TTPS, HDC warn of housing scams

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) are warn­ing cit­i­zens about a se­ries of fraud­u­lent schemes tar­get­ing peo­ple seek­ing af­ford­able hous­ing.

In a me­dia re­lease, the TTPS Fraud Squad, work­ing with the HDC, said scam­mers have been im­per­son­at­ing HDC of­fi­cials, ad­ver­tis­ing homes on so­cial me­dia, and de­mand­ing up­front pay­ments from vic­tims.

The HDC said the scams tar­get fam­i­lies hop­ing to se­cure safe and af­ford­able hous­ing. It warned that the Cor­po­ra­tion does not re­quest pay­ments through What­sApp, Gmail, or so­cial me­dia plat­forms. It al­so un­der­scored that all le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tions must take place at its Head Of­fice un­der of­fi­cial pro­ce­dures.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors iden­ti­fied sev­er­al tac­tics used by scam­mers, in­clud­ing fake Face­book ad­ver­tise­ments of­fer­ing two-bed­room homes at be­low-mar­ket prices; re­quests for up­front pay­ments rang­ing from TT$12,000 to TT$13,000; and the use of un­of­fi­cial email ad­dress­es with com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­strict­ed to What­sApp.

Both the HDC and TTPS al­so warned that fraud­sters use pres­sure tac­tics such as claim­ing lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of hous­ing units to rush vic­tims in­to mak­ing pay­ments.

The HDC re­it­er­at­ed its of­fi­cial poli­cies, ad­vis­ing that all pay­ments must be made at its Cashier’s Unit at South Quay, Port of Spain. It al­so stressed that no HDC of­fi­cial will re­quest meet­ings out­side its of­fices or ask for pay­ments through per­son­al ac­counts and stat­ed that hous­ing ap­pli­ca­tions are free and processed on­ly through of­fi­cial chan­nels.

The TTPS and HDC are urg­ing cit­i­zens to avoid mak­ing pay­ments to in­di­vid­u­als claim­ing they can ex­pe­dite hous­ing ap­pli­ca­tions.

They ad­vise that cit­i­zens ver­i­fy all com­mu­ni­ca­tion through the HDC’s of­fi­cial phone lines and web­site, and re­port any sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty to the TTPS’ Fraud Squad.