OVER the years, Guyana has been the target for international scammers, the most ubiquitous being from Nigeria. The scammers throw out a variety of ruses, one of the most common being the offer of buying shares in tickets for the world’s richest lotteries, such as El Gordo of Spain where the prizes are hundreds of millions of dollars.

Letters from these lottery scammers come from all over the world – from Germany, Australia, Britain and other developed countries. By some means, they manage to obtain the names, addresses and even telephone numbers of their intended victims. These letters are attractively written, addressing the intended victim familiarly by his first name.

Some letters begin by informing the victim that he has won so many million dollars in a lottery and describing how he should come to receive his money. When he reads on further, the letter then discreetly tells him how much money he must forward to them and even the mechanism of so doing. The letters initially ask for a fairly manageable sum so as to have the victim take the bait, and once he is hooked, the scammers may even follow up with voice contact.

In Nigeria, there are actually training schools for such scammers which results in the scammers using the same line of approach. One of the favourite Nigerian letters begins by saying that the scammer works with a Minister of Government who has under his control large amount of funds which no one has any record of and he would be willing to send it to the foreign account of the intended victim who would receive 40 per cent or half the funds for his service.

Other letters of this type would say that he, himself or one of his close associates is a very senior public servant who has in his hands millions of dollars not in the accounts of his department and that he would immediately send these large sums to the victim’s foreign bank account and that the victim would receive 50 per cent for his service.

From other parts of West Africa, especially the francophone countries, terrorist groups which would like to launder money offer their victims large sums and suck them into the world of international terrorism without actually paying over any money.
The object of these Nigerian scams is mainly to secure the number and details of the victim’s foreign bank account and other personal details which they could use to rob the victim.

All of these gambling offerings are meant to rob the victims. One Guyanese victim of these Nigerian scams was a dentist who was so taken in by the scammers that they would telephone him with short calls that could not be recorded. The victim ended up by losing his house and died almost a pauper.

The only foreign gambling offering that was fairly credible was the English Football Pools which was played here for many years, until the scarcity of foreign exchange caused their local agents to close shop. With the football pools, there were local agents, the results of the matches were broadcast by BBC and some players did win even large sums. There was accordingly a fair amount of transparency.

For some time now there had been a lull in the activities of these foreign scammers but since the news that Guyana was on the verge of becoming an oil-producing country, there has been an upsurge of their activities.

When one receives a letter from the scammers, and sometimes several letters would arrive in the same week, one should immediately destroy them. Do not reply or do not show such letters to any friend or associate for that is exactly what the scammers would hope. No law enforcement body could deal with them since everything about them is fake including their addresses which keep changing. One must resolutely protect one’s self against the skill of these confidence tricksters.

The lottery in Guyana is owned by a Canadian company and they sell millions of dollars per week in tickets. Much of this money is spent by players who feel that the greater the amounts of money they “invest” the greater would be their chances of winning the jackpot. Many of these persons have never won anything but they persist in the hope of winning.

The players who believe that the greater the amounts of money they spend on tickets, the greater are their chances of making winnings are assuming that there is some rationality about the lottery drawings and that they are not dependent on pure chance or luck.
If winning the jackpot is solely dependent on chance or luck then with the purchase of one ticket, if it is one’s luck to win, then one will be the winner. This proposition is testable from the experience of hundreds of buyers.