By the Way
Reply me now, you are inheritance wilting
Is it only
journalists who regularly receive sad news?
Anon keeps texting me that Dad’s had an accident, is in hospital and
wants me to call. Unfortunately he can’t
get a new phone card, so can I help?
Absolutely. I’ll pay anything for a chat as the Old Man
has been dead more than a decade and there’s some unfinished business we both
need to fix.
Don’t cry
for me, Indonesia. Although Dadless there’s no call for tears because I have
many fine friends, including Cecelia Rosaline-Lum, Stanley Prince and Tunner
Waters. Then there’s Turcan Napley, Rucas Omego and Ban Luwis.
As befits
folk with redoubtable names they are legal executors, investors overstocked
with wealth or dethroned royals seeking hideaways to hold their gold.
They like
me so much they’re keen to share their good fortune with an orphan writer
rather than a deserving child, Oxfam or even a home for stray dogs.
All I need
to do is pay the fees to release the funds. Only Western Union, thanks.
By now
you’ll have logged on that these philanthropists live in Nigeria, a country
I’ve never visited, and where the scammer is probably better known as Jones
Goodluck Ogunfowora.
Imagine how
his day evolves. After a breakfast of
egusi soup, hugging his kids and kissing his wife, he heads to the factory of
fraud. He clicks on, wipes flyspots off the flatscreen and hits qwerty.
Today Jones
has to knock up another hundred names that hint of wealth and substance. These he adds to plausible letters and
e-mails to millions of stolen addresses, trawling for the gullible.
If not
fortunes, threats. The FBI, Microsoft, Immigration, Taxation and a queue of
banks I’ve never used keep warning of a fiscal firestorm unless I update my
account password.
Then there
are the competitions. The good news is
there’s no need to enter to win, or chase the results. The organizers will track you through
cyberspace to present the prize, though local taxes have to be paid first,
including to the ‘UN Police Report Fund Clearance.’
What an
authoritative title, clearly legal and trustworthy. Good one, Goodluck.
His trouble
is that the prey are waking up. Anyone
who’s been owed money knows it’s easier to open a zealot’s closed mind than a
debtor’s wallet.
Life experience
makes us doubt that strangers might be so generous. Though maybe, just maybe, could it be
possible, just this once? There are exceptions to every rule, aren’t there? Stranger
things have happened. Right?
The donor
could be an eccentric with money to gift and by chance has selected my e-mail. Hooking just one innocent might make it all
worthwhile. And it’s not always the avaricious who get hauled to the surface.
Sister Enhambre Maribel Guso, a trusting nun in Flores has
reportedly been relieved of Rp 820 million (US $ 68,000). She believed the
people who wanted to donate to her charity first had to be paid to open
accounts.
My
mother-in-law, a normally cautious lady, got snared by a scheme to win
kitchenware through buying cellphone top ups.
She had to call through the receipt numbers to see if she’d won.
She hadn’t,
but the deceiver had by harvesting the digits needed to keep his own phone in
credit.
The e-mail
scammers are smarter than sunburn – except for one critical area. They may have passed computer science with
straight A grades, but they sure flunked English correspondence.
Potential
victims might be impressed by the standout logo and page layout, but no sober
person has ever called me ‘Most Honored Sir’ or ‘Respected Gentleman’.
I might
have bitten had Dingo Smith written: ‘G’day mate – your e mail has won $500 K.
Flick us your bank account number and password and we’ll do the rest. Have a good one.’
How sad
that people like Jones and his Indonesian counterpart Djoni Gagal, so creative
and technically smart, labor on the dark side.
Like drone pilots they never see close up the damage they can inflict.
If they
applied their significant skills to good works how much happier we’d all be –
even without a windfall million dollars in our accounts.
(First published in The Jakarta Post 16 March 2014)
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