The fraudsters’ playbook

Our study of Enron traders shows how easily the language of trust can be abused. Matteo Fuoli writes for The Conversation.

20 June 2026

From election debates to job interviews, language shapes our perceptions of how trustworthy other people are. This power can be used to build healthy relationships, but it can also be used to manipulate and deceive.

To better understand this darker side of building trust, my colleagues and I turned to the corporate world – a domain that offers plenty of cautionary tales. Our case study was among the most notorious, involving one of the world’s largest...Read the full article on The Conversation

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Dr Matteo Fuoli
Associate Professor in Corpus-based Discourse Analysis
Biographical and contact information for Dr Matteo Fuoli, Associate Professor in Corpus-based Discourse Analysis in the Department of Linguistics and Communication at the University of Birmingham.
Phone: +44 (0) 121 415 8346
Email: m.fuoli@bham.ac.uk

The fraudsters’ playbook

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Dr Matteo Fuoli

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