Debbie Preston from Knight Security Solutions has shared the information below which was received from a client and says,"'Please be aware of another scam that targeted one of our clients over the past month."
"Hi Debbie, about 3 months ago we were contacted telephonically by a gentleman who said he was from Transnet, he asked if we wished to be added to the Transnet database. By being added to the database, we would be able to do quotations, work for Transnet and we would receive a vendor number.
He emailed us a Transnet supply chain document which we had to fill in and attach many of our business documents. We were very slow to respond and we received regular phone calls from him with regard to emailing these forms back. We eventually emailed the documents to him.
Yesterday (30 October 2014) we found out that this was a scam and our details were being used by someone in Johannesburg to obtain R300 000 worth of stock from a company in Johannesburg. The fraudster had used an email address which was very similar to ours and used the document that was supposedly for Transnet as a credit application at this company.
Please could you warn other businesses out there to be extremely cautious when responding to phone calls from anyone from Transnet. The fraudster even mentioned names of people listed on the Transnet website and changed the spelling of their names slightly. He was extremely clever, please be careful".