Serian school teacher loses RM270,000 to investment scam

KUCHING (Dec 5): A school teacher in her 40s from Serian district has lost about RM270,000 to an investment scam that was promoted on social media.

Sarawak Police Commissioner Dato Mancha Ata said the police received a report from the victim on Dec 4.

“In early September this year, when the victim was browsing Facebook at home in Serian, she was attracted to a stock investment advertisement.

“The victim had dealt with a woman who introduced herself as Chryseis before being added into a WhatsApp group named A80.

“In the group, the victim would be requested to attend classes through a website on every Monday, Thursday or Sunday to learn about the techniques of investing,” he said in a press statement today.

Following that, Mancha said the victim was asked to download an application through a link given and for registration purposes, she had uploaded pictures of her identity card to the application.

“The victim, who was interested (in the investment), was offered returns of about 10 per cent for each investment made.

“The victim made a total of nine fund transfers to two different bank accounts totalling about RM270,000 starting from the middle of November until the end of the month.

“After performing each transaction, the victim would sell or buy stocks via the downloaded application and through the application, she was able to view the performance of the stocks,” he said.

Mancha said the the victim only realised she has been scammed on Nov 29 when the victim found that the money from in her application’s account could not be transferred to her bank savings account.

“Because of that, the victim conducted a check with a Singaporean company and was told that the company did not provide stock trading service,” he added.

In view of this, Mancha advised the public not to easily believe in investment schemes that promise lucrative returns within a short period of time.

Apart from warning the public against downloading any android package kit (APK) from untrusted source, he also urged them to only invest on platforms that are registered with Bank Negara Malaysia and Securities Commission Malaysia.

He said the public must immediately call the National Scam Response Centre on 997 if they feel that they have been scammed.

Further information on the modus operandi of scammers can be found at http://semakmule.rmp.gov.my or by visiting the Commercial Crime Investigation Department’s Facebook page.