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Protecting Customers Without Losing Them: The Cost of Getting Scam Protection Wrong, A Conversation with Marti DeLiema
158 Plays1 day ago
Fraud prevention is often framed as a battle against criminals, but what happens to the customer along the way?
In this episode of Scam Rangers, host Ayelet Biger-Levin sits down with Marti DeLiema, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, to explore the human impact of scam prevention and fraud interventions and the unintended consequences that can emerge when protection efforts aren’t designed with empathy and care.
While fraud teams work tirelessly to stop money from flowing to criminals, this conversation shines a light on what happens after an intervention is triggered: how customers experience account restrictions, investigations, and confrontational moments and how those experiences shape trust, retention, and long-term relationships.
This episode is a must-listen not only for fraud and frontline teams, but also for digital banking, customer experience, marketing, growth, and retention leaders who may not always see what happens on the fraud front lines, yet own the customer relationship that follows.
What You’ll Learn
- Why scam prevention is a cross-functional customer experience moment, not just a fraud decision
- How well-intended interventions can make victims feel blamed, criminalized, or pushed away
- The emotional impact of scam prevention on individuals and families
- How trust, dignity, and autonomy factor into fraud decisions
- Why the way institutions intervene can influence attrition and long-term loyalty
- What digital, CX, and marketing teams need to understand about fraud moments they don’t always see
Featured Guest
Marti DeLiema
Marti DeLiema is an Assistant Professor and Gerontologist at the University of Minnesotawhose. Her work focuses on aging, financial exploitation, scams, and the human impact of fraud prevention efforts. Her research examines how individuals experience fraud interventions and what institutions can do to protect people while preserving trust and dignity.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marti-deliema-95323535/
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/
Recommended
Transcript
Fraud Victims or Suspects?
00:00:02
Speaker
They had law enforcement come visit and try to help this woman understand what was going on. And they parked behind her vehicle in her driveway. And she said, i felt trapped. um I felt like i was being accused of the crime. And I saw that again and again in these interviews where individuals in the process of of the financial institutions trying to protect them inadvertently and maybe with, you know,
00:00:27
Speaker
partially because law enforcement and other agencies were involved, felt like they were being accused as being the criminals themselves.
Impact of Fraud Interventions
00:00:36
Speaker
What Marty just described isn't only a fraud problem. It's also a customer and member experience problem. Marty DeLima is a researcher at the University of Minnesota, and her work looks at the human impact of scams and the impact of the interventions meant to stop them.
00:00:51
Speaker
Fraud teams are on the front line, doing critical work to stop the money and prevent harm. But how those interventions are experienced and how they're communicated, how people are treated, lives across digital service and experience teams as well.
00:01:06
Speaker
This episode is about protecting people and protecting trust, because how we show up in these moments shapes retention, loyalty, and long-term relationships.
00:01:19
Speaker
Welcome to Scam Rangers, a podcast about the human side of fraud and the people who are on a mission to protect us.
Focus on Aging Populations
00:01:26
Speaker
I'm your host Ayelet Bigger Levine and I'm passionate about driving awareness and solving this problem.
00:01:39
Speaker
I'm really excited about today's guest on the podcast and as we call today's scam ranger, Marty DeLima. And I'll let you state your title. Yes, um I'm Marty DeLima. I'm an assistant professor of social work at the University of Minnesota and a gerontologist.
00:01:55
Speaker
Okay, so I had to look up that word and I understand it's something to do with studies of aging process in older adults. So maybe before we dive into everything, tell us what that word means and and what but your focus is on with your research. Yes. So gerontology is the study of human aging. And we study kind of the biopsychosocial model and processes across the lifespan. So adult development and aging, but really aging begins at birth. So it is very much the study of aging from birth all the way to death.
00:02:33
Speaker
But with a particular focus on the later lifespan. So adults 65 and older. Okay, well, and a lot of your focus has been on the impact of aging with regards to scams and fraud. And we'll talk a lot about that today. And I do promise that there are very pragmatic and practical tools for financial institutions, fraud fighters, and during this ah conversation that we're going to have today.
Elder Abuse and Financial Exploitation
00:02:58
Speaker
i will say that Marty and I met in the context of prep for the Global Anti-Scam Alliance Conference, where Marty ah presented at the research track and talked about her research in this area. And what I found really, really interesting and insightful kind of myself being from the tech space and not so much from the research is the, I want to say ah collegiality between the different researchers in the space. It seems like there's, there's really a lot of joint work that you do together and you've done some work with nonprofit organizations organizations that are really trying to help both victims and and prevent scams. So I would love to ask how you got into this, how you got to focus on scams and fraud and tell me a little bit about the work that you've been doing with such organizations.
