KUCHING: Members of the public are strongly advised to be smart in managing the usage of the social media to avoid from getting scammed.
Sarawak Criminal Investigation Department (CID) head Supt Mustafa Kamal Gani Abdullah said members of the public must be careful when accessing the Internet or any form of communication tool as recent commercial crime cases that happened were the result of using a medium or platform through social media, smart phone applications and others to cheat people.
“We have recently received three fraud cases involving Type Allocation Code (TAC), Macau scam and non-existing loan in the state for which we have warned the public about them,” Mustafa said in a statement.
The first fraud case involving TAC was reported in Sibu where the victim a civil servant aged 20, received a phone call on April 16 where the suspect asked him to read out the TAC number that was sent by Molpay Sdn Bhd where money will supposedly be sent to the victim’s “father” who is ill.
On April 17 when the victim checked his bank account through online banking, he was shocked to find that RM7,000 has been deducted from his account. He then immediately went to the bank and was told that the amount has been transferred to a third-party bank account.
The second fraud case, a Macau scam, was reported in Bintulu where the victim, a company supervisor aged 43, received a call from a bank officer who claimed that someone was using the victim’s credit card in Johor Baharu and asked the victim to follow the instructions of a “Sergeant Alan Chong Wai Mun” to transfer money to a bank account under an unknown individual’s name for investigation purposes.
On the very same day, the victim transferred his life savings of RM22,999.00 to a bank account given by the suspect. The suspect then ordered the victim to destroy the receipt and forbade him to access the account until April 23 in order to keep the “investigation” smooth.
When the victim checked with his bank later, he was shocked when told that he has been scammed by the phone call.
Third fraud case of non-existing loan was reported in Miri where the victim, a sales person aged 23 was excited when a representative of a company through a Facebook account offered to give her a loan on April 13.
The victim claimed that she wanted to loan RM15,000 from the company when the suspect told her that in order for the loan to be approved the victim has to make a few payments first.
Apart from that, the victim was asked to send a photocopy of her MyKad, pay slip and bank account number to the suspect via Whatsapp.
Following the requests, the victim then made three payments totaling RM3,350 to a bank account given by the suspect from April 14 until April 19.
The woman only realised that she has fallen victim to a scam when the loan she applied never came although she has followed all the instructions.
Hence, members of the public are strongly advised not to give any TAC number received via text message to anyone and always be careful and not to easily fall for tricks used by people disguising as police officers or others asking to transfer money and loan offers through social media.
Should members of the public have any question or suspected that they have been cheated or deceived they can send text messages via WhatsApp to Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CID) hotline at 013-211 1222.
