What’s happening in Jamdown ?

well lets just take a look at a few stories that hit the news in the past week. bad stuff mostly. Schoolgirls Raped in Record Numbers; why ? Killer Monkeys from Haiti.. WTF ? Kids so poor they don’t go to school they go to the dump or Dungle’ to Eat, and find their subsistence.

the new scam reminds me of the Nigerian 419 scam, where people send money by wire transfer; to appease their own greed. only in this case the people claim to be getting the money for a charity. that’s why it’s so despicable.  they changed it to be a lottery now, but it’s still sweeping in the cash from the greedy in the us.  and we wonder why Jamaica is so much like america ?  it’s apparently turned into Our Sand Box for Trying out Bad Shit.

to start out lets look at a comedy newscast, before the seriousness

Trinidadian and the Jamaicans – Wham Dey? News@ 11

Take a look , this could be YOU ..

URL: RISE IN BROKEN WILLY

RISE IN BROKEN WILLY

Dining at the dump – One man’s garbage is another’s food

April 13, 2009 – Paul Williams, JA Gleaner

Boys and men surround a garbage truck at the Riverton City dump. Many fortune hunters scavenge for food and other objects to make a living. – photo by Paul Williams

He said he was in the eighth grade, but he was not at school because he had no lunch money. As the rays of the mid-morning sun hit his brown eyes, he squinted. His short, black, curly hair glistened but the dirt on his discoloured face could not mask his frustration and shame as he barely opened his mouth to speak.

It is Thursday, another day in Riverton City, another day of scavenging for food in the dump. This is the reality of Rajiv, an Indian-Jamaican youth who survives, as do scores of others, on the food they harvest at the landfill that borders St Andrew and St Catherine, near the Duhaney River.

The dump is known as ‘Dungle’, an iconic name shared with the slum featured in H. Orlando Patterson’s Children of Sisyphus. It is now situated atop a hill overlooking cane fields and urban developments.

For years, it has been a hunting ground for food, clothes, broken furniture, malfunctioning electrical appliances, zinc sheets, board and utensils. You name it, they’ve got it in Dungle.

In a discussion with a group of residents, juices and other ‘groceries’ retrieved from the dump were displayed for The Gleaner. And like a chorus, they told how much the dump was contributing to their livelihood.

“You nuh see how mi fat? When mi go doctor, doctor say, ‘Mother, what you feeding on?’” Maxine said with pride, twirling to show her massive build. “You want to see we daughter an’ son how dem big an’ strong.”

Goodies galore

“Is it dem feed out o’, you know how much pickney it sen’ go school,” another woman chimed. (Because of reservations about the media, many inner-city residents only disclose their first names, if at all.)

“Look pon dem yah nice things yah, you see anyt’ing wrong with them!” Maxine shouted while showing off her bag of goodies.

One young boy, Chuey, offered this reporter some of the brightly coloured Skittles he had to prove they were fit to be eaten. In the background, young men echoed the sentiments of the women, explaining the strenuous search for food for their many children, some of whom were frolicking in the river nearby.

Residents said there has been an increase in persons flocking the massive dump in recent months. They surmised that the recession and the rise in unemployment are contributing to the spike in fortune hunters. They were also quick to debunk the perception that only Riverton City residents frequented the dump.

“Three-quarters of the people them who hustle pon the dump nuh come from Riverton. Them come from all St Thomas, Manchester, St Catherine, Clarendon, Portmore, all ’bout the place,” said a National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) worker, whose name cannot be published because he does not have clearance to speak to the press.

Daily workers

While talking with the residents, The Gleaner observed well-dressed people making their way into the dump. According to the residents, these people actually come to ‘work’ every day, hunting for objects which can be sold for recycling and other purposes.

After an afternoon of sifting through the refuse, they take a bath in the river and change back into their regulation gear.

“Them come to work because the money what dem a mek fi de week can pay their mortgage, can pay rent fi who a pay rent, can sen dem pickney go a school, can buy food put pon dem table,” said Devon, a long-time resident.

Rajiv himself had a big bag in his hand. Wearing an old oversize jacket, he made his way through freshly delivered piles of garbage. The eighth-grader, who looks much older than his years, competes with cows, birds and pigs for food.

Life-and-death matter

Devon and Maxine’s pronouncements, lambasting the NSWMA for trying to prevent them from going to the dump, are poignant reminders that scavenging is a bread-and-butter issue.

