KOTA KINABALU: Two victims here were cheated of nearly half a million ringgit by telephone conmen.
Kota Kinabalu member of parliament Hiew King Cheu said the victims had voluntarily banked in the money into some unknown and untraceable bank accounts belonging to the conmen.
The victims came to see Hiew crying and informing that they were conned of RM225,000 and RM244,550 respectively.
In both cases the victims were said to be lucky draw winners in Hong Kong, and the prize money was more than RM500,000 each.
The callers, who were Mandarin speaking ladies, congratulated the winners and asked them to remit money in order to process the prize. They would later persuade them to invest their prize money for bigger lucky draw prizes. The victims were also told that they could use the winnings to invest, but more cash investment was needed.
The victims fell for this trick and remitted more cash into the untraceable accounts. The bank-in slips that were shown to Hiew showed huge sums from RM50,000 to RM70,000.
“It is surprising that many people have fallen into the trap and this time it is the ‘big lucky draw’ with winnings in millions of ringgit,” he said in a statement yesterday.
The member of parliament asked the public to be very careful not to fall for these tricks.
He advised the victims to make reports for the police to start investigations into this overseas con job. Hiew urged the police to immediately track these con men and to recover the money.
“Interpol must be brought in to help with the investigation because it involved an international crime ring,” he said.