As is Often Said, Murphy Was an Optimist! The SCARS’ Laws of Scams and Scam Victimization

The ‘SCARS’ Laws’

These ‘SCARS’ Laws of Scam Victimization’™ are inspired by Murphy’s Law but reflect the unique psychological, emotional, and situational challenges that romance, relationship, and investment scam victims-survivors face. They aim to capture the “truisms” and ironic twists that many victims-survivors experience during and after a scam—highlighting how things can go wrong (and usually do) in ways that feel unexpected or even painfully absurd.

Note: this is a combination of a bit of humor, irony, and an essential truth or wisdom that seems painfully obvious in hindsight. By no means is this an attempt to blame victims-survivors or make light of the pain and suffering. Sometimes looking at the problems and challenges from different perspectives can yield new insights – that is our attempt here.

These aren’t scientifically proven principles, but rather they’re observant reflections drawn from patterns seen in real-life scam situations in helping and educating millions of scam victims-survivors. They fall somewhere between truisms (as they often reflect predictable patterns) and dark humor, providing insight into the manipulative and deceptive dynamics scammers use. Like Murphy’s Law, they underscore the idea that if something can go wrong, especially in the scam-recovery journey, it often does, but with a hopeful hint that understanding these principles can lead to greater awareness and resilience.

Each “law” serves as a reminder to scam victims, survivors, and advocates about the challenges and paradoxes in navigating scam recovery, helping others avoid the same pitfalls and prepare for the journey ahead.

Here’s a set of the SCARS Laws™ and principles inspired by Murphy’s Law, crafted specifically for romance, relationship, and investment scam victims. These “Laws of Scam Victimhood” capture the painful ironies and lessons learned from the experience of scams.

SCARS’ Laws of Scam Victimhood

They are presented in no specific order, except as in alphabetical order, created by Dr. Tim McGuinness, the SCARS Institute Principal Scientist, Director, and Founder,

• Complicity Guilt Principle: Scam victims often feel guiltier for falling for the scam than the scammer feels for creating it.
• Contact Confidence Law: The more a scammer contacts you, the more certain you feel about their sincerity—even as the warning signs stack up.
• Crisis Escalation Law: If a minor crisis convinced you to send money once, a more dramatic one will come next time.
• Delayed Gratification Fallacy: Promises of future rewards are designed to keep you investing in the present.
• Emotional Withdrawal Principle: Once you sense the deception, the harder it becomes to separate feelings of love from feelings of betrayal.
• Endless Question Corollary: For every reasonable answer you get, there will be two more questions you can’t quite bring yourself to ask.
• Escape Hatch Principle: As soon as the scam starts to crumble, they’ll create a reason for a sudden, permanent disappearance.
• Family Bypass Principle: If you feel reluctant to tell family or friends about the relationship, it’s often because something feels off.
• Flattery Trap: The more they praise or compliment you, the deeper you fall into the trap.
• Feedback Effect: The more you give (emotional or financial support), the less they need to offer in return.
• Illusion of Exclusivity Law: Scammers convince you that you’re the “only one”—even if you’re one of many.
• Investment Blurring Principle: The line between affection and financial gain will always blur in a scammer’s game plan.
• Investment of Hope Principle: You invest not just money, but hope—a hope that only grows harder to release as the scam deepens.
• Law of Belated Realizations: The moment you begin to question the scammer’s story, you’ll remember overlooked details that now scream “scam.”
• Law of Emotional Investment: The more emotionally invested you become, the harder it becomes to question their motives.
• Law of Idealization: The more perfect they seem, the greater the deception behind them.
• Law of Self-Deflection: A scammer will always redirect any suspicion, making you doubt your own intuition before you doubt them.
• Never-Finished Project: They will always have one final plan or promise to fulfill, which will never materialize.
• Payback Delusion: The more money or time you invest, the more you feel compelled to invest again to “get it back.”
• Perpetual Loyalty Loop: They’ll manipulate you into loyalty, using everything from promises to guilt, to keep you engaged.
• Post-Realization Shame Principle: When you recognize the scam, the shame that follows is often harder to shake than the financial loss.
• Reality Delay Principle: The longer the relationship or investment seems “too good to be true,” the more shocking the eventual realization will be.
• Rescue Appeal: When you start to sense doubt, they’ll have a new “emergency” that pulls you back in.
• Self-Blame Trap: The more you rationalize the scammer’s actions, the more you end up blaming yourself.
• Sudden Distance Law: When you’re nearly broke or emotionally exhausted, their response time will miraculously slow down.
• Too-Good-to-Be-True Rule: If the person or investment seems flawless, it’s because you haven’t yet seen the flaws intentionally hidden from view.
• The Too-Late Realization Law: By the time you’re convinced something is wrong, the scammer has likely moved on to another victim.
• Trust Overload Law: The more you trust, the more red flags you ignore.
• Unseen Lie Law: For every lie you catch, there are at least three you missed.
• The Urgency Trap: Any request that requires immediate action is usually designed to stop you from thinking critically.
• Vulnerability Exploitation Principle: Scammers will always find the most vulnerable part of your life to leverage against you.
• Withdrawal Resistance Principle: The moment you try to pull back or set boundaries, they’ll have a reason for you to stay.

