You’re too smart to fall for a scam, right?

For this week’s Reality Cheque, we’re looking at the myth that online scams are easy to spot.

In 2025, I reported on an Ottawa conference advertised online that was allegedly a scam designed to take money from LGBTQ activists. It wasn’t promoted with the typo-laden grift that gets stuck in spam folders, but on a sleek webpage with crisp photos, clean copy and clearly outlined steps to apply for funding. But much like the world-building writers do when crafting books or scripts, this too was fiction.

There were neither grants nor a conference to attend. The photos were doctored and stolen, text was lifted off other websites, and the applications did nothing more than give victims busy work on forms designed to appear legitimate. It was built to look genuine at every touchpoint and lull visitors into handing over personal information and their hard-earned cash.

This scam—seeking a few hundred dollars in registration fees to a non-existent event—is the tip of the iceberg. In 2025, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) received over 112,000 fraud reports representing losses of over $704 million—and that’s only the cases that were reported.

Today’s scammers are endlessly creative—whether promoting sham investments, faking romantic interest, or cosplaying as Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) or even CAFC employees. It’s more critical than ever for Canadians to realize that online scams are no longer as obvious as they may have once seemed.

Is it a myth that you’ll recognize a scam when you see one?

Scam psychology expert Martina Dove, who literally wrote the book on The Psychology Of Fraud, Persuasion And Scam Techniques, says it’s harder than ever to recognize some scams. “People that wouldn’t necessarily be very vulnerable five years ago because they were more vigilant are vulnerable now,” she says.

Advances in AI technology play a huge role, says Dove. New tools help scammers set up—and scale up—operations quickly. They can generate text, fake photos and videos—even complete websites—with little time or effort. (In comparison, the effort expended by the charity scammers I investigated looks old-fashioned already.) Sometimes, she says, AI-identification tools don’t notice them. “If it’s difficult for other AI tools to say it’s fake, I don’t think any average person will be able to detect it’s fake either.”

Bhupendra Acharya, a University of Louisiana, Lafayette assistant professor and scam researcher says other tools designed to identify scam websites, don’t always help. “Phishing detectors are not that effective in finding a scam which has been set up pretty recently, or which has not been reported.” 

In short: No scam-busting tool offers a guaranteed answer, so prudence and due diligence are also necessary to stay scam-safe.

Don’t trust everything you see on social media

Though people are skeptical about certain types of social media posts—no one really leads the perfect lifestyle some people present, for example—Dove says people can make themselves vulnerable to scams by buying into narratives built on social media. 

Some scams depend on you believing fake online personas are real or buying into hype around dodgy courses, events or investments. And, when causes or groups confirm our worldview, we sometimes let down our guard, even if we should scan for red flags.

“People will look at the number of followers,” on a social media profile, says Dove, “and they’ll immediately assign credibility to it.” But, she suggests, check out engagement and history (including other users’ comments and past posts). 

The conference scam I investigated had a Facebook page with a four-figure follower count and a multi-year post history, though a closer look showed post dates had been altered, there was minimal engagement, and photos were swiped from an Australian city council, a British Columbia university and a legitimate LGBTQ conference.

The “Page Transparency” section showed not only that people managing a supposedly Canadian page were located in Tanzania, but that it had two previous names. One was “Viral nJobs Dubai.” But since relatively few people will seek out this information, scammers don’t need to put effort into hiding it.

Acharya says it’s common for social media accounts to be bought and sold, and wiped of past posts. In a 2024 paper, he and his co-authors identified nearly $64 million worth of social media accounts being marketed online. These sales put platform users at risk because they “foster fraudulent activities such as bot farming, harvesting accounts for future fraud, and fraudulent engagement.”

Why do we fall for online scams?

Though technology evolves, how we think and feel doesn’t keep pace. “There are circumstances you can have in your life that are a huge factor in whether you’re going to find a scam interesting or applicable to you,” Dove says. 

These can be existential or circumstantial. Today, many Canadians are struggling in a tough economy, which can make them more susceptible to promises of payout from a crypto or investment scam. Meanwhile, one person in a social circle encouraging others to take part can cause people to be more susceptible. Even Bernie Madoff, who ran the largest financial Ponzi scheme in history, operated “on word of mouth and in a small circle,” Dove says.

In a few years, the humans currently operating scams will be replaced entirely by chatbots, suspects Dove. Given that people are finding them real enough to treat them like a friend or lover, it’s not far-fetched.

We need to close research gaps to better understand the shadowy world of scams, ays Acharya, but in the meantime it would help if social media and web hosting companies took quicker action to shut down fraudulent accounts and sites. Delays mean victims could “potentially lose quite a bit of money in the future too.” Case in point: the website I researched last year stayed online for quite some time after I outed it as a scam, continuing to trick one unsuspecting visitor at a time.

If you suspect a scam, don’t engage. Instead—especially if you believe you have been scammed—report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (1-888-495-8501) and your local police.