Police: Be Cautious With ‘Purchasing’ Online

December 14, 2018

The police are reminding members of the public to remain vigilant when making any purchases online, saying “two recent reported scams involved a smart TV and a laptop respectively posted for sale on a local online classifieds site.”

A police spokesperson said, “The Bermuda Police Service [BPS] would like to remind members of the public to remain vigilant when making any purchases online.

“Two recent reported scams involved a smart TV and a laptop respectively posted for sale on a local online classifieds site. In each case the transaction between the local resident and the alleged seller was conducted via e-mail.

“The alleged seller of the TV requested payment through MoneyGram, while the alleged seller of the laptop asked for payment in iTunes gift cards.

“The BPS continues to encourage residents to be extremely cautious in responding to internet merchandise offers from unknown sellers or unknown business entities and to be especially wary of responding to any person requesting payment in cash or gift cards using popular free e-mail addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook etc.

“Many of the local websites carrying classified advertisements already display a warning message on their home page in relation to these types of scams, as con artists continue to post on local ‘.bm’ and ‘.com’ websites.

“Any incidents of suspected internet fraud should be reported to the Financial Crime Unit on telephone number 247-1757 or via the e-mail address fraud2@bps.bm.”

click here banner technology 7

Read More About

Category: All, Crime, News, technology

Comments (11)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. george says:

    What are the likes of classified sites doing to try and stop scammers from posting scams Ads in the first place? Consumer Affairs should be looking at this. G

    • postit.bm says:

      at postit.bm we verify accounts by ensuring that the phone number you use is correct and working. We also review all posts daily and will remove any posts that we feel are not safe for the public.

      If you see any ads on postit.bm that look suspect please report them and we handle it ASAP.

      • Family Man says:

        haha I’d never heard of this site but just tried it out. I don’t think anyone has to worry about seeing fake ads. You won’t see anything with a big database fail:

        /var/www/postitbm/framework/db/CDbConnection.php(399)

        • Micro says:

          Hehe, oh boy.

        • postit.bm says:

          Hello,

          Yes we did have an issue last evening with our database. We have fixed the issue and all services have returned to normal.

          I would like to thank you for your support for small Bermudian built projects. postit.bm is 100% free to use for everyone on the island. We created the system at great cost to fill a massive gap in the Bermuda market.

          Since our launch 18 months ago Emoo has updated their site to a whole new system. We like to think that we helped force their hand to make some much needed upgrades.

          As a whole the Bermuda secondhand market can only function if we have community support. If anyone sees an ad on postit.bm that looks suspect we ask that you report it so that it can be viewed.

  2. Family Man says:

    With a classified site’s recent overhaul they seem to be posting a lot of really sketchy ads.

    • Toodle-oo says:

      Noticed some of the recent ‘dogs for sale’ ?
      Incidentally , the warning should also apply equally for people posing as interested buyers .
      There’s one scammer that I was told about months before he tried to scam me when I actually posted an ad some time later.

  3. Real Deal says:

    no one is that stupid

    • Toodle-oo says:

      Of course not . That’s why there’s still people here who get caught up in the “I need your bank account number to transfer millions to you” Nigerian scam even though it’s over a decade old now and the ongoing “Windows computer troubles scam”.
      I guess that not everyone is a cynical genius like you .

    • PBanks says:

      You’d be surprised.
      I don’t know why red flags aren’t raised to the potential buyer when the seller’s asking you to wire $$$ for example, without even seeing the product in person or the like.

  4. Izzypop says:

    This has been going on via a certain classifieds site for years