Florida residents are increasingly falling prey to ruthless scammers.
According to Florida police’s Lieutenant Colonel Sipho Dlamini, many of the scams doing the rounds are incredibly convincing.
“Scammers go to great lengths to make their schemes seem legitimate, and people are falling for it at alarming rates,” he says. “This often results in people losing large amounts of money.”
Dlamini says that one of the scams that residents should be on the lookout for is the age-old tender scam, where a ‘tender’ is advertised, usually via email.
The scammers send out emails pretending to be a government department, requesting them to ‘tender’ for the supply of certain goods.
“The scammers even supply the unsuspecting resident with the contact details of a supplier for said goods. Unbeknownst to the resident, the ‘supplier’ and the scammer are likely either the same person, or they are working together.
“The ‘supplier’ will provide the resident with an invoice for the stock, and an account number for payment, and continue to hound the resident for further payments, until the resident finally catches on that they have been cheated. As soon as the victim starts demanding their money back, the scammer disappears.”
Telephone scams are also on the increase. Dlamini says even though this is one of the oldest scams, it is still effective, and scammers somehow still get away with it.
“A scammer will call, pretending to be a bank official,” says Dlamini. “They inform the victim of a large transaction that has mistakenly gone through on their account.
“They promise to reverse the transaction and demand a card number and a One Time Pin [OTP], which allows them to access the victim’s bank account, they then create beneficiaries and clean out the bank account in a matter of minutes.
“By the time the victim notices that something is amiss, it is too late.”
Dlamini urges residents to never give out any personal information on the phone to anyone.
“The bank will never email or call you asking for passwords, OTP numbers, or card numbers.
“These scammers are very skilled and convincing, but rather confirm with your bank before you consider giving out any such information,” he concludes.
