De­spite re­cent suc­cess­es in in­ves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing crim­i­nals us­ing Face­book Mar­ket­place to lure vic­tims, the head of the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion says he is still con­cerned about the fre­quen­cy of this type of crime.

On Wednes­day, there were two in­ci­dents of peo­ple be­ing am­bushed by ban­dits af­ter vis­it­ing Laven­tille to de­liv­er goods for sale.

In the first in­ci­dent, a 20-year-old man and his moth­er, an off-du­ty po­lice of­fi­cer, went to the East­ern Main Road near a busi­ness place to de­liv­er a hood­ie to a cus­tomer.

On ar­rival, they were con­front­ed by two ban­dits, one of whom grabbed the man by his pants pock­et and or­dered him to be qui­et.

The man’s moth­er pulled out her li­censed pis­tol, forc­ing both ban­dits to run away.

Hours lat­er that af­ter­noon, an­oth­er man went to Rigualt Street, off the East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille, to drop off a PlaySta­tion 5 game con­sole to a stranger he met via Face­book Mar­ket­place.

On reach­ing the area, the man was ac­cost­ed by a ban­dit who snatched the game con­sole and ran away.

The vic­tim chased the ban­dit and even­tu­al­ly caught up to him; how­ev­er, as they strug­gled over the item, $3,000 in cash from the vic­tim’s pock­et fell out on­to the street.

The ban­dit snatched the cash and ran away.

Besson Street Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing both in­ci­dents.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day about the in­ci­dents, Snr Supt Ray­mond Thom said “steps were tak­en” to ad­dress the trend of crim­i­nals cre­at­ing fake so­cial me­dia ac­counts to pose as ven­dors and cus­tomers to lure vic­tims.

Re­fer­ring to an in­ci­dent last week where some­one was charged for the rob­beries, Thom said “ex­haus­tive en­quiries” led to the man be­ing placed on sev­er­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­rades be­fore he was even­tu­al­ly charged.

He, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted there were chal­lenges to the time­ly in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of these crimes.

“In Port-of-Spain, there are sev­er­al mat­ters cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed with a view of pre­fer­ring more charges against these crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

“How­ev­er, there are many oc­ca­sions where the vic­tims are very re­luc­tant to come for­ward or pro­vide for­mal state­ments to as­sist with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“Al­so, the fact that re­cent­ly two of these crimes oc­curred in the same gen­er­al area on the same day demon­strates the cal­cu­lat­ed meth­ods be­ing em­ployed by per­pe­tra­tors.

“In this re­gard, we wish to in­vite cit­i­zens to re­frain from do­ing that type of busi­ness with strangers they met on­line.”

Thom re­mind­ed the pub­lic that po­lice sta­tions were avail­able for them to con­duct any le­git­i­mate fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions if they were con­cerned about their safe­ty, ei­ther buy­ing or sell­ing items.

He al­so not­ed that there were plans to in­crease po­lice pres­ence in the city and was con­fi­dent that the high vis­i­bil­i­ty of of­fi­cers would de­ter crim­i­nals.

With the Christ­mas sea­son ap­proach­ing, Thom al­so said there would be height­ened po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty in the city and sur­round­ing ar­eas.

But in ad­di­tion to crime sup­pres­sion ac­tiv­i­ties, Thom al­so urged the pub­lic to be vig­i­lant and wary of risk­ing their safe­ty for a deal.

“Con­duct fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions with strangers on­ly in safe, well-lit, and well-tra­versed pub­lic ar­eas. Con­sid­er meet­ing at po­lice sta­tions or oth­er des­ig­nat­ed safe zones where po­lice pres­ence can serve as a de­ter­rent, avoid go­ing alone to un­fa­mil­iar or iso­lat­ed lo­ca­tions to meet on­line sell­ers.

“By ad­her­ing to these pre­cau­tions, peo­ple can great­ly re­duce the like­li­hood of be­ing tar­get­ed by in­di­vid­u­als set­ting up fake on­line ac­counts of­fer­ing seem­ing­ly at­trac­tive deals.”