Private investigator warns of scam targeting small businesses
Rick Crouch said they have noticed an increase in the number of these cases with businesses scammed of hundreds of thousands of rand, with the highest amount being more than R2 million.
PRIVATE investigator Rick Crouch has sent out an urgent warning to small business owners in South Africa after an old scam resurfaced in recent weeks.
He said scammers are using the lockdown and Covid-19 as the subject of the scam this time.
According to Crouch, companies are receiving what at first glance appears to be a genuine Request for Quotation (RFQ) from a government department. He said the two departments being used are the Department of Defence and the Department of Health.
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“The RFQ will ask the company to quote an item that is urgently needed by the department, it will give a specific description and/or part number of this item. When the victim company conducts a Google search for that description or part number, the search result will show only one supplier for that specific item.
“The website seems legitimate, but on closer inspection, there are a couple of red flags, like the only number posted is a cell number and the email address is a Gmail address.
“The victim contacts the supplier for a quotation, then tells the RFQ requester that they can fill the order.
The supplier and the RFQ requester is the same person.”
After much back and forth between the victim and the RFQ requester and the supplier, Crouch stated that the victim places the order which will be delivered directly to the RFQ requesting department. The victim then receives the invoice and pays the amount requested to the supplier.
The supplier then ‘delivers’ the product directly to the RFQ requester.
“Now one of two things happen: the RFQ requester and the supplier go silent and disappear, or the RFQ requester emails the victim within a few days saying they received the items and that they are so impressed with the service that they will place another urgent order. The whole cycle starts again and the victim finds out too late that they have been scammed, sometimes twice by the same scammer.”
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He said the victim usually does not realise that they have been scammed until they submit their invoice for payment.
The private investigator said they have noticed an increase in the number of these cases reported to their office in the last few weeks.
Crouch revealed that the victims have lost huge amounts of money with the smallest amount being R600 000 and the largest amount was more than R2 million.
“The victims do attempt to open a case with SAPS but unfortunately many times they are turned away because SAPS are saying that there is no one to open a case against; the truth is that many in SAPS do not understand these cases and do not know how to investigate them.
“If you receive an RFQ do your due diligence, especially if they are requesting a product you do not sell. And remember that old saying, if it appears too good to be true it most likely is,” warned Crouch.
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