“We are thankful people are now aware of the scam and have come forward to lodge complaints with relevant authorities,” Mr Kamikamica said.
Approximately 1700 complaints on the EbayShop Online Recruitment scam were received by the Consumer Council of Fiji, Fijian Competition & Consumer Commission and Fiji Police Force.
Their total value was around $3.6million.
This was part of the deliberations during a Scam Taskforce meeting held yesterday.
The taskforce consists stakeholders including the Ministry of Trade Co-operatives, Micro Small Medium Enterprises and Communications, Reserve Bank of Fiji, Fiji Police Force, Consumer Council of Fiji (CCoF) and Fijian Competition Consumer Commission (FCCC).
The taskforce also co-opted Vodafone (Fiji) Limited and Digicel (Fiji) Limited.
Minister for Trade Manoa Kamikamica said there was a need to meet regularly, coordinate with all stakeholders and disseminate accurate and timely information to find solutions to avoid repeat of such scams.
“We are thankful people are now aware of the scam and have come forward to lodge complaints with relevant authorities,” Mr Kamikamica said.
“As a taskforce, we need to explore in strengthening our legislations, in an effort to avoid future scams and also charge the perpetrators.”
CCoF chief Seema Shandil highlighted that as consumer protection agency she expected the number of complains to increase.
“We hope more people come forward to lodge complains,” Ms Shnadil said.
CCoF has collated a list of complaints received and forwarded it to the Police.
“As a consumer protection agency, we continue to advise the people of Fiji to stop participating in such schemes,” she said.
Investigations on EbayShop Online Recruitment scam have started by Police who also have established special teams in the Central, Western and Northern Divisions.
RBF Governor Ariff Ali said the central bank wants to better understand how the scheme worked by better understanding and exchanging information with stakeholders like the FRCS, Vodafone and Digicel.
“RBF in partnership FIU, FRCS and the telecos had commenced investigations into Ebay Shop and other fraudulent online activity by analysing its data to determine if money has gone out of the country and if breaches of the Exchange Control Act was committed,” he said.
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