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By Lian Cheng
KUCHING, July 5: A female retiree in Kuching narrowly avoided a catastrophe when she decided to call a lawyer instead of withdrawing her savings and putting it into another account as instructed by phone scammers.
On June 27, the almost-victim received a call informing that she had a parcel sent from Kuala Lumpur to Penang consisting of items such as identification cards and passports.
Following that she was transferred to a purported high-ranking police officer at Bukit Aman named ‘Datuk Safoan’, who told her that she had been found to be involved in money laundering activities and if she wanted to get out of her situation, she would have to follow his “advice” by withdrawing her money from a certain account and deposit it in another account which did not belong to her.
Confused and frightened, the retiree obediently went to the bank to make the withdrawal.
“Upon arriving at the bank, she felt something was not right as she felt she was being followed.
“She asked to see the branch manager and at the same time called me. I advised her to instantly instruct her bank to suspend or freeze all her accounts and to check the balance of accounts,” said Sarawak United Peoples’ Party (SUPP) Public Complaint Bureau chief Milton Foo in a press conference held at SUPP headquarters here.
Further checks showed that her savings in the bank were still intact, including her fixed deposits.
Prior to that, Foo also tried to make sure that the retiree did not check her account using her own handphone. This was because the scammers may already have remote access to her device through which they may access her password if she were to key it in.
“After that, she lodged a police report and extended a copy of the statement to the bank,” said Foo.
Foo said the scammers sounded convincing as they somehow were able to get hold of details such as the name of the retiree’s former boss and the amount of savings in her bank accounts. — DayakDaily
