By Malcolm Lau
KUCHING, June 12: Members of the public are urged not to be easily swayed by loan offers from social websites and applications following two scam cases that have been reported to the police recently.
Sarawak Commercial Crime Investigation Department chief, Supt Maria Rasid said the first case happened at Kota Samarahan in which a 25-year-old woman was deceived by an offer from a social media website on May 31, 2020
“The victim had decided to loan RM20,000 from the offer and had contacted the number provided on the website,” she said in a statement today.
She said the victim later followed the instructions from the scammers and had paid a total of RM36,000 through 16 transactions to them as insurance and other processing fees for the lenders.
“The victim later felt suspicious with all the payments and had realised she was scammed by the offers. She lodged a police report after no money had been transferred to her,” she said.
Maria said the second case happened at Padawan area where a 22-year-old woman was scammed of RM800 through a social media website.
“The victim saw an interesting loan offer from the website and had decided to contact the number for a loan of RM10,000,” she said.
“The scammer later had requested the victim to pay RM800 as “stamp fee” in order to proceed with the loan,” Maria added.
She said that the victim later became suspicious and had reported the case after the scammer requested another RM850 as a processing fee for the loan.
“The public are urged not to borrow, lend, or sell their bank account to anyone as the owner of the bank account will be charged if their bank account is involved in criminal activities,” Maria noted.
Members of the public can contact the Commercial Crime Investigation Department at phone no. 013 2111222 if they have any information concerning these irresponsible acts from the scammers.
Meanwhile, a total of 162 cases involving loan scams have been reported starting from January 1 to June 11 this year in Sarawak, incurring RM1.6 million worth of losses.
A total of 26 arrests had been made so far this year. –DayakDaily
