BY STEVEN JACKSON Business reporter jacksons@jamaicaobserver.com
Friday, October 10, 2014
LASCO Financial, which offers cambio and remittance services, will this month fortify its MoneyGram network with two software upgrades to block lotto scammers and improve its analytics.
It’s the latest remittance company to move against criminals following the much publicised lockdown by rival Western Union in 2012.
“It’s a remittance software done by MoneyGram which allows us to manage Lotto scamming. So it will offer customer relationship management and give us the opportunity to offer loyalty cards as well,” stated Lasco Financial Managing Director Jacinth Hall-Tracey in her address to shareholders at the annual general meeting held September 30 at the Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston.
Lasco Financial, a primary agent for MoneyGram International in Jamaica, provides a network of 90 sub-agents in Jamaica. It also provides MoneyGram services in five Unicomer Courts Furniture Store branches in Barbados.
“So we are adding two software [programs] in October and I do not know how our staff will manage,” she joked. “[The software] will give timely financials, better analytics, better administration for loans, remittance management and security.”
Remittance inflows into Jamaica totalled US$2 billion (J$220 billion) in 2013 with Lasco Financial’s total revenues at a fraction of that, or J$628 million at its March 2014 year end.
In August 2012, Western Union International ordered its operators in St James to close for two weeks in order to implement anti-lotto
scam security measures. GraceKennedy Money Services holds the Western Union franchise for Jamaica.
In March 2013, Parliament passed the Fraudulent Transactions Act, dubbed the anti-lottery scam bill, aimed at specifically criminalising activities, some of which found loopholes in the law. It was followed by the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) passed in October that year.
“The amendments to the POCA last year, if you recall, as individuals you are not allowed to trade with over $1 million in cash with one transaction in 24 hours,” Hall-Tracey reminded the shareholders.
“Unfortunately, when this bill was being passed apparently no one remembered that remittance agents trade in cash and in high volumes of cash. Some banks use their discretion and allow them to get cash to run their business, but for several of them the banks refuse to pay more than $1 million cash and that really affects our business because we really need the funds in cash,”
she said.
The bill exempts banks and licensed financial institutions. However, many of Lasco’s sub-agents, which include supermarkets, would not fall under the supervision of the Bank of Jamaica or Financial Services Commission as financial institutions.
US officials have estimated that at one point lotto scamming fleeced US citizens of US$300 million annually. The US Embassy in Kingston has posted on its website a page highlighting scams from Jamaica.
“The most prevalent in Jamaica is the lottery scam, where scammers lead victims to believe they have won a drawing or lottery, but the cash or prizes will not be released without upfront payment of fees or taxes. Scammers frequently target the elderly or those with disposable income,” stated the Embassy on its website. “If it is too good to be true, it is not true.”
Additional scams originating in Jamaica include US citizens defrauded by Internet and social contacts they thought were their friends or loved ones, stated the embassy.
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Lasco upgrading software to fight lotto scammers
