"They Think Mum Can't Recognise Her Own Child?" — Woman Laughs At Scam Attempt On WhatsApp
In WhatsApp messages sent to the mother early in the morning, the scammers addressed the woman by her name while threatening to kill her daughter, who they claimed to have kidnapped.
By Sadho Ram — 28 Jun 2023, 03:37 PM
Scammers in Malaysia attempted to blackmail a mother via WhatsApp by sending her messages claiming that they had kidnapped her child
The scammers addressed the Malaysian woman by her name while threatening to kill her daughter if she ignored their demands, according to screenshots of the messages sent to her earlier this week.
"Rafidah, we have your daughter" — read the first WhatsApp text, which was sent along with a photo showing two masked men with batons holding down a person in a corner, whose hands were tied behind their back.
After the first text, which was sent at 4.47am, the scammers called the woman between 5am to 5.01am. However, after the calls went unanswered, they sent her another text, threatening to kill her daughter.
"If you fool around, we will kill your child," read the second text.
Fortunately, the woman was performing her haj in Mecca and didn't have time to reply to the scammers, according to her daughter
"They must have thought that my mother was stupid and could not recognise her own child," she said while sharing her mother's experience in response to a similar kidnapping scam on Twitter.
The daughter, Afiqah, said her mother was still worried when she finally saw the messages and tried to contact her, but as she was sleeping at the time, she couldn't answer her mother's call.
After her mother couldn't reach her, she contacted other family members, who checked up on Afiqah later.
"[They] checked up on me later because they thought I was kidnapped," she added.
Afiqah has consented to SAYS using her tweet for the story.
Afiqