Con artists have devised yet another means to feed their criminal ways, this time scamming authorised retailers of Digicel Flex cards, particularly, those who sell them in voucher form, out of thousands of dollars.

The Star has learnt the scammers recently called at least one supermarket in St Andrew pretending to be employees of Digicel. They then told an employee that there was an error on the 'system' and that Digicel needed all the voucher numbers for the $1,000 Flex Cards in order to correct the problem.

After being told the voucher numbers, the crooks then ended the call. Reports suggest that the criminals then sold the phonecards at a bargain price by not charging the stipulated tax.

Attempts to ascertain the overall value of the vouchers swindled from the supermarket were unsuccessful. One Digicel employee, however, told The Star that scammers made off with more than $100,000 in Flex credit in a similar incident last year after they tricked employees at a popular restaurant into giving them the voucher numbers of the cards they were selling.

plaguing retailers

The phone company has also confirmed the theft, stating that scammers have indeed been plaguing retailers.

Digicel's head of Consumer Sales, Patrick King, told The Star that "from time to time, persons will attempt to acquire credit by this route. However, only on very few occasions is it ever successful".

He said the company had already been holding training sessions with resellers to c****at this and any other such situation. "These training programmes educate resellers on how best to manage their inventory to minimise losses as a result of theft or fraud," he said. "We also send out advisories to our dealers whenever we are made aware of any such incidents."

King said he was not sure if the matter had been reported to the police as it would be the reseller who would have taken that step and not necessarily Digicel. He also urged customers to purchase cards from only legitimate resellers.