LOTTO SCAM GOES TO DC:

Yesterday March 13^th, Jamaica’s National Security Minister and anoth­er high-rank­ing Government Official arrived in Washington DC to tes­ti­fy before a select Senate Committee. 

The spe­cial select com­mit­tee yes­ter­day heard tes­ti­mo­ny from rel­a­tives of vic­tims of the lot­tery scam as well as law-enforce­ment offi­cials. The hear­ing fol­lowed the air­ing of a CBS doc­u­men­tary on the scam, and came a day after Jamaica’s National Security Minister Peter Bunting met with Collins and Nelson.(jamaica​glean​er​.com)

There’s noth­ing wrong with Allied Nations meet­ing under prop­er cir­cum­stances to share infor­ma­tion or dis­cuss strate­gies so that they may come up with solu­tions. One gets the feel­ing from the report­ing, that this was not exact­ly what hap­pened in this case. Judging from the tone of Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins, it appeared this was not nec­es­sar­i­ly a meet­ing between equals, but rather that the Jamaicans were there to receive a tongue lash­ing from their supe­ri­ors in Washington DC. “I sus­pect that the Jamaican phone scam is one of the worst,” Collins said. She not­ed that to most Americans, Jamaica was a trop­i­cal par­adise with beau­ti­ful white sand beach­es, lush green moun­tains and vibrant sun­shine. “We have all seen those ads full of gor­geous scenery and upbeat music call­ing Americans to come and feel the spir­it of Jamaica,” she said. Collins also said bil­lions of dol­lars are spent year­ly by mil­lions of Americans who answer the call for a vaca­tion on the island par­adise, not­ing that the mon­ey is essen­tial to the island’s econ­o­my. “But beneath the Jamaica of those entic­ing ads and the tourists’ dreams lurks anoth­er Jamaica, one that brings night­mares to elder­ly Americans tar­get­ed by Jamaican crim­i­nals intent on swin­dling them out of their life sav­ings. She told the com­mit­tee that an esti­mat­ed 30,000 phone calls are made dai­ly by Jamaican scam­mers, who she described as “mas­ters of manip­u­la­tion” who play to their vic­tims fears and emo­tions “until they drain them of every dime”.

Whoa there, lets back up a lit­tle, The United States pos­sess­es expo­nen­tial­ly more resources in a sin­gle State in the Union than minus­cule Jamaica ever could muster in a mil­lion years , not to men­tion at the fed­er­al lev­el, yet Collins berate Jamaica for not doing enough?

In order for Collins to assert that scam­mers make 30,000 phone calls dai­ly, I have to pre­sume that the Senator has intel­li­gence on what con­sti­tutes a scam call. If my pre­sump­tion is cor­rect, then the log­i­cal ques­tion has to be what has the United States done with this intelligence?

The United States has the tech­nol­o­gy and the staff to coör­di­nate with its Jamaican coun­ter­parts in nab­bing scam­mers and once and for all putting an end to this menace.

Let’s be clear it takes a cer­tain kind of stu­pid­i­ty, naiveté’ and greed for any American cit­i­zen who has nev­er entered a Contest of any kind in Jamaica a third world coun­try, to hand over their finan­cial infor­ma­tion to some­one they have nev­er met, who lives in anoth­er coun­try, because they were told they won a lot­tery. At last check it required over 90 Jamaican Dollars to buy 1 Dollar American, the dri­ving force on the part of the scammed is greed.

The fact that peo­ple who turn over their life sav­ings to scam­mers are stu­pid and greedy does not absolve those who prey on them from crim­i­nal cul­pa­bil­i­ty. It requires a sense of under­stand­ing and coöper­a­tion how­ev­er from both coun­tries with a lit­tle respect and a sense of real­i­ty on the part of the Americans. Susan Collins seem to believe this is a Jamaican prob­lem which ought to be solved by Jamaica. I am sor­ry to tell the good Senator this but, she should first learn some respect in deal­ing with oth­ers, pon­tif­i­cat­ing and pos­tur­ing sounds good to her con­stituents but does noth­ing to solve the problem.

