KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 3 — If you think you are a savvy investor who could never get scammed into a fake investment, think again.
This is the real-life story of how a retired professional who dabbles in stock investments found himself losing RM47,000 in a scam last month, as shared by his lawyer Mohanthas Narayanasamy (with his permission).
Read on to see how the investment scam unfolded:
On Facebook, scammers shared a website offering free lessons on investing in stocks;
When the retiree clicked on the invitation link in Facebook, he was sent a link to join a WhatsApp group;
In the WhatsApp group, there was a “teacher” and an “assistant”. The assistant contacted him at least once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening;
The scammers held sharing sessions on stock trading every day and reminded him of the sessions almost every night;
To gain his trust, the scammers recommended one or two stocks for investment, while other WhatsApp group members would praise the “teacher” and “assistant” for the good stock picks. But these WhatsApp group “members” are actually part of the scammers’ group.
In fact, more than half or 80 per cent of the handphone numbers in the WhatsApp group are owned by the scammers.
To gain the victim’s trust and confidence, these purported “members” would also “invest” in the same proposed investment plan.
The scammers used a customer service number to solicit investments via an online app under their control.
The scammers promoted the method of depositing money for stock investments by “piggybacking” onto the “teacher’s” or scam operator’s “institution account”.
So, any deposits you make into the “trading system” will be under the scammer’s control.
If you have already been investing in stocks and shares, the scammers’ operations looked almost exactly like a “professional” investment scheme, Mohanthas said.
Lawyer Mohanthas Narayanasamy, member of both the Bar Council’s Personal Data Protection Committee and the Legal Tech, AI and Sandbox Committee, speaks at a talk titled ‘Scam Prevention and Awareness’ at Malaysian Bar’s MyBar Carnival 2025. — Picture by Ida Lim
The game of psychology
Mohanthas’s client initially started with a sum of RM3,000, but found himself putting in more and more money before eventually realising that he had been scammed.
The scammers gave the man an investment account, and “deposited” RM10,000 as a credit to him and gave him stock tips.
At this stage, the man has not put any of his money into the scammers’ scheme. But as the RM10,000 kept growing over a few days in purported value to say RM15,000 and then RM17,000, he wanted to take the money out.
They have a very sophisticated way of telling you, in order for you to now really play the game, you have to put in real money. So in order for you to register, you have to pay RM3,000,” Mohanthas said.
By then, the scammers would claim that the RM10,000 they “lent” you for investment has purportedly grown to RM17,000.
When you put in RM3,000 of your own money, the scammers will deduct that from the RM10,000 credit they gave to you, but you would think that at least you had made a “profit”.
“So it’s a very sophisticated thing, where you will find the amount of money that you ‘make’ is quite ludicrous — you lose yourself.”
Because the scammers are very persuasive and “catch you in the moment, in the game of psychology”, the man started putting in amounts of RM5,000, and RM10,000 into the “investment” scheme.
“Before you knew it, by the end of the week, five straight days, he had already put in RM47,000,” said Mohanthas.
When the man wanted to withdraw his “profits”, the scammers gave him all kinds of excuses, and that was when he realised he had been scammed.
The scammers had even told him that he had to pay money in order to withdraw what he had put in.
Earlier on, the scammers would have earned your trust by allowing you to withdraw some money.
But the money they allow you to withdraw would only be a small amount such as RM500, and you would have mistakenly believed that you are not being scammed since you can still withdraw money.
The scam victim then lodged a detailed police report, which compiled all relevant information such as WhatsApp conversations, WhatsApp profiles, the scam operators’ bank and bank account number, dates and amounts of deposits transferred to the scam operators, and scanned images of all bank transfers.
He also lodged reports with the National Scam Response Centre, the police’s Commercial Crime Investigation Department, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, the Securities Commission, Bank Negara Malaysia, a bank and even telecommunications operators.
Tips to avoid getting scammed
Mohanthas, who is a member of the Bar Council’s Personal Data Protection Committee and also the Bar Council’s Legal Tech, AI and Sandbox Committee, shared this story at the Malaysian Bar’s recent MyBar Carnival.
“The message I’m trying to say here is, a lot of schemes go on greed and quick returns,” he said.
Using just last year’s figures of RM1.6 billion losses from 35,000 scam cases in Malaysia, he said that was equivalent to 96 people getting scammed every day with daily losses of RM4.3 million in the country alone.
He said Malaysians should not be complacent and think “it’s not going to happen to me”, saying that they should be aware of scams and of the possibility that it could happen to anyone.
Mohanthas listed the “red flags” that you can use to spot a scam:
- Sense of urgency
- Unexpected contact
- Strange payment request
- If it’s ‘too good to be true’
- Request for secrecy
- Suspicious links
Here are other scam prevention tips jointly produced by the Bar Council’s Cyber and Privacy Laws Committee; the Bar Council’s Legal Tech, AI and Sandbox Committee; and the Bar Council’s Personal Data Protection Committee.
