Scams and scammers are not new to this world. they have always been around with different tricks for looting people. There happened such an incident with my family some 20 years ago.
A group of three people knocked Our door. They introduced themselves to us as a member of some company. They Had some papers with them and they claimed that we had won a plot in a lottery. It was unbelievable my father had never been because my father had never been Into buying any sort of lotteries. They showed us a map of housing scheme, and told the address and number of the plot and lottery. The asked us to pay 200 PKR as a token and that would be the only payment we needed in order to attain the ownership of that plot.
My mother said that she didn’t believe them as her husband had never told her anything like that. They told that a man had bought the lottery with the name of my elder brother (they took the name of my brother). Hearing his name my mother got confused. She thought that my father might have forgotten to tell her. Still she was not willing to give any money without my dad’s permission. At that time 200 pkr was a big amount for a middle class family.
We made a call to our father’s office. It was an unfortunate day. The call wasn’t received on both of the available numbers. It had never happened before that the call wasn’t received after this many attempts. On the other hand, the team was telling us that there was only one day left for the token to submit, else the plot could never be ours. My mother with the advice of my grand mother gave the money to the team and took the token paper.
Interestingly, when we made the call to our father after the team left our home it was picked up. It means the loss of money was destined. When my father heard of the story he said that he never bought any lottery. We then asked him how could they know the name of my elder brother. My father replied it is because his name is written on the name plate outside our home.
Later, we found out that this scam had happened to several people across the city. Even in the later years, the similar kind of scam kept on happening with names of different companies.
Today the world has modified and so are the scams. With the increasing use of cyber technology, the scammers have jumped into this space. About a couple if years ago, a friend of us encountered a scam.
There is an app with name EASYPAISA in our country. It is used for transferring and receiving cash across the country. The friend received a message on the app that he had received 12k PKR in his account. A few minutes later he received a call on his number. Someone talked to him in a very desperate voice that he was a very poor man. His money was mistakenly transferred to his account. He begged him to transfer the money back to him.
Our friend, transferred the money back to him instantly . Later, when he checked his account he found out that that no money was transferred to him at the very first place. The money he had transferred to that person had gone from his own account. He didn’t think of checking his account balance before making the transfer because the initial message of receiving money he had got from the account named with the service providing company.
Some people might say that only foolish become the victim of these scammers. I would say No to this idea. The cyber crime is so smart even the smartest people can become the victim of it. One example is of our wonder lady @dreemsteem who lost her crypto worth of thousands of dollars about two years ago. It was stolen from her metamusk wallet. How it happened.......! We don’t know for sure.
I would say in order to keep us safe from the scams and scammers all around we not only need to be prudent but also should be praying to God to save us.
This is my participation for the Hive learners contest