Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Cell Phone Scams

So what are you going to do with a small town Mexican woman even at age 54

Mari won a cel fone in the local school lottery (Nokia no less) and it works fine. I don't know how universal these things are but it was originally Telcel. Soon after winning this thing she gets a message or call stating she has won a new Volkswagen and just needs to deposit $3100 pesos in an account at Elecktra. Supposedly this extra fee was because she didn't respond to the original message and caused a delay.

She asked for the $3100 and I told her they were just rateros on a scam. She called back and they said if she would buy $1000 pesos of MoviStar Cel time she could also qualify. We don't have MoviStar service here and no one sells it. Next it was Telcel so we bought the cards, she gave them the numbers .... and expects to have a new Volkswagen delivered tomorrow.

I figured a lesson of $1000 pesos is better than $3100. I expect no car and her cel cards are or soon will be useless. A shiny new Jetta tomorrow I doubt

-

P.S. -- No car as of yet but she is working on it so diligently that she almost has me convinced she may get one. Supposed to be talking with a lawyer in Guadalajara. There's lots of stories of this same scam on the Internet
P.S.S -- Mari had to admit finally that was only a lesson. A bit embarrased she was ;)

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The construction of the house finished in April 2011 and I'm pretty much settled in. As of March 2014 I'm in preparation for rain mode for this coming summer. That includes sealing and painting things and dealing with drainage issues from last year.

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