocacy Against Scams
00:05:17
Speaker
educate people on scams and fraud trust resilience rebuilding a whole bunch of different topics and that's I guess where we where we met so ah this is this is my world now Thank you for sharing. So I want to unpack something slowly because I think um your experience and then bringing you to shift and focus on being a scam fighter is very powerful. So going back to to the story and to what happened, you were in a relationship, but I wanted to talk for a second about the the scam. We're talking, I think when we talk about um relationship fraud, there kind of two paths that the the scam takes place. One is the person
00:05:57
Speaker
showing distress and saying someone is chasing them, they owe money, and they kind of ask you to help. And I think that triggers one emotion. And the other one is more um offering an opportunity or providing that trust. So how did that path unfold for you? or what it are Or maybe broader, his techniques, I think they were likely similar across the board, right? Yes, they um you know the behaviors and tactics are typically the same. It's just sort of the situation is different. And my situation was an intimate an intimate fraud scenario. ah We did meet on a dating app. He presented himself as a man by the name of Max Tavita. He was 41. He was a chief investment officer for a family office.
00:06:37
Speaker
So he created this persona and this identity that he then carried on for the better part of 18 months. And so, you know, there was a lot of sort of deception and manipulation around that.
00:06:50
Speaker
And he built my trust slowly. know, he he worked his way into my life. He got under my skin, into my head and into my heart. And he did that by, you know, tactics like mirroring.
00:07:02
Speaker
You know, we grew up in the same era in Australia by the beach. And so we had a lot of similar sort of cultural references He loved, you know, the the surf. He loved surfing. He loved being outside. He loved exercising. So a lot of those things were very similar to my preferences. But then over and above that, all he had to do was listen to what I wanted for the rest of my life, the relationship I wanted to be in, my values, my morals, where I saw myself. And he essentially just mirrored that back to me. And he did all of this while creating this persona of being a very, very high level finance executive. He spoke about money all the time. He spoke about what he was doing with his investment strategies for some of the wealthiest families in Australia at at his family office. He sent me pictures of what was going on in his office. i met his CEO. He provided documents and reports that he was sending to his investors.
00:07:54
Speaker
There was so much deceit and manipulation that was built slowly over time. And I kind of describe it like death by a thousand cuts because it's not the one thing that you go, oh, wow, this guy is who he says he is. It's the thousand things that he says that all match up and it all paints a picture. And so these tactics were very um slow. They were very layered. They were very insidious. They were over a long period of time. And so when it came time for him to sort of talk about my 401k or my investments, my money, everything he had told me previously made me believe that he was the perfect person to invest my life savings. And he wasn't even like he presented it as this incredible opportunity. He presented it as care and concern and let me help you. You know, he was he he would say things to me like, you know, Trace, you are one of the hardest working people I've ever met.
00:08:49
Speaker
You deserve to be financially independent. Let me help you. And this is where financial coercive control and grooming, um you know, really, really comes into play because it doesn't always come in waving a big red flag saying, hey, I've got this great investment opportunity. Cha-ching. You know, it's not like that.
00:09:07
Speaker
It is so insidious and it is so manipulative and it's so coercive. He was presenting himself as somebody that would help me become financially stable in my, you know, my coming years and financially independent. Yeah. And to me, that was, that all seemed legitimate, you know, in the same way that if someone said to me, I've got a small business and I'm trying to do some social media and some marketing activities, Chase, can you advise me? Can you help me?
00:09:32
Speaker
I've been in marketing for 25 years. Of course, I would offer to help them. I'd probably write them a strategy document and that would be legitimate, you know? So it just didn't seem that that weird to me that he would do that. But of course, he was very, very tactically creating this world, which I describe in my keynotes as a movie. You know, there was this movie that we were living in that it was a movie that only he and I had his other victims have different movies.
00:09:56
Speaker
So it's, it's very, um, yeah, it's very layered. It's very hard to explain in one sentence. It is very, very insidious and deep. And that's that's how they get you because you then you become under their spell and and that's the end of you know that's the end of your logical thinking, basically. And what were what was the moment that you realized that this had happened?
00:10:17
Speaker
The moment I realized that this had happened was when I watched the Crime Stoppers video of him being arrested outside of his Bondi Beach apartment. Because up until that moment, I knew him as my partner, the man I was going to spend my future with. We'd just taken a mini break up the coast to a place called Byron Bay. We were looking at houses to buy. I knew him as Max Tevita. And I see this ah this video online of him being arrested. you know, taken away by police outside of his apartment and his face is all blurred out. But of course I know it's him. And the headlines that were attached to the article were things that were saying, um, you know Bondi businessman 47 superannuation fraud. And I'm thinking that they've got it wrong because Max is only 42 and superannuation fraud.
00:11:03
Speaker
Like, What are they even talking about? I was in denial. I was in disbelief. And it wasn't until I spoke to the detectives and they told me that the name I had was wrong, his age was wrong, everything I knew about him was wrong and armed with his actual name, I could go and do my own research and see that there was a very, very long history of ah of of fraudulent activity.
00:11:26
Speaker
Wow. Thank you for sharing that. That's, you know, I'm thinking about that and what you went through afterwards. And, you know, I'm sure there was a whole process here of understanding and figuring out the money's not there and that you need to rebuild your life savings. So I'll jump ahead a little bit and ask you, you know, with all that had happened, what is that moment when you said, i'm going to recover from this? And I'm also going
Sharing and Empowerment
00:11:52
Speaker
to change this into something that we're going to help others. And I'm sure it probably one moment in time, it's sc probably a process, but walk us a little bit through that.
00:12:02
Speaker
It was a process, but I do remember very clearly it was probably about two years after Hamish was arrested. So I think I failed to mention before that he was arrested. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. That was reduced to 12 years on appeal. So he has been in prison for the last nine years and he has just been granted his parole, which means he'll be out in the community on the 10th of July this year. um So, that period of time has passed and and and you know it's fair to say that was a very, very significant sentence for white collar crime in Australia. In fact, globally. know White collar crime does not incur the same penalties as as other violent crimes. So, ah that is one thing. So, he was arrested, he was put in jail and at this point in time, we were going through a criminal process which took three years. And so it was probably about two years afterwards when I started speaking to the journalist who did the podcast, Who the Hell is Hamish? And I was very hesitant to speak to media.
00:12:59
Speaker
There were very few people that actually knew that this had happened to me because i couldn't tell my daughter or I chose not to tell my daughter. There were, you know, I had a career to get on with. I thought it would impact my reputation and my career. And there was part of me that just wanted to compartmentalize this part of my life because I just had to button down and and keep working really it was my only financial lifeline. So at this point, there weren't many people that knew. And I knew that talking to the media would be a really big deal. I was advised by my family and some of my closest friends not to do it. And I woke up one morning and I remember it being a couple of years after he had been arrested. And I thought, if I don't tell this story, it's going to happen to someone else. If I don't use this for something positive, then I'm going to, you know, essentially just disappear under the weight of the shame and the depression and the anxiety that had essentially gobbled me whole for two years. And i don't know what it was. Maybe I just felt stronger. Maybe I'd have enough time between the event and when I felt this to to gain that strength. At the same time, I was starting to understand the extent of his crimes through the investigation for the podcast because law enforcement couldn't really tell me anything. Because it was a criminal case, they would say things like, it's millions of dollars and it's many victims.
00:14:18
Speaker
And that was really the extent of the information that I got. And slowly I met a few of the other victims and started to hear about their stories. And then through the investigation, the journalist would give me much more information that actually, for me, started to put the picture together. And the thing about our human brains is we actually don't like unfinished stories. And for me, I'd lived in this world for 18 months where everything was a lie. And then I spent the next two years trying to put those jigsaw puzzle pieces back in the right spot according to the truth. And that was really difficult. And the journalist and the podcast helped me do that. And so that gave me some level of strength to know that this story is an important story to tell. And we have to tell our stories to help others because I'd never heard a story like this. I'd only seen stories on those, you know, current affair programs where it was, you know, someone that didn't look like me. You know, they always present people who fall victim or are victims of romance fraud as lonely, uneducated, middle-aged women looking for love on the internet, desperate for love.
