SEREMBAN: A 61-year-old government retiree from Sikamat near here has lost her entire gratuity and some of her husband’s savings, totalling RM202,000, in an online investment scam.
The victim, who wished to be known only as Ika, said she was added to a Telegram group on June 16 and the administrator introduced her to a scheme that offered high returns.
“I was told that if I invested RM1,000, I would get a RM10,000 profit within three hours.
“I eventually decided to invest RM1,000 on June 20 after seeing feedback from other members of the group who showed photographs of themselves holding huge amounts of money, buying jewellery and even queueing at ATMs to withdraw their profits,” she said at Bukit Kepayang assemblyman Nicole Tan Lee Koon’s service centre here on Friday (July 22).
Ika said when she asked for her profit, the suspect told her that she would have to pay for other expenses such as taxes, administration and miscellaneous fees.
He then encouraged her to keep on investing as it was a good time to do so and returns were high.
“I believed the suspect as he sounded very religious.
“I transferred the rest of the money in instalments into different bank accounts over the next 10 days.
“However, when I asked him for the profits which had apparently gone up to RM1.5mil by then, he said I would need to make payments totalling RM35,000 before I could get the money,” she added.
…
