Scam Targeting OFW Relatives

Here’s a variant of the Dugo Dugo gang scam, but this time targeting relatives of OFW’s. It’s hard to believe that in this day and age that this scam still works, considering that it has been going on for years already and has been widely covered in mainstream media.

How this scam works is that a relative of an OFW(usually the wife) will be contacted via cellphone by somebody impersonating somebody from the Dept of Foreign Affairs then they will be told that their relative is in distress and needs some money. The relative is told intimate details about the OFW’s relative that they will be convinced to send cash to the scammers.

This particular incident had a wife of a seaman scammed out of P37,000 when she was fooled into thinking that her seaman husband got into a fight abroad, was smuggled in the country by his mates, then needed money for an operation. After they started asking more money from her was when she started doubting the scammers. Upon calling the agency that deployed her husband abroad, she found out that she was ok.

This sort of scam is similar to Pretexting, a form of Social Engineering, with the target of getting people to do something. There are ways however to prevent from falling victim to their modus operandi, most of which rely on common sense and thinking on your feet always. The “tragedy” part of the scam is what unbalances you and prevents you from thinking coherently.

As a family, you could set up a system of determining if something bad had really happened to a family member. This could be easily done now with the advent of cellphones that speed up communication even if the party your contacting is in another country. Do this by keeping a list of contact numbers of friends or office workers close to a family member. So if something indeed happened, one can easily verify and ask for help from them. Another is to always keep each other informed of their whereabouts and plans for the day.

It’s quite sad really when people’s source of livelihood is fooling other people. So either in business or in everyday life, one must always be eternally vigilant, informed and careful.