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Bongani Ndlovu, Showbiz Correspondent
BUYING stuff online is a risky business as the place is a fertile ground for people to scam you while thieves nowadays, use it to offload stolen property to unsuspecting customers.

Social media networking site, Facebook, is being used by people to buy and sell stuff through pages like Bidding Wars and Storage Wars that have been set up. To participate in the buying or selling, one has to simply join the groups.

Such pages have seen people buying clothes, vehicles and furniture at  bargain prices.

The Facebook pages have unfortunately become a den for thieves who use them to quickly sell stolen property, especially phones at a bargain.

A victim of one of these Facebook pages was Bulawayo DJ Nospa who revealed that his phone, a Samsung Galaxy S8, was stolen and sold on these platforms. The phone was sold to one white lady who lives in Matsheumhlope after she saw it advertised on a Facebook page called Bulawayo Online Market.

DJ Nospa said his phone was stolen on February 21 at a nightspot in the city that has become a hunting ground for phone thieves. The club’s management has even put up posters of people who have been banned from the premises because of thieving.

“I had a cocktail function at Mystic Gardens. After that, I went out for some drinks with friends. I started off at the Lounge, then Red Cafe and my night ended at Club 263. When I got home, that’s when I discovered my phone was missing. I dialled my number with another phone and it rang twice before it was switched off,” said DJ Nospa.

Being techno savy, DJ Nospa quickly went onto the Google Find My phone service which helps one see the location of the phone.

“The Google find my phone shows you the timeline and a map of where you went. The last seen on the application was opposite Club 263. On the following day, I made a police report.”

He said after making the police report, there was a court order that was processed for it to be used to track the phone using the mobile phone service provider and its IMEI number.

“When you report a missing phone, they process a court order that is taken to service providers such as Econet, Telecel and NetOne. That court order will have all the details of the phone like the make and IMEI number. They’ll use the IMEI number to see which line is in the phone and its owner.

“However, the court order took a bit of time to be released. Three weeks down the line, it came and when I took it to the service provider, I was shown that the phone was on and in use.”

IMEI stands for International Mobile Equipment Identity which is used to identify mobile phones. It is usually found printed inside the battery compartment of the phone, but can also be displayed on-screen on most phones by entering *#06# on the dial pad. The IMEI number is used to stop a stolen phone from accessing that network. The owner can call their network provider and instruct them to blacklist the phone using its IMEI number. This renders the phone useless on that network and sometimes other networks too, whether or not the phone’s subscriber identity module (SIM) is changed.

After establishing the person’s number, DJ Nospa they decided to call them to ask who they were and where they got the phone.

“We called the number and it was a white lady who said she was collecting her child from school. We then went to meet her at Busters Sports Club. When we met her with the police, she revealed that she bought the phone from some person by the name Tafadzwa Ngonidzashe Govo who had advertised the phone on the Bulawayo Online Market on Facebook.

“She said she bought the phone for $630 yet I’d bought it for $1 600.”

He said  the woman then accompanied to the police station where she surrendered the stolen phone.

DJ Nospa said efforts to pin Tafadzwa down were unfruitful as he was evasive.

“We called him but he didn’t want to come to the police station. He was evasive until his number ended up being unreachable. Three days later, he sent me a WhatsApp message with a South African number saying he was already on his way to South Africa.

“He gave me a number of another person called Marshall Manda who apparently runs stand number 42 at Unity Village. However, the number was not reachable and every time we look for him at his stand, he is said to have just left.”

After his encounter, DJ Nospa said it was important that people take down their IMEI and serial numbers and keep them safely somewhere as they will be of great help in the event their gadgets are stolen.

“Without the IMEI number that was on the box of my phone, my phone was going to be lost for good. It’d have been a miracle for me to find it. I advise people to take down their IMEI numbers for all their phones as these thieves sell the phones fast,” said DJ Nospa.

It is important for those who buy stuff on line to be very careful as they may end up in jail for crimes they did not commit.