Hello Hivian, how are you doing?
My entry for w17e1 contest tagged 'The unprofitable work called scamming'.
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Scamming has now become a day to day practice in this generation. Some years back, scamming was not as conversant as it is nowadays because it was highly prohibited by the law. But when social media and technology came into our lives, the whole story changed and scamming becomes a skill.
Scamming is an act of defrauding other people of their assets or possessions through deceitful methods. How on earth will someone dupe another person of their property without considering the situation the individual might be, all what they care about is to make money.
And they will spend the money lavishly on smoking, drinking, womanising and also on gambling. Those scammer have so much developed differs tactics in which people can not differentiate if it is real or not. They use fake job alert, fake promos, fake charities, hacking and so on to rip lots of people. To avoid these swindlers one need to be extremely careful.
My encounter with a scammer
Three years ago during my cousin's (Sarah) wedding introduction. Her fiance (Jerry) was out of town, so Sarah and I needed to make the necessary preparations for the program. All was set for the day and the program was scheduled for 10am on a Saturday in 2019.
A day before the program around 4pm Jerry called that himself and his best friend (Steve) were on their way. Their journey would be two and half hours drive to our place (the bride's parent house), so we were expectant of their arrival.
After they had journeyed for a hour, Sarah called to check on her love and Jerry told her that there was traffic congestion along the express road because a truck fell. Jerry told her never to panic cause the traffic law officers were on ground to solve the problem. Thirty minutes after, we dialled both Jerry and Steve's line severally to know the situation of things but we could not get through so we concluded it might be network issue.
Lo and behold I received a call around 6:15pm that Jerry has been arrested by the traffic law officers.
I was dumb founded, my questions was How? When? The caller explained that he drove against traffic that was what lead to his arrest and he will be charged to court on Monday or I should send 20,000 naira for his bail.
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I screamed ahhhh, less than 17hours to his wedding introduction, how will I tell Sarah what has happened.
I told the caller to let me speak to either Jerry or Steve he said No that I have less than 5mins to decide and he hanged up. I called back to negotiate the 20,000 naira bail to half but he refused.
I didn't tell Sarah anything so has not to frighten her because she had dial their lines and it was not going through.
So I concluded the caller was saying the truth, I started making the arrangement to pay. I never knew my younger brother had noticed that I was disturbed. So he came to me and I explained everything to him.
Only God knows how he sensed that it might be a scam, so he called the caller with his personal line and to our surprise a lady picked the call telling him wrong number. Wow.... that looks strange to me, when I called with my line a guy will pick and ask if I'm ready to pay for their release. It was at that point I knew it was a scam, immediately I regained my lost strength and vowed to speak ill to him once I confirm Jerry's safety. So I played along, He continue threatening me and I keep begging for half payment. After much plead, he agreed.
Around past 7pm I heard a car horn, I rushed out and it was Jerry and Steve, I was extremely happy, they explained how their journey went and how they tried to reach us, but discover they are out of network coverage.
I called the scammer guy severally and he did not pick, he later blocked me. During dinner time I explained everything to the people at home, they were all amazed.
Till today, we never know how the scammer guy got his fact right and my number. But we concluded it might be one of Jerry's wicked friends who called to check on him during his journey.
I so much appreciate my younger brother for his wisdom and for saving me from been scammed.
Please always watch out and be careful, fraudulent people are everywhere.