GEORGE NEWS - People easily fall victim to online scams, making it one of the most frequent complaints police have to deal with.
This was heard at the first Community Police Forum (CPF) meeting for the year held at the George Civic Centre last Wednesday. According to Captain Kobus Landman, from the George Police, this is a massive problem because many people have been conned out of thousands of rands.
Landman warned that fraudsters use popular sites like OLX to catch their victims. "Not everything advertised is true." If you want to spend lots of money on something, rather buy locally," said Landman.
Common practices by fraudulent buyers and sellers
Buyers:
- Ask you to wire money into their account
- Offer high-value (but fake) cashier's cheques in exchange for the item for sale. The value of cashier's cheque often far exceeds your item and the buyer asks you to wire the balance back to them via a money transfer service. Banks will often cash these fake cheques and then hold you responsible when the cheque fails to clear. Scams often involve a third party (shipping agent, business associate owing buyer money). OLX strongly discourages you from wiring money
- Recommend an unfamiliar escrow or payment service
- Place large orders to be sent to a foreign location
- Say they will pay you half of what's due before they receive the item, and half the payment afterwards
- Will not provide you a verifiable telephone number
- Pay with an international credit card or cashier's cheque
Sellers:
- Ask you to wire money into an international bank account
- May ask you to send payment overseas and will only accept Western Union or another
- money transfer service (e-Gold)
- List an address that is different from the address on their item detail page
- Recommend an unfamiliar escrow or payment service
- Not be up front about the authenticity of items for sale
- Will not provide you a verifiable telephone number
- Try to convince you not to use payment services that offers protection (accepted services are those like Escrow.com and PayPal)
- Will repeatedly not answer phone calls or e-mails
- Continuously provide excuses about why you have not received an item
- Sell suspect copies of software, music, or videos
- Refuse to give you a working shipment tracking number
- Sell an expensive popular item at a sus-piciously low price
ARTICLE: HENRICA VELDMAN, GEORGE HERALD JOURNALIST
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