Our courses will go live on October 26, 2026.
Our courses will go live on October 26, 2026.
OUR STORY
It began with the love of my life. He never existed.
In 2022, my private story became public in more than 180 countries when I came forward in the Netflix documentary ‘The Tinder Swindler’. I had fallen in love with a man who was charming, attentive and, I believed, the love of my life. What I did not know was that he was a fraudster and that everything between us was a script.
Over a year and a half he built my trust, made me emotionally dependent and manufactured one crisis after another. There was always an emergency, always a reason to act now. Under that pressure I lent him my savings, took out loans and was drawn deeper in. In psychology this has a name: coercive control, the same slow, deliberate manipulation we recognise in abusive relationships.
By the end I was more than 180,000 euros in debt, grieving a person who had never truly existed.
The second wound
The fraud broke me financially. The response almost broke me completely.
When I finally reached out for help, I was told I had “transferred the money voluntarily”. I was turned away by organisation after organisation. I went to three police stations before I could even file a report, retelling eighteen months of manipulation again and again. Being disbelieved and turned away did more lasting damage than losing the money. At my lowest point, I did not want to be here anymore.
It took two years of intense therapy, EMDR, mindfulness, trauma-focused work, to find my way back. And through it, I did not just recover. I became stronger than ever.
Instead of letting what happened define me, I set out to understand it. I studied the psychology of fraud: the manipulation tactics, the cognitive biases that make every one of us vulnerable and the shame that keeps victims silent.
I saw the gap clearly. When a victim reaches out, the response they meet decides everything. Yet almost no institution trains its people for that moment. So the very people who should help too often deliver the second, deepest wound. S.A.F.E. exists to change that.
Why S.A.F.E. exists
Fraudsters do not hack systems first. They hack trust.
What S.A.F.E stands for
Scam Awareness and Fraud Education.
S.A.F.E. works on two levels. For organisations: See the victim, Acknowledge the trauma, Facilitate recovery, Enable reporting and prevention. For individuals: Stop, Ask, Feel, Engage, four steps anyone can use to stop a fraud before it ever becomes a story someone has to recover from.
For organisations
S
See the victim
A
Acknowledge the trauma
F
Facilitate recovery
E
Enable reporting and prevention
For individuals
S
Stop
A
Ask
F
Feel
E
Engage
Our mission
Make victim-centered fraud response the standard, everywhere.
Our mission is to break the shame and silence that protect fraudsters and keep victims from ever coming forward. To move institutions from treating fraud as a claim number to treating it as what it truly is, a human crisis. To be the voice that was missing when I needed it.
We do it by bridging the gap between fraud-detection technology and the human experience of financial crime. We are giving the people on the front line the knowledge, language and tools to respond with both competence and compassion. Because a victim who is met with belief recovers faster, speaks up sooner and goes on to warn ten more. Compassion is not the opposite of good fraud practice. It is good fraud practice.
Our vision is a world where no one is treated the way I was. Where victim-centered response is the international standard, from the very first contact to full recovery. Through free education, training for professionals and a movement, built in alignment with the United Nations’ work, to bring fraud education to societies around the world.
What makes us different
Built around the victim, by someone who was one.
Evidence-based
Built on research into manipulation, cognitive bias and recovery.
Victim-centered
We start from one question: what does a victim actually need?
Trauma-informed
Grounded in how trauma and the nervous system actually work.
Survivor-built
Created by someone who lived every stage of this, not written from the outside.
Recognised & Connected
Bridging fraud technology and the human experience of financial crime.
Founder Ayleen Charlotte is a Board Member of the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) and S.A.F.E. works with partners including the American Bankers Association, Victim Support Europe and the United Nations. These are working partnerships, not endorsements, relationships that connect our victim-centered methodology to the institutions on the front line of fraud.
Everything S.A.F.E. stands for
S.A.F.E. by Ayleen Charlotte is the wider methodology, mission and organisation. S.A.F.E. Academy is its education platform where that methodology becomes training for professionals and free resources for everyone.
Meet Ayleen
From survivor to internationally recognised fraud expert.
Ayleen Charlotte is a keynote speaker, advocate and the founder of S.A.F.E. She draws on her lived experience to bring one of the most human perspectives on fraud to professionals worldwide. Ayleen is working with financial institutions, law enforcement and victim-support organisations to make victim-centered fraud response the standard, everywhere.
