It’s that time of the year again where Malaysians need to file their income tax to the Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri (LHDN), and a WhatsApp message has been circulating just in time to remind taxpayers of the ‘LHDN’ scam.
If you’re unfamiliar with this scam, usually, the culprits would disguise themselves as Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri (LHDN) and send an email to potential victims informing them about a tax refund. A malicious link would usually be included in the email, which would ultimately scam some money out of the victims.
A few years ago when this scam was at its peak, Maybank released a statement on its official website, urging members of the public to take note and beware of the scam.
“Please be alert against any emails claiming to be from Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri (LHDN) requesting you to submit your tax refund request. LHDN does not send out any email requesting customers to provide customer information or directing customer to bank website.”
In the statement, LHDN said that they’ve been receiving many enquiries regarding the emails sent from this address – Tax-Payment@hasil.gov.my, which has been confirmed by LHDN as fake.
If you’ve received the email, please do not open it. In the event that you’ve opened it, you should just delete it without replying anything.
In order to smell out a fake link, you just need to move your mouse over the link to see the URL at the status bar located at the bottom of your browser. You will notice that instead of taking you to http://www.maybank2u.com.my, the URL link is actually directing you to a phishing site.
Please refer to the picture below.
As you can see from the screenshot above provided by Maybank, the scammer’s email looks extremely convincing and any absent-minded person would’ve fallen into this financial scam!
The scam may be old as it can be traced back to as early as 2010, but it still managed to swindle a woman as it completely ‘cleaned out’ her bank account. Check out the story at below!
Also read: M’sian’s Bank Account Gets Wiped Out After Clicking into E-mail From ‘LHDN’