FROM time immemorial, people have been stealing from each other.  In Biblical times, the thefts were material things such as sheep or goats or clandestinely reaping the neighbours’ crops.  Today, many thefts have become “white collar,” such as trying to sell a property that does not belong to the seller, or claiming that after being paid a large “commission,” one would be able to secure lucrative government contracts or obtain the housing lots which are being distributed by the Ministry of Housing, and so on.  The scammers usually turn out to be known confidence tricksters or “con-men,” and the victims, as usual, tend to be poor and trusting folk.  These kinds of scammers are homegrown, and most citizens are aware of them.

Now that Guyana has become an oil-and-gas economy, foreign scammers have begun to target the country.  They are attracted here because they perceive that more money is in the hands of the population than formerly. The people were simple and innocent and could easily be conned.  The same trend affected the Gulf States many decades ago, when they were transformed into oil-and- gas economies.

These foreign scammers use all kinds of ingenious scams, and we will point out a few of the simplest and most used in Guyana.  There are foreign prostitute organisations that have reportedly been sending persons mostly from Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and The Dominican Republic, to exploit their victims and pay their foreign sponsors.  These foreign persons who often engage in prostitution are, in reality, an exploited group themselves. They mostly remain in the cities and coastal regions, though some are venturing into the interior in the mining areas.

Another scam that is going on now is someone telephoning you, saying you have won a sum of money from GTT, but you should make certain payments to their credit cards.  GTT should be able to uncover the criminals operating in its name.

Another common scam that predates the oil-and-gas industry, but which has been revived with a new vigour is the scamming by letters.  There are, for example, letters emanating mostly from Nigeria, where the writers claim that they have got their hands on millions of dollars of funds from government departments which they would like to deposit in their victims’ foreign bank accounts, giving them a 40 percent commission for this laundering service.

The victims would have to send the scammers details of their foreign bank accounts, which would then be immediately plundered.  Or, there are compulsive and almost mesmerising letters coming from various countries inviting the victims to make an “investment” in “shares” of the world’s wealthiest lotteries,such as El Gordo of Spain or the Irish Sweepstakes.  After collecting the first remittances, the victims would be convincingly informed of how close they were to winning and becoming millionaires and inducing them to try again.  And if they do, they become hooked, never winning, but helplessly finding their life savings draining into the pockets of the
scammers.

Most Guyanese have heard of Stanford and Madoff, two Ponzi scheme operators who robbed their victims of millions of dollars before the law caught them.  Most imagine that Ponzi schemes are a scam that occurs only in developed countries and that Guyana would never encounter them.  Actually, with Guyana becoming an oil- and-gas country, Ponzi operators have clandestinely begun to set themselves up.  A Ponzi scheme, in its simplest form, is someone receiving deposits from the public with the offer of enormous interest rates every six months or a year, trying to invest some of this money, but mostly using the new deposits to pay the interest of the old.  The Ponzi scheme operator takes a good part of the deposits for himself.  If ever there is the slightest loss of confidence, there will be a run on the scheme, and it will fall apart like a pack of cards, and depositors will lose their money.

Two Ponzi scheme operators were recently reported in the media as having been arrested by the police.  The first is a Cuban married to a Guyanese and who had naturalised as a Guyanese citizen, and the other is a Nigerian.  They both operated in the countryside, and they were only discovered when one of their depositors complained to the police that he could not have his deposit repaid.  It is believed that several other Ponzi schemers are operating in Guyana.

Another group of scammers are those who claim by the use of witchcraft, astrology or spiritualism or supernatural practices from India, Africa and Suriname:  they could cure all illnesses, including cancer;  ensure one is successful in court cases;  in business;  in love and marriage;  and in general win health, wealth and prosperity for themselves.  They could also harm one’s enemies physically and otherwise.   For these services, the spiritualists would demand a number of fees and would always have excuses when their “supernatural” remedies do not work, shifting the responsibility for lack of success to the victims.  Several of these scammers boldly advertise in the classified columns of the newspapers,

The laws affecting such crimes, such scams, must be urgently modernised to ensure protection for the population.  The best protection citizens could have, however, is for them to emphatically realise that one never gets something for nothing and to reject any enticing offer of something for nothing.  If one is guided by that principle, one could never be a victim of any scammer.