Afriend and I decided to go out for dinner some days back because she wanted to talk to me about something urgently. After getting our stomachs filled and catching up on old times, we got to the reason why she had wanted to see me.
Maggie (not her real name) was at a restaurant a few days prior to our meeting, and was having lunch when she received a phone call.
Seeing that it was a local number, she answered the call. A Chinese man on the other end of the line read out her full name and address.
Maggie realised that the man definitely had her MyKad because the address that was read out to her was her mother’s, which doesn’t appear on her legal documents.
The man claimed that there was a platinum credit card belonging to her being used for a purchase of an item at a jewellery company.
She was taken aback because she doesn’t have a credit card from that bank.
She insisted on this, but the man was adamant in telling her that someone was currently trying to swipe the card for a purchase of more than RM4,000.
When she asked him for his location, he said he was from the bank’s credit card centre in Jalan Raja Laut, Kuala Lumpur.
He added that this was the second purchase made using this credit card.
Maggie, who was confused, said that she could not seem to connect the dots and figure out the legitimacy of the call and the claims.
When she asked the man to “cancel” her card, the man told her that he would do so immediately and she should not go to the police. She ended the call as she wanted to speak to her husband.
She called the number again, but the answering machine on the other end of the line claimed that it was the bank’s credit card centre and gave her a set of instructions.
She ended the call but minutes later, the man called her back and told her that he would connect her call to an officer for her to lodge a report.
She was passed on to another man from the “Investigation Department” of the bank, and he told her that she would receive a call soon from an investigating officer.
Ten minutes later, she was on the phone again with a person who introduced himself as “Tuan Lim”.
He was asking many questions regarding her finances and bank account details, claiming that he needed the details of all her finances so that he could reimburse her money via PIDM (Perbadanan Insurans Deposit Malaysia) protection.
He made her walk to the nearest bank and told her not to talk to anyone.
He said she needed to key in some details to protect whatever money she had left in her bank account — all of this while still on the phone with her.
In her state of panic, she complied.
He gave her instructions to follow and got her to key in details on the automated teller machine in Malay because they were dealing with Bank Negara.
She ended up transferring RM6,000 to an unknown account, and that was the end of her money.
She had nothing left in her bank account. Only then did it hit her that she had been duped. By then it was too late, and she headed for the police station to lodge a report.
Perhaps, it was a lapse of judgment, or perhaps, it was ignorance.
Perhaps, it was simply folly, or perhaps, it was sheer distress.
Whatever it was that caused her to do what she did, it is not for us to judge.
It’s human to make mistakes, but what matters the most is that we learn from these blunders and hope that it would teach others to be more aware and alert to scams like this.
Scammers are rampant, and they would do almost anything to deplete your savings.
It should be our responsibility to make sure we don’t fall victim to these heartless, deceitful people.
The writer, a lecturer at Sunway College, is a Malaysian-born Eurasian with Scottish/Japanese/Indian lineage. She believes in a tomorrow where there is no racism and hatred