A Bellville woman says she is the victim of a bank scam that has left her with nothing over the festive period.
Charmaine Brandt says over R30 000 was withdrawn from her Capitec account on 25 November and transferred to an unknown Standard Bank account which cannot be traced by either bank.
“That morning I got my salary, my bonus and my savings, so there was over R30 000 in there,” she explains.
“During the year, I saved R1200 every month for the end of the year, so after I checked that all that my money was there.
“I made one payment of R1000 and then I went to work.
“While waiting for my work to open, because I got there before 6am, my phone went off and when I checked, it said I made a payment of R4900 and there was just an account number.
“By the time I got into work, three payments had gone off and next thing I knew there were seven payments for R4900 and there was nothing left in my account.”
Charmaine said she tried to check her Capitec app but it did not allow her access, and when she went into a nearby bank branch, she was told her account had been hacked.
“They could not tell me who the money was going to but they could see that it was a Standard Bank account,” she says.
“After calling the Capitec numbers for days afterwards, some guy eventually told me that Standard Bank must now go and recover the money and if they can’t, then I will lose all my money because it is not insured.
“I thought how can that be because every time you do something with the bank, then they charge you, but now they say my money is not insured.”
Charmaine says she faces a bleak season while she has missed all of her debit orders.
Capitec told the Daily Voice that they needed more time to investigate before commenting on the matter.