Going to war as a survivor, fighting scammers

That was when I really decided to go to war

I had spent decades in the job

Come up with a memorandum containing recommendations to protect the public from online scams

Make various suggestions from advocacy and awareness programs to doing more studies to understand if there is a gap in the law allowing for such crimes to go unpunished

Urge for a better safety mechanism to red flag large or unusual banking transactions, and proposed a way to insure our bank deposits against losses from fraud or scams, the same way one would insure a house from disasters or fire

You can even insure your face these days, so why not your life savings?
And I’m not talking about the Deposit Insurance Corporation, which only insures the deposits from a financial institution's bankruptcy

Propose law enforcement use studies on neurolinguistic programming to train their staff and educate the public
Right now, if someone goes to the police to say they think they were hypnotized they won’t be taken seriously, but this is an actual technique used to manipulate people into believing scammers

Some countries there are special bank accounts for senior citizens
These accounts have different safeguards against online scams and fraud, because seniors were found to be particularly vulnerable to such scams
So why can’t we have the same?

But I’m not stopping

I refuse to be scared or trapped in anxiety.
I choose to rise against this system that allowed this to happen.
Of course I feel anger, sadness and shame, but I choose to fight.

When this happened, I had many friends who said, “Why were you so stupid?
You are such an experienced job servant but you fell for this?”
If it was up to my feelings, I would have retreated in shame but I steeled myself.

I prayed incessantly for strength.
As a religious person, I accept my fate and this helped me become a survivor, not a victim.
When it first happened, I kept asking myself, “Why me? I do charity and give back.
I never took a sen from public coffers, I don’t have hundreds upon hundreds of thousands in the bank like business people.
I live purely on my employees provident fund. Why me?”

But now I believe God chose me because I was in a position to do something about it.

There are many scam victims or survivors who can share their story and raise awareness but they are ashamed to do so.
They are called stupid, ignorant and so on.

I don’t give two hoots what people say and all I want to do is share this information with others, especially senior citizens who are more vulnerable.

I strongly believe, to fight this scam problem, we must work in a multidisciplinary and multiagency manner.
Now we have the Anti Scam Coalition, endorsed by the government, which includes major NGOs and even telecommunication giants.

But I still hope we can have a select committee in Parliament with members from both sides of the divide to work together to help the people.
Billions of dollars have been swindled from them via scams.

Some people have asked me why I don’t just choose to forgive my scammers and move on.
Yes, forgiveness is a virtue in any religion and God forgave those who did worse to Him but I think I would rather meet my scammers in the afterlife and see who they are first.

I will continue to fight them in this life, not by hunting them down and beating them up, but by speaking out, raising awareness.

This is my war.

I may have lost tens of thousands of dollar in this life, but with this war, God willing, I will receive rewards from God far exceeding my losses.