People need to understand scams and avoid easy money making processes- Vodafone Fiji Head of eCommerce

Vodafone Fiji Head of eCommerce and and Digital Financial Services, Shailendra Prasad says people need to avoid easy money making processes and understand scams as they can lose huge amount of money.

While speaking on fijivillage Straight Talk with Vijay Narayan, Prasad says they are concerned about the huge amount of money lost by some costumers through the eBay scam.

When questioned on the money lost through the eBay recruitment scheme, scammers having multiple accounts, transactions looking suspicious and the reporting requirements needed, Prasad says customers can have multiple accounts.

He says they process about $170 to $180 million as person to person money transfer within Fiji on a monthly basis and the account limit is $10,000 while the daily transaction limit is $2,000.

He says one of the things they have in their system is that they are able to see the value of transactions by monitoring through which they have reported a number of these account holders to the Financial Intelligence Unit and the Reserve Bank of Fiji, as suspicious transactions.

He says their role is reporting and the investigating bodies such as the Financial Intelligence Unit, Police, Fijian Competition and Consumer Commission that has the powers goes beyond to investigate whatever is required.

Prasad further says majority of the money lost by the people in these scams should be within the country because through their M-PAiSA master card has only a limit of $5,000 that can be transferred, however, people can keep cash with themselves as well.

He says no transactions can be done through crypto-currency using the M-PaiSA master card as the NCC number is blocked.

Consumer Council of Fiji Manager Campaigns, Information and Media, Vinash Singh says it is concerning that many consumers have lost a lot of amount in the eBay scam, however, people need to trust in them, their processes and take their alerts seriously as they are there to protect the consumers and their money.

When questioned on why no actions were taken despite calls being made regarding the eBay scam, Singh says the Council was raising alerts, going on Talk-Back shows, newspaper articles and all their social media platforms in order to educate consumers, warn them and protect their money.

He says once the pyramid scheme had collapsed, they formed a Taskforce under the leadership of the Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica in order to investigate these cases and come up with strategy on how to investigate the cases.

He says the procedure which they established was that all consumer bodies was to compile complains of consumers by different relevant authorities, investigations to happen and actions to be taken as per their requirements and laws.

He further says there are almost 948 complaints received and any complains or information received is sent to the police immediately for investigation. Singh also says that negotiations are ongoing with the Taskforce as they have proposed to form a national scam watch and the laws that need to be amended so that one particular body can take action quickly in terms of such scams.

The Manager Campaigns, Information and Media also says in cases of money being taken out of the country through crypto-currency, there are clearance to be taken from the Reserve Bank of Fiji, which can be detected as well.