THE WORLD OF SCAMMERS

 For the past 20 years, there has been an impending rise of fraudulent individuals who earn millions and thousands through scamming those who are naive and desperate. This practice has been quite prominent as of late, yet its emergence dates back to as far as 2001. Fraudsters come in different shapes and sizes and present themselves in different forms. They deliberately target the lower class due to their desperation for easy and quick money. Some fraudsters have even gone to the extent of presenting themselves as prophets and pastors, preaching nothing but prosperity sermons all in the name of receiving incentives or cash in exchange for blessings, prophesies, healing and providing positive affirmations. 

Unfortunately, countless individuals have fallen prey to scams, resulting in bankruptcy and extreme debt they can never get out of. In the past, scammers were easy to identify, one could easily tell that what was presented to them was a blatant scam, however, as of late scammers have become innovative and are also learning and adapting as the years progress. Back in 2005 to 2011, the most common scams were email scams, where you would be sent an email randomly requesting for your banking details in exchange for winning a competition or an amount of cash. Digital scammers also used Yahoo as a prolific platform to scam desperate, especially elderly, individuals who were not tech savvy. What emerged from these Yahoo scams were the popular ‘Yahoo boys’. This term mostly referred to Nigerian men who lure women through Yahoo and defraud them of large sums of money, they form syndicates that sit on their laptops 24/7, solely working on scamming people. 

Fraudsters

As Yahoo scams continued to rise over the years, another wave of fraudsters emerged, presenting online ‘stokvels’ where individuals would enter schemes through payment of a certain amount and further recruit others who will in-turn also pay a joining fee, all with the prospect of accumulating money in your account as the mission would be that the more people you recruit, the more you have in your storage account. This money would then rotate among individuals who have joined the group, starting with the scheme administration then further trickle to those at the bottom of the pyramid, however, more often than not, the more people recruited the harder it is to account for the money flow, thus usually resulting in the total disappearance of the administration and the closure of the scheme, leaving countless people without money and having not received any dividends back. 

The recent wave of scammers are the indomitable prophets and pastors. These are by far the strongest and most controversial faction of scammers. They are considered the strongest because they use the most influential tool to lure their subjects, religion. However, as much as they are the strongest of all scammers, they are by far the easiest to identify. It is common knowledge that the Bible speaks of false prophets and how people should beware of them. 

Ways

It is nonetheless hard to prove their scamming ways to the populace they usually target simply because men of God are seen as special or sacred. Religion scammers more usually preach on nothing but prosperity. All their sermons are usually based on blessings, success and prosperity. They are commonly referred to as ‘prosperity preachers’. How this line of scammers scam is they use their sermons to entice individuals to give money in order to receive these blessings they speak of. In recent years, we have seen the selling and purchasing of what is referred to as ‘Holy water’ and also the use of ‘offering’ to threaten people to ‘pay up’ for their blessings, by mostly interpreting statements from the Bible to inflict fear in people, such as telling them how the only way to receive blessings and prosperity is by offering, but not just offering any amount, but large amounts of money. This last group of scammers is the most controversial simply because they usually have a cult following that believe more in them than they do in God, making it hard for the victims to realise they are being scammed.

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