fraud-related crimes
31 July 2007
The South African Police Service (SAPS) Head Office Commercial Crimes Unit's
Banking Unit in conjunction with the South African Banking Risk Information
Centre (Sabric), today conducted a crime prevention and training session on
fraud-related crimes, including but not limited to credit/debit card and cheque
fraud, to point-of-sale staff members, at the Kolonade Shopping Mall, Pretoria.
The SAPS/Sabric interventions are both in the form of presentations and 'lower
level interventions,' that is, distribution of pamphlets and other
information-related material.
This exercise follows on an earlier successful interaction between
SAPS/Sabric and retail managers, held at the same venue, on 14 June 2007.
Kolonade Shopping Mall is one of the locations identified country wide, by the
Commercial Crimes Unit, as being a hotspot for ATM-related (card skimming and
swapping) and cheque fraud. In the past year, major shopping malls across the
country have benefited from this SAPS/Sabric pro-active initiative, that of
informing and educating big business about fraud-related crimes. Significant
decreases in the reporting of this particular category of crime has henceforth
been noted.
The SAPS Commercial Crimes Unit has periodically studied fraud-related crime
trends and conducted and in-depth docket analysis nationwide. It has been found
that this particular crime has a tendency to migrate from one mall to the other
and from province to province. Of interest is also the 'peak' phenomena, where
high incidents are reported just before or during school holidays and festive
season. Some card or cheque account holders tend to be careless during this
period when conducting their normal day-to-day transactions.
In the past week, the Joint Operations Forum on Banking-related Crime,
comprising the SAPS Commercial Crimes Units, Sabric, Interpol (SA) and Private
sector stakeholders, met in Port Edward, KwaZulu-Natal, to share information on
fraud and other banking-related crimes. This forum meets quarterly.
Card fraudsters have been found to generally display certain behaviour when
conducting a fraudulent transaction. The following are but a few examples:
making random purchases, selecting items with little regard to size, quality or
value, not providing identification when asked, purchasing and unusual amount
of expensive items and providing the point-of-sale staff member with an
authorisation number he or she alleges to have obtained from the bank.
Whenever in doubt or suspicious of a person or transaction, the following
contact details are very important:
SAPS Commercial Crimes Unit, Banking Group, Head Office, Pretoria
Tel: 012 393 1662
Fax: 012 393 1202
E-mail: comm.banking@saps.org.za
Contact Person:
Captain Percy Morokane
National Spokesperson
Tel: 012 393 5541
Cell: 082 778 5602
Issued by: South African Police Service
31 July 2007
