SCARS™ Editorial: Remembering The Fallen – Past RSN Staff
Over The Years We Have Had Many Team Members Work For Us Helping Victims.
Some asked who is behind SCARS & RSN.
So here is the short answer (made long).
RSN was a corporation, and until July 2017 was a subsidiary of one of the related companies called PerfectReputations® (www.PerfectReputations.com ») owned by Dr. McGuinness, co-founder of such companies as TigerDirect » (originally called BLOC Development and others. PR was one of the companies that helped fund the anti-scam activities of RSN and paid for their staff. In July 2017 RSN was transferred into SCARS (a separate non-profit corporation domiciled here in the United States) www.AgainstScams.org »
Over the years, we have had different employees running RSN and our victims’ support groups. We have had many different employees working for RSN (about 10 in the 4 years up through the end of 2017). John Hall was one of these. He no longer works for SCARS and has moved on in his career. John into TV journalism.
Helping scam victims is extremely difficult – especially when you help thousands and thousands of victims every week. Over the years we have seen that the burn-out time is about 1 year due to “Vicarious Trauma” for those that have significant contact with victims – then people have to move on for their own sanity.
Scam victims are composed of all kinds of people. Some are wonderful, some are extremely difficult and hateful people, some are mentally ill. Our Team handles almost a 1,000 people a day across all of our social media pages & groups and our websites.
Very few victims understand why this happened to them, and why we cannot save them. They want their money back, they want the scammers arrested. They expect us to get on a plane and fly to Ghana or Nigeria to do it! Some can be very violent and threatening when we do not do it. Some view themselves as “experts” and hate us because we are professionals – they view us as a cause for their problems also. This results in some extreme reactions and hate against our people who are just trying to do their jobs and help as many people as they can.
But We Know We Can’t Help Everyone!
We receive hundreds of investigation requests a day. Hundreds more that email us their photos – but under U.S. law, we require that THEY fill in the form on our websites so that it is authenticated and maintains “chain of custody” so that it is usable evidence. Most victims have no idea how to report scammers so they just throw information anywhere believing it will be the difference in fighting these crimes. Sadly most of it is a waste because the victims neither understand how to prepare their information or post it in places that serve no purpose.
We spend over USD$100,000 building the SCARS|CDN™ Cybercriminal Data Network™ – an Anti-scam Data Reporting Network™ that connects victims with governments or law enforcement entities around the world. The main website is www.Anyscam.com » and this website here. It provides free-of-cost criminal data feeds to our subscribers. But only a small number of victims bother to report their scammers in a way that is actually helpful.
We get at least 3-5 a week that are suicidal, and we help them get connected with an intervention hot-line or some we do our best help directly (a few of you were probably in that state yourselves).
Many Are Trapped In Their Rage And Anger. And They Take It Out On Our People At Every Opportunity.
We get death threats and bomb threats all the time. We even get packages that look like bombs or poison. It is crazy, but this is what being a victim does to some people.
Dealing with it is beyond the call of Duty!
The people that work (or worked for us) are as protected as we can make them. They were here to help, but not to make friends. We are professionals providing a FREE service and helping as many people as we can. We try hard not to let victims project onto us and develop attachments, but it happens, and when we see that we pull them out, In one case, the team member had a substance problem, and we had to put him in rehab after working here.
Our employees keep their personal lives hidden, not to be fake, but to protect themselves from some of the seriously unstable victims out there. As we said, this is about you, not us.
Throughout all of 2016 and until about April of 2018, our whole team was constantly under attack on Facebook by angry victims and other amateur anti-scam groups.
Other anti-scam hate groups would organize massive attacks on us. As a result, our people’s personal family profiles would be removed, and we would lose all the work (posts) they added when their profiles were deleted by Facebook. Facebook is stupid (but getting a little smarter), and it responds to reports. If a couple hundred people report someone, Facebook deletes them. If you want to know who, others can tell you – we try not to mention or talk about the incompetent amateurs that are out there by name but to warn you about them for they are as dangerous to your recovery as the scammers are.
We know this makes no sense to most of you, it just is the way it is.
So when all this really started happening to our team, we stopped having employees identify themselves that work on Facebook. In fact, we almost turned off all of our Facebook pages and groups and abandoned the platform due to all of the hostility. But we worked through this insanity.
SCARS is an incorporated tax-exempt nonprofit corporation registered in the State of Delaware – having recently re-registered in that state. Our employees at not identified, but our officers are as required by law. This makes us the most transparent anti-scam group anywhere.
SCARS (Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc.) is lead by Dr. Tim McGuinness – a PC Industry Pioneer, Roboticist, and Cybersecurity Expert on the faculty of several universities. The SCARS Team is lead by Tom Borman, the Division Direct. These rest of our employees work in various capacities to help support victims, identify trends and perform analysis of worldwide socially engineered cybercrime, publish & educate, and help our mission to advocate for victims worldwide.
So in summary, you will rarely see or hear about our employees by name. We are all SCARS and SCARS is us!
This helps us stay hater-proof!