00:15:20
Speaker
And that just wasn't me. And so i thought, you know what, I have to tell this story. And someone once said to me, there's a point in time where you will realize or come to accept that that you own the story, the story doesn't own you. And I knew that people would talk about it anyway once it hit the media. And I thought, you know what? I want to own that narrative. I know exactly what happened.
00:15:43
Speaker
I am the only one that knows exactly what happened. So why aren't I telling that story in my own words, my own voice? And then it just snowboarded, it just took on a life of its own. And you know, the rest, the rest is history basically. But yeah, I think it was a couple of, a couple of years. And to be fair, i still got quite wobbly.
00:16:01
Speaker
after that because stories would come out and I'd read the comments and they are brutal. People's opinion of these crimes are so unfounded, not based in on any level of knowledge or lived experience, and they are brutal. And that's really hard to read when you're putting yourself out there to try and help others. And over time, I just realized, you know, and another person said to me once, don't read the comments.
00:16:27
Speaker
And now I never read the comments because it's just, it's just not, it's not useful. No, people, you know, it's really, that's a whole other conversation about people on social media hiding behind the screen and saying ridiculous things. But I think that point about telling the story and the fact that you had never heard a ah story about someone who's like you. And um I'm sure people who now listening can hear how intelligent you are. And a lot it can relate to you because they're in the tech industry or they are have jobs, you know, fighting fraud at financial institutions.
Understanding Scam Victims
00:17:01
Speaker
So um this is the world that you've been living in from from a certain perspective. and And then realizing that, you know, the nuances that you shared earlier, it's not like one day, oh, here's a prize or, Yes, those can happen too. And those can happen in the wrong moment for people who are very intelligent too. But that's not typically how these things happen. When we're talking about, you you know, investment, larger sums of money, there's ah definitely a journey there. And criminals are very sophisticated. And we also talked in the past about they have certain narcissistic or psychopathic or whatever, you know, personality traits that,
00:17:40
Speaker
They have patience and they know that the ah ROI on their patience is going to be high. So thank you. The long con, we call it. Yeah. The long con. And yeah, that they're all different, of course. Everyone's experience is different. But characters like Hamish, serial fraudsters like him, they are very, very patient. And, you know, you have to remember he had six or seven of these going at once. You know, i lost $317,000. There was a retired couple that You know, like it's just that would that was heartbreaking when I met them.
00:18:17
Speaker
That was heartbreaking because i knew that I could rebuild. I knew that at 42, I still had another 25 years of work in me at least. And I had the career, i had the opportunity and I had the time. And these, you know, these retirees, that they were the ones that broke my heart. They had worked hard their whole life.
00:18:35
Speaker
And they were looking down the barrel of a pretty comfortable retirement. And now they don't know how they're going to afford their groceries every week. And that's the one that breaks my heart. You know, that's why I feel so passionate about helping seniors because they don't have the luxury of time or to go back into the workforce. You know, so yeah, it's, it, there's so many things and, and you're right. I, I didn't, I didn't think it would ever be me because on paper, you would never imagine someone like me to do it. You know, I've traveled the world. I come from a good family. I've had an amazing education. I've had a stellar career.
00:19:10
Speaker
I've got great friends. I'm a pretty good judge of character. And none of those things made oser of difference when a professional like Hamish came into my life. So it it can happen to anyone. and Intelligence has nothing. Everyone always says, oh, you're so it's so intelligent. If it can happen to you, it can happen to anyone. and I'm like, intelligence has nothing to do with it.
00:19:30
Speaker
Absolutely nothing. And in fact, what they say is people with a little bit of knowledge are actually The most vulnerable because you, you aren't as careful. You, you maybe take a bit more risk or you know enough to be dangerous is what they say. So it's, yeah, if there's so many things to it, but yeah, it's, it certainly wasn't, it wasn't on my vision board growing up.
00:19:52
Speaker
Scams don't target intelligence, they target trust. Successful professionals, executives, teachers, engineers, retirees. Scammers don't care who you are. They care whether they can build trust. As scams have become more personalized and AI-powered, consumers need more than awareness campaigns. They need support in the moment and in context. ScamRanger helps people verify messages, understand manipulation tactics, and make safer decisions before sending money, sharing information, or taking action. Because intelligence isn't a defense. In a world where trust has become the attack surface, awareness alone isn't enough.
00:20:29
Speaker
We need resilience. Learn more about ScamRanger and Rangers AI at RangersAI.com.
00:20:38
Speaker
So tell me about um both the podcast that you joined and and the journey to your book. how How did that happen? How did you decide to start that? So and I met the journalist who worked for the Australian newspaper and he was ah a friend of one of my really good friends. And I think in the beginning he was just going to write a story about what happened to me. And just after we met, he came along to Hamish's plea hearing, and that was the hearing where he appeared. It was the first time I'd seen him since he had been arrested. I went to the hearing, no one else turned up. I i guess people didn't know at that point. And the journalist came along with me and that is when he pled guilty.
00:21:18
Speaker
And after that, the after, after that sort of happened in the courtroom. The journalist, Greg, asked for a copy of the statement of facts, which is the document that that they presented in court that day. And it was a 33-page document outlining every victim, how much money they lost, under which circumstances. It was summarized, of course. And because he was part of the media, we got a copy of that document. And we went across the road to a cafe and we both just read over it. We were like, holy shit, this is huge. And that is when that is when I realized the extent of... of what this crime had become, you know, this this case. And Greg looked at me and he said, Trace, this isn't an article. This is a podcast. I want to do a podcast. And I said, okay, let's go.
00:22:02
Speaker
And that's where it started. So he started with my story. And then every week as he released an episode, well, people came forward. So it was just, again, this noble effect of people that came forward that said, you know, let me tell you my story with Hamish. Let me tell you this. And he traveled all over the world finding victims.
00:22:19
Speaker
And this is what was so incredible about the podcast experience was that every
Connecting with Other Victims
00:22:25
Speaker
time he, every time the journalist uncovered something, he called me, he said, Trace, I just, I just connected with Hamish's wife.
00:22:32
Speaker
And I was like, he was married? What? You know, and Probably several times. Yeah. And, uh, you know, nothing, nothing would have surprised me at this point. But as he did that, I was able to connect with people that had had experiences with him. And that was really helpful in my journey moving forward. So that all sort of put put things into place. There was a lot of media around it.
00:22:54
Speaker
And of course, it finished up with the final sentencing and that that Hamish received, which was a good end to the story. And then um really, I just went back to to life, to corporate, rebuilding my finances, rebuilding myself. and focusing on my daughter, all of the things for seven years. And then um I met somebody who was a professional ghostwriter.
00:23:14
Speaker
And I said, i've I've been thinking about writing this story. What's the process? How does it work? And and we just connected. And she was absolutely obsessed with the podcast. And so we presented um an idea to some publishers and we got a book deal and we wrote the book together over the following sort of eight months. And it was published in May, 2024. So going back over everything in detail with her was You know, it was a process. I was working full time at the time, so so it was a lot. um But it was actually a very cathartic journey because the podcast was really about Hamish and the book was about me and and my life before I met Hamish, what happened when I met him, and then, of course, what I've done afterwards. So that was it that was a really um detailed recollection of of that whole experience, which, you know, it's it's done really well and and I'm hoping that it's helped a lot of people. Do you feel like the book is part of the healing process for you? I think so. i think so. it It was cathartic to go through it and there are parts in the book that have nothing to do with Hamish. It had a lot to do with my life before i even met him. And in some ways, those pieces of the puzzle were harder to write than
00:24:27
Speaker
the Hamish chapter. um but it was really, it was really interesting because it, it created a lot of reflection for me to understand where I was emotionally and psychologically when I met him.
00:24:39
Speaker
And, you know, i was a year into, you know, a separation and a divorce and, and that is never easy. It's not easy for anybody. um and there were certain vulnerabilities that I had at the time, that I didn't realize I had and I didn't really think of them as vulnerabilities until I wrote the book. So for example, I was working so hard when I met him. I was doing extra projects on top of my day job. I was working through midnight every night.
