RM116,700 gone in two days: Bank rejects Kuching woman’s fraud dispute

KUCHING (Feb 5): A woman here lost RM116,700 to unauthorised transactions from both her fixed deposit and savings accounts in October last year.

The victim, identified as Ang, discovered the suspicious activity only after a friend alerted her about money-borrowing request messages sent from her WhatsApp account.

She raised the matter with Stampin MP Chong Chieng Jen’s special assistant, Michael Kong, during a meeting.

“Alarmed, she immediately checked her bank statement and discovered that the balance in her savings account showed withdrawals of RM116,700.00,” said Kong in a statement.

“What is deeply troubling is that Ang’s savings account originally contained just over RM20,000.

“Yet somehow, the bank allowed RM100,000 from her fixed deposit to be withdrawn and transferred into her savings account, after which the entire sum was siphoned out over the course of two days,” he said.

According to Kong, none of these transactions were authorised by Ang, who also did not receive any real-time notifications while the transfers and withdrawals were taking place.

The only notification she received was an email at 11.53am on Oct 6 last year.

She immediately contacted the bank to dispute the transactions.

“By the time she reached the customer service, all the money had already been wiped out,” he said.

Following the incident, Ang promptly informed the bank, lodged a police report, and submitted a formal dispute claim to the bank.

Despite what Kong described as clear red flags, including unauthorised access, lack of notification alerts, and the movement of a large fixed deposit sum, Ang’s dispute was rejected by the bank.

Kong added that he had assisted Ang in lodging a dispute with the Financial Markets Ombudsman Service.

“This case raises serious and disturbing questions. How was a fixed deposit allowed to be uplifted and transferred without the account holder’s knowledge?” he questioned.

“Why were there no immediate alerts for such large and unusual transactions? And when consumers act swiftly upon discovering fraud, why are they still left unprotected?”

Kong pointed out that ordinary Malaysians, including senior citizens and retirees, were losing their life savings in a matter of hours due to security lapses that are beyond their control.

“It is simply unacceptable to push the burden entirely onto consumers while financial institutions disclaim responsibility,” he said.

“Banks profit from public trust. When that trust is broken, regulators must step in decisively to ensure consumers are protected.”

Kong called upon Bank Negara Malaysia to urgently review and strengthen mandatory cyber security standards across all banks.

“These must include stricter controls over fixed deposit withdrawals, real-time transaction alerts, stronger authentication mechanisms and clearer accountability when breaches occur,” he said.