Cyber Crime

Keep Umngeni Clean

The Christmas morning was set to be an exciting adventure in introducing my 2 year old son to all the reasons I love Christmas. I was set to share a message at the morning service and we were due to open his presents after church. Lunch was to be another highlight with a variety of roast beasts. that she had been socially engineered into handing over money, she was an easy mark. The ending of the story reads like a Greek tragedy with mom being groomed, EVERY DAY, for 3 years by an evil charlatan who would eventually steal millions from her leaving her emotionally devastated and almost destitute.

Preparations were derailed late on Christmas eve by a far flung acquaintance who queried my mother’s declaration, on social media, of undying love to a Lebanese man whom none of the family had met or ever heard of! Christmas was spent scrambling to establish what was really happening and giving feedback to confused and concerned family members…. I made a promise to this conscious-less embezzler that I would chisel his infamy in stone and make his future attempts as difficult as possible. Please let our story serve as a warning.

By Angus van Niekerk

As the story unravelled it became clear that the “gentleman” in question had been grooming mom over months and had coached her through internationally transferring him money in order to support him because of her feelings for him.

We intervened, sought help for mom, set up structures to protect her and arranged for her financial advisor to be brought into the conversation to prevent future re-occurrences. All seemed to go well for a while.