Most people are terrible judges of character and honesty, especially when dealing with psychopaths. Bernie Madoff met most of his victims IRL and they completely trusted him.
IRL is definitely not fallible but it's better than the internet-only. To my knowledge there's no way to stop a motivated and skilled actor, like a Bernie Madoff
It pains me that this feels true as someone chronically online and used to find great use from the internet, but online-only has more failure modes now. There's still ways to do it though.
