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- South African businesses are being fleeced by scammers who send out fake procurement documents.
- The fake tenders lure businesses to websites of fake suppliers.
- In the last few weeks alone, one expert said R1 million had been lost to this scam.
- For more stories, visit the Tech and Trends homepage.
South African businesses have lost, and continue to lose, millions through a procurement scam where con artists impersonate both government departments and suppliers.
A representative of one South African business that fell victim to the scam, who wishes to remain anonymous, said their company lost a "vast" amount of money through four separate fake tenders while thinking they were doing legitimate business.
A forensic investigator at TCG Forensics, Craig Pederson, said he was aware of R1 million that had been lost to this scam in the last few weeks alone.
Here is how the scam is run:
Businesses that are registered with the Central Supplier Database receive an email in their inbox which seems to be from a government department asking for quotations to procure a specific product.
The request for quotation (RFQ), on the face of it, looks the same as other tender documents.
Pederson supplied one such scam tender to News24:
The RFQ then lures people in to search for the item that is being procured.
After entering the product name into Google, potential bidders will find only one supplier of that particular product.
In this case, businesses will be taken to Denvor Equipment Suppliers, which purports to be a Cape Town-based sustainable/alternative energy company.
Any business that checks the availability of supply will find there is ample stock.
Any business that bids on the tender will have that bid accepted. But, once a deposit is paid to the supplier, nothing will be delivered.
The tender and the supplier were never real.
Scammers are behind the RFQ and the fake website.
The representative of the business that was scammed said their company fulfilled four fake tenders from four different government departments before realising what was happening.
He added eventually he went to the government departments and spoke to the procurement directors who said they never issued those requests for quotations.
"Slowly you realise … this is all fake."
He said he was told the responsibility was his to check whether the quotation was real or not.
Ongoing
He still regularly receives scam tenders in his inbox.
The business representative said he reported his case to his local police station but was not hopeful anything would come of it.
He did not believe police officers have the required skills to deal with this category of offence.
He said:
Buyers beware
The business representative said he now checked with relevant government departments' purchasing directors before he proceeded with any tender.
This is the most reliable way to assess whether it was the government department that put out the tender or whether it was a scam.
Pederson said it was important for businesses to scrutinise details on the supplier's website such as the contact number provided.
He added contact numbers that started with "021 516" or "011 516" are often used by scammers and should be a red flag about the reliability of the website.
