How to Recognize con Artists from their Accents

A con artists will do their best to imitate an active speaker, especially if the children were raised in a family that chose to communicate with them in an accent they grew up speaking.

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There are con artists who do better in accents than their native language. Do you know that scammers pay very close attention to replying fluently with an accent?

A few key points to recognize a scammer—and I dare say any scammer—are:

Rapid speech: There are people who speak fast, but most tribes generally speak faster with their native tongue. They are most likely speaking quickly to hide their accent. (Now this could be a problem if the scammer takes English as their first and only fluent language.) Yes, it happens. There are many people, mostly in Nigeria, who can’t speak any other language but English or have English as their most fluent language.

They are used to repeating slang like “You know,” “Yeah,” “That’s right,” Again, there are normal people who do this, but this can be a sign of a scammer as well. I have met many scammers and lived around them (not my proudest history), and yes, we condemn their choices and encourage them to stop, but it’s not like you can force people to be good. One thing they all have in common is their use of repetitive slang, which is common.

I have no idea who they are or where they claim to be from: Most scammers I’ve met, no matter how smart they are, are generally lazy when it comes to finding basic information about who or where they claim to be from. You can easily catch them off guard with simple questions like who’s your president, what city has what monument, or even the easiest thing you can Google. Believe me when I say they will not bother researching and will find a way to end the conversation. If, by some bad luck, you meet one of the not-lazy types, you may need to be a little more tactical in your questioning.