Chong speaks to the victim at his office.
KUCHING (Jan 4): A woman lost more than RM44,000 of her savings after falling victim to a house-cleaning service advertised on Facebook, said Democratic Action Party (DAP) Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen.
He said the woman had sought for his assistance after her bank account was recently depleted of RM44,074.49 due to unauthorised fund transfers.
“It happened when the woman was surfing Facebook and came across an advertisement for house-cleaning services. As Chinese New Year is drawing close, she engaged the Facebook administrator to sign up for the house-cleaning service.
“She then encountered some problems in making payment for the said service and the next day, she discovered that her bank account was blocked.
“Upon enquiry with the bank, she found out that there were eight consecutive transfers of funds from her account to someone’s account from another bank, and the name of the recipient’s account is someone unknown to her,” he said in a statement.
Chong, who is Stampin MP and Padungan assemblyman, said the eight unauthorised transfers occurred within a short span of less than an hour –between 7.37pm and 8.29pm on Dec 30 – involving a total of RM44,074.49.
“What’s peculiar in this case was that the woman had previously set her account with the condition of a one-day maximum withdrawal limit of RM10,000.
“She did not receive any notification from the bank that her account limit setting had been changed,” he said.
He also pointed out the abnormality of the eight consecutive fund transfers, where five transfers of RM4,000 were made at 7.37pm, 7.42pm, 8.02pm, 8.03pm, and 8.04pm; followed by a transfer of RM9,296.56 at 8.23pm; RM5,577.93 at 8.26pm; and RM9,200 at 8.29pm.
“Had the bank’s Internet banking security system been more vigilant and secure, such consecutive transfers of funds would definitely raise some red flags in the system, thereby stopping the transfers.
“But that was not the case. Moreover, not only was there no such alert within the bank’s security system, the victim did not receive any notification or any OTP or TAC from the bank,” he said, referring to the one-time password and transaction authorisation code.
According to Chong, he wrote to the bank on Monday on behalf of the woman to demand reimbursement of the entire sum lost.
“This is in view that the money was kept in the custody of the bank and definitely there was some deficiency in the bank’s security system, which allowed such abnormal transfers to occur within such a short time and involving such a large amount,” he said.
He also said that he had sent the same letter to Bank Negara Malaysia in the hope that it could act to protect individuals’ interest and money in the bank.
“I shall also personally bring the matter, together with all those bank scam cases that I previously handled, to the attention of the Finance Minister.
“We cannot allow the banks to push their responsibility to their customers, instead of improving the security of their internet banking system,” he said.
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