wish to share this experience with all Malaysians, so they know what the banks actually do. Also to share details of scammers and their bank details.
A friend of mine was scammed by someone she met online. This person had been communicating with her and later claimed to want to marry her. Obviously he was from the UK with a UK mobile number. During their last conversation, he told her that he would be coming down to Malaysia to meet her family in two weeks and in the mean time, he was sending her some gifts. He claimed that the parcel contained a laptop, a diamond ring, flowers, perfumes and 5000 pounds. He also gave her a fake website for the so called courier company that would be handling the delivery. The name of the so called company is ‘GLOBAL EXPRESS SERVICES’ supposedly based in Sabah. If you check out the website, it does not have any land line or fax line, all the numbers listed are local handphone numbers. I know, I know my friend was stupid to actually believe the guy was genuine. Many have tried this scam with me before but I knew it was a scam and never bothered.
Anyway to make the long story short, she was given a personal bank account number to bank in a total of approximately RM8,000 supposedly for custom clearance and insurance. Which she stupidly did. The account number provided was as follows :-
Name : HUZAIDAH BINTI HUSSIN
Bank : CIMB A/C 12510075365528
Unfortunately for my friend, I only knew of this after she made a police report when despite banking in the money, she did not receive the parcel. In fact she did not even realize that the person she had been communicating with is involved in the scam and the person supposedly from the courier company was actually an African/Nigerian which I told her after calling the mobile number and pretending to ask for someone else. From his accent, it was obvious but she never realized it.
Anyway I took her to the nearest CIMB branch to make a report and to try to get the money back. I requested the officer to hold back the funds and do not allow any withdrawals as the account holder is a scammer and we were also informed that the RM8,000 plus is still in the account. She tells me that since the account does not belong to her branch, she is not able to do that. She informed us that the branch is their Kepong branch and so I asked her to call up the branch and ask them to immediately stop withdrawals and we will go to that branch and provide all the evidence and make our claim. That done we went to the kepong branch and provided all the evidence to the officer and requested that the money be refunded as there is clear cut evidence that it’s a scam. Even the police report was given with the deposit slips.
This happened on the 3/9/2008. The officer tells us that he will get his managers approval and call us if approved. After several days, I call the said officer only to be told that the legal department is handling it and they are investigating the case. I informed him that why should the case take that long to investigate as all evidence confirming the account holder is a scammer has been provided including write ups from other people who have been scammed by the same group. He tells me I am not able to speak to the legal officer handling it and can only liaise with the branch concerned.
Anyway again to make matters short, after making lots of noise and telling of the operator, I finally get to speak to a legal officer who tells me to call a Miss Rajesh based at the kepong branch as she is handling the case. I called her and she tells me nothing just that she does not know when it would be resolved and when I asked her to at least give me a date, she says she does not know and is very rude. I tried to explain to her to speed up the refund as my friend had borrowed the money from a money lender and thus paying a high interest as she thought that she would pay back once she received the parcel which also contained money. This Miss Rajesh tells me rudely ‘the bank is not bothered about that’. This of course pissed me off and I gave her a good piece of my mind, telling her yes I know the bank could not be bothered, only when people are doing well, they will run after them like a dog begging them to take loans etc. I had also spoken to the National Cosumer Complaints Center and provided all the details to them. Thus I told this Miss Rajesh as she was very rude and not helpful at all that from now the NCCC will communicate with her.
I even called BNM and have written to them about this. BNM says they have given CIMB 2 week to respond. BNM also tells me they have no procedures to deal with scammers, and that it falls under the police jurisdiction to take action. Despite the fact that so many people are being scammed, should not BNM be proactive and come up with proper procedures requiring all banks to report any scam accounts and all banks to be forwarded the report so they should blacklist this scammers and not allow them to open the a