Podcast 262 - HOW TO GET SCAMMERS TO GIVE YOU BACK YOUR MONEY

Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast # 262 on February 14th of 2026. 

My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald, and I am an author of 7 investment books. My seventh investment book, Achieving Financial Independence Safely - 200 NYSE Stocks Analyzed and Scored" became available January 3rd on Amazon. You can easily find it by searching in Amazon or Google for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books". 

Realizing a good dividend income from a financially strong portfolio does not mean you can ignore unnecessary drains on your income. For example, have you been scammed, conned, cheated, robbed, or otherwise relieved of money today, yesterday, last week or last month by businesses you thought you could trust? Hopefully the loss was only a few hundred dollars. 

Scammers know that people tend to be more cautious with larger sums. They deliberately keep their scams under a few hundred dollars to remove your incentive to fight to recover what you have lost. The scammers that you will usually encounter aim for high volumes of small, scams rather than a single big one. They count on you treating your loss as a lesson learned and walking away. This allows the scammers to continue scamming others. 

In today's podcast I will explain how you can recover your money from scammers.

Ian Duncan MacDonald
Author and Commercial Risk Consultant,
President of  Informus Inc
                              2 Vista Humber Drive
                               Toronto, Ontario
                                Canada, M9P 3R7
                                 Toronto Telephone - 416-245-4994
                                   imacd@informus.ca

Transcript

Safe Dividend Investing Podcast 262

Recovering Money From Scams and Unfair Business Practices

Safe Dividend Investing

14 February 2026

Greetings to investors all around the world. Welcome to Safe Dividend Investing’s Podcast #262, recorded on February 14, 2026. My name is Ian Duncan MacDonald. I am the author of seven investment books, with my latest work titled Achieving Financial Independence Safely – 200 NYSE Exchange Stocks Analyzed and Scored” now available for delivery from Amazon since January 3, 2026. For further details about this book and my other six investment books, please visit my website www.informus.ca.. Alternatively, you can search for "Ian Duncan MacDonald books" on Amazon or Google, where you can read reviews and sample chapters. 

Realizing a good dividend income from a financially strong portfolio does not mean you can ignore unnecessary drains on your income. For example, have you been scammed, conned, cheated, robbed, or otherwise relieved of money today, yesterday, last week or last month by businesses you thought you could trust? Hopefully the loss was only a few hundred dollars. 

You probably accepted the loss because you did not understand how to recover your loss or you felt it was not worth the effort to recover the money. If the amount had been in the thousands, you might have considered seeking the help of a lawyer. 

Scammers know that people tend to be more cautious with larger sums. They deliberately keep their scams under a few hundred dollars to remove your incentive to fight to recover what you have lost. The scammers that you will usually encounter aim for high volumes of small, scams rather than a single big one. They count on you treating your loss as a lesson learned and walking away. This allows the scammers to continue scamming others. In the following I will explain how you can recover your money from scammers and to perhaps encourage these businesses to earn their money honestly.

Since scammer companies rely on you passively accepting your loss, if you complain through their official customer complaint system, you will likely receive messages explaining that a refund is impossible and the company has fulfilled its obligations. This is their first line of defense in retaining the money they've taken from you. Their replies are not meant to resolve a customer relationship problem; they are just a cost-effective barrier to prevent direct communication with the scamming company. In these times of Artificial Intelligence, you are never quite sure whether you are communicating with a human being or a computer. . If you ever do manage to speak to an employee, you will be told they lack the authority to resolve your problem. Their role is to always deny your demands and insist that the company is not a scammer They want you to just go away and accept your loss. 

The success of most profitable legitimate businesses is customer retention. Repeat sales give businesses a reliable growth in profit. Thus, companies who neglect customer care should be avoided. While checking the on-line reviews and references available on companies recognize that those on-line reviews can be manipulated and edited by scammers. A reference from a trusted friend is probably best the best reference.

