NOVEMBER 13 — I often see friends online talking about how they were rude to or were mean to scammers.

Sadly, my innate compulsion to be a killjoy (so much so a friend says she needs to form a support group with my other "victims”) leads me to tell them, often, "You do know that whoever you’re toying with might be trapped somewhere and forced to do this, don’t you?”

This often results in a quick change of subject and probably secret meetings of the Erna Is A Killjoy support group.

Still, I can understand why people are so frustrated with scammers.

I’ve had phone scammers cold call me on weekends and even late at night, while I’m at the movies or even travelling overseas.

While sometimes it’s obvious the unknown number is a spam or scam caller, half the time I won’t know if it’s a package courier, food delivery or the local cops (supposedly) saying they need to "investigate” my tax bill.

Recently a man posted on social media about how he was scammed of RM5,000 when trying to rent a room.

The scam was both elaborate and well thought-out, preying on very human weaknesses.

It’s sad to read near-daily scam reports of people losing their savings to dodgy investment schemes or catfishing and I wonder, where are the stories with happy endings?

Do people ever get their money back?

Are the scammers ever caught and made to pay restitution?

Will we ever have days, maybe weeks or months of the phone ringing from legitimate callers?

Though it’s painful to read the stories I know they’re a good reminder to never think myself too smart to be scammed.

Yet I wish we could do more for victims.

Financial indoctrination

Reading the rental scam victim’s account and where he was told by the police that it was unlikely that anything would come out of his police report, it made me realise scams will thrive because there aren’t deterrents.

My own theory is that as a society we have become addicted to instant gratification.

Why go through all the hoops to apply for jobs and in the end get paid little for all that effort, when you can instead fleece gullible targets?

We need to stop blaming victims; I used to write about computer security and hacking, and what I’ve learned over the years can be summarised by this — scammers/hackers succeed not because they know systems, but because they know people.

For instance, investments.

I can’t even go to TikTok without some random video telling me I’m not doing enough to "make my money grow”.

The reality is that investing really isn’t as simple as it’s made out to be and while research and financial savvy help, sometimes it’s just about pure, dumb luck.

I often feel sorry sometimes for those fooled by investment scams because they’re not just victims of scammers — they’ve been indoctrinated by the never-ending push to invest, to make more money, to get more returns — finance propaganda that you probably wouldn’t be exposed to if you were herding goats in a place without internet.

Giving victims compensation

In the UK, banks now must refund fraud victims up to £85,000 (RM483,240) within five days.

The new law came into force from October 7, and it also means that the bank or payment provider who has refunded a customer can also claim back the refunded amount from other financial institutions that a fraudster used to receive the stolen money.

Basically, if a customer was scammed into transferring money from Bank A to Bank B to a scammer, Bank A will be obligated to refund said customer and then ask for half the money back from Bank B.

It is hoped that the new law will incentivise banks to tighten security controls and take action against fraudulent accounts.

Truly this would be helpful to Malaysians but I can already imagine banks and such would be saying, "Why should we pay or be inconvenienced by people not being smart enough?”

It’s easy to just say oh, people are stupid and greedy but the reality is that scams have become so much more elaborate they could fool even people who think they’re too educated or aware to be fooled.

This is the age of AI where now you can spoof voices and even videos, easily convincing your terrified grandmother that it’s you in that WhatsApp video, handcuffed and crying for help when in reality you didn’t plug your phone into a charger when you fell asleep, so she couldn’t call to check.

I’ve had scammers call my divorced parents separately trying to convince them my brother was in "Hospital Puchong” (which doesn’t exist, a Sabahan might not know that).

Fortunately, my parents asked me first because unlike most of the world, they think a journalist in the family is the best person to verify information.

Maybe some Malaysians just think that life is a scam anyhow, work so hard, get a degree, get paid peanuts while scamming a mark gets you easy money, conscience be damned.

Make scamming hard again.

That is the only real solution.

It’s time we make the banks understand that if they don’t protect their customers, they don’t deserve them and the banks who treat their customers like the moneymakers they truly are, will keep them.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.