KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A Cen­tral Trinidad moth­er is ques­tion­ing how scam­mers got the in­for­ma­tion she sub­mit­ted to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and TT Post two weeks ago, as they al­leged­ly used the in­for­ma­tion to steal $50,000 off her cred­it card.

Jane Park (not her re­al name) said she went to a pass­port ap­point­ment at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion in San Fer­nan­do two weeks ago and filled out var­i­ous forms, pro­vid­ing her name, ad­dress, date of birth and pass­port num­ber. She al­so pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion for TT Post to de­liv­er the pass­port to her home. An im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer told her it would take four to six weeks to get the doc­u­ment but it could ar­rive ear­li­er.

Last week, Park said re­ceived an SMS that ap­peared to be from TT Post re­gard­ing the pass­port de­liv­ery, which said she had a pack­age it could not de­liv­er due to an in­cor­rect ad­dress. The mes­sage asked her to up­date her ad­dress with­in 24 hours, or TT Post would re­turn the item and re­de­liv­er at her ex­pense. It pro­vid­ed a link for her to mod­i­fy her ad­dress.

Park said she clicked the link, which took her to a web­site she be­lieved to be the le­git­i­mate TT Post web­site, as it had all the in­for­ma­tion she sub­mit­ted to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.

“It said a dri­ver at­tempt­ed to de­liv­er the pass­port, but ei­ther no one was avail­able or the di­rec­tions were in­cor­rect. They said we had 24 hours to up­date the de­liv­ery in­for­ma­tion, and if we did not, it may in­cur a small fee. Ini­tial­ly, I was try­ing to up­date the in­for­ma­tion be­cause I was prepar­ing to trav­el and got caught up with work. I for­got to put in the in­for­ma­tion. I checked it, and I knew 24 hours had passed. It said I had to pay $2.04, so I said it was not bad. The in­for­ma­tion seemed le­git, and when I tried to en­ter my card in­for­ma­tion, it took me to (what ap­peared to be) the Sco­tia­bank web­site to put my in­for­ma­tion,” Park said.

Af­ter she en­tered her in­for­ma­tion, the web­site asked her for a code for the cred­it card. She re­trieved a code gen­er­at­ed by the web­site from her email, be­liev­ing it was added se­cu­ri­ty. When she en­tered it on the site, it re­turned a mes­sage stat­ing, “In­cor­rect.” Af­ter at­tempt­ing the process four times, she be­came sus­pi­cious and checked her bank ac­count to see if TT Post had charged her. She saw four pur­chas­es made in Dubai, the Unit­ed States and In­dia. Park re­alised she had fall­en prey to a scam­mer and im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed her bank, which had al­ready halt­ed her cred­it card af­ter flag­ging it for sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty.

“On­ly a hand­ful of peo­ple knew I took my son to get his pass­port two weeks ago: my hus­band, his (son’s) fa­ther, Im­mi­gra­tion and TT Post. No­body else knew that, so for me to be tar­get­ed and hacked, it has to be that it hap­pened through im­mi­gra­tion or TT Post be­cause those are the on­ly two or­gan­i­sa­tions that knew I was wait­ing on a pass­port,” she said.

As she was about to trav­el abroad, Thomas has yet to con­tact TT Post, the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion or the Fraud Squad and is still await­ing the pass­port.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, TT Post man­ag­ing di­rec­tor George Alex­is told Guardian Me­dia he was in a meet­ing and asked us to call back at 3.30 pm. How­ev­er, he did not an­swer fur­ther calls. Ef­forts to con­tact the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion were not suc­cess­ful.

Park not­ed that all trans­ac­tions were in TT dol­lars, which the bank al­so found in­ter­est­ing, lead­ing her to be­lieve the scam­mer was lo­cal. How­ev­er, she was more wor­ried that a cy­ber­crim­i­nal had her per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

“I am very scared about that. It is mad­ness, to be hon­est, and just shows you how eas­i­ly your en­tire fam­i­ly can be at risk for com­plet­ing a sim­ple, le­gal trans­ac­tion.”

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ear­li­er this month that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 cus­tomers fell prey to text mes­sages with false in­for­ma­tion claim­ing to have been sent by TT Post de­mand­ing that the re­cip­i­ents pay mon­ey to col­lect their pack­ages.  Checks show that scam­mers de­vised sev­er­al mes­sages they sent to peo­ple’s phones, ad­vis­ing them of pack­age de­liv­er­ies. How­ev­er, the com­mon thread was a link to con­firm their ad­dress­es.

TT Post and the Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) have is­sued nu­mer­ous warn­ings re­gard­ing this scam. The TTPS Cy­ber and So­cial Me­dia Unit is­sued a pub­lic ad­vi­so­ry weeks ago, say­ing it was aware of and was in­ves­ti­gat­ing the scam. It ad­vised peo­ple to ver­i­fy all com­mu­ni­ca­tions claim­ing to be from of­fi­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions by con­tact­ing them di­rect­ly. It al­so warned peo­ple against click­ing on sus­pi­cious links or down­load­ing at­tach­ments.