Combing through Ghana for cash

………A lament for victims of the bandwagon effect

We may choose to allow ourselves to be trapped into viewing incidents and news stories of the collapse of financial institutions as isolated cases. That will be unfortunate. The result is that we will lose the chance to truly learn from these cases and to bring about the much needed change. 

As I connect the dots between the stories, I have become convinced that they are all inextricably linked to a larger and even more insidious phenomenon that has been going on for years; and are repeated more frequently than a small country like Ghana needs. Besides, this phenomenon is only a symptom of a deeper ailment and rottenness in our attitude towards money; and of what appears to be an absence of state protection of the citizenry. 

For instance, the state should seek to know in the past 10, 20 or so years, how many people have lost money to phony investments, how much money have been lost, how many families have been destroyed, how many people have committed suicide as a result? 

HOW I LOST LAND TO AN INVESTMENT SCHEME

About 18 years ago when I was a student outside Ghana, I received a letter from my mother with an urgent request for me to send her some amount of money to invest in a certain investment scheme. I explained to her that I could not afford that amount. The request continued to come through with urgency. She assured me that the investment was full-proof and that several people in the village had put in money and had made good returns. 

Finally, she came with the big suggestion: she had decided to sell a parcel of land I had sent money earlier on to be purchased for me. She will use the proceeds from the sale for the intended investment. Not being able to stand the parental pressure; and more so to earn my peace of mind, I gave in. She promptly sold the land to a distant relative, who in the end, only made part payment of the price. Equally promptly, my mother handed over the proceeds into her beloved investment. 

A couple of years later, I gently asked her how her so-called investment was faring. To my utter shock, her response was that she didn’t want to talk about the matter because it was a very embarrassing and painful experience. In short, my land money had evaporated. The schemer had moved on and several people in the village had been duped and lost their investments. 

THE MONEY BUSINESS FOLKS

Periodically, the news headlines had alarmed us about US Tilapia, DKM, God Is Love, Menzgold and banks that had collapsed. It is as if we treat these stories as isolated cases. Methinks that what we should do is to get to the root of the problem: what makes it so easy for individuals who may be criminally-minded and confidence-tricksters to comb through Ghana to deceive our people—like they did to my mother. They leave behind grown-ups with broken hearts, hurts, depression and probably some suicide cases. 

As matters stand, there is a category of business folks who are in the business of collecting other people’s money with dubious promises of paying high profits to depositors. With this kind of business, there are no tangible products to produce, to buy or to sell. The product is raw cash. It is a line of business that is partly a Ponzi scheme and partly the purest form of impunity at defrauding. 

The individuals in these types of businesses audaciously decide that their sole focus is to go round targeted parts of the country to brazenly mop out money from people in the name of investment. They are our modern-day money-doublers who promise to grow money for their clients. Often, the schemes sound so attractive and cause people to recklessly hand over their money. The investment schemers know that the regulators are ineffective. And that when (not if) things go wrong, they will get away with their crime. 

SUFFERERS OF THE BANDWAGON EFFECT

It is said that if you can see a bandwagon, it is probably too late! Clearly, the criminals know about the bandwagon effect. So at the start of their schemes, they do things right to make the prospects of profits look so good and tempting. Then when the clients lose their guard, they strike hard with impunity. My mother was a classic victim of the bandwagon effect. Without a doubt, the Menzgolders, DKMers and victims of the known and unknown Ponzi-type schemes have been bandwagon victims. 

Most of us are potential victims of swindlers. If you let your guard down for even a fraction of an inch or a second, a money-making schemer will fleece you. Naturally, we expect the first point of call of swindlers to be the non-literate. My heart breaks when I see several microfinance companies littering market communities, targeting market women. When these women are duped, their stories do not often make it to primetime news (or to any news at all). The women suffer quietly after losing money, and continue with the hard grinding life of trading. 

Interestingly, the elite and very well educated people, whom we expect will know much better, are also conned in one money-making scheme or the other. I suspect that when the elite realize that they have been duped, some of them keep the bad experiences to themselves and suffer quietly out of embarrassment and shame to be seen as weak. 

THE STATE VERSUS INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

Strangely, individuals continue to engage in risky financial behaviours because they want to make easy money. When these sugar-coated, sweet-tongued, butter-crusted money sales-people arrive in the cities, towns, villages, markets, communities and homes of our country to pitch their quick moneymaking schemes to our people, who has the responsibility to protect them? Does the state of Ghana bear any responsibility; or high risk-taking grown-up citizens are on their own, left at the mercy of unguarded moments of human foibles of gullibility, innocence, greed and even foolishness?  

The role of the state is to promulgate policies and laws, and set up structures and systems that make the current free-for-all money-making schemes difficult for charlatans to break through and thrive. The state also has a responsibility to conscientise the citizenry about destructive risk-taking behaviours.

This phenomenon of business people combing through Ghana for cash is probably at the heart of some of the incurable poverty in our country. For some of our people, it is as if the more things change, the more they remain the same. All it takes is one swoop through a community by some of these investment schemers and the hard-earned little wealth of families are fleeced off and they return to their former ground-zero, in shock and in a perpetual state of depression. 

dorisdartey@gmail.com