“The chicken truck come, the juice truck come, the biscuit truck come. Dem look one bag, and that a go home go stock dem fridge. So when dem go home, dem pickney have nuff sup’n to eat,” Devon said.

Maxine concurred: “You see all the little biscuit, give de pickney dem inna dem lickle schoolbag, the juice dem inna dem lickle bag … . Dem want to know how much Dungle food we nyam, none a dem nuh healthy like we. None o’ dem!”

paul.williams@gleanerjm.com

Half of Jamaican teen girls forced to have sex – 94% of adolescent pregnancies unplanned, study reveals

JA Gleaner – April 13, 2009

Forty-nine per cent of girls aged 15-17 in Jamaica’s capital, Kingston, have reportedly experienced sexual coercion or violence. One-third stated that they had been persuaded or forced to participate in their first sexual experience, a study has revealed.

Though young women who had experienced sexual violence were not more likely than those who had not to become pregnant, the numbers reflect the widespread prevalence of gender-based violence in Jamaica, the authors concluded.

The study, titled The Influence of Early Sexual Debut and Sexual Violence on Adolescent Pregnancy: A Matched Case-Control Study in Jamaica, also found that 94 per cent of the pregnant teens interviewed reported that their pregnancies were unintended.

These findings, the researchers said, demonstrate a strong need for increased education and services for young people in Jamaica to help reduce the country’s high rates of unplanned teen pregnancy and gender-based violence.

Efforts to empower young women are key to addressing these problems, said the authors. The study found a significant link between unequal relationships and pregnancy risk: Compared with their peers who had never been pregnant, adolescents who were pregnant were more likely to have had a first sexual partner who was at least five years older, to have low self-esteem and to believe contraception is solely a woman’s responsibility.

Contraceptives

Among teens who were pregnant, those who first had sex by age 14 were more likely to have had two or more partners than those who had first sex at a later age. In addition, pregnant young women were less likely to report having used contraceptives the first time they had sex than were teens who had never been pregnant. Eighty-seven per cent of pregnant teens who reported having used contraceptives at the time they became pregnant said they had relied on condoms.

To help reduce pregnancy risk, the authors recommend that programmes encourage teens to delay sex (if it is under their control) until they find a job or finish school, as well as educate sexually active young women on more reliable, hormonal contraceptive methods that can be used in combination with condoms.

Of the 250 pregnant women recruited to participate in the study, 182 were from one large hospital and the rest from smaller antenatal care clinics.

The study appears in the March 2009 issue of International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, formerly known as International Family Planning Perspectives.

Its authors are Joy Noel Baumgartner, Cynthia Waszak Geary, Heidi Tucker – all based in the United States – and Maxine Wedderburn, executive director of Hope Enterprises in Jamaica.

Data for the study were primarily gleaned from interviews with teen girls aged 15-17, 250 of whom were pregnant and 500 others who were sexually experienced but never pregnant.

Attack on child porn – New legislation coming to crack down on paedophiles
April 11, 2009 – Arthur Hall JA Gleaner Senior Staff Reporter

The Government is getting tough on paedophiles with new laws aimed at cracking down on child pornography.

The Cabinet has approved a bill titled ‘The Child Pornography (Prevention) Act 2009′, which is to be debated by Parliament shortly.

“There is no law in Jamaica that deals specifically with child pornography and the trend globally is to treat child pornography as a separate crime,” Attorney General and Minister of Justice Dorothy Lightbourne announced recently.

“The bill will criminalise the production, possession, importation, export and distribution of child pornography,” Lightbourne added.

She noted that though 16 was the age of sexual consent, for the bill, a child would be described as anyone under 18 years old.

According to Lightbourne, when the bill is passed later this year Jamaica will have its first definition of child pornography.

“It encompasses any visual representation of a child or any person depicted as a child engaged in real or stimulated sexual activity, any representation in picture or words for sexual purpose showing the sexual organs of a child,” Lightbourne said.

She pointed out that any representation of a child being subject to torture, beatings or physical abuse would also be punishable under the bill, even if it is not in a sexual context.

“Also covered by the bill is just accessing child pornography. So going on the Internet and coming up on it accidentally you will be protected if you take steps to do something about it. So persons are caught if you are surfing the Internet and you come up on it and you don’t report it,” warned Lightbourne.

