Cellphone shops faced with new cellphone scam

By Tando Mfengwana
30 October 2006

Cellphone shops are targets to an emerging cellphone scam that has hit Cape Town recently. Genuine cellphones are swapped for a fake that looks identical to an authentic phone and are the same weight as the original.

More than 20 cases of cellphone theft have been reported by cellphone shops over the past two weeks.

Ben Lombard, a Cape Town based expert that tracks down shop staff who steal merchandise, said that the only visible difference between the fakes and the authentic phones was the back cover and batteries of the fake phones could not be removed, according to the Cape Times. He believes that a batch of stolen fake phones, which were produced by cellphone suppliers as display models, was being used in the scams. Lombard said that a customer would ask staff to have a look at a phone and when they had the phone they would ask to see another model.

The thief would swap the authentic phone with the fake one while the salesperson was taking another out the display cabinet. The report says Lombard suggest that shops should put paper stickers on their phones to prevent this kind of theft from happening.