In the Steven Spielberg movie Catch Me If You Can, the main actor Frank Abagnale Jr is projected making a living through forgery as a fraud expert and conman. He forged millions of dollars in phony checks and posed as an airline pilot, lawyer, and even a doctor. Most conmen don’t use tricks as grand and complex as Abagnale, but sometimes it’s the little "smash-and-grab” cons that are the most worthwhile for the criminals, the small crimes which may make them that much harder to catch.

It can be easy to catch a criminal when they’re seen red-handed, but how do you catch a criminal when nobody knows a crime is being committed? This is partly what makes con so devious, and so hard to spot.

Conmen have been around for centuries and they continue to exist today, all over the world, and in this digital era, more options than ever before are available to trick unsuspecting victims.

According to Rwanda National Police (RNP) some local fraudsters employ varied unscrupulous means to defraud people and among the major scams that have been recorded in the recent past involves overcharging, deceiving or coercing a person into paying for a service they don’t want, and outright theft.

In fact, in 2016, cases of coning and deceit were ranked 8th among the common crimes reported and since January 2017 to June, same cases were standing at the sixth position.

"We urge the public to always be conscious about people who may want to offer them services or sell them something at an unbelievably cheap price. There are higher chances that such people are attempting to con you,” said the Police spokesperson, Assistant Commissioner of Police Theos Badege.

A case in point is when people enter a commuter taxi and start duping passengers into giving them their belonging pretending to be helping them to keep them safe from thieves.

"Avoid being a soft target to a fraudster. You should not succumb to such lies, there is no way a fellow passenger who is a complete stranger to you can convince you that they have the ability to keep your money safer than you can,” Badege warned.

One of the cases that police have handled involves a ring of five people, who were arrested in December 2015 defrauding traders in the City of Kigali. They had already duped seven traders in Kigali of about Rwf50 million, at the time of their arrest.

The conmen would pose as employees of Strabag, a road construction firm, looking for spare parts for their machines. After identifying a potential target, one of them would call the traders to sell them the fake idea of supplying strabag with the equipment.

The victims would then be given contacts of another person claiming to be the technical director of Strabag, who claims to be based in Gicumbi.

The fake technical director would then inform the victims, separately, of how they need the equipment as soon as possible, offer them a very high price if he delivered the equipment and would direct him to another person – member of the gang – claiming he’s the only person with those spare parts.

The victim would then buy the apparatuses at a very high price and the suspects would varnish after accomplishing their scam.

The gang had used photocopies of other people’s national ID to buy SIM-cards, which they used to coordinate their criminal acts.

Other scams include fraudsters who target the rich claiming that they are auctioning some minerals at a give-away price and hoodwink them into believing the seller is in urgent need of money and that’s why they are selling them cheaply

There are also those who impersonate telecom staff calling people and deceiving them that they won a jackpot and ask them to dial some digits on their phone in the end they steal all the money a victim had on their mobile banking account. Black dollars

Conmen have different tricks and according to ACP Badege, there are those that approach people carrying a box full of black-painted piece of papers claiming that they need money to buy a particular chemical that would be used to turn the paper into US dollars.

Conmen usually dupe their victim into believing that they would share the amount if he or they gave them the money to buy the chemical. "In actual sense, the scammers are just looking at putting their hand on the money and disappear.”

Other fraudsters target students and job-seekers and promise them jobs in some place far from their homes; the victim is later asked to wire money for the hotel on their first night.

By the time the victim riches the place, the caller has switched off the phone and disappeared with the money, or steal their computer laptops after making the victim to believe that he has gone to install a certain programme that is required to do the job.

One of the most awkward cons involves fraudsters who pretend to be having hundreds of kilogrammes of gold worth hundreds of millions of francs, and they attempt to convince the unsuspecting victim that they have run out of money to transport it so they decide to sell it cheaply in most cases at US$10, 000, but claim that the goods are already in another country.

This way, they continue to solicit more money from the victim like money for air tickets and some money to bribe officials.

"There are several other tricks they use but we manage to always be a step ahead of them. We urge the public to be on alert at all times, deal in legal businesses and be quick to inform police in case they encounter such,” Badege said.

He said that most of these people have been arrested, either in Rwanda or in other countries, with the support of police institutions in countries where they are hiding.

Fact is, although cases of fraudsters and conmen haven’t racked up heavily in Rwanda, the fraudsters’ illegitimate gains often wrecks the victims who may have invested more than just finances to make the money the swindler snatches.

However, with increasingly sophisticated criminal activities have come equally impressive preventive measures and this goes a long way to illustrate the extent to which authorities have cracked down on instances of fraud over past few years.

There is no silver bullet to stop fraudsters. Predicting who is likely to con you and which type of fraud under which circumstances would involve a lot of calculations which may as well not come out right, the best option is to stick to legitimate businesses and purchase from authorised dealers.