There's just this excruciating pain that comes with working hard regularly for days, months or years even to save some money, only to watch them slip away in a matter of minutes, why? Because someone is able to manipulate their way with words just so you can trust them. In most cases losing the money itself is not even the worst part of this encounter. It is the fact that an individual is willing to go the extreme mile to study what makes you tick, how you operate and most especially your weaknesses just so they can take advantage of you to benefit from your shortcomings.
Scams usually come in the most innocent methods possible and not like the mysterious ways one might expect - A friendly voice offering to help, a conversation with almost no intent or a business idea with the promise to make a quick fortune. Just like that, your guard is down and before you realize it you are at the losing side of an unplanned transaction. This has turned into one of the major problems plaguing today's society as it is very visible in every sphere of life we look. Since the birth of the internet, there are now online scams operating everywhere whether it is on social media, job adverts, crypto
Schemes and even messages coming from people claiming to be people we know. Let's not even forget the not so current trend popular called "Yahoo Yahoo" that is rapidly becoming a way of life now. Every single day, these scammers are always busy working on ways to prey on human emotions for their personal gain creating a big hole of distrust at every turn.
A few months ago my mother got a call from an unknown number spewing bad news with a sense of urgency right from the jump. The voice sounded calm, reliable and very serious so it was hard not to listen. The person on the other end of phone introduced himself as a licensed with news about my sister's health status. According it him, my sister was involved in a fatal accident, was currently in an operation room and some money needed to be deposited for treatment to commence. He told my mother to hurry up because time was of the essence if she wanted to increase my sister's survival rate and sent an account number where the money should be deposited.
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Pained ensued at home, and my mother started calling family members to raise the money without even thinking things through. After making a few calls myself, I decided to call my sister's husband just to give him a heads up about the entire situation. When I told him what had happened, he seemed confused because he was certain his wife (my sister was in the kitchen). After s brief back and forth, we concluded that this was either a misunderstanding or just a scheme from schemers. We waited for a while and just like clockwork, the same number called again to verify if we've made payment. I screamed thief from to the phone and he immediately hung up as he realized we were onto him. Everybody laughed about the whole ordeal when it was over but I couldn't thinking; if I had not called to check in with my brother in-law, that criminal would have gotten the better of us for something that did not happen. Scammers do not only play on our greed but also our emotions for caring about people close to us as well. That brief encounter taught me a valuable lesson about dealing with swindlers which is " Nobody is too smart to get duped no matter how smart you are there always a new pattern to cheat so just hope you can weasel your way out of it".
Thank you