The identity of an official of the Department of Justice under the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking is being used by scammers in their fraudulent money-making scheme.
This came after the IACAT issued an advisory warning the public of a bogus email address that allegedly belonged to IACAT’s Executive Director Jinky Dedumo who was apparently being used to solicit assistance in the purchase of eBay gift cards.
The scammers behind the scheme were using the email address “executivedirector1028@gmail.com” and made it appear that it belonged to Dedumo.
In its advisory, the IACAT noted the similarity in an earlier money-making scheme that targeted DOJ Secretary Guevarra. A false email address “osecmig1@gmail.com” was attributed to belong to the Justice Secretary.
The fake Guevarra email account was being used to request assistance for the procurement of iTunes gift cards as donations to patients to hospice care units across the country, and subject to reimbursement.
The IACAT earlier said Secretary Guevarra only has one official email address, “osecmig@gmail.com”. While Dedumo’s official email accounts are jpdedumo.iacat@gmail.com and jpdedumo@gmail.com.
“In the event that you receive a message fitting those descriptions, close the message immediately and report it as spam. However, some spam may occasionally get through to your inbox or be diverted to your Spam Folder, so please be cautious,” IACAT said, in its advisory.
The agency warned that messages coming from different email addresses, other than the mentioned official email addresses of Guevarra and Dedumo, shall be dealt with conscientiously.
It reminded the public that phishing is a fraudulent process used by scammers to acquire sensitive information from users such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details. It added that, “email recipients are often deceived by phishing attempts since messages appear to be sent by legitimate and trustworthy sources.”
The agency urged the public to check on the safety protocols issued by the Philippine National Police to avoid being victimized by scammers.
“IACAT strongly advise the public to stay vigilant regarding such malicious online activities,” the advisory said.
The IACAT also asked the public to immediately report suspicious activities of the same nature to the nearest police station or call the PNP Anti-Cybercrime hotline numbers for assistance, Globe number +63 915-5898506 and Smart number +63 961-8298033.
