Khalaf Al-Harbi Okaz The world is full of wonders. A Saudi woman who is not yet 25 years of age was able to collect about SR500 million from a large number of men under the pretext of real estate investments. The poor swindler is now in police custody. The local media nicknamed her the “Phantom Girl” because her real estate investments were nothing more than an illusion. Perhaps a more appropriate name would be the “Reality Girl” for it seems our men neither learn from past mistakes nor repent. First there was the Sawa card scam and countless investment scams and yet there are still hundreds or thousands of people who are more than willing to fall victims to such scams. They are ready to sacrifice their money due to the illusions of wealth. They are prepared to go after investments that have no guarantees for success. Just that it offers them a simple and quick route to make more money. It is quite obvious that our commercial system is full of loopholes. Otherwise, how could a young woman easily fly away with about SR500 million, leaving behind miserable victims who could only find solace in police stations? Once they realized they had been duped, they ran with their complaints to the police in the hope that they would regain their embezzled funds. The stories published by the local press about this woman seem to be confusing and ambiguous. Some reports said she issued bad checks and others said her signature did not match the one recognized by the banks. Whatever the case may be, about SR500 million has disappeared into thin air before the very eyes of the victims and the concerned authorities. The concerned authorities have come out with complicated financial systems and regulations that seem to be hard to break. However, a novice fraudulent or an inexperienced crook like the ‘Phantom Girl' can easily circumvent these regulations. She simply proved that our financial laws are not invincible. The ‘Phantom Girl' has shown us that our financial rules and regulations are not foolproof as we have been mistakenly believed. These systems are nothing more than a big illusion. The world is replete with investment scams; stories about fraudulent investments are aplenty and in every country there are scammers as well as there are people who are always willing to be victims to such scams. But what angers me about such scams in the Kingdom is that fraudsters do not require big imaginations or bright brains or intricate tactics to institute such swindles. If this were the case, a young and inexperienced woman would not have been able to pull off a multimillion-riyal scam so easily. Out of the blue, a young woman convinces mature and wise men that she can double their incomes and then flies away with a large sum of money in the blink of an eye. The ‘Phantom Girl' did not need publicity or huge advertisement campaigns to market her scam. Investing in empty, or white lands as they are known here, is a very common business. Unlike the stock market, there are few risks with such investments. The woman knew this fact very well. She was also aware that our financial systems could easily be broken and she was aware that she could manage to lure a bunch of marks with a quick-buck scheme, and she did, in the process, make a laughing stock of some of the people with keen business acumen. I wish that local fraudsters would come up with innovative and creative methods of swindling people out of their money. They should have some respect for our minds but unfortunately, our victims are easy prey.
