SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

On­line fraud­sters have man­aged to fleece des­per­ate Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) ap­pli­cants of $48,000 in the last month.

This is the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in a pub­lic hous­ing scam the HDC re­cent­ly un­earthed.

Yes­ter­day, the HDC re­mind­ed cit­i­zens that all trans­ac­tions/pay­ments re­lat­ed to the al­lo­ca­tion of hous­ing units are con­duct­ed at its of­fices and they will nev­er sanc­tion pay­ments or trans­fers to per­son­al ac­counts.

The warn­ing came af­ter scores of HDC ap­pli­cants des­per­ate­ly seek­ing to se­cure sub­sidised homes were conned of their hard-earned cash in the last few weeks by fraud­sters. In a re­lease, the HDC said in some cas­es, “the vic­tims were ac­tu­al­ly de­fraud­ed of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars.”

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Brent Lyons told Guardian Me­dia he was very con­cerned hous­ing ap­pli­cants were be­ing ripped off dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“I am par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about peo­ple los­ing their hard-earned mon­ey to fraud. It’s over ten re­port­ed cas­es we have had in terms of peo­ple who ac­tu­al­ly called us to com­plain...and then there were re­ports of peo­ple whose friends called us who did not feel com­fort­able with what hap­pened,” Lyons said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

The HDC has over 100,000 ap­pli­cants wait­ing in line for pub­lic hous­ing.

Lyons said one has to keep in mind the per­son who hand­ed over the cash but not­ed the per­sons who ac­cept­ed the mon­ey have al­so com­mit­ted a crime.

“You are pay­ing to de­fraud the sys­tem.”

He said HDC’s se­cu­ri­ty de­part­ment had re­ceived com­plaints from “dozens” of ap­pli­cants who were swin­dled in the last four weeks.

“We are again hear­ing a num­ber of peo­ple com­plain­ing or mak­ing re­ports that some­body has at­tempt­ed to de­fraud them or they have been con­tact­ed to pay some mon­ey some­where.”

So far, the HDC has re­ceived re­ports of ap­pli­cants hand­ing over ap­prox­i­mate­ly $48,000 in cash to con artists.

In once in­stance, Lyons said one ap­pli­cant paid $18,000 in cash to a fraud­ster, a case which is now the sub­ject of a TTPS Fraud Squad in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Lyons said the fraud­sters had gone about plan­ning an elab­o­rate scam as well. He said they have been tak­ing pho­tos of sin­gle units, town­hous­es and apart­ments from the HDC’s web­site, most of which are in ad­vanced stages of con­struc­tion and us­ing them to con­vince the un­sus­pect­ing ap­pli­cants that their files were be­ing processed.

“They have al­so been tak­ing pho­tographs of hous­ing de­vel­op­ments them­selves, which they have been show­ing the ap­pli­cants. What they would do....they would look at our Face­book page and so­cial me­dia and look for peo­ple who say they ap­plied to HDC for a home and is await­ing a re­sponse. These peo­ple who have been wait­ing for a house are con­tact­ed via Face­book or In­sta­gram by the fraud­sters, who pre­tend to be an HDC em­ploy­ee ask­ing them to make a de­posit or down pay­ment to­wards their new home,” he said.

“They tell you they could help in mov­ing the process along if you pay mon­ey. I am not say­ing peo­ple are gullible. Peo­ple want hous­ing. If they get a call it lifts your hopes and the fraud­sters try to give you some­thing to hold on to make it sound le­git­i­mate.”

He said the scam­mers had found a cre­ative way to swin­dle ap­pli­cants by go­ing on­line.

The HDC has pho­tos of 20 hous­ing sites on its web­site and so­cial me­dia pages. The fraud­sters have showed bonafide ap­pli­cants they ap­proached pho­tographs of the de­vel­op­ments at Re­al Spring in Val­sayn, Eden Gar­dens in Freeport and a pri­vate/pub­lic part­ner­ship project in Cen­tral.

Asked if the fraud­sters could pos­si­bly be col­lab­o­rat­ing with HDC em­ploy­ees in the scam, Lyons said they had no ev­i­dence ap­pli­cants’ per­son­al in­for­ma­tion was be­ing leaked to fraud­sters on the out­side.

“There are cas­es where peo­ple are pur­port­ing to be from the HDC ... and it hap­pens all the time. We are say­ing no­body from the HDC will call you to meet them out­side to con­duct a trans­ac­tion or pay­ment. And if that hap­pens don’t fol­low that... come in­to our head of­fice.

“If any­body con­tacts you to do any­thing oth­er than that, know it is a fraud­u­lent of sus­pect trans­ac­tion. That is is not how the HDC is run. We have our sys­tems re­al­ly locked tight. So there is no fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be launched.”

This is not the first time HDC ap­pli­cants have been tar­get­ed by scam­mers. In 2018, Lyons said the HDC had launched a “Scam­mers’ Alert” cam­paign to treat with such fraud. Last year, an HDC em­ploy­ee was al­so ac­cused of fraud­u­lent­ly giv­ing a house to a ten­ant liv­ing in the Green­vale Park de­vel­op­ment in La Hor­quet­ta. The fraud was on­ly un­cov­ered when min­istry of­fi­cials were screen­ing res­i­dents to as­sist them fol­low­ing se­vere flood­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Lyons said with an in­crease in fraud again, they may have to re­turn to the ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign.

“Don’t let these fraud­sters make you part with your hard-earned mon­ey,” Lyons urged.