I enjoy the challenge of recovering lost funds from scammers and those businesses that are blind to their unfair policies or whose products provided no value to customers. You can recover your money from such corporations, but the process is not quick. It requires some effort and lots of patience and persistence.

My background in dealing with scammers began years ago when I was employed by a large international conglomerate. One of the many companies they owned was a small collection agency. The collection agency's president was terminated and that collection operation was added to my responsibilities because I was the only executive with credit management experience. Although I had never managed a collection agency, it looked like a valuable learning experience.

I discovered that collecting past due accounts is a fascinating business, somewhat like running a junkyard. Companies write off to bad debt accounts for which they believe will never be paid. They try to recover part of that write off by handing these bad debt accounts to a collection agency. The collection agency earns a percentage of any amount they can collect.

I was initially surprised to see that a single phone call to a debtor could result in our immediately collecting 30% of the claims assigned to us. This initial phone call worked because the creditors only gave us claims they had aggressively tried to collect over the previous 90 days. For that first 90 days the debtors viewed the efforts of their creditors to collect as a game. They wanted to see how long they could delay payment.  After six months of effort, you might collect another 30% of what was owed. Perhaps 5% of what remained would be sued with only about 1% ever going to trial. Litigation can take years, is expensive and you can never be sure whether a judge would rule in your favor. You always wanted to reach a compromise and settle out of court. What was not collectable was usually because the company had gone bankrupt or closed the business leaving no seizible assets.

To a deadbeat, not paying a supplier is like getting a free loan. If they had borrowed the same amount of money from a bank they would have been paying interest on the loan. 

Assigning the debt to a collection agency signals that the free money game is over. The debtor’s disputes and excuses no longer work. The debt is no longer just between two parties it was now being handled by a third party that has no interest in maintaining the debtor as a customer

The debtor now must find a new supplier and they recognized that their reputation as a deadbeat has now become public record. This exposure makes it difficult for them to get the goods and services they need to operate their business. To get credit from a new supplier it is preferable for the new supplier to at least see that a collection claim has been paid. Thus 30% of new collection claims are paid quickly just because of the third-party intervention.

 Since many suppliers are desperate for new sales. Some are willing to gamble on deadbeat customers, convinced they will be treated differently than other suppliers.

The first lesson I learned in getting paid by business scammers is that they must realize they have more to lose by not refunding your money than by simply settling the debt. The second lesson is that it is difficult to maintain a scam if everyone knows you are a scam artist.

 In business, success is highly dependent on reputation. I think o pluf a company like Amazon that refunds almost instantly if a customer is not happy with their purchase. Is this one reason I order from them constantly plus their speedy reliable delivery? They have earned my trust and the trust of millions of their customers.

I became so interested in collections that when a job opportunity arose to be a regional manager with the largest and best-run commercial collection agency in the country, I eagerly applied for the job. I wanted to learn what I didn’t know about succeeding in the collections business.

In this new employer I learned that 20% of the business population are deviates who believe that good customer relations are for suckers. This 20% are noted for their greed, deception, and selfishness. Within this group, a small percentage are thieves would not hesitate to steal a penny from a blind beggar’s cup. Fortunately, your chances of encountering such extreme predators are rare. More likely, you will be dealing with scammers that bend the rules for their own selfish greedy advantage, but their weakness is they still want to be seen as ethical and successful. They also understand that publicizing their bad reputation can hinder their ongoing scamming efforts. They will attempt to rationalize, defend and try to bury their scamming behavior.

The scamming example I am using this time involves gift cards. They have become a popular gift choice for birthdays and other festivities. They eliminate the effort of selecting a present.

The scam begins when you walk into what you think is a reputable retailer. You soon encounter a display of a hundred gift cards offered by well-known retail brands. You choose what you think is an appropriate gift card and take it to the cashier where you tell her how much money you want to put on the gift card. That charge is immediately paid for by a charge to your credit card.  If the gift card is for someone close to you, you may have put a few hundred dollars on it.

The gift card recipient, a few days later goes into the retailer whose card you had chosen. They eat a meal or buy merchandise and present the card to pay for it. They are then told that that card is worthless and it has already been drained of its monetary value. 

