21 Sept 2007

PENANG: Another housewife has fallen prey to a lucky draw scam, losing RM360,000 after responding to an SMS.�

She banked in the money into numerous accounts after receiving an SMS informing her she had won a multi-million ringgit lucky draw allegedly organised by an international hypermarket chain.�

Acting state Commercial Crime department chief Supt Shaharon Anuar Abdul Latif said the housewife was at home in Butterworth, when she received the SMS at 3pm on June 16.

�She called back the number and was told by a Mandarin-speaking man that in order to claim her windfall, she needed to pay an administration fee.�

�He was so convincing that that she used her life savings and money borrowed from friends and relatives to pay it,� he said yesterday.�

He said the housewife kept on banking in the money between June and August but her winnings never �arrived� as promised.�

�She realised that she had been cheated, when the man kept on asking for money. A police report was then lodged at the Butterworth district police headquarters on Wednesday.�

�We have already checked with the hypermarket chain management and were told that no such lucky draw was ever organised,� he said.�

Supt Shaharon Anuar said they had checked the bank accounts which were likely to have been �rented� to the syndicate by individuals from other states.�

�We will be calling up these account holders to give a statement soon. We want to know how their accounts ended up being used in the scam.��

On Sept 10, a 32-year-old female computer analyst lodged a police report after she parted with RM560,000 upon being made to believe that she had won HK$2.86mil (RM1.43mil) in a lucky draw.�

Supt Shaharon Anuar said the department also received reports from two women, aged 34 and 49, who were cheated of RM1,700 and RM2,490 in Butterworth and George Town.�

�The public should just delete such SMSes upon getting them. These scams are perpetrated by syndicates which we believe are operating from Hong Kong and Indonesia,� he said.