Online Scams and Model Minority Stereotypes

Online scams target some of the most vulnerable and trusting people in society, extracting billions of dollars from millions of victims each year. It’s a lucrative business, and an innovative one, giving rise to increasingly creative and diabolical ways of inducing people to part with their money.

One recent iteration involves the impersonation of college professors on emails sent to their students. The student is offered a paid research opportunity, and upon completion of the task is sent a check to be used for the purchase of gift cards. The check initially seems to clear, in that the victim’s bank account shows a higher balance. The student then buys the cards and sends images of them to the scammer, ostensibly for verification purposes. A few days later the check bounces, but by then the cards have been drained of all value.

Despite the enormous harm that such activities inflict on people, they seldom result in arrest. Part of the problem is that they are transnational crimes—victims are typically in more affluent nations in which banking is almost universal, while offenders operate out of call centers in countries with limited enforcement capacity and widespread bribery and corruption. Kolkota, in particular, has emerged as the fraud capital of the world.

Since there is seldom an arrest, the offenders usually remain faceless. Photos and videos depicting them are not circulated, broadcast, or posted online. As a result, their activities do not tarnish the reputations of co-ethnics elsewhere in the world. That is, people with similar features and origins continue to be viewed as model minorities.

One of the points that Dan O’Flaherty and I make in our book is that our perceptions of criminality are shaped by offenses that have high rates of arrest and prison admission, even when these have relatively low frequency. For example, robbery is less frequent than other serious crimes of appropriation such as burglary and motor vehicle theft, but is considerably more likely to result in arrest and incarceration. The following table from Raphael and Stoll illustrates:

This phenomenon can give rise to a stereotype trap: those who are negatively stereotyped will face less resistance from robbery victims, find robbery to be easier and more lucrative than burglary and motor vehicle theft, end up being apprehended and incarcerated at higher rates than those committing other crimes of appropriation, and the stereotype will be reinforced.

Meanwhile, people committing online scams largely escape arrest, and those who resemble them in appearance escape the shadow of being seen as having criminal dispositions. This is not a phenomenon that can be easily corrected, though perhaps some good can come of bringing such things to light.