eCommerce Operator Rings Scam Alert

Cristobal Alonso, chief executive officer of MOBOfree.com, has advised eCommerce consumers to adopt some key habits in order to avoid fraudsters.

According to Alonso, consumers need to “Keep things local. Meet the seller in person, check the item and make sure you are satisfied with it before you make a payment; do not pay in advance, not even for delivery. Buyers – don't make any payments before receiving an item. Sellers – don't send an item before receiving payment. Exchange item and payment at the same time”.

He added that for consumers to ‘beat’ the scammers scheming they should always meet in a safe, public location. “Before meeting, try to collect as much information as possible about the individual you are going to meet”.

According to the MOBOfree CEO, “Never give out financial information. This includes bank account details, eBay/PayPal information, and any other information that could be misused; buy and sell only on the most trusted marketplaces with robust security measures. Avoid those that have no content monitoring or clearly outlined security measures and use common sense. If the deal looks too good to be true – it is most likely a scam. Nobody sells new cars for half the price or new iPhones for N200”.

He affirmed that most of the local classified players have the standard safety measures in place: the possibility to report a scam or rate a user; safety tips visible for all visitors, etc.

He added, “You might be surprised but 90% of scammers have the same specific behaviour patterns on our platform and in many cases we can say a person is carrying out or going to carry out some form of illegal activity even before seeing the content of his or her classifieds.’’

He advised other players to emulate MOBOfree which has a dedicated quality control team which reviews every single advert manually before launching it live. “I can confirm that up to 30% of the classifieds submitted to MOBOfree are removed during quality check so they never become visible to our visitors. There is a real risk on platforms that do not implement such advanced security measures,” said Mr. Alonso.