THE South Coast Herald has been inundated with complaints from South Coast residents, particularly those in the Margate area, who had sums of money withdrawn from their bank accounts over the weekend. It appears that the victims’ bank cards were ‘skimmed’ and the fraud is thought to be linked to Malaysian banks.
In some cases, it took three transactions to empty the accounts. Many people have had their accounts completely cleaned out, with not even a cent left behind to cover stop orders or pay for monthly expenses.
At about midnight last night, Retha Kemp (71) heard her phone going berserk with sms alerts. When she checked her account, she discovered that R9 000 had been withdrawn from her account.
Ms Kemp received five or six smses notifying her that various amounts of money had been deducted from her account. She immediately phoned her bank and her account was blocked. She said that when she went to the bank this morning, she was joined by about 20 other people who had also found money missing from their accounts.
Margate resident Amanda Ellis (32), woke up on Saturday morning to find that a couple of thousands rands had been withdrawn from her account at around midnight on Friday. She described it as ‘a frightening experience’.
She has opened a case, and encourages everyone affected to do the same so that source of the crime could be traced and stamped out.
Luckily for Deborah Leask, when they hit her account it was empty. The withdrawal was made from Hong Leong bank in Malaysia. “There are benefits to being broke at the end of the month,” said a relieved Ms Leask. The news was broken to her bank’s fraud department which contacted her.
