This website has been created by Cathy Wilson, a Licensed Professional Counselor in Littleton, Colorado, USA.
Several years ago I worked with a couple of people who had been victims of a scam, and I wanted to give them resources such as support groups or reading material about the emotional impact to supplement the work we were doing in counseling. I couldn’t find ANY. Then, someone I love also experienced a scam.
With no other resources I could find, I wrote a webpage with information about how to support someone who had been scammed. It wasn’t long before it started getting a LOT of hits. The number of people that are scammed and the money lost is an astonishing amount. I did not anticipate how needed that page was.
I started getting calls and emails from people thanking me for writing it, needing to talk to someone who understands, and asking if I knew a counselor they could work with because they couldn’t find someone that knew anything about how it feels to be scammed.
This motivated me to do more by publishing The Emotional Impact of Being Scammed and How to Recover in 2021, in hopes that this would help many more people. It HAS.
The need for even more support has evolved into this website of resources, lots of videos on my YouTube channel for survivors, and many hours collaborating with advocates and other organizations (see below).
The needs of survivors has also led me to create online courses to help supporters know what to do. These supporters are family and friends, advocates, law enforcement, and mental health providers of people who were scammed and dealing with the devastating emotional effects. You can find those courses here: Helping and Supporting Victims of Scams and Fraud
To those of you who are survivors: No, you are not stupid. Anyone can be scammed, and I hope you find evidence of that, and healing, in the resources I have for you here.
All my best,
Cathy
Some of the organizations I work with to continuously improve services available are shown below:
