You would think that scammers are smart, but sometimes, they're not. This happened to me twice, and thankfully I don't fall for these calls so easily as it doesn't make sense to me.
If you don't know yet, there's a new type of scam with people pretending to be your "friend" that has changed their phone numbers. Usually how it works is the so-called "friend" would give you a call, try to make you guess who they are as if we remember the voices of every single person we know (lol), and when we say someone's name in particular, they will just agree with you and say things like "Ya lah ... it's me! how can you forget my voice". Usually, after you guessed "their" name right, they will continue on to go into the topic of lending money.
As mentioned previously, I've faced this two times before, I didn't fall for it easily. However, I'm not sure if it's the case for everyone, so I'll share my experiences to bring awareness to whoever's reading this.
I noticed that one common thing is that the caller will always be a male, and for me, it's usually something unusual cause I don't get phone calls from my male friends unless it's my close friends. When I got the call the first time, I couldn't make out who was calling me. When I asked, "Who's this?" the guy would just say, "Keep guessing! You know me!".
The moment I say someone's name, that first name is the name they pick for themselves. So when I said, "Optimus?" the guy was like "Ya lah! That's me! Haiya, why took you so long to guess". Now just for context, Optimus is the nickname of a friend that I just got to know and we barely call each other. At most, we would only text each other via WeChat, and I'd never given him my phone number. So when the guy on the phone said that he was my friend, "Optimus", it already seemed off to me. After confirming his identity, without hesitation, the guy continued on to ask me if I could lend him some money. When I asked how much? He said RM7,500, and when I asked what was it for? He then said he had to do something about his house renovation.
Then there's red flag number two, cause I know for a fact that my friend Optimus, was not in need of renovating his house. In fact, he's living in a rented room with his mom in KL, so obviously, there's no "renovation" needed and it just doesn't seem like him. So I rejected the guy by saying, "Sorry, but I don't have that much money to lend you", to which the guy replied, "Well, can't you lend me half of it?" I then replied, "You do know what I work as, right? You do know I don't have that type of money, right?". Still not giving up, the guy proceeds to ask, "Well, do you have friends that can help?", By then, I'm already fed up with the questions. After countless attempts, he finally gave up and hung up the phone. He still continued to WhatsApp me to ask the same question, but because I wasn't budging and kept repeating myself, he finally gave up and stopped finding me. If you're wondering, yes, I did ask my friend Optimus if he called me, and even Optimus himself thinks that it's absurd cause he doesn't even have my contact number, so of course, it's impossible.
The second time this happened, everything was the same except this time, the man on the phone requested a much more reasonable amount of money which was RM250, but of course, I didn't budge and just informed him that I could not lend him any money. Same thing, the guy continues to WhatsApp me, trying his best to convince me to lend him some money, but I just deny his request each time he asks until he stops.
Fun fact, this happened to me a few years ago. However, this scam is finding its way back again as I saw a few people posting their experiences of the same thing on social media. I guess you could say the moral of the story is, if you pick up a phone call from an unknown number, and the person asks you to guess their name, just give the name of someone whom you know very closely so that it's easy for you to identify if that's the person you're talking to. If they start asking about money lending, just act as pitiful as you can to make them feel bad for even asking in the first place.
Stay safe, scammers are everywhere.
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