The public has been warned of a scam being carried out by two men in a mini van under the guise of selling electrical appliances that had been purchased overseas.
A NewsWire reader who had been defrauded by the suspects has revealed his experience, urging the public to remain vigilant.
Recounting his experience, the victim has revealed that the suspects have been defrauding several people in various parts of the country.
Following is the statement by the victim on the scam:
There’s a new scam going on these days. Two people travelling in a buddy van claim they have some overseas purchased items that they would like to sell because of some reason. The reason may vary from one person to another and those items also may vary from person to person. But the scam is always the same. So what happened to me was, my brother met those two people around Kadawatha while my brother was shopping. They told him that they have some overseas purchased items that they want to sell. The reason they are selling these items is that one of them has to go to Kuwait for his “driving job”. And his Kuwait driving license has expired on 16/12/2021. So he has to renew it for another two years and that would cost him 450,000LKR. So that’s why he is selling those items. He had the bill from the shop where he bought every item. It’s a well-known shop in Kuwait. So in the bill, the total for all items was 560KD. The bill date was 02/04/2021. In that time 1KD was equal to 650LKR. That would mean the whole lot cost about 365,000LKR. But now he is selling all these items to 110,000LKR. The items are as follows:
1. National Air Fryer
2. National Multi-Cooker
3. National Gas Cooker
4. Live Sonic 5.1 Home Theatre
5. Electric Cooker
He said he has four children and even showed me a picture of them, including him. And he said he bought these items for his new house or whatever. But he could never use any of these items. Now because of this “driving license” issue, he has to sell those things and get money ASAP.
There are two things that I was caught up in this scam. One is, the bill, it is almost brand new. And another thing is the packaging of all items were sealed. I was the one who tore up those boxes and all. In a world full of technology like this the only thing I forgot to do was check those exact items on the internet. I did that. But I did it after they left with our money. That whole lot cost about only 70,000LKR or 75,000LKR. But as he is doing this thing in his day-to-day life as a job, I think he got these items from Colombo Fort or anywhere else in Sri Lanka for like 55,000LKR or 60,000LKR. They are doing this scam very confidently. They even gave us their driving license copy, ID copy and we had a written letter from him too with his signature. But those two never back down from any of it. Because of all these reasons we trusted them and bought these items for 111,000LKR which cost around 70,000LKR. Their phone number is also not working at the moment. . These items are brand new no argument with that. But all these items are not overseas purchased items. And I think they are not the brand we know. I think it’s a duplicate or something. Who knows 🤷🏻♂️
I just wanted to show everyone this new scam going around. After I got scammed, I told this incident to my friends. And two of them have also said they had been caught up in this. But they had not seen these items. That means they told those guys we don’t want anything and dodged them. My friends also didn’t know that this was a scam until I told them. When I told my friends about this incident, they even ask me, did they come in a buddy van? So that means this is now going to every area in Sri Lanka. So don’t get caught in this scam from now on. There are people who cannot bear these losses. We somehow managed the loss. But there are so many people in Sri Lanka with the ongoing crisis that some people couldn’t eat every three meals. So please don’t get caught in this scam. And pass this message to everyone you know. (NewsWire)