Authorities warn members of the community to be on a high alert during the festive season.

Bank card scams are very popular during this time of the year and the citizens are advised to be cautious while withdrawing money at ATM’s.

Popular syndicates target ATM’s  in parts of the country  which are in isolated shopping complexes where they pretend to help people and during the process they exchange cards without being noticed and immediately run to ATM’s which do not have CCTV cameras around town

These syndicate are mostly well dressed and spoken, authorities urge people to only allow the security guards who work at the ATM’s to help them instead of allowing strangers to assist them.

Criminals also target the stokvel groups by robbing them of their hard earned cash which they saved through out the year.

There has been reports of people being robbed of their stokvel money on their way back from withdrawing their money at the bank in most rural parts of the country including Tzaneen in the Limpopo Province.

A few years ago there was an incident at a Tzaneen retail shop where stokvel groups were on a queue to buy their groceries and they were approached by people who pretended to be staff members of the store and asked money from the groups and they fled the scene.

“We ask community members to be on alert in ATM’s, they must not allow strangers to help them, Stokvel groups must transfer money to retailers to avoid carrying a large amount of money and criminals must know that we will deploy a huge number of our officers in shopping complexes and they will be arrested,” said Major General Maggie Mathebula.