Our fears make us perfect marks for scammers

Winter storms have swept the country recently and we've previously experienced other forms of severe weather or dangerous phenomena. In this postscript edition, we tell you about the scammers who swoop in during disasters. Don't make a crisis even worse. Listen in and find out how to protect yourself from those who want you to pay for services or say your charity money will go to help those in need. Listen to our new podcast: Unseen Influences. Available everywhere.

Learn about our new podcast -- Unseen Influences. It takes you behind the scenes of the techniques others use to guide our behavior.It officially launches in February, but Scams & Cons listeners can listen to early episodes right now. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts or by going to our website, unseeninfluences.com.In this four-minute episode, I'll also bring you up-to-date on what's happening with Scams & Cons and give you details about what shows to expect on Unseen Influences.Listen in -- you're the first to know.

The only ways I know to get easy money is to either to be born rich, marry a rich partner or have someone bequeath you a fortune.If someone stepped up to us and said they have a way for us to make a lot of money fast, odds are we’d listen – listening doesn’t cost anything. Unless the person doing the talking is a scammer and they have now set the hook and may very well reel us in.Today we'll talk about Easy Money scams and you'll learn just how easy it is for you to lose your cash.

It's not easy to escape from prison, but when you have a lot of time on your hands and experienced con artists available ... well, it's going to be inevitable. A few weeks ago, we looked at how con artists used their skills to escape a highly secure prison. This time we're looking at the case of the Texas 7 who managed to escape, but not without costing a police officer his life.The Seven were on the lam for 41 days, but then police used cons of their own to bring them back to jail. We'll tell you how.

Fear gets your attention. It throws you off-kilter. It corrupts your judgement. You recover quickly when surprised by a spider. The impact is greater if you awaken in the night and see a stranger standing at the foot of your bed. In this episode, we tell you how scammers use fear to get us to do things that interfere with our ability to reason and recognize the scam for what it is.

The basics of romance scams haven't changed all that much. Find someone who is lonely, gain their trust and affection, then bleed them dry of all the money and assets they have.In this update to season one's story, we tell you how scammers are using new techniques and technology to make their efforts more effective and dangerous.

Why would a good scammer give up their trade just because they are in prison where those skills could be used to escape?If they are bold enough, they wouldn't.This is the tale of the Maze Prison Break. Maze is a prison within a prison within a military base. It took a lot of planning and a lot of cons, but they got out. We'll tell you how.

Nearly all scams are impersonation scams. They need you to believe they are someone else in order to get you to hand over your money.In this episode, we tell you about some of the new ways scammers are using impersonation techniques to rob you and why it's only going to get worse in the future.

In our last episode, I told you about social engineering -- how a con artist's patter can convince you to do anything. But sometimes props are needed to make that tale seem more real.In this episode we talk about the devices and distractions tricksters use to keep you from noticing your money is slipping from your fingers. 

Nearly all scams are built around the technique of social engineering. Con artists know how to manipulate you, what buttons to push and allow you to believe you made a choice you never had.In this episode, we explore the techniques of social engineering and why we're all vulnerable to them.And you'll hear a scammer confess to her crime and said she took advantage of an elderly couple because they were "good people."