THERE seems to be no end to all sorts of scams hitting our people, poor and rich alike, across the country, among the most recent was the reported kappa scam last year, then to the deepening Covid-related scams and the ongoing rice scam controversy.
Negrenses were stunned again last week by news reports and stories of an alleged rice scam involving more or less 110 victims from various parts of the province, who reportedly lost P70 to P80 million to a group of rice syndicate, similar to numerous pyramiding and networking scams in past years.
I was able to interview some of them last week, and their stories made me emotional. The victims were overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), wives of OFWs, small entrepreneurs, online buyer-sellers, small traders, ordinary odd jobbers whose common reason was to gamble their money hoping to get it doubled or more and become more secured especially amid the crisis caused by Covid.
Like other scams, it only took a few dozens of victims, who know the culprits, to elicit trust and quickly entice a multitude to join the prey, just like the Covid transmission rate. A fraction of the sizeable money from the first set of victims was used to give them payouts for their investments; the same happened to the money of the next set of victims. But the next sets of victims, never get any. Hence, the scam.
The most disheartening story I heard from the victims was the one who was left by her husband because she invested their savings into what turned out to be a scam. She was not able to finish conveying her story because she just cried sorely.
I don't need to make an extensive analysis of the rice scam nor parallelisms with the other scams.
What is apparent in all these scams is that they happen now and then, and they happen more frequently with varying degrees of intensity or despicability during the intense crisis.
One told me that the rice scammers were deplorable because they did it during these tough times for almost all people, that they took advantage of the Covid crisis to rob others of their hard-earned incomes and savings.
Well, scammers, opportunists and crooks are inherent in a society with a great class divide, a society where a few enjoy the wealth produced by many, while the many who labor so much hardly get a penny.
They are even bold and daring in undertaking these killing operations because the government doesn't even care running after the big- and small-time crooks in the bureaucracy, and the big names in society, while the working class and the middle-class professionals often shoulder the brunt of common looting by government officials and errant thugs.
In short, so long as the ruling society is corrupt, decadent and moribund, there will always be people in authority or position of power, or have connections with those in power, who will take advantage of the marginalized, powerless, voiceless, helpless and simply neglected.
In short, the ruling society is chiefly to be blamed for the breeding of scammers, opportunists and crooks in and out of the state bureaucracy.
In fact, the most lethal and giant of the scammers are those in the government in cahoots with private corporate interests, and often they evade the spade of justice.
The effects of these scams are more impoverished citizens, bigger government funds go to the pockets of the politicians and dynasties, social services hardly scratched the needy and the neglected and. on the other hand, the victims are made to quarrel among themselves while the rich and the small-time thugs go scot-free.
Unfortunately, our analysis and judgments often missed this bigger reality. Many of us tend to fire their hatred on the petty thugs, scammers, crooks and opportunists. We ignored the structural roots of many facets of our social decadence and moribund life. Hence, our education, information and training likewise missed the right targets.
What a waste of resources, knowledge, talents and skills.
But it's not too late to recoil and make the right shot. Believe me.