We know that respect has nev­er been the strong suit of cer­tain peo­ple in the United States, par­tic­u­lar­ly when deal­ing with small­er weak­er con­tem­po­raries. But we also have to acknowl­edge that Jamaican Authorities have not exact­ly done much to engen­der respect either.

The Government is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent, not vices exact­ly unique to Jamaica, but ampli­fied because of the degree to which it exists there. The cor­rup­tion Index com­piled by inter­est­ed par­ties to include Agencies of the US Government dras­ti­cal­ly deval­ues the worth of all Public Officials in Jamaica.

As is to be expect­ed the Jamaican Government respond­ing to the issue, could not for one moment put parochial polit­i­cal bick­er­ing aside for the National good.

Yesterday, Sandrea Falconer, the min­is­ter with respon­si­bil­i­ty for infor­ma­tion, speak­ing dur­ing a Jamaica House press brief­ing, said the Government had used pub­lic edu­ca­tion as well as leg­isla­tive and inves­tiga­tive tools to shut down the scam. Falconer also shot down sug­ges­tions from the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party that the Government had not respond­ed effec­tive­ly to the lot­tery-scam cri­sis. “Sometimes peo­ple say a lot because they don’t know or they just have to talk because they want to be rel­e­vant,” Falconer said.(jamaicagleaner.com)

In my esti­ma­tion this is part of the prob­lem which has plagued our coun­try, this is some­thing which the President’s Press Secretary would nev­er say about any mem­ber of the Republican lead­er­ship. How can a Minister rep­re­sent­ing the Government not under­stand that she is rep­re­sent­ing the offi­cial posi­tion of the sit­ting Government when she makes utter­ances like this to the Press?

This Spanish Town Road type of a response pret­ty much sums up the qual­i­ty of Jamaica’s Government, dis­re­spect and igno­rance are the hall­marks, the par­ty which forms the Government does not feel that the Leader of the Opposition is rel­e­vant. What does it say about the Government when the Minister tasked with artic­u­lat­ing the Governments posi­tions fails to under­stand that the Opposition is part of the Government?

So while Susan Collins talk down to the Jamaican Minister, we give them ammu­ni­tion with which to burn us , because of our crass and cal­lous dis­re­spect for our­selves and others.

The so-called Lotto Scam has been in exis­tence since around 2006 – 2007 to the best of my rec­ol­lec­tion. Like all oth­er aspects of crime in Jamaica it has been left to fes­ter and devel­op until it got out of con­trol. This occur main­ly because of police inept­ness, and cor­rup­tion, and the dis­grace­ful and woe­ful lack of leg­is­la­tion to com­bat the ever-increas­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion of the coun­try’s criminals.

Anyone feel­ing hurt or offend­ed by the posi­tion of the Senate Select Committee on this issue should take a seri­ous look at the crime sit­u­a­tion in Jamaica. Many peo­ple argue that there is crime every­where, sug­gest­ing that the heinous crime sit­u­a­tion be ratio­nal­ized away.

For years the Jamaican Government knew that there was a prob­lem with scam­mers bilk­ing peo­ple of their earn­ings, they did noth­ing, in fact there is ample intel­li­gence from the Jamaican streets which shows that many peo­ple in posi­tions of pow­er are behind this scam. In some com­mu­ni­ties par­tic­u­lar­ly on the west­ern end of the Island many peo­ple live lav­ish life styles, flaunt­ing huge Mansions, fleets of lux­u­ry Automobiles and Millions of American Dollars, yet they have no vis­i­ble job or profession.

Lavish Parties are the order of the day, this allows the Government to shirk it’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to Govern, Police Officers are cor­rupt­ed and every­one turns a blind eye. The prob­lem with this sce­nario is that the prac­ti­tion­ers behind the scam also report­ed­ly use some of the pro­ceeds of their nefar­i­ous activ­i­ties to buy high-pow­ered weapons which they in turn sell and rent. So the lit­tle prob­lem of lot­to scam has metas­ta­sized into a full-blown cancer.