Cape Town - Parliament has warned the public about a scam in which an email address and WhatsApp number ostensibly belonging to National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula are used to defraud unsuspecting victims.
In a statement, Parliament warned the public of the scam, highlighting that its modus operandi includes the scammer sending an email from a G-mail account, which appears to be that of Mapisa-Nqakula.
The scammer asks victims for their WhatsApp details to initiate a conversation.
“Once the email chat migrates to WhatsApp, the scammer, whose targets thus far have been several staff members of Parliament, then requests potential victims to urgently purchase them an iTunes voucher.
“The WhatsApp number used bears the name of the Speaker but the profile picture is that of National Council of Provinces chairperson Amos Masondo. Anyone who receives such email is urged to ignore it.”
The SA Revenue Service (Sars) has recently also warned taxpayers about two of the latest scams targeting them.
One arrives as an SMS text message and the other via email, summoning the reader to court.
In a notice on the Sars web page, the taxman urged unsuspecting taxpayers to ignore the messages and not to fall for the con by clicking on any links sent either to their phones or their email addresses.
The text message scam, also known as smishing, involves a “PayFast” SMS asking the receiver to click on a link to receive a payment from the revenue service.
The other new scam arrives via an email in which the scammers claim to be Sars employees sending a notice with a link to a “court order”. This is known as phishing.
Sars gave examples and said they include emails that appear to be from [email protected] or [email protected] indicating that taxpayers are eligible to receive tax refunds
Sars said they would never request banking details in any communication received via post, email or SMS and would never send any hyperlinks to other websites.
* Additional reporting by Mwangi Githahu