A Malaysian Guy Made A Scammer Lose His Patience After Annoying Him For An Hour
He wanted to see how far the scammer's script could go.
By May Vin Ang
Do you often get phone calls from people claiming to be from the Inland Revenue Board (LHDN) or the Federal Court of Malaysia?
Beware of them, they are almost always scams.
A Malaysian Facebook user, Ooi Beng Cheang, was well aware of that when he received a phone call on 4 March, from a 'machine recording' of a woman claiming he had an overdue payment owed to LHDN.
Instead of putting down the phone like the most of us do, he decided to play along with it, just to see how far the scammer's script would go.
"A scammer called me today on my off day. Since I had the time, I let it drag on just to waste theirs," he shared on Facebook about his hour-long phone call.
Ooi pretended to be an elderly Chinese man who was retired and lived alone to lure the scammers into thinking he was easy prey
"I pretended to be a Wong Ah Tak, a retired Singaporean toilet cleaner now living in Johor Bahru. Just moved there for a month, renting a room. No family and friends, but with RM82,000 in the bank," he wrote.
And it seemed like the scammers took the bait.
"Started off as a call from LHDN with outstanding amount owed to a bogus company (Greenwood Trading in Georgetown) supposedly registered under my name," he said, explaining the scam.
The bogus LHDN officer then asked him to write down the name and details of that company and connected him to another person pretending to be a sergeant from the Penang Contingent Police Headquarters so that Ooi could report his 'crime' to the police himself.
"It continued with a Sarjan Faris who proceeded to record my police report over the phone. He must be an idiot because his phone line wasn't clear and it kept breaking up and he had to call me back," Ooi chided.
At this point, the scammers were still trying to retrieve information about Ooi such as his occupation and family, to estimate if he had money they could scam
On the video of the conversation that Ooi shared, he managed to stay in character of an elderly Mr Wong who had no family and friends, so that they knew he had no one to ask for help from.
"The main victims of scams are usually retirees because they are more gullible. These scammers must have been very happy to hear that I was one," wrote Ooi.
It was 45 minutes into the call when 'Sarjan Faris' told Ooi to stay on the phone so that he could discuss his case with a 'police inspector', but Ooi decided to make it interesting by pretending he had to pee.
He held in his laugh as he could hear the scammer losing his patience while he talked about going to the toilet.
After a 'background check', the scammers then came back to Ooi and told him that they found he was guilty of working with a drug lord
Sarjan Faris sternly said that Ooi had a Maybank account that was used to launder RM1.4 million of drug money.
Ooi again decided to waste some time and pretended to be happy instead with the large sum of money in his bank account, which really frustrated the scammer.
"Sarjan Faris then wanted my bank details. But I told him I just opened the Maybank account this morning and didn't know the login details. So he asked me to stay on the phone with him while I went to the ATM machine," said Ooi.
He wrote that the scammer finally gave up when he realised that Ooi didn't leave his house to find an ATM and put the phone down.
The video has been viewed over 7,000 times on Facebook, and people loved how 'old Mr Wong' got the best of the scammers
'I totally salute you! Well done! Give them a taste of their own medicine," said a Facebook user.
"Good on you! Thanks for sharing this," said another.
"You're truly skilled in trolling the scammer! I died laughing while listening to Sarjan Faris get more and more frustrated," said another user.
While this user said, "My daughter received a similar call two days ago and I received one as well during lunch time. They usually call using a handphone number, so we immediately ended the calls. Thanks for sharing this information."
