Costa Rica News – Because there are so many loopholes in the Costa Rica legal system and the time a money required to bring a case to trial in Costa Rica normally outweighs the compensation, Costa Rica has become a hot spot for scam artists and fraudsters.
All you have to do it look around and there will be someone talking about how they call people saying they won the lottery (the sweepstakes scam that preys on the elderly), people selling real estate to investors overseas with no plan on developing (Paragon), and the list goes on and on. The scammers know the system and use it to their advantage to steal from others.
The most recent is a scam where callers in the name of the INS, Costa Rica’s National Insurance Institute.
The scam is used to obtain people’s information for an alleged “financial offer” which provides loans with certain terms.
What the scammers try to do is have the victim to call the INS phone number and provide all of their personal information such as full name, occupation, date of birth, income, home address, and scanned versions of their cedula or passport. Eventually, they are directed to verify his or her user profile in order to receive a text confirmation.
Once the registration is processed and reviewed inside the hour, the victims are sent a message to phone back as the scammers have obtained all of the person’s credit information. Hence the target calls, and receives the news that their loan was approved but on the condition that they will have to deposit ¢595,000 (over $1000) for the purchase of an “INS insurance policy”.
The scammers know if you fall for this most are not willing to take someone to court over the ¢595,000.
If someone has placed this type of call to you and wish to report it, call 2287-6000, extension 2815 or 2685 for the INS Research Department.
