Jiji is a popular online platform that enables sellers to meet buyers online and exchange goods and services for money without brokers.
Many Ugandans use this platform every day to carry out transactions. This has attracted fraudsters and scammers who use a popular trick to disguise as interested buyers to fleece unsuspecting victims of their money.
The scammer feigns interest in the product that you are selling.
They then contact you using a foreign number on WhatsApp purportedly for a woman based in the diaspora.
The lady proceeds to introduce themselves to you and how they are interested in the product that you have put up on the platform.
She intends to buy the product for a relative and will therefore wire money to you using the remittance service Remitly. You have to register to use this service but they contact you during off-work hours and tell you to use a shortcut instead.
You are instructed to call the Ugandan-based ‘relative’ to whom you are told to deliver the product. However, in order for the diaspora buyer to send you money, you have to first send Mobile Money of a certain amount to ‘Remitly’ so that the transaction can be processed.
This goes on until you send the money. Once you do so, the diaspora buyer keeps giving excuses about how you need to send more money to enable the process to be completed faster. This becomes continuous till you realize that it is a scam. They however don’t close channels to you but continue giving you excuses until you give up and accept the loss that you have already made.
