Fraud Squad of­fi­cers are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a Face­book scam where fraud­sters swin­dled a Tu­na­puna cou­ple out of cash af­ter they paid for two hous­es ad­ver­tised on­line.

Po­lice said on Feb­ru­ary 3, the woman re­spond­ed to a Face­book ad­ver­tise­ment for two Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) hous­es in Phase 4, Mal­abar. She con­tact­ed the list­ed num­ber and de­posit­ed $18,000 at Re­pub­lic Bank’s Tu­na­puna branch for one house. Her hus­band de­posit­ed an­oth­er $18,000 in­to a dif­fer­ent ac­count for the sec­ond house.

How­ev­er, they nev­er re­ceived ac­cess to the prop­er­ties. When the woman com­plained to the sell­er about the lack of re­sponse, the per­son as­sured her of a re­fund, which she had yet to re­ceive.

The cou­ple re­port­ed the mat­ter to Fraud Suad of­fi­cers who are prob­ing the case.

The HDC has re­peat­ed­ly warned about hous­ing scams.

Last No­vem­ber, the cor­po­ra­tion raised aware­ness about a surge in scams tar­get­ing prospec­tive home­own­ers, with fraud­sters ex­ploit­ing the names and im­ages of HDC of­fi­cials to de­fraud un­sus­pect­ing cit­i­zens. 

It said these scams in­volved false promis­es of HDC homes, with fraud­sters de­mand­ing pay­ments to ex­pe­dite ap­pli­ca­tions or guar­an­tee hous­ing al­lo­ca­tions.

The cor­po­ra­tion has stat­ed that the on­ly way to own or start the process of own­ing a home is through the HDC.