00:03:43
Speaker
Right. So as a graduate student, I was working with Dr. Kate Wilber at ah USC School of Gerontology on elder abuse issues. And i would sit in on the L.A. County Elder Abuse Forensic Center, which is a multidisciplinary team that meets to discuss some of the most egregious cases of elder abuse in L.A.,
00:04:06
Speaker
And I would say over 70% of the cases involved financial exploitation, and some of those cases involved scams. So that's what got me really interested in this topic, because many of the victims of the fraud cases were not meeting a lot of these criteria that we would consider to define someone as vulnerable.
00:04:30
Speaker
So they were still engaging in their own financial affairs. They were driving, they were getting their own groceries. um So there was some kind of disconnect in their decision making that seemed distinct from other aging processes and cognitive
Scam Susceptibility in Older Adults
00:04:46
Speaker
aging. And that got me really interested wanted to understand what makes an older adult susceptible to scams. And that was, I think, gosh, almost 10, 12 years ago. And then man has how the landscape has changed since then. Absolutely. I just reminded me yesterday, I was walking my dog, I ran into a neighbor, we said hi. And he told he shared a story of how his grandfather, who's still independent, has been doing working
00:05:17
Speaker
in a firm and doing online trading. And he called his grandchild because he needed money, because he needed money, he borrowed from someone, and he just keeps investing and investing. And obviously, this is a scam. But this grandfather is very independent. he He wanted to show independence. And he said to his grandson, I got this. I know what I'm doing. There are more people with me. I talk talk to them daily. This is a legitimate workplace. And so it's really like there's a dissonance between the desire to be independent and to show and to prove to family members, I got this. Don't worry, I just need some help versus really the decision making. But again,
00:05:56
Speaker
i from my where I'm standing, it can happen to anyone. So I'd love to hear more about the distinct, ah unique characteristics. So um from there, from that, you know, 10 years ago, when you decided to get into it, ah share a little bit more about your journey so
Predicting Fraud and Demographic Analysis
00:06:11
Speaker
far. Yeah. So after I started to study financial exploitation and scams where the difference is really the perpetrator. So in financial abuse, we see family members, friends, neighbors, scams, it's third party, you know, today, transnational criminal organizations. I wanted to understand the predictors of each. And I think back to
00:06:32
Speaker
Ten years ago, it was much easier to understand these risk factors for fraud. Today, a lot of those risk factors aren't seeming to hold because all of us are being targeted and all of us are experiencing scams. But the type of scams that we experience are different.
00:06:51
Speaker
So what criminals might go after, a young college-age student, maybe an employment scam, will look very different than an 82-year-old retiree sitting on you know a couple million dollars of assets, right? So it's really hard to understand the predictors of fraud unless we look at different types of scams
Tech Scams Targeting Older Adults
00:07:10
Speaker
individually. So a lot of my research tried to do that. need to disaggregate these scam types, and then we can come up with typical victim profiles. So what we do see um from the literature, and some of this is using Federal Trade Commission reported data to the Sentinel, is older adults do appear to be victims of tech support scams and some types of imposter scams. So maybe think about romance scams and investment fraud And partially, those are factors that are driving vulnerability, like if you have more retirement assets and you're an investor to begin with, you might be more likely to be exposed to investment scams. And then others, it does seem to be maybe a lack of sophistication with technology. um less likely to be working on machines and devices that have adequate protections on them. So you're clicking on pop-ups or seeing pop-ups. So there's kind of a push and pull there with both, there's exposure factors and also innate susceptibility factors that kind of work together and make that perfect storm.
00:08:13
Speaker
What about the government impersonation scams? Is that something that's unique or distinguishable for older adults? I think I heard in the past something about um authority and generational relationship with authority. Is that something that you've
Authority and Trust in Scams
00:08:31
Speaker
discovered? Yeah, well, what's interesting is I did a project and one of my colleagues actually interviewed two scammers who were working out of Indian call centers. And they so they said, you know, these government imposter scams only work with Americans because you are afraid of your government.
00:08:51
Speaker
And I thought that was really, really and ah telling because we maybe as Americans or as Westerners don't necessarily question the authority of someone who's pretending to be the IRS or the Social Security Administration or the FBI, whereas maybe others in a different type of culture might think, wait a second, I don't always have to comply with an authority.
