Basil Jarrett | When scamming starts costing jobs

Just over a week ago, Prime Minister Andrew Holness reemphasized something that those in law enforcement have long since known: Lottery scamming is no longer simply a crime problem. It is an economic problem, a reputational problem and, increasingly, a national security problem.

Following a recent meeting of the National Security Council, Government formally declared lottery scamming, a major national security threat to the country’s Business Process Outsourcing and Global Services Sector. Several of Jamaica’s law enforcement bodies, namely MOCA and the JCF’s Anti-Lottery Scamming Unit were directed to intensify its targeting of perpetrators, while Government signalled a broader regulatory and law-enforcement response involving the industry, regulators and overseas partners.

The numbers explain the urgency. According to the Global Services Association of Jamaica, scamming has already cost the sector more than J$6 billion, deprived Government of as much as J$900 million annually in revenue and contributed directly to the dismissal of almost 2,000 BPO employees, with thousands of other Jamaican jobs at risk.

WE HAVE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE

The deleterious impact of lottery scamming on Jamaica is well documented. Scammers don’t simply rob elderly retirees in the United States to buy the latest Mark X, but are now key players feeding an elaborate ecosystem that finances gangs, buy guns, pays killers and fuels disputes over lead sheets. For years, that ecosystem has been a major contributor to the country’s high homicide rate as victims piled up in the fight over territory and proceeds. The lure of easy money has made lottery scamming an attractive career choice for many young idle hands, drawn to the sudden wealth on display in their communities.

That perfect storm of easy money, idle hands and young, creative minds led to what former Police Commissioner Major General Antony Anderson described years ago as one of the major funding sources for gangs and the criminal underworld, increasingly driving murder and violent crime.

So law enforcement players are no strangers to the fallout from lottery scamming, namely murder, shootings, corruption, money laundering and gang violence. To that inglorious list we can now add economic contraction if international companies decide that it is too risky to hire Jamaicans and setup business here.

KILLING THE GOLDEN GOOSE

The global services sector is one of Jamaica’s most important economic success stories. Depending on whose measurement is used, it currently employs somewhere around 40,000 to 50,000 Jamaicans and earns hundreds of millions of US dollars in foreign exchange every year. At its peak, employment was closer to 60,000. One recent industry assessment placed local spending by the sector at US$780 million annually, second only to tourism.

The downside of this is that because modern BPO and global-services operations handle financial information, healthcare records, payment data, customer accounts and other sensitive information belonging to some of the largest companies in the world, they are a goldmine of opportunity for lottery scamming syndicates.

From all accounts, persons who have worked in the BPO sector are increasingly being targeted and recruited for their expertise and pleasant accents. This makes multinational corporations who have decided to place thousands of customer-service or back-office jobs here in Jamaica, skittish about data security and data privacy. One compromised employee with a cellphone can do considerably more damage than an office full of mediocre customer-service agents.

Companies responded by masking financial information, disabling screen captures and USB access, restricting devices and introducing increasingly intrusive security measures. Those measures are expensive, both in terms of time and money, and in a situation where international investors have options, you don’t need to be a prophet to see the potential impact.

If Jamaica becomes too expensive to secure, too difficult to vet or too risky to secure customers’ data those jobs can move to India, Latin America or the Philippines. Take your pick.

THE FSC ENTERS THE FIGHT

Underscoring the concern for the potential fallout from lottery scamming on the BPO sector, even the Financial Services Commission has been recruited to join the fight. As part of Government’s expanded response, the FSC has been mandated to establish a regulated architecture allowing stronger supervision and greater information-sharing around persons carrying out fraudulent and scamming activities within the BPO and Global Services Sector. That is important because this problem cannot be solved by arrests alone. That means better vetting, stronger regulatory standards, meaningful information-sharing and systems capable of identifying individuals dismissed from one company for fraud before they simply turn up at another BPO on Monday morning with a freshly printed résumé.

To be fair, law enforcement has been making inroads in the lottery scamming fight for several years now. MOCA, the JCF’s Anti-Lottery Scam Unit, the Financial Investigations Division, the Jamaica Defence Force and international partners have conducted sustained operations involving arrests, prosecutions, extraditions and asset seizures. Further, the Jamaica Operations Linked to Telemarketing Task Force (JOLT) was specifically created around the recognition that an American victim sitting in Minnesota and a scammer sitting in Montego Bay are now part of the same crime scene. In the last two years, JOLT related activities have resulted in at least 23 key players in the scamming industry being charged locally for lottery scamming and five persons being extradited to the U.S.

THIS AFFECTS ALL OF US

Lottery scamming has always been a stain on our communities. But when companies start weighing whether or not Jamaica is a viable place to invest millions of dollars, it is no longer simply robbing foreigners. It is stealing Jamaican jobs, foreign exchange and local investment.

The scammers have now made this everybody’s business. Perhaps it is time everybody started treating it that way.

Major Basil Jarrett is the director of communications at the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) and crisis communications consultant. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Threads @IamBasilJarrett and linkedin.com/in/basiljarrett. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.