A 74-year-old retiree has lost more than RM1 million of her life savings to a Macau Scam syndicate. It was reported that the retiree even handed over her Maybank card to the scammers.
Petaling Jaya district police chief Nik Ezanee Mohd Faisal said that the elderly woman received a call on 25 September 2020 which claimed to be from “Pos Malaysia headquarters”. The scammers then told her that they were holding a package containing an Identification Card (IC), a cheque book, and three bank cards under her name.
The call was then transferred to someone who introduced himself as Sergeant Fairul—who told the retiree that she had been involved with a money laundering case, and that she was “under investigation”. After that, the call was later transferred again to another “policeman” named Si Wan—who said that she would be arrested if she refused to cooperate with them.
“Frightened, the victim obeyed all orders by the scammers and gave away her bank account information to Si Wan, and transferred RM833,000 from her Tabung Haji account into her Maybank account,” said the police chief.
On 5 October 2020, the retiree was told to go to Atria Shopping Mall and place her Maybank card on top of a letterbox. It was claimed that the card was needed to “withdraw the money for auditing purposes”.
After handing over her Maybank card, she conducted several other transactions on 28 October 2020. She transferred RM75,000 from her CIMB Bank account into her Maybank account, and another RM84,500 into her Maybank account from another source.
According to the police chief, the elderly victim had incurred losses estimated to total about RM1,007,673.33 to the Macau scammers. He also said that the syndicate often targets the elderly “who lack knowledge and exposure on today’s cyber-crimes”.
Last year, it was also reported that a 90-year-old woman was cheated a whopping RM3.83 million through a phone scam. The modus operandi was similar whereby the victim had received a call from “Pos Malaysia” and was later transferred to individuals claiming to be the police.
However, it’s not just the elderly who’ve been victims of scams. A 25-year-old student lost RM84,600 over a Bitcoin scam after he responded to an ad on Facebook.
The Royal Malaysia Police has always reminded the public about potential scams especially individuals that pretend to be the police or bank officers. Your personal details are not meant to be shared and banks or authorities will never request for your account details including username and password over the telephone.
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