Postmortem of a Con: 20 Mistakes That Got Me Swindled

In I Made a Lot of Mistakes: All Things Go, All Things Go, I recounted how a con artist defrauded me out of thousands of dollars when he bought my late beloved husband Michael’s car (really our car, but I think of it as his since he was the only one who drove it).

I Made a Lot of Mistakes: All Things Go, All Things Go

In this follow-up, I conduct a postmortem of the con to not only prevent myself from repeating the errors of judgment that got me chiseled but also to help you avert similar painful regrets. Although it isn’t necessary for you to read the first part, some of these observations will make more sense if you do.

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Postmortem of a Con

Within hours of selling Michael’s car, I suffered the humiliating realization that I—someone who specializes in detecting psychological manipulation, social engineering, propaganda, and lies—had fallen for all those techniques on a personal scale, even though I tend to recognize instantly when they are being deployed on a mass scale or against loved ones.

In describing what transpired to a few friends, I wrote:

I did something exceptionally, uncharacteristically stupid and allowed myself to be swindled into selling Michael’s car for thousands of dollars below its actual value.

One friend with expertise in propaganda and social engineering replied:

How utterly horrible. As deception and greed are really at the pinnacle of our social system, it’s not surprising really that the methods have found their way into every nook and cranny of our existence, and yet so tragic, painful and life draining. I have suffered multiple times myself in similar ways. Your response, which was wonderful, will stay with him forever. It’s hard to imagine people who are so heartless and cunning and who are so demoralizing when encountered. I suspect the worst part is not at all the money but the idea that something so precious to you has found its way into the hands of a no-good, useless miscreant. Don’t be hard on yourself. You weren’t stupid, you were honorable and vulnerable—as one who has experienced a deep and abiding love for another human being—in a way that this man knows nothing about. HE is the double loser—he may have swindled the car but he can’t touch Michael’s spirit which you retain forever!

She struck on precisely what galled me the most—the car I so deeply associated with Michael because it had been our sole means of transportation for two decades of our history was now in “the hands of a no-good, useless miscreant.”

It reopened the already-tender wounds of grief, and every time I saw the vacant driveway, it felt like grinding gravel into the wounds.

Given that Michael had no life insurance, savings, or material wealth and was too young to collect social security, this car was the object of greatest value he had left me. I knew he would have wanted me to use it to pay off credit card debt—and I’d thrown that possibility away for a story from a stranger.

I felt like writing a thousand times on the pavement, “I lost the nest egg!”

While undergoing this experience, I was listening to Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary. The following passage spoke to me:

Similarly in the fruitfulness of opposition, of dialectical growth—what Nietzsche, like Heraclitus, simply calls war—there is hope, since the worse it gets, the better it gets. He quotes, as having long been his motto, Increscunt animi, virescit volnere virtus: ‘The spirit grows, [and] strength is restored, by wounding.’

This made me think of something Michael had said as I was enduring the most excruciating, disabling, and prolonged physical pain of my life due to a back injury a few months before his death. As a lifelong sufferer of migraines, I have an extremely high tolerance for pain and can work through almost anything, but this was so torturous, I found myself whimpering on several occasions.

During one such episode, Michael said, “You are a shit Stoic.”

It might sound like an insensitive thing to tell me while I’m writhing in agony, but he was helping me get out of my self-pitying head by reminding me I have the power to control my perception of my circumstances, no matter how dire, while making me laugh.

Michael never coddled me. He always challenged me to be better than whatever was trying to beat me down, to rise above the Stoic challenges and even to laugh at them.

So now, whenever I’m hit with a windfall of lemons, I set up a lemonade stand.

That’s why I cringed my way through the security camera footage of this educrisinal episode to conduct a postmortem, observing my unsuspecting self overriding my intuition and making uncharacteristically poor decisions that set me up for exploitation.

Below are twenty things I did that got me conned. I’m sure there are more, but these are the most egregious and may save you from getting hoodwinked if you bear them in mind next time you hear a knock at the door.

20 Mistakes That Got Me Swindled

1. I answered the door.

2. I answered the door without checking the security camera first.

3. I answered the door while half-asleep.

4. I took a stranger at his word.

5. I got emotional.

6. I allowed my compassion to be weaponized, sacrificing personal gain for a feel-good story.

7. I let the prospective buyer state the price first, which anchored expectations to his lowball offer and triggered cognitive dissonance.

8. I trusted him.

9. I fell for the urgency created by a time-sensitive deadline when he told me he wanted to buy the car and fix it up for his mom’s upcoming birthday.

10. I didn’t look up the Kelly Blue Book (KBB) value myself.

11. I let him distract me by asking about the license plate and mileage while he took control of looking up the KBB value on his phone.