These ironic principles provide insight into the psychological traps and manipulative tactics that scammers use, while also highlighting the emotional journey scam victims endure before, during, and after the scam. Recognizing these patterns can help prevent future victimization and aid in recovery for those affected.

Murphy’s Law and Variants

Murphy’s Law states, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” a straightforward expression of the tendency for things to fail at inconvenient times or ways. Emerging from aerospace engineering during WWII, the phrase emphasizes a realistic, even humorous approach to inevitable errors and setbacks. While it may seem pessimistic, Murphy’s Law is often seen as a reminder to plan for the unexpected, a principle with applications in fields like project management, risk assessment, and even daily life. Its importance lies in preparing us to anticipate flaws, manage complexity, and practice resilience. Embracing this “law” fosters an awareness that things seldom go perfectly as planned, helping individuals and teams avoid overconfidence and plan for a range of outcomes.

Here’s a list of Murphy’s Law and some other correlated or related laws that explore the concept of unintended consequences, pessimistic outcomes, and how things often go wrong in unpredictable ways. Note that some are actually cognitive biases and logical fallacies.

Murphy’s Law

1. • Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
   • Extended Murphy’s Law: If there’s a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will go wrong.

Murphy’s Law Corollaries

• • Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives: “Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.”
  • Murphy’s Law First Corollary: Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
  • Murphy’s Law Second Corollary: If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
  • Murphy’s Law Third Corollary: If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
  • Murphy’s Law of DIY: If you put something somewhere safe, it will never be seen again.
  • Murphy’s Law of the Open Road: If there is a car anywhere in the lane beside you, it will move into your lane when you do.
  • Murphy’s Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory.
  • Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics: Things get worse under pressure.
  • Murphy’s Law of the Workplace: If something is left to the last minute, it will take the least amount of time to do.
  • Murphy’s Military Law: “The inherent error in any operation will be in the direction of the most damage.”
  • Murphy’s Philosophy: Smile… tomorrow will be worse.
  • Murphy’s Technology Law: “Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.”
  • O’Toole’s Commentary on Murphy’s Law: Murphy was an optimist.
  • Sod’s Law (British version of Murphy’s Law): The idea that bad things will happen to you at the worst possible time.

Related Laws and Principles

• • Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
  • Cheops’ Law: “Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.”
  • Dilbert Principle: “The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.”
  • Ettore’s Observation: The other line always moves faster.
  • First Law of Unreliability: Everything that goes wrong will go wrong, regardless of the best plans.
  • Fudd’s First Law of Opposition: If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.
  • Gumperson’s Law: The likelihood of something happening is inversely proportional to its desirability.
  • Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
  • Heller’s Law: The first myth of management is that it exists.
  • Hofstadter’s Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”
  • Imelda’s Law: “If you have to take something out of your suitcase, it will be at the bottom.”
  • Law of Averages: Given enough opportunities, even unlikely events will eventually occur.
  • Law of Bureaucracy: “The progress of a government is inversely proportional to the number of bureaucrats in place.”
  • Law of Diminishing Returns: After a certain point, additional effort or resources yield progressively smaller returns.
  • Law of Inverse Appreciation: “No good deed goes unpunished.”
  • Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
  • Law of Selective Gravitation: The object that falls is always the one that can cause the most damage.
  • Law of Triviality (Bike-Shedding): The amount of time spent discussing an issue is inversely proportional to its actual importance.
  • Law of Unintended Consequences: Actions, especially large ones, often have outcomes that were not anticipated.
  • Liberman’s Law: Everybody lies, but it doesn’t matter since nobody listens.
  • Maier’s Law: “If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.”
  • McDonald’s Corollary: In any set of observations, the number of bad observations will increase.
  • Occam’s Razor: “The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.” (Often used to cut through unnecessary complexity.)
  • Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”
  • Peter’s Inversion of Parkinson’s Law: “Time expands to fill the available work.”
  • Peter Principle: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.”
  • Resistentialism: “Inanimate objects are out to get you.”
  • Rule of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.
  • Shirky’s Principle: Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
  • Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.” Originally applied to science fiction, it suggests that a vast majority of things are of low quality.
  • Tesler’s Law of Conservation of Complexity: Every application has an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. The only question is who will have to deal with it.
  • Theory of Theories: “Every great truth is eventually found to be false.”
  • Unspeakable Law: As soon as you mention something, if it’s good, it goes away; if it’s bad, it happens.
  • Zymurgy’s First Law of Evolving System Dynamics: Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can.

