The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is warn­ing the pub­lic about rob­beries re­lat­ed to on­line busi­ness trans­ac­tions, some­thing of­fi­cers are call­ing “a new phe­nom­e­non.”

At yes­ter­day’s TTPS me­dia brief­ing, act­ing Se­nior Supt Joseph Chan­dool said, “These are in­stances where peo­ple try to trans­act sales on­line and meet at a lo­ca­tion, and are then robbed of their cash or com­mod­i­ty for sale.”

Chan­dool said the TTPS is en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to meet at a safe venue to con­duct such ac­tiv­i­ty.

“The ex­ec­u­tive urges peo­ple to use the po­lice sta­tion as their meet­ing place. If some­one asks to do so and the oth­er par­ty re­fus­es, that ought to be a red flag and that alone lets you know that every­thing is not above board.”

Chan­dool said this is a se­ri­ous cause for con­cern for the TTPS, as peo­ple are los­ing their hard-earned com­modi­ties and cash. Say­ing they be­lieve one re­port is one too many, he said they have had some suc­cess­es in bring­ing peo­ple to jus­tice for these crimes.

“The Cy­ber Crime Unit is ac­tive and en­gag­ing the sit­u­a­tion, it is a ro­bust op­er­a­tion, I can­not give the num­bers at present but we have had some suc­cess­es.”

In Ju­ly this year, the TTPS an­nounced that it had made a ma­jor dent in an on­line rob­bery ring.

Twen­ty-four-year-old Jef­frey Joseph, of East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain, was ar­rest­ed in con­nec­tion with this mat­ter. Po­lice be­lieved he was the main sus­pect in a se­ries of re­ports of on­line scams and rob­beries.

The TTPS said then that Joseph was the sixth sus­pect to be ar­rest­ed and charged in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion in con­nec­tion with these types of on­line rob­beries. Five oth­ers were charged in April 2021.

The po­lice said po­ten­tial buy­ers re­spond­ed to what was lat­er learned to be fic­ti­tious on­line ad­ver­tise­ments and they were di­rect­ed to un­fa­mil­iar lo­ca­tions. Once there, po­lice were told, they were robbed of their prop­er­ty and cash. The po­lice are there­fore urg­ing ex­treme vig­i­lance dur­ing this Christ­mas sea­son.