Aniefiok Udoabasi
You meet a guy today. Less than a week after, things start to happen. Your gas has finished in the middle of cooking. Your house rent expires. Next day ,your mum is sick and needs help. Your phone is missing and needs replacing. All your burdens and sorrows were waiting for the new relationship and friendship.
Last week, one even told me that her mum is dead and as they arrived the village to bury her, they were told that they could not do that because they are yet to bury her grand mum. The two burials are on her head as her father is an old pensioner.
I looked through her profile again. Very beautiful lady. Outstandingly beautiful. I thought may be its just a fake account created for fraud but I followed her posts to 2011 and discovered she is a real person. Moralistic posts. Prophetic posts. Reasonable posts. With huge followership.
Then I checked and found that we have 91 mutual friends. One of those mutual friends is a secondary school classmate and friend who shares the same surname with her. I checked and found that she had tagged him in a photo last year. They were together in that picture. I reached out to him.
He told me that they are first cousins. That the girl’s father is his dad’s older brother of the Same parents. That her mother is alive, strong and healthy. That she is a serving senior civil servant. That their grand mother whom the girl said was also in the mortuary actually died 6years ago and was buried same month. The guy, my friend, was shell shocked. He sent me the family photos of the grandmother’s burial six years ago with the girl in it.
I then reached back to this lady that I thought was my friend and told her that she is ‘a wasted beauty and a disgrace to womanhood’.
Some men are also into this. From the stories told by women who have fallen victim,theirs usually start with a fake offer of marriage. They target single mothers and single women above 32. Next, he says he has a daughter who was abandoned by his ex wife. Next, the daughter has a hole in the heart. Next, his old mother is sick and needs help in the hospital.
This may sound like child’s play but so many women actually start sending money. Hundreds of thousands. Some borrow to send. They want to show they are a ‘wife material’ to their ‘prospective husband’. They want to prove to their future mother in law that they are worthy daughters in law.
The next step is that he travels to go and see her. On the way an accident must surely happen. He arrives broke. Lost his car, wallet and ATM card in the accident!
The woman pays for the hotel or takes him to her house. She feeds him and even pays his way back! I even heard of a situation where the woman gave her car to take back since he lost his car while coming to see her!
Love scam! It happens both ways and could be checked if people bother to take their head into a relationship.
It will reduce when people begin to see that a relationship is not a means out of poverty and hunger.
