Well, these tactics are not isolated to catching a fraudster. They are universally applied to any situation, whether a lying friend or a lying criminal, when we have something to hide.
The TV Show “Lie to Me” has raised awareness to gesture based cues of liars, such as, avoiding eye contact, increased breathing rate, touching of face, or asymmetrical facial expressions mostly of the lip, etc. However, in this blog I will offer tips based on text or language analysis which are easier to spot. Here are a few tips:
The lack of use of the word “I”: When covering up a misdeed, a liar will avoid the pronoun “I” and instead revert to passive sentences, such as “The safe was left unlocked” instead of “I left the safe unlocked” or the use of “you” instead of “I”…”You try to lock the safe every night, but sometimes when you are busy you just forget to do it.”
Switching between past tense and present tense: When describing past events, deceptive people refer to past events as if the events were occurring in the present. Describing past events in the present tense suggests that he is rehearsing the events in his mind. So, paying close attention to when the tense improperly changes to present tense can be a cue of the untruthful statement. An example is “Last night, I locked the safe and when I went out the door, a guy jumps in front of me and puts a gun to me …”
Answering a question with a question: Even fraudsters want to avoid lying, when possible. A typical response of a liar to this question “Peter, if money is missing who do you think might have taken it?” would be “Why would somebody take the money?”, whereas a truthful person’s typical response would be “I did not take it.”
Use of qualifiers: Vague statements and expressions of uncertainty allow a deceptive person leeway to modify his or her assertions at a later date. Therefore, liars have a natural tendency to overuse “sort of”, “maybe”, “might”, “approximately” among a long list of qualifiers, whereas truthful people tend to give more factual and certain answers.
Average length of sentences used: An average person uses 10-15 words per sentence to describe truthful facts. When lying, there is a tendency to either omit details or exaggerate events thus excessively shortening or lengthening the average sentence length of a response.
While deception cues should not be analyzed in isolation, as many factors of culture or personal habits may influence how a person behaves, it is advisable to look at them holistically. The more cues you gather, the higher probability is that your subject is lying. So, how can you get a lying person fall into his own trap?
The following tips may help you:
Ask questions in reverse chronological order: People, who fabricate a story, need to memorize the sequence of events they invent. Recalling events in reverse chronology, when the event is experienced, tends to be far easier than recalling it when it’s just a cognitive exercise. How many of us can count the alphabet backwards, but have an easier time to tell about our day starting from dinner moving to breakfast?
Praise them for their misdeed: The psychological reward of being praised lets the fraudster take claim of the action. Start with a sentence such as “I’m impressed that you went around the system…can you tell me what happened?” However, do not outrightly accuse them with such words as “you took the money.”
Interject with surprise questions: Throwing them off-course can be an effective way to digress their train of thought and cause extra stress on the brain to keep up with the lies. This technique is widely used on TV shows because it is simple to use, yet truly effective.
Once you become confident which employee has been stealing from you, you can plan to take action. Read “You caught an employee stealing from you…Now what” for next steps.
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