KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 12 — If you’re reading this, you have probably been called by someone claiming to be a customer service representative or agency official asking to verify your identity and other personal information, or know someone who has.
If your Spidey senses tingle and you hang up, congratulations, you’ve probably had a close call with a scammer and escaped.
But scams these days are evolving very fast and everyone is at risk because it is a challenge to keep up.
A recent survey by CelcomDigi in collaboration with 307 of the government’s community centres known as National Information Dissemination (Nadi), found that 65 per cent of 10,893 people aged 18 and above across Malaysia have encountered some form of fraud.
The survey also found that those with tertiary education have been targeted; 77 per cent hold a bachelor’s degree, or a masters, or even a PhD.
Scammers also have done their homework and prey on those with higher income levels — 75 per cent of those surveyed earned above RM4,000 a month compared to 60 per cent who earn below RM1,000.
CelcomDigi head of sustainability Philip Ling said that Malaysians are still very trusting towards figures of authority and tend not to question the callers if they claim to be from Bank Negara for example.
“The scammers will always escalate the issue to their ‘superior’ as they know that most Malaysians tend to fear people in higher positions.
“One thing Malaysians must know is that the bank will not call you to tell you that you are suspected of money laundering; nor would they inform you that they are about to come and arrest you soon.
“This knowledge isn’t there,” he told Malay Mail in a recent interview.
So what kind of scams do Malaysians fall for these days? Here are the call tactics that have been employed, as listed in the CelcomDigi survey:
- Pretend to be a representative from a bank/telecommunications company/government department, requesting for personal information. Inform you that there are problems with your bank account, threaten you with legal action unless you pay to resolve the problem.
- Call or send you an SMS that you have received some financial assistance and ask you to provide your personal or bank details.
- Pretend to be an official from an enforcement agency regarding a summons or criminal activity.
- Pretend to be a representative for an online business and ask you to pay for product or service ordered, claiming that the the initial payment did not go through/was not received.
- Pretend that the mobile phone application that stores money is faulty, and ask you to provide your username and password to fix the app.
- Pretend to be a customer service representative saying that an OTP (one-time password) has been sent to you, and asking you for it for verification purposes.
- Ask you to transfer money to an unknown person’s account because it had allegedly been transferred to yours.
- Tell you that your computer or internet line has a problem and ask you for your personal information and bank or credit card details to resolve the issue.
- Claim that you bought concert or travel tickets online, which turn out to be fake.
Below are the real-life accounts three Malaysians who have been scammed shared with Malay Mail.
How Say See remembers a phone call he received one day from someone who claimed to be a friend and asked him for money to be transferred to a bank account online.
The 70-year-old retired engineer did not doubt the caller as the name was listed in his phone contact list.
“I got a call and the caller pretended to be a person I knew. He asked for some money, and the only reason why I didn’t suspect it was a scam was because this person was in my contact list,” he said.
So he wired money to this “friend”.
It was not the only time it happened to How who was hit twice more by scammers who impersonated two other people in his contact list.
Another 70-year-old who gave her name as Siti related how she lost RM75,000 to a scam in just one night.
The former civil servant received a call from a police station and was told by the “officer” that one of her bank accounts in Kelantan was suspected to have connections to an underground boss.
Siti was told the police had both her personal details as well as those of her family.
The next day, she was called by someone claiming to be a Bank Negara officer under the “AMLA” department who offered to help Siti transfer her savings for safekeeping until the end of the investigation.
This caller addressed Siti by name, earning her trust, and asked for her personal details.
She was informed that she would receive a message and was to ignore everything else during the 30-second time frame it would take to read the numbers to the “AMLA officer”.
Siti did as told and that was how she lost 50 years’ worth of savings.
AMLA actually stands for the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission has an Anti-Money Laundering Division that investigates cases under that law, but not a department.
A teacher in her 40s who asked not to be named shared with Malay Mail that she often receives calls about her bank card being compromised and asked to pay a certain fee to resolve the problem.
“Why I almost fell for the scam was because the scammer was very convincing since they had my bank card details.
“You would wonder how it was possible that they managed to get my bank card details, unless they actually work in the bank,” she said.
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