Scammers’ roles and online fraud process: Perspectives of the elder victims in Thailand

Although the literature on online scams reveals the richness of studies in many areas, research on the forms of scam and scammers’ roles during online scam engagement is rare. The current research fills this void by interviewing 15 elder victims of online scams about their experience. The findings show that online scams can be committed individually or as a team, and that the scam can be either victim-initiated contact or fraudster-initiated contact. The analysis of the data reveals four main roles of the scammers (persuader, supporters, manager, and financial person), each of which plays a different but supporting role in order to smoothly convince the victim that their scam is legitimate. The use of information technology (IT) was also found to be a part of the scam mechanism to control and manipulate the victim.