It was a sunny Friday afternoon, June 2nd, 2023, and I was at work. It was almost time to go home, so I decided to open up the Facebook app on my phone to kill some time while waiting for my boyfriend to come and fetch me from work. As I was scrolling through my Facebook, I came upon a post that was posted by a friend of mine, showing that GSC Cinemas was holding a giveaway for Free movie tickets. I clicked into the post, read the instructions, and thought "Why not?" since the only thing I need to do to get a chance at winning free tickets was just simply comment "Selamat Hari Jadi".
Now, of course, now that I'm aware that it's a scam after everything had happened, I wouldn't have commented anything in the first place. But during the time I saw the post, I was overtaken by curiosity and excitement. I didn't think twice to check the legitimacy of the post cause it looked like your typical GSC Cinemas posting and quite honestly, because I trusted the fact that my friend posted it, so scam is not the first thing that came across my mind.
So I did it, I commented "Selamat Hari Lahir" on the post, and in less than 3 seconds, "GSC" sent me a notification through Facebook messenger informing me that my comment has got through and I'm in the running to win the tickets. To make it seem more realistic, they even throw in some questions for you to answer like "Who do you want to bring to the cinema with you if you won the tickets, what movie you're interested to watch, and how often do you go to GSC cinemas". My silly self went on to answer all of those questions thinking that my answers seem perfect to win me a pair of tickets.
And just like that, I'm already halfway into their scam, not knowing every step is just a trap. After they have received my "answers", they're smart enough to leave you hanging for a while to get that adrenaline rush of anticipation on whether or not you've won the tickets. After 2 days, they sent me a notification saying that I have won the tickets. The "winning" notification included terms and conditions of the tickets, what movies can be watched, the ticket's expiration date, and many more. So it's still very legitimate up until this point. At the very end of the post, it was said that they would send out the tickets alongside 3D glasses to our address and all we have to do is pay for a "delivery fee" that would cost less than RM12. In order to fill in your details and pay for the "delivery fee", there was a link to click into to do so.
Still not having any idea that this was a scam, I clicked on the link and filled in my details. Some might say, wouldn't you think that it's weird you have to pay for the delivery fee? Quite honestly, no. Cause I've participated in many contests and giveaways that do require you to pay for the delivery fee, it didn't seem off to me during that time. Now this is the part where I felt stupid after realizing, cause you see, in many third-party websites that company uses for payment, there are always options for you to pay with online banking, card, or even e-wallets. However, in my case, the website requires only the banking info of my debit card which includes the account number, expiration date, and the CVV number. I had no choice but to fill it in to pay for the "delivery fee". Once the "delivery fee" has gotten through, that's when I realized something was off. As the payment got through, I was notified via SMS that my card had debited EUR1.95. So it started to look suspicious for me by then cause wouldn't my payment be made in MYR or RM? In that very instant, I finally realized, "Oh no, I effed up".
After I realized my mistake, I quickly went on to the so-called GSC page that posted the Giveaway to check and the first thing I noticed was the followers of the page. There are only 1.2k followers on that page when in reality, the REAL GSC Cinemas have more than 2Million followers. I honestly felt my whole body descended from the earth cause that was already a big giveaway that this was a fake page. I then continued on to scroll down and look at the Giveaway post, only to see that there are a lot of people warning others that this is a scam. But unfortunately, you can see that there are already a lot of people who fell victim to this post as I can see that there are already a few hundred shares on the post by people who are as excited to win free tickets just like me from this phony page.
What did I do after all this? Of course, I finally do something logical and that is to call the Bank to inform them about this scam and have my card cancelled. Thank God I was still able to transfer all of my money from that account to another account so in case if the scammer were to try to take my money, they won't even have any more to extract as the money have already been taken out.
This experience has made me feel like the world's dumbest person cause I never thought I could fall for such a scam all because the excitement of getting free move tickets got the best of me. I'm glad it didn't escalate further and that I'm able to realize that it was a scam. I'll make sure after this, I would check every single detail of any page or postings to make sure that it's not some phony scam again. This is a lesson learned. Also, after the whole ordeal has ended, I went onto the real GSC Cinemas page to check and see if they do have this giveaway ongoing, and found out they actually posted a statement informing people not to fall for the scam. Which obviously means there are a lot of people who fell for it. But on the bright side, as of today June 7th, 2023, the profile is not to be found anymore on Facebook.
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