BUSINESSMAN NEARLY FALLS VICTIM TO ONLINE BANKING SCAM

Businessman nearly falls victim to online banking scam

Tan showing the police report.

KOTA KINABALU 1/10/2012: A businessman nearly lost RM9,800 through an Internet banking scam when he clicked on a link in his email which led him to his online banking webpage.

The businessman who wanted to be identified only as Mr Tan, 37, said he received an email from his bank around 5pm on September 27, notifying him that the bank was in the process of upgrading its database and he was required to update his profile.

He clicked on to the link provided in the email which re-directed him to the online banking login page of the domestic bank and was asked to key in a new password for that facility.

“The webpage looked exactly the same like the real one,” he claimed.

Fiften minutes later, Tan suspected something amiss and when called the bank via a given hotline number, he was given the assurance that the bank was definitely carrying out an upgrading exercise.

Later that day, he attempted to login to his account through the bank’s website using the new password which he had keyed in earlier, but to no avail.

When he logged into his online banking account the next day, he discovered that RM5,000 was missing from the initial RM22,000 available in the account.

He also received a notification in his email that the money was transferred to a third party account under the name of ‘Mmoloki’ in another bank.

Tan immediately went the nearest branch of the bank in Inanam where a staff member assisted him to notify the bank’s headquarters. The transaction was successfully cancelled to thwart the fraud attempt, as an interbank transfer would normally take two days to process.

He subsequently received a text message and an email advising him that the interbank transfer of RM5,000 had not been successful.

But that was not the end of the problem, for the bank checked the balance of his account once again at that time and discovered that another RM4,800 had been debited from his account.

This prompted him to make another call to be made to the bank’s headquarters to advise cancellation of the transaction and Tan’s account is now frozen.

Tan lodged a police report on September 28, and was informed by police that several cases with a similar modus operandi involving another bank had been reported.

Tan was lucky not to have lost money in the fraud and urged members of the public to be wary of such scam, especially involving online banking.

by Chok Sim Yee