00:09:18
Speaker
So that is one factor that we do see. I don't know if there is generational differences in these types of scams, as we see many middle-aged people are experiencing these hybrid scams where it might start out as an Amazon imposter, then it moves into a bank imposter and a federal government imposter. So it seems to be hitting people across the lifespan, but it is possible. Again, a lot of these are over the phone or kind of mixed with tech. If you're at home, if you're an older person who is at home, you might be more likely to be available and to be exposed.
Applied Research and Organizational Collaboration
00:09:52
Speaker
Interesting. And I think you told me in the past that you've done also some work with ARP. You mentioned the FTC as well. um So curious to kind of learn about how you were able to take your research and kind of really make it pragmatic into helping people. Right. So one of my goals as a researcher is to do applied work. i strongly believe that the research that I do has to eventually make a difference.
00:10:20
Speaker
So I've worked with many organizations kind of across sectors. So I've worked with AARP on Studies of multi-level marketing fraud. I have developed a guide on how to choose your power of attorney, how to pick a financial advocate that is great for families and and aging people. And that was funded by a erap i was also spent a short time as a special government employee to work with the Sentinel data to try to understand those characteristics of vulnerability across different scam types. I've consulted for the CFPB and for financial institutions as they're developing kind of fraud controls and and protocols and also just to you know examine costs and consequences of fraud.
Account Holds in Minnesota
00:11:10
Speaker
I think that, you know, another point of impact that can really become pragmatic is your research on account holds. This is something that you shared in the conference, and I really wanted it actually to be our main point of conversation today. and when you introduced the subject at the beginning, i will admit I was thinking, OK, cool. So there are places and and you'll talk about the legislation in Minnesota in particular as well. But I've heard many times from fraud teams, the frustration around, we see it's a scam. We really have all the indicators in place in our fraud tools and systems. And we want to convince the consumer not to go through this, not to transfer the money. But ultimately, it's their decision. And they tell us, it's my money. i want you to transfer the money. And if we don't let them, they'll take their money out of an institution, go somewhere else across the street, open and send the money to the, you know, romance scammer or whatever the case may be.
00:12:10
Speaker
So your research talks about account holds. And initially I thought, okay, you know, you can hold, there are places where you can hold the money and great, but there's so much depth into the impact on individuals, the impact of communications and and everything around that. So I would love if you can share this research in particular, what your thesis was, what but drove you to um to research this topic, and then your findings, which are really fascinating.
00:12:37
Speaker
Sure. So one thing that matters is intervention. And there is such a dearth of research on intervention for scams and fraud. You know, I've spent a decade looking at predictive factors and what makes people susceptible and vulnerable, which it's all starting to go out the window now that scams are so tailored for each individual group and demographic type.
00:13:00
Speaker
But, you know, across scam types, there's this question, well, how do we keep people safe? And a lot of the time in my consulting work, I experienced the same thing that you're talking about. Financial institutions saying, we really want to protect this client, but we've run out of options. you know What do we do? How do we keep them safe? They're denying that it's a scam. They're becoming combative with our frontline staff.
00:13:26
Speaker
And we're at the point where we're going to say goodbye to this client. we're goingnna We're going to fire the client. So how do we keep them safe? So some states, I would say about half, have um statutes that allow depository institutions, so banks, credit unions, qualified lenders, to place a temporary transaction hold. um So whatever the suspicious activity is, they're able to hold it for a defined period of time. So all brokerage firms can do this under FINRA 2165. And that's very, um i'm I'm very happy that's a really strong start. But as we know, i think, I think I just looked it up.
00:14:06
Speaker
Only 61% of Americans hold um securities and have retirement assets. So that leaves so many people, unprotected by these laws that only apply to brokerage firms. So all brokerage firms can do this, but but only half of the banks and well in half the states are evo states yeah yeah are able to temporarily hold funds. So I live in Minnesota and we have a very unique statute here. on Chapter forty five a that allows banks, credit unions, of course, broker-dealers and qualified lenders to hold the funds for a period of three weeks, which can be extended an additional two weeks if risks persist. And so I engaged in a collaborative research project with our Department of Commerce, which is our financial institution regulator here, to study what cases are reported for temporary holds and who experiences a hold And how much money is being safeguarded from these
Mixed Reactions to Account Holds
00:15:05
Speaker
holds? The other thing I did is I really wanted to know what the experience was of victims. So I did interviews with victims and with some ah
00:15:15
Speaker
proxies, so family members, if the victim was unable or unwilling to participate in an interview, because I wanted to know their experience. That was kind of the goal of the work. You know, if only half the states have these statutes, can I bring in some evidence to show how other states might model their laws to reflect some of the strengths of Minnesota's law and maybe address some of the weaknesses?
