Two fall victims to scams while three avoid being cheated

KUCHING: Sarawak Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) received five new reports from individuals in connection with the so-called Macau and parcel scams on Wednesday.

CCID chief Supt Mustafa Kamal Gani Abdullah in a press statement here yesterday said out of the five, two had fallen victims to the Macau scammers while the other three managed to detect the ploy and thus avoid being cheated.

“The two victims were a 66-yearold housewife from Kuching who lost RM40,000 and a 65-year-old man from Miri who lost RM20,996.68," said Mustafa.

According to Mustafa, the first victim received a call from Kuala Lumpur from a woman named ‘Sabrisa' who said the former's bank account was used in drug activities.

The caller was also said to have blamed the victim for the former's ‘friend' being warded at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital after consuming sleeping pills.

After being told that the case had been reported to the police, the panicky victim banked in a total of RM40,000 into a bank account under the name of ‘Pang Kar Lun'.

The other victim said Mustafa was cheated of his money by a caller named ‘Lim Kei Chen' who said he worked at a hospital in Kuala Lumpur.

The caller had told him that the latter's identification card had been misused to obtain a medicine at the hospital.

The victim was then urged to go to the nearest ATM machine to key in a series of numbers which he did without suspecting anything .

“The victim only realised that he had been scammed after all his savings were transferred to another bank account," said Mustafa.

The three individuals who managed to avoid being cheated were a 46-year-old man from Kuching, a 26-year-old man and a-37-year-old man from Miri.