Quality Education for Africa - QEFA

ON SCAM, SCAMMING, AND SCAMMERS. (Part 2)

By Emmanuel Aniedu

Do you know that you can be scammed serially for many years without realising it even uptill the point of your death? Needless beating yourself up if you are fortunate to find out about it while still alive because the scamming ministry is automatically programmed in such a way that the victims never realise themselves, and even at the few instances that they do find out, there is very little or absolutely nothing that can be done about it.

To a very determined scammer, your tears is their joy. But, before we delve deeper into how you can ruin a scammer's joy, how to "scam" a scammer by turning their game on its head, and how to use their so-called skills against them in order to expose them and bring them to justice, let us quickly turn our attention to the subject of this particular series in fulfilment of my last month's promise to reveal to our readers how scammers identify their most preferred targets while x-raying the signs that makes potential victims easy to identify for scamming in this edition.

The biggest turn on that attracts the attention of a scammer towards a "new catch" is the physical appearance of the potential victim at first sight. Jaachynma N.E. Agu captured it more accurately when he said that 'you are addressed the way you dress'. To scammers however, there is a strong correlation between dressing flamboyantly and being gullible. Expert con-artists do not like wasting their time with difficult targets at all, that is why they have trained themselves overtime on how to quickly identify an expensive wristwatch or any other luxurious item on their target even from a far distance, to serve as indicators for gauging how rich such a target really is, in order to determine their suitability or unsuitability for deception.

From scanning through your shoes, belts, jewelleries etc, this intentionally deceitful individuals have become experts at 'sizing' people up from hair to toe, and in passing instant judgement on the networth of any personality who has unfortunately fallen under the influence of their exploitative gaze. Their familiarity with almost all high-end fashion brands and logos of luxury items will amaze you. They have indeed done their homework before going out to the field to hunt for easily exploitable targets.

In fact, to show you how much scammers hate wasting their time with a wrongly identified target or client (aka "bad market"), there is a new strategy that has recently been adopted by them in any event that they get frustrated in the middle of an operation. Scammers attempt to mock and shame targets who refuse to comply proportionately to their schemes. Imagine a beggar accusing the person he or she intends begging from, of being a 'stingy' miser. Such is the way of a typical frustrated scammer! They even go as far as using the same trick of false accusations to silence their former victims by first accusing them of being incapable of moving on in the spirit of 'forgiveness' so as to enable them get away with their proceeds of fraud.

Fraudsters do not enjoy being exposed at all. It hurts their fragile egos and lowers their ratings in the highly competitive criminal world. Worst still, it scares away potential victims who were already booked to patronize them. In order to manage the backlog of already scammed victims, these fraudulent individuals have come up with several catch phrases for dumping those victims they consider to be useless or dangerous to their craft. Few of them include: 'I am done with you!', 'We are done and dusted', 'How did I even know you?', 'Can't you just move on?', and 'Can't you help someone without expecting anything in return?'.

Make no mistake, a scammer is first of all an expert in guilt-tripping, shadowboxing, and gaslighting people. To them, it is just their own way of rationalising away the guilt that is eating them up from inside for all their acts of wickedness and greed over the years. The entire scamming ministry is set up in such a way that the victim automatically runs back either to the scammer or other scammers for help in an event of any suspicion. Instead of receiving any help for self-realisation, such a victim will further be ushered into deep confusion, depression, and even su***de in extreme cases. Nevertheless, there is hope of recovery from the shackles of scam for any courageous victim out there, and the details shall be captured in our next series.

Here's wishing our dear readers a scam-free life ahead as we March into a promising new month.

ON SCAM, SCAMMING, AND SCAMMERS.
(Part 1)

By Emmanuel Aniedu

The level of seriousness in which scammers are operating with in recent times is a great cause for concern. If these deceptive individuals would put in the same amount of effort and work wasted in SCAM into developing value-added skills, most of them would have become billionaires more quickly than they could possibly imagine, with an added bonus of enjoying the peace of mind that comes with duly earned wealth too.

However, a determined scammer would never listen to nor believe in this proposition. Such is the nature of deceptive individuals who have perfected the art of fleecing away the hard-earned monies of their unsuspecting victims - including ripping them off of their lifetime pensions and, in some extreme cases, extending further into stealing the entire family inheritance of their victims by tricks.

Scammers come in all manner of shapes and sizes. They have mastered the art of appearing like innocent help seekers, extremely skilled in seeking for public sympathy yet very focused and pinpointedly fixated on achieving their primary goal which is to dispossess their unfortunate victim(s) of targeted sums of money - one at a time, serially or even simultaneously. Bear in mind however, that the failure of a typical scammer to reach a certain target plunges them deeply into frustration hence the need for precision in identifying gullible victims.

The fool and his money are soon parted, so says the scriptures, but regardless of this warning, no one is totally above the risk of falling victim to the ploys and wicked schemes of scammers for they are available in both genders of the human race and roaming about in every strata of our society. Scammers will more readily bow and scrape and even lick the feet of whomever unfortunate fellow they can lay their gaze upon to be possessing the right amount of careless money coupled with an ego large enough for stroking such money away.

If peradventure one is lucky enough to escape the fangs of a venomous scammer, such a victim will naturally be left to contend with the overwhelming feelings of depression, self-disgust, and sometimes su***de that usually accompanies targeted deception, most especially if the victim is not assisted to overcome the guilt that is associated with past feelings of vulnerability. In any case, scammers never leave their victims alone except they are absolutely sure that such a victim has been rendered totally bankrupt or DEAD!

By the time a scammer is 'DONE' with his/her victim, what will be left of the victim's shattered reputation (if any) shall eventually be finished off completely by false accusations set in motion by the comity of scammers against such victims who at such times shall have a very difficult time explaining to their loved ones how they fell so blindly to the whims and caprices of a deceitful stranger. But that is the nature of the scamming business especially in a land such as ours where those responsible for the rot in the system have become accustomed to the art and science of slandering the reputation of the REMNANTS who seek to better the society.

What are the signs that draws the attention of scammers to easy potential victims and how do these scammers spot their most preferred 'mugus' and 'magas'? This perspective and a lot more shall be x-rayed in our next pen series. Happy new month Great People of Africa.🌍


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