 In 1973, Universal Pictures released a film called The Sting. It was a complicated plot involving two grifters that successfully defrauded a mob boss. The film went on to win seven out of its 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Original Screenplay. The reason was not far-fetched. The film depicted the lengths confidence tricksters will go to to create elaborate schemes and build an architect around the plot to defraud people of their money. At the end of the film, even the room that the final scene took place in was an illusion. In Malcolm Gladwell's book, Talking to Strangers, he sums up the reason we get blindsided by people's behavior and actions by stating that you believe someone not because you have doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don't have enough doubts about them. And this is the case with victims of scams. Specifically, scams not targeted at a person's greed. Scams counts 419, as we call it on this side of the Atlantic, has been with us since Heaven knows when, and with each passing year, the sophistication in the game grows. I became a partner on the Booking.com site. With the downturn of the economy, we were all becoming more creative. Shortly, I had my first client. Something was off. And in a carefully crafted response to a follow-up chat inquiry by the client, I turned down the reservation. I went to the app to report myself and tell the reason I declined the reservation. Apparently, I was out of time to seek a cancellation. Boy was I in soup. His credit card was on the file and they would charge it if they were not informed. The reservation came with an airport pick up. Last morning, the day of the arrival, fleetingly, it struck me as odd that the client seemed blind to the fact that I had declined the reservation, even as I was relieved that he had taken no note of my decline. With a note of caution, I informed the transport company to pick him from the airport. At 2 p.m., as he was passing through immigration, he reached out to the transport company for help. He needed to make an online payment of $48,500 to immigration. The transport company had catered to similar requests in the past. The difference was that they knew those clients. This was their red flag. In the meantime, on the other side of town, I was sweating like a Christmas good. I had swept, scrubbed, cleaned at the house all in a mud rush because of the late booking. Within five minutes of seeing the alert, he had cleared out the account, thanked the driver and promised to tip him with $1,000 when he came out. Then the point he dropped. As the world is on a steady decline and as a matter of urgency, we need to deploy the same time, energy, smarts, patience, knowledge as much as the con artists have to sharpen our gut instincts. This is the key to our survival going forward. We all need to have our wits about us, not suspicious of everything and everyone, but tuned in and listening to ourselves. Over to the floor. Yes. Like rightly said, it's easier for us to complain than to face the fact that we have not done enough homework as the people on the negative side would do. You're talking about con artists. If you look at criminals, maybe armed robbers and stuff, they want to rob you, they can monitor you for weeks on end. Just so that they can get what they want. But for us as humans, when we go around and we submit a proposal and the person says they're not available, we get angry, who does he think he is? I won't even go there anymore and the deal is off. So I think you rightly said that we're not really, we're not as tenacious as we should be at times. And I mean, since I like to look at Nigerian politics, maybe that's why political terrain is this way. You know, I always say, if it seems off, it is off. It's better to actually stall if you have any doubts about a particular activity. And I think we've had many years now of realizing that con artists are here to stay. In fact, it's almost the profession now for many people. It is. It's the easy way out because we believe that the people are very gullible, right? So on the one hand, we're supposed to be very smart people who can see through funny stuff. But at the same time, we're also naive because we are very careless. I find that the average, and I hate to put a blanket, but what I find is that we're not meticulous. We're careless in our documentation. We don't finish processes. And then we want to resort to the culture of shouting, right? If a mistake has been made. So you're supposed to do a cancellation. You don't do it. When they go ahead and initiate action, you feel like it's easier. If I shout, I'm going to get results. So that's the same persona we carry into every single thing. And that can get us into trouble more times than not. Con artists, right? I like the fact that said, if you can actually transfer this ingenuity and creativity, imagine the... I actually personally believe that they should be hired for financial services, right? And cyber security. And that's what a lot of organizations... Well, in the Western world, if you're very good in those kind of things, if you can crack a system, you should be hired. Because you know you can build in case studies and scenarios. Exactly. If you're able to crack a firewall of an organization, they should hire you to run their cyber security end because you can see all the different scenarios and things that can go wrong. But instead, we always criminalize things instead of creating opportunities where we can turn mischievous behavior into talent. Absolutely. A coach that just comes to mind, one of my favorite quotes is, the devil is in the detail, right? And it goes both ways in this case. So like I said, the con artist has an ulterior motive and he spends weeks on end and wants just studying you to be sure to find the loophole, right? But you as a person... I mean, he's concerned about the details. But you on the other side are not very concerned about the details. And more often than not, we just lack the discipline that is required. That's the word. Discipline. And I know Comfort said this is basically greed that is not targeted towards greed. But in a lot of times, there's also a greed element. I always say when I hear people have been con, that nothing can cheat a man when he's on the street. Somebody comes in here and says, I'll give you $1,000 if you give me $100 each. Or I'll give you $10,000 if you give me $500. I mean, at that point, your brain is calculating, $1,500. Then your greed takes over, more or less, and says, let me do the $1,000. At that point, this is a greed issue. And again, it goes back to discipline. So it's important that we're very disciplined about our systems, our processes. As a business person, it's very important that you have processes and systems in place that help you actually find those loopholes that you can get combined. Sorry. To clear that, the $1,000 offer came after they had collected the $48,000. So it wasn't put on the table before. And that's why the major thing for me is the, they say you don't disbelieve a person because you don't have doubts, but because you don't have enough doubts about the person. And so what was taking advantage of was the fact that they do that for their incoming clients. They've done it several times. I know that a lot of them, yes, they might know them, but you have one or two on the off chance. And so that's where we are careless. The trusting, because we are raised to be trusting. Because they're not giving you any reason to doubt. Exactly. Because we are raised to be trusting and so we differ immediately to that truth that, I mean, I'm not a cheat. So this person who is on the other side is most likely not a cheat. And that's the loophole. That's the psychology that is used. So they use that in route, playing on our psychology. But that's why we now need to be as smart. That's the advocacy here. We need to spend as much time owning our gut instinct. We come with that naturally. And I think which is said, once you have that doubt, just go with it. Don't do it. Just instinct. Walk with it. All right, Comfort. What next? After the break, Titi Lauper talks us through child maintenance.