Fighting Scam Schemes

editorial:

The State Government has constituted a committee “for oversight of un-incorporate bodies in Sikkim”. This is essentially a coordinating body to facilitated cooperation between various agencies of the State and Central governments and the Reserve Bank of India in checking the facility with which con-artists have been selling scam schemes in Sikkim. The committee is also tasked to recommend ways and means on how the intent and guiding principles of Sikkim Protection of Interest of Depositor (In Financial Establishment) Act of 2009 can be better implemented. While this development is welcome, it needs to be accepted that just more rules and laws cannot provide enough defence against cons. All acts of fraud, whether through ponzi schemes or with the deployment of IT tools, are after all already punishable offences, but that has not saved too many from losing fortunes. It is possible that having an official committee in place will move the concerned agencies to act against such potentials scams even before a formal complaint is lodged, but it would be unrealistic to expect any departmental or inter-departmental exercise to provide a watertight defence against scams. The committee would have delivered handsomely if it can recommend watertight laws and clauses to ensure that the perpetrators of such scams are traced down and convicted. When it comes to ‘protecting the people’ from such cons, the challenge is handicapped by the combined strength of gullibility and greed. It is after all individual naiveté or greed, and in most cases both, which entrap people into parting with cash against fantastical promises. Government intervention cannot bestow wisdom or suppress greed.
So what can one do? Inform people better. Information is the best defence because rules and laws will never be able to keep up the frequent mutations that the scams undergo to slip under the official radars. If one were to go over the scams to which Sikkim has lost massive money to in recent years, they begin with job cons in which youth [and their parents] were sold dreams of enormous salaries in foreign locales against large deposits. Some lost their money in Gangtok itself while many suffered penniless for days in the metros. There are still jobs on offer which demand security deposits and these are always scams. In the background, there always were the down-line schemes being sold from office to office and their success fuelled the ‘investment’ scams. Unfortunately, while the rest of the world has wizened up to bulk-mailing/ SMS attempts to convince people that they have won millions in lotteries they never purchased, this is still relatively new to Sikkim and as more and more people move online or acquire mobile phones, they are more at risk. What is more, these cons have taken another minor mutation and graduated from cold SMSes to actual voice calls with people speaking in Nepali and seeking to convince people to deposit money to pay for the delivery of prizes they have won. The quickness with which scamsters can change track requires an adeptness which legislation of rules and laws cannot provide. This brings one back to the need of information instead. And this is where community organizations and groups and even panchayats and councilors need to be involved and all forms of media harnessed to warn people against falling prey to the guile of operators selling scams. Apart from just sounding people off on the kind of scams being attempted [the moment a new one is born], receivers of such feelers should also be informed about and encouraged to leave complaints with the appointed authorities.