Fraudster scams — five red flags that should raise your suspicions

Fraud refers to instances where documents have been forged or someone has been impersonated, such as identity theft, while a scam is when someone manages to successfully convince you to either provide your banking details, part with your money or help them access your funds.

“When we look at monetary values, however, the most money is lost to romance scams,” Manie van Schalkwyk, chief executive officer of the Southern African Fraud Prevention Society, said at a recent Daily Maverick Money Cents webinar.

“A recent case we dealt with involved a woman, who was interacting with a man supposedly in Italy. He told her that he was going to send her a bag filled with euros, and she started getting messages to say that she needed to pay customs into a particular account. Then there were taxes to be paid, and then a release fee, and package fees. She paid quite a bit of money over before realising it was a scam,” said Van Schalkwyk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B64n7hQ9W1Q

He noted that even though online dating had become more common and acceptable, caution should still be exercised, particularly if the person you were interacting with claimed to be in a different country.

Van Schalkwyk says these scams are often unreported because people don’t want to admit they have been made a fool of. These scams often involve the use of attractive photos. You can do a Google reverse image search, which is easiest to do on a desktop computer. Simply go to images.google.com, click the camera icon to open Google Lens, and either paste in the image link (URL) for an image you’ve seen online, upload an image from your hard drive, or drag an image from another window. This should show you the original source of the image.

Gerhard van Deventer, head of enforcement at the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, said digital media had become highly popular for scams and also fraudsters impersonating legitimate companies. “While investment companies might use social media for financial education, they are unlikely to ask you to invest via a social media platform,” he said.

These are the typical red flags Van Schalkwyk and Van Deventer recommend you watch out for:

• A sense of urgency: If a so-called company has a short window and tries to insist that you must invest money within x number of days, or you will “lose out”. The short window means you don’t have time to do proper research to figure out if the “investment” is legitimate or as good as they claim it is.


• Further payments required to recover your money: If you have invested money in a product with a time frame such as five years and you want to access the money early, you are likely to be charged a penalty fee. However, the penalty is usually a fixed amount that is disclosed to you when you first take out the investment. “Repeated requests for you to put more money in to cover your losses or before you can access your money should be a sign to immediately cut your losses and report the company as suspicious,” Van Deventer says.


• Impersonation: Van Deventer says there has been an increase in fraudsters impersonating legitimate financial service providers on social media in particular. “You should always contact the company named directly using contact details that have been independently sourced by you, and not those provided via social media or the person contacting you,” he says.


• Unrealistic returns: Returns that are vastly in excess of what you could earn from a bank investment, that offer to double your money within a short period or seem like they are “too good to be true” often are just that – too good to be true. “Thirty years of experience has taught me that if it’s an unrealistic return, that’s a red flag,” Van Deventer warns.


• Your phone suddenly stops working: You can’t receive or make any calls or messages. Immediately contact your cellphone service provider as this could be a sign that someone has requested a SIM swap on your phone. This means someone has fraudulently used your personal information to pretend to be you and then cancelled the sim card in your cellphone to switch it to a new sim card in a cellphone that they are using.  All your incoming calls and text messages (including your bank authorisations) are then routed to them. DM