About The SCARS Institute
Society Of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc
The Early Years of Online Fraud
The Society grew out of the work of our founder, Prof. Emeritus Tim McGuinness, Ph.D., DFin, MCPO, MAnth, a scientist, researcher, technologist, criminologist, recoverologist, and anthropologist.
In 1991, while publishing on America Online, he observed how quickly fake identities were spreading through online communities. People were already using those identities to commit fraud, from Nigerian prince schemes to romance scams. As a co-founder and executive of TigerDirect.com, originally known as BLOC Development, he began alerting the public to these cyber-enabled crimes and cataloging the people behind them.
In 1996, a consortium formed to help e-commerce companies and internet publishers address liability for user comments and reviews. That effort contributed to the passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that year. Section 230 helped make the growth of social media possible, and it had an unforeseen consequence. As platforms grew, major technology companies did little to address the fake identities and fraud spreading through their services. Doing the minimum became the prevailing response. Organized criminal enterprises gained room to operate at scale, and the people they targeted were left to deal with the consequences.
What the Victims Showed Us
As we began cataloging fake profiles on dating websites more systematically, we learned how much public education alone left unaddressed. We heard about people who died by suicide after scams and others who became homeless after sending a scammer every dollar they had. We also saw untrained anti-scam groups put their own agendas ahead of the people they claimed to help. Survivors came looking for answers and found urban legends, vigilantism, and a lack of compassion. Many were already deeply traumatized when they reached out. They were still left to sort through the experience on their own.
By 2014, the gap in care for victims of cyber-enabled crime was clear. There was no professional field of support focused on their needs. Law enforcement officers often lacked training in these crimes and in how to respond to the people affected by them. Some victims went to the police and could not even get an officer to take a report. After losing money, trust, and sometimes their homes, they found themselves having to explain why what had happened to them deserved attention.
Most of the victims we saw left to deal with the trauma on their own never regained the emotional stability they had before the crime. Even today, denial and anger keep many survivors from engaging in the work of recovery. We made a commitment to find out what would help them recover and to build comprehensive programs for education, recovery, and deterrence. We wanted to change how victims were treated after a scam and how institutions responded to the criminals responsible.
From the Society to the SCARS Institute
That commitment led to the founding of the Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc. in 2015 and its transformation into the SCARS Institute in 2022. We developed structured peer-to-peer support groups and self-help recovery programs. We expanded our work to include psychological recovery services, counseling, and coaching alongside public education. We also developed the multi-disciplinary science of Recoverology®, an interdisciplinary approach to understanding how crime affects victims and what helps them recover. A person who has just discovered a scam needs to understand what happened. As recovery continues, they also need ways to manage the trauma, work through grief and self-blame, and rebuild confidence in their own judgment.
We have educated more than 13 million scam victims about the dangers they face. We opened offices in Mexico and China that were instrumental in reaching Hispanic and Chinese victims. We now operate exclusively from the United States, working through international partnerships to help victims around the globe and in numerous languages. Our websites cover different aspects of this transnational global crime problem, including how scams work, how to recognize and report them, and the complete scam victims’ experience and what survivors face after the crime.
Working With Governments and Partners
The SCARS Institute has built relationships and partnerships with governments and agencies around the world, including the United States Department of Homeland Security. We regularly speak and present at government functions in the United States and abroad. We bring what we learn from victims into those discussions so officials can understand the consequences of these crimes, the difficulties victims face when they report them, and the need for stronger enforcement.
We have worked on the ground in West Africa to reduce and disrupt the operations of organized scam enterprises. In Southeast Asia, we have helped rescue people held captive in scam compounds. This work has helped governments and agencies understand how these criminal enterprises operate and where enforcement needs to improve.
The SCARS Institute continues to welcome other organizations and entities dedicated to aiding and assisting these crime victims to survive and fully recover.
Today’s SCARS Institute
Today, numerous organizations compete for the attention of scam victims and try to help them through the first days after a scam ends. Some have copied elements of the structured recovery approach developed by the SCARS Institute and use them to help victims become survivors. These organizations provide support at an important point in recovery, but none has developed the full scope and breadth of the SCARS Institute’s work across victim support, education, recovery, deterrence, and research.
The SCARS Institute remains the primary research organization devoted to understanding the full experience of scam victimization and recovery. Its work examines the psychology of scam victims and the neurological and physiological processes that shape their responses to the crime and its aftermath. It also examines the philosophical questions that guide survivor support, including what it means to recover and how to help survivors regain confidence in their own judgment and direction in their lives.
The Institute continues to lead this research by drawing on academic studies conducted around the world and bringing that knowledge into its work with survivors. The questions that arise in recovery help direct the Institute’s research, and what the Institute learns informs the education, guidance, and recovery programs it develops. This work follows the survivor’s experience from the first days after discovery through the longer process of rebuilding a life after the crime over the years that follow.
The People Behind the Institute
The SCARS Institute is the work of many people. Our volunteer management team and Board of Directors lead the organization, with guidance from an Advisory Board whose members bring experience and expertise to that work. Our volunteers give their time to help scam victims understand what happened and begin their recovery. Many of those volunteers are survivors themselves. They remember what it was like to look for help after the scam, and they bring that experience to the people who come to us today.
You can learn more about the SCARS Institute through our websites and social media channels. You are also welcome to write to us and address your message to our directors at contact@AgainstScams.org.
Thank you for your support!
Prof. Emeritus Tim McGuinness, Ph.D., DFin, MCPO, MAnth
Chairman, Founder and Managing Director
SCARS Institute
Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc.
An incorporated nonprofit organization registered in the State of Florida, USA
November 2026
SCARS Code of Conduct
The Society requires that all members follow a Code of Conduct that establishes professional ethical behavior and conduct in their activities relating to the publication of anti-scam information, and in their interactions with victims of online crimes.
Please view our Code of Conduct and FAQs for more information.