00:15:40
Speaker
So my understanding is that um that you you mentioned the hold for three weeks, right? Yes. Is that for all transactions on the account or is that for a specific transaction?
00:15:51
Speaker
Right. So in Minnesota, it's supposed to be a transaction hold. And in FINRA's law, does say a disbursement hold. So really, it's not supposed to be a full hard account hold. However, there are cases and situations where that might be necessary. Maybe the perpetrator has full access to the accounts. Maybe the victim is being manipulated to withdraw money in other ways.
00:16:18
Speaker
So maybe the concern at first was the wire transfer, but then the victim is coached by the criminals to start taking money out of an ATM machine and then put it into a crypto machine. So in some cases, off a full account hold is needed, but that's not the spirit of of the statute. It says transaction hold. So again, there's kind of this, a lot of leeway provided to the financial institutions to decide, well, what types of transactions should we hold? Or should we hold a payment tool, like just block the ATM card or the debit card for a short period of time? So it does require some care and attention to this client, to this customer to identify, well, what are the risks here?
00:16:59
Speaker
Because in my interviews with the older adults, one thing that I discovered is that some of them had a full ah hold and then their routine bills were not getting paid. oh wow. So their phone bill wasn't getting paid. They were concerned about their how they were going to pay their mortgage. They had some health care bills come in and they didn't know how they were going to write checks for those health care bills.
00:17:24
Speaker
So that was a concern because the last thing we want to do, and this is true for the financial institutions, is they're trying to protect someone from financial harm. They don't want to cause financial harm.
00:17:36
Speaker
So we'll we'll get to that topic in depth in a bit. But before we, and it's such an important piece of of what I want really to talk about. Before that, how how did you observe financial institutions using this ability to put a hold on the account? So the example you gave is a full hold, which impacts the consumer definitely. But did you see cases where there was more fine tuning and kind of just to your research questions, what what types of cases did they report?
00:18:04
Speaker
Who did they put the temporary holds on with regards to the lens of ah older adults? And we'll get into the the victims and in a bit, but but kind of how did they use it?
00:18:15
Speaker
Absolutely. So they used it in in several ways. And there were many financial institutions that were very mindful of what needed to be held and how to protect this client.
00:18:28
Speaker
So the way it works in Minnesota is financial institutions can report to our Minnesota Department of Commerce. And we have a team of three financial fraud ombudsmen that assist them with the investigation. So they will reach out to the concern, the client or the customer that everyone is most concerned about, try to assess what does this client understand about the risks of this transaction? is this truly a scam? And then after kind of gathering more facts and data, the Department of Commerce will go back to that financial institution and either say, yes, based on what we've learned, we do think a hold is necessary or no, you know, there's actually a reasonable explanation for this and we'll go over it. So they kind of act as a sounding board and they advise the financial institution what to do. Financial institutions can do this on their own, but they like the collaboration they have with commerce and the safe harbor protections that reporting to their state regulatory agency provides. So I would say the cases that receive the hold are those cases that we were talking about earlier, where the older adult is just absolutely unwilling
00:19:39
Speaker
to stop the behavior themselves. So they are already receiving an intervention from the financial institution. They're already having those conversations. Some of the individuals I interviewed had interventions from Adult Protective Services and from the police as well their home, and they were still resisting intervention.
00:19:58
Speaker
So I would say these are your true believers, the people who are really been manipulated by the criminal or the family member. I wanted to ask, were there also, you mentioned there were reports from others. Was it also family members in touch with these authorities? Yes. So family members can report too. And we saw that um in about, i think under 10% of cases, 65% of the reporters were financial institutions. We also had ah law enforcement reports. So local law enforcement and adult protective services is a major reporter to the department of commerce. So even those two state agencies are working together to try to safeguard these older adults. Because in Minnesota, the rule is you have to be 65 and older, or if you're under 65, you have to be vulnerable. But with APS, Adult Protective Services, even a 65-year-old has to be shown to be vulnerable. And many scam victims do not meet that criteria, that threshold for Adult Protective Services. But they can still be protected under these temporary count holds.
00:21:01
Speaker
Wow. Okay. That's really interesting. So in order to hold the account, you need to be under so over 65 or ah considered vulnerable. Exactly.
