The Min­istry of Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices has is­sued an ur­gent ad­vi­so­ry fol­low­ing re­ports of coun­ter­feit so­cial wel­fare cheques cir­cu­lat­ing.

This warn­ing is specif­i­cal­ly di­rect­ed at bank­ing in­sti­tu­tions, gro­cery own­ers, shop­keep­ers, su­per­mar­ket man­agers, cashiers and staff who have of­ten been the pri­ma­ry tar­gets of in­di­vid­u­als at­tempt­ing to cash forged doc­u­ments.

The min­istry has pub­lished a com­pre­hen­sive list of 26 names and their as­so­ci­at­ed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers that have been linked to these il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties to help busi­ness­es pre­emp­tive­ly iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial threats.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry’s bul­letin, fraud­sters are util­is­ing these iden­ti­ties to se­cure mon­e­tary gain by pre­sent­ing false iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that, at first glance, ap­pears to match the print­ed de­tails on the forged cheques.

Au­thor­i­ties al­so warned that the in­di­vid­u­als be­hind these crimes may use mul­ti­ple stolen or fab­ri­cat­ed IDs to by­pass rou­tine se­cu­ri­ty checks.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Bion­di Bachew is urg­ing mem­bers to be cau­tious, say­ing it has tak­en note of in­stances where fraud­u­lent cheques are be­ing cashed or at­tempt­ed to be cashed.

He not­ed that one of the pri­ma­ry chal­lenges is an in­creas­ing lev­el of so­phis­ti­ca­tion found in re­cent forg­eries.

“We have urged our mem­bers to be cau­tious when ac­cept­ing these cheques. In some in­stances, sim­ple ver­i­fi­ca­tion to en­sure the name on the ID and the name on the cheque match can work; how­ev­er, we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a lev­el of so­phis­ti­ca­tion that needs a deep­er lev­el of scruti­ny,” Bachew ex­plained.

He al­so told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the or­gan­i­sa­tion, in an ef­fort to com­bat the prob­lem, has been work­ing with the min­istry to have more ro­bust mech­a­nisms im­ple­ment­ed.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion, as well as some of the vest­ed mem­bers, would have had what I be­lieve to be a pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tion with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the min­istry ear­li­er on this week, and we brain­stormed some paths for­ward to help au­thentat­i­ca­tion of cheques.

“We ex­pect a for­mal­i­sa­tion of some of the things dis­cussed in the meet­ing in the next cou­ple weeks and at that point we will be able to an­nounce what mech­a­nisms will be in place to help re­tail­ers pre­vent fraud,” he ex­plained. — Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo