PRAYER FOR SPHERE COMMERCE — COMMERCIAL CRIME
She worked as a clerk in an office, not well paid and not well treated, but there were mounting credit card debts to be settled. Yet she loved going to the malls and there was always so so many things she wanted to buy. Then this man came and promised her a hard to resist job offer with incredible money and travel to Europe, luxury dining, entertainment. She would start first by approaching people to sign up for (fake) ‘credit cards’, she would give the particulars of those who signed up to her boss. If she did well she could progress to other jobs like carrying ‘parcels’ to countries in Europe with free lodging and money to spend.
He was a regular at the disco’s and nightclubs in town, and very much hooked to the designer drugs (Ket, syabu) . Money was running out but his hunger for drugs, sex, street fashion and entertainment grew exponentially. One day his drug supplier told him he could earn easy money. All he had to do was to hang out at the ATM Counters at the Banks, when he saw someone put his card in, he would drop some money. When the victim bent down to pick the notes, he would replace the victim’s ATM card with another.
Each day there are numerous stories of scams, people being cheated of money, jewelry, criminal breaches of trust, money laundering, land titles illegally transferred etc. The NST on 4/3/10 reported that commercial crime cases rose from $845 mill in 2008 to $1.3 billion in 2009. The bulk of the losses were from cheating and criminal breach of trust amounting to $1.2 billion , while the balance came from cybercrime, misuse of property, forgery, counterfeit of money. “The reasons why people were cheated were due to greed and a lack of common sense” .