Peer Involvement

Overview

The scammer uses the victim's peers to encourage the victim to engage in the scam, claiming that "others are doing it". Sometimes called "social proof" technique.

Common in investment scams where the scammer will create an online forum seemingly full of people who are singing the praises of the scammer's methods. In actuality these people are fake, or are part of the scam.

This technique can be paired with Easy Money, Scarcity, or Urgency to accelerate the victim's fear of missing out (FOMO).

In the literature, Peer Involvement can be thought of as half of a larger pattern called The Convincer. The Convincer is the thing that convinces the victim to go along with the scam. Traditionally, this can either be a human shill, as we see with Peer Involvement, or it can be some other mechanism that convinces the victim that the scam is real, as we can see in Boost Of Trust where the scammer lets the victim win a little bit of money at first so that they will ultimately invest more later.