An Internet Scam

A news item on hoax e-mails prompted me to write this piece. The Daily Star on 10 October 2007 reported that the British High Commission was warning people against being duped by Internet scams which claim to offer large financial sums. The need of such a warning was now apparent since many people had started receiving such unsolicited e-mails, purportedly from UK companies. But who warns when those come from companies of other countries! Moreover, the fact is such e-mails are the product of the computer age, and have been in practice for quite some time. This story is about one such email scam.
People who use free e-mail accounts like me are the frequent victims of scams. Even if you do not post your e-mail ID to any of the unknown places, your e-mail account may be automatically enlisted. The more you begin to open those mails, the more the number of such e-mails, i.e. spam, will increase. Once it used to originate only from African sources saying that s/he is a barrister or manager or attorney who has been entrusted with a huge amount of money that s/he wants someone reliable like me to disburse to. To date many students of mine, novices in the online world, have made phone calls and queried with trembling voices about such receipts of mails. I can only whisper to him/her: "My dear, please don't get caught as your teacher did once."
It was November 2004. By that time I had been an internet user for about five years. No doubt I had experience in scam emails as well. My Hotmail account stores them in the 'junk' box, while the Yahoo mail throws them in the 'bulk' bag. Even while being aware of all these facts I got snared into a lottery scam.
The mail seemed to originate from the Netherlands and even though I wasn't exactly sure at first, later it did prove true. How could I disbelieve the message of the electronic mail saying that my email account had received a huge cash amount totaling three hundred thousand euros? Immediately I multiplied the figure with 85 and began to drown myself in unfathomable waters. I also strongly felt that I shouldn't tell this fact to anyone else in order to ensure the security of my own property.
Didn't I ask to myself why my name would be placed there? Why not somebody else? Yes, I did, and answered them myself, in my own favour. My e-mail account ID was on many different sites as a lot of my write-ups on Kazi Nazrul Islam or other novelists/writers of Bangladesh had been posted with my email ID at the bottom. And so it was not very unlikely that mine would be included in the random lottery draw and therefore incidentally also win the cash prize.
While I had to keep the news secret, I could not sit idly by as there was a time deadline. The first night I just read the mail over and over again and could not keep my head cool. In accordance with their suggestion I sent a reply with some basic information about me to someone who was to deal with the disbursement of the money. Immediately I got a form from the second mail recipient. The form was supposed to be filled up neatly. So, I had to go to Nilkhet, look for an electric typewriter, get it filled up and then fax it to the destination. But what a problem, the form demanded a bank account!
It seemed to me to be an insurmountable problem. I did not earn enough money to necessitate a second account! Could the account that dealt with my office payments serve the purpose? By then I had to share my anxiety with my wife and sister-in-law, who play a vital role in all our familial affairs. All three of us decided not to mention the previous bank account since the huge amount might be exposed to all my colleagues. So we began to talk to our family friends in banking. We did not tell them why I needed a second account for, but only narrated something fictitious. But our friends advised us, saying that it was no problem to receive big foreign amounts. With their help over the phone, we were able to open a new account in a non-governmental bank. While opening it I had to fill out a column of possible monthly transactions. With huge uncertainty I wrote ten thousand to ten million. Taking the code of the branch from the helpful manager I rushed to Nilkhet.
It is the only place where one can do many things with little hassle. People without a personal computer at home can get their work done on payment there. But you have to rush to a place like Nilkhet to fill up a form with an electric typewriter. After some meticulous checking I filled up the form and at last faxed it with a great sigh. Now, nothing else remained but to wait for their reply.
My wife took greater care of me since she saw that I was passing through a period of great anxiety. With hot dishes before us on the dining table, we sat down to revise what we had done by then and how we could manage the forthcoming flood of money. And what a discovery! The passport number on the form was wrongly written. How could that blunder have happened after so much careful readings? Consequently I had to rush to the cyber cafe where I do my online activities, take another print of the form, run to Nilkhet again, get the form electrically re-typed, re-fax it to the Netherlands and return home with no appetite left for dinner.
But the tired eyes would not close as one's anxious mind was filled with new apprehensions, ever-unknown possibilities, conditions-not-met problems, etc., etc. A sleeping pill could create dozing effects only. We then decided to make a phone call to the office mentioned in the Netherlands, since we feared that duplicate faxed forms might cause some troubles. We had to clear up the confusion.
And how nice it was to talk to the person who picked up at the other end! Such a soft voice, ever so polite a tone, a generous approach. That phone call became the main topic of conversation in our everyday life.
But everything ended in smoke when I was sent an email from that office that I was to send five percent of the total cash for managerial purposes. How was that possible! Five percent meant a million in our currency. How could I collect that huge a figure? With big sighs I had to give up all possible hopes of the money, thinking that if only I were rich, I would have been able to collect the huge amount and be a truly wealthy person.
But after some days my pangs of sorrow turned cold when I found the same exact message in my other email accounts as well, and knew what kind of a scheme had been attempted on me. It came as a consolation for me that I had been saved from near ruin that originates from the sin of greed.

Subrata Kumar Das, a teacher, has also set up www.bangladeshinovels.com