SOME years back, Eye believe it was in 2012, a scam promising cash prizes purportedly from a large petroleum company started circulating via SMS in Malaysia.
Among others, the scam text message which was sent out to mobile phones indicated that the receiver had won a promotion or a competition, promising up to RM30,000 cash and even attached a so-called serial number to ‘verify’ the winnings.
The funny thing that set off alarm bells regarding this scam were the grossly misspelled words and of course, how could one win a competition without participating in it to begin with. Even mobile phone users who did not use this particular brand of fuel received the text messages.
Unfortunately some people, being typically human, got caught up thanks to the promised cash prizes and responded to the text messages.
In doing so, they were asked to provide personal details including identification card and bank account numbers. Some were quick to realise that things did not sound right and immediately terminated the interaction with the conmen.
Those still blinded by the prospect of RM30,000 went on ahead and found that their bank accounts were short of money, or found themselves having to make deposits to have the money released to them.
In spite of reports in the media and warnings by the said petroleum company, the Petroleum Products Agents Association, consumer groups and concerned individuals, the conmen behind the scams never let up and continued to send out text messages claiming that recipients had won cash.
This year, the said petroleum company again found itself facing the same public relations nightmare. The company had to again issue statements in the earlier part of this year to inform the public that these text messages were not legitimate.
A representative from the Sarawak Petroleum Products Agents Association even made a statement to say that these scams put the company and their agents in a bad light and urged telecommunication providers to play a role in helping to track and curb the activities of these conmen.
Yet the people behind these scams have been relentless. Just this week, mobile phone subscribers again started to receive the text messages.
The accompanying photo shows one example received within the week. The recipient actually sent a sarcastic reply “Aok” (Bahasa Sarawak for “yeah”) back to the sender. He never received any further communication from the sender.
Now there is definitely more than one thing wrong with this text message and at first glance, one who is not gullible or easily blinded by cash will be able to tell that it is a scam.
First of all the prize is indicated as “RM30.000”. Is this 30,000 or just 30? This sender, besides probably failing maths in school and not having any semblance of intelligence when it comes to placing decimal points, also fails as a conman.
The second major fail is that the spelling and language in the text message is simply atrocious. Call it net-speak, text-speak or whatever, no prominent company would put out an announcement in such appalling language.
The third fail would be the fact that the phone numbers indicated in text message as a sender and the number to call appear to be one of those prepaid numbers anyone could go to even roadside stalls to purchase.
Large corporations would not use such numbers to send text messages, but instead use subscribed numbers through telcos, which are easily recognisable and can be verified.
As a matter of fact, prominent companies will never resort to such unprofessional text messaging to inform that one has won a contest in the first place.
So, besides being wary and just blocking out and ignoring these weird text messages, what else can be done to curb these con jobs?
One such measure that we could take is to report such messages to the telecommunications provider that we subscribe to. And should we receive excessive numbers of these text messages, go ahead and lodge a police report.
Why not? It may take up some of our precious time, and for all you know, the conmen may not be caught, but at least we made it known.
Yet, at the end of the day, a conman’s success lies with a person’s gullibility. Are we so hard up for cash to respond to such messages and follow their instructions all the way?
Which brings the Eye to conclude with the following statement made by the friend who received the text shown here: “The irony is that, those who fall for these scams, are those who actually have money in the bank!”
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