The great story in this early part of the year is a
story of a young couple who got scammed out of a huge of money in a “phishing
scam,” that was targeted at the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation’s (OCBC)
customers. The full details of the story can be found at:
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/dbs-bank-warns-of-sms-phishing-scam
Scams and con-jobs are nothing issue. Con-jobs have
been around since there have been jobs. As human civilization has gotten more “advanced”
so have scams and con-artist. This has been particularly true as technology has
advanced to levels that were once considered futuristic. The level of phishing
scams has become so sophisticated to the level that the average person is not
going to be able to tell between the scam and the actual institution they are impersonating.
An example of that subtle difference can be found below:
I guess if you have to be fair to scammers, the guys who create the sophisticated scams actually put a lot of hard work into creating something that most people won’t be able to recognize as a scam. How, for example would an untrained eye be able to distinguish between the real bank and the scam bank pretending to be the bank when the difference in the URL is almost the same?
However, a lot of scams aren’t all that difficult to around
if you were only sharp enough. The scam letters out of Nigeria were usually the
easiest to spot. In some cases, the letters from the respective ministries
might not even have the letter head of the ministry they claimed that they were
representing. One of my favorites was a diamond dealer who had bank statements
from a bank in Macau that looked like they were printed on an excel sheet the
night before.
As unsophisticated as these scams are, the question remains
– if such scams are easy to spot, how is it such that they continue to flourish.
Well, the answer is pretty obvious, they continue to thrive because they have
and endless source of customers.
The reason why people continue to fall for such scams
is the fact that the scams often tend to dress themselves up in a veneer of credibility
and they appeal to the greed factor in their victims. It’s the second factor
that usually screws up the victim. Speak to any of the victims of these scams
and they will tell you that there were “NO REASONS NOT TO TRUST.” So, what are
these “NO REASONS NOT TO TRUST”
One of the more sophisticated ones that comes to mind
is a scam that involved getting mid-level professionals to invest in hydroponic
farms. The premise was credible. The government (usually the source of everything
in Singapore) had been talking about food security and not depending on imports
and the science of hydroponics has been proven. So, in that respect the premise
was credible.
However, the key issue was that it was more “talk” about
hydroponics than actual hydroponics. The scam artist in question was very
generous in producing glossy brochures. They held impressive seminars for the "investors." However, this was hype with no substance. Even the glossy photos used in the brochures were stock photos from the "royalty-free" section of the stock library.
The premise of the scam was actually credible. The
presentation was incredibly slick. On paper there was nothing to fault the
investors for not believing in it.
Another method used by scammers to gain trust is by
using “trusted people.” One of the saddest cases that comes to mind was that of
an “investment” house that claimed that they were lending money to banks which
offered higher interest rates.
In this case the premise of the scam sounds improbable.
However, in this case it turned out that the main scammer was the type of
person whom his target audience was naturally inclined to trust – specifically a
well-established working professional. He introduced his victims to two young
men, who behaved like “Nice-boys” as they proceeded to fleece a group of
pensioners out of their life savings (which promptly found its way to Mauritius,
India and St Lucia).
If you ask each of the victims why they parted with
their money, you’ll probably find that the answer being “I had NO REASON NOT TO
TRUST.” I think of one of the victims telling the director of the company that
scammed him - “You are my niece – you should have stopped me from putting in
the money in October when you knew the company would have to close its bank account
in December.”
Ask any of the victims of this scam and they are
likely to tell you that they had “NO REASON NOT TO TRUST,” the people that they
were talking to because they were either “nice” or a “relative” or a “friend.”
In a way, Singaporeans have been lucky. We are one of
the best educated people on the planet. However, we tend to fall for things easily
because we’ve been trained to trust certain things. How can, for example, established
working professionals be untrustworthy – after all they are all licensed and
regulated by the state? How can anyone who spent so much on a marketing campaign
be a crook? We have been trained to believe that anyone who wears a shirt
(especially a white, pressed one) has our interest at heart.
Crooks and conmen are not unique to Singapore.
However, in a culture where signs and symbols of material wealth are equated
with virtue and skepticism towards established authority is frowned upon, you
provide a fertile ground for con artist. When someone shouts “Trust me” you
better not.
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