TANZANIA: HOW WOMEN ABUSE SOCIAL MEDIA TO CON MEN

THE adage "since men learned to shoot without missing, birds have learned to fly without perching" has never made sense as it does today, with social media users coming up with new tricks of getting an extra buck.

In recent times, men have become slippery and unpredictable when it comes to relationships, and with the advent of money first and love later, more men find it burdensome to involve themselves in love affairs.

It is with this in mind that more and more women look for alternative ways to slip into the well protected wallets of sometimes stingy men, with promises of wild love and passion.

In a survey conducted by this paper, it has been established that social media users, especially women, have been coming up with ingenious ways of getting money by luring unsuspecting men into their snares.

The flooding into the market of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, WhatsApp, Badoo and others have seen women devising ways of conning unsuspecting men of serious amounts of money. In a recent interview carried by 'Daily News', it has been established that apart from conning men out of their hard earned cash, some of these women go as far as cleaning their victim's bank accounts.

"When I met Schola Rwegasira (not her real name) we started chatting on Facebook, and she told me that she lives in Bukoba, and begged me to send her money so that she can come to Dar es Salaam," said Daniel Tumaini, a resident of Bahari Beach.

He said that the lady told him that she was living a hard life in Bukoba, and said that she was even ready to come and live with him until she got her own job, although she said that she has an aunt who lives in Dar es Salaam.

He told our reporter that after numerous pleas from the lady, he sent her 100,000/- as fare, because she told him that from Bukoba to Dar es Salaam by bus it costs 68,000/-.

He said that immediately after sending her the money, the lady stopped communicating, although she continued to post sexy photos of herself on her Facebook account. However, Tumaini got shocked afterwards when he relayed the story to his friends and discovered that four of them had fallen victim to the same girl, with the same name and story.

Their investigation revealed that the lady actually lives in Dar es Salaam, and that her list of friends includes people they knew, who confessed the same woman has been trying to solicit money from them.

Another scam involves women with seductive profile pictures in their Facebook accounts requesting for friendship, but after a while, using various methods, they manage to get your bank account number, and they clean it out.

"These women take advantage of men's weakness of beautiful women to request for friendship, but after that when you are hooked they start asking for money.

Imagine one woman getting money from two men every day, it means that they have turned it into a lucrative business," said Clance Ruhamba, a Dar es Salaam lawyer.

Coming in many disguises, some of these women are even ready to meet their new found "love" in person, but eventually if one is bright will realize that they are only after your money.

Mr Ruhamba said that it will take time before the habit could be stopped, because after being conned, most men don't tell anyone for fear of doing further damage at home because most of them are married. He said that targeting dating sites, the scammers have continued to get away with their loot, because so far getting their real identity has become a challenge.

"Be sure to not to believe anything someone tells you online, these scammers do not care about what they do, or about what the cost is to you, they just believe that if you are stupid enough to fall for it then you deserve it. So do not let this happen to you," said Jason Amir, who parted with a whole 500,000/- in a similar scam.

Daily News