Africa-Press – Eswatini. Police have sent a strong warning to the public regarding a new scam by con artists.
Fraudsters are said to be now using a loan portal as a new technique for crooking emaSwati. As of now, 23 new fraud cases have been reported, which were committed via the loan portal and an amount of E115 000 has been lost. These cases are said to have taken place between November and December 2023. Information gathered is that the scammers had come up with a new technique of creating a loan portal similar to that of local financial institutions uploaded online or social media. A loan portal is a specially designed website that provides information about the specific loan from a lender and serves as a single point of access to such a loan.
Scammers
Nicholas Jele, Senior Superintendent of the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS), under the Fraud Department, yesterday on national radio, said they had discovered that scammers were now faking bank products such as loan portals, which they put on their social media pages with the purpose of scamming emaSwati by creating counterfeit ones. Jele said financial institutions came up with the idea of having loan portals online, so that customers got the necessary services they wanted at their disposal any time. Previously, people had to physically visit their banks to make an application for a loan, something which proved cumbersome due to the long queues, among many other challenges. According to Jele, loan portals make life easier for people to access loans while sitting in the comfort of their homes or in the office.
He, however, indicated that some of the fraudsters had upped their game this time around by taking chances where they were replicating financial institutions’ loan portals by coming up with their own, to scam emaSwati. “As we speak, the fraudsters have come up with their own social media page similar to that of banks. They also have a loan application form requiring personal login credentials, one time password (OTP) and card numbers. They do that as if they want to assist that customer get a loan within a short space of time,” said Jele. According to Jele, after providing all the information, a message indicating to the victim that their loan application had been declined pops up. Jele said the unfortunate part was that the fraudsters then made use of the information at their disposal to get all the money in the victim’s bank accounts.
Information
He then pleaded with emaSwati not to divulge their personal information to unknown people. “There is no way the bank of your choice can require any secretive personal information. That is impossible. Just look away if you come across such individuals demanding your personal information,” explained Jele. The senior police officer was then asked whether they were able to make any breakthroughs in the arrest of such fraudsters. In response to that, he assured emaSwati that they were working hard to track down the criminals and get them arrested.
“Sitsi emaSwati akangayengeki, which can be loosely translated to mean; ‘EmaSwati must not be deceived easily’, said Jele. The Eswatini Bankers Association is yet to respond regarding the issue at hand.
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