Of course, we deal with the haters very effectively as well. One we litigated against and won, and have 3 more cases settled or pending – it is a long costly process and we try to avoid it whenever possible. Another we had the FSB Russian State Police visit (I wish I could have been a fly on the walk when he was dragged into their offices for questioning), and others were served by the U.K. police for unlawful victims’ assistance services. We are not afraid to fight for victims – after all, haters are just another form of thugs just like scammers regardless of their intentions.
We (meaning SCARS) are the ONLY lawfully registered Victims’ Assistance provider in the anti-scam industry – meaning specifically for online crime victims. We are registered and recognized by the United States Department of Homeland Security, partnered with them on their cybersecurity and cybercrime campaigns; and the United States Department of Justice on multiple projects and initiatives, including the Victim Connect program from the National Center for Crime Victims, and registered in the National Census of Victim Support Providers. We are also working with DoJ on scammer prosecution strategies in Africa. We do real analysis of what is going on and provide the government with a more realistic view. We are also a member of NOVA – the National Organization for Victims’ Assistance that provides training and certification for victims’ assistance providers such as SCARS.
Also, for those new to us, RSN was founded by Dr. McGuinness as an educational & awareness campaign in 1991 on the old AOL, as a service provided by a company he co-founded called TigerDirect.com (and its sister companies in the U.K. and Europe). He had a scam information page on TigerDirect.com in 1995 through 1998, then pulled it out onto a separate website. The current SCARS (www.RomanceScamsNow.com) website was created in the mid-2000s. You can even see some of those early pages from TigerDirect.com » (webmaster’s section that once talked about scams ») and RomanceScamsNow » on Archive.org » – these are simply stored versions of those website and may not function well – visit the current versions for the best experience.
If you want to know more history, please visit our SCARS website About page »
We would also like to point out two very important people: Jackie Corbett and Chris Fromai (and others of course too) who have volunteered huge amounts of time over the last few of years and have helped all scam victims tremendously. We have many volunteers, but Jackie and Chris have really been a massive amount of help and have saves hundreds of people themselves personally over the years.
As time goes by, we (SCARS) see this group becoming local chapters run by our Ambassadors and Local Chapters. SCARS will provide the international organization, but support groups and local functions will be run by local chapters eventually. We currently have such Chapters in China and the UK Chapter will come online in a few months, with New Zealand and Australia coming in 2019 as well (we hope). We also plan a Mexican & Canadian Chapter as well.
The successful survivors that have come through our current support groups will be the ones we turn to setup as local chapters in the future – all of this takes a huge amount of time. But when working to stop the world single largest crime patience is a requirement.
Amazing things have happened in the last two years. In 2018 over 21,000 scammers were arrested, plus nearly 13,000 deportations related to scams by the U.S.I.C.E. That is not a drop in the bucket, it represents a major shift in priorities. With more to come!
We hope you will join us on this journey and avoid the haters, if for no other reason than your own sanity and recovery.
Either way, we will continue our mission as we roll into our 28th year of helping to educate the world about scams and scammers!
Thanks for reading this.
Dr. Tim McGuinness, Chairman & Founder
SCARS
Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc.
Miami Florida U.S.A.
TAGS: SCARS, Team, Haters, Amateurs, Experts, Professionals, Nonprofit
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Tell us about your experiences with Romance Scammers in our Scams Discussion Forum on Facebook »
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FAQ: How Do You Properly Report Scammers?
It is essential that law enforcement knows about scams & scammers, even though there is nothing (in most cases) that they can do.
Always report scams involving money lost or where you received money to:
- Local Police – ask them to take an “informational” police report – say you need it for your insurance
- Your National Police or FBI (www.IC3.gov »)
- The SCARS|CDN™ Cybercriminal Data Network – Worldwide Reporting Network HERE » or on www.Anyscam.com »
This helps your government understand the problem, and allows law enforcement to add scammers on watch lists worldwide.
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Visit our NEW Main SCARS Facebook page for much more information about scams and online crime: www.facebook.com/SCARS.News.And.Information »
To learn more about SCARS visit www.AgainstScams.org
Please be sure to report all scammers HERE » or on www.Anyscam.com »
All original content is Copyright © 1991 – 2020 SCARS All Rights Reserved Worldwide & Webwide – RSN/Romance Scams Now & SCARS/Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams are all trademarks of Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Incorporated (formerly the Society of Citizens Against Romance Scams)
Legal Notices:
All original content is Copyright © 1991 – 2020 SCARS All Rights Reserved Worldwide & Webwide. Third-party copyrights acknowledge.
SCARS, RSN, Romance Scams Now, SCARS|WORLDWIDE, SCARS|GLOBAL, SCARS, Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams, Society of Citizens Against Romance Scams, SCARS|ANYSCAM, Project Anyscam, Anyscam, SCARS|GOFCH, GOFCH, SCARS|CHINA, SCARS|CDN, SCARS|UK, SCARS Cybercriminal Data Network, Cobalt Alert, Scam Victims Support Group, are all trademarks of Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Incorporated.
Contact the law firm for the Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Incorporated by email at legal@AgainstScams.org
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