00:21:12
Speaker
And what is the definition of vulnerable in this context? Yeah, so there's two criteria. Either one, you have to be receiving care services. So that could either be home care services from a licensed professional or you can live in a facility. So that's one characteristic of vulnerability. The second one is um vulnerability such that you are unable to care for yourself and you're unable to protect yourself from suffering. harm from elder financial exploitation or elder financial or elder abuse in general. And those are hard bars to pass, to, to look you know, to overcome. So many of these APS workers, they're getting reports from financial institutions, they're going to the home where they're doing a phone interview with the older adult. And they're saying, we have to close the case because this person does not meet our vulnerability criteria here in the state of Minnesota. However, now they have this other option to report to the Department of Commerce to say, we can't serve this client, but perhaps a temporary hold would be helpful to stop the bleeding.
00:22:19
Speaker
Scams don't begin with money moves. They begin when trust is manipulated one message at a time. Rangers AI builds ScamRanger to help step in before the damage, detecting scam messages and guiding people while they still have the power to choose. And on the ScamRangers podcast, we bring you the voices on the front lines, experts, advocates, and leaders fighting back.
00:22:41
Speaker
Because stopping scams means protecting people before they're pulled in. Learn more at rangersai.com.
Chronic Victims and Scam Protection
00:22:51
Speaker
So what are the cases that are being reported? What types of scams? You mentioned earlier that most scams were tech support, romance scams. What would you consider a kind of higher percentage of scams that were reported versus versus others? That's a good question. So the data wasn't perfect. So I can't wasn't able to disaggregate by all the different scam types. So we did see a lot of romance scams. We saw some tech support and some crypto investment scams as well. And then a lot of kind of your mixed bag. And in that mixed bag was often multiple scam types at once. It was a lottery scam and a romance scam and a cryptocurrency. So we're seeing kind of this
00:23:33
Speaker
blending of vulnerability across these scam types. so it might have been going on for a while or the criminals just change their tune once, you know, the person believes that, oh, that wasn't the true love of my life. Well, maybe this crypto investment will help me get some of that money back. So we see a lot of that and and we call them kind of the chronically victimized where the account holds are really kind of the next step in a series of interventions to try to protect these people from total financial devastation.
00:24:03
Speaker
That's really interesting, that blend of a scam, because I think you're right. In the past, we've seen a lottery scam or a cryptocurrency investment scam or a different type of and investment scam or romance scam. And the characteristics even of a romance scam cash out where the stories were different, right? It's like, I'm in trouble. I need you to send me money. It's not like I love you. Yeah. You know, my uncle ah taught me how to invest in crypto. I want you to do it too. And now it's a lot more convoluted. They kind of navigate with they have this whole Swiss army knife of options to to scam individuals and then just try it out and see what works. And some of those are are really convoluted. So it it just brings me back to the account holds where you talk about it's it's designed to be for a specific transaction, but we need to look more holistically.
00:24:50
Speaker
So let's transition now to talk about some of the interviews that you had with the victims, because I think these are really going to be pragmatic for financial institution considerations.
Temporary Protection and Long-term Safety
00:25:01
Speaker
So before we get into that, what was the outcome or the benefit? You said that you're kind of trying to research what would you recommend are the good parts of these account holds and how did they really protect consumers? And then we'll get into the area of issues and and victim or consumer issues.
00:25:18
Speaker
perspective of these holds and how they felt about it? So the main benefit was kind of this rapid response to lock down those assets that are most at risk. So sometimes this was, usually this wasn't the first intervention because it wasn't applied right off the bat. There was some investigation first. There was usually that confrontation with the with the victim, trying to motivate them to stop on their own. So already you're getting to the sample of people that are resistant.
00:25:51
Speaker
So this is the one way to protect those funds from going out the door where they're going to be much harder to recapture once they're gone. So I would say the main benefit is that that kind of rapid financial protection, but we have to remember it's only temporary. It's only temporary. So in Minnesota, up to five weeks, but traditionally just three weeks.
00:26:12
Speaker
um So let's talk a little bit about the the victims and how they perceive these holds. I know that you had some interviews with victims. So what have you learned from from your conversations with them?
Autonomy vs. Safety in Interventions
00:26:25
Speaker
And what what could financial institutions have done better in some cases? And maybe some are grateful. So just ah wanted to hear a mix of those. Sure. So we had a range of perspectives. I would say the proxies that we interviewed, so the family members, were overwhelmingly grateful for the hold. These were one individual.
