BJ Beukes from Roodepoort writes:After receiving an SMS from Rica stating that we won R375 000, we were very excited. We contacted a Mrs Theresa on the number provided and we were instructed to buy airtime of R180 to activate the claim.She gave us a reference number and offered to have the cheque delivered to our residential address. A few days later we received another SMS to inform us the money is ready to be delivered but we have to pay R1 999 for insurance purposes to a bank account. We faxed the proof of payment to ‘Rica’ The next SMS congratulated us saying the money has been released and we should pay another R4 970 to the courier. It is a lot of money for pensioners and when I enquired about the amounts, we were told it is very little compared to the amount we will eventually get. The woman told us she will put the payment on hold until we managed to find the money. We were continuously reassured that it is not a scam even though I asked many times. My wife and I discussed this at length and decided to pay the fee as requested.We called back and she said she would SMS the bank details.She also stated that the money must be cleared by the bank before they can deliver it. At this stage my wife and I discussed the matter at length and could not understand why Rica/MTN, or whoever was responsible for the rewards could not deduct these amounts (R 180.00 MTN airtime, R1 999,00 insurance and R4 970 delivery charges from the award and just pay us the balance or tell us upfront the amounts we would have to pay to get the reward.This, however, was not the end of the ordeal. We received a call from a Mrs Botha to inform us that we now had to pay R9 500 ‘document fee’. When we told her it is too much, she gave us the weekend to “think about it.”As a result I went to the MTN Head Office to enquire about the MTN/Rica Awards only to be told that it was a scam and that MTN was aware of the scam but that they could do nothing about it as our country was rife with this type of scam. The receptionist at MTN phoned Mrs. Theresa on 078 157 1551 in front of us and “Mrs Theresa” denied knowing anything about the matter.
However, lo and behold Mrs. Jen Botha phoned again a week later to find out what progress had been made and I advised her that I had been to MTN and they knew nothing about this “ award “ – She immediately put down her phone.Pensioners should be aware of this kind of scam. If we fell for it, anybody else can as well. Please be careful!
