MAMA GOT SCAMMED!

It’s her birthday today and in lieu of a gift, I decided to just give her cash…nope not because I want her to buy a gift for herself but because she had just recently been SCAMMED!!! Yup …you heard it right my mom got scammed! I guess all her years as an intelligence officer did not truly prepare her for these kinds of things…or I guess my mom’s gullibility got the better of her and so got victimized. You see it’s not an entirely new modus operandi but when she got a text message from an unknown number telling her that this is his/her new roaming number, she immediately assumed it was my brother (who was in Abu Dhabi). Then, when he asked for some load, at first she thought nothing of it; maybe he was just out of money and needed to call someone. But when the scammer started asking for more and told her that he is doing it as some sort of a ‘loading business’ for other Filipinos in the area, she even felt happy. She thought that finally my brother had become wise enough and business-minded so that his hard-earned money would not just go to waste. And so she thought nothing of pawning her jewelry and borrowing money from friends just so she could buy enough cell cards that he asked – I think about 20 or 50K! The sad part is that my brother failed to call her that Friday (I think the scammer started texting her around Wednesday) as his usual habit (because Friday was his day-off) so he failed to alert her to the scammer’s evil intent. In fact, her giving of load continued up to Sunday when my brother finally called and told her he has not changed his roaming number at all…oh no! And that was when she felt her world crashing on her… And so this is the reason why I am giving her money…not much but just enough to tide her over with her day-to-day necessities. Since all the money she would be earning now would be used to pay her loans and the jewelry she pawned, she would have not much left to buy her food and other stuff… but, I guess my brother would also help her out…after all though he did not intend to it was indirectly his fault that this happened to her. I just hope now Mama would learn her lesson and not be so gullible anymore…I remember when I was still a teen-ager, she almost always gets enticed by some smooth-talking sales personnel to buy something she doesn’t really need – that’s how gullible she is! Or maybe she just has a soft spot for people in need so even if she doesn’t really have the money to spare, she couldn’t help but give it away to someone whom she feels needed it more than she does…