00:26:48
Speaker
She used that time period of protection to file for a temporary conservatorship of her father. who had really run through all of his friends and family members had been borrowing money, but she was able to protect a significant portion of his assets. And he was a rural farmer in Minnesota, so he had land holdings and other investments.
00:27:10
Speaker
And without this hold, he would have possibly left even his wife, who was in a facility, impoverished and unable to afford her assistant living facility bill. So hugely important. She was very grateful. Another family, same thing. Without the hold, you know, there the um mother would have lost lot lost everything. So that's the perspective of the concerned friends and family members. You know, none of these are the abusers. Then we have the perspective of victims. Here is where it ranged. So i had some individuals who I would say universally, there was that feeling of embarrassment at first.
00:27:47
Speaker
Shame, embarrassment, feeling kind of caught, like exposed. in a way. um And for some, that transitioned into feelings of gratitude once they kind of were able to break through the ether, kind of come up for air, realize what was going on didn't erase their feelings of being embarrassed, but they recognized the value and they were happy that things played out the way it did. They were happy to be protected.
00:28:14
Speaker
I would say that was still a minority. Oh, wow. Then we have another group of victims who felt very upset that the hold was placed. Remember, this is involuntary. um It's kind of placed without a long due process. Victims do have the right to appeal in Minnesota, and some do try to make an attempt to appeal. Usually the facts of why it's being done outweigh the facts of trying to appeal. But these individuals, you know, you can see that this was their, whatever the scam was, became their life purpose.
00:28:50
Speaker
And here are these financial workers and state employees basically intervening and putting a kibosh on whatever their their life purpose is which is to to make this big investment or this lottery win or this romance, um new romance in their life. So they felt very upset. There was a lot of animosity between them and their financial institution. And they felt that it was an invasion of their privacy and their right to use their money however they wish.
00:29:23
Speaker
So there's this this threat to their independence that was really kind of driving this anger. So I wanted to read some quotes, if it's okay with you, from your presentation. Sure. Because I think it really reflects the the perspective. So the first one is, and I think this this is to the the the feeling of, you know,
00:29:46
Speaker
Why are you blocking me? This is my money. I can't. and but But more than that, it's it's impact. I can't get to my funds. I can't pay my bills. I have health insurance that is to get paid. i have a mortgage that has to get paid and she can't. Her account is on hold. Here's another example.
00:30:01
Speaker
And it made very, very difficult because I can't get my funds. You put money in the bank. And for example, I had over almost 3000 in my account and I couldn't get to it even to pay my bills.
00:30:13
Speaker
And when I did pay a couple of bills, they returned the checks unpaid to the person I gave the check to. So these are really kind of pragmatic implications. But I think the most, the one that struck me the most, and I'll read this one too, is the, not just the, the sense of, okay, I can't do it. It's pragmatic, but also the sense of why are you snooping in my business? I'm not snooping into yours. So here's another quote from someone who, a female who's 73, she was a romance scam victim,
00:30:41
Speaker
When I made the deposit a year ago, and when I put the money into my account, you weren't suspicious, you meaning the financial institution. And it is my money. And I feel that I have the right to give my money.
00:30:54
Speaker
And this is for a good cause too. And I didn't really feel like it was their business because it's my money. It's not the bank's business. I don't ask the bank about their business. I don't ask the bank who they're talking to.
00:31:05
Speaker
So tell me a little bit about this case. Right. So this was a woman in her 70s. And I should say there was no difference in in gender in the cases they're getting reported, male and female. Average age was in the mid 70s.
00:31:21
Speaker
And she was being chronically victimized by romance scammers. I think at one point she recognized that the first person was probably not who they said they were and was trying to get her money. But then she had recently met another person on the Internet.
00:31:34
Speaker
And there had been so many attempts to try to protect this individual. She lives independently. She still drives. She has a job.
00:31:45
Speaker
um And she actually works. She actually does elder care. And she said that these calls, these calls from the police were were coming to her when she was at work, when she was trying to help an older woman bathe.
00:32:00
Speaker
And that was really threatening to her. They had law enforcement come visit and try to help this woman understand what was going on. And they parked behind her vehicle in her driveway. And she said, i felt trapped.
00:32:13
Speaker
um I felt like I was being accused of the crime. And I saw that again and again in these interviews where individuals in the process of of the financial institutions trying to protect them inadvertently and maybe with, you know,
00:32:27
Speaker
partially because law enforcement and other agencies were involved, felt like they were being accused as being the criminals themselves. So, and in some cases, maybe there is some money meal activity happening, but it automatically creates this us versus them mentality in the victim, where then almost anything you try to say or any motivate their better behavior is going to just be met with a wall. You know, I'm not going to work with you because you're just harming me or you're taking away my rights.
