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The Imperfect ‘Perfect’ Fraudster: Exploring How Vulnerability Framing, Fraudster Identity, and Victim Attachment Shape Financial Risk Perception

Huang, Yidan ; Yao, Rui (2025) — European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research

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DOI: 10.1007/s10610-025-09638-9 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   Global
Tags:   Adult Attachment Theory, Attachment Avoidance, Crisis Narratives, Deception Theory, Financial Risk Perception, Fraudster Authenticity, Fraudster Identity, Fraudster Identity Construction, Impression Management Theory, Interpersonal Deception Theory, Mixed Methods, Pig Butchering, Risk Perception, Romance Scams, Strategic Imperfection, Victim Attachment, Victim Psychology, Vulnerability Framing, Vulnerability Narratives
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Synopsis

            
This three-study mixed-methods project examined how offender identity, crisis narratives, and victim attachment shape perceived financial risk. Study 1 scraped 11,454 ScamDigger reports and retained 5,763 profiles for identity analysis. Study 2 modeled 3,909 Ripandscam victim reports; a TF-IDF and Multinomial Naive Bayes classifier assigned crisis types with 87% accuracy. Study 3 experimentally varied crisis and occupation cues for 290 women. Meeting-expense requests received the highest perceived-risk ratings and occupational crises the lowest; attachment avoidance also interacted with crisis type in the experiment. Self-reported public reports are selective, and a short women-only scenario experiment cannot reproduce prolonged adaptive grooming or establish how perceptions translate into actual payment behavior.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
Prior work had not systematically tested identity–narrative matches or how vulnerability narratives interact with gendered occupations to shape risk perception. The authors also identify limited evidence on fraudsters’ dynamic adaptation to victim psychological traits, especially attachment avoidance. Existing qualitative and quantitative approaches were described as insufficiently integrated, while pig-butchering’s dual emotional-financial manipulation remains underexplored.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
Exploratory sequential mixed methods: Study 1 web-scraped 11,454 Scamdigger reports, retaining 5,763 valid entries for text-based identity analysis. Study 2 analyzed 3,909 Ripandscam victim reports using preprocessing, LDA topic modelling, keyword expansion, TF-IDF, Naïve Bayes classification, and ANOVA of danger scores. Study 3 used a between-subjects online scenario experiment manipulating crisis narrative and occupational gender segregation; 290 valid women participants completed measures of authenticity, financial risk, and attachment avoidance.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
Reported-case data may underrepresent victims deterred by shame, self-blame, or stigma and may omit psychological profiles, strategies, and lower-loss cases. The experiment cannot reproduce the prolonged, adaptive interactions through which real fraudsters build trust and social pressure. Although data covered diverse regions, cultural variation in fraud narratives and victim susceptibility was not fully examined. The experimental sample was entirely women, further limiting generalizability.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Use longitudinal designs to track victim decision-making and reporting; use digital ethnography or participatory studies of evolving real-world interactions; conduct cross-cultural comparative research using social-psychological theory; and examine pig-butchering scams’ emotional-financial manipulation, cross-platform narrative logic, and technical strategies.

          

              

    
    

        
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