SIBU: A woman suffered a whopping loss of close to RM2 million after she was cheated by a syndicate involving ‘high profile figures’ claimed to be from Hong Kong.
The 54-year-old woman surnamed Ling, her husband and younger sister were accompanied by Dudong assemblyman Yap Hoi Liong to lodge a police report at Sibu Central Police Station yesterday morning.
Yap said the victim received calls from four persons from Hong Kong – a lawyer, head of tax department, bank manager and head of customs department.
“The woman said she was told to pay tax amounting to HK$880,000 (about RM400,000) for alleged profit she gained in a business,” he told reporters at a press conference yesterday.
Yap said when the callers could identify her personal particulars, the woman was led into believing she was really mired in trouble.
He added that her “mind was blank and did not know what to do” then.
“Scared to tell the incident to others including her husband, she kept it to herself and paid the money to 10 persons from Peninsular Malaysia through seven different banks in stages.”
Yap hoped the police would instruct related banks to investigate the 10 bank accounts.
The woman also received a ‘letter from the Hong Kong government’ on May 9, telling her to pay up.
In August, she received a court order from Hong Kong, demanding she compensate for money laundering involving RM10 million.
Yap said the woman had paid over RM1.7 million from May 2 until Sept 29.
Of the RM1.7 million, over RM700,000 came from the woman and her husband, and the rest said to have been raised solely by the woman.
Yap said the woman also sold her gold to make the payment.
The woman, who was in the tailoring business in the past, sells vegetables with her husband to earn a living.
Her husband, who is also a photographer, only learned of the incident after his wife demanded money from him to pay the ‘debt’.
Yap urged public members to be aware of such cheating because it had been published in newspapers many times.
He advised the public who come across such incidents not to keep it to themselves but to lodge a police report.
In another case yesterday morning, Yap said a friend told him he came upon a credit card fraud through a telephone call.
In the call, the friend was told that his credit card was abused and was told to transfer all his savings to a given bank account, lest his bank accounts get frozen.
When he hung up the phone, four men came to his shop and confronted him asking him why he did not do as told.
Yap said a public member had phoned him yesterday that he had come upon a fraud through a flyer.