Vehicle-tracking companies have warned of a car-theft scam that targets motorists with tracking devices.
Cape Town – As the festive season approaches, vehicle-tracking companies have warned of a car-theft scam that targets motorists with tracking devices.
Tracker issued an alert about a recent syndicate to say its customers were being contacted by “scamsters” pretending to work for Tracker and advising there was something wrong with their device and they needed to come out to repair or replace it.
“Once on site, the perpetrators claim they need to test the device by taking the car for a test drive, or they say they can’t finalise the repairs on-site and need to take the vehicle to the fitment centre,” Tracker said in a statement.
Another tracking company, Netstar, also issued an alert to say some of its customers had received calls from people posing as employees of vehicle-tracking companies.
Netstar’s operations executive Charles Morgan said the company had launched a multi-pronged strategy to combat the threat by sending alerts to customers, staff and fitment centres.
The company said if people were contacted by someone who claimed to be from Netstar, they should ask the person to first confirm the client’s Netstar account number. If they were unable to do so, simply hang up the phone or contact Netstar to remove any doubt.
Fidelity Services Group head: marketing and communications, Charnel Hattingh, said although the company had not received reports from SecureDrive customers to date, “there does appear to be evidence of a scam impacting the industry generally”.
Recent police crime statistics for 2019/20, revealed that car-jacking had seen the biggest increase year-on-year. People reported 18 162 cases, which equated to 50 cars being stolen in the country every day.
Cape Argus
