What is a Process Predator?

In this episode Rob and Beth discuss the concept of a "process predator" in the real estate industry, based on an article by Lee Goldstein and Dave Ledger.

A process predator is an individual who learns from contacting multiple realtors, becoming more familiar with their routines and language, and developing a process to attack them.

These predators are not opportunistic, but rather plan their attacks, often over weeks, months, or even years. They go through stages of initial focus, focusing behaviour, fantasy, and stage setting before executing their plan. Realtors need to be able to identify these behaviours and red flags to prevent attacks and the industry isn’t helping right now.

Listen For
8:33 The Initial Focus of Predators on Realtors
10:59 When Predators Enter the Research Phase of Their Attack
14:11 Fantasy Development and Stalking
21:46 The Risk of Multiple Appointments

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Transcript

Rob Andress (00:02):

I was doing some research and I came across an article written by a guy named Lee Goldstein and Dave Ledger, and they did a article for a company in order to provide information to the realtor association in the us, the National Realtor Association. And they didn't take it. And as I was going through this, their article, it's an older article, but man, did these guys ever have a lot of cool stuff? And I started reading it and I just thought to myself, why was this not brought out? And they really took a look at the psychological behavior and the motivation of a process predator and what he goes through when he targets a realtor. And I looked at it and kind of brought it up with a little bit more fact base in it from what we have experienced. And we have put together the seven steps in the timeline of a criminal when he attacks a realtor process. Yeah, yeah. Well, what a process predator does, he's an individual who learns. So he will learn from contacting multiple realtors. And he himself goes through a learning process and as his process becomes more educated, he becomes more familiar with the verbiage, he becomes more familiar with the routine of the realtor. He now develops a process to attack the realtor based on his education and he gets better at it every contact he makes.

(02:32):

Welcome to realtor Safety and Self-defense with Rob and Beth. Beth, we have an amazing topic that I want to go through today and I want to give some kudos to two gentlemen who ended up developing a article. It was a research article on a process predator and how one goes through the victim selection for a real estate professional. And I read the article and it was an amazing article, a little bit older, a little bit dated. And when I was going through the article, I used some of the information that Lee Goldstein and Dave Ledger wrote in this article. And I kind of brought a lot of our own experience in dealing with the real estate professional when we've met individuals who have been victimized and we ended up putting together seven steps, the seven steps of the timeline of the process predator,

Beth Andress (03:44):

And how interesting Rob, that we have met people with those actual real life experiences that completely match the research that someone in entirely another country has done.

Rob Andress (03:57):

Well, Beth, that's what stunned me when I was going through what their research had done for them or what the research that they put together. What stunned me about it is it's like a book. I mean these individuals, you would almost swear have some kind of a flipping manual that they follow. And it is so clear and with me and because you've seen some of my passion when I get rolling at live presentations and my lack of being able to maintain my tongue sometimes in a professional manner. But anyway, that's another story in another day. And you've heard me go on with the fact that these are not crimes of opportunity. And I wish the so-called professionals who want to educate realtors on being safe would stop this because this is not a crime of opportunity. These are planned attacks, these are hunters. And if we can provide the education for the professional to be able to identify the behavior, be able to identify the actions that they demonstrate, you know what, we can stop the before and if we can stop the before the after is never going to happen. And it's really that simple. But the industry's got to stop with this nonsense about 9 1 1 and realtor safety apps and having somebody with you and having the red file and because it's nonsense. But let's take a look at what the seven steps of the timeline of the process predator is when he targets a real estate professional. And this is shocking. It's moving and it just really moved me. So I want to share it today. So I hope you can bear with me as we're going through this.

Beth Andress (06:14):

Hey, I feel like I'm along for the ride here today with you, Rob. This topic is so interesting to me mostly because we know from those real life experiences that these things happen, but we also unfortunately have sometimes been the only method of disclosure for these people to actually be able to speak about what happened to them and actually have their experience validated that this in fact is number one, not their fault. Number two is not about them individually, it's all about the predator and their ego. And number three, that they do need the proper education and awareness, all of those skills, those aren't something that we have naturally when we are sent out there to work with the public. And the education required to never have that after is not available readily through the proper channels. So I am, I'm so interested to listen to you speak today myself because of the reality that goes along with this. So hey, let's go.