Major problem

Child pornography has been a major problem worldwide, with its reproduction and dissemination changing radically since the introduction of the Internet and cellular phones with recording devices.

In Jamaica, several cases have surfaced recently of video recordings on cellular phones. Perhaps the most infamous was the seeming attack on a teenage girl by a group of boys in a vehicle being driven by a then church deacon.

That case is still before the courts.

It was estimated that in 2003, 20 per cent of all pornography traded over the Internet was child pornography, and that since 1997 the number of child pornography images available on the Internet had increased by 1,500 per cent.

In 2007, the British-based Internet Watch Foundation reported that child pornography on the Internet was becoming more brutal and graphic, and the number of images depicting violent abuse had risen fourfold since 2003.

About 80 per cent of the children in the abusive images on the Internet are female, and 91 per cent appear to be children under the age of 12.

It has been estimated that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 paedophiles involved in organised pornography rings around the world, and that one-third of these operate from the United States.

arthur.hall@gleanerjm.com

MONKEYS USED IN DRUG TRADE? – Animals allegedly brought here to protect smugglers

In light of the recent reports of hairy, four-handed beasts either attacking humans and destroying plants, in at least two parishes, one man is convinced that the phantom creatures are apes, brought to Jamaica through the illicit guns-for-drug trade with Haiti.

Speaking with THE STAR yesterday, voodoo artist Dr Morung, from the island’s western end, said that the beasts behind the recent reports in the media came to the island on drug boats as a means of added protection.

The voodoo man said that in some instances, the ape might wonder off and is left behind.

Witch doctor

When asked what made him so sure of his theory, the witch doctor responded: “I travel go Haiti nuff due to my work and mi kno dat nuff ape ova deh because de Haitian dem love use animals in their craft and dem will carry de ape pon de boat dem fi scare off people.”

The man also continued that the “big, hairy, bushlike, four-handed” description that is used to describe the creatures in recent reports is in keeping with the type of apes he has seen in Haiti.

When THE STAR contacted spokesman for Operation Kingfish, Detective Sergeant Jubert Llewellyn, however, the policeman could not confirm having seen any of the animals in their operations.

“I have been on a lot of operations and I have never had that experience, so I could not speak to that,” the lawman said.

Llewellyn said that he would not want to go overboard and link the recent reports to this theory. Instead, he said that the creature may be nothing more that a large rodent, much like the capibara.

A representative from the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) yesterday said that they, too had “no knowledge of apes being present in Jamaica” or the Caribbean for that matter. The source said that while they have had some reports in the past, there has been no evidence to substantiate the claims.

In the meantime, a source close to the illicit trade between both islands also denied the claim.

Furry creature

In recent times, residents of both Port Morant, St Thomas and Clark’s Town in Manchester have reported having encounters with a furry creature. In the St Thomas episode last week, a nine-year-old girl related how she was playing with friends when a bushy beast held on to her legs and tried to snatch her away. Luckily, she was rescued.

Sometime before that incident, a farmer from the Clifton Hill area of the parish recalled having a run-in with a similar monster. During that encounter, the man escaped but his dog was eaten.

In the first incident in March, farmers in Clark’s Town vowed to capture an elusive four-handed creature, which had been destroying banana plants in that community for over a year. Residents said the beast appeared monkey-like.

The Mandeville police said they had heard of the creature and, just like residents, are anxiously awaiting an encounter.

Genesis of a racket

April 12, 2009 – Paul Williams, JA Gleaner writer

Historic Sam Sharpe Square in Montego Bay is one of the many locations where illicit deals are conducted. The city is grappling with a high crime rate which is said to be fuelled by the illegal lottery-scam activity. – File

Already more than 20 members of the police force and at least 30 civilians have been arrested. The scammer collects the money and immediately breaks off communication with the victim.

THE MULTIMILLION-dollar lottery scam that has gripped western Jamaica for more than five years may have started in a little apartment near the upscale community of Coral Gardens in St James.

But what began as a top-secret operation among a group of friends is now the centre of local and international criminal investigations.

Already more than 20 members of the police force and at least 30 civilians have been arrested in connection with the scam which is believed to have netted the criminals more than US$30 million.

Understanding the genesis

To understand the genesis, evolution and nature of this illicit game, The Sunday Gleaner went to Montego Bay, St James, recently to get answers.

Though the majority of those close to the action were tight-lipped, some were more than willing to spill the beans.

