Criminals and trained to hone in on people who are vulnerable. Listen on to learn how you can protect the people you care about and what signs to look out for. Today's guest is Louise Baxter. Lou graduated with a law degree and worked for Sussex Trading Standards. She took over as the chair of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute's consumer power alliance and is the CTSI's lead officer of education. She got frustrated by the system in relation to support of scam victims and started what is now the National Trading Standard Scams Teams, and she was awarded an MBE for protecting vulnerable consumers from financial abuse.

Show Notes:

• [1:10] - Lou shares her background and why she was driven to be more proactive.
• [3:05] - Her team deals with specific types of scams.
• [5:19] - If you respond to one letter scam, your details get passed around to more.
• [6:54] - There are times of mental health challenges that make you vulnerable, such as grief and high stress.
• [8:40] - There are different types of vulnerabilities and you could experience several at once.
• [10:51] - There are mental health impacts when learning that you've been a victim of a scam.
• [12:35] - Scams are only reported between 5 and 15% of the time.
• [14:48] - Even Louise has been affected by situational vulnerability.
• [16:01] - Louise describes the way a lottery scam increases their web of victims.
• [18:49] - What support is available for scam victims?
• [20:35] - Louise shares the types of responses her team receives when they reach out to scam victims.
• [23:00] - Situational vulnerability creates opportunity for scammers to make their message more believable.
• [25:35] - At the start of Covid-19, vulnerabilities were at an all time high.
• [27:13] - Criminals can target constantly.
• [28:38] - One million people have completed the training Louise's company offers.
• [30:19] - As a society, we need to begin supporting victims rather than shaming them.
• [32:50] - Scams and fraud are forms of emotional abuse.
• [34:12] - Lou compares the tactics used by scammers to domestic emotional abuse.
• [35:41] - Louise explains that most criminals are not in the same country as their targets.
• [37:35] - There has been some valuable international work that's been done, but every country operates a bit differently in their standards.

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