Tips to avoid money transfer service fraud

Meadowlands police have urged residents to be more vigilant when using money transfer services.

Sergeant Octavia Thebe, public relations officer of the station said, “Every week we receive reports of people depositing money for relatives that are not necessarily in the same province.

Then the money never reaches those relatives because someone always manages to withdraw the money before the actual recipient gets to it.

What’s more concerning is that the money is sometimes withdrawn from the same store it was deposited at.”

The latest case is of a woman who deposited money at a store that offers these services.

The woman deposited an amount of R200 for a relative who stays in Pretoria and straight after that she messaged the details to the recipient.

At around 1pm on the same day, the woman received a call from the original recipient telling her that she did not receive the money.

The woman then went to follow up on the incident at the store, and she was told that the money was already withdrawn at another store based in Tzaneen.

A docket has been opened and police are investigating further.

Here are some tips to avoid being victim to such incidents:

• Always make sure you enter the correct cellphone details when giving your information to the cashier
• Always use your original identity document and not of a friend or relative to make the transfer.
• Don’t deposit large amounts of money all at once, rather send it in small doses in case there is a chance you fall victim to it; in that way, you will not lose all your money to an unknown fraudster.
• When you sending the reference details for the recipient, it’s safer to text the reference number only in case the message is sent to the wrong number.

The most important tip is, after sending the reference number, call the intended recipient to give them the pin number over the phone, never send it in a text message in case the recipient does not have their phone on them at the same time.

@Miss_Blackbone