Sun Cellular cracks down on fraudsters

CEBU, Philippines - Sun Cellular has conducted entrapment proceedings in Sun Shop outlets following reports that some individuals have been submitting fraudulent applications for cell phone subscriptions.

Since the start of the year, Sun Cellular has filed several cases against suspects who tried to file dubious subscription applications in an attempt to get handsets and free network usage attached to these subscription plans.

“We are serious about bringing these fraudsters before the courts of law, not just because of the business losses that we incur with each fraudulent application, but also to make sure that the postpaid subscriptions they get from us will not be used for any other fraudulent activity,” said Reuben Pangan, Official Spokesperson of Sun Cellular.

Pangan explained the suspects usually use falsified documents to avail of new plans, and some even present stolen credit cards to avail of promotions.  Some apply in multiple Sun Shops and present themselves as different individuals, with different sets of falsified proof of identification and proof of income.

Apart from fraudulent applications, Sun Cellular mentioned that unidentified parties have been circulating messages aimed at extorting load credits from their subscribers.

“We advise the public to be especially vigilant as scammers keep coming up with new schemes aimed at extorting load or money from unsuspecting mobile subscribers.” Pangan said.

While these types of scam has been going on for years, Pangan said that in recent cases the scammers introduce themselves as representatives of Sun Cellular, stating that the receiver has ‘won’ some sort of promo that make the potential victim eligible to avail of free items such as load, cash or service fee exemptions and discounts, among others. The message would then require a series of numbers to be sent to 2292, which causes the receiver to unintentionally send a specific amount of load to the scammer’s prepaid number.

The set of numbers “2292” is the short-code number for Sun Cellular’s “Give-A-Load”, which is a tool Sun Cellular subscribers  use to send load credits to whomever they choose, usually relatives, friends or co-workers.

Another modus operandi of text scammers is to pretend to be relatives of a certain subscriber claiming to be in an emergency or accident, or badly needing load credits.

“Some may even pose as employees from our billing and collections department,” Pangan added.

“We advise that these instances be immediately reported to  Sun Cellular or to the NTC,” Pangan says.  “Sun Cellular and the NTC are both working together to curb, if not  totally eliminate all these  prevalent fraudulent practices,” Pangan concluded. (FREEMAN)