I have always prided myself as a smart Alec. I have tried to be ahead of evildoers, scammers and other fraudsters. As a result, I have never used an ATM card for bank transactions. Not that I ever had so much to be afraid of losing. There is an Ewe proverb which translates to mean that even if you don’t have anything of value, you still have to lock your door.

I got my first MTN Sim Card in 2002 after having used a tiGO one when that company started as Mobitel. The number began with 0244 because that was what the NCA had granted the company at the time it began operations. I still have that number which I registered a money transfer regime with, after pressure from people who would want to transact money transfer business with me.

Then about six years ago, I visited a cousin who was a Medical Officer in Cape Coast to spend a couple of days. On the morning of the second day an SMS pop-up showed on the screen of my phone from a strange number purporting to have credited my MoMo account with over a thousand cedis. What intrigued me was that the balance as indicated from this “transfer” actually showed that if I subtracted the purported addition I would still be left with the amount already in the account.

Suddenly a call came through from someone claiming to have inadvertently credited my account with a thousand that was meant for someone else and that I should go through a certain process to revert the money to him. He claimed he was calling from Winneba. I told him that because it came from a certain number I was only going to resend his text to him so he could have his money. I did not understand the method he wanted to show me and I told him I was not conversant with what he wanted me to do. I told him I was going to Pedu to get it transferred back to him and he agreed.

I quickly drove to Pedu, told a vendor that cash was accidentally dropped into my account and that he should reverse the transaction for me. He took my word and started the process, then realised that the amount in my wallet was not up to a thousand so he could not continue. I did not understand until he scrutinised what was on my phone. “Money transfers don’t come as text message from numbers, Sir. They come with Mobile Money,” he quipped and said it was a scam. The bloke at Winneba called to check if I had done the transfer. Before I could say he was a fool, he hung up.

Before the end of that day I had eight calls from people claiming to be at Kasoa and had moved various sums into my MoMo wallet and asking me to check my account balance in case there was no notification on the screen of my phone. I wondered why my number was a target. How did they get my phone number in the first place?  When I tried to find out, I was told these scammers dial numbers randomly, but it turned out that their main targets were numbers beginning with 0244 because that was the initial prefix from MTN so the users were likely to be the elderly who were not technology savvy to suspect they could be victims of a scam.

Their modus operandi has changed over the years. The moment a substantial amount of money hits my phone, a message would pop up asking me to enter my PIN code to complete a “Cash Out” transaction. The latest was just a couple of days ago and the destination was to GCB Bank. I called a friend at one of the branches of the bank just to ask a few questions. The bank was likely to be a victim as well.

I have spoken to the numerous friends who work at MTN. Their response was that under no circumstance should I ever enter my PIN code if I did not authorise any transaction because the fraudsters cannot do that on my behalf. But these scammers never let up. They would call and if they realised that you detected they were fraudsters, another person would call, claiming to be a staff of MTN, to inform you that the previous caller was a fraudster and that you must follow certain steps to protect your account being scammed. In my case, this particular scenario only plays out when I am driving. And it has happened more than 20 times in just a couple of months.

Only last week, I chanced upon a young man who is a mobile money vendor. I poured out my encounters with these scammers and wondered how they could detect a cash lodgement into my account because the latest one requested my PIN code for the transfer of an odd 1,472 cedis. How did the scammer ask for the transfer of that amount? The young man told me these fraudsters have accomplices in the Telcos, in my case, the MTN. The accomplices follow all transactions of clients and relay the information to the scammers and when people fall victim, the proceeds are shared among them.

According to this guy, the scammers are mostly semi-literate or school dropouts who do not have the technological capacity to run the system of the Telcos to follow people’s financial transactions, unless there is someone from the inside. I believed him because the English these scammers speak makes me wonder if the Telcos conduct proper interviews if these blokes were really their staff. Videos abound on social media on the activities of these fraudsters, yet their activities continue unabated.

I am on tiGO-Cash and V-Cash as well, but I have had not a single issue with scammers on their platforms. It’s only MTN. They might be the market leader so they easily attract the hoodlums, but do they have any system in place to monitor the conversations between their staff in the sensitive money area with their clients or partners in crime? If, indeed, there are moles in the Telcos there must be a way to flush them out.

The mobile money is great service for the ordinary folks like me and my relatives in the countryside and everything must be done to protect us from societal deviants and criminals.

If the activities of these criminals were not lucrative they would have folded up by now. Customers need to be protected because not all of us understand what these transactions on these devices entail. The regulators must find a way to ensure that clients of these mobile money regimes are protected. They should not only concern themselves with revenue they get from the operators. They should not allow stealing from our MoMo wallet.

Writer’s e-mail address:

akofa45@yahoo.com

By Dr. Akofa Segbefia