A few weeks ago, I received a friend request on Facebook from a middle-aged man who said he was from Germany and worked as a flight attendant and bitcoin trader.
He would text me in the afternoon and ask how my day was and would tell me what he had for lunch and where he was flying to the following day. Part of me felt he could be a scammer but I thought let’s see where this chatting goes. He would ask about the weather in Oman, when is the best time to visit, and what are the property prices in Muscat.
Once he tried to convince me to buy bitcoin, and when I said I was not interested he sounded angry saying “We are friends, and we should be able to talk about everything”. Once he texted me saying he was in Canada with his friends, and could not use his credit card and asked me to send him some cash, when I replied, “sorry I can't, he responded, “Why?”
Scamming is a common phenomenon and the internet made it easier for scanners to study their prey and plan how to lure them to trap. Most victims are middle-aged or older women who are either divorced or widowed or living alone. Being lonely and in need of feeling loved makes them the perfect prey. The internet is full of real stories of women who meet men while on a holiday abroad and fall in love with them in a short period. Some end up getting married and start helping their new husband get their nationality so they can travel back with them in the hope of living happily ever after, only to discover that the man is after their money and the new nationality. The majority of scamming victims feel shy and do not report the scamming preferring to suffer the psychological impact I silence.
Psychologists tell us that scammers use sophisticated psychological techniques to get control over their targets. Some would contact several victims in the same period to see who is vulnerable while others focus on a specific person. The most common method of scamming is probably random phone calls from someone claiming to work in a company selling a specific product and offering you a special discount for a limited period, the offer is usually “too good to be true” yet some people fall for it.
The second method is creating a sense of urgency when scammers fabricate scenarios like claiming a bank account is at risk of closure or your order will not be delivered unless you send them money. This aims to prevent you from assessing the situation logically or seeking advice, so you rush to send them what they asked. So how can you avoid being scammed? Make sure you verify the identity of the person contacting you by asking a different way to call them back. Don’t rush into signing up for suspicious offers, watch out for pressure tactics, and remember that someone else’s problem is not yours to solve. When in doubt consult a colleague or family member.
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