Suddenly very early today received a call from India.
Almost a year ago, during our trip to India, my wife bought a bunch of clothes ( mostly sarees) from a store located in the mall of our residential complex ( South City, Kolkata).
A young salesman in mid 20s or early 30s was showing her sarees etc. I distinctly remember his voice as he was speaking in English with a forced strange accent even after telling him, that she understands Bengali, and later he called up an woman from some other shop to help Lenka with a saree.
We both liked that guy and paid with an Amex card ( that was our only CC working in India)
Now coming back to the morning call, somebody told me there has been some security issues with Amex Card ( something to do with some chip in the card or something) and requested me to visit some address near city centre of Prague.
Since we rarely use that card here, I asked him if it could wait for few days.
Here we rarely get calls from credit card companies as long as the bills are paid, or they straightaway send collectors at home ( I've seen it happened to a neighbor, poor chap's cheque got misplaced or something)
The voice ( specially the accent) sounded very familiar, it was neither typical Czech or American/ English, but I couldn't place it at that time.
Anyway he hung up after promising a call in next couple of hours.
Within 15 minutes he called back and told it can be solved over phone ( making the scam obvious even to an idiot like me) and this time I finally could recognise the accent.
So I asked him straightaway...instead of getting scared, the guy told me that he's now working here!! ( Though the call originated from India!!)
Long story short, after further pressing he told me the truth...he has lost his job and working in some company specialising in these kind of activities and he received INR 5000 for stealing the card transfer details from his previous employer ( I don't know how he did that)
I remembered the guy being very decent and extremely helpful. Circumstances forced him to do what he's doing now.
Of course most of us would think/ say that thousands have lost their jobs, but not all of them are engaging in criminal activities.
But somehow I am still feeling terrible for this guy..I could and did help him with a very small amount that would feed him and his ailing mom and dad for a month at most.
But it's no solution, though he promised that he will leave these things but I'm sure he's possibly trying to scam someone right now. It breaks my heart, it really does. What a waste of life!!
Almost a year ago, during our trip to India, my wife bought a bunch of clothes ( mostly sarees) from a store located in the mall of our residential complex ( South City, Kolkata).
A young salesman in mid 20s or early 30s was showing her sarees etc. I distinctly remember his voice as he was speaking in English with a forced strange accent even after telling him, that she understands Bengali, and later he called up an woman from some other shop to help Lenka with a saree.
We both liked that guy and paid with an Amex card ( that was our only CC working in India)
Now coming back to the morning call, somebody told me there has been some security issues with Amex Card ( something to do with some chip in the card or something) and requested me to visit some address near city centre of Prague.
Since we rarely use that card here, I asked him if it could wait for few days.
Here we rarely get calls from credit card companies as long as the bills are paid, or they straightaway send collectors at home ( I've seen it happened to a neighbor, poor chap's cheque got misplaced or something)
The voice ( specially the accent) sounded very familiar, it was neither typical Czech or American/ English, but I couldn't place it at that time.
Anyway he hung up after promising a call in next couple of hours.
Within 15 minutes he called back and told it can be solved over phone ( making the scam obvious even to an idiot like me) and this time I finally could recognise the accent.
So I asked him straightaway...instead of getting scared, the guy told me that he's now working here!! ( Though the call originated from India!!)
Long story short, after further pressing he told me the truth...he has lost his job and working in some company specialising in these kind of activities and he received INR 5000 for stealing the card transfer details from his previous employer ( I don't know how he did that)
I remembered the guy being very decent and extremely helpful. Circumstances forced him to do what he's doing now.
Of course most of us would think/ say that thousands have lost their jobs, but not all of them are engaging in criminal activities.
But somehow I am still feeling terrible for this guy..I could and did help him with a very small amount that would feed him and his ailing mom and dad for a month at most.
But it's no solution, though he promised that he will leave these things but I'm sure he's possibly trying to scam someone right now. It breaks my heart, it really does. What a waste of life!!
Only special place in the regular hell 
