Beware the conmen

Apr 11, 2013 Editorial

Confidence tricksters abound. Recently, there were numerous reports of people purchasing goods purportedly using Manager‘s cheques. This is a simple scheme. Guyana remains a largely cash-oriented society but in cases where large purchases are to be made the buyer is asked to provide a Manager’s cheque. This is because the relationship between the company and the buyer is not one that would permit trust to the point of accepting personal cheques.
A manager’s cheque is drawn against a bank and purports to represent that an individual does have money to cover the cheque. This is where the confidence tricksters make their play. They would approach a store and make purchases to a certain value. They would then guarantee payment by a manager’s cheque.
In this electronic age just about anything can be fabricated and made to look like the authentic document. What makes the scam work is that the cheques are paid close to or after the commercial bank has closed. The business entity therefore has no way of checking the authenticity of the document. In this day and age when businesses are quick to grab every penny that comes its way the business houses often become careless.
None of them takes the correct course of informing the buyer that they would wait until the cheque is cleared. They fall prey to a sucker story about being in a hurry. Guyana is not the only country in which people fall prey to schemes. In every country there are people who set out to live by their by their wits.
In some societies people become victims of identity fraud. Someone steals their name and various forms of identification. They then create accounts and it is years before the real person can re-establish his accounts and the like. Meanwhile the person could be blacklisted, taken to court for debts and even suffer other indignities.
That has not happened as yet in Guyana and with the society being so small it is unlikely that identity theft would ever be a problem. However there are the bogus cheques and the counterfeit currency. The latter has caused the government to keep making new currency notes with added security features.
Of course, if caught there are severe penalties but not so severe that they would thwart any future scams. These people work in groups and right now there is an individual who has been identified but because the scam is so widespread and because these people have left no forwarding address nobody can contact them.
Crimes of this nature can be avoided; all it takes is responsible behavior. But then with competition comes the rush to seek shortcuts. After the initial reports many others began to come forward. Until that initial report there was the view that the scam was very limited. It is now recognised that people do not even report to the police because they feel embarrassed. And they have every reason to be.
The police are constructing a forensic laboratory. With proper staffing and training it should not be too long for the police to be in a position to trace the source of the paper that makes the bogus manager’s cheques.
When all is said and done there are many people with criminal intent. They operate in many corners and the police seem unable to match the wits of the criminals. There are those who openly rob people at gunpoint. Many of these are illiterate and therefore rely on scare tactics and even brute force. Many are very young men, some just out of school.
The police are better able to deal with these because it is often a question of force against force. But when it comes to the confidence tricksters it is another ball game. These are the people who rely on their brain. Because they are not as prevalent as the others the police have a hard time tracking them.
Strange as it may seem they surface for a brief period, rake in a few million dollars and disappear into the woodwork. But by the same token they are so much easier to guard against.

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Beware the conmen

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