The Fake Phone

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Photo by Sašo Tušar

For someone who lives in a country which is currently on the top five spot of countries with a lot of scammers, it’s surprisingly shocking that I’ve only been scammed ones. That is not talking about the usual everyday scam that happens every now and then, things like getting paid with fake money or buying fake things from a store and when you go back to return it, the person who sold it to you would no longer be there. You will meet an entirely different person who will swear on his life that the shop belongs to him and he has never seen the man you’re talking about before. Those are every day scams over here.

The one time I got scammed though was when I was a kid. Back then I had this little Nokia phone that my dad had bought for me and needed money to buy some data so that I could download some games on the phone. Unfortunately I had no cash on me and no one agreed to give me money, that was when my mom called me and asked me to go buy some kerosene for her at the filling station. It was getting dark.

I know what some of y’all might be thinking right now. No, I didn’t take some of the money to buy data for my phone, I wasn’t even given the chance to do that. We were on our way to the filling station when a man walking towards our direction suddenly stopped right in front of us and picked us a phone, another Nokia phone.

He had pretended like he saw the phone by luck and when I and my friend who was escorting me attempted to walk away, he stopped us and said that we can’t just leave like that. According to him, we all saw the phone and he was going to give us something for that. The amount he had offered to give to us what the exact amount of money I needed to buy data for my phone so I felt luck had shined on us and agreed to take the reward from him.

He had asked us to wait for him while he went to bring the money only for him to come back two minutes later and told us the person he wanted to take the money from didn’t have change so if we had some change to give to him so that he can go get the money, we should give it to him. I immediately counted all of the money my mom gave to me and handed it over to him to go get the other money, that was the last time I saw him.

We waited and waited and when we finally knew we had been scammed was when I checked the phone he claimed to have picked from the floor (he had given us the phone to hold as a way to trust him). The phone was just an empty casing with nothing in it. It was dark so we hadn’t seen it earlier. Anyways, that was when we realized we were fucked and walked back home while regretting everything.

I knew if I had told my mom the truth, she would have beaten hell out of me so I made up a story of some guys coming to fight us and collecting the money for themselves. I know it was a lie but if you look at it from an angle, there was a little bit of truth in it.

Anyways, that was the only time I remember getting scammed.



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These people are smart and crooked... They can easily play on a child's innocence and have their way easily.

But, honestly, we experience scam everyday in Nigeria, especially in Market places (like Computer Village Lagos or Onitsha Main market)... scammers plenty!!! 😅😅😅

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Exactly bro.. Also in places like Alaba too in Lagos state.

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