Wednesday August 5, 2009
Falling for Internet love scam
KUALA LUMPUR: She fell in love with a British man over the Internet and ended up losing RM20,000.
Y.K. Lam of Ampang became friendly with the man after chatting with him for two months via a certain website.
He even sent her his photograph and his family’s.
The two decided to get engaged. Lam claimed that the man said he would be sending over a parcel of presents from Britain, including an engagement ring, a gold wrist watch, a gold necklace for her and her mother, a camera handphone and some clothes.
“I was also to receive £10,000 (RM59,207), a laptop and a rose as a token of our love,” she told a press conference at the MCA Complaints and Public Services Department yesterday.
All she needed to do was pay the courier service fee of RM16,379.29. She did this by banking in the amount at a bank in Taman Putra.
On July 29, she received a call from a woman introducing herself as a Customs officer named Mary, requesting her to transfer another RM3,500 into a bank account to redeem the parcel. Again, Lam complied.
The next day, she again received a call from Mary, claiming that her British boyfriend, Raymond, had been detained in the police lock-up after arriving here to meet her.
She was told to pay RM3,000 to release Raymond and obtain the parcel.
She sensed something amiss with the whole episode and decided to lodge a police report on July 31.
Department head Datuk Michael Chong said seven other women had fallen victim to such Internet love scam, with total losses of RM383,371 last year.
This year, he had received cases of five women and two men who had been victimised and with a total loss of RM186,118.
“To make matters worse, two women were also lured to have sex with the conmen,” he added.
Chong said it was usually lonely individuals seeking for companionship that fell victims to such scams.
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