Stephen Dubner

DeLima explains.

So if I'm a scammer, the good news is that there's an audience for any kind of scam I can come up with.

You said the financial fraud victims tend to be male, upper middle class with a high level of financial literacy.

I'm guessing a lot of people hearing this are surprised.

What's the pitch?

What are they selling and what is the victim buying?

I bet it does.

So I can imagine that one way of doing that is to broadcast that there's a scarcity, right?

There is this windfall, but only the first X people will be able to get to it.

But then even if it's not scarcity, there's urgency, which makes people respond often a little bit irrationally.

How do they use urgency typically?

If you had to identify just a handful of markers that make any one person more susceptible to fraud...

Given that you've told us that those markers may differ from scam to scam, what would be those markers?

I think about, you know, loneliness.

I think about financial fragility.

Can you give me an example?

AI in all its forms has been a great tool for scammers, right?

I can replicate the voice of a loved one and feign a kidnapping or something like that.

How has that changed your field?

I would assume that AI will also be just as good, however, at identifying scammers?