A scamster, pretending to be from Grocott's Mail, this week tried to con an elderly Grahamstown resident into handing over the money to renew her subscription to the paper.
A scamster, pretending to be from Grocott's Mail, this week tried to con an elderly Grahamstown resident into handing over the money to renew her subscription to the paper.
Grocott's Mail's Finance Clerk, Annamarie Schoeman, said she'd got a call from the concerned daughter of a resident at Somerset Place, a home for the aged near Settlers' Hospital. A woman had told the caretaker she was there to collect the resident's subscription to Grocott's Mail.
Because this was unexpected, the resident, puzzled, called her daughter, who in turn called Grocott's. Which was just as well, because the newspaper had sent no such person. Schoeman, asked members of the public to call the newspaper if anyone visited them claiming to be from the newspaper.
"It really pains me, especially because these people are targeting old folks pretending to be from here," she said. She thought the scamster might have heard that on occasion, when residents had told the newspaper they couldn't come in to pay their subscriptions, Grocott's Mail had sent an employee to collect their subscriptions.
However, Schoeman said the newspaper employed no middlemen and staff from her office dealt directly with subscribers.
The advertising department has also been targeted by crooks. Ronel Bowles, Head of Advertising, said every now and then business owners had called, suspecting that someone claiming to represent the newspaper wasn't the real deal. "There have been situations when people have pretended they work here and have gone to businesses, asking them to advertise.
In the most recent case, Bowles said, they were given a description of the perpetrator. "Apparently it's a short white man with a bald head," Bowles said. Bowles urged business owners to always call newspaper if they were at all suspicious of someone approaching them in the name of Grocott's Mail.
Grocott's Mail had not yet laid a charge, Bowles said, because descriptions given of the fraudsters so far had been vague. "It would be good if the perpetrator(s) could be caught in the act" she said.
