Before you can recover from an addiction you must first acknowledge that you have an addiction.  If you’re not able to bring yourself to admit that you have a problem you’ll never be able to rise above it.  The same is true when it comes to being scammed.  You can’t move on until you admit to yourself that you were scammed.

It’s not the worst thing in the world.  Sure, it’s a bit embarrassing.  Nobody wants to admit to friends, family members, co-workers … etc. that they got hoodwinked, but that’s better than continuing down the same road toward perpetual disappointment and potential financial loss.  Just like the alcoholic has to say “My name is John … and I’m an alcoholic”, the dinarian has to be able to say “I made a big mistake here.  I got duped.”

I had to say that to myself a couple of years ago.  “My name is Sam, and I got conned.”  (“Hi Sam.”)  When I finally got around to doing my due diligence and realized that “deleting the zeros” means a lop, and that even if they don’t lop the money supply is too big for the dinar to ever RV to a level that would make anybody rich, I did a Homer Simpson DOH!!! or two and started selling my dinar.  It wasn’t easy to say goodbye to the dream of instant millions, but in a sense it was blissfully liberating.  At least now I knew what was going on.

And actually, it wasn’t all my fault.  I was new to currency speculation.  There wasn’t a lot of information out there on the Kuwaiti “RV” (which never happened), the history of revaluations, and many other things that the gurus were talking about to support their claims.  And even if you found the information, most of the dinar forums wouldn’t allow inconvenient facts to be posted as they were considered “negative”.  Even some of the most intelligent sounding gurus and researchers were repeating “forum facts” that had no basis in truth.  And some of the redenomination articles actually used the word “revalue” when they were clearly describing a lop.  It was confusing.  It took years for those of us who have dug through articles and studied currency to get to the bottom of this and compile the information that is available today.

If you’re hesitant to admit that you were scammed, look at it this way.  You’re in good company.  Some very famous people have been the victim of scams.  Steven Spielberg, Kevin Bacon, Sandy Koufax, Larry King, Zsa Zsa Gabor, John Malkovich, and Eliot Spitzer all lost money in the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.  Dr. Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the worldwide web (no dummy there), bought products online from a fake company.  Singer Billy Joel lost millions to a former manager.  Sting and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lost millions to their shady financial managers.  It happens.

So don’t beat yourself up.  Just chalk it up to experience and move on.  You’ll be glad you did.  Just repeat after me … “My name is (your name here) and I got dinar scammed.