I’ve been meaning to post this for a long time. No, this has nothing to do with internet security. These are real-life scammers who make use of people’s worries and ignorance to cheat them of their hard-earned money.

This is very real, and can happen to you and anyone around you. Especially if you are living in Malaysia or Singapore.

Months ago, a relative of mine who lives in Malaysia received a phone call from a man claiming that he is a judge working at the Malaysian High Court. He says that my relative’s bank account is suspected of being used by loansharks (moneylenders) for money laundering. He then gave my relative instructions to transfer money from my relative’s bank account to the bank account that he stated so that investigation can be done and clear my relative’s name. My relative obediently and quickly did as told, and as a result, lost a considerate sum of money.

That guy even called back to ask for more money, but we suspected something is wrong after learning what happened and instead went to make a police report. Even then, the money is gone for good, and my relative had to go through the trouble of getting the phone number used changed so that the man won’t be able to reach him again so easily.

I left out a lot of small details, but these links below contain some more complete and extremely similar reports of the same type of scam.

Don’t fall prey to those scammers, and don’t let the people around you do. Pass the message around! If more people knows and guard against the scam, lesser people will be cheated.