Camille Clarke

Mem­bers of the pub­lic are be­ing ad­vised not to dis­close any per­son­al in­for­ma­tion over the phone to strangers.The warn­ing comes af­ter sev­er­al text mes­sages, claim­ing to be from the Cen­tral Bank and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) ,told lo­cal re­cip­i­ents they had won prizes and mon­ey and to seek to col­lect them.How­ev­er, the texts proved to be a ploy by for­eign-based scam­mers con­ning un­sus­pect­ing peo­ple out of their mon­ey.In the case of the Cen­tral Bank, peo­ple across Trinidad yes­ter­day com­plained they re­ceived sev­er­al texts claim­ing they had won $50,000 and telling them to vis­it the bank for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion and to re­ceive the mon­ey.

The phone num­bers are ten dig­its long and from var­i­ous area codes. How­ev­er, at­tempts to con­tact and text the num­bers proved fu­tile.Nev­er­the­less, peo­ple yes­ter­day vis­it­ed the bank at In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, hop­ing the mes­sages were gen­uine.The T&T Guardian learned that the Cen­tral Bank was bom­bard­ed with over 200 calls and vis­its by mid­day yes­ter­day from peo­ple claim­ing to have won the mon­ey. Some were vis­i­bly up­set and ar­gued with mem­bers of staff af­ter learn­ing it was a hoax, com­plain­ing they spent "re­al mon­ey call­ing them back."

The T&T Guardian lat­er learned that af­ter com­plaints from cit­i­zens, TSTT quick­ly put a block on the num­bers and traced the calls and texts and dis­cov­ered they were com­ing from So­ma­lia in Africa and be­ing rout­ed from T&T.

Some of the mes­sages said

�2 "Win­ner call now free and re­ceive your new car or it will be can­celled or trans­ferred to an­oth­er win­ner."

�2"Ur­gent ap­peal get your car from the di­rec­tor of tele­mar­ket­ing of T&T."

�2 "Cen­tral Bank of T&T you are in­vit­ed to re­ceive your check of $50,000. Call and learn about the place of re­ceipt."

Cen­tral Bank: We­don't give out cash

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day at the Cen­tral Bank, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Char­lene Ramd­hanie said the bank was in­ves­ti­gat­ing the hoax."We have been in touch with law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and we are al­so con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions be­cause the bank does not give out mon­ey," she said.Ramd­hanie strong­ly ad­vised mem­bers of the pub­lic not to give out any in­for­ma­tion over the phone.The T&T Guardian was in­formed that some of the texts or callers were asked for their name, ad­dress, how many chil­dren they had and their bank ac­count num­ber and e-mail ad­dress.The Cen­tral Bank re­it­er­at­ed that it did not give out mon­ey, adding com­pe­ti­tions held by the bank give out units from Unit Trust and not cash.

Dis­ap­point­ed

One of the re­cip­i­ents, Joy Marchan, said her daugh­ter, a Stan­dard Five stu­dent, re­ceived sev­er­al of the mes­sages on her phone yes­ter­day morn­ing.When asked about the text, Chelsea Haynes, who is an as­pir­ing lawyer, said she did not be­lieve the mes­sages at first."I did not be­lieve it but I said we will buy all that we want to get be­cause the gov­ern­ment gives us noth­ing and every­thing will be ok," she said.An­oth­er of the re­cip­i­ents, who vis­it­ed the Cen­tral Bank ear­ly yes­ter­day, said she was told they would con­tact her in three months.

"I left Ch­agua­nas to come here. At first I did not be­lieve it but de­cid­ed to see if it was true. I don't know why peo­ple would do that," she said.

Ig­nore bo­gus over­seas texts too

TSTT says mo­bile ser­vice cus­tomers have al­so re­ceived text mes­sages urg­ing them to call an in­ter­na­tion­al num­ber that starts with the dig­its "002522973" or just "2522973." How­ev­er, calls to the num­bers re­sult in charges be­ing cred­it­ed for in­ter­na­tion­al calls.In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, TSTT said the mes­sages were not from the or­gan­i­sa­tion and told cus­tomers to dis­re­gard text mes­sages from num­bers with which they were not fa­mil­iar."These mes­sages orig­i­nate from an in­ter­na­tion­al source and re­turn­ing calls to them can re­sult in cus­tomers in­cur­ring sig­nif­i­cant costs which are to be paid to an over­seas car­ri­er."Cus­tomers should there­fore treat these mes­sages as hoax of­fers. The com­pa­ny is mon­i­tor­ing ac­tiv­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with the text mes­sages and will take all rea­son­able ac­tion to safe­guard the in­ter­ests of cus­tomers," the re­lease said.