Money Scams - it’s time to go public

What is wrong with this country? Do we always entertain the exploitation of innocence by the powerful and the cunning?

It seems that Sri Lanka has become a treasure land for the money scammers over the recent times and with the little intervention by the government to curb their activities, they seem to enjoy the gullibility of the Sri Lankan innocent people. Several such scams have swept through the country over the years and little awareness has been raised to preclude people from getting entangled in these schemes.

I published a post earlier about the Typeinternational and its Sri Lankan franchise Alpha Holdings Pvt Ltd and how it turns out to be another money scam, reaping out the money from the less informed general public. This post is not intended to be replica of the previous one, but a result of something I observed in the newspaper today. I was amazed to see that Alpha Holdings has published a full page advertisement in one of the extra sections of Lakbima (March 27^th), one of the leading newspapers in the country. To be honest, that advertisement, by the looks of it, is something irresistible and hadn’t I known about them earlier, even I would have fallen for it. The question is, how many people will read this advertisement and how many will fall for it?

So, does this mean that the government is indifferent to these kinds of promotions by these scammers or does this mean that the government is implicitly acknowledging their work?

To my knowledge, the best way people can avoid these scams, especially those regarding the internet, is to do a web search on that company. Since most of the fast money making schemes are scams the chances are that someone before you has tried that and if they have failed they will have posted something somewhere in the web. Government intervention regarding the restriction and control of these scams is still at a very elementary stage. It should be appreciated that the Central Bank carried out certain awareness campaigns through the newspapers regarding the Gold Quest pyramid scheme although, ironically, the head of the bank itself today is one of the leading persons carried out that scheme around Sri Lanka; but let’s leave it at that. I wouldn’t call the Gold Quest a scam, but still the end result is the same; the poor will suffer and the rich will get even richer.

So, what can we really do to safeguard our people from getting caught in the trap?

Circulate e-mails, submit in forums, inform the responsible people; just do what ever you can to curb this menace. It’s time that we take action when those that ought to are not. I believe all the bloggers who concur with this view will do something to help the future targets of these cruel people. And I sincerely hope that government, sooner than later, will come up with a policy to safeguard our people from the potential scams that fly over this country.