Po­lice have is­sued a warn­ing to be wary of falling prey to scams on so­cial me­dia plat­forms such as What­sApp, where­by crim­i­nals trick un­sus­pect­ing vic­tims in­to pay­ing large sums of mon­ey in ex­change for em­ploy­ment.

The warn­ing fol­lows re­ports of a lo­cal so­cial me­dia scam that has re­sult­ed in vic­tims be­ing fleeced of large sums of mon­ey by crim­i­nals.

In De­cem­ber 2018, sev­er­al per­sons who are mem­bers of a What­sApp group were false­ly in­formed that they would be em­ployed as rig­gers at an en­er­gy com­pa­ny, if they wired TT$3,000 to a West­ern Union ac­count.

Up­on pay­ing the mon­ey, the vic­tims were told to at­tend an ori­en­ta­tion pro­gramme card­ed for Tues­day 8th Jan­u­ary, 2019.

How­ev­er, when they showed up for the ori­en­ta­tion, they were told it was can­celled.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to this mat­ter are on­go­ing.

Po­lice say that as a gen­er­al rule, if an of­fer made on­line, on so­cial me­dia or oth­er­wise ap­pears too good to be true; then it is high­ly pos­si­ble, it is a scam.

The state­ment by the po­lice said that any trans­ac­tion in­volv­ing cash pay­ment of large sums of mon­ey to un­known per­sons should be avoid­ed.

It ad­vis­es that per­sons of so­cial me­dia scams car­ried out lo­cal­ly, should make a re­port to the near­est po­lice sta­tion or call 999, 482-GARY or 800-TIPS.