Cops vs Debt Collectors Posing as Cops
WARNING: Paying these fines may prejudice your rights as the time in which the may have been pursued has lapsed...
If you missed or were unable to watch Carte Blanche Consumer on 3 June 2010, you can watch it online now at http://beta.mnet.co.za/carteblanche/Article.aspx?Id=3981&ShowId=2
The images below appear on their site and relate to the two parts of this insert.
If you speak to motorists around the country, you will be hard pressed to find someone who has not received am SMS, letter, email or phone call from a crowd claiming to be the JMPD "traffic fines department" threatening criminal prosecution.
This is because the JMPD has engaged the services of VVM Collections to "follow up on stagnated traffic fines" dating back to 2008 and 2007. The JMPD and the Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality reportedly feel that this is a completely justifiable and legitimate way in which to deal with members of the public but victims of this activity feel very differently.
The manner in which contact has been made so closely resembles a Nigerian 419 scam that it is uncanny and reports that over a million of these so-called stagnated fines have been handed over to a private company strongly suggests that either one ninth of South Africa's motorists simply ignore their fines or that the JMPD did not send the alleged notices to them in the first place.
According to sources, more than R10 million has already been collected by VVM for the JMPD and at 10% "commission", that represents R1 million to VVM.
Payfine.co.za which is run by Syntell (Pty) Ltd - also a "contractor" to the JMPD has distanced itself from these "fines" by stating on their website:
Please note: |
| Should you have received an email and/or SMS from the Johannesburg Metro Police Department, and you have questions with regards the email/sms, you should contact their call centre on 0878054906 and not the payfine.co.za call centre. Payfine is not responsible for the communication, nor have we shared any of your data with them. Thanks - The Payfine Team. Click here to view the JMPD Letter. |
The "JMPD call centre" number 087 805 4906 routes to VVM Collections (at cell phone rates) where callers are dealt with by ill-trained staff who get their jollies by threatening callers with arrest if they don't pay.
There is a very simple and appropriate word for this type of behaviour - EXTORTION!
Ordinarily you would have recourse to report this behaviour to the SAPS, especially where you are the recipient of a threatening phone call at 19:45 in the evening from someone claiming to be a police officer, but according to Director Gerneke at the JMPD, this is 100% OK.
We (JPSA) have and continue to receive enquiries from members of the public with regards the legitimacy of the SMS, emails, letters and phone calls from VVM and the JMPD continues to defend this despicable practice. But the wheel will turn and someone is going to have to explain why it is that many of these so-called issued notices do not exist in the JMPD's database but do in VVM's.
According to Edna Momonyane of the JMPD "over a million of these fines – some
from as far back as three or four
years ago have been outsourced to VVM Collections." If each fine is for the minimum value of just R100, then it stands to reason that there is a lot of money involved. Of course, many of the fine values we have seen are for four times that.
VVM stands to make somewhere in the order of at least R10 million from this exercise if a (low) collection fee of just 10% is applied and they manage to intimidate everyone into paying. They have collected 10% of these "stagnated fines" so far. Not bad for simply threatening people is it?
So successful and lucrative has this exercise been that VVM is now doing the same for a multitude of other traffic authorities!
There have been at least 3 versions of the email sent out by VVM from the email address "jmpd@traffic-fines.co.za" (which is a domain that VVM owns) some of which have actually stated that the recipient will be liable for contempt of court charges. What they and the JMPD seem to have ignored is that a contempt of court judgment cannot legally be applied if a Section 56 Summons has not been served on the accused in accordance with the law and that accused has failed to appear in court.
Let's have a look at just how legitimate some of the emails look.