Everyone is fallible.

Recently, I received an e-mail which encouraged receivers of the mail to forward it to friends and other people with the hope of exposing a syndicate which has cheated a colleague of the e-mail writer. The writer believes that by exposing the method used, it could prevent other unsuspecting people from falling for the same ruse.

Looks like there are many such syndicates on the internet. Till today, (touch wood) I have been lucky to not fall prey to such people. God must be looking after me very well. Thank you, I do count my blessings. Still, it's always good to know what can possibly happen to us, so please read on.

This is the e-mail writer's colleague’s experience. One Saturday, he received a phone call from a certain bank. It was a system playback message announcing that this colleague had an outstanding balance of RM4,982 on his credit card. He was politely requested to make the payment as soon as possible. The system playback sounded just like the ones officially used with “For customer service, please press 1, for………….”

Since this colleague did not have a credit card from this bank, he pressed ‘1’ to talk to the customer service. And after providing his name and IC number, the customer service told him that there was a credit card under his name. He responded that he did not apply for it. The customer service said that it was possible that people stole his information and made a credit card with it.

Customer service then suggested that he called Bank Negara - Pusat Pengurusan Kad Palsu (Management Centre for False Cards) to make a report so that they could investigate on it. Since the next day was Sunday, Customer service suggested that he make the phone call on Monday and provided him with the phone number 03-8659 0241 .(This is a false number. Bank Negara does not have such a department.)

On Monday morning, he made a phone call to the given number, he could hear the announcement "Terima Kasih kerana menhubungi Bank Negara...(Thank you for contacting National Bank…)" After that he talked to a guy who spoke in the Malay Language. The guy returned his call later with the same caller ID, and started to ask for details of his complaint. The guy also kept on telling him that if what he said was not true, he would be charged by the police and jailed. The guy then asked for all his credit card details; whether he had ever used a credit card on ATM, his ATM card and the balance in it. The guy also told him not to expose the report details to his friends as it might affect the investigation results.

After that the guy gave him a report number and mentioned that a colleague from another department would help him to secure all his bank accounts. (They do this to make people believe that they are genuine National Bank Officers, so that the victims would cooperate with them.)

After a while, he received a phone call from a woman who told him that they had suspended all his bank accounts. But not the ATM card as they could not do it remotely, hence she wanted him to go to his bank's ATM machine, and key in some special "PIN" numbers to deactivate the card. After he reached the ATM, the girl called him and told him that what he saw on the screen was not the true information. He just needed to key in the PIN number given by her. So he just followed the steps given and keyed in everything. She then told him to destroy the transaction slip and throw it away. She told him he could not use his ATM cards and other bank accounts for the next three days. (Keying in the ‘PIN’ provided by the woman into the ATM is not the right thing to do. The given ‘PIN’ is actually somebody’s account number and the transaction made is the amount transferred out of the victim’s account.)
Actually, one can confirm with the National Bank concerning their such actions. The National Bank has a toll-free number. The actual number could be obtained from the internet.

From the e-mail I gather that the victim is a senior engineer in the e-mail writer’s office. Well, even for such a person, there are moments of panic or anxiety which could lead one to lose touch of sanity and become so gullible as to willingly transfer a sum of money out of his account.

Well, things can happen to just anybody. However, now that we are all forewarned on this matter, we can hardly be easy target for such a syndicate. Anyway, do watch out!