Rob Andress (07:40):

Awesome. Alright, so one of the first things that we need to really understand is that most people think when a real estate professional gets attacked that it's when the predator meets the realtor or the agent, they meet them once and then this whole fiasco breaks down and it happens. And the reality of this is this crying Beth, this crying, it's starting weeks, months, possibly even years before the process. Predator develops enough education through his own means of reaching out and contacting professionals before he even has the confidence to meet the professional. These are not crimes of opportunity

Beth Andress (08:28):

That just sends shivers down my spine, Rob, how unfortunate.

Rob Andress (08:33):

And there's a predator offender cycle that happens with this. And we need to really understand what these guys are. They're hunters. They're hunters. So let's take a look at one, the initial focus. This is when the predator first notices a real estate professional, a realtor, an agent, a broker, whatever you want to call them. And the crazy thing about this is very rarely is it just one they have seen several who have created interest in them, possibly some level of fantasy occurs, but it's rarely just one. The initial focus and how they create this interest is through photographs and it's all the professional displays themself through social media, online marketing, bench advertising for sales signs. It's all through the marketing effort of the professional. Then something happens. So we have the initial focus now it elevates,

Beth Andress (09:53):

Can we go back to that initial focus for a second? Because I think it's important to throw in there that we have met people who have been victims and have experienced those unfortunate situations. And they always, not always, they often wonder why me? I am older than most or I'm unattractive, or I'm this ethnic group or I'm that ethnic and I'm not attracted to these people, or these people shouldn't be attracted to me. I don't fit the Barbie stereotype that one would think a predator would choose. So you never know what it is that tweaks that person. There is no there stereotype that is chosen. So never discount yourself as a victim or a good target for someone because of what you think your appearance might have to offer or not have to offer.

Rob Andress (10:59):

A hundred percent. And thank you for sharing that. So let's take a look at the next step of this. The focusing behavior. The predator is now in a research stage. That's how I'm going to put it a research stage. They're focusing on information that they can obtain about the realtor, the real estate agent, the broker. And this generally will happen through his or her website. I hate to say this, but I'm going to some of the photos and the way we present ourself. We could discourage some of that by elevating our image of confidence during some of these photos. And I'm going to leave it at that because maybe we can get into a topic about photos at another time. So we have this focusing behavior that happens. They're looking, they're trying to get information that they can obtain. They're seeing the professional in different worlds on maybe social media through website advertising, that type of thing.

(12:13):

And then something happens, this fantasy starts to occur. But we have to understand this fantasy is not sexual, this fantasy. And here's oftentimes where male realtors think, oh, this's never going to happen to me. Well, guess what? There's nothing to do with sex. It's all about dominance and control. And here's the fantasy. What ends up happening here, the realtor has now started doing some researching on their target. They've collected information from social media. They start to insert elements that they can't find about their target, and they start making the stuff up. So what happens here is they now start developing a fantasy life about their targeted victim. It's called celebrity stalking. And we hear about it. We hear about celebrities being stalked by individuals all the time. The professional realtor is no different. They're out there everywhere. And it becomes very easy for a predator to develop a celebrity stalking phase with their victim. So as this now is starting to go on, there's an opportunity here where the predator announcers focusing so heavily on the agent, they become dependent almost on how the agent structures themselves, how they handle themselves, how they present themself. And here's the crazy part, and you've heard it. You have heard it, right? You've heard this.

(14:11):

He seemed familiar to me, but I didn't know from where. I think I saw him before. But I don't know from where this is the fantasy stage. I as a predator am going now to physically watch you. I may not make physical contact with you. I don't have the confidence in order to come forward and say, oh, hi, how are you? I want to meet. I don't have that yet because I'm still in the fantasy stage of all of this. When I'm watching, I am watching. And now once this fantasy starts to develop and it starts taking hold of the predator, it starts overtaking them. And now they need to start developing a plan. And here is where the fantasy and the stalking no longer provides the fulfillment. They got a contact. And how do they do it? They reach out through email, through social media messaging, through phone calls.

(15:26):

And the end goal, the absolute end goal, right, is to make the meeting. And it's probably going to be a showing. However, the ease of contacting a professional is so simple. I don't need to do it on a showing. I can do it at an open house. I can call you about leasing a property. I can watch you go into the leased property and I can stay outside and try and steal your car. I can go into the showing with you. It doesn't necessarily have to be a showing because of the way that we as real estate professionals work, and we're so easy to get in touch with and we're so easy to manipulate.

