A woman saw thousands of Ringgit slip through her fingers after she fell victim to a group of scammers pretending to be customer service officers from an online shopping platform.
The housewife from Ipoh, who wanted to known as Tan, recounted the unfortunate incident during a press conference organised by Perak MCA Public Services and Complaints bureau chief Charles Yuen.
Got a call about shopping prize
According to Tan, she got a WhatsApp call on July 1 informing her that she had won a prize worth RM3,000.
She was offered a choice between shopping vouchers or a cash reward to be credited into her e-wallet. Tan eventually opted for the latter, reported The Star.
Her call then got transferred to a “manager”, with Tan noting that he sounded like an Indonesian national.
“I simply followed all of their instructions. Before I knew it, they took control of my phone screen and kept directing me to click on different pages, giving me no time to think,” she said as quoted by Oriental Daily.
Tan’s suspicion grew further when she was given a link and instructed to enter her bank ID. leading her to immediately end the call which had lasted for 30 to 45 minutes.
Money gone
Although Tan contacted the shopping platform’s customer service through the app, activated the kill switch and lodged a police report within an hour, it proved to be too late as the official complaint submitted through the app, screenshots and supporting documents all vanished from her phone.
She claimed that RM4,500 was billed to her Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) account, and RM6,000 was withdrawn through the platform’s loan facility, causing her to lose RM10,500 in total.
To add insult to injury, Tan said the RM6,000 loan was converted into a 24-month repayment plan requiring monthly instalments of more than RM300 even though she didn’t receive any money.
As for the RM4,500, it was transferred to an entity listed as “Lucky Boy Trading” despite Tan not buying any of its products.
“To date, I’ve refused to repay both the BNPL charges and loan. The online platform has also yet to provide a definitive response beyond informing me that investigations are ongoing.
“I’m also surprised as to how the scammers obtained my user ID as it can only be viewed within the account security section of the app,” she added.
Stronger measures needed
Meanwhile, Yuen urged on e-commerce platforms to fortify security measures for digital payment and financing services so that customers will not fall victim to scams.
He reminded Malaysians not to trust unsolicited notifications claiming they had won prizes, be it through WhatsApp, SMS or links from unknown sources.
Yuen also suggested that the public check their their credit records through CTOS and CCRIS on a regular basis to detect any unauthorised borrowing activity.
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