Phone Scam

Imagine this.  You're happily at work, or doing your chores at home, or maybe even outside.  Then suddenly your phone rings.  If you received the call from your mobile phone, you look at the number and it shows some unknown number.  Curious, you answered the call.  A machine reads out the following message, or a variation of this message.

 

"Ini panggilan daripada XYZ Bank.  Anda mempunyai tunggakan baki kad kredit tidak berbayar sebanyak RM5,000 untuk tiga bulan.  Untuk bercakap dengan seorang pegawai, sila tekan 9".

Or in English

"This is a call from XYZ Bank.  You have credit card balance amounting to RM5,000 unpaid for 3 months.  To speak with an officer, please press 9".  

Or in even more plain English, this is a scam, better known as Macau scam.

The Scam

Upon receiving this call, many people just panicked and pressed "9" without thinking.  Then, they would be led to a person posing as a banker who would be "concerned" that your banking details had been leaked and would be nice enough to transfer your line to a "police officer", usually a "sergeant".

The "sergeant" would then tell you that your name is listed in either drug trafficking, money laundering, or whatever grandfather story that they can think of.  

Due to the pressure they received from the callers, the victims do not have time to think it through.  They would have shared their account numbers, debit or credit card numbers, internet banking user IDs / passwords and even the TAC (telephone activated code) which are sent by their banks.  By the time they realised something is wrong, it is usually too late as the scammers would have already transferred out all the victims' money to other accounts, usually mule accounts which they had gotten other people to open for them. 

It Can Happen to Anyone

The thing about these kind of scam is it can happen to anyone.  It doesn't matter what is your educational background.  Even teachers, doctors and businessmen get tricked by this scam.  

The beauty of this scam is its simplicity and reliance on our fear and lack of knowledge.  

What to Look for? 

Machine Call

When you received the call, the caller is a machine reading out a variation of above text.  We are not talking about Terminator's Skynet talking, but a voice-recording of a woman reading the text.  Banks do not use pre-recorded voice message to tell you why they are calling you.  

They never verify your identity

In fact, the first question any bank's collection agent will verify your identity before proceeding with details, even if they are the one that had initiated the call.  This is to ensure that they do not breach Section 133 and Section 134 of Financial Services Act (Section 145 and Section 146 are the equivalent under Islamic Financial Services Act) by inadvertently releasing information to an unauthorised third party.  So, if no one tries to verify your identity at the very beginning of a call, you might be talking to a scammer.

The Caller always Transfer you to a Police Officer or Bank Negara personnel

They do this to play with our fear of the authorities.  These are people that can arrest us or prosecute us for criminal activities.  And in our daily lives, we seldom (or rather dare not to) question these figure of authorities.  

But if you stop and think for a moment, how did they manage to transfer the line to police or Bank Negara so quickly?  Unless they are sitting next to each other.

Note, a possible variation they can do with you is by saying a police officer or Bank Negara personnel will call you shortly. 

They will always ask for your banking details via the phone

Your name, MyKad number, debit / credit card number, internet banking user ID / password, and TAC are the details they would be asking from you.  Why do an officer needs these?  Especially TAC as TAC is time sensitive?  So if anyone ask you for any of the above, especially via phone or even WhatsApp / FaceBook messenger / any messaging platform, stop.  This is a scam.

Note: I nearly fell for one similar scam.  An ex-colleague suddenly added me again on FaceBook even though I had added her years ago.  She then messaged me to ask for my phone number, which I volunteered to her, thinking she might wanted to ask me something as I had just bumped into her days ago.  Then, out of nowhere, I received a TAC for some online purchase.  "She" messaged me to give her the TAC quickly.  Suspicious now, I quickly checked the new FaceBook and noted the date of birth was wrong.  I definitely can remember her date of birth as we shared the same date.  I replied I need to check for details as they are scammers pretending to be others.  Realising I was on to the scam, the person broke off contact.  Which I can only inform my friend that someone had spoofed her account.

Phones Calls are Received at Sequentially Numbered Phones (Office Setting)

I've seen this many times.  One by one of the phones at my office received phone calls from the same scammer.  Which evidently points to one thing, they are calling at random.  

Note: I have an admission to make.  Sometimes, I gleefully accept these calls as a stress reliever.

What not to look for?

The Phone Number

Chances are they got the number from an illegal immigrant who is planning to go back to their home country and no longer require the phone number.  Or they had gotten it from naive students and / or housewives who were asked to open accounts on their behalf, probably using either a sob story or for a small token sum.  

And a possible scenario that may happen, the scammer may use some software or system to spoof a real bank's phone number.  So do take note based on the red flags I've shared above.  Just remember, a real bank will always verify your identity first. 

What do you need to do if you still get scammed?

File a complaint with your banker and make a police report.  

When you file your complaint with your banker, please make sure that you get them to disable your current internet banking profile.  Depending on banks, you will need to ask them to reissue a new ID for your internet banking, as your previous profile had been compromised.  

Can you get your money back?  

Unfortunately, you are unlikely to get your money back.  If you act fast enough, your banker might be able to stop the fund from flowing out of the mule accounts used by the scammers to park the money temporarily.  

But getting the mule account holders to refund you would be a tough cookie to crack as they are usually victims in some other way too.  So what is mule account?  That would be a story for another day.