Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Hier 20:35

Central bank: $3.3m in fraud reported

The Central Bank Governor Larry Howai convened a high-level meeting of bankers, officers of the TTPS Fraud Squad, the Financial Intelligence Bureau and the Financial Intelligence Unit, to raise an alarm over a growing trend of incidents of fraud, which has amounted to $3.3 million over the fiscal year October 2024 to September 2025. Howai said the main targets of these incidents of fraud are women. "What struck me was that if you're a woman and you're between the ages of 30 and 49 and you live somewhere in east or south Trinidad, you're probably about twice as likely to be defrauded," he said. Speaking at the stakeholder meeting on October 28, Howai said that although the numbers were "small," it is important to take note of the trend. "You may want to know why we called a meeting...The trend I'm seeing is a trend that I think we need to do something about and nip in the bud. "Therefore, I thought it was important for us to get together as community, to talk about what we're seeing, how we might be able to create a regime of restitution for those who lose money, and how we might be able to prevent these things from happening in the future." Noting that commercial banks already had implemented robust systems to deal with the issue of cybersecurity and protecting customers, he insisted that unless banks and the Central Bank push back, the figure is likely to grow. He noted that in many cases, the victims are elderly. "In fact, the largest percentage of online fraud is related to elderly people. As I reflect on it, perhaps because I'm elderly, I think I can easily find myself getting caught in some of the ways in which these scams have become more and more sophisticated as we go forward. So it's something I want us to consider." Howai also raised concern with the banks’ response to fraud cases, saying that the way victims are treated could vary from branch to branch. "I get a lot of complaints of people being treated differently within banks. "I understand different banks have different ways of dealing with how you manage the process of customer complaints, but what strikes me is really that even within an institution, the ways customers are dealt with and managed seem to be entirely different from branch to branch, from incident to incident and from time to time. "I am not sure what is driving some of these decisions, whether it is perhaps we are delegating without providing a robust enough framework, but we are not doing enough to ensure that they maintain some kind of consistency, because that makes it even more difficult for the ombudsman to manage." In the month of June alone, three women were scammed of money in excess of $3,000 On June 5, a 30-year-old woman from Arima reported to police that she was defrauded $3,000 after making an online payment for a vehicle advertised on Facebook Marketplace. On June 7, a 26-year-old La Horquetta woman was defrauded $9,800 after making payments to another woman who claimed to have a connection with the US Embassy and promised she could assist in getting the victim a visa. Similarly, on June 27, a 32-year-old woman from Longdenville, Chaguanas, reported that she was scammed out of $5,500 two days earlier after contacting a man on Facebook. The post Central bank: $3.3m in fraud reported appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.