How to scam someone in seven days

January 8, 2026·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

Romance scam handbooks read like choose-your-own-adventure books with instructions like 'if victim mentions a promotion, turn to page 47.'

The scam setup sounds like a game, which is part of why it lands. The cold open compares manipulation to a choose-your-own-adventure book: sadness about a cat sends the scammer one way, a mention of promotion sends them somewhere else. Grim, yes. Also a bit ridiculous, in the show's usual style. Graham Cluley introduces episode 449 with Leslie Carhart, then takes a bright little detour into the story behind Hacks for Pancakes. Leslie goes with it. The handle turns into a quick sketch of volunteer work, community help, and getting paid in food more often than cash. That is how the episode works. The human aside comes first. The security point wanders in after it. The sharper section is Leslie's warning about the job market. She talks with young people, runs career clinics, mentors university students, and keeps seeing the same ugly mismatch. Hiring managers are missing things too. In her telling, this is not a small correction. It is a collapse in junior cybersecurity roles. Layoffs have tightened the squeeze. AI shows up as the shiny answer, pitched as a replacement for people even when Leslie is not convinced it works that neatly. Then there is the boot-camp hangover. Cybersecurity was sold as a large, well-paid field that needed millions of workers, and a post-pandemic wave moved through programs with that promise hanging over it. Now those graduates are hitting a colder market. Leslie is not selling doom for fun, but her advice is blunt: anyone trying to get in now needs a serious plan. The old Wild West is gone. Academic credentials have become part of the gatekeeping, whether she likes it or not.

As heard by us

A scam-framed Smashing Security becomes a blunt, useful look at the junior cybersecurity jobs crunch.

How to scam someone in seven days starts with a sharp little image: social engineering as a choose-your-own-adventure scam manual, where a victim's offhand detail becomes the next lever.

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Why you'd press play

Scammers are running a choose-your-own-adventure script on you -- this episode hands over the playbook.

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