Laws of Technological Inevitability

1. • Bell’s Theorem: When a body is immersed in water, the phone rings.
   • Cannon’s Law: If something can go wrong, it will, in front of the boss.
   • Cunningham’s Law: The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.
   • Law of the Telephone: When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal.
   • Lerman’s Law of Technology: Any technical problem can be overcome given enough time and money.
   • Murphy’s Technology Law: Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.
   • The Ninety-Ninety Rule: The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.
   • Putt’s Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people—those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

Laws of Human Behavior

• • Cole’s Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.
  • Improbability Principle: Extremely unlikely events are commonplace.
  • Iron Law of Distribution: The people who need the most help are the least able to get it.
  • Law of the Internet: The likelihood of encountering spam is proportional to the time you spend online.
  • Le Chatelier’s Principle: If some stress is applied to a system in equilibrium, the system will shift in such a way to relieve that stress.
  • Waldo’s Law: All progress is based on a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
  • Zymurgy’s First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics: Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a bigger can.

Murphy’s Law Extensions for Daily Life

• • Boren’s First Law of Bureaucracy: When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, delegate. When in charge, ponder.
  • Law of the Alibi: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.
  • Law of the Lost Penny: You always find something in the last place you look.
  • The Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.
  • Law of Missing Objects: Missing objects are always found in the last place you look for them.
  • Law of Unattractiveness: A woman’s desire to remain beautiful is inversely proportional to the number of mirrors in her house.
  • Murphy’s Law of Travel: Traffic always moves the slowest in the lane you are in.
  • O’Reilly’s Law of the Kitchen: Cleanliness is next to impossible.
  • Principle of Least Action: Nature always favors the least amount of work.

Murphy’s Law of Probability

• • Conway’s Law: Organizations that design systems are constrained to produce designs that are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.
  • Law of the Bed: The part of the bed you are not sleeping on will always be the coldest.
  • Law of Photography: The best shots happen when your camera is off or you’re out of film.
  • Law of the Workshop: The tool you need is never the tool you have.
  • Manly’s Maxim: Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Laws on Failures and Accidents

• • Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives: Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.
  • The First Law of Laboratory Work: Hot glass looks exactly like cold glass.
  • Meskimen’s Law: There’s never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.
  • Sod’s Law: Similar to Murphy’s Law, but emphasizes that it will only go wrong for you.
  • Witzling’s Law: Failure is more often due to a lack of imagination than to a lack of resources.
  • Wright’s First Law: No experiment is ever a complete failure; it can always be used as a bad example.

Financial and Economic Laws

• • Jenkins’ Law: Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
  • Murphy’s Law of Economics: The other line always moves faster (at the checkout).
  • Gumperson’s Law: The probability of something happening is inversely proportional to its desirability.
  • Johnson’s Corollary: Nobody really cares or understands what anyone else is doing.

Laws of Success and Achievement

• • Conway’s Law: Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.
  • Fitzgerald’s Law: Murphy was an optimist.
  • Law of Success: Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
  • Swipple’s Rule of Order: He who shouts loudest has the floor.

Laws of Persuasion and Relationships

• • Kitman’s Law: Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
  • The Law of Attraction: You attract what you fear.
  • Mark Twain’s Observation: Put all your eggs in one basket—and watch that basket!

These laws illustrate Murphy’s Law’s wide-reaching influence across diverse areas, from technology to bureaucracy and human behavior. The key takeaway is that understanding these “laws” helps one prepare for and adapt to unexpected or adverse outcomes in a variety of contexts. If you’d like even more, I can continue listing additional Murphy-related laws.