A scam is not only when someone takes your money. It is also when someone takes other values away from you in order to use it to achieve an aim for himself. For instance, if you are a director of a company and someone hacks into your official email account, the person may not take your money but he could take something out of your reputation by using the email account to defraud one of your clients. As you can see, it could even be better for you that someone takes your money than taking your business reputation.

Also, I have seen people using the picture of an accident victim to defraud other people online. He/she would tell you to send some money to an account no matter how small. He/she would pray for you in advance, saying something like "as you help me, you can never be a victim of an accident this Christmas Season". Then, she would add, "even if you cannot give anything, at least, share this to help me". When you share, you have helped his/her crime to succeed. I know you wouldn't like that to be you. So, he/she has scammed you actually in a very big way just by making you share the scam post. Do you know how many more people who would get to read and fall for it just because you tapped the 'SHARE' icon in split seconds? It means that the scam artist is using you to smile to the banks very fatly.

In one of those cases, the guy whose picture was being used for the scam even made a comment, posting his other pictures to prove that he was the real person. He also placed a curse on the scam artist using his predicament to scam people. BUT, SURPRISINGLY, PEOPLE KEPT ON SHARING THE SCAM MESSAGE just because the scam artist played on their emotions. People even continued to make comments after the comment where the original owner of the photo complained.

WHAT TO DO?
I am not saying that people shouldn't express their pious emotions by helping other people who are in need. I like helping too. But, we should be careful lest we are USED by unscrupulous people to achieve their sinister intentions. One of the red flags in such a scam is that the scam artist will not include his/her physical address. Someone who is genuinely in need would like to include a physical address where people can come to meet him/her with any help they have.

In some cases, the scam artists might be daring enough to just place some unexisting physical address there, hoping that nobody would care about that. And even if you found out, you will still be unable to stop the message from spreading since other people will keep sharing it. Whatever happens, if the post has a phone number and a physical address, I advise you to call the number and tell them you are coming there. If you are not close to the address, you can ask someone who is close to go and confirm. You can even make a post here on Nairaland to get the attention of anyone who could help you to confirm if the person asking for help is real. That's by the way.

WHY WE ARE HERE
I have told all these stories above to prepare the ground to discuss the exchange I just had with a 'Christian-themed' scam message I just received. Someone might say, "after all, no money was demanded, so let me re-send it". But, if the scam artist makes you do something against your faith, it's even worse than any other type of crime. Yes, if scamming you out of your reputation could be a worse-case scenario than scamming you out of your money, then I can tell you also that scamming you out of your faith should be worse than the rest.

The response I gave to this message made me remember when the Scammer-General (Satan) came to scam Jesus Christ out of his relationship with God. And what is your faith if not your relationship with God?

Please people, there is hunger in the land. But some people think that it is by scamming other hungry people that they can satisfy their own hunger. Don't let them. Instead, trust in your God, be strong and don't let anyone play on your pious emotions. Thank you.

I don't think there's any monetary or financial scheme attached to these kind of messages.

It's mainly sick, lonely people who needed to weirdly see their acts circulate in places they can't socially be that usually do this.

The stuff is very popular on Facebook

theFilmtricsay

BadBradley:
I don't think there's any monetary or financial scheme attached to these kind of messages.

It's mainly sick, lonely people who needed to weirdly see their acts circulate in places they can't socially be that usually do this.

Yes, that's why I took time to explain that it is not only money that you can be scammed out of. You can be scammed out of other values as well.