When asked about what happened to him, Jimmy tells people he’s a “scammee survivor”.

At age 19, Jimmy was hit by a car while riding his bike and sustained a severe head injury.

The accident and subsequent isolation made him reach out online, using social media platforms in an attempt to connect with people, make friends and date.

“Trauma that you live with, can be very isolating,” Jimmy said.

“Even though you’re living with a group of people, even though you might be living with significant others who are actually your family or even a partner, they don’t quite understand what it is to be the way you are.”

He turned to a couple of US-based social networking platforms that allow you to chat with strangers.

Unfortunately, they were also sites that have been flagged by some users as being rife with scammers.

Jimmy signed up, and eventually found himself in relationships with people he met online. And they knew just how to reach Jimmy.

“When you’re feeling lonely … it’s easy to kind of get somewhat addicted to the little phrases they’re saying,” he said.

Jimmy was actually talking to a scammer.

The scammer would build elaborate stories about their life, and introduce details like a sick mother who needed help with her medical bills.

When they asked Jimmy, he was all too happy to help. He began sending payments of a few hundred dollars.

“I realised that I was manipulated and led to believe that this was the right thing to do, for someone I was telling myself that I was in love with and, and it cost quite a bit of money,” he said.

Scamming on the rise in Australia

Jimmy isn’t alone in losing large sums to scammers.

According to the latest Scamwatch report, 16,473 people with a disability reported being scammed in 2022 with reported losses of $33.7 million.

It’s a 58 per cent jump in losses compared to the previous year, continuing a trend of vulnerable Australians falling victim.

Phil Hayes-Brown is the CEO of Wallara, a not-for-profit disability support agency, and said the rise in scams had been reflected in his clients.

He said the prevalence of scams meant providers were forced to work year-round to educate and protect clients on cybersecurity.

“The rise in frequency and attacks and data breaches and everything else, and the changing ways that the scammers are approaching people means that it can’t just be a start-of-the-year thing that you do anymore,” he said.

Mr Hayes-Brown’s daughter Phoebe also lives with disability and is non-verbal and he said navigating online spaces remained a challenge.

“My daughter has got caught a few times, I’ve had invoices sent to me. And we’ve had to get out of certain situations at home,” he said.

But Mr Hayes-Brown believes the experience the online world provides is too valuable to shut off altogether.

Latest estimates show that the average Australian now spends over six hours a day online, meaning that disconnecting altogether may only increase isolation.

“The flip side is that it allows them to reach out into the world and connect with people like never before. My daughter can’t pick up the phone and have a chat to people … it’s going to be texting, it’s going to be online, and it’s changed her world,” he said.

“It does feel like you’re playing catch up … it’s a rising issue for society and the most vulnerable are the easiest targets, so we all need to lift our efforts to help keep them safe.”

But while it is understood that people living with a disability may be more vulnerable to scams, it took a Melbourne-based researcher to help connect the dots between acquired brain injuries and scam susceptibility.

How brain injuries might make us more vulnerable

Clinical neuropsychologist Kate Gould was first alerted to the issue when one of her clients, who had suffered a severe brain injury, revealed he had been victim to a romance scam.

“We realised that there was no one in the brain injury sector that was highlighting this as an issue,” Dr Gould said.

As she began to ask fellow clinicians, Dr Gould saw a pattern emerge.

More than half of the 100 or so clinicians they surveyed had clients with brain injuries who had been scammed.

Dr Gould said a combination of factors likely made some patients more susceptible to scams.

“From a physiological or neuropsychological perspective, the brain injury itself interferes with a range of cognitive skills that are really important for being able to vet what’s authentic and genuine and what is maybe disingenuous,” she said.

At the same time, people with acquired brain injuries may be socially isolated, making them more susceptible to reaching out to strangers in an attempt to connect.

“They might be spending a lot of time on their own and really be isolated and lonely wanting a relationship,” she said.

“So they might spend actually quite a bit of time online, perhaps without the skills and knowledge about cyber safety and learning about how to recognise and avoid scams.”

Former scam victims helping to educate and train their peers

Dr Gould is now the lead of the CyberAbility project, a TAC-funded program co-designed by people with brain injuries to provide safety training and psychological interventions.

She said after a scam, family, carers and friends sometimes restricted the financial or online independence of a scam victim.

While well-intentioned, Dr Gould said doing so could trigger more distress and frustration for the person at the loss of independence.

“What was really impactful and noteworthy to [patients] was that by coming together as a group with other people with brain injury who’d been scammed and us as facilitators who knew about scams, they felt that this was finally the the input that helped them to really reduce their feelings of shame that they were having,” she said.

Jimmy is one of the people who was engaged to help design the program, sharing his own experiences and providing feedback.

He said he was able to fully empathise what other participants in focus groups were going through.

“With a with a head injury, you almost have to rebuild identity, it’s so hard,” Jimmy said.

“To then be putting yourself so openly into an online relationship where you’re really dying for love and to then have someone authoritatively tell you “this is a scam” is just shattering.”

The project is garnering international attention, with Dr Gould highlighting the link between brain injuries and scam susceptibility at the World Congress on Brain Injury in Dublin earlier this year.

Jimmy said his goal was to destigmatise being scammed and to humanise victims.

“I wanted to really stress that you’re not stupid, scams work by attacking you at a basic human needs level,” he said.

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