The SA Post Office alerts the public of a scam doing the rounds, where customers are duped into depositing money into fraudulently opened Postbank accounts.
The scam works as follows:
- You receive a sealed Speed Services Couriers package delivered at your doorstep, or workplace.
- Inside the package is a laminated certificate claiming that a substantial amount has been paid into a Postbank account opened for you.
- The instruction in your delivery package states that to activate the Postbank account opened for you in order to claim your winnings, you need to pay a certain amount of cash into another account.
Clients are advised that will not see their money again once it has been deposited into that account.
The SA Post Office advises the public to ignore items of this nature should they receive them. Postbank, the SA Post Office or any of its other subsidiaries will never open an account on anyone’s behalf and request an activation fee. Always be wary of any promises of large sums of winnings for competitions you never took part in. Also, you should know that you are probably being scammed in any situation where you are required to pay an amount of money upfront, either as an admin fee or for any other reasons, to access large sums of money.
The SA Post Office is currently working with law enforcement agencies to trace the perpetrators of this scam and members of the public that with information are requested to call the police or the Post Office’s Crime buster Hotline on 0800 020 070.
