SOUTH AFRICAN INSURANCE CRIME BUREAU 

ALERT: High Value Vehicles are currently being targeted by syndicates pretending to be employees of Vehicle Dealerships, specifically their Service Departments or Customer Service.

The following Modus Operandi is used by the suspects:

The suspects will obtain information of a specific vehicle which is booked in for service or repairs at the service department of a dealership as well as the details of the client involved.

It is not known whether something is deliberately done to the vehicle targeted in the workshop in order to ensure a complaint is logged or whether the suspects act on random complaints logged by owners at the different service departments.

However once the owner of a targeted vehicle logs a complaint, he will receive a phone call from one of the suspects pretending to be either the Customer Service Manager from the Dealership’s Head Office or somebody from the specific Service Department.

The suspect will tell the client that he is aware of his problem and will even mention the name of one of the real employees at the dealership with whom the client dealt before,, he will enter into discussion with the client with the view of solving the client’s problem and will ensure the client that they will do anything not to inconvenience him further and in doing so prevent bad publicity.

The suspect then arranges for the vehicle to be picked up from the client in order to have the problem resolved at the dealership and subsequently disappears with the vehicle. Only when the client eventually starts to enquire about his vehicle will he realize that the person he has been dealing with does not represent the dealership and all his credentials are false.

We suggest that you advise all parties concerned and specifically your service providers to take note of these bogus operators. Clients should check the credentials of persons claiming to represent dealerships and vice versa.

Hugo van Zyl
Chief Operating Officer
SAICB (NPC)