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This multidisciplinary article, anchored in behavioral economics, develops a measuring tool (scale) to assess the likelihood of deception on the part of eager (if not, desperate, or dishonest) borrowers through an exploratory and a confirmatory empirical study. This article introduces, for the first time, the notion of disconnection, and show that it is a noteworthy construct in understanding indebtedness. It shows its link with subjective financial vulnerability, deception, and personal debt. The long-approved methodology recommended by Churchill in 1979 and by Furr in 2011, is used. Deception can be approximated based on the other constructs measured in said questionnaire. A model is presented, one that is easy to use for both academics and managers, which has been conceived to relay essential information about the borrowers’ risk in a mnemonic format called the “Square of Deception”. Through this model and its associated scale, lenders can enhance their marketing campaigns to attract new customers and minimize default risk while improving margins.