Amid re­peat­ed calls for the pub­lic to avoid meet­ing strangers in un­fa­mil­iar neigh­bour­hoods for fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is again urg­ing ven­dors and po­ten­tial cus­tomers to be mind­ful of the tricks crim­i­nals use to iden­ti­fy and tar­get vic­tims.

Gue­var­ro’s warn­ing comes one day af­ter a 25-year-old Ma­yaro man was robbed of cash, jew­ellery and elec­tron­ics when he vis­it­ed Laven­tille to sell items or­dered by peo­ple he met through Face­book Mar­ket­place.

Po­lice said the man went to Plai­sance Ter­race short­ly be­fore mid­day on Mon­day to meet the sup­posed cus­tomers when he was con­front­ed by three ban­dits. The as­sailants stole his gold chain, eight HY300 movie pro­jec­tors, his Ap­ple iPhone 14 Pro Max, a gold watch and $7,000 in cash.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter a han­dover cer­e­mo­ny for radar speed guns on the Fore­shore yes­ter­day, Gue­var­ro ad­mit­ted he did not know how else to raise aware­ness about the dan­gers of meet­ing strangers on­line.

Re­fer­ring to pre­vi­ous in­ci­dents in which peo­ple were tricked in­to pay­ing for bricks and boul­ders pack­aged to re­sem­ble items ad­ver­tised for sale, Gue­var­ro said the pub­lic need­ed to ex­er­cise greater cau­tion and bet­ter judge­ment when ar­rang­ing meet­ings with strangers.

“Face­book Mar­ket­place is not the place to be meet­ing strangers, es­pe­cial­ly in those hotspot ar­eas. I don’t want to point fin­gers and stig­ma­tise any par­tic­u­lar area to say on­ly here is where it oc­curs, but at the end of the day, you’re buy­ing $5,000 worth of big stone, three big boul­ders in a box—come on, man. Let good sense pre­vail,” Gue­var­ro said.

The Com­mis­sion­er al­so re­ferred to in­ci­dents in which crim­i­nals used dat­ing apps such as Tin­der and Grindr to lure vic­tims, as he high­light­ed the dan­gers as­so­ci­at­ed with on­line meet-ups.

He fur­ther urged the pub­lic to be wary of on­line scams and schemes in which fraud­sters at­tempt to ob­tain per­son­al bank­ing in­for­ma­tion.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the TTPS again en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to use des­ig­nat­ed “safe ex­change zones”—in­clud­ing po­lice sta­tions, well-lit pub­lic spaces and ar­eas equipped with CCTV cam­eras—to cre­ate safer en­vi­ron­ments for ex­changes and trans­ac­tions.

The TTPS al­so ad­vised the pub­lic to re­view the pro­files of buy­ers or ven­dors for au­then­tic­i­ty, check re­views or rat­ings that may in­di­cate sus­pi­cious be­hav­iour and be cau­tious of un­usu­al­ly low prices, which may sig­nal a scam.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic were al­so en­cour­aged to arrange meet­ings dur­ing day­light hours in busy pub­lic lo­ca­tions, avoid iso­lat­ed ar­eas, in­spect items be­fore mak­ing pay­ment and use se­cure pay­ment meth­ods, such as on­line de­posits, where pos­si­ble.

Po­lice fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed bring­ing along a friend or rel­a­tive for added safe­ty and avoid­ing car­ry­ing large sums of cash to trans­ac­tions. - Shane Su­perville