As the public gains awareness of the various tactics scammers use to trick their victims, scammers are also innovating and coming up with new strategies to execute their crimes.
Recently, a Malaysian shared with WORLD OF BUZZ her experience of losing RM7,000 to a group of scammers pretending to be from a digital marketing agency, Primal Malaysia.
It all started when the victim, a university student, sought a part-time job to fund her university expenses.
During her job search, she encountered a digital marketing company, Primal Malaysia, who offered to hire her.
Little did she know that it was actually a group of scammers using the company’s name to swindle her of her money.
Adding items to the cart
First, one scammer, Jeffrey, asked the victim to complete a trial task as part of the hiring process.
She was told via WhatsApp that her job scope was to “increase the exposure rate of merchants’ products by adding the items to her cart and making payment to the merchants.”
Then, within 10-15 minutes, the “merchants will refund (the amount she had paid) with a 10% commission.”
These transactions were to occur on Shopee and the Lego Official Store website.
Is the job legitimate?
Wary of how simple the proposal to earn money was, the victim carried out multiple checks to see whether the job was legitimate or not.
First, the presence of Primal Malaysia’s official website link in the scammers’ WhatsApp bio made the victim think it could be real.
Then, she talked to a couple of people in a WhatsApp group she was asked to join earlier by one of the scammers.
The group’s 20 or so participants were disguised as other part-timers and were part of the scam. So, naturally, they encouraged the victim to take on the job as it paid well, “almost RM2,000 in 3 weeks.”
Afterwards, the victim did not need any more convincing.
Losing RM7,000
The victim started with the trial task. She did everything she was supposed to do – add items to the cart and pay for them – and was paid the amount she paid earlier plus the 10% commission.
Then, she was given subsequent tasks, each worth RM495, RM 1,799, RM3,339.40 and RM7,000.
The victim was able to complete the first three tasks but as she did not have that much money left, the victim borrowed money from friends to complete the RM7,000 task.
However, it was in the midst of completing the final task that she realised she had been scammed as she had yet to receive the money from the first three tasks.
The total losses incurred were RM5,633.40.
Realising that she had been scammed
When the victim realised she would probably not get her money back, she looked up Primal Malaysia’s actual contact number and got in touch with them.
They confirmed her suspicions that she had gotten scammed and showed her an article they had previously written asking the public to beware of scams like this.
Below are the bank accounts the victim transferred money to:
1. Berg Usry Suhaili – 7033319383 (Cimb Bank)
2. Adril Azmeer bin Mohd – 156057444983 (Maybank)
3. Eugene Lee – 4676978232 (Public Bank)
Although it is unfortunate that this happened to the victim, we hope no one else will go through the same thing!
Also read: M’sian Shares How She Lost RM163k In Savings From Multiple Banks In Just 2 Days
