Across a fortnight in July 2026, South African talk radio returned repeatedly to a single anxiety: how easily South Africans — from naive 18-year-olds to retirement-age nurses — are being separated from their money by increasingly sophisticated scammers. Cape Talk, 702 and Power FM all ran extended segments on digital bank fraud, romance scams and impersonation calls, drawing in cybercrime experts, financial educators and, in one striking 702 case, the Northwest Hawks appealing for help tracing men who allegedly defrauded a Klerksdorp nurse of R2.5 million.
The reporting mixed hard numbers — SABRIC data showing digital bank fraud roughly doubling year-on-year — with a steady drumbeat of listener stories and expert warnings. Presenters converged on a common diagnosis: scammers manufacture urgency, banks are reluctant to disclose their internal fraud processes, and victims are too often left carrying the loss. The unresolved question, aired most sharply on Cape Talk and Power FM, is whether stronger banking safeguards and consumer education can keep pace with a fraud economy that is expanding faster than the industry is willing to admit.
Talk radio spent much of July framing bank fraud not as a series of unlucky incidents but as a systemic problem. Cape Talk's Bongani-led segment on commercial crime put a number on it: digital bank fraud is the one category where disaggregated data actually exists, and SABRIC's 2024 figures alone were on track to double those of 2023. "It's not just increasing. It's increasing," the presenter emphasised, arguing the rest of the commercial-crime picture remains opaque.1
The on-air case studies did the emotional work the statistics couldn't. On 702, hosts returned repeatedly to a 52-year-old Klerksdorp nurse who cashed in her retirement savings after a new boyfriend claimed he was due to inherit R14 million but needed cash for "rituals" to "cleanse the wool".23 Power FM built a parallel segment around an 18-year-old who had just received R440,000 into her account when a caller — posing as her bank — convinced her to move it "somewhere safe".4 Both stories were used to make the same point: scammers target the extremes of financial life, whether inheritance, retirement or a first big deposit.
Presenters and guests were remarkably consistent on the mechanics. The pressure play — a phone call, a suspicious transaction, an instruction to "act now" — surfaced on every station. 702's cybercrime guest put it bluntly: "The real bank will never have a sense of urgency. It's not their money. They're going to be cool and calm."56 Power FM's host echoed the point almost verbatim, arguing scammers "don't want you to stop and think, they don't want you to put your phone to your family and ask for advice, they don't want you to hang up and call your bank yourself."7
Cape Talk widened the aperture to impersonation more generally. Cybersecurity educator Boyco Corbetso Maketluwani described an "inside threat" pattern where staff collude with outsiders to make bank-impersonation calls credible, alongside fake traffic-fine SMSes and "child in distress" calls aimed at older parents.89 A TransUnion Consumer Pulse survey cited on Cape Talk claimed 68% of South Africans have been targeted by fraud through email, phone, SMS or online platforms — a figure that framed the station's week of coverage.10
The romance-scam thread ran hardest on 702 and Power FM. Power FM's host argued these were "the saddest stories because it's matters of the heart," and pushed listeners to educate parents and grandparents that "someone that loves you is not going to ask you for money or for you to take out a loan for them."11 702 returned to the same theme in a broader discussion of older women being targeted by "younger, often nefarious guys who want to benefit financially".12
Where presenters disagreed — or at least where the tension was sharpest — was on the banks themselves. Cape Talk's commercial-crime series noted that banks are "predictably reluctant to fully disclose information around their internal processes," and that once an institution determines a customer's own login and password were used, the victim is effectively on their own.13 The same segment reminded listeners that banks "tell us thousands of times a year that they will not call you from a mobile number" — yet victims keep answering.1415
Interestingly, Power FM also complicated the "reckless youth" narrative that often accompanies scam coverage. Standard Bank's 2026 Youth Barometer, unpacked on air, argued young South Africans are in fact more financially savvy than assumed — saving earlier, building credit profiles and planning long-term.1617 That reframing sat awkwardly beside the same station's later segment on the 18-year-old scam victim, and presenters implicitly conceded that financial literacy and scam literacy are not the same skill.18
Adjacent risks crept into the coverage too. Cape Talk flagged unregistered micro-lenders who seize bank cards and IDs, and Old Mutual's John Manyike warned that young people increasingly turn to credit "just to survive" — a vulnerability scammers exploit.1920 "Friends in need of money" scams and investment-fraud stories rounded out the picture.21
What remains unresolved on air is the question of remedy. Presenters called repeatedly for stronger consumer education and for banks to be more transparent about how they investigate fraud claims, but no station reported a concrete regulatory move during the period. With SABRIC's numbers pointing one way and banks' disclosures pointing another, talk radio's implicit question for the coming months is whether South African institutions will meet the scale of the problem — or continue leaving individual victims, and their families, to absorb the losses.
