Gave you an upvote there. I have gotten taken advantage of - and embarrassingly, a bit too late in my life to use my age as an explanation... All the clients I

Gave you an upvote there. I have gotten taken advantage of - and embarrassingly, a bit too late in my life to use my age as an explanation... All the clients I've had before this first bad one were generally decent; the obvious idiots were obvious. The second time around, for this nonprofit, I grokked he was a full blown psychopath (although not quickly enough) - the people who had been working with him for the previous 5 years had kept giving him the benefit of the doubt wrt his horrible interpersonal style and behaviour. They got me sucked into the mess because I trusted them over my gut. In the dust-up over matters this summer, this clown kept claiming he was the victim to an outrageous extent despite the fact it was his actions that instigated the blow up of the organization. People with anti-social personality disorders are very good at social manipulation / PR / etc and it's difficult to get bystanders to really understand the whole thing w/o a lot of explanation, which bystanders are not terribly interested in listening to - e.g. "which person is the real victim?" I think a key factor in these sorts of events is that the scammer etc sets the situation up (or makes plans to) to be able to successfully play the victim from the outset when needed. The police should have been contacted. "Poor me" talk from a 22 year old ... it all sounded really fake. There is something in the way language is "used" that triggers my warning bells. Then again, I am biased as I have been through this myself first hand in dealing with a 57 year old. I can now see how twisty his use of language was and how glossing over details and omitting facts can guide the reader into believing what is being said - not outright lies, but manipulation of the reader's emotions.