You now learn that scammers can access the masked secret password numbers on the gift cards that were in the rack at the store. Once the scammers detect cash has been added to the card they altered, they are then able to steal that money unbeknownst to the buyer, the recipient of the card or the retailer.

Now the fun begins. You go back to the large retailer where you obtained the card and ask them to cover your loss. They tell you that the gift card display is the property of a third-party company out of Los Angeles and it has nothing to do with them. They only provide the display space and receive a small commission for each card sold. 

You contact the referred to third party in Los Angeles and are told that this loss has nothing to do with them because they also did not receive any of the money that you put on the card.  All they receive is a small commission from the retailer who accepts the card for payment. 

At this point most people who have encountered the gift card scam give up in frustration. Do a Google search for scammed gift cards and you might see hundreds who have been robbed this way.

 The way you get your money is to recognize that the reputable retailer, despite their denial of responsibility, is the most vulnerable to your collection efforts. It was their cashier who took the full payment that went on the card.

You now go through the motions of contacting the reputable retailer’s customer service staff at their head office. They are trained to tell you there is nothing they can do for you and it is not their responsibility. You ask to speak to their manager who repeats that they cannot refund what you have paid.

Since the gift card was charged to a credit card. You now contact Visa or Master Cart and ask them to reverse the charge back to the retailer and return your money to you. They are unlikely to do this easily or quickly. They will want to contact the reputable retailer who they may have a business relationship with. They may say it will take weeks to resolve. If they take more than three days you now move to the next step.

Google becomes your new best friend. Using Google searches, you ask who all the senior executives of this reputable retail company are. You may be directed to the Linked-in website where all these executives are listed. If they are a public company, this information is easily and freely available from companies like Yahoo Finance.

 Depending on which is easier, you now write a letter or send an email to the chief executive of this company. The letter describes your problem and gives them one week to refund your purchase. You point out in the letter that they are the ones who took your payment and that they are responsible for the gift card display since it is in their store. Unlike expensive perfumes that they lock safely away in glass cabinets, gift cards, each potentially worth hundreds of dollars, are on open display giving scammers open access to stealing your money. Your loss is due to their negligence.

That letter is copied to every Vice President at the head office. One of them will be responsible for the gift cards. You copy all the VPs, names and titles into the letter to the chief executive. He will now have to meet with them and explain how he wants this problem handled. If they are smart, they will settle at this time. No reputable chief executive wants word to get out that they tolerate scammers in their operation. 

One week later, not having heard from them, you send a second letter to the same executives but this time you write in your letter that legislation should be passed that forces sellers of gift cards to lock them away from easy public access. The chief executive knows such a law would cost them a small fortune to set up in their hundreds of stores. You show that you have copied this letter to all the leaders of all political parties, all local politicians including the local mayor, the municipal business licensing department, the Consumer Finance Department of the federal government and the Federal Trade commission. In the letter you also mention you will be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, Trust Pilot, Endeavour and any other entity that you  that publicizes customer complaints. 

Politicians are always looking for a hot potato that will get their name in front of their constituents. Government departments that receive letters of complaint feel compelled to request a written explanation from the identified cause of the complaint. It also seems these civil servants like the feeling of power they get by making large powerful companies know that they are not as powerful as a government department demanding an explanation.  When you register your complaint with a complaint bureau like the Better Business Bureau, they also, out of sense of fair play feel compelled to contact the large retailer to request a written explanation.

 Having to answer all these queries is time-consuming and thus expensive. It will cost the large retailer far more than the amount you want refunded. It would be unusual if they did not pay you your money at this time. If they did not settle then you can keep on going by contacting trade associations, newsletters, trade magazines, and others. 

This recovery strategy works because chief executives have big egos. They do not want to be seen as scammers by their peers, wives, friends and neighbors. They see themselves as successful, legitimate businessmen who care about their customers.  

You have been scammed and you have right to pursue your refund.