Some of you must have heard the saying “America is the biggest brand in the world”. In many subsaharan countries and Cameroon in particular, I can extend that to say the light skin complexion is the biggest brand. In countries like Congo, skin bleaching is a longstanding cultural phenomenon.
I will continue to see, for a long time, white people get godlike or preferential treatment over me in my own country. It is well known that even the dullest, poorest and ‘last coco’ of white people has one thing to be thankful for, that he/she is not black. Africa remains a zoo to them and even blacks in America would not give up the discrimination they face in America to come back to Africa.
Through methods that are not the subject of this post, the American man has successfully branded himself and his land to be superior to every other. Africans far removed from the period of slave trade voluntarily move over to America to willingly enlist themselves as servants of the modern version of slave masters. Besides, being a slave in America is a better career choice than being a poor nobody in Cameroon - the likely fate of the average Cameroonian citizen.
For over a decade, Maryland, USA has been somewhat the economic capital of Ambazonia. Meanwhile Trump’s friends are coming to Africa to get rich, many Cameroonians over the years have been running to the United States to flee poverty. Many Cameroonian families, especially in the anglophone regions survive mainly on income being sent back home from their family members abroad.
Meanwhile, there are many honest and hardworking people who wake up everyday and experience immense hardships just to be able to take care of their families, a good number of Cameroonians abroad indulge in fraud and other illegal activities for their own financial gains. The number of fraudsters and criminals is too many to be few and we all know a drop of poison in a bucket of water makes the whole bucket undrinkable.
In October 2017, a federal grand jury in the state of Maryland USA, indicted five individuals on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering; three of whom are young Cameroonians. The five individuals were arrested in December 2017.
According to the indictment, between February 2016 and in or about July 2017, the defendants gained access to email accounts associated with the victims and sent false wiring instructions, causing the victims to wire millions of dollars into drop accounts set up by the defendants. The defendants then allegedly disbursed the money received from the victims into the drop accounts by, among other transactions; using wires to transfer money to other accounts, by initiating account transfers to other accounts at the same bank, by withdrawing sums of money, by obtaining cashier’s checks, and by writing checks to other individuals or entities.
Over the course of the conspiracy, the defendants stole or attempted to steal over $8.7 million from at least 11 victims.
It is important to note here that an indictment is not a finding of guilt. An individual charged by indictment is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty at some later criminal proceedings. We however all know how this is going to end because this is not the first time Cameroonians especially in the DMV area are running out of luck with the law.
I am sure every Cameroonian knows at least one ‘fraudster’ or ‘scammer’ as we more often refer to them that indulges in financial fraud of all sorts. Some might even argue that it is part of the Cameroonian and Nigerian DNA.
For all the white man has stolen and continues to steal from the African man for hundreds of years, part of me finds no remorse in them being finessed out of what is relatively some pocket change. What annoys me the most about these scammers is the way they spend the money and how they get caught easily. There is in fact a running joke about some Cameroonians that robbed a bank and were caught two blocks down trying to split the money because nobody trusted another person to bring the money to a safe place.
We might see the cases of Cameroonian scammers being caught, locked up, or deported from different countries around the world like some isolated incidents but when put together, a lot is being done to damage the reputation of every Cameroonian in many countries around the world. Nowadays, as a young man, when you go to Western Union or any other money transfer service to collect any money sent from abroad, it is sometimes a nightmare as you are already being prejudged as a scammer.
Many times, I have not been able to collect money for freelance work I do for people in different countries because the service personnel can’t believe there is a possibility for a Cameroonian to be doing honest work for someone in Saudi Arabia.
I have a U.S bank account and other financial services from the United States that I can hardly access from here. Whenever I use my PayPal account from Cameroon, it gets blocked - same goes for my Bank Account.
Add the international reputation the scammers are giving us to the disgraceful behavior of our politicians and you begin to see how Trump's supposedly description of African men as “lazy, horny, criminals” can hold much truth.
I earlier on mentioned that my sympathy for the victims of these scammers is short lived when I think of the historical pillaging that the white man has perpetrated on Africa but the foolish extravagance of most Cameroonian scammers makes me feel worse. There is something about that money that makes it impossible for them to sit down and shut up. I believe the white man is the bigger thief in this equation but his ability to keep everything on the low is what has made him survive longest in that position. For us, everybody has to know when we have laid hands on some small change. In that line of work, attention should be shunned but for us, it is usually the opposite.
Will it end anytime soon? - I doubt. I just write this so you can know that as a Cameroonian moving through the world, there is a shadow hanging over your head, the shadow of the actions of every other Cameroonian that has walked the path you now walk in whichever country you find yourself.
We are all custodians of our national identity and whether we like it or not, we will be treated in consideration of the actions of every other Cameroonian known in that place in the past. By our actions, we too shall lay the grounds for future generations of Cameroonians to walk on. So when we act, we should remember that the sins of the father live on in his offspring.
- Tino Foy