People are capitalizing the innocence, ignorance, dreams and lack of knowledge of others to make a fortune for themselves. LinkedIn is used more often as the best platform to manipulate and victimize the targets while such scammers are active on other big and small networks as well. Here are five of the most common spams that are targeted at Nepali internet users who are doing great recently.
Pyramid and Ponzi schemes are still operating
You might have got messages about new companies trying to expand their business in Nepal and they want to have you as promoter or business development executive or VIP investor or something fancy like that. Don’t fall for them. There are 99% of chances that they are either originators or victims of one of the Pyramid or Ponzi scheme. In such schemes, the person on the top of the chart (old members) gains money with each branch they create and all the other final branches that cannot make further members lose their money.
They organize seminars, product launch events, involve celebrities and public faces and have a lucrative business plan and missions to make the business seem legit and profitable. So, please be extra cautious when someone with really nice LinkedIn profile asks you to join them to be rich within a month or sooner.
Have a look at this article to understand how such schemes work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme
WhatsApp groups
I see lots of people and pages (mostly Indian) posting updates about private WhatsApp group for some events or discussion forums in LinkedIn. I advise you to not expose your phone number and email in such threads. Almost every time, they are only harvesting your phone numbers and emails either to sell it or to bombard you with their marketing calls and emails. Until you know them personally or trust them completely, never share your phone numbers, address, emails or any other personal details to anyone.
What is phone number harvesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_spam
Sagoon and similar companies
They are trying to fish old and prosperous NRNs with a bait of unrealistic promises and patriotism. 23$ per share for a social network with nothing innovative and that is in 2017! And the interesting thing is they are getting the funds. After the first round of out-of-the-world social network, now they are selling the idea of “battery recharge by mobile app” thing. And claim that the research is going on without providing any details about the actual research and development progress. Don’t get fooled by all the media, celebrities, public figures and politicians promoting the company. People are seen buying almost everything and anyone!
I suggest you do complete due diligence before putting even a single penny on such schemes/promises. From my observation and examination of their marketing campaigns and the main product; which is sagoon.com, I do not find anything that is worth even checking further. But this is my personal opinion and observation. Only invest money if you find the idea really great and this will give you returns in future either financially or emotionally (yes! people invest for that too).
Here are some of the materials that are useful to get the full insight of the things surrounding the whole Sagoon thing. Please go through all the links below. You will learn a lot about how people might fool you and make you give your hard-earned money to them.
Sagoon’s financial information from their SEC filings:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1639953/000114420417037373/v471033_partiiandiii.htm
If you want to get detailed explanations of any fact or figure present in the document, please feel free to contact me.
About Ponzi scheme: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/ponzischeme.asp
A reddit page:
A Quora Question : https://www.quora.com/Have-anyone-used-sagoon-com-and-found-it-useful
Job application fees (Employment spams)
Another method some clever people are sucking money from the poor and helpless people is by opening job vacancies, promoting them through various Media and collecting money from all the applicants. Generally, the chance somewhere from Rs. 200 to Rs. 1000 per form in the mane of processing fee or something similar. Even some small real companies with real vacancies are seen doing so. If you find such a situation, please inform the concerned authorities (Nepal police) and ask them to keep your information secret.
This article covers a lot about the issue: http://blog.quikr.com/2017/03/16/beware-of-job-scams-be-smart/
Work from home and online jobs scams
There are many students and youth dreaming of working from home and earning lots of money online and working in a boss-less environment. This can be done and many people of Nepal are making tons of money online. This needs a lot of knowledge, patience and hard work. Success won’t be knocking your door while you are asleep at 8 am. Many youngsters think that it is really easy to make money online and just the thing you should find is the key to open the money-box on the internet.
This is a huge and widespread misconception and scammers are capitalizing on this.
These scams are targeted on young people especially students. In this scam, a person or company presents a juicy proposal through email or to the visitors of their websites. There are many people who claim to teach you methods of earning a huge sum without any knowledge and effort but need to buy their service which is usually very expensive ( around Rs. 30,000 in general). I have written an article about the insights of online jobs in Nepal. Please read the article to find out what the valid ways to make money online are and how scammers are targeting young students to suck money out of their savings.
The article about the insight of online jobs in Nepal: https://studentsnepal.com/online-jobs-in-nepal/
If you know any other scams that are running successfully in Nepal, please comment below or send an email at admin @ studentsnepal.com. The information you provided will be added to the article.
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