We spoke with a security officer, John, who once worked at a popular remittance agency in Montego Bay, and his friend Jameswho has intimate knowledge of how it began.

“It actually started with them (a group which we shall call ‘The Pioneers’). They met an overseas couple, and encouraged this couple to raise funds because they (The Pioneers) had an organisation, some ‘charitable’ organisation. The couple would raise money and send it. What they (The Pioneers) did was to take pictures to say that was the organisation and they really needed funding,” James said.

It didn’t work for long, however, as the foreigners found out that they were being conned. With the money no longer coming in, the criminals turned to other sources: telemarketing companies, located in the Montego Bay Free Port. Lists of names, email addresses and telephone numbers were obtained. Stage two was now activated.

The modus operandi was, and still is, to call overseas to tell the ‘victim’ that he or she has won the lottery or some other betting game but before they can collect the ‘winnings’, they must send a processing fee. This money is usually sent through a remittance agency.

The scammer collects the money and immediately breaks off communication with the victim. However, there are times when the scammer calls the victim a second time to say more money is needed as the first sum was not enough to process the prize.

James continued: “A friend of mine who was a security detail in the whole operation said the head honcho would employ five or six persons and each person would have two phones. What he did was to rent a house and everybody had a room. He employed even a chef to prepare a meal.”

In the mornings, “the employees would be picked up at (a popular fast-food restaurant in Montego Bay) to be taken to their ‘job’ location … and everybody would operate from their little room, telling the people to call back for verification”.

The victim would return the call, and the employees would tell them how to send the money, and to whom.

Professional behaviour

Whatever questions the victims had were professionally answered, as the employees were well trained. What existed was an incentive system in which the employees were given a portion of the money they made each day, The Sunday Gleaner was told.

According to James: “You as a worker … you have a quota, and you must make, let’s say, a thousand (US) dollars today. If you make beyond your thousand dollars, you get an incentive … say 10 or 20 thousand dollars more by the end of the week.” It was simple, the more persons an employee convinced to send money through the remittance agency, the more money he received from his ‘boss’.

“He (the leader) used to operate the ‘business’ and he would buy cellphones and give to them (the employees) … and apparently what happened, he showed a friend how it worked … the other friend showed somebody else, and then they showed this one, a very good friend of theirs, who told everybody, and it got out of control, and everybody wanted a piece of the pie,” explained James.

And the pie grew and grew. According to John, “You have professional scammers now. The scam is not about a caller getting a hundred dollars, or 200 hundred dollars or 300 hundred dollars. It’s a business.”

At one stage, there was a very unholy link between a notorious St James criminal gang and The Pioneers.

In return for protection, The Pioneers gave the gang huge sums of money, which it used to buy guns and ammunition. Both groups were eventually dismantled by the police, but by then the scam had taken root in St James.

“The ‘business’ is everywhere, from St James to surrounding parishes. Families are supported by it. In many sections of western Jamaica, teenagers drop out of school to become ‘entrepreneurs’ in the scam,” the sources said.

Identifying scammers

According to John, scammers can be easily identified. He argues that the trappings, their swagger and profiling says it all. “From yuh see them, yuh know them … . When yuh see a car pull up and yuh see the type of person come out of the car, yuh sey, ‘Si a scammer yah’.”

It is not uncommon to see young people who can barely look over a counter at remittance agencies leaving with wads of money.

“A lot of persons who come inside there don’t even collect them money. Some man just come in there and afraid, frighten to collect the money because a scam money. Sometimes, people come inside there and the company can’t pay them. Too much money at one go,” James said.

Illicit trade ‘no secret’

April 12, 2009 – Gareth Manning, JA Gleaner Staff Reporter

Several people collect money from the same person over and over on any given day when business is at its peak

HUNDREDS OF thousands of US dollars are being wired through money transfer agencies on a daily basis to tricksters in the out-of-control lottery scam, better known in the second city as ‘the game’.

The scammers tend to use branches of two agencies, The Sunday Gleaner understands, some of which, it appears, knowingly facilitate the practice for a percentage of the ill-gotten gains.

US$5,000 in a day

Scammers sometimes collect as much as US$5,000 or nearly half a million Jamaican dollars in a single day from these agencies.

“So inna two day, dem can collect up to $1 million,” a source who works at one of the remittance agencies tells The Sunday Gleaner.

