Our firm’s activities in fighting PPE fraud and finding ways of funding legitimate small businesses serving the PPE and medical supplies sector have spanned a period of 6 months as of now.
This was by no means an easy journey, as along the way have a number of bad experiences with unethical supply parties, fraudulent buyers and generally insincere people in all walks of life who saw the COVID19 epidemic as their lottery ticket to get away with selling gigs no one would have otherwise given credence to during the normal course of circumstances. They received their golden ticket to gouge prices of medical necessities, and profit from the abhorrent crime of counterfeiting and advance payment scams.It would not be wrong to say that panic of the pandemic staring in the face of humanity would have caused even the most rational state buyers to panic, let along governments burdened by cries for help from their masses.
Mr Tinus van der Berg (B.Proc, PFM, MBA), the owner of Van Der Berg and Associates in South Africa is our firm’s newest friend and partner to join this fight with us.He has been in the legal profession long before us but while he does comment that fraud has evolved over the years, his methods of dealing with situations in PPE sourcing when ‘something does not seem quite right’ with a buyer or seller dealing with a client are perhaps something we are learning from him.’Fraud”, he remarks, “Ends up showing its gnarly feet very earlier on if we do not let it hide behind our greed’.
