In our recent random survey of some major cyber cafes in Nigeria,
we observed that most young men now spend more time on football betting
websites like, bet365.com, 1950bet.com, naijabet.com… This is a shift in the
trend, moving away from Facebook madness, which brought about a raped increase
in youth involvement in a version of cyber crime called ‘Social Media Love.’
Cyber Crime isn’t
new in Nigeria.
In 2002, Nigeria
accounted for 15,5% of total internet crime activities reported to American
FBI. It is reported that over 50, 000 scam letters originate from Nigeria
each month, even though the 'scammers' use different countries’ IPs.
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| Job Men At Work |
Perhaps, it started as a result of high unemployment rate in
the country and more of young university graduates without jobs decided to go
by the name ‘Job men’ – using their academic ingenuity and their computer
knowledge to perpetrate advance free fraud on the Internet.
Well, you don’t say what successes these evil-genius began
to show-off opulent lifestyles, and painted the streets red with some latest
models of exquisite automobiles. Jobmen’d proud themselves with such illegality,
calling it ‘Reparation of Funds.’
It got worst as more and more young people began to
understand the scheming using facebook, linkedIn, Match Maker, Badoo… to
unleash fraud on the Internet. It’s even common to find college boys who are
already involved in the crime, proud themselves as Job men.
Social Media Love
is a scam largely schemed around impersonations and false claims on various
social media websites. A Job man creates such false accounts and uses it to
propose illegal transfer of money, contract fraud, sale of crude oil,
disbursement of money from wills, intimate relationships…
For instance, a Job man takes a beautiful lady’s photo to
open an account on say facebook. He impersonate or forge a name and then use
such fraudulent account to lure relationships on the social media platform,
making false claims and by appealing to the emotions of his victims, the Job
man defraud them both monetary and material valuables.
Remember the case of Cynthia Osokogu, how she was duped of
her money, raped and strangled to death by some Job men, who lured her into a
hotel room at Lake View Estate, Lagos
(Read Her Story).
Good News: This is the reason I think it is good news that
many of the job men are getting away from cyber crime to embrace football
betting.
Well, more and more Internet users are also getting smarter
each day and it is becoming more difficult to get them to fall victims of such
frivolous scheme.
I think that the shift in trend may be due to the difficulty
of getting victims to budge as well as the word of mouth going around town of
how easy football fans are winning lots of money from betting online.
I think some Job men suddenly realized how they could better
channel their ingenuity into predicting football games than defrauding some
victims on the Internet. With this, no longer would they be afraid of Police or
EFCC busting into cyber café to arrest them.
Remember, Nigeria
cyber crime bill propose 5 years jail term or 15 million Naira fine for anyone
found guilty.
I know some observer may say ‘Criminals are gamblers!’ The
difference really is the legality. It isn’t illegal to use your knowledge in
predicting upcoming or on-going football games around the world. It is a decent
means of making money or what do you think.
I really like you post,Thanks for your sharing.
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