I was scammed, not of money but time. Normally, I wouldn't bite but for some bizarre reason I thought a LinkedIn profile with 15,000 followers meant it was legitimate.
Surely these profiles go against community standards. Right?
Things I learnt. A scammer will distract you with pressure sales pitch, constantly flooding you with their messaging. In this case with phone calls and several emails daily. They will cause confusion by every changing goal posts, promises never realized, and lots of excuses and contradictions, then gaslight you if you aren't following their plan to their schedule or answering their questions. They will never pay their dues.
When you stop and think where is this all going, do a little research, then it all makes sense. The scammer will never give you a straight answer but lead you down a garden path, to an uncertain future. They will appear to have knowledge but it's incomplete and your intuition tells you that things do not add up but if you are heavily invested, you just keep getting lead along to your own demise.
Think of how this relates to covid and the players involved.
For the vast majority of people, a scammer has them reeled in, that they only wake up when they have suffered loss. No matter how much you say or warn them, they cannot admit that they have been lied to, that all the things they have gone along with, have been for nothing. The bigger the losses, the larger the investment in the lie.
As for LinkedIn, the scammers are getting pretty good. Almost had me because I was too busy to do my due diligence. I won't make the same mistake again.
RESOURCES
"One of the biggest mistakes we make is assuming others think the same way we do" Deborah J Crozier
https://apositivestart.org.uk/s-t-a-n-d-grooming-behaviours/ is an online training workshop for raising awareness of grooming behaviors; which very much ties into being a victim of scams.
