Busted: a register of rogue dealers

Busted: a register of rogue dealers

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By Staff Reporter

YOU have just returned from a 12-hour shift and are sinking back on your chair at your rented flat in Slough, England, when you hear your mother from a remote Zimbabwean rural outpost is in Harare.

You are seriously thinking of sending her some money before she returns to the village. By chance, an unsolicited text message drops into your mobile phone inbox offering a fantastic exchange rate for money transfers. They promise it will be transferred to a Zimbabwean bank account within 24 hours.

Tired and eager to take a rest, you ring the mobile phone number provided and the voice on the other end indeed confirms the rate is dramatically improved from what your usual money transfer dealer offers.

Simple economics detects that you take up the offer, and you promptly do so. You transfer money into the given account number and fax the receipt with details of the Zimbabwean account number where the money should be deposited. Once again, you ring the mobile number provided to confirm everything is in order and you get an assurance everything is taken care off.

Fast forward to the next day. You ring your folks in Zimbabwe to check if the money has been received. To your utter shock and amazement, the money has not been received and on each occasion your mother has gone to check her balance she has been charged - as Zimbabwean banks do.

Concerned, you ring the mobile number from yesterday and the smooth, soothing and assuring voice has been replaced by a harsher 'leave-me-alone' tone.

"The money was transferred last night, so they must check tomorrow. You must be patient. I'm driving at the moment and can't talk," says the voice on the other end. The phone goes quiet.

The conversation marks the beginning of a protracted struggle to get the money released to your mother. Twenty-four hours becomes a week, and a week becomes a month and with time, you simply try to ignore this sad episode and accept you have lost the money.

Reporting the dealer to the cops is slightly troublesome because you are a "failed asylum seeker" and fear the police might ask for your details. A question of common sense: would you rather be held in a detention centre in Yarlswood awaiting deportation because you wanted to nail a rogue dealer over £350, or remain outside and working hard while accepting you have been swindled?

Months later, the mobile phone you used to call no longer works, or your number has been barred or is diverted to a number that is out of use. You learn that the fax number you used was an internet fax number, and is untraceable to a physical address.

Or picture this: You have applied for asylum in the UK and the Home Office has retained your passport. Without your passport you can't open a bank account, work or gain access to some services. You hear of a guy who can get your passport back from the Home Office, or can get you Permanent Leave to Remain and sort you a National Insurance Number. You are told the guy can get a visa put on your passport if you have overstayed.

Driven by desperation, you promptly pay the demanding sums of up to £2000. You wait for months and nothing comes through. When you call the individual, he bluntly tells you to go and jump into the River Thames. The requested service was illegal, and you think you have no recourse to the law. You accept you have been robbed and sink back to wallow in misery and self-pity.

Sounds familiar?

This is the story of how thousands of Zimbabweans have been forced to normalise the abnormal. Many are helpless and powerless.

New Zimbabwe.com is about to change that. We today declare war on the rogue traders, from shipping companies, foreign currency dealers and internet cons who promise to deliver goods to your people at home and fail to do so.

With the help of South Wales Police, our sleuths will enter these rackets across the UK to bring them to account. New Zimbabwe.com is going to be in the frontline catching dodgy businesses in the act. We will be dedicating a weekly column to be known as BUSTED to expose the roguery sweeping through our societies in the Diaspora.

With the help of our readers, we will make a serious effort to return morality to the Zimbabwean community and protect the vulnerable from fraud. Where our readers are afraid to lodge a complaint with the police, we will do it for them and send our sleuths in to entrap the dodgy dealers and bring them to account.

A register of the rogue dealers will be put up, monitored and updated by YOU.

Our readers can e-mail their personal experiences and stories to busted@newzimbabwe.com They are guaranteed a response and an update on their complaints.

The best advice is don't give work to any unsolicited companies or individuals who send you text messages out of the blue before you check whether they have a valid address, a fixed phone line (not just a mobile) and request details of company registration
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