New Cornubia and government tender 'scams'

Please be careful of offers that appear too good to be true - as we repeatedly say, this usually means they are not legit. Here's a case in point. This woman from Phoenix who claims to be able to get you a one-bedroom or two-bedroom house in the Cornubia development near Mount Edgecombe has 'caught' at least one person we know of. And the catch is you need to pay her a deposit of R1100 or R1200 respectively. Our listener paid over her money, then realised it was a scam, asked for a refund and was told that wasn't possible. If you've been similarly affected please go to your nearest police station and lay a criminal charge.

Anand wanted to warn small business owners aware of a scam that's going around relating to tenders. In fact we've mentioned a similar one in Crimewatch on two recent occasions. A woman called to say she was from the rural development department and that Anand's company could put in a tender for drills. Once they sent a quote the woman got back to Anand saying they'd been awarded the tender (just like that!). She sent him a document to sign and fill out their banking details, and that's when Anand started to get suspicious. The logos, confirmation letter etc all did not look right. He's since sent the documents on to the department in question and they've confirmed this is not legit. Please be wary of unsolicited calls inviting you to tender for supposedly government business. In this case the value of the drills was at R175 000 - that amount would have been devastating to lose.

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