Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

At least two To­bag­o­ni­ans have been scammed by fraud­sters pos­ing on­line as used-car deal­ers, as po­lice warn the scheme may be af­fect­ing vic­tims na­tion­wide.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors say the op­er­a­tion in­volves iden­ti­ty theft and the use of so­cial me­dia plat­forms, in­clud­ing Tik­Tok, to ad­ver­tise ve­hi­cles at at­trac­tive­ly low prices. One such page, which has amassed more than 1,000 fol­low­ers, lists at least 13 ve­hi­cles, in­clud­ing a Kia Sportage, Toy­ota Axio and Nis­san Navara.

Prices range from $24,000 to $70,000, with the pur­port­ed sell­ers al­so of­fer­ing pay­ment plans to en­tice buy­ers who can­not af­ford the full up­front cost.

To­ba­go po­lice con­firmed that two in­di­vid­u­als re­cent­ly re­port­ed pay­ing down-pay­ments to a Trinidad-based sell­er but nev­er re­ceived their ve­hi­cles. The vic­tims said they com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the page ad­min­is­tra­tor, made pur­chase arrange­ments, and trans­ferred sums of up to $8,000. Af­ter the pay­ments were made, all con­tact with the sell­er ceased.

Dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered that the What­sApp pro­file name and im­age used to com­mu­ni­cate with cus­tomers had been stolen. The re­al in­di­vid­ual had pre­vi­ous­ly raised the alarm in De­cem­ber via Face­book, warn­ing that his iden­ti­ty was be­ing used to fa­cil­i­tate fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tions.

In his post, he stat­ed: “Guys, I want to clear some­thing up. This is not me. I do not buy and sell ve­hi­cles. I’m not sure who it is, but some­one is try­ing to scam you out of your hard-earned mon­ey us­ing my in­for­ma­tion. That is not my phone num­ber. Please share and be care­ful.”

Po­lice are al­so prob­ing a sep­a­rate on­line scam in­volv­ing a fraud­u­lent vil­la rental list­ing in To­ba­go. Sev­er­al Trinidad-based vic­tims re­port­ed­ly lost de­posits ear­li­er this year af­ter book­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for va­ca­tions that did not ex­ist.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk urged the pub­lic to ex­er­cise cau­tion when con­duct­ing on­line trans­ac­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when deal­ing with un­known sell­ers.

“Do not part with your mon­ey un­less you have phys­i­cal­ly ver­i­fied the goods,” he ad­vised. “We have been ad­vo­cat­ing this for quite some time. Peo­ple see some­thing on Face­book Mar­ket­place and are too quick to send mon­ey, on­ly to find they can­not con­tact the sell­er af­ter­wards.”

Kirk said the Fraud Squad is ac­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the re­ports, while the Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit con­tin­ues to dis­sem­i­nate pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion ma­te­r­i­al on iden­ti­fy­ing and avoid­ing scams.