A ruthless (and ruthlessly efficient) industry is using digital tools to supercharge one of the world’s oldest behaviors. We look at how the industry works, and ask the scam-fighters what they’re doing about it.

• SOURCES:
  • Kati Daffan, former assistant director at the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Marketing Practices.
  • Marti DeLiema, assistant professor of social work at the University of Minnesota.
  • Mark Frank, professor of communications at the University at Buffalo.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Cambodian Scam Tycoon Wanted by U.S. Extradited to China," by Gabriele Steinhauser (Wall Street Journal, 2026).
  • "The Rise and Fall Of Accused Cambodian Scam Kingpin Chen Zhi," by Low De Wei (Bloomberg, 2026).
  • "Protecting Older Consumers 2024-2025," by the Federal Trade Commission (2025).
  • "Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show," by Jeff Horwitz (Reuters, 2025).
  • "Exposed to Scams: What Separates Victims from Non-victims?," by Marti DeLiema, Emma Fletcher, Christine Kieffer, Gary Mottola, Rubens Pessanha, and Melissa Trumpower (Stanford Center on Longevity, 2019).
  • "Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?," by Cormac Herley (Microsoft Research, 2016).
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2013).
  • FTC Fraud Reporting Portal.

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