KUCHING: A warehouse assistant who was besotted with a woman whom he befriended through social media learned a bitter lesson when he lost RMM94,250 to her.
The 40-year-old local victim first got acquainted with Vivian Chen Lugard on Facebook at the end of November 2018. Since then they frequently contacted each other on Whatsapp.
The victim told police that the woman claimed to be a citizen of the USA and has studied at Curtin University, Miri.
After they have known each other for a while, the woman began to ask the victim for money for school and family affairs and promised that she would ask her father, David Lugard, to reimburse him. He sent her a total of RM94,250 on four different occasions to different accounts.
According to the victim, Lugard claimed that her parcel posted from Ave Don Manuel 4004, Zulia, Venezuela had arrived in Malaysia.
Later he received a phone call from one Celine Chong, who claimed she was an agent of Swift Star Global, confirmed that the parcel had arrived.
She asked him to bank in RM40,800 into a Public Bank account as payment for the delivery.
Sensing that something was wrong, he told a friend and was asked by him to lodge a police report. It was only then that he realised he had been cheated.
Commercial Crime Investigation Department chief Supt Mustafa Kamal Gani Abdullah, confirmed the case and said police were investigating it.
He urged the public not to trust people on social media whose backgrounds are not known or can’t be verified satisfactorily.
Mustafa said most parcel scam victims had never met their social media contacts, yet they readily hand over their hard-earned money.
Most of the victims continued to put money into accounts that didn’t belong to their Facebook contacts but in the name of different individuals.
Mustafa urged those who were not sure of their contacts to check with the department or any nearby police station for advice.
For more information, Mustafa said they can check with the official portal of the Royal Malaysia Police (rmp.gov.my), Commercial Crime Investigation Department (ccid.rmp.gov.my), ccid.rmp.gov.my/semakmule/# and Facebook of the Sarawak Commercial Criminal Investigation Department to obtain information and recent advice on financial fraud.
