IPOH: FIFTEEN businessmen lost more than RM2 million after they were cheated by a man through several tenders for projects allegedly from the state Forestry Department.
The victims, who are contractors and suppliers from various companies, learnt that they were cheated when one of the victims shared the information on the conman on the “Ipoh Ipoh Ajerr Versi 2.0” Facebook page on April 11 after failing to contact the man for two weeks.
Since then, 12 victims, including a woman, contacted each other through Facebook and learnt that some of them had lodged reports at the Sungai Senam police station between February and this month, while the remaining had yet to lodge reports as they are abroad.
Aznol Rizal Fatahal Karim, 39, said he knew the conman since 2015 through several deals and had several successful business dealings with him. The problem started in December last year.
“He asked me to bid for several government contracts and convinced me that I was the sole funder for the tenders. I did not know that he had used the same method on two other contractors by telling them that their companies also won the tenders. Instead of getting RM50,000 for a job, he would get RM150,000 from the contractors in exchange for securing the projects,” he said outside the Sungai Senam police station alongside six victims here yesterday.
The owner of Salpro Resources said the highest amount he had paid was RM40,000 as capital for a project to provide uniforms for the state Forestry Department. But he received only RM30,000 from the man later instead of the full payment, which included interest, which amounted to RM55,000.
“When asked, he said the remaining RM15,000, out of the RM55,000, would be used as rolling capital for the next project,” he said.
In two years, Aznol, who supplies trees and office equipment, said he funded the conman and the accumulated payment balance, costing him a loss of RM122,000.
The money was paid for his company to secure the projects and to provide other services such as the uniforms allegedly requested by the Forestry Department through the conman.
In the deal, the man would act as the broker and look for “potential” jobs. He later would share the profit with the businessmen.
“Out of more than 10 jobs, only five were considered ‘successful’, even though I did not receive the full amount. Compared with other victims, I did not receive official offer letters from the department as the man showed me only WhatsApp messages to convince me. Other victims who had offer letters found that they were fake as all of them had the same file and quotation numbers for different companies,” said Aznol.
He met a Forestry Department officer at the development unit last week and was informed that they would tighten the standard operating procedures for documentation and had requested the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate the matter.
The officer said the department had also lodged three reports regarding the issue.
Yesterday, a state MACC spokesman said he had yet to receive information from the state Forestry Department on the issue.
“The conman could no longer be contacted and checks at his house in Taman Ipoh Jaya and a family house in Teluk Intan found that both were vacated,” Aznol said.
The group hoped that more victims would come forward and lodge reports so that action could be taken against him.
“I hope no new victims fall into his trap as we have highlighted this issue to the public,” he said, adding that it was believed that there were more people involved as some of the tenders were awarded to other groups of contractors.