Cape Town - Con artists are openly defrauding the state by advertising government positions only to steal eager job seekers’ money after convincing them to pay deposits.
The job seekers, some of whom cried when they realised they lost their money, were required to make deposits before applying for the jobs or attending interviews.
They applied for jobs as traffic officers and prison wardens, but the scammers disappeared with their deposits. In one incident, advertisements were sent out for 500 traffic officers, said Gumtree spokesperson Teri Caswell.
“A fairly common scam that pops up across Facebook and classifieds is that the traffic department is looking for 500 candidates (or a similar number). Individuals are told to pay a fee and then arrive at the local traffic department for an interview, only to find it doesn’t exist,” said Caswell.
When people arrived at the traffic department, they found out there were no positions advertised and they had been duped.
In another case, at least three women from Kayamandi in Stellenbosch heard from the local library of positions as warders with the Department of Correctional Services. The positions were advertised on the library’s Facebook page, according to one of the victims, Zonke Kongwayo.
She said she and another woman paid deposits of R1000 each and a third paid R800 via Pep Stores into the scammer’s accounts after he had told them to do so.
“He asked for R1500 and we told him we’d pay the rest of the money if we get the jobs,” said Kongwayo.
He promised them R3500 as trainees before they would get permanent jobs. They waited for him for hours at the correctional services’ offices, where he asked them to meet him, but he didn’t pitch. They called him continuously, but he was not available, she said.
When they went back to Pep to see whether their money was still with Pep Stores, they were told the transactions had gone through and they should check at the ATMs whether the money was still in their accounts.
They checked their balances at the ATM “but it was all gone”, according to Kongwayo. When she and the other women returned to the library, there were more then 10 other people demanding answers from the library because the same thing happened to them, added Kongwayo.
“The lady tried to call the guy, but couldn’t get hold of them.”
According to her, the library employee called three other nearby libraries and heard the same thing happened there.
She said she and several of the other women burst into tears and tried to console one another. “We were so desperate for work,” said Kongwayo.
“We went back to correctional services and asked for a person with that name, but they told us no person like that works there,” she said, adding she hasn’t found a job yet.
Casswell said government positions advertised on Gumtree or Facebook were “usually fraudulent”, adding these jobs were normally advertised on their own official websites.
She said in general, not only regarding government positions, job seekers were scammed out of R200 to R20000.
Claire Cobbledick, head of marketing for Gumtree South Africa, warned: “There has been a sharp spike in the number of fake job adverts being posted on various social media and classifieds platforms.
“We urge all prospective job seekers to be extremely careful when applying for a job online,” she added.
Provincial traffic chief Kenny Africa said it was clearly a scam since the traffic department wasn’t currently advertising posts. He said recruits would complete a year-long training programme in June.
Then new advertisements would be posted “through normal channels”, including traditional media like newspapers, he said, and not sites such as Gumtree.
“This can definitely harm a lot of people,” the traffic chief said.
Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Logan Maistry condemned the scammers and urged people not to fall for it.
“It’s definitely a scam and unlawful. We really want to protect the public,” he said.
Afrika and Maistry said government departments would never ask job seekers for a deposit. “That’s nonsense,”said Afrika.
The two also advised complainants to lay charges at their nearest police station.