Police in Kampala have arrested five men suspected to be text message fraudsters.
The suspects are Geofrey Mutyaba 21 years Frank Mubiru 25 years, Joseph Bukenya 20 years, Peter Ntambi 32 years and Tom Kayizi 31 years.
This was as a result of various telecom service providers reporting to police a number of complaints received from their numerous subscribers that a group of fraudsters have been sending text messages that they have won cash prices or misplaced mobile money transactions.
Police investigated the matter, identified the suspects and tracked their movements. The arrested syndicate can be best described as being similar to a spider’s webs through their call connections.
Forged documents, devices and tools, as well as phones and cards suspected to be used in the fraud have also been seized.
MODE OF OPERATION
The suspected fraudsters send congratulatory messages to peoples’ phones informing them of an amount of money they have won and the recipient of the text message is immediately requested to call a certain phone number to redeem his or her prize, stating that the text message is often accompanied with a fake pin number, which are all attempts to obtain the recipient’s cooperation.
The moment you call, the receiver purporting to be working with a telecommunication network will ask you to confirm the pin number and scratch a credit card for them to begin the processing of your prize. You are also promised a refund of the credit when the processing is over.
However, after defrauding they switch off the phones and there is no prize to pick up.
Other times the fraudsters send a fake mobile money message and call back requesting it back arguing it was a mistaken deposit and the unsuspecting users end up loosing huge sums of money.
Members of the general public are cautioned to be mindful of such activities for a lot of people have been swindled under this type of falsehood.
The public should take note that service providers don’t charge any money or its equivalent before prizes are redeemed and any request for money, recharge cards or airtime before a prize is redeemed is fraudulent.
Promotions from service providers are authenticated and names of winners published on their official websites.
Do you have a story in your community or an opinion to share with us: Email us at editorial@watchdoguganda.com
