SCAMS. IF YOU INTEND ON TRANSACTING, IT IS JUST A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE YOU FALL VICTIM TO A SCAM!

Scams are running rife and it seems that nothing can be done about them. Especially in a country like ours being South Africa. The criminals are becoming more brazen as they have realised that they can continue with their scams unabated. It is so hard to purchase any item, holiday or service without wondering whether or not you are being scammed. You simply cannot trust your fellow man anymore.

What’s even worse is that the Covid 19 Pandemic has caused so much damage to the economies of the world that there are going to be a lot more desperate people out there which simply means that crime is going to rise dramatically and I can almost guarantee you that there are going to be a lot more scamsters looking to earn a quick buck!

A recent scam we have noticed is people advertising great deals on holiday specials on Facebook. Everyone has been cooped up for so long with this pandemic that they see these great deal holiday opportunities and jump at it. You see the ad ,ask for more info (not knowing it is a scam) and the person on the other side of this facebook account responds with all the details very quickly and professionally. This unknown facebook user then places you under pressure to pay the deposit as quickly as possible to ensure that you secure the booking and advise you that they will not hold the booking for you due to past experiences where people don’t arrive. You then hurriedly pay the deposit and are now just looking forward to your holiday. Sadly, you arrive at the destination just to find out that the place you are looking for does not exist and you cannot get hold of the person that placed the advert on the phone only to eventually realise you were scammed!

They do this using fake profiles created on facebook as well as fake websites. We have reported these fake profiles to facebook only to be told that it does not go against their community standards and that they can do nothing to stop it. We have also assisted people with opening criminal cases at the SAPS which obviously is not going to be attended to as they simply do not have the resources and the know how on how to deal with these criminals.

Where we have been successful is when a client gets to us quickly enough and we jump into immediate action by quickly pressing criminal charges and sending the proof of the crime to the bank to where the money was paid. The bank assists by quickly freezing the account and if your money is still there, you will get it back.

We assist clients with large legal matters that often have criminal aspects to the problem and whilst we are currently dealing with many of these matters, the clients on these matters have the resources to fund our work and get the problems resolved. It has however been bothering us as to how we can assist people with matters where the scams are smaller such as these holiday scams and second hand goods scams. On these matters, people just don’t have the resources, time, patience and or inclination to do anything about it. The problem is that if nothing is done about it, it is just going to get worse and worse because the criminals realise they can get away with these scams without any one being able to or wanting to do anything about it.

Our business is resolving peoples’ problems and we always love a challenge. We have therefore been bouncing a few ideas around on how to resolve this problem. These are the initial two ideas:

1. We put a specialist team together that assists in tracking down, locating and making these criminals known to the public and even go so far as to prepare a proper criminal case against the perpetrators. In essence we would assist the SAPS in bringing these people to book. Our team would endeavour to make the investigation as public as possible with videos and reports on the processes taking into account all the information that we can legally publish at the requisite times. The intention would be to make it as interactive as possible and thereby make the public part of the process in stopping these crimes. At the end of the process, we would like to publish the identities of these criminals in the public sphere, ensure that they are arrested and charged and go so far as to push for a criminal conviction.

2. The second option would simply be to put a bounty on the scamsters profiles and anybody that can assist with information that leads to the successful capture and arrest of the individuals where after the bounty would be paid to the person whom assisted.

The unfortunate part of this as with any project is that it will require sufficient resources and funding for it to run effectively. To start this, we would need to put together a crowd funding platform and in the process would also need to ensure that no one takes advantage of these funds, whereby we would appoint an independent auditor and all the details of the accounting would need to be made as public as possible.

These are just some of the ideas we are toiling with and will keep thinking of solutions to the problem. We are however interested in any ideas that you as the public may have around this. If you have any of your thoughts and or solutions, please let us know in the comments section.

We are also interested to know if there are any people that would be interested in contributing to a cause like this. If there is enough interest, we will put everything together and see if we can stop the scourge of these SCAMS!

Lastly, Standard Bank have brought out an excellent product called an Escrow account whereby you can place your money in a holding account and the funds will only be released once the product or service has been delivered. If you are unsure of the person you are dealing with, we highly recommend that you take a look at this.