I ALMOST GOT CONNED
Fake online jobs.
With the internet, comes a lot of opportunities. Also, with the internet comes with its disadvantages. At such times when youth unemployment is high and so is the spread of fake news, it doesn’t come as a shock with the amount of fake online jobs that exist. I almost fell victim once and this is how it went. I was job searching when I came across an ad from a telecommunication agency that was seeking marketers with basic high school education. I made a call to the number itself. The other person at the other end was hospitable and that didn’t make me suspect anything. Thena few days later after I had restarted my phone I decided to look up the company’s numbers online and contact them. It turned out that the people at both ends sounded very different and the company wasn’t looking for any marketers at that moment. They apologized to me because they had gotten similar calls from other people and due to this they had called the number to put down the ad. So was I to believe some random person I called from an internet ad or from the company itself?
This is the most common and the oldest way of getting conned. I have heard stories of people unknowing giving out the bank details and later find huge chunks of missing from their accounts because of this.
I was once sold for a fake iPod. This was back in 2012 and I had saved three thousand for it. The knockoff looked like the original one from the iconic logo at the back to the buttons and nothing looked out of place. By the time of purchase I didn’t even test it. A decision that I would later regret. I just looked at the case which was still in mint condition and everything look alright. It was even kept in Apple box and it had the Apple earpods. I was convinced that it was authentic.
When I reached home, I found out that it needed a smaller charging pin similar to Android phones. If you are familiar with tech specifications then you will realize that Apple devices have unique charging slots therefore only Apple-like chargers can only charge Apple devices.
When I turned it on, instead of the Apple logo there was this logo of a doodle of the planet earth. At that point I realized something was amiss. Five minutes later while I was still asking myself what I had just bought, the iPod was fully charged. I was amazed with the quick charge it needed. This made feel like I had made a good investment.It even made me look forward to owning Apple devices. It took twenty minutes of use for the whole battery to be depleted before it completely shut down. When I connected it to the computer, the MP3 player had been labeled ‘Thomas Oluoch’. At least they could have reset the device before handing it over. Tom, if you are reading this, thanks for the songs on the ‘iPod’ even though I only had it for a month before I destroyed it. Also guys remember that no stranger can sell an Apple device at a cheaper price unless it is your uncle who decides to pass down his iPhone to you for free.
No one should pay for interviews and let it remain like that. At the beginning of the year I saw an ad that read something like:
This college dropout is earning 10,000 per day while
his peers are earning 5% of that while doing the same thing.
To even prove its legitimacy, it showed screenshots of text messages of who is supposed to be the guy getting 10k from M-Pesa. I thought to myself that there was no way the messages would be fabricated. It just had to be true.
I contacted the number via Whatsapp. First of all, the number had an avi of a beautiful lady as bait. She looked like the love-child of Beyoncé and Ciara. They replied to my message by telling me to buy a suit and not to forget tobring money for the interview. Money for the interview? As soon as I read that I closed the message. A few days later, I saw a similar message. This time, the lady was making 15kon a daily basis and earning equally to her male counterparts. Way to go for FEMINISM.
They finished up the post with screenshots for proof. There was also a number. This time, the number was different.Therefore, I contacted the number through Whatsapp. It smelt fishy when the avi had the same lady in the same clothes just as the previous number. Things got fishier when I got the same reply. I reverse image searched the picture and then I found that it was model Jasmine Sanders.
This has been the biggest waste of my time and money. I am talking about those ads that will tell you that you have won a free iPhone and then when you click on them they tell you to enter your mobile number which you will later find out that you have subscribed to some service that charges 30 shillings per day when they send you a message. I had subscribed to so many of them that I had to change my SIM card.
Lastly, text messages from unknown numbers. I have been smart enough to not send money to them but that didn’t stop me from being sympathetic. There was this time that I got a message and it read:
Mama Onyango, send me money via Western Union my son has been
bitten by a snake and I don’t have money to take him to hospital.
The first thing that came to my mind was not the fact I had been addressed wrongly but that the fact someone had been bitten by a snake. At that time, I didn’t have any Western Union account let alone any account so I told my mother about sending money to the poor parent. My mother just looked at me and laughed at my face. She stopped cooking just to laugh at me. She started tearing up and I didn’t even know what to say. That’s when she told me that I was being conned and that she gets similar messages very frequent that she is reconsidering the people she shares her number with. I later learnt that it was just a text from a prisoner who is somewhere locked up in Kamiti.
So that is how I have been conned in the past. If you have had such a similar experience, comment. Don’t forget to share this post with someone who you think is more likely to get conned or has been conned. Stay safe.
