SIBU: Two individuals here suffered a loss of more than RM93,000 and RM3,000 respectively due to fraud when purchasing face masks online.
The first case involves a female teacher here who suffered a loss of more than RM93,000 after dealing with a woman who allegedly sold face masks online.
The victim was said to have ordered 200 boxes of face masks worth RM50,000 from the suspect through the Facebook Messenger application on July 29.
Sibu District police chief ACP Stanley Jonathan Ringgit, in a statement on Saturday (Aug 8), said the payment was made through the victim’s Maybank and Ambank accounts via online transfer of 13 transactions to the suspect’s Maybank account between July 29 to August 1.
“The complainant also followed the suspect’s instructions to pay various other payments including purchase tax amounting to RM17,360 on August 2 and a payment of RM8,560 for the delivery service on August 3.
“On August 4, the complainant was also asked to pay another tax where an additional payment of RM17,800 was also transferred to the suspect’s account,” he added.
Stanley explained that the complainant was instructed to pay an additional payment of RM2,500 but she refused.
He said the suspect then informed the complainant that her order would arrive at her house on August 6. However, the goods did not arrive as promised.
“The complainant began to feel suspicious and felt cheated when her calls and messages were blocked by the suspect,” he added.
Stanley said the victim then lodged a report on Saturday after suffering a loss of RM93,070.
In a separate case, a 45-year-old female trader also suffered the same fate after ordering 10 boxes containing 2,000 pieces of face masks online on August 6.
“The second victim was offered a price of RM300 for each box. She also suffered a loss of RM3,000 after making full payment,” he explained.
The suspect also assured the victim that the face masks would be sent by a courier service. When the victim checked the tracking number on August 7, she found the item was not in her name.
Stanley said the complainant realised that it was a scam when she failed to contact the suspect.
He added that both suspects were scammed into depositing money into the suspect’s account to buy non-existent face masks.
“Both cases are being investigated under Section 420 of the Penal Code for fraud,” he added.
