The Southern African Association for Stationery, Home & Office Products (Shop-sa) has asked its members to be vigilant after a non-member contacted it asking for help to recover the R750 000 (€66,000) she had just lost in another fraudulent 'government' order.

Shop-sa says that her call comes on the back of another member who is desperately hoping his R57 000 order is genuine and at least another five or six scams the magazine has heard about this past week.

All of them are on 'official' government order forms and sound convincing and genuine. All were for cartridges and from a person they hadn't dealt with before. All used a cellphone number for the contact person.