The Post Office warned members of the public to be on alert of a scam doing the rounds where customers are duped into depositing money into fraudulent Postbank accounts.
Explaining how the scam works, the post office said: “You receive a sealed Speed Services Couriers package delivered at your doorstep or workplace. Inside the package there is a laminated certificate claiming that a substantial amount has been paid into a Postbank account opened for you. The instruction in your delivery package states that to activate the Postbank account opened for you in order to claim your winnings, you need to pay a certain amount of cash into another account.
“This is when you are conned because you will be seeing the last of the money that you would have deposited into that other account.”
The Post Office advises the public to ignore such packages when they receive them.
“Postbank, the SA Post Office or any of its other subsidiaries will never open an account on your behalf and request an activation fee. You should always be wary of any promises of large sums of winnings for competitions you never took part in. Also, you should know that you are probably being scammed in any situation where you are required to pay an amount of money upfront, either as an admin fee or for any other reasons, to access large sums of money. “
The SA Post Office is currently working with law enforcement agencies to trace the perpetrators of this scam and members of the public with information are requested to call the police or the post office’s Crime Buster Hotline on 0800 020 070.
