Rock wrote:
If you wanna give to the less fortunate, there are many legitimate ways to do it rather than getting cheated so frequently.
If anyone needs money for any reason at any time in any country (USA included), just make a polite excuse to deny them. It's really that simple Lad. Even Winston, the guy who signed over $1,500 to a Nevada brothel has pretty much managed not to be scammed in Philippines. If you learn how to say "sorry" and "no", then you cut out a huge percentage of the scam possibilities. All that's left are holdup pings/muggings, pickpocetings/snatchings, and more elaborate investment/consumption ripoffs.
A slightly more sophisticated scam was being perpetrated in LA area not too long ago. It involved callers who had somehow managed to glean personal data on individuals, pretended to be from the IRS, and would call these people up posing as IRS agents. They basically convinced the people they were indeed from the IRS (otherwise how would they know for instance the last 4 digits of your social), acted like they were about to execute an audit because they believed tax fraud had occurred and that a certain amount of underpaid taxes plus penalties and interest had already been accessed (usually 10s of thousands of dollars), but due to shortage of manpower, they were offering a quick solution (no audit and wipe the slate clean) - just wire something much smaller figure (like say $3,239) to such and such a party/account by the end of the day. This really worked on quite a few people because it scared the hell out of them and panic tends to override rational thinking.
Totally agree. I have no problem with the declaration that there are lots of liars, scammers and thieves in the Philippines. I only object to the wild notion that there are not such people in our home countries. Here's an interesting statistic kept annually in the US on employee theft/fraud:
Amount stolen annually from U.S. businesses by employees $50,000,000,000
Percent of annual revenues lost to theft or fraud 7 %
Percent of employees who have stolen at least once from their employer 75 %
Percent of employees who have stolen at least twice from their employer 37.5 %
Percent of all business bankruptcies caused by employee theft 33 %
The last stat is particularly telling: % of bankruptcies cause by employee theft. For small businesses the biggest risk is not government paperwork or even taxes - it's employee theft.
Most of us in our home countries are immune (or feel immune) to cons and scams, because we have lived there our entire lives and know the score. But that doesn't mean that people are not scammed every day. As I said before, "knowledge is the key," You know how things are supposed to work in your home country, so are less likely to be cheated. You don't know how things are supposed to work in a foreign country and so are more likely to be a victim. Add to that the fact that most guys in a 3rd world nation are being led by their pecker and bad things can happen.
