Beware of Mobile phone scam known as “Macau Scam” involving “bank officers”

Friday, November 11th, 2011 at 11:21 AM

The mobile phone scams are on the rise in Malaysia with the recent uncertainty in the global market and many scammers looking for a quick buck by “scaring” victims into transferring their money from their bank accounts into another “safe” third party account. Many businessmen were already “conned” by these highly skillful conmen which acted as “bank officers” or “policemen”.

Apparently, this syndicate has siphoned more than RM18 Million from 811 victims according to NST Malaysia.

The modus operandi of this “Macau Scam” group is to obtain as much details about the prospective victim’s personal data and someone from the group will act as either a “bank officer” or “policeman” to verify the personal details with the prospective victim. Once these details are verified and the prospective victim begins to trust them a little more, they will use “fear” to scare these prospective victims into revealing even more details and to take certain actions like “transferring their money” to another “safe” account in order to protect their money.

One of the frequently used “fear tactics” that this group of syndicate is using is to inform their prospective victims that their credit cards or bank account had been hacked by a third party. In some cases, the victims were informed that their credit cards have been fraudulently used abroad and Federal Police like the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) or the Hong Kong Police are involved.

“The syndicate has also used the prestige and name of Bank Negara to impress upon the victims about the seriousness of the issue. The more well-known the reputation, the higher the chance of the victim acting first and thinking later.”

The main objective of the call is to get their victims to act quickly and think later.

iPhoneMalaysiaBloggers have reported this in an earlier blogpost but compelled to re-write about this as these scammers and fraudsters are highly skilled and very good at what they are doing. To date, they have already “tricked” 811 victims of more than RM18 Million.

Below is our earlier blog post which details how these scammers use “Bukit Aman Police Station” and “Hong Kong Police” to trick their prospective victims:-

http://www.iphonemalaysiablog.com/news/mobile-phone-scam-in-malaysia

Please continue to share these with your family and friends so that more and more people are aware about what these group of “Macau Scam” syndicate is doing and how we can equip ourselves with knowledge to spot these scammers and not add into the statistics.