KUCHING: Sarawak Democratic Action Party (DAP) chairman Chong Chieng Jen has warned the public not to easily trust online ads found on social media websites.
The Stampin MP warned the public this after helping a woman who ended up losing RM44,074.49 in eight unauthorised bank transfers within a short span of less than an hour, from 7.37pm to 8.29pm, on Dec 30, 2022.
“It happened when she was surfing Facebook and came across an advertisement for house-cleaning services and as the Chinese New Year is drawing nearer, she engaged the Facebook page administrator to order the house-cleaning service.
“However, she later encountered some problems in trying to make payment for the said service.
“On the following day, she discovered that her Public Bank account was blocked and upon enquiry with the bank, she found out that there were eight consecutive transfers of funds from her Public Bank account to someone’s account from Ambank Berhad.
“The name of the recipient account is someone unknown to her and what was peculiar in this case was that she had previously set her Public Bank account with the condition of one-day maximum withdrawal limit of RM10,000 and yet she did not receive any notification from Public Bank that her account limit setting was changed.
“Moreover, not only was there no such alert within the bank’s security system, the victim did not receive any notification nor any OTP or TAC from the bank,” he said on Tuesday (Jan 3).
Due to the aforementioned case, Chong has called on Public Bank Berhad to step up their internet banking security system to be more vigilant and secured as such consecutive transfers of fund would definitely raise some red-flag in the system thereby stopping the transfers altogether but regrettably that was not the case.
“I have, yesterday, immediately helped the victim to write to Public Bank to demand for the reimbursement of the whole sum as the money was kept in the custody of the bank and definitely there was some deficiency in the bank’s security system thereby allowing such abnormal transfers to occur within such short space of time and involving such large amount.
“I have also sent the same letter to Bank Negara Malaysia with the hope that Bank Negara Malaysia, being the regulator of some financial institutions in the country, can act to protect individual’s interest and their money in the bank.
“I shall also personally bring the matter, together with all those bank scam cases which I previously handled, to the attention of Minister of Finance (and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim).
“We cannot allow the banks to push their responsibility off to their customers instead of improving on the security of their internet banking system,” Chong concluded.’
