On Swindlers and Texting

I received a forwarded e-mail from a friend which was about this guys blabbing to kingdom come about his friends almost being swindled by a person pretending to be him.

This struck a high-pitched chord in my cholesterol-coated heart string. This happened to me and my sister.

FLASHBACK MODE:

My sister first e-mailed me at my work account asking if I texted her lately. When I said no, she replied in a heart-beat that she was almost swindled a formidable amount of money by a person pretending to be me. I told her to tell me the WHOLE conversation so that I'd know by the syntax and composition if I knew the person who was using my identity to trick the people I hold dearly.

This was her uber-long e-mail (obviously edited and translated to English so that my non-Filipino fans can understand).

-=-=-=-=-=-

Oh my. It looks like I really am stupid! This was what happened. Last week, I went to Manila because our brother invited me to go out with his family to visit Ocean Park. While there, he asked me why we don't go into business like selling pre-paid cards on-board because 500PHP pre-paid cards sell there for 15USD. Come Monday or Tuesday somebody texted me:

SWNDLER: This is my new roaming number! I got Sim-Blocked! Text me here when you get what I sent! Miss you.

SISTER B (thinking why you were using a Globe number when I know you use Smart roaming): Driedfish?

SWINDLER: Yeah it's me!

SISTER B: You're fabulous! You've already got a great career now you have a great lovelife! It looks like R is OK with mom and dad, they told me he was brought up really well. He came here last week bringing some stuff because he said he just got back from a vacation in Baguio.

And to my surprise. His response wasn't the one I was expecting.

SWINDLER: Oh really? I want to start a business here, I'm looking for a partner .. the ìgoodsî will come from there and I will sell them here.

(Knowing that you'll press on the subject about ìRî, I found it strange that you didn't ask more details.)

SISTER B: And what business is that?

SWINDLER: Loading business! The 500 PHP cards can be sold for 1,500 PHP here.

SISTER B (I suddenly remembered what our brother told me): I only have 10K available, will this do?

SWINDLER: Yeah, that'll do!

SISTER B: Which carrier and denomination?

SWINDLER: Globe and Smart! 500!

SISTER B: OK, I'll e-mail it to your gmail account (thinking that there'll be too many pins to text, and that somebody else might see them in your office e-mail and use the loads up before you sell them to others).

SWINDLER: NO! Text them to me through this number!

SISTER B (Thinking ìAre you nuts?î, but ok, maybe you can't open your gmail or that you really need to sell some cards right away) OK.

SWINDLER (whose reply intervals where getting faster): Buy it now!

SISTER B (replied while one of my eyebrows raised by 12 feet): Are you crazy? I'm still at work. Later when I'm done here.

And when our office closed, I went to the bank to do an OTC and withdrew 10K. My phone went dead, you know my battery has a problem right? Anyways, I bought the pre-paid cards and headed home. When I was on the jeep, I suddenly realized you texted with a lot of exclamations (!), when I know that you are more fond of ellipses (Ö)

(MY NOTE: Yeah I know, it's weird when your sister knows how you form your text messages).

But then again, I was thinking of the 1.5K. Imagine, my 10K will become 30K. And I was planning ahead. I though, ìThis is great, Driedfish will send some money next week to pay for his Philippine-credit-card debts so he'd be able to include the money from the pre-paid card sales with his wire transfer. I'll return the 10K to my bank account, I'll buy some more loads with the 20K, and it'll become 60K. The 30K from that will serve as working capital, while I can put the remaining 30K in the bank for us, split evenly.î

(MY NOTE: You guessed it right, my sister is an accountant and she works for B.I.R.).

While thinking of this, I swear I heard a voice telling me ìThat's not Driedfish!î. I was so nervous I almost ran home.

(MY NOTE: This is saying something as the street that leads to our home is literally in a 45 degree angle, and my sister isn't on the ìSlimî side)

As soon as I got home I asked dad, ìDid Driedfish text you?î

DAD: You know your brother, he doesn't text when he is there, he either e-mails or calls. Come to think of it, he doesn't text when he's here either. He always calls! Just look at how high his Globe bills are!

When our dad said this, I felt all the effort I've put in climbing our road. I sat down and told him what happened. Dad started his litany.

