NO victim

Who am I? I am the victim of financial crime.  Why do I talk about it? Because it matters. Why does it matter?Because fraud can kill.  Scammers steal something more than money from their victims. They steal trust in people and in humanity. Victims end up trusting no one. There is a physical rape, and there is a psychological rape. What scammers do to their victims is a psychological rape, it is an assault.  FRAUD is an assault against humanity. 

Major fraud cases grab the headlines for a few days or weeks, then forgotten until the next one comes along. We never have to wait long. Media typically focuses on following the money, the colorful perpetrator and occasionally on the victims. Because no violence is used, there is some sort of collusion, and sometimes insurance, fraud appears to be a victimless crime. On the contrary, fraud victims are often devastated by their loses, blamed for their perceived collusion, secrecy, greed, lack of foresight, gullibility, stupidity and so on. Is that why is there so little support for fraud victims from the mental health community? Google help for victims of fraud and you will find various resources from police forces, governments, lawyers, accountants, and third parties who will help you navigate the legal system. Google psychological help for fraud victims and you get pretty much the same results but more along the lines of how to prevent people from falling for scams. Missing from...

Yuriko Nakao / Reuters A researcher reflects on conversations with nearly 50 convicted executives about why they did what they did. EUGENE SOLTES Two leading executive headhunters once wrote a book called  Lessons From the Top: The Search for America’s Best Business Leaders  that celebrated 50 titans of industry. Readers were encouraged “to learn from and pattern themselves” after the leadership qualities displayed by these executives. Yet within a few years of the book’s 1999 publication, three of those 50 were convicted of white-collar crimes and headed to prison, and three more faced tens of millions of dollars in fines for illicit activity. It was an extraordinary rate of failure for executives once deemed the “very best—and most successful—business leaders in America.” I’ve  spent much of the last seven years investigating  why so many respected executives engage in white-collar crime. Why is it that fraud, embezzlement, bribery, and insider tradi...