Hi and welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host Bob Sullivan.

Today we're taking on a topic that's near and dear to my heart and that's

changing the language around victim blaming.

I hope we all know that victim blaming is a terrible thing to do,

but it's even worse than you think.

It's actually part of the structure which I believe enables this horrible

crime of financial fraud to continue and to keep snowballing. And it is snowballing. The

Federal Trade Commission just announced that consumers reported a stunning

8.8 billion dollars in losses during 2022. And even more stunning, that's a 30% increase from the last year. 30%!

There's still so much more work to do.

We like to think we're doing some of that work here at the Perfect Scam podcast.

This April marks the fifth anniversary of The Perfect Scam.

We've been at this for five years in almost 150 episodes bringing you stories of crime,

emotional toil, and bravery.

At the perfect scam, we think victims, often the most vulnerable people in society, are the real heroes.

And we should be doing much more to protect them, rather than blame them.

So to hit this issue of victim blaming head on, today we're doing something a little different.

A roundtable discussion with three very important and special guests, Kate Kleiner,

Paul Greenwood, and Mark Solomon. I'm going to let you meet them by allowing them to introduce themselves.

Kate, why don't you begin?

My name is Kate Kleinert and I'm here today because I was involved in a romance

scam two years ago and to help me get past all of this I have become an advocate and

...