KUANTAN: A housewife lost RM59,500 to a Macau Scam after being deceived into believing that she was involved in money laundering activities.
The 57-year old from Bera received a call on Jan 16 from a woman claiming to be "Arisa" from a bank headquarters in Kuala Lumpur stating that she had outstanding loan installments amounting to RM50,000.
The victim was reluctant to response to such claims and was then transferred to a man claiming to be "Sergeant Azman" from the Seri Kembangan police station.
The impersonator told her she was involved in money laundering instead.
The victim again denied such accusations and once again was transferred to another line.
The third person she spoke to was "Tuan Chong". He asked her to transfer all her money into a specific bank, stating that it was the safest bank option.
According to Pahang Commercial Criminal Investigation Department Chief Superintendent Mohd Wazir Mohd Yusof said this Tuan Chong claimed the specific bank was "the safest among all the other banks in Malaysia".
"The victim did not fight this anymore and followed his demands.
"She transferred all her savings of RM59,600 into her account in the other bank she was told was 'safe'.
"This Tuan Chong then told her to change her ATM card and register a new phone number which he had given for the account.
"She did everything he asked for, and the next day when she checked her account balance... there was only RM100 left," he said.
In shock, she rushed to the nearest police station to lodge a report.
According to Wazir, the scammers were using their standard modus operandi of “good cop, bad cop” to dupe victims.
He added that continuously transferring the line was a major red flag seeing that the victim was not convinced of their claims.
"They were phishing for victims and here she had fallen for it after three attempts.
"Seeing that she had not fallen for the outstanding loan game, they used the money laundering card on her instead," he said.