When our Mom heard what was going on, she joined in and they did a duet.

Right then, the phone rang and it was our brother. When our mom told him what happened, he started a sermon on his own while on the speaker phone. So basically, there were three people talking over me and telling me how stupid I was.

Thank goodness Ate Bernie didn't call that time or it'll be too much for me.

While they were talking themselves hoarse, I plugged-in my phone on the socket. As soon as it turned on, guess whose text message I got first? The swindler!

SWINDLER: Were you able to buy it?

This guy is persistent, he texted me the same message like 5 times over the span of one and a half hours of my phone being dead.

SISTER B (after asking Mom, Dad and our brother what to reply): Mom is asking when you're going to send money to pay for your house. She said she wants to join our business.

SWINDLER: That's great! Tell her I'll send the money next week!

So that's it. I didn't reply anymore. But before I went to bed, he sent another message.

SWINDLER: Hey! Why didn't you text back?

The next day:

SWINDLER: Were you able to buy the pre-paid cards already?

SISTER B (trying to make this swindler salivate): Yes. Dad e-mailed you the numbers already because they're too many to text. That's 100 pieces of 500 Globe and 100 pieces of 500 Smart. Mom added some money to our business. (Imagine, that's worth 100K already).

SWINDLER: My e-mail isn't working! Send them through this number! Now!

And we all laughed in our office (I told them everything). My boss even told me it looks like it's fun to play with this guy because she can imagine the swindler shivering with excitement while texting me. The next day, he was obviously getting angry.

SWINDLER: Hey! Reply! Where's the pre-paid card numbers?

I never replied after the 100K thing but he kept texting. At first I found it funny, but later it was irritating the hell out of me. I mean, doesn't this guy realize that I already know his MO?

After some research, I found out that there were other victims here in SBMA. There's even one Manager from Chowking who lost 45K .. in a matter of seconds he transferred 45K via e-wallet thinking it was his best friend.

That's the story of my stupidity Ö

Love you bro!

-=-=-=-=-

Well, aside from the entertainment factor of my sister's e-mail, I think that it's important to share this info to people you know who have friends or family who are OFW's.

These predators prey on people who have loved-ones working outside the country (see how he phrased his introductory text? ìThis is my new roaming number! I got Sim-Blocked! Text me here when you get what I sent! Miss you.î).

Please help spread the word by forwarding this post to your friends and family.

And please, don't forget to quote my blog! I mean, hey!, I need the traffic here!

Lots-a-love to y'all!!!! And keep those comments cumin!

(Header Pic from DeviantArt.com - Butch Cassidy by VirginiaVitamins)

Back to the Twilight Zone

I’ve always told my friends that whenever I’m on my 6-month contract working on a ship, I can’t help but feel that I’m trapped in the “Twilight Zone”. It’s like I don’t exist for the whole time I’m away. This is probably because I’m so far from the people I care about the most.

E-mails and phone calls can’t really take the place of the good-old “conversation over dinner” with your family and consoling your friends that everything will be fine as you tap them on their backs while they vomit from drinking a keg.

When I got my flight itinerary, I was appalled by the fact that I was going to fly via Continental Airlines to cross the Pacific. I usually had Cathay Pacific which offered great food, ample space for your feet to move in, and your own monitor where you can watch movies and TV shows during your 14 to 16-hour flight. CA on the other hand was on the opposite side of the spectrum - the food tastes like it came from a public hospital, the space was cramped, and you have to have a giraffe’s neck to comfortably watch the movies they play on the projector screen.

Well, that’s coming from a person flying in economy class. I know the difference between the two airlines would be less if one was flying business, having his own cocoon and a steward at his beck and call.

As an OFW, it was great that they removed having us go to a POEA flat outside the main NAIA building just to have our certificates validated, now, you can do that on the special booth for OFW’s set-up in the Customs Section right after you check your luggage in. So it’s a big check to the NAIA Managment for that!

After I checked-in, had my POEA certificate validated to waive my terminal fee, and gone through Immigration, I went to my first stop - Tinderbox.

