Scamming

This spring, my partner and I were strolling through the streets of downtown Bangkok, on our way to visit yet another breathtaking temple and then consume our body weight in pad thai. But before we could get there, we were intercepted by a man in a suit who looked Thai but spoke impeccable English. He asked where we were from, what our plans were for the day, and if we wanted any advice from a local about the city. My partner and I glanced at each other, wary of where this strange interaction was headed and consciously keeping one hand on our possessions at all times. 

The man explained that we happened to be visiting during the annual Buddha holiday week, a very special time with lots of opportunities to visit sacred temples that were normally closed to the public, and particularly huge sales for custom-made dresses and suits. He rambled on about how the government helped fund these sales from the designer suit brands and even paid the tuk-tuk drivers to drive people around this week as a way to promote tourism. In the moment, we were both incredibly skeptical, and looking back, we had every right to be. So far, this man had brought up many of the main hallmarks of a good scam: this was a special, once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity, we were essentially pulled off the street by sheer good fortune, and it seemed too good to be true (it usually is). 

Although we were suspicious of this obvious scam, we were also incredibly curious about where this situation was headed. I would certainly not recommend engaging with anyone who seems to be scamming you, and we were admittedly naive to the very real dangers of the situation, although we somehow felt less vulnerable knowing that we were being targeted. We ended up getting in a tuk-tuk with a second man who “happened to be” driving by at the perfect moment to pick us up and take us to the place the first man had recommended (the two were obviously in cahoots but we couldn’t figure out why or how), getting dropped off at a temple, and meeting a third man who conspicuously brought up the same suit sales that the first man had discussed. That was enough to get us to Google the situation, where we discovered that we were living out one of the most common scams in Thailand. 

Through a complex web of deception, huge groups of scammers typically work together to target tourists and channel them through a procession of people who each play a role in the chain of events, eventually funneling them to a location where they’re tricked into purchasing fraudulently labelled goods (often silks and tailored suits, like the man on the street had promised us) or even fake airline tickets or tourism passes. In the worst cases, victims are robbed violently or even taken hostage. Luckily for us, we were able to walk away with minimal harassment.

Scams like this thrive because they prey on the very qualities that make us human: curiosity, trust, and the tendency to believe in serendipity when we’re far from home. At its core, scamming involves deliberate acts of deception designed to manipulate people emotionally, cognitively, and often socially, into giving up money, personal information, or control. They come in endless varieties, from the charming tuk-tuk driver and the “helpful” local in Bangkok to high-tech voice-cloning vishing attacks and AI-generated crypto schemes. What unites them all is their reliance on behavioral psychology: scammers exploit heuristics like authority, scarcity, and urgency to override our critical thinking. In this article, we’ll unpack how scams work, explore their devastating impacts, examine what behavioral science can teach us about how to resist them, and uncover how society as a whole can do a better job of stopping them.