00:32:57
Speaker
And this woman really felt that she, it was, she had full rights to her money that she, she said, if I want to take my money in the backyard and burn it, that's my, that's my right. If I want to give my money to Mickey mouse, she said, I i should be able to do that. So she really felt that because it's her money, it doesn't matter who, who it should go to, even if it's going to criminal. So she was very, very resistant to intervention, but she had some good points and other quotes. She said, listen, They're the ones, they're making money off of my money right now.
00:33:27
Speaker
Because they're holding it, they're making money. They're making interest off of my money. So she was very articulate. She understood what was happening, but she was just unwilling to change her behavior regardless of the risk. She was willing to take that risk, but others clearly were not allowing her to. That's really interesting. And I agree, she has very good points.
00:33:46
Speaker
But we know that at the end of the day, the bank was trying to protect her. Yes, of course, they're making money. But that's a micro case for them, probably.
00:33:56
Speaker
So what is the right point here? how is How do we strike that balance between letting individuals or consumers feel like, yes, we have our independence, we can use our money however
Risk, Crime, and Financial Interventions
00:34:07
Speaker
we want. We come to this bank to protect our money but and and and safeguard it, but but we should be able to use it. And that balance between that and really protecting against scams and everything around that.
00:34:19
Speaker
Right. So we often talk in my field about something called the dignity of risk. And it's this idea that we all should be granted the autonomy to take risks.
00:34:31
Speaker
And sometimes those risks are financial. So we also have the right to folly. So If I want to take it all of my money and take it over the casino, put it all on red, spin the wheel, see how it goes, I have the right to do that.
00:34:44
Speaker
But then there's this tipping point. And that tipping point is when my money is funding criminal activity. So I am not allowed to take all of my money and go do a major drug transaction or, you know, purchase sex workers, right? There's there's laws as well. So when it moves into... well, the actions that I'm doing are causing harm, then financial institutions not just have the right, they have the obligation right to intervene.
00:35:10
Speaker
So that is the balance that we're trying to make. We have to do our due diligence. We have to ah you know investigate, make sure that this is actually highly likely to be a scam or financial abuse by a friend or family member. But once we've done that, once we have reasonable suspicion, we have to take action. and and It's not going to mean that you're going to make best friends with that client. In fact, it might mean that there's going to be a strong animosity. It might mean that as soon as that hold is lifted, they're going to ask for their money and take it out and move it somewhere else. But the whole point at sometimes is delay, delay, delay, delay the movement of money into ah into the hands of the criminals. And what you said now, I think is very powerful. And it brings me to maybe the last point of our conversation, which is that whole description of, um you know, going head to head with the customer to try and stop them. Because yes, first we tried to communicate and break the spell and all these things. I'm sure there was a lot of conversation before the hold and confrontation happened. But one of the topics that was discussed also in Global Anti-Scam Summit was trauma-informed communication, which with the consumer and really understanding that.
00:36:20
Speaker
And Martina Dove said this in one of our previous podcast episodes, the person who entered the scam is not the same person, is not the original customer you had. Now they're groomed and they're manipulated. So how do we approach this conversation? with more empathy, not just to break the spell, but also to explain the hold, also to explain, yes, it's your money, just what you said now, yes, it's your money, but it's funding criminal activity. So what are your thoughts around that, around approaching this without getting to the other side with the consumer feeling like they're the criminal? How can we do better as financial institutions in communication around account
Empathy in Financial Interventions
00:36:59
Speaker
holds? Right. And here's where the rubber really meets the road, because i think you can potentially preserve a relationship if you do this well. And I can see a lot of financial institutions saying, listen, we're in finance. We're not social workers. We're not counselors. This is a whole new set of roles and responsibilities that these folks weren't
00:37:21
Speaker
planning to go into, but this is where we are now. This is the world we live in. So I would say you have to approach the customer with absolute empathy, recognize that they are experiencing a crime, they're a victim of a crime, and approach them with concern.
00:37:37
Speaker
So um we often talk about using motivational interviewing, asking kind of open but leading questions, you know, about, you know, tell me a little bit more about, you know, how this person first started asking you for money. It's like, oh, this seems like a relatively new relationship. Do you normally give money to people that you haven't met in person? And, and you know, kind of allowing or landscaping, we but might say, the conversation so that the individual realizes maybe there are some risks here.
