BY KWANELE TSABEDZE
MBABANE– The Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) Fraud Department today dedicated a few minutes to educate the public about cyber crime.
Head of Department Nicholas Jele spent over half an hour educating on cybercrime on the Kusile Breakfast Show on Eswatini TV. During the interview, it was revealed that Eswatini lost E4 million through cybercrimes in the past 12 months up to March 2023.
“The first thing which pains and affects us as emaSwati, who are also police officers, is that there is money which is lost by elderly retirees. As these people retire, they begin wondering about investments they can make and they sometimes search Google for Investment options.
“This is where they find websites set up to trap and defraud people who are looking for Investments online. It happens often that people get caught in these traps and deposit their funds. It is very painful to see an elderly person who has served the nation for Emaswati lose their well deserved pension,” said Jele.
In addition, he requested emaSwati to meet them halfway. when they are deciding where to invest.
Jele mentioned that they were aware that everyone has the right to invest where they want, and yet nonetheless, these decisions do affect us as well as the police.
“This is because when they lose the money which they were investing online, which is negligent investing without due diligence, we have to investigate these cases. We therefore request Emaswati, our desk is always open to assist the public, when they decide to invest online, they should come to us for an authenticity check of the investment,” he said.
He warned Emaswati to be very wary of investment opportunities which offer outsized returns online. He cited that it is much better to invest in tangible institutions, not internet companies without physical offices.
He also warned the public to be careful of online purchases, especially with respect to Facebook sellers. He revealed that a big red flag for Facebook scammers are people who sell items at unbelievably low prices and promise to deliver the goods at your location.
He revealed that the best second option to clearing a big online purchase with the fraud department was to consult with your banker to verify the legitimacy of the banking details before sending any funds.
He added that a lot of people have sent money to personal accounts abroad, thinking they were buying from legitimate companies as convinced by the advertisements they see on Facebook, as well as the quotations and invoices they receive. Jele added that it is important to never use free wifi to make online purchases or online banking transactions, as they are more liable to hacker presence than personal data.
Jele revealed that a new scam involves people who buy national identity cards from the elderly to register sim cards with. He said that these criminals then use the cellphone number to scam people. He urged people to warn the elderly not to sell their identity documents for any reason.
“We should not think of these warnings as referring to distant threats, as these things are happening in Eswatini. The technology is evolving with the scams, so we urge Emaswati to be highly cautious with their funds and give their personal information online,” said Jele.
