Pandemic sprouts thousands of online scams

Legalbrief Today Issue 4912

Fraudsters have wasted no time in using the pandemic to scam a public desperate to avoid infection. According to research published by service provider Atlas VPN, more than 35 500 unique fraudulent websites related to Covid-19 were set up last month. Moneyweb reports that the projection is based on work done by Chad Anderson, a senior security researcher at DomainTools. These websites mostly claim to offer products to combat Covid-19. Some make wild claims about their efficacy. Others may simply not exist. Anderson identified one site selling a 'corona necklace air purifier' selling for R1 090 that claimed to offer 'all day protection'. A number of sites are offering home test kits for between R550 and R1 450. None of these have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, and there is no proof that any of them work. The proliferation of these sites has been made by possible by e-commerce platforms like Shopify that make it easy for any retailer to register a site. All that is needed is an e-mail address and a credit card. According to Atlas VPN, Shopify has already closed more than 4 500 sites selling fake or mislabelled products related to Covid-19. Amazon has also removed more than half a million coronavirus-related product listings due to price gouging. It also blocked more than one million misleading listings, such as pills that claimed to be able to kill the virus. Scammers have also drawn the attention of Interpol which blocked 18 bank accounts during March and froze R13.5m in suspicious transactions. Interpol reported that victims have reported losses as large as R1.8m in a single case.

Full Moneyweb report