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But the Commissioner of Police isn't buying Toro's story just yet. While he isn't too familiar with the way this very popular online scam works, he believes that many can avoid falling into the trap with a little common sense. Today he warned residents to properly check the legitimacy of any transaction they may want to do online before sending any money.
Reporter:
"She claims that is a victim, she fell for a scam herself. Is this information that the police is getting from her and if she is indeed a victim of a scam and they used her name, what happens then?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"That's a strange one, I must say. So because she was a victim, she becomes a perpetrator? Is that it? I don't know."
Courtney Menzies: "I think the way the scam works is that she applies for a job that's online and they take her name and her account number and they pose as her, and then that person poses as Cordel and scams somebody else using her name and account, but she doesn't directly have any connection, like she didn't directly talk to the other victim."
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police "Well, I don't know much about in terms of the intricacies of the investigation. That would be something within the knowledge of the investigators. I am sure that there must be sufficient evidence for the investigators to be able to draw down on her and arrested her and let me say this, there are a number of scams going on social media and I think that these scams are easy to detect if you just apply common sense. Sometimes I think people might just see certain deals on social media and it might have moved them so much that they failed to do the necessary due diligence that would have led them to know that it is not genuine and so I just want to say to people, just be careful before you make any deposit to anybody who is offering you anything online. There are several things you can do to verify that those persons are not authentic. And then look for example the issue with."
"The ghost vehicle. I don't know who would buy a vehicle and have not seen the vehicle and then for the person to tell you later on, I done have the vehicle, you need to send more money, you will send more money and you still don't have the vehicle yet. You must apply common sense and you'll find that some of those things that are there are not really true."
But while the ComPol may be tech savvy and knows his way around social media, the same can't be said for every Facebook user. And he told us that the cybercrime unit is working on educating the public more about the laws currently in place.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"We certainly are working on an informercial to deal with the issue of cybercrime. I do believe that many of our Belizean people are still ignorant to the law and so we believe that there is certainly a need for us to do more sensitization where the cyberlaw is concerned. And I think that once we can do that, we will see more people coming forward. I watch social media everyday and everyday I see varying degree of cyberbullying happening on social media and I think for the most part, those persons are not even aware they're actually committing cyberbullying and so to make people aware of the law and the repercussions is going to be important so the cyber unit is extremely busy, we're trying to put together an informercial and I have just recently increased the number of officers at the cyber unit again because we are seeing the demand more and more where cybercrime is concerned and so the few persons that were there were inadequate to be able to handle the load of the work coming in and so have increased the number and I am currently trying to see if we can lobby for a vehicle for them because again, they move around the country and it's a lot of work so we can need to give them the tools to be able to get the job done."
