over a small sum of money in order to release a larger one, often being told they had won on a fictitious lottery, or would be paid a commission for facilitating a money transfer. It said victims recognised that something was wrong, but went ahead anyway on the off-chance that it would succeed, because of the size of the possible prize they would win relative to the initial outlay. The research was carried out to help inform the joint OFT and Serious Organised Crime Agency's national strategy for tackling mass marketed fraud. The groups hope to use the information to develop more effective consumer awareness campaigns to help people recognise and resist scams. The OFT estimates that around 3.2m adults, the equivalent of one out of every 15 people, are victims of mass marketed scams each year, collectively losing around 3.bn. Around half of all people are likely to have been targeted by a scam at some point. The research found that many scams used a range of highly persuasive techniques to recruit victims, often seeking to exploit basic human emotions such as excitement or fear to provoke a spontaneous gut reaction to the offer. Scams were often personally addressed to people or available for a limited time only, to make people think it was a unique or urgent opportunity; this reduced their motivation to look at it objectively. The study also found that fraudsters abused people's trust of authority by making a scam look like a legitimate offer from