Ladies beware: Learn from how this lady got duped of of N120,000 in Lagos

  You can learn one or two things from this woman’s story!She was scammed with the name of her church and church members. It reminds me of when I was duped last year by a fake Arik Air official, never planned to tell it but i just might do so now.

The twitter handle, Charity Arinze that narrated the story said “My friend has just been scammed. She received a call from someone who said he knew her in church and mentioned his name and other names of her prominent church members. The guy now said he had relocated to Port Hacourt. and needed someone in Lagos to get products from Bentex Olawale engineering Ikeja and deliver to 2 Chevron drive first Gate Lekki. Details standard chrome, models spn no 1.8Store Keepers name: Gabriel Alabi, phone no: 07080712044 while his won phone nos, Emmanuel 09030185535. 

When she called the Mr Gbariel on phone that Mr Emma sent her to help pick the product and deliver, he told her to deposit some money before they could dispatch the product to her for onward delivery. Unfortunately she fell victim, and they scammed her of 120k and the money was paidinto Access Bank. When she revisited the bank that it was scam, they told her the money has been withdrawn on the same day and the bank refused to give her details of the account.”

In my own case, N60, 000 was lost (I lost N20, 000 while two other friends lost N20k each too) and I still can’t believe i fell for that scam, lol!

I had this 9-5pm job that I was doing then (2013) and sometimes my work extended to receiving calls/making calls to clients (if need be).

One Friday however, while carrying about my job description diligently, a client who claimed to be ‘Patrick Okafor’ from Arik Airline, called to make some enquiries and as usual I received the call calmly, curtly and …as I could.

After attending to his enquiries, he thanked me and said he was very impressed with how I attended to him.

He asked for what I studied in school, my grades, credentials…blah blah and then he asked if I would like to work with Arik Air .

I simply laughed over it but he was very persistent so I quickly googled his name and I found that the supposed ‘Patrick Okafor’ was real, he’s the GM for security/operations in Arik, in addition he won two awards recently.

In convincing me, he said “See dear, Arik is currently recruiting (not cabin crew), customer/human resource/client officers and today is the last day for the interview and I will really like you to be there, you have really impressed me” and then he mentioned a mouth watering, jaw breaking and bone weakening salary range!

I looked through my schedule and asked if I could fly in on Monday for my interview because I did not plan to leave Lagos that weekend but he said ‘Nah, we have selected the employees and today is the final interview stage, medical check-ups and screening will hold tomorrow (Saturday) I am going to include your name cos I’m on the board and your training will begin in Lagos on Monday”

It sounded so real, I suspected no foul play but I told him ‘Thank you for the offer sir but I love my current job….and I can’t fly out of Lagos today”

He said ‘Okay’ and asked if I had any friend who was as pleasant as I was or that I could vouch for.

“I’l be extending the opportunity to three of your friends, preferably a male and two females but I’l really like you to come, I want you to work with us @ Arik, you impressed me”.

So I told him I would get back to him.

Sharp sharp I took to my BBM status and threw it open for my contacts, in less than 3 seconds, I got over a 100 pings…anyway, I selected two of them and asked them to call the dude which they did.

I began having second thoughts and my conscience began scolding me “Kemi you don’t know if this is God’s way of turning your life around for the best, lol” so I sent him a text saying “I changed my mind, I’m interested.”

He called back, he laughed (he has this chief-like voice by the way) and asked why I said no at first…anyway, he said I needed to go and book a flight at the airport and when we checked the fee was like 33k+ so I said “I don’t have that amount to spend o” and he said ‘Don’t worry, you’l be given a discount…you’l only pay N20, 110…I’l give you the account to pay it into (Diamond Bank) so that you can have your ticket sorted out on time…all you need to do is to show up at the airport with your teller and passport…take your credentials, NYSC discharge certificate, birth cert, five passports and CV along cos you’ld need these at the interview”