Fraud spike puts vulnerable at risk

THE South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) is concerned by the rising number of burglaries at post office branches, with the sole intention of stealing SASSA cards.

The SASSA cards have been designed to protect social grant beneficiaries from unlawful deductions, however, there is an emerging trend or scam where beneficiaries’ funds are withdrawn from their cards without their consent or knowledge.

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Senior Manager for Communication and Marketing at SASSA, Sandy Godlwana said it is suspected that this involves duplicating beneficiaries’ cards and then clearing out their legitimate accounts.

In a recent case, St Lucia resident Nelia Louw’s 80-year-old bedridden mother was scammed out of R7 000.

‘The card had not been working for several months and R11 000 had accumulated in my mother’s account.

‘After much hassle, we were given a new SASSA card in April and I withdrew around R4 000 as there was a limit. The next day, around R7 000 had been fraudulently withdrawn from an ATM.

‘It was, however, picked up that the old card had been stolen. This despite us being in possession of it the whole time.’

Godlwana said, should beneficiaries fall prey to this unfortunate experience, they should do the following:
* Visit the nearest South African Post Office (SAPO) outlet to report the incident
* SAPO will help the beneficiary complete an affidavit
* Affected beneficiary’s ID and payment cards will be copied by SAPO
* These documents will be submitted to the SAPO Fraud Unit for investigation
* If the investigation confirms that funds were fraudulently withdrawn, the client will be refunded.

‘Since September 2020, SASSA has encouraged new social grant applicants to use private bank accounts to receive payments.

‘As SASSA, we vow to leave no stone unturned in the fight against fraud with regard to social grants.

‘We exercise a zero tolerance approach to anyone who commits, or is complicit in, fraud in the social grant environment.

‘We urge anyone who may have information on people who defraud beneficiaries, to report this information.’

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