Seven Innocent Words

Dear Sophia,

Over the past few days, I've come to a rather unexpected realization.

Not while writing SCAMMED: The Inside Story of a Perfect Trap.

Not while reflecting on the lawsuit that ultimately became the foundation of this story.

And not even while revisiting the real-life scam for my second novel, SCAMMED: The Price of a Broken System - One Letter at a Time.

No.

It happened during a conversation with Emma. With Yann. With Jonathan.

We were trying to answer a simple question: How do you describe SCAMMED?

As so often happens, the conversation started with marketing...

...and ended somewhere completely different.


Then, one sentence appeared.

Every scam has a first sentence.

I stared at those words for a few moments.

And suddenly, I realized they meant far more than a book.

They were true.

Because no scam begins with money.

It begins with simplicity.

With a few ordinary words.

Sometimes, just seven.

"Hi... I came across your profile."


And that's exactly where the danger lies.

The first sentence never feels dangerous.

It feels friendly.

Curious.

Innocent.

Only in hindsight do you realize that everything had already begun.


Perhaps that's the hardest part about manipulation.

It's not that you believe the lie.

It's that you never recognized the first sentence as the beginning.

As I write these words, I can't help wondering how many people still remember that very first message.

Not the day they lost their money.

Not the moment everything fell apart.

But the innocent words that started it all.

Maybe every scam really does have a first sentence.

Maybe we should pay a lot more attention to it.


Love,

the part of you that never left


Scammed: The Inside Story of a Perfect Trap explores this space, not as a distant story, but as something that unfolds step by step, often without being noticed until it’s too late.

Because the most dangerous systems are not the ones that look broken.

They are the ones that look perfect.

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