Hi!

I'm sharing with you the forwarded message sent by a friend.  Please take heed! Thanks! God bless!

Isay

Friends, be careful of extra-evil persons.

Almost everyone in the Philippines has lost a mobile phone. It has happened to many people, including me.

Whenever you lose a phone, whether you dropped it or it was snatched from you or you gave it voluntarily (due to a deadly weapon being pointed at you), you try your best to think positive and convince yourself that the person who took it needed money badly. After all, there are so many poor Filipino people and many will resort to dirty money if that's all they could get.

But then, we realize that there also exist really evil human beings...

On February 2, 2007 (Friday), I received a text message from a former colleague. Melody (that's her real name) used to work in our office, but has transferred to another company. That morning, she sent me an SMS asking for a favor. Since I was out of load that day, I asked Ope, an officemate, to text her and ask her what she needed, and she said that she needed PhP7K ASAP because of her mother's illness. I've known of her mom's illness, so I immediately said okay, and that she can pick it up at the office that day. Through text, she said that she was in Nueva Ecija staying at her aunt, and she can't go to our office in Quezon City. She also said that she was gonna pay me the following day and offered a PhP2K-worth interest. We talked about it in our office and decided that everyone would contribute to give her money.

Katherine, another colleague, said Melody also texted her and was borrowing PhP8K minimum. Katherine was pregnant and was due any day, but she was willing to lend 15K.

It was already noontime, and Melody was saying that she already needed the cash. In a couple of hours, the few of us came up with 26K.

We tried calling Melody to discuss the details of how she can get the money, but she wouldn't answer and would only respond through text. I figured she must be in the hospital and must be really busy. She probably couldn't hear her phone ring (because I almost never hear mine ring, too).

I told her through text that we from the office could lend her 26K and asked her how we could give her the money. She said 26K was enough and we could send it through a Globe Center as G-Cash. I said I didn't know how to do that, and asked if we can deposit the money through a bank. She said that only a Globe Center was close to where she was, and instructed me to just go to a Globe Center at SM City, give the money and send it to Melody P. Santos, 09279070847, Bgy. Rosas, Talavera, Nueva Ecija. She said those were all the details I needed.

Because it was only about 1 pm, we couldn't leave the office. Rommel, a colleague, was going out to do some errands and volunteered to bring the money to Globe. We gave him the money. At that time, Rommel was also out of load, and had a problem with his mobile phone. We could text him, but he couldn't text us back. His phone was also useless for calls. So before leaving, we made sure that Rommel had all the details for the transaction. And so he left.

After a few minutes, Katherine received a text message from Melody's mother. She said that Melody's phone was just stolen. (I thought that the phone was stolen at that instant and was worried that she might not be able to text Rommel other important details.)

After a few more minutes, Katherine received a call from Abie, another former colleague who is a close friend of Melody, too. She said that Melody's phone was stolen the day before and we should ignore any text from that number.

Appalled, Katherine tried calling Rommel and almost everyone in the office were sending text messages to him and telling him not to make the money transfer. There was no use calling him, because his phone was problematic. Ate Ebbey gave him load (through pasa load), but he still wasn't responding. We asked our messenger Aboy to follow him at Globe SM and asked our driver, Manong Willy to accompany him. To our dismay, Manong Willy just brought the office van to the service center that morning. Hence, we just told Aboy to get a cab.

Fifteen minutes later, Rommel called me and said that he was at McDonalds in Visayas Avenue. I was talking with him loudly, and everyone at the office were listening intently to our conversation. He asked me why he received messages asking him to stop the transfer. He was already done with the transaction, he said, when he received the messages.

"What?! you already made the transfer?" I asked standing up.

"Yes," he responded, and that made me slump in my chair. Katherine understood my reaction and was red and stunned.

"I'm kidding. I haven't even reached SM yet when I got the messages. Melody's mom was the first to text me."

Everyone's heartbeat and breathing came back to normal, especially Katherine's. She wasn't gonna deliver that day, thanks to Rommel. It just so happened that before going to SM, he decided to meet his girlfriend first, which slowed him. Oh God, Your sense of humor is fascinating!

After some time, the real Melody called our office and told us what happened. She said that she lost her phone. I asked her how come the "villain" knew the details of her life: her full name, her mom's illness, etc. She said that the person played a text game with Abie (whose name appeared as Abie Sis. Abie, trusting that it was Melody texting her, played the game. This was the message:

Test kng gnO mk Kklala!
NAME Q -
MIDDLE NAME Q -
SURNAME Q -
BDAY Q -
AGE Q -
ADD Q -
WORK Q -
LIKES Q -
DISLIKES Q -
FAVE EXPRESSION Q -
MSG M SKN -
Answer in 3 mins. GAME!

Because of the game, that person was able to obtain useful information about the cellular phone's owner, because he/she played it with someone really close to Melody. He/She also found out about Melody's mom's illness, obviously reading all her message folders and probably squeezed for information from other persons in the phonebook, too.

We reported the incident at NTC, but they said that all they could do was to block the phone, because catching the evil person would be very difficult since he/she was probably using a prepaid sim as well.

In the end, all we could do was to pray and ask God to take charge and do the vengeance for us. Also, we asked the Lord, "Sana kunin Niyo na siya."

Thank God we all got our money back. However, we are not sure if no one else in Melody's phonebook was deceived.

So here are some reminders for everyone:


When someone borrows money from you through SMS, confirm it by calling the borrower. You're obviously gonna recognize if the person's a phony.
If someone plays the abovementioned game with you or anything similar, be suspicious. Make sure you're playing with the right person.
Keep an extra copy of your mobile phonebook. When you lose your phone, inform all the people in your phonebook about the loss.
Friends, let's be careful in everything that we do. Although God is there to protect us and most of the time rescue us from our foolishness, sometimes, He lets us fall flat on our face if we commit the same mistake more than once. Our intentions were good, but we were not very cautious.

However, our carelessness is no excuse for that evil person to do what he/she did. God is forgiving, but He is also fair. So to all sinners, including me, may God's love forgive us all, and may His justice rule the earth. Amen!

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