Beth Andress (16:15):

You know what? Going back to that celebrity stalking, I think it's really hard for some real estate professionals to actually understand that they are seen as holding that celebrity status once they've been identified. They're successful, they're popular, they're advertising, they have a social media following, and someone truly can elevate them to that celebrity status in order to fulfill what it is they need in what they're seeking.

Rob Andress (16:52):

Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Beth Andress (16:55):

And then to covertly fulfill that fantasy by showing up at an open house and maybe just asking a question, it's that tiny little, that tiny little bit of what they get from that fuels the fire to carry on. Is that what you're telling me?

Rob Andress (17:16):

It's a high, it's a rush, right? I get a fulfillment here of watching, researching, looking at photos, finding out where you're going. And now the high elevates because my confidence is building up and I'm not getting enough of that fulfillment. So now I'm going to reach out and I get a little bit more of a rush. I sent an email that's exciting to me. I reach out on social media. That becomes exciting to me. And as this plan of this meeting starts to unfold, there's going to come a point in time where I'm not going to get that fulfillment anymore. So what's my next step? I reach out and the professional response to me, that's a huge rush now, right? Dominating, controlling, I'm now dominating an individual and controlling their responses. And this is where the need is, is all around this dominance and control. So now I'm going through all of this. I've made contact either visually at watching or open house. I've made communication, we've established it.

(18:38):

And just from doing this now elevates my need to meet, to physically meet, right? And now I'm going to execute the plan. So now I arrange to meet and there has been so many professionals who have received contacts from people, scheduled appointments with them, and then the individual never shows up. And we often think, frigging loser, waste my time. How could you do that? You're disrespectful. The home seller went through all kinds of efforts, but do we ever think why? Why? And granted, sure, some of them might be working with someone else, someone might have something come up. But here's the reality of it. When I reach out, if I'm a bad guy and I reach out and I've dominated and controlled all the way down through this and I've got the professional to do something that I want and I've set the appointment, but maybe I don't have the confidence to face them, so I don't show up, I don't show up, I'm not ready yet.

(19:56):

So I go back to the control. Maybe I move now to a different realtor and I go back to the control. But I am going to get to the point where I have enough confidence in order to go through with the appointment. And now I meet them, I meet them. And here's the crazy part of it. Look at all the control I had. I controlled the conversation. I controlled what I wanted to reach out. I controlled what I want to meet them. I control where I get to meet them and I can control at the time I want to meet them. And if I'm not ready, I just don't show up, but I can reach out to another one and do it all over again. Dominance and control.

(20:48):

And I guess the thing that we need to keep in mind is it's not only just one realtor. This process predator could go back through step three four as this is happening because they're getting more and more fulfillment, but it's going to build to the point where they get enough confidence that they're actually going to meet. And here's where our industry doesn't get it, because they believe the first time they meet, they're going to get attacked. And the realtor themself, if I don't get attacked, oh, they're a client, I'm unsafe. And here's the problem. They go through multiple appointments and why? And I want to explain this, I want to explain why they may end up going through four or five appointments. We heard we had somebody who was on our podcast who went through four appointments before her attack. And we hear this all the time, all the time.

(21:46):

This is the norm for five, six appointments, right? But why? Well, let's take a look at why. So there's multiple reasons. The first thing that this person has to do, this bad guy when they meet their target, one is measure their own risk against the individual they want to victimize. And I'm going to put that in real simple straight terms, right? If I plan on robbing a male realtor, I want to make sure that I know that I can physically hurt him, that I'm not at risk. If I'm going to attempt to sexually assault a female realtor, I want to make sure that I can hurt her. I want to make sure that my plan, when I decide to execute it, I'm going to be successful. There is a measurement that happens here, and this individual is going to take a number of different appointments to measure their own risk against their victim.

Beth Andress (22:57):

And can we mention here that this is why meeting in a public place the first time or meeting at your office to get their ID or something like that is not a tactic to use to keep you safe. Just because that person has agreed to meet you before the showing in a public place doesn't mean that they're a good person. It means that you've just given them the opportunity to measure their risk against you. End of story. That's it. And

Rob Andress (23:28):

The second part, they get a rush out of it. I now get to measure my risk against you. Now I'm meeting you, now I'm getting more fulfillment out of it. You want to meet me in a public place to get my photo id? Absolutely not a problem because I know I'm going to meet you. I'm going to show you my license. You're not going to take a photograph of my license. Chances are the only thing you're going to do is look at my face and look at my name. Are you going to know my middle name? Do you know my birthdate? Do you know my driver's license number? Do you actually take the time to write down what my address is that you see in my driver's license probability? No, you're not going to. But just by me showing you a photograph in a public place or at your office, all of a sudden I'm a good guy now and you trust me, I'm going to use that moment in time to measure my risk against you, build trust in you start building relationship in you. And I get again to control and dominate all this and I'm getting a rush out of all of it.

