{"id":279847,"date":"2018-10-15T08:03:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T06:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=279847"},"modified":"2018-10-15T11:58:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T09:58:40","slug":"dangerous-olx-extortion-and-kidnapping-syndicate-uncovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/279847-dangerous-olx-extortion-and-kidnapping-syndicate-uncovered.html","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous OLX extortion and kidnapping syndicate uncovered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carte Blanche<\/strong><\/a> and a specialised police unit have arrested a dangerous syndicate which targeted people who advertised their vehicles online.<\/p>\n

The gang, which operated in the Vaal area, has been going for five years and typically trapped online car sellers with an elaborate scam.<\/p>\n

Carte Blanche interviewed people who were targeted by the syndicate, and they all advertised their vehicles on the OLX classifieds website.<\/p>\n

In one case<\/strong><\/a>, involving a Centurion man,\u00a0the scammer asked to meet him at a police station in Vanderbijlpark.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story is the criminals are actually officers in Vanderbijlpark and have been identified, but as usual, nothing has happened due to a lack of evidence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Many<\/strong><\/a> reports<\/strong><\/a> about the same modus operandi have been posted online.<\/p>\n

How the scam works<\/h3>\n

A syndicate member contacts the victim \u2013 the vehicle seller – and lures them to a meeting in Vanderbijlpark to buy their vehicle.<\/p>\n

At the meeting the victim is introduced to a second member of the syndicate, who shows them a bag full of cash and diamonds.<\/p>\n

The diamonds must allegedly be sold to a third party to make up the rest of the cash to pay for the vehicle.<\/p>\n

The victim is then taken to a nearby house, where they are told to wait for the rest of the money to arrive.<\/p>\n

Fake police officers then barge into the house and accuse the victims of fake diamond dealings.<\/p>\n

The victims are then taken to separate rooms, if there are more than one, where they are threatened that they will be taken to jail where they will be raped.<\/p>\n

The victims are then forced to transfer money to the criminals\u2019 accounts, and hand their bank cards to the criminals with their PINs.<\/p>\n

Some of the victims were forced to withdraw money from a bank branch, while the other victim was held captive.<\/p>\n

After the victims handed over their money to the criminals, they were told that they will be killed if they go to the police after being let go.<\/p>\n

The screenshots from Carte Blanche show the criminals waiting for a victim outside the bank.<\/p>\n

The headline image shows a victim (in front) being followed by a criminal to the bank.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The gang arrested<\/h3>\n

According to News24<\/strong><\/a>, five Namibian nationals which were allegedly linked to the syndicate will appear in the Vanderbijlpark Magistrate’s Court.<\/p>\n

The screenshot below from Carte Blanche shows the arrest of the gang last week.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

OLX responds<\/h3>\n

OLX said in a statement that the safety of its customers is extremely important to them and they aim to protect their users from criminal activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe invest heavily in technology to detect fraudulent users and cooperate with SAPS to bring perpetrators to book,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe provide our users with a fraud prevention helpline (021 406 3900) to report any suspicious activity and an online chat function to help our customers buy and sell safely.\u201d<\/p>\n

OLX added that it is deeply concerned about the elaborate criminal activity Carte Blanche uncovered and will help remove such activity.<\/p>\n

Now read:\u00a0OLX invests R1.4 billion in We Buy Cars<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An undercover sting operation revealed a dangerous gang targeting people who advertised their cars online, and then planted fake diamonds and fake money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":279859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[35,18506,1271],"class_list":["post-279847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-headline","tag-olx","tag-scam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279847"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279865,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279847\/revisions\/279865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}