Nadya Eka Lestari
TechInAfrica — Recently, South Africans are being targeted as a part of an intricate scam on WhatsApp. The scammers ended up stealing thousands of rands from the victims
The National Stokvel Association South Africa (NASASA) has cautioned people not to trust the latest WhatsApp scheme, which has been happened over and over again. The scam performed as a claimed ‘savings club’ or stokvel, where users are able to join the club with R200 and are driven to invite as many people as possible to join them.
These scammers appeared to be from trusted saving organizations and lured their victims using social media. Recently, WhatsApp has proved to be their biggest magnet. When someone is added to stokvel, they are asked to recruit more members to join and promised with earning up to R12000 according to the number of people joining the group.
When the money is deposited, there is no response at all from the other end. Many victims have reported that they are being tricked and never heard anything from the initial messager again NASASA has started informing the media about this fraud issue.
There is a set of guidelines for this type of scheme. SAPS has issued several directions to ensure that no more people are lured by the promises of easy money. This direction includes:
- Refraining from making cash deposits of members’ contributions on high-risk days (e.g. Monday after month-end).
- Ensuring persons depositing club contributions or making withdrawals are accompanied by another member.
- Arranging a stokvel, savings club or burial society for members to deposit cash directly into the club’s account instead of collecting cash contributions.
The police and the association hope that people will notice these ‘pyramid schemes’ as such. Some people even have reported that they lost thousands after pledging to the scam, only to found that they have lost all of their money. It is time to stay smart and keep thinking critically.
Source: thesouthafrican.com