- 702
- Cape Talk
- Power FM
Citations
- 1.
“The only area of commercial crime for which we have some numbers, Bongani, is digital bank fraud. For everything else, it's impossible to get disaggregated data on what commercial crime actually looks like. But we do know that digital bank fraud is exploding. In fact, the numbers collected by the South African Bank and Risk Information Center for 2024 alone would double those of 2023. So it's not just increasing. It's increasing.”
- 2.
“and the prompts are shout out this morning. The Northwest Hawks are appealing to the public for help. They want to trace three men accused of defrauding a 52-year-old Clarkstob Nurse of 2.5 million rand in an alleged romance scam. So they say that the woman entered into a romantic relationship with a man who then told her he was due to inherit 14 million rand from his late father's estate. But he needed about a million or so to perform certain rich children.”
- 3.
“of a romance scam, a clerk's orb nurse cashed in her retirement savings because her new boyfriend told her that he'd just come into money. They were going to be rich, you see. She was going to be in the poundseats. 14 million ran, he was due to inherit. But here's the kicker. There were some rituals that needed to be performed to make sure the wool was cleansed. Whatever that means,”
- 4.
“How does that person know that this 18 year old received 440,000 in accounts and calls the next day and says, "Your money is not safe. You need to move your money into a different account so that nothing happens to it, right?" So she's 18, she's naive. She believed that she was speaking to someone from the bank and she followed the instructions, right? So the instructions, the caller allegedly told her that the money wasn't safe where it was and she needed to move it into another account immediately.”
- 5.
“and on the profile to say that this person is legit. So there were a couple of things that were unfortunately missed by the fella because of the pressure. Yeah, that's a common one. And that's, I mean, for any scare, banking scare, it's always the pressure when they phone and say, "We're from your bank for division." And we've noted some suspicious transaction and you must act now. The real bank will never have a sense of urgency. It's not their money. They're going to be cool and calm.”
- 6.
“Yeah, that's a common one and that's, I mean, for any scam, banking scam, it's always the pressure when they phone and say, we're from your bank's full division and we've noted some suspicious transaction and you've said, the real bank will never have a sense of urgency. It's not their money, they're going to be cool and calm and, you know, but anyway, so on the ID verification thing, you were careful to say it's not in itself the son of a scam, but is it, am I reading you correctly?”
- 7.
“Leiden Yutrosthim, so that's exactly how they get people. They create urgency, they don't want you to stop and think, they don't want you to put your phone to your family and ask for advice, they don't want you to hang up and call your bank yourself, they want you to make a decision while you are scared because I generally feel like this scammer got into this 18 year old's head and made up believe that this money that your dad saved for you, for you to be able to go to university and have a beautiful,”
- 8.
“where they're going to tell you, "Hey, there's money leaving your bank account. I'm calling you from this particular bank." So it's more of inside a threat where somebody from the bank is working with somebody from outside and they try to convince you that, "Hey, money leaving your bank account, you need to do ABC so you can make changes and you give them direct access to your bank account." So we're seeing a lot of those happening at this current moment and the ticket and traffic fines which are fake, sending people, SMS's, making sure that people are safe.”
- 9.
“because they targeting a lot of older people. You know, because they know it's easier to scam them, it's easier to scare them. I'll just tell you just a quick one. So there's one way they also targeting the old parent. So what they would say, they would act as a child of that particular parent and they would say, "Hey, I need money for this at this particular time. I'm a rest day. Please send the money. Somebody's going to call you now and they drop the phone." Right?”
