SIBU: Because of greed, a 48-year-old teacher lost more than RM8,000 after being tricked into paying for a non-existent mobile phone purchase from an online shopping company on Sunday.
Sibu district police chief ACP Stanley Jonathan Ringgit said the victim had earlier received a message from a man who claimed to be a representative of the online shopping company.
According to him, the suspect had informed the victim about a mobile phone worth RM8,000 bought from them, however the victim claimed to have never made any purchases before.
“The suspect then presented a receipt with the victim’s name and bank account number.
“The suspect proceeded to tell the victim that they would return the money after the victim refused to buy the phone,” he said in a statement yesterday.
Stanley added the suspect had instructed the victim to follow his instructions to get the money back whereas, the money in the victim’s account was never deducted.
He mentioned that because of the victim’s greediness of claiming ‘free money’, the victim received four Transaction Authorisation Codes (TACs) for online banking around 7.53pm on the same day.
“Without thinking too long, the victim provided the TACs to the suspect. The man told the victim that the money would be returned within three days, considering that there was no deduction of money in the victim’s account prior to the so-called purchase,” he told.
Stanley noted that the victim checked the bank account and eventually found out that RM8,250 had been transferred twice to a person’s e-wallet account.
The victim decided to lodge a police report the same day after the scam.
The case will be investigated under Section 420 of the Penal Code.