00:25:08
Speaker
It was a lot and I was getting my head around single parenting. I was very stretched and I was very tired. And those two things were vulnerabilities that I never believed to be vulnerabilities when it came to romance fraud. I was, again, i always thought, you know, you have to be lonely and desperate for love to be vulnerable. You don't. You can just be distracted. You can be tired. You can be stretched.
00:25:30
Speaker
You can be working really hard. And those things for me were, were vulnerable. And I was a single parent, so I didn't have a lot of time. to, you know, interrogate every piece of information he gave me. And why would I?
00:25:42
Speaker
You know, this was a person that I believed was in love with me. So that's been a really interesting reflection going through and and sort of seeing where I was at when I met him to realize that it's not just my desire for connection and companionship that had me in that space with him or vulnerable to his manipulation. It was being tired, being stretched, overworked, burnt out, single parenting, you know, all all of the different things. So that's been really, that's been a really, um I've been able to give myself a lot of self-compassion through that realisation.
00:26:13
Speaker
So I wanted to talk a little bit about your work today. You've been really, since you wrote the book and since your, I guess, the podcast, you've been really, you know, talking to organizations, to people all over the world and really sharing your story. But I was surprised when I saw you presenting at Women in Payment in Washington, D.C.,
00:26:33
Speaker
in the winter, our winter. um i i thought this was going to be sharing your story, which you did. But at some point you shifted and you went deep into what is happening in the world of scams and what people should think about it. I was surprised you were talking to a room full of women in payments and you taught them so much.
00:26:54
Speaker
um So tell me a little bit about what you've been doing from that perspective, or the education and awareness that you've been driving all
Bridging Knowledge Gaps
00:27:00
Speaker
over the world. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think the story is interesting. And of course, everyone loves a bit of true crime. And that is the way for me to get into the conversation. But you're right, I've spent the last eight or nine years researching this world heavily because I had to make it make sense to me as well. And the more I researched and the more I got into this whole sort of world, the more I realized that what people don't know. And then I was seeing what organizations were pushing out in terms of communications to their customers. And then I was having conversations with my friends who have teenage children and are being exposed to to different things. And what i realized was that there is there is a gap between what the industry knows and understands so deeply and so passionately and what consumers know to be true. And I can see them trying to bridge that gap.
00:27:51
Speaker
But I thought that there would be an opportunity for me to be that voice, to explain things in a way that people understand and can relate to. And because I've been through something that I don't want anybody else to go through, I'm so passionate about educating and protecting people. And so that's so that's what I do. So yes, this story, this is what happened to me. It was terrible. And here were the tactics and here's what you can learn. And here were the red flags. But this is what's happening in the world and this is why we all have to lean into this issue because we have, you know, scam compounds popping up everywhere. There is not almost a day that goes past where I don't get some type of scam communication sent to me, these digital scams. And
00:28:34
Speaker
People don't understand the industrialized nature of what is going on. And so if I can use my story to at least get them to stop and listen, and then I'll explain it in everyday terms that people can understand. And then I move on to, here's what I think needs to happen. And if I'm talking to an organization, I'm talking about how to protect their employees and therefore their employees' families. I'm talking about how they can actually level up their compliance training to make it more human, not those courses that you try and get through as quickly as possible because we know a lot of um breaches happen through social engineering and human error.
00:29:13
Speaker
So there's an opportunity for organizations to level up their compliance training with some more humanness in it. And then of course, we've got customers where, you know, they're putting out the communications and saying, set up your two-factor authentication. Now, millions of seniors in the world would have no idea what that means. But if you sit with them and say, it's like having two locks on your door. The first one is this, the second one is this, and let me show you how to set it up.
00:29:38
Speaker
That's where I think the opportunity is. We have to show, not tell. We have to sit with people. We have to spend more time. And I do appreciate that it's more layered and nuanced and probably going to cost more money. But what we're doing is not working. So I'm working with organizations to try and level up that education and get people to listen with a real human story and ah a human lens um so so that we're more protected for kids. It's like, I mean, we've spoken about this. We've both got teenagers. It is not enough to tell your kids not to accept friend requests from people they don't know on Snapchat because they're going to do it.
