I Survive On Fraud – 23-Year-Old University Graduate
Workplace operations are greatly enhanced by internet use. However, the internet has been haven for fraudsters and this contributes to degeneration of society.
Kwame(not his real name) is a 23-year-old man. He holds HND Certificate in Mechanical Engineering from Accra Technical University. He has been jobless since he completed National service.
He resorted to fraudulent activities on the internet to survive. According to him he has been doing this for the past two years.
When asked if it was right, he said it was wrong.
“I know it’s wrong but it gives me a lot of money,” he said.
Kwame explained that after his parents separated seven years ago, he was abandoned to fate and left to take care of himself and his four other siblings. He didn’t want to drop out of school, so he took to menial jobs until he got admission to the university. He said it was traumatic.
“Around when I got to the university, my friends introduced me to fraud, and even my friends were not struggling as I was but they were earning more than enough from fraud/browsing, so I decided to join them, so it can take the burden off my shoulder.” He explained
On how he convinced his “clients” to send him money, he stated that if the client was male, he pretended to be female and after two or three weeks of dating, he starts putting in requests for rent, wardrobe change and others but when the “client” is female he pretends to be romantically interested in them and after the other party “falls” for him, he drains them off their money and blocks them afterwards.
Kwame said, he has earned enough money to rent an apartment, buy a car and have enough money left to take care of his siblings for the next two years.
He disclosed the money isn’t earned easily as a scammer. He said tricksters ought to be fast, patient and smart and above all be able to learn faster. Most times ”its a plus if you can speak other international languages aside from English.
Young boys are now leaving school and dedicating their time to fraud/“browsing”/ scamming as they have termed for they have become shortcuts to wealth, which schooling cannot guarantee, exemplified in number of graduates who remain unemployed.
The reason the youth of today venture these acts is no mystery. A country where educational honors do fetch jobs, amidst rising inflation, people will fall into all kinds of temptation. We are not out of the woods yet. However, the story about this internet scammer is a wake up call for leadership to urgently fix the economy and improve living conditions or the social fabric of our very existence festers.
According to Kwame, initially fraudsters were mostly males but in recent times it is dominated by the females.
“nowadays, the lady’s are even fraudulent than the men, they have taken over the work… its either they are working themselves or are aiding their boyfriends, ” he said
He also said, that “Girls nowadays choose to go out with a fraud boy other than waste time with someone who wants to have a rather hard earned future be it schooling or learning a vocation.”
Kwame and his kind are happy to see the Ghanaian currency the cedi, fall against the dollar because they stand the chance to make a lot of money should a client pay in dollars.
Kwame is somehow terrified that some of their tricks on the internet have been uncovered, thus it might just be a matter of time a sophisticated system unmask scammers. In MOMO fraud-he reveals that individuals call claiming to be representatives of the Telcos who want to secure the mobile money wallet of the one who received their calls. He said, if you are not smart enough, they will lure you to divulge your account number and pin code. These give the scammer a direct access to empty your account.
Or worst still, a scammer may call you pretending to be a relative overseas with their usual term “sister nie oooo London” and request for your bank account details to send you money but when you give it to them they manoeuver and rather empty your account.
Cybercrime contributed to Ghana being blacklisted for money-laundering by the international watchdog, the Global Financial Action Task Force in 2012. This dented the country’s international reputation as an investment destination.
Kwame, recognizes that being a fraudster isn’t the best way to go but that is the only means of survival, which makes it difficult for him to stop anytime soon.
Just as explosives, landmines or any other lethal device, effects of Cybercrime can be deadly.
There are many young men and women out there like Kwame whose dire situations might have turned them into fraudsters. It is high time society re-examine the issues and for our leaders to know that any poor decision they take, could have a boomerang effect.