(24:38):

Multiple appointments. Then we move to this thing called stage setting. Here it is. During this time, I'm now going to start inputting my control over the realtor. And you know how I do this. Here's how I do this. Are you ready for this? Can you come on into the bedroom and look at the closet with me? And the realtor comes, can you come on into the primary bedroom and look at the master bathroom with me? And the realtor comes, Hey, you know what? I really like this room, but the sun, it's really bright in here. Would you mind closing all the blinds in the living room? And the realtor does it. I'm stage setting. I now know that if I ask these questions, you're going to come stage setting. Wow, look at all the dominance and control I'm developing here, right? And I am going to keep doing this right up until the moment of offending.

(25:50):

And it may not happen the day when I ask you to come down into the basement and walk into the utility room and bend over and show me the age of the furnace. Might not be that day, but I now know that I can stage set you to get you where I want to get you. And when I get you there, I may be in a primary bedroom and open the door on a walk-in closet and say, wow, come and look at this closet. And in you go, now I've made the decision today. I offend. Today is going to be the day that I make the attack. And why has all of this happened? Because through the entire process that the predator has gone through, they have dominant or dominated and controlled every single aspect of the engagement, every single aspect. And here's the unfortunate part.

(26:57):

If we provided reality education on the behaviors, on the risk threat behavior, on the adrenaline dumping that these people go through the way to identify the red flags. And we've talked about this like a hundred times and I'm going to bite my tongue right now. And you know what? We hear about it, don't we? Boards are getting ahold of Karate Joe Guy and this guy and that guy coming in, and all they do is they teach 120 pound woman to go toe to toe with 180 pound guy. And she's going to learn how to do this shit within an hour. It's not going to happen. That's just such a frigging falsity that it puts the professional at a higher risk. We need to am our game up here and bring reality, education, fact-based situational training to the real estate professional. And once we can provide that, once we can give these good people the ability to be able to identify the risk behaviors before the explosion, the after never happens. And that's really I think where the industry of self-defense instructors needs to go, especially when you're dealing and trying to provide self-defense training to real estate professionals. Understand your client and the industry itself, they call these people in and they don't know anything about their client. They go in and they show them how to do hip throws and pain compliance techniques and nerve isolation. And it just doesn't work.

Beth Andress (29:10):

It just doesn't work. And identifying and being able to identify those pre attack moments or the fact that you may be stuck in this process predator cycle or following your intuition and understanding that if you think that you have identified that something is wrong here, something probably is wrong here, and it's okay to remove yourself from that situation, how to safely or better conduct your appointments, how to pre-qualify these people. And I don't mean financially, I mean as true clients, all of this stuff. It's stuff that is first and foremost is 90% of that safety and self-defense for real estate professionals. It is not in those physical skills, like you said, the hip throws, the kicks to the groin, the roundhouse to the femoral nerve, all those things that we have seen these people try to show us that they've learned their kickboxing, all that stuff. And then when it comes right down to it, they actually understand that they cannot defend themselves by going toe to toe, like you said, with somebody who is bigger and stronger and faster and highly determined. It just doesn't work that way

Rob Andress (30:44):

A hundred percent. So you know what? We've been going on here a little bit longer than we normally do, but I think this was a really important thing for us to go through. It was a really important thing to share. And again, I want to thank Lee and Dave for the work that they did on this. We've added to it and brought it up with some of the things that we know as well from working with some victims that we've met. But I just understand it, this is not a crime of opportunity. They're hunters and we can beat them, but we have to beat them through the right way and the right channels and having the proper education to do it. And you know what? With that, I think I want to end on that education, not physical matters, education. And I want to thank you for listening to us today. And if you found our podcast today of value to you, please leave us a rating. We would really, really appreciate that. And if you found the information would be of interest or vital or helpful to other members that please share the link to our podcast. And I want to thank Doug from Stories and Strategies for always producing an amazing podcast for us. And Beth, I want to thank you too. Thank you. And please, everyone have a prosperous and a safe day, and we'll talk again.