00:30:11
Speaker
What we need to teach them is how to spot a fake profile or the things to look for that might seem a bit unusual. And they're things that take a deeper conversation, an open communication, um an open mind, especially with our teens, so that they don't fall victim to financial extortion, which is a very, very common scam that I'm seeing at the moment. So there's lots of opportunity. And then um more recently, I've been fortunate enough to be invited into um some government task force here in Australia. So we have the National Anti-Scam Centre, which is ah a collaboration of of all the different parts of industry coming together to ah to solve
Changing Media Narratives
00:30:48
Speaker
this issue. And I was invited into a fusion cell last year. It was a romance fusion cell, romance scam fusion cell. And there were certain ideas that came about from everyone being in a room. And then we work on projects over a six month period. So it's sort of like a sprint. And you're collaborating with academics, you're collaborating with industry, you're collaborating with government, with consumer groups. One of the outputs from that ah last year was a language guide.
00:31:13
Speaker
And what is amazing to me, and I think why we have such underreporting amongst other things, is the way in which the media narrative has rolled out in terms of scam victims, particularly romance fraud. You know, you're a lonely, uneducated, desperate for love woman, and that's why you got fleeced, you know, or duped.
00:31:34
Speaker
Things like a woman conned out of like it's blaming the victim for what happened to them. 100 percent. Criminal stole from a woman. I think Kathy Stokes was was ah on, I think, first guest on our podcast and and talked about that. And I'm so glad to hear that you're involved in an initiative to change that that's on the government level. So tell us more about that. And yeah, it's, and, and look, it's not telling media or journalists how to suck eggs. It's a guide. And not too long ago, we didn't have guides on how to express violent sexual crimes against women. There was a lot of how late it was, what she was wearing, how many drinks, who she flirted with at the bar and all of that.
00:32:12
Speaker
is is reducing now, which is fantastic. And it's been called out the same with our mental health. No, we don't say commit suicide anymore. We say died by suicide because as a more trauma-informed way of speaking, there wasn't a guide for financial crime.
00:32:26
Speaker
And so i wrote one. It's very simple. There are nine principles. There are examples of what a headline or, ah you know, some copy maybe used to look like and what it could change to. And it's really just, let me help you make this better. And so that guide's available now. i can share that with, um, with you. Please take it reformat it, do whatever you want to do with it. Um, so that, so that you can use it in your own organizations or, or in media over in the, in the States or or wherever you're located. And you know, it's just little things like that, that we're chipping away with and the thing that I've come to realize is that you don't know these things are problematic until you go through them yourself which is why lived experience is so important to have that lived experience voice at a solutions table it has to sit alongside all of the other work that industry and corporates are doing in government but it is such an important voice because You know, solutions are being decided and no one thinks to ask whether it would actually be useful or whether that would actually be re-traumatizing or whether that is actually the right process. And that is where lived experience comes into it. And I guess I'm lucky because I have worked in corporate for it for such a long time. that I can understand where my voice will sit and will create change. So yeah, that's that's what I'm working on most at the moment. And you're right, I'm traveling the world doing it for everyone. so that's great. Yeah.
00:33:47
Speaker
I'm just thinking about your what you just said, your last point. It's not just, so on one hand, it's talking to corporate in a way and bringing that lived experience voice so they can find ways to be effective with Yeah.
00:34:02
Speaker
with victims with survivors etc and then talking bringing that your corporate experience to have corporate listen to you showing that right so it's like it's really a double double mission here yeah I think too, what's interesting with my, ah you know, and and maybe it's just my outlook, I'm pretty optimistic generally, but you know, for me, I think I can't change what happened to me. i am not about pointing the finger at anyone. What's done is done. But in going through that experience, there are a number of gaps and there are a number of opportunities to ensure that fewer people have to experience this in the future.
00:34:41
Speaker
And if I can be the person to do that, then let me help you. You know, let me show you what those gaps are in a really positive, affirming way, not in a, you know, the whole system's wrong and the government aren't doing enough and the banks aren't doing. Everyone loves to bank bash. And what I see is dedicated individuals that are so passionate about solving this problem. So let me work with you. Let me help you because I can, I can show you things that you, you would never know because you're not a victim. And and that's where I think, you know, that conversation for me feels very um positive, very affirming. and And, you know, that's where my advocacy comes in as well on behalf of victims that don't have the strength or the voice to do this yet. So I wanted to, to that point, to talk about two types of organizations, maybe going back to how it all started. you met on a dating app.