As this is the only place where you can smoke in the NAIA, it has always been the first place I go to as soon as I’m done with Immigration for the past 6 years. The drinks are fairly priced and the staff are accommodating. The cappuccino I had tasted like it was from Starbucks, without the unnecessary nausea of having to choose whether to have your milk, in soy, skim, full, or from a nursing mother with Hepatitis A from a third-world country. Sometimes, too many choice complicates things and Tinderbox is kind enough to save me from that.

From Manila, I went to Hong Kong - the only airport in the world I’ve been to where the escalators and conveyer belts talk to you.

From Hong Kong, I had a flight to O’Hare - Chicago. I haven’t been to that airport for around 4 years already. I don’t know if the “fiesta-like” lighting has always been there, but I noticed it this time:

I went out of the airport to smoke since I still had enough time before my connecting flight. An Indian guy went up to me and said “Shimasen, Konichiwa”.

That was utterly weird. I was in Chicago, smoking a FIlipino cigarette, and an Indian guy wearing a Chinese Budhist Monk outfit was talking to me in Japanese while pulling a hot pink luggage behind him.

I said “Watashi wa-karinai Niponggo desu.” Thank goodness I used to work for a small company sending entertainers to Japan so I knew a couple of Japaneses phrases that could save my life just in case I find myself stuck in Japan.

He laughed and said “Sorry, you grew up in America?”

“No, I grew up in the Philippines and I’m not a Japanese.” was my reply. I’ve always been amused by the fact that most Americans and Italians think I’m either a Japanese or a Chinese, while a lot of Asians think I’m either from Latin America or Italy. In this case, I think my fake brown hair did the optical trick.

It turned out he wanted to give me a book for “free”.

After skimming over the book’s cover, I told him I’ve always been interested in learning Budhism ever since I saw the movie about Tina Turner where she was chanting “Nam Yoh Rengge Kyoh” while her eyes were swollen from being smacked around by her husband in a limo.

After he handed me the book, he asked for a donation. When I said I didn’t have any money, he snatched the book out of my hand, said “God Bless” and hobbled away with his pink luggage.

I guess nothing really is for free these days.

After O-Hare, I had to fly to Miami Dade.

When I got there and was about to leave the carousel section to look for my hotel’s free shuttle, a cute guy who was wearing a “police-officer-like” uniform went up to me an asked if I were a crewmember from my company.

I hesitantly said yes, while an image of getting shackled to a 1-ton iron ball went through my head. When he said he had my transportation to the hotel, I thought that my luck was changing for the better.

It turned out that it wasn’t for the better ... it was turning worse.

Before giving us our luggage when we were in our hotel’s parking lot, he was telling me and the other Fipilipino guy I found already inside the van before getting in, that we had to pay 20 USD each. I told him that I know for a fact that hotel shuttles are for free. He said that he doesn’t work for the hotel and he was called by my company to pick me up. I asked him to tell me my name.

Ok, let me clear that up, I’m not suffering from amnesia, and if I did I wouldn’t ask a buff guy wearing short shorts for it. The only way I’d know this guy is for real is if he had a list of some sort with my name on it.

He pretended to look at the clipboard he had and shrugged. Then he said “But I know his name though!” and pointed at the other FIlipino guy I was with like he was a carrier of some viral plague about to set it loose in American soil. I said “Prove it!” and felt stupid when he removed a paper with huge marker-writtings of the Filipino guy’s name.

The other Pinoy guy can barely speak English and I felt he was about to drown in panic and misery. I told him that since I shared the van, we’d just split the 20 USD bill.

Entering the hotel was a bliss. Our company usually books us at Holiday Inn near the airport which was OK . This time though, we were booked at LA QUINTA HOTEL and all my travel hassles were kicked out from my consciousness.

I woke up 7am, waddled in the bathtub for 30 minutes, got dressed and went for breakfast. I stuffed my usually foul mouth with some great food (good thing La Quinta serves a lot of fresh fruit varieties in the morning, not just the usual American breakfast buffet).

8am sharp, the bus that will take me to my 6-month home/prison came.

After 45 minutes of listening to Beyonce’s HALO over and over on my iPod 3G Shuffle, I was on a que in the ship terminal thinking to myself ...

“I hope this contract won’t be as dull as my travel ...”