More than 120 people claim Sandile Mantsoe, on trial for murdering his girlfriend, Karabo Mokoena, scammed them out of hundeds of thousands of rands. This was revealed on eNCA's Checkpoint episode on Tuesday.
Mantsoe (27) claimed to be a highly successful forex trader through his company, Trillion Dollar Legacy.
Social media users were incensed by how Mantsoe and traders like him continue to scam many South Africans out of their hard-earned cash.
Here are three top things that have come out of the conversation on Twitter:
1. It is not that people are ignorant, they are misinformed and sometimes just desperate
Life is very difficult in SA, people end up falling for scams times are really bad, even so look out for the scams #Checkpoint
— Sipho Nkosi (@siphoni_sn) September 20, 2017
2. The lifestyle as seen on social media is appealing especially to young people -- and attracts them to the trade
3. Forex trading is legit, only there are too many scammers masquerading as genuine traders
How to tell the fake from real
Potential traders have every right to check if the trader or trading company they want to invest money in is registered with the Financial Services Board (FSB). The FSB is an institution for non-banking financial services providers, aimed at protecting South Africans who want to branch into non-banking financial avenues such as forex from losing their money.
The board says: "Persons rendering financial services without a licence or without being appointed as representatives are acting in contravention of the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act. Transgressors can be fined and or imprisoned."
However, although trading is protected, the challenge remains that forex trader training is still unregulated -- and this is where some scammers make the most money.
Thank you, Checkpoint, for shining the light again on such an important conversation.