Derek Achong

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is warn­ing cit­i­zens search­ing for love on­line to be vig­i­lant. 

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing, of­fi­cers of the TTPS's Fraud Squad said that they have had to in­ves­ti­gate a se­ries of re­cent in­ci­dents in­volv­ing ro­mance or friend­ship scams. 

"They steal your heart to steal your mon­ey," act­ing In­spec­tor Cor­nelius Samuel said. 

Samuel re­vealed that the most re­cent in­ci­dent oc­curred sev­er­al weeks ago when his de­part­ment ar­rest­ed a 48-year-old Niger­ian man as he was in the process of de­fraud­ing an 82-year-old woman from Port-of-Spain of over $262,000. 

"The ar­rest pro­vides a small break­through as it pro­vid­ed crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion on oth­er cas­es of a sim­i­lar na­ture," Samuel said. 

He ex­plained that fraud­sters, who com­mit such crimes, are ex­perts at iden­ti­fy­ing and play­ing on emo­tion­al trig­gers to con­vince per­sons to part with their mon­ey. 

He said most cre­ate fake pro­files and pre­tend to have re­spectable jobs as doc­tors or mil­i­tary of­fi­cers.

"Once that con­fi­dence and trust are gained then the sym­pa­thet­ic sto­ries come. A sud­den med­ical sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing them­selves or fam­i­ly mem­bers, which they can­not af­ford or typ­i­cal­ly they may claim they sent a care pack­age of gifts for you but they can­not af­ford the cus­toms fees to clear it," he said, as he gave a se­ries of ba­sic tips on iden­ti­fy­ing such fraud­sters. 

Samuel sug­gest­ed that such fraud­sters usu­al­ly ask many per­son­al ques­tions ear­ly in the on­line friend­ship and ad­vised cit­i­zens to con­sult with trust­ed friends or the po­lice be­fore agree­ing to trans­fer any funds. 

He al­so warned cit­i­zens against post­ing too much per­son­al in­for­ma­tion on their so­cial me­dia ac­counts, which may cause them to fall un­der the fraud­sters' radars. 

Samuel al­so said that the TTPS had re­ceived re­ports of sim­i­lar scams in­volv­ing fraud­sters con­ning cit­i­zens through tele­mar­ket­ing in­vest­ment schemes. 

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence, ASP Cur­tis Julien, al­so of the Fraud Squad, not­ed that the TTPS had record­ed an in­crease in cred­it and deb­it card fraud com­pared to last year. 

Julien re­vealed that for the first quar­ter this year there were 758 re­ports of card skim­ming as com­pared to 459 for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od, last year. 

How­ev­er, de­spite the in­crease, the sta­tis­tics showed that cit­i­zens were de­fraud­ed of less mon­ey with $1.74 mil­lion com­pared to $2.214 mil­lion, last year. 

The sta­tis­tics al­so showed that of the re­port­ed cas­es, the ma­jor­i­ty were made at the Fraud Squad's Port-of-Spain. 

How­ev­er, Julien ex­plained that the dis­par­i­ty was pos­si­bly down to the fact that the Port-of-Spain of­fice cov­ers a large ge­o­graph­ic area in­clu­sive of To­ba­go. 

Julien point­ed at sev­er­al elec­tron­ic de­vices that were on dis­play at the press con­fer­ence to high­light how fraud­ster com­mit their crimes. 

He said that skim­ming de­vices can be placed at ATMs ma­chines and point of sale ma­chines or they can be mod­i­fied to fa­cil­i­tate skim­ming ac­tiv­i­ty. The da­ta is trans­ferred to mo­bile de­vices via Blue­tooth and is used to cre­ate cloned bank cards. The fraud­u­lent cards are then used to with­draw mon­ey from the vic­tims' bank ac­counts. 

Julien said that the Fraud Squad's in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that many of the de­vices are man­u­fac­tured in for­eign coun­tries, which shows that the fraud­sters are linked to transna­tion­al crime. 

He said that ma­chines that are tam­pered with would usu­al­ly tell a user that there was a com­mu­ni­ca­tion er­ror or trans­ac­tion fail­ure. 

"What we need to un­der­stand is that we need to safe­guard our­selves from this type of ac­tiv­i­ty," as he called on cit­i­zens to not be dis­tract­ed when con­duct­ing such trans­ac­tions. 

"It is im­por­tant to keep your eyes on cards, and as long as there is any sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place, im­me­di­ate­ly raise a red flag and dis­con­tin­ue the trans­ac­tion. Con­tact your fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion and of course make self-checks us­ing on­line bank­ing," he said. 

He al­so re­vealed that some skim­ming fraud may be per­formed un­know­ing­ly by staff at busi­ness­es as their own­ers may have have arrange­ments with fraud­sters and se­cret­ly tam­pered with ma­chines.