00:35:29
Speaker
So let's talk about that for a second. I know you're involved in some work around dating apps and and maybe some codes and regulations around that. What do you think the dating apps could do differently to ensure, you know, he used a fake name, he had fake problem, you know.
00:35:46
Speaker
So what are some things there that you think the industry could
Improving Dating App Safety
00:35:49
Speaker
do better? There's one thing that they could do that would solve this whole issue. And when I talk about dating apps, I could extend that to social media platforms as well, because we know a lot of ah romance fraud or or fraud is initiated through social media contact. They could implement a compulsory identification verification process. And that is essentially demanding that everybody who has a profile on these platforms has a government issued ID that verifies their identity.
00:36:18
Speaker
Now, there are some platforms like Bumble that have that capability and that technology, and you can do it if you want, but it's voluntary. It's not mandatory, it's voluntary. Now, when I've questioned that in the past, the answer that has come back has said, well, you know, our members don't all want to be IDV'd or identification verified.
00:36:39
Speaker
And my answer to that is, but doesn't that tell you exactly what you need to know as to why, you know, there is a reason people don't want to be identified and they are the exact people that probably shouldn't be on the platform looking to date people. So,
00:36:54
Speaker
i I think it's going to take either a very, very brave company or is going to take regulation. And in Australia, we've seen some very, very brave moves in terms of regulation um for social media age gating recently, the under-16 social media delay. We've seen it as well with age gating pornography sites, which has just come into play. So we know there's appetite. It's just going to take something very brave and thought-leadded to to make that next step. The technology exists. The dating apps do have the capacity to do it. And there are other solutions that actually even sit underneath the apps that wouldn't require the dating apps to actually, you know, create their own process and manage the data privacy and all of those things. There there is
00:37:38
Speaker
There is a solution that's about, you know. But Tracy, it's not it's not about them taking the time to create the process. if they take If they enforce this, their their revenue will go down. Of course. there are people who are are in on these apps paying, not identifying themselves. Right.
00:37:54
Speaker
Unfortunately, I think at the end of the day, it is going to take the regulation path. The voluntary code will be you know nice, but but I'm talking from my experience with social media companies, tech platforms that are not stopping scams the way they could. It's going to always contradict their bottom line. If they need to take down ads that are malicious, if they need to take down or trackun so ah take down profiles, it's the same idea. So unfortunately... Yeah, they're incentivized on acquisition. They're incentivized on revenue. They're incentivized on active users. Their share price is dependent on it. So of course they're not going to do it.
00:38:33
Speaker
So what's the other option? It's regulation. And it's going to take a very brave government to do that. I have hope that our government will do it. We've taken some brave steps already and it is getting... you know, coverage all over the world. there are There are some other countries and regions that are following very quickly. And that is really encouraging to me. So if there is anything that I want to achieve out of this whole horrific saga is that that is the change that happens because I have a daughter, he's nearly 16, you have a daughter. i will never be on the dating app ever again but I know our daughters will and I know that my friends' kids will and I know that some of my friends will and it's, I feel like it's my civil duty to push for this change so that they are safer and it's as simple as that.
00:39:26
Speaker
Well, Tracy, I wanted to really commend you for all the work that you're doing. You took, as you said to me, a shitty situation and you turned it into advocacy and and a life mission. And look how much you've achieved. You wrote a book. You participated in multi-series podcast. You're advocating all over the world. You're educating people and, you know, aware of it. driving the government-level initiatives and and working with the dating sites and and apps to to do better. And I think the compassion that you bring to organizations is unique.
00:40:02
Speaker
ah Like you said, bashing is easy, understanding their motivation and coming to a conversation with, you know, open and honest collaboration is is really unique. So i hope organizations that are hearing will definitely note and take the opportunity to reach out. And we're going to put everything in the show notes. I wanted to thank you so much for your time and for sharing this with us.
00:40:24
Speaker
Oh, thank you for having me. It's so nice to chat to you as always. Thank you.