SIBU: Two local men in their 30s have been detained in South Korea on allegations of being involved in an illegal activity of voice phishing.
Bukit Assek assemblywoman, Irene Chang said yesterday that the duo is now awaiting trial in South Korea and their case is causing mental, emotional and physical hardships to their family members here.
“The families of the two accused had contacted me for assistance as the duo had been put in a lock-up. I have already liaised with the Malaysian Embassy in South Korea,” she said.
The duo is believed to have been enticed by scammers abroad who offered them lucrative deals but ended up participating in illegal activities.
They were caught by the South Korean police and detained.
“As the case is still on-going and for the privacy of the families, it is not proper for me to reveal much on it. The only thing which I want to say is that people need to be careful and not to fall to such trap,” she said.
Chang added that she was also a scam victim when someone created a fake Facebook account using her name and profile photo from her own Facebook account to cheat a man from Sarikei a week ago.
“The scammer messaged the man, who is my FB friend, to inform him of a purported Federal government programme which gave grants to those who required financial assistance. The impersonator told the man that this was a collaboration between the federal government and the World Bank to help those in need of financial assistance for various reasons. Without checking on the veracity of the message, the man had banked into the account given by the impersonator, a certain sum of money as upfront processing fee,” she said.
She said it was only a few days after the bank-in that the man sensed something amiss and called her personally on the telephone to ask if the person who contacted him in the first place was really her.
“That was when I got to know about the scam using my name and FB profile photo. Both the victim and I have since then lodged a report for the police to investigate the matter,” she added.
In highlighting, the emergence of various scams through both telephones and online media, where many people had fallen for them and losing their life savings to scammers, Chang said in some cases, these scammers have also enticed people, especially young people to go to other countries with promises of high salaries.
“And after these people followed the scammers to the destination country, they would find themselves either stuck in the country without being able to return to Malaysia, like the 40 Sarawakians who were detained in Cambodia in last February,” she said.
Scammers, she said are often successful because they feed on people’s needs for quick financial solutions as well as desire for quick gains to address their financial problems.
“I urge the people not to fall for these scams and to always refuse to entertain any calls or messages from people which offer lucrative deals and offers as well as those involving the transfer of money from your account to any bank account given by them.
“Even if these scammers use the name and profile photos of public figures, like the case from Sarikei, we should always check with sources close to the public figures whether the calls/messages are real.
“And we should always practise wisdom and caution like as in the Sarikei case where the victim should have realised that if there had really been such a federal government programme, it would have been widely publicised in all media and would certainly not have been offered/processed through personal messages by elected representatives,” she said.
For those whose computer security has been breached, Chang advised them to contact MyCERT (The Malaysian Computer Emergency Response Team) at 1300882999 whose team of specialists would provide immediate assistance for Malaysian Internet users in the detection and response to computer security incidents such as computer abuses, hack attempts and other information security breaches.
She also called on the police to step up on their investigations of these cases and to bring the culprits to court as a deterrent.
