SMS Scam

As most Malaysian knows, our newspaper will be flooded by seasons of news each period of time. Well, long time ago, there was a season where kidnapping was happening here and there. Then come the raping cases. More and more raping cases capturing the highlights of our local newspaper. The murdering season came shortly after that where more news of murder cases were reported almost every 2 to 3 days. After that it did cool down for a week or two but then, traffic accidents that involve mostly buses floods the news faster than Mother Nature can flood Malacca. Every two or three days, several souls will be taken away just like that because of the bus driver's mistake.

Lately, SMS Scams have been conquering the new's headlights on daily basis.

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Source:http://thestar.com.my/news/story.aspfile=/2007/9/3/nation/18766055&sec=nation&focus=1

Gullible Malaysians lose RM35mil to syndicate in lucky draw scam
By LOURDES CHARLES

KUALA LUMPUR: Gullible Malaysians have lost a whopping RM35mil in the past seven months to an international syndicate in an elaborate SMS scam.

Police learnt of the huge losses after 163 cases were reported since January.

Forty people were detained recently in connection with the syndicate, based in Taiwan and Hong Kong, which has been operating here since 2006.

“We believe the syndicate members raked in about RM5mil a month just by sending out SMSes to the Malaysian public, claiming that they had won a lucky draw.

“Our investigations revealed that the syndicate either used a local or Hong Kong cellphone number,” Federal Commercial Crimes Investigations director Comm Datuk Ramli Yusof told The Star.

He said the syndicate had devised at least seven types of SMS scams It is learnt the syndicate in Taiwan had raked in an estimated $280mil Taiwanese dollars (RM29.7mil) in the past few years.

At least 19 Taiwanese suspects had been detained in the past few weeks in Xiamen and Fujian provinces in China.

The syndicate’s modus operandi is to send out SMS in Chinese to selected cellphone numbers informing the victims that they have won a lucky draw. They are to contact the number to collect their winnings, usually nothing less than RM100,000.

The message is normally accompanied by two cellphone numbers – a local and a Hong Kong number. In order for the victims to collect their prize, they must first pay a fee – being legal, insurance and membership expenses.

Some of the SMS scams are:

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  VICTIM receives a call that he or she has won a lucky draw by an electrical company based in Hong Kong and that he/she needs to pay a 5% tax to retrieve the goods worth an estimated RM100,000;


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  VICTIM receives a call from a Mandarin-speaking person saying that he/she has won a lucky draw contest and to contact the phone numbers given to collect the winnings. But he/she must pay a transfer fee to be deposited into an account. After depositing the money, the victim will be asked to contact another party to collect the prize. When the victim contacts the other party, he/she is asked to pay other charges; and


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  VICTIM receives a call from a person claiming to be a court official. He says the victim has failed to attend a court hearing. This will be followed by another call from a man claiming to be from Bukit Aman. The second caller informs the victim that he/she is involved in a criminal case and has to deposit a certain sum of money or his/her bank account will be frozen.

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You might been wondering why do I bother to post this up even though there's nothing to do with me. Well, if I have not received a SMS few minutes ago stating that I've just won RM14,000 I might not do this. Yeap, I just received this SMS that says PETRONAS has been organizing a lucky draw and I'm one of the lucky winner. The original message goes like this.

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Pengumuman dari PETRONAS MAS, TAHNIAH! SimCard Anda betua memenangi undian hadiah Wang RM14,000. Sila hubungi telefon 0062856814567.

Terima Kasih.

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PS: Will upload the picture once I get my hand on my camera. Blogging from my workplace.

It is so obvious that this is a scam (although I got kinda pretty excited at first.). Look at the language used. Betua? WTF is betua. If my Bahasa still serves me right, there ain't such thing as 'betua'. And beside that, look at the phone number. Looks like and Indonesian number to me. Why would Petronas, being a Malaysian company, asking us to call all the way to INDONESIA to collect our so-called prize. It just does not make any sense. So what I did was I gave a call to Petronas Headquarters to clarify things out. And it is true, that there isn't any such competition threw out by PETRONAS.

The reason why I went through the hassle of getting this blog up is because I just want to let you guys know that this such scam could happen to anyone although you're nobody. So, don't fall for these kinds of traps and thinking God has answered your prayers by dropping gold from the sky. It doesn't work that way.