12. I didn’t examine the parameters he entered to obtain the KBB value, and I didn’t verify the estimate independently after he showed me his screen.

13. I didn’t sleep on the decision.

14. I didn’t consult friends who knew the value of the car.

15. I let him avoid putting his contact info on the bill of sale when he explained he wanted to wait so he could put his mom’s info on there.

16. I didn’t request his driver’s license and make a copy of it.

17. I didn’t get the name of his uncle’s body repair shop after he mentioned it.

18. I didn’t complete the transaction at a bank so I could ensure the cash was legitimate before signing the paperwork (the cash turned out to be real, but I advise others never to take that risk).

19. I allowed my left hemisphere’s rationalizations to override my right hemisphere’s intuition.

20. I wanted so badly for his story to be true.

That last mistake was the deadliest. I let myself believe his perfect story about fixing the car up to give to his mom for her birthday because I wanted it to be true. It was the story I needed to let go of Michael’s car.

This is the same self-deception that keeps narrative-believers trapped in narratives that collapse instantly upon inspection. That’s why they never inspect. They instinctively know doing so will threaten their security-blanket beliefs.

When this self-deception is combined with the blinding power of denial, you may never escape the delusion. That is how a vulnerable person can get catfished, be presented with evidence that he’s been catfished, and still chose to cling to the chimera.

If I had practiced the same degree of skepticism I do toward mass persuasion, I never would have succumbed to such a blatantly manipulative story.

What if I translated my micro-level mistakes to the macro level—what would this list look like then? How about I put the mainstream media in the role of the scammer? (Feel free to substitute your preferred fraudster—governments, corporations, agencies, institutions, or other narcissistic-abusing members of the Big, Beautiful Club.)

20 Mistakes That Get MSM-Believers Fooled

1. They consume mainstream media.

2. They consume mainstream media without checking its funding sources and influences.

3. They consume mainstream media while mentally, emotionally, and psychologically exhausted.

4. They assume what mainstream media says is true.

5. They get emotional.

6. They allow their compassion to be weaponized, which makes them willing to sacrifice personal rights for a feel-good story.

7. They let mainstream media anchor expectations and trigger cognitive dissonance.

8. They trust mainstream media.

9. They fall for the urgency created by time-sensitive deadlines.

10. They don’t research the topic themselves.

11. They let mainstream media practice distraction techniques.

12. They don’t examine the sources mainstream media cites for a story, and they don’t verify the conclusions independently.

13. They don’t take time to carefully process the information.

14. They don’t consult friends who are knowledgeable about the topic.

15. They let mainstream media get away with making unverified claims.

16. They don’t request supporting documentation.

17. They don’t investigate related sources.

18. They don’t vet the information.

19. They allow their left hemisphere’s rationalizations to override their right hemisphere’s intuition.

20. They want so badly for the story to be true.

After getting conned myself, I have more empathy for those who trusted the media, The $cience™, puppeparties, puppeticians, billionairians, philanthropaths, tyrants, kapos, and other cruelites and colluders who Big-Lied to our faces so they could dupe us out of our money, rights, health, and lives—and then amnesty-demand that we forget about it.

Once they realize how shamelessly brazen psychopathic liars are, authority-trusters feel stupid, gullible, and embarrassed that they ever believed them to begin with—just like I felt with my shyster.

It took me a few hours to recognize I’d been cheated, and even then, I still held out hope that he had a wisp of a conscience and would rectify his grievance against me when I texted him the next morning.

That, too, was terrifically naive.

It’s like the teacher in A Christmas Story telling the unidentified suspects who triple-dog–dared Flick to stick his tongue to the flagpole:

“Those who did it know their blame, and I’m sure that the guilt you feel is far worse than any punishment you might receive. Now, don’t you feel terrible? Don’t you feel remorse for what you have done?”

The narrator then observes:

“Adults love to say things like that, but kids know better. We knew darn well it was always better not to get caught.”

Like children with undeveloped consciences, cons know darn well it’s “always better not to get caught.”

Our mistake is to project our own goodwill onto them. We’re looking at them as people just like us, whereas they are predators who see us as marks to be milked.

This makes me think of something my heart sister Vera Sharav said during a phone call on June 23, 2025:

“I find this is our hardest task, to convince people that they [the cruelites] intend evil. They [ordinary people] can’t accept evil, they really can’t. They can’t wrap their head around it, that they intend evil. This is the hardest thing to really convince decent people. They can’t fathom it, they really can’t. Of course, you captured it in that poem so powerfully! There’s no ifs and or buts, it’s absolutely fabulous.… You captured so much in there, all the different things that happened during this period.

