“Sir, your account has defaulted and we need to fix it. Send us your details.” A fluent English speaker with an Asian accent called the wrong person, a Bhutanese journalist. Knowing that the country code of the caller’s phone number, he berated the caller who hung up the planned scam call.
Ugyen was lucky. He had heard stories about how people were robbed by fraudsters and the many other schemes duping people. But not many are still aware. Despite the warnings and advisories from the Royal Monetary Authority to be aware of scammers, many Bhutanese are falling victim to scammers.
The recent is the QNET, another ponzi scheme that has been robbing a huge number of innocent investors with the promise of making quick cash. Ponzi schemes make money by recruiting more and more members or sellers at the bottom of the ladder. The bitter reality is that there is no such thing as easy money.
Bhutanese have fallen victim to scams before. The danger is that not many share their experience or story for the fear of shame. Not sharing could put more into trouble. De-suups and the other victims did a big favour by sharing their stories. And by not recruiting members they saved many others. The De-suung programme has thousands of members, mostly unemployed, and could easily be a hunting ground for scammers.
Members are recruited as profits made by people at the top are from the cash invested by sellers further down the scheme, not from external customers. In other words,…
