Any suggestions on where I can report a scam that is currently in progress?
Our local police station is quite corrupt and this scam I think is somewhat above their level of competence anyway. Also, I’m not really sure a crime has been committed yet. If the person was to attempt to withdraw their funds and they then disappear with it, then it would definitely be a crime. That would however render almost all of the evidence that I’ve collected useless and there would be 0% chance of the guy recovering any of his funds.
Thus far I’ve tried contacting BusinessTech (in case they could offer some guidance), SA Cybersecurity hub and Centre for Fraud Prevention. Thus far, no responses to any of my emails.
You mention withdrawing funds, so I assume there’s banks involved. All the major banks have dedicated fraud reporting services. Maybe send a copy your email to all of them.
If there’s any indication that there’s any cross border shenanigans going on, the SA Reserve Bank have a reporting contact as well: Report all cross-border fraud and scams to [email protected]
Thanks. It is actually quite shocking to see how difficult it is to report an ongoing scam. You can report it when you’ve already been scammed and it is too late, but getting something done while there is useful evidence to pursue is another story it seems.
Yes, I contacted them. Forgot the exact name, but it is them.
I did send emails to the banks now, but to their main contact emails since ALL the banks involved, only provide a phone number for fraud, no email. Pretty useless since there is only so much you can say over the phone and I tried contacting the fraud line for one of the banks and the line quality sucks, you can barely hear each other.
Not a phishing scam, but I see the page contains contacts for the Hawks and Public Protector. I’ll just go check out their exact functions and see if it would be appropriate to contact them.
I’m guessing the people are Nigerians or some other African nationality, but they seem to be operating from within South Africa with local cellphone numbers.
Just got a reply from SAFPS essentially saying that, well, I’ll just quote them:
SAFPS Yima do not conduct investigations or execute financial recoveries and in order for you to pursue the recovery route, you would need to open a police case and also discuss the matter with your bank for assistance in recovering any funds you have been scammed of.
It seems that reporting it to Yima is only for consumer awareness initiatives and not really for any investigations.
Thus far only Absa has responded and said they’ll forward to their fraud department. Not even read receipts on any of the other emails yet.