Last year, the National Consumer Complaints Centre recorded 1,066 such complaints, and in the first half of this year, 733 cases have been noted.

“The two biggest amounts lost through this scam last year were RM20,000 and RM60,000,” said its director, Darshan Singh.

“Scratch-and-win has been around for about 30 years and although it has slowed down, it has not died out,” he said, adding that the trend is such that it will reappear in a different form after a while.

Darshan said NCCC had presented these figures to the authorities but what’s needed is an awareness campaign to educate people, similar to what the Government did with the skim cepat kaya (get rich quick scheme).