COVID SCAMMER

As an average Nigerian you must have sometime in your life gotten a call from a Hausa man who dialled the wrong number, a Yoruba man who wants to speak to his sister or daughter and a guy who who is calling you to inform you of money that you just won from a promo or a contract that has been awarded to you. In Nigeria, many have fallen into the traps of these ruthless scammers and have paid dearly for it.

With the outbreak of the pandemic, the trend seems to have skyrocketed and has become an hourly occurrence. Dear anchors, this is where my story begins.

So it is about 9/10pm in the evening and I am just sitting, chilling and enjoying the low voltage that PHCN decided to supply when my phone rings and it is from an unsaved number. Now I am not one of those people that say "I don't pick calls from unknown numbers" so I answered because I am a business woman and every call is from a potential client. As I picked, the guy on the other side of the call sounded very very believable. He explained his ordeal to me and I felt like helping him.

He was a worried husband whose wife was having trouble operating her app on her android phone. He said my number had been registered to his wife's ecobank account and that he was unable to sign into the app. He said he had been to the bank on many occasions and quite early enough but because of the queue he was not attended to. He blamed it on the Covid19 palaver and I sort of understood his ordeal. I asked where he was calling from and he said he lives in Asokoro but formerly used to live in mpape.

He ran out of airtime so I called him back. He kept explaining and I actually listened but suddenly I felt the urge to round up the conversation because he was beginning to lead me round in circles and sensed a bit of manipulation there. At this point, I ran out of airtime so I called him with my second line which shortly ran out of airtime also. He called back a few minutes later and began to explain again but one thing stood out, dude kept asking me "do you work with ecobank" , "are you an ecobank staff" "do you know anyone that works with the bank" lol it was getting too much.

I did not accept or deny, but I told him I had already contacted ecobank and that I was waiting for the customer service to reply my mail( I no send any mail o) He said that he would like to download the app again, but to sign in he would need an OTP which would be sent to my phone and he required me to send the OTP code back to him ( na there my guy story hit dead end) lmao! I told the bros that he should not worry about the OTP, customer service are working to resolve the the issue. He said he was going to call me back the next day but till now baba never call back.

It is intrigiuing how people seek to dupe others of their hard earned money. Thank God for the Holy Spirit and wisdom , I escaped that one but many have fallen victims. Have you ever experienced such before? Share your experiences.

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