Internet scams

For nearly a month this year, an internet con artist lured Patricia Jacob into a scam by telling her what she wanted to read. After laying this foundation, the mystery man preyed on her affections, telling her the only way to show her love was to send him money.
Jacobs, 55, a widow from Franshoek, says she was scammed out of nearly R25 000 over three months, as part of a textbook Internet fraud case with ties to Africa.
 “I felt like someone had finally taken an interest in me, and perhaps even fallen in love with me” she said. “It’s embarrassing to admit it, but it’s a sad situation.”
While Jacobs regrets her “gullible” behaviour, she is far from alone, Franshoek police officials said.
Over the past decade, Cape residents have submitted hundreds of Internet fraud complaints to the SAPS, said Jim David, SAPS official.
“They fill my in-baskets,” David said, noting he had 400 such complaints, dating back to 2001, in his email inbox. He has deleted countless other emails and estimated that county residents had filed up to 1200 complaints over the past decade.
“It’s a sad situation when you’re dealing with international transactions,” he said. “There’s often little recourse available to (the victims), and there’s often little recourse available to us.”
In layman’s terms: The victim loses money and the perpetrator is never caught. Many of the scams start in African coffee shops, far out of local South African jurisdiction.
The scam that caught Jacobs in its web is a spin-off of the common cashier’s cheque scam. The victim sends money to the perpetrator with the expectation of being reimbursed. But the money disappears.
Shortly after signing on to christiancafe.com Jacobs began chatting with “Gary,” supposedly a resident of Johannesburg. He said he was a native of Algeria who had lost his mother and father.
After weeks of chatting online, “Gary”  told Jacobs he was going to Algeria to complete an architectural project and to meet with his mother’s attorney. From there, he told her the attorney had advised him to go to West Africa to retrieve gold bars his late mother left him.
Until then, Gary had not asked her for money. But once he arrived in Africa, he asked for R12,500 so he could travel to Central Africa to obtain the gold bars and then return to West Africa.
She complied and from there, “it just seemed to snowball.”
Along the way, Jacobs got unknowingly roped into a “re-shipping” scam, too. As part of the scam, another Franshoek resident’s credit card was used to purchase items that were sent to Jacobs. Her instructions were then to ship them to Ghana.
Police investigated the credit card fraud. Jacobs is not believed to have participated in the scam knowingly and does not face criminal charges in the case. The investigation is complete unless new evidence is presented, according to an SAPS report.
Jacobs’s losses did not stop with the initial con. She met a person on another web dating service, seniorpeoplemeet.com, who claimed to be able to help her find the person who stole her money. She wired them more than R8,800. She never received any of her money back.
 “It’s hard to protect people from themselves,” David said. “You’re talking about people who want to help.”
Jacobs regretted not seeing red flags when “Gary” wanted to chat on a site that did not track their interactions or when he mentioned that his children were being raised in Ghana.
 “I doubt very much I’ll get the money back,” she said. The faint hope of the statement evaporated after a brief pause. “I know I’ll never get the money back.” - Cerrin Hendricks