On June 16th, Brad Ashton gave members a talk entitled “Scams and how to Avoid Them”.

Brad has previously talked to us about his career in the entertainment industry, and much of this talk came from those experiences. His enjoyable style demonstrated how close the ‘art of the con’ for entertainment purposes overlaps with those with a more criminal mind-set. A series of ‘spot the con’ stories cleverly introduced plausible situations in which all too nice/gullible people get fooled by skilled tricksters employing false documents and diversionary tactics – taking advantage of our innocence or greed.

Brad used examples in which he got fooled and encouraged us to be more questioning, cynical and distrustful. Many examples were low tech, but the introduction of technology has introduced a whole new range of opportunities for scamming.