Who the Heck is Annie McGuire?
Who the Heck is Annie McGuire? Ms. McGuire runs a site designed to educate people about fraud. What is interesting about her site, among many things, is her own story. How a well educated, reasonably well-off, intelligent person appears to have lost over $1 million of her money and others falling for scams which "I could have avoided every last bit of what happened had I only stopped believing and stopped implicitly trusting long enough to pose the right questions to the right sources - starting with my own common sense. I should have listened to my own personal Jiminy Cricket when I heard his tiny voice saying that something was fishy. That's easy to say now, of course." (my emphasis)
It is not entirely clear from her narrative how she managed to ignore her own concerns.
I wish that I could recommend the websites as a favourite. But while the website is interesting, its layout is fairly confusing and could probably do with a makeover, there is no blog, rss, or even forum. This is odd in a site which wants to assist fraud victims since what fraud victims need to hear from each other that it wasn't their fault for being robbed.
Technorati Tags: jiminy cricket, intelligent person, tiny voice, fishy, trusting, scams, makeover, common sense, narrative, confusing, listened, heck, educate, annie, pose, fraud, rss, blog, lost
Comments
Annie;
Something you said confused me, why would a scam victim be arrested? Are we only talking about counterfeit check scams? Or is there more?
Posted by: Michael Webster | September 26, 2006 9:14 AM
Good review. Thank you.
1. Makeover coming. We are only too aware of this problem and have a June 2007 deadline for the entire new web design and sites. Very, very user-friendly.
2. Any scam victim, from judges and cops to attorneys, bankers, corporate execs, military personnel, and the kid down the street will tell you that suspending disbelief isn't all that hard. Con artists are, after all, experts in the field of convincing folks to do just that. Everyone has a scam button and those who believe they cannot be scammed or who never consider fraud one way or the other are the ones who never see it coming. People can be talked into believing anything provided it's something they want to believe and the persuasion is sprinkled with elements of truth.
3. Forums, blogs, and RSS feeds are very time-consuming and time is something we do not have very much of. People come to us from all over the world all day every day. Our time is spent on helping scam victims, particularly those who have been arrested, working with their defense attorneys. Fraud Aid is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and we do not charge for our services. No salaries here and finding qualified volunteers willing to go through an extensive training program is really, really not easy.
Thanks again for the your objective review.
Annie McGuire
President & CEO
Fraud Aid, Inc.
Posted by: Annie McGuire | September 18, 2006 12:34 AM