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The Fraud Squad Unit of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice has is­sued a stern warn­ing to the pub­lic, urg­ing them to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion and re­frain from click­ing on any links re­ceived via email or text mes­sage.

This warn­ing comes from Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Fraud Squad, Michael Jack­man, who says there is a sharp rise in fraud-re­lat­ed of­fences tar­get­ing in­di­vid­u­als’ fi­nan­cial ac­counts.

Fraud­sters of­ten em­ploy de­cep­tive tac­tics, send­ing emails or SMS mes­sages claim­ing there is an ur­gent is­sue with the re­cip­i­ent’s bank ac­count. The mes­sages typ­i­cal­ly di­rect the vic­tim to click on a link in or­der to re­solve the mat­ter. Once the link is clicked, how­ev­er, the per­pe­tra­tors are able to gain unau­tho­rised ac­cess to the vic­tim’s per­son­al fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion, which can lead to the theft or il­le­gal trans­fer of funds.