“victim to” and “victim of”

Question

In Insider Secrets To Hydraulics there is two texts:

1. When I inquired why the new pump hab been fitted, the maintenance manager advised me that the original pump hab been uneconomical to repair. I knew immediately that this maintenance manager had fallen victim to distributor bias.

2. There are three things you can do to ensure that you don't become a victim of one of these costly rip-offs.

In both texts "victim" is used in a similar sense but with different construction. Can you explaine to me why in 1) there is construction "victim to" and in 2) there is "victim of"?

Answer 1

Perhaps consult a dictionary?

Lexico shows "fall victim to" as a standardized phrase. Probably that (and variants) are the only time we use "to" with "victim".

Answer 2

The common construction is fall victim to, fall victim of is a less common variant. In both case the meaning is:

: to be affected badly by (something)

• She fell victim to the flu.
• He fell victim to a scam.
• schools falling victim to budget cuts (M-W)