Get-Rich-Quick Schemes? Avoid Them

Dear Lovely people,

Many are the people with noble dreams to change their lives and those around them but then what happens? They get into such a rush to accumulate wealth that they forget the important factor of time. Time is an important factor when it comes to transforming your dreams into reality. You need time for the plans you set into motion through minute by minute action to produce the desired results.

A truth I learned at the very early stage of my life is that there is no free lunch, no easy money. Yet people often become victim of ‘double-your-money’ or ‘earn-lifetime-income’ schemes. Nothing comes free in this world, especially money. The universal truth is you need to earn your money by hard labor all the time and there are no shortcuts to double it in the shortest span of time.

Tomsina is a young entrepreneur who was on a steady rise to the top until the idea of getting rich at all cost and as fast as possible crept into his head. He succeeded in getting some few cloudy deals through that brought in much money and thought life was to remain that easy.

He received a phone call one sunny day from a man who claimed to have met an artisanal miner from the East Region of Cameroon with a 105Kg of mined gold. He added that as middleman, he equally knew an expatriate buyer in the economic capital of Douala who was ready to buy the gold at ten times the price offered by the artisanal miner. He told Tomsina that if he could purchase the gold, they could travel together to sell it to the waiting expatriate and then he Tomsina could reward him at an agreed percentage.

They arranged a meeting in a hotel in the capital, Yaounde. After four hours of negotiations, Tomsina paid the requested sum of thirty-five thousand dollars. Outside the hotel, the bag of gold was dropped in the booth of a waiting Toyota LandCruiser with a driver behind the wheel said to be the expatriate’s driver who was to take them to Douala to meet the expatriate.

Just after taking off, the driver’s phone rang and after the conversation, he informed Tomsina that the Expertraite’s wife who was lodging in another hotel proposes that they come over and have breakfast together before all of them take-off for Douala. Tomsina didn’t see any problem with that and so off they went to the hotel. Once settled in the restaurant at the hotel, the Driver’s phone rang once again and he told Tomsina after the conversation that the lady asked them to start eating while she rounded off with something before joining them at table.

While they eat, Tomsina’s phone rang this time around and the middleman was online. He requested Tomsina to move away from the Driver so he will not eavesdrop on their conversation. Tomsina did just that and was held on phone for as long as it was necessary for the driver to disappear into thin air. It took Tomsina another hour of waiting to realize that he had been taken on a sucker by a gang of scammers. His money was gone just like that.

In Proverbs 28:19-20 (ESV), it is written: “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty. A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.”