00:38:05
Speaker
um Maybe this financial institution employee is actually someone that I can talk to And kind of get some good advice and feedback and and feel like kind of a sense of alliance with so that we're together trying to investigate what's going on and figure this out rather me versus them.
00:38:22
Speaker
So I think approaching with empathy, say, and then when the hold is placed, being really clear about why. This is what we're going to do. And we're doing it because we're really worried. We really want to keep your money safe. We really are concerned that if it goes out the door, you know, there's going to be no way to get it back in the future. And so here's how we're going to make sure that we can still have all of your bills paid during this time. Will we all continue to figure this out together? So again, using kind of us, we're in this together language rather than that this is us doing this to you. And then then ensuring that the hold is um specific enough so that routine bills like phone bills, energy bills are getting paid. Because especially here in a state like Minnesota, you know, we can't live without our heat.
00:39:09
Speaker
We have to make sure we keep people safe. And that means making sure that their routine, you know, non-fraudulent money is is going out the door. 100%, especially when the the criminal is actually using the same tactics, right? Their criminals are isolating individuals, playing the us game too, right? It's us against the world. Don't tell anyone. You know, I'm with you.
00:39:33
Speaker
They groom individuals. So as financial institutions, we need to work hard to build a rapport with the the consumer to kind of get them a little more a little out of that us, yeah you and the romance scammer potentially, and and more like, we've got you too, you're not alone in this and and and build that. and And one thing I would say for the financial institution employees, especially if this is their role, like maybe they work for a large financial institution, they're always doing these reach outs to customers.
00:40:02
Speaker
I think they themselves are going to need some trauma informed care. and There's something that we talk about, we call it vicarious trauma. And especially when you're you know interfacing with these clients who are coming to you full of rage, they've been groomed to mistrust you and to and to lie to you. you're constantly in this role where you're feeling like you're not gaining any ground and that you're not actually helping people, you're not breaking through. So we definitely see some vicarious trauma kind of bubbling up in the financial institution employees themselves. So I would really encourage firms to consider that and offer services for their employees who who are being traumatized by working with these victims who are traumatized. That's so important. And I do think that I've seen colleagues in the industry who are really working hard and frustrated because they talk to these people all day, not just financial institutions. i ah There are many people in this industry who talk to victims and definitely go get some help and talk to someone. But definitely financial institutions need to think about this in a more methodical way for the frontline teams. Right. And to avoid burnout and turnover, because these are highly specialized roles. They require really unique skill sets.
00:41:22
Speaker
And if you have a good person in that role, you don't want to lose them. So giving them kind of the services and healing that they need is is important. yeah One more thing that I can say is back to when we think about aging and vulnerability to scams, one thing that we find with older adults in particular is this disconnect between many areas of functioning and executive functioning in the realm of financial decisions. So there are six instrumental activities of daily living. They involve, you know, are you able to prepare a meal? Can you use the telephone? Can you drive? And one of them is managing money. And what we find is that is the first instrumental activity of daily living to be impaired, even in normal aging, even in typical aging without underlying pathology like dementia, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's. But what's particularly pernicious about these changes in financial decision-making is that it's accompanied by a lack of insight that it's happening. So I have these great graphs that I can't show in a podcast where researchers have administered financial decision-making quizzes to people of different ages across the lifespan. And they've also asked people, how confident are you that you got that answer to that question correct? And And what you see is that confidence levels stay high from age 60 to 90, but actual performance on financial literacy quiz goes down with an over the life course, or it's lower, I should say, among people in their late 70s, 80s. So there's this huge gap.
00:42:57
Speaker
between actual financial literacy and perceived financial literacy, which is still high. And I think that that creates this huge vulnerability that scammers latch on to. They're looking for that person. They're looking for the person that is not performing the way they did when they were young, but still thinks they are. hasn't brought in friends, family members, advisors to help them with their financial decisions. And so they're unprotected.
00:43:22
Speaker
So I think that's a huge thing that the field needs to think about because older adults aren't necessarily going to be asking for help. You're going to have to identify when they're going to need help. That's tricky. And that really explains the need but or maybe another justification for the need for additional assistance like account holds. Absolutely.
00:43:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:43:48
Speaker
I wanted to thank you so much for your time today, Marty. It was so interesting and such important research that you're doing and informing organizations and financial institutions about the impact and the ways where we can do better. So thank you so, so much for your time today. And it was great to have you on the podcast. Thank you.