Globally renowned money transfer and remittance services company, WorldRemit has reacted to the unlawful use of its brand name by some fraudulent persons to scam customers in Ghana.
This comes days after the Bank of Ghana (BoG) issued a statement cautioning the general public against a money-doubling scheme operating in Ghana under the pseudonym “World remit”.
In a communique dated October 13, the central bank said WorldRemit does not engage in any money doubling scheme as purported by some unscrupulous persons impersonating the company online.
Under the fraudulent scheme operating in Ghana, customers are persuaded to send money to them in exchange for double or thrice their investment.
However, investors do not get their reward as promised by the scheme.
An example of the promised reward is shown below:
In a statement issued by the official WorldRemit, the company said it is aware of the tactics used by fraudsters and are committed to minimising the impact of such fraudulent activities.
Below is the full statement.
Dear WorldRemit partner,
We’re aware of recent fraudulent attempts to impersonate our brand online in Ghana – using our name or pseudonyms like Worldremit or World Remit.
We aim to be ever-vigilant in our approach to cybersecurity and fraud prevention measures, and do our best to shut down these sorts of attempts when we see them.
The reality is that there are many fraudsters on the lookout to scam customers out of their money or personal details. This is not unique to us, but is a very common tactic used by unscrupulous people who target our industry.
Ways we minimise the impact of fraudsters:
1. Educate our customers on security measures, including our most recently published Security Guide, which you can find online here: http://wrem.it/security
2. Report and remove fraudulent accounts that are active on the various social media sites where we operate
3. Only ever use secure connections through our website and app, which use a bespoke, in-house machine learning model to protect against fraud
4. Utilise a bounty programme which pays white hat hackers to find vulnerabilities in our system to then be patched and secured immediately
5. Implement next generation antivirus to keep our system secure from any fraudulent attempts to access our systems internally
6. Adhering to PCIDSS compliance to protect all cardholder data
As always, we seek to keep our customers safe from all online scams where our service is concerned. Some simple steps we would urge our audience in Ghana to adhere to are:
Check that they are visiting our official website www.worldremit.com (you will see a secure lock pad in the browser window next to our URL).
Check that you are downloading our official WorldRemit app before making any transactions. We will never ask for your personal details over our social media sites in a public forum, such as full name, address or bank details.
We take your safety very seriously and request that if you do see any instances of people acting fraudulently that you join us in reporting them on whichever channel they appear.
Thank you for your help in this matter,
Your WorldRemit team
Source: WorldRemit.com