- 10.
“Union Consumer Pulse Survey that found that 68% of South Africans have been targeted by fraud through either email, phone calls, texts, messages or other online platforms. And one person who's trying to fight back is cybersecurity educator, Boyco Corbetso Maketluwani, who has been exposing online scams, teaching people how to protect themselves. And we hope”
- 11.
“They drafted, right? So it's very important to be careful about this and we also need to educate our parents and our grandparents about these scams that someone that loves you is not going to ask you for money or for you to take out a loan for them, right? So I want to get into this. So another scam that's becoming common is these romance scams and honestly these are the saddest stories because it matters of the hearts and anything that has to do with the hearts is very painful because I mean,”
- 12.
“by these younger, often nefarious guys who want to benefit financially, mainly from older women. I'm not qualified to express a very steady view on that. There are discussions like that. But I would want to hear from you if you've seen this. I'm keen to find out in your experience, in your encounters, if you have somehow interacted with this phenomenon of banking.”
- 13.
“and Skamming. So banks, predictably, I suppose, would be reluctant to fully disclose information around their internal processes. I'd imagine that compounds some of the difficulties for victims. Yes, it does. The issue is that if the bank investigates your case and tells you we've determined that your login details were used. Your password, your login and your password were used to facilitate this fraud.”
- 14.
“and the Bank's fraud line. That is very common as well. That increases the risk, doesn't it? That you are going to be scanned. It's really easy. All of the banks tell us thousands of times a year that they will not call you from a mobile number. If you get a call from a mobile number and it is somebody trying to tell you about fraud on your bank account, you know that they are the ones who want to commit fraud.”
- 15.
“I think I've had more pretending to be the bank than actual fraud to cause. So because it's not actually that often that I think I have had genuine calls where they said a flight was being booked using my card and I said that's not me and they said thank you and they put the phone down. I think that that call happened about four years ago. I haven't had a single one from my bank warning me because there haven't been any fraudulent transactions. So probability wise, at the moment, it's more likely to be a scam.”
- 16.
“- New Research Farm, Standard Banks, 2026 Youth Barometer. It's challenging the stereotype that young people are financially reckless. We'll unpack the findings and what they also reveal about a changing financial behavior in young people. What are they saying? They just don't have money. No, they actually saying that young people are more financially savvy, more financially educated. And so they use, even though that they may have”
- 17.
“Now the new youth barometer from Standard Bank challenges the perception that young people are financially reckless. Instead, it suggests that many are taking a far more deliberate approach to managing their money, saving earlier and building credit profiles and planning for long-term financial security despite a difficult economic environment. We'll unpack what these changing financial habits mean for banks, businesses and for the broader economy.”
- 18.
“In 2026, there are people that are still getting scammed by things that are preventable because we are always told about not giving people that call us an us for our account, our card thingy passwords, the CCV at the end of the card. We are always told that there's no bank that's going to call you and ask you for that information, right? But I do understand that not everyone has knowledge into how these kinds of scams work, right? So I want to talk about bank scams.”
- 19.
“operate illegally and they charge sky high interest rates. And to get their money back, they'll often seize people's bank cards. They'll take your ID and sometimes even resort to violence. The National Credit Regulator and Police say they want to step up efforts to shut down unregistered micro lenders who they say are preying on desperate people. And what most people don't know is if a lead, a lead, a lender, big a pardon, is unregistered, the”
- 20.
“and St. Louis. John Mannike, MacPherson, L.A.T.A.B.E. and the cost of living continuing to climb, more young people are turning to credit just to survive. But while debt can sometimes open doors, it can also become a trap if it's not managed properly. To help us understand this issue better, we're joined on the line by John Mannike, who is the head of financial education at Old Mutual. John, welcome to the show. Ah, good afternoon. How are you doing? Very well. Can you tell us why are so many young South Africans finding themselves in trouble?”
- 21.
“and a genuine attempt to aid your privacy and security or to modify your privacy and security concerns. Yes. Well, as you know, there's lots of things, scams out there, like the ones that, what they call the friends in need of money scams. Yeah. And a lot of the other investment scams, I mean, a friend of mine was hit by one of the hoods and they actually paid money”