This article examines situations of remote manipulation by a crook who engages in a scam on Internet. It looks at the development of a relationship marked by narrative revivals and a lowering of vigilance, likely to produce a regime of ascendancy. The victim's relational isolation makes it more difficult for him or her to become aware of the manipulation. For awareness to occur, there have to be outside affordances. Under which conditions do victims 'open their eyes'?? What puts a stop to the dynamic of credulous entrapment based on habituation and the victim's gradual engagement in denial and self-conviction? What is likely to trigger a dynamic of curious worry, going from non-verbalized 'disquiet'? to the certainty of having been fooled?