Yesterday, during lunchtime, I got a phone call from a person saying they were a third-party appointed by Maybank.
The gist is: An account owner on Maybank named Saleha binti Zakaria listed my number as their emergency contact number. The account is suspected of several suspicious transactions, and Saleha cannot be contacted, so this person, on behalf of Maybank, contacted me.
My gut said this is a scam. I don’t know any Saleha binti Zakaria in my life, I don’t have a Maybank account, and, well, overall, the whole thing reeks of a scammer.
I did entertain the conversation, though. I used broken Bahasa Melayu overlapped with English, most of the time I used English, and told the guy that I don’t know any Saleha and I don’t have a Maybank account. I told him: “If needed, I can just go to Maybank and check with them.”
The guy thanked me and ended the conversation. This is where I got the doubt: The conversation was too “civil” for a scam 😅 Like, wow, he was really polite as a scammer lor, hahah. But then again, I think this is a scam. I checked the phone number on Truecall, and the number returned as the number of a teacher/principal (?) of a middle school. I highly doubt this guy is the person who called just now; perhaps number masking? Is it possible to do number masking on a personal phone number? I also haven’t contacting MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) to report the number because what if the number is actually legit and the scammer using some sort of number masking effort.
Anyway! I posted my experience on the subreddit r/malaysia here, under the mega post on commonly known scam tactics in Malaysia. Stay safe, folks! In case you suspect you got scammed or receive scam phone calls, you can report them by following the guide provided here.
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