Jona Cham thought she saw it coming. But she ignored the warning signals. Within 24 hours she had lost P10,000 and her sense of security.

By Pauline Mangilog-Saltarin, Pinay Traveller

Jona is only one of the many Filipinos who get duped online everyday. Her story, like most, unfolds simply enough.

One day, she gets a YM (Yahoo Messenger) message from her sister, Janice, who is based in the US, asking her if she would be willing to ‘invest’ in phone cards. Janice explains that Jona can make a lot of money if she sends her 20 pieces of 500-peso phone cards which she would then sell to her Pinoy co-workers.

“I felt that there was something odd about the request, especially after I computed the amount I would need to buy the said cards, and asked in jest if she was sure she was my sister and not some hacker. She laughed my comment off and I told myself I was probably just being overly paranoid, after all, didn't I just chat with her the day before about her upcoming wedding?"

But there were already a few telltale signs that she was talking to a fake sister-signs that she promptly ignored.

“I would start talking about her wedding plans and she would just give me monosyllabic replies, and [then] she would type out words in text-speak when she usually spells them out, pero sinabi ko sa sarili ko na wag akong praning (but I told myself not to be paranoid), so I ignored it."

To make the long story short, Jona bought the cards and sent all the PINs via YM and informed her sister Janice that she did so by emailing both her Yahoo and work accounts. The next day, she found a bomb in her mail.

“She replied that she had no idea what I was talking about and even joked sarcastically that I had sent the message to her by mistake, as I would a text message. I stared at the message and re-read it a few times, all my fears from the night before flooding back."

But the story doesn’t end there. Jona was not the only victim in this elaborate scam. Her other sister, Joyce, was also duped into buying 80 phone cards. When the sisters realized what had hit them, they frantically inputted the PINs to various SIM cards they could get hold of.

Fortunately, they were able to recover half of the amount of all the cards sent.

“According to Janice, she hasn't been able to log into her yahoo account after she clicked on a link somebody randomly sent her. When Joyce and I started to piece together the events leading up to the bust, sure enough, it was around that time that the fake Janice started chatting with Joyce with requests to buy prepaid cards," recounts Jona.

Online Scams
The Phone Card Scam is only one of the many tales of online deceit that abound the world wide web.

There are many others, like ghost auctions where the ‘auctioneer’ disappears after a winning bidder sends money to pay for an item won online. This is especially prevalent in social networking sites such as Multiply.

There is also the Lottery Scam, where a victim, after being told that he has won a huge amount in a lottery draw, is asked to deposit an amount in a bank account before he can claim the prize. Before he realizes what had hit him, his cash is gone with no lottery prize in sight.

Whatever the scheme is, online scammers prey on unsuspecting victims, most of whom are too trusting and naive.