Authorities warn members of the community to be on high alert during the festive season.
Bank card scams are very popular during this season and the community is advised to be cautious while withdrawing money.
“The syndicate in Tzaneen target ATM’s which are in isolated shopping complexes where they pretend to help people and during the process they exchange cards without being noticed and immediately run to ATM’s which do not have CCTV cameras around town,” said Marius Jacobs of Northern Security.
Jacobs added that the syndicate are mostly well dressed and spoken and he urged the community to only allow the security guards who work at the ATM’s to help them instead.
Letaba herald is aware of three businesses (cannot be named due to safety reasons) which have their ATM’s targeted by these groups.
Management of one of the businesses has assured the herald that safety measures are in place and that they are doing everything in their power to protect their customers from criminals.
Criminals also target the stokvel groups by robbing them of their hard earned cash which they saved through out the year.
There has been reports of people being robbed of their stokvel money on their way back from withdrawing their money at the bank.
A few years ago there was an incident at a retail shop where stokvel groups were on a queue to buy their groceries and they were approached by people who pretended to be staff members of the store and asked money from the groups and they fled the scene.
“We advise our customers to never give anyone money to anyone who claims to be a staff member, they first give us their grocery list, we do a quotation for them and afterwards they go to our Cash Office which they will pay for their groceries and our caddies will collect all their stock while they enjoy pop corn and refreshments prepared by our staff,”said Premjee management.
The management also added that customers must not use just any transport because there are syndicates which steal people’s groceries while transporting them.
“We ask community members to be on alert in ATM’s, they must not allow strangers to help them, Stokvel groups must transfer money to retailers to avoid carrying a large amount of money and criminals must know that we will deploy a huge number of our officers in shopping complexes and they will be arrested,” said Major General Maggie Mathebula.
