Dawie Roodt warns about financial scams in South Africa

Renowned economist Dawie Roodt has warned South Africans about a sophisticated scam being used by fraudsters after he was nearly defrauded earlier this month.

In a recent interview with RSG, Roodt explained how he was almost scammed into sharing his personal financial details, including his credit card’s CVV number, with fraudsters.

Roodt explained that he received a phone call from someone he assumed was his bank asking whether he was currently using his digital credit card.

When Roodt responded that he was not, the caller said this card had been used to make multiple transactions to betting sites.

The caller said they decided to keep these transactions on hold and first confirm with Roodt whether he was the one making the payments.

Roodt then affirmed that he did not make those payments, to which the caller reassured him that they would be reversed.

He then immediately received an SMS saying the payments had been reversed and another saying a fraud case had been opened to investigate the matter.

Roodt said these messages were similar to those you would expect to receive from your bank.

After receiving these messages, the caller phoned Roodt again to confirm that the payments were reversed and urged him to cancel his digital credit card immediately.

The caller walked Roodt through the process of doing this using his bank’s app, giving him step-by-step instructions. Roodt cancelled the card, saying he was very grateful this was flagged before he lost his money.

The caller then offered to help Roodt get a new digital card. He said the caller knew precisely how the bank’s system worked.

After Roodt opened the new digital card, the caller instructed him to relay the numbers on the card to her, as she needed to add the new card to the bank’s system.

This was Roodt’s first ‘red flag’ of the interaction, as the caller specifically asked him to share the card’s CVV number.

A card’s CVV number is used to verify whether the person making a purchase is the card’s holder and should always be kept private.

The next ‘red flag’ came when the caller explained that she would set up the card so that its CVV number changes every five minutes. She claimed this would make the card even more secure and protect against future fraud attempts.

Roodt then questioned why the caller needed the CVV number and asked if he could phone his bank directly.

The caller told Roodt it was unnecessary to call his bank, and as soon as she heard him phone the bank, she hung up.

South Africans urged to be careful

Roodt explained his interaction with the caller to his bank, who informed him that this is an “old trick” now being used by new people to scam South Africans.

“Be very careful, people. Don’t give all of your information,” Roodt warned. “I was so close to being scammed.” 

“If I had given those three CVV numbers, she would have had all the information for my new card, and the little money I had would have been gone.”

He said it is also not guaranteed that the bank would have been able to help recover that money if it had been stolen.

Roodt said the most surprising part of this experience was the scammer’s knowledge and insight into the bank’s system.

His experience corroborates recent warnings from industry stakeholders about the sophistication of financial scams.

As technology becomes more sophisticated, so do scammers, and it has become increasingly difficult for ordinary South Africans to recognise fraud attempts.

The South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC) recently warned that AI-driven scams, deepfakes, and social engineering are rapidly emerging as the biggest threats to South Africa’s banking sector.

“Criminals are leveraging AI to create scams that appear more legitimate and convincing,” said Andre Wentzel, SABRIC CEO.

“From error-free phishing emails to AI-generated WhatsApp messages and even voice-cloned deepfakes, these tactics highlight the need for proactive and collaborative strategies to protect consumers.”

SABRIC’s 2024 statistics showed that digital banking fraud remained the most dominant channel, accounting for 65.3% of reported incidents.

The volume of cases has almost doubled over the past year, from 31,612 in 2023 to 64,000 in 2024, while losses increased from R1 billion to over R1.4 billion.

Importantly, the organisation said these incidents resulted from social engineering techniques that exploited human error, rather than technical compromises of banking platforms.