“I listen to only my own inner voice, so I’m alright.”

My deeply intuitive real-life friend Cynthia Bauman reminded me of this tendency of empaths to assume kindness in others when she commented on my post about being fleeced:

Oh wow, Dearest Margaret, I remember you telling me about this briefly over text and I was incensed then, but now reading it in its full glory I am ACTIVATED and quietly furious.

Listen, you may remember that my specialty is in helping people heal from abuse, so not only can I sniff out abuse and a con artist 1 million miles away, I also know how they manipulate their victims to make them feel A) sorry for the con artist and B) like everything that happens is the victim’s fault. They count on it. I talk with people r-e-g-u-l-a-r-l-y who have been conned, scammed or abused in other ways, and the one common denominator is that they rely on their victims to carry all of the guilt. Please don’t feel badly about yourself, or even that you made mistakes, because they are masters at this, and masters at getting into your head. Now that you have seen it you won’t fall for it in the future, but they prey on the unsuspecting first timers.

As I was reading your post here at some point I said to myself, “Oh my God, they found out about Michael’s death and targeted her.” Moments later I read the part about how he said his name was Michael. It’s not, I guarantee it. That was so cruel, and they knew exactly how that would affect you. I am so sorry you were targeted like this. The mom’s birthday, your husband’s name, starting so low that by the time you got to $4500 you would feel like YOU were the one pushing the limit, was all part of the ploy to use their snake charm to hypnotize and manipulate you. They have no conscience, this even feels potentially sociopathic. The best thing you can do is to return the guilt to them, it does not belong to you. You didn’t make any mistakes anymore than any other victim of a crime made mistakes. You were manipulated by masters, that is not a mistake on your part, it means that they are that devious.

What I always tell people is that of course you trusted them, because you were acting from a heart that would only expect that others have the same honesty. That is not a fault, that is human design. Just because you never learned how to speak sociopath doesn’t mean you are the one who erred.

Was it a mistake to trust them? If by “mistake” you mean that you were responsible for that, then no. Were they trustworthy? No. Did they manipulate your mind, almost like a drug, to doubt your own instincts? Yes. You were up against masters and that is not your fault. I am glad you are feeling at peace with it all now. Remember to return the “mistakes and the guilt” to them. You will be more street smart now because you have to, not because it was a flaw that you never knew how to in the first place. Now you know. And now everyone reading your incredibly brave and honest post knows too, so you are foiling their scheme by preventing others from becoming victims. They didn’t know who they were messing with when they stole your car. BIG, giant hugs to you. 🧡💪🧡

In my reply, I noted:

Wow, Cynthia, what an astonishingly insightful, wise, and healing comment. You are absolutely right about so much of this, but this statement especially struck home: “you were acting from a heart that would only expect that others have the same honesty.”

After I was targeted by a covert passive-aggressive narcissist two years ago, I devoured books on narcissists and sociopaths to try to better understand their psychology.

One of the messages I remember reading in The Covert Passive-Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse resonates with what you said. Debbie Mirza tried to absolve targets’ feelings of gullibility and guilt by highlighting the fact that they were targeted *because* of their exceptional empathy, open hearts, and kindness toward others.

This is a difficult point to reconcile because my starting position in a relationship is to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume good intentions, but I realize psychopaths/narcissists/dark-triad personality types prey on this tendency, which becomes a vulnerability in those situations.

I have always thought I could easily identify the predator types (e.g., as I did with my family members in A Tale of Two Scams), but that experience from a couple years ago combined with this one makes me realize the more masterful ones can fool even me, especially when I’m emotionally vulnerable or have my guard down because I think the person is a friend or shares my values.

Assessing the steps I took that led to this outcome (the next article in this series) should help me and others avoid falling into the trap of Machiavellian actors in the future, but recognizing it could always happen again is perhaps our best defense because it means we will remain cautious, especially in regard to strangers.

Cynthia then responded:

Yes, yes, yes, all so true. And I woke up this morning with another piece of the puzzle... these two target widows in particular. It’s their gig.

There is something else that might help too, in addition to understanding their psychology. They can sense a wound too. If we have been abused, or if we we are potentially carrying it in our unconscious from our ancestors, they can “smell” it. I heard about a study during my training that was done with convicted rapists (and I wish I could remember the source of this study so that I could quote it more precisely) who were shown various photos of women they did not know and were asked to choose which ones, if any, they would target if they saw them walking down the street. I don’t recall the percentage, and it may have been 100% of the time, they chose the women who had been previously abused, and would have left the others alone. This is what happens when the wounds we carry in our unconscious, or that we may be unwittingly playing out for ancestors, is active. They sense it, and our own wound feels sorry for them and overrides our instinctual boundaries. Once healed enough though, and it can be done, they steer clear and it becomes easier to trust our own instincts again. So when I say “return the guilt to them”, I mean it quite literally. It’s like a residue they leave and your body has to then process it. You can send it back through prayer and / or ritual with intention.

So, again, good for you for telling it like it is with your fabulous and honest writing. This in and of itself is a “return to sender.” When people don’t feel their own shadow and make others process it, it’s [a] lot easier for them to not feel remorse for their actions and they are less likely to change. (Which is also the origin of the scapegoat.) Whether or not they ever feel a shred of conscience about their behaviors is not your concern, it just so happens that by returning the guilt that belongs to them, it helps break the cycle for everyone. But do it for you. The rest will take care of itself. 🧡

I appreciated Cynthia’s insights but had a different take on their modus operandi:

Thank you for these perceptive additions, Cynthia.

They are definitely predators, and you have captured their strategies well, but I think they may have just lucked out on both his name and my being widowed.

I considered those possibilities myself, but the fact that he didn’t bring up his name until later in the process and only because I asked makes me think it was truly a coincidence.

I didn’t publish an obituary in the local papers, and only people I know and trust (like you) were invited to the funeral, so I don’t think they would have known about my being widowed, either.

I think their modus operandi is to search for valuable cars and hope they find someone who doesn’t know their true value. They specifically seem to target Dodges, I’m guessing due to their own predilection toward them, but also maybe because that’s what his uncle’s body repair shop specializes in.

The reason I think that is they were driving a Dodge Charger themselves, and I later found out they also expressed interest in buying the Dodge Durango truck that belongs to a neighbor. (I posted pics of the brothers and put out a PSA to the neighborhood FB group as a warning just in case they try to come back.)

I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet, but Ahmad just published his conversation with Meredith [Miller] about healing ancestral trauma, and I think you would definitely resonate with it.

#346 - Meredith Miller: Ancestral Wounds, Modern Healing

I love your idea of returning the guilt, which is a handy tool for dealing with narcissists and psychopaths in general!

Cynthia added some closing wisdom I hope will help you fend off predators in your own life:

Ah yes, good points about their modus operendi, that is the common denominator - scammers always have one. Whether it’s cars, unsuspecting widows, the elderly, guilting an empath who hasn’t yet learned that their boundaries are just as sacred as others’ (been there, done that, on repeat!) - they find their specialty and master it. And then the victim feels foolish. But that too, is part of the devastation, not the fault of the victim.

Indeed, he may not have known your husband’s name, it’s true. But for what it’s worth to any of your readers who may have been scammed, I recommend reading Martha Stout’s book, The Sociopath Next Door to understand how even professionals, respected in their field, have been fooled. If he was really masterful, he may have had access to DMV records and could have had information about the car’s owner by the license plate.

That’s not to say that everyone who scams is a sociopath. But everyone who scams always has a modus operendi. And they become very, very skilled at it. And then the victims feel like it was their fault. It would be like a first time chess player going up against a world champion and then kicking themselves afterward for losing. But if the chess player cheated, you would learn soon how they did it and be better armed next time.

One way to protect yourself when you are unsure is to buy yourself time. If you are being pressured to make a decision (another sign) you can say, “You know, I need some time to think about this. I want to be sure I am considering everything with the thoughtfulness it deserves, so I will get back to you in (x) time.”

Again, brava to you, brave Margaret for exposing the truth!

A few weeks after being buffaloed, I wrote these mid-sleep notes on my phone:

Sometimes what looks like synchronicity is crafted to manipulate you and induce magical thinking. But even when things go painfully wrong, if you integrate the trauma, glean valuable lessons, and catapult growth, you still win.

While I was writing I Made a Lot of Mistakes: All Things Go, All Things Go, several songs from the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack made their way into the essay as they played in the background, delivering the healing messages I needed to hear at each respective moment.

Then there was a surprise—a song I never expected to spark introspection. I found myself tearing up as I sang along to the lyrics of Super Freak while performing my own unchoreographed dance at my standing workstation:

She’s alright, she’s alright
That girl’s alright with me, yeah

I’m alright. I’m alright.

I’m going to be alright, yeah.

Like Vera said, “I listen to only my own inner voice, so I’m alright.”

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Coming up … a Surprise Twist

After I had processed the loss of Michael’s car to a trickster, a surprise twist changed everything. Here is the curveball conclusion to this life lesson in manipulation.

Instant Carma’s Gonna Get You: Turning the Tables on My Scammer

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