“What I see is dat certain time of the month, you will find it up and you will find it down,” the source says – a pattern that likely reflects the period of the month when many of the victims, who are elderly, receive their pension payments.

Remittance agencies

During the earlier parts of the month, many scammers pour into the agencies to collect their funds, but business dwindles as the month closes.

“It’s often easy to know who the scammers are because several people come to collect money from the same person over and over on any given day when business is at its peak.

“One person keep collecting off the same person and then you have other people who come and collect off of that same person too,” the source tells us. “Because the whole scamming thing, you know, is one person to all 50 different man,” the source adds.

“When a client send a money, say in my name, the client will give me the tracking number, but you find that Tom, Dick and Harry coming with the same tracking number because when they do get a chance to call the client, they give them the same tracking number,” the informant says.

“And often when the scammers turn up to collect the funds, they are told by the company agent that the funds have already been received or the funds were not sent in their name, so they are not able to collect”.

When some money transfer agencies begin treating the transaction of some scammers as suspicious, they use another route to collect their proceeds.

“They use the elderly people like them grandfather and them grand-mother. Sometimes, them caan even see fi write up the paper,” the source says.

“You know is the sweepstakes (them come to collect) because the names that the youngsters collect off of is the same name the old

People dem collect off,” The Sunday Gleaner source adds.

Rogue cops involved in the scam also use a similar method of collection, opting to have the funds wired in someone else’s name instead of their own.”

Avoiding suspicion

To avoid suspicion also, some scammers have the funds wired to relatives or friends abroad who then wire the money to them in Jamaica, the source explained.

“One is able to tell that the funds being received are connected to the scam because the receiver suddenly begins to receive funds of a similar value from a person who often shares the receiver’s surname.

“In times like these when America and so much place dat a go through crisis them a send so much money come?”

In addition to that, the source points out the scammers sometimes make no secret of their illegal actions.

“You we hear them talk and say a dem bredda and a dem cousin them ask fi sen the money come gi dem,” the source says.

Illegal transfers difficult to monitor – Eaton

Published: Sunday | April 12, 2009

That is no problem for the scammers in St James which has 42 money transfer agencies

MONITORING THE complex and sometimes overwhelming Montego Bay lottery scam is not a simple task for remittance companies and their agents.

“You’d have to watch it and try to fathom it out,” says attorney-at-law and former secretary of the Jamaica Bankers’ Association Shirley-Ann Eaton.

By law, the companies are required to report any transaction that they deem suspicious to the Financial Investigation Division as well as to their head office.

Suspicious transactions include any unusual rise in remittances going to any particular agency or parish.

Remittance services and money transfer companies, like other financial institutions, are governed by the Proceeds of Crime Act which places a reporting threshold of US$5,000 on any transaction with these agencies.

“The thing is we don’t know if the remittance services have reported it. But do I think they would have? Probably,” says Eaton who notes that by law such reports would be held confidential.

When scammers use multiple agencies and multiple receivers, that’s the one sure way to spot a possible fraud, she says.

Using multiple collection outlets is no problem for the scammers in St James which has 42 money transfer agencies most of which are in Montego Bay.

Remittance money

“But this is a small damn country and each agency knows how much money comes in on a weekly basis,” Eaton says.

According to Eaton, while it is likely that most agencies submit these reports, the overwhelming nature and complexity of the scam might make it difficult for the authorities to stamp it out.

The scammers use a number of methods to collect their money, including using multiple receivers and having the money wired through relatives and friends to ease suspicion.

“You see the problem is that it is not the same sender. (If it were) it would be easy to pick up. All you would have to do is over time you see something come in from this sender you just – throughout the whole island – flag it. So when the people come in, you can actually apprehend them,” she says.

“If you are using different people to collect it as well, that is a problem … It’s not a simple investigation,” Eaton adds.

gareth.manning@gleanerjm.com

What the law says to remittance agencies

Pay special attention to all complex or large business transactions, which are being carried out by the customer and unusual transactions whether they have been completed or not which appear to be inconsistent with the normal transactions carried out by the customer.

If you are conducting any kind of wire transfer, you have to ensure that you include in your records accurate and relevant information on the funds transferred and the whole payment chain including the correct name and address of the sender and recipient and any other relevant reference numbers and instructions that are given in relation to the transfer.

The law allows you to raise questions about any transaction of US$250 and over with the receiver.

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