DURBAN North SAPS has warned residents to be wary of the ‘Your domestic worker has died’ scam. This comes after two cases of fraud was opened at the station.
According Captain Raymond Deokaran, the suspects involved in the scam try to get sensitive information about employers in order to con them out of money. In the past, residents have been scammed out of more than R1 000 to a man claiming to be a relative of a ‘deceased’ domestic worker.
Deokaran said this sort of scam normally occurs around the festive period.
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“We’ve had more than six cases in the lead-up to the festive season last year and we’ve already recorded two incidents in the last two weeks. In previous incidents, the scammers phoned the domestic worker under the pretext of being from the Labour Department.
“They asked the domestic worker questions about her family and work. When they’ve set the scam in motion, they normally contact the domestic worker before they make the call to the distraught victims by pretending to be from a mobile network. They then ask the domestic worker to switch off her phone for a few hours under the auspices of performing routine maintenance on the network. Speak to your domestic workers and tell them not to give out personal information,” he said.
Deokaran urged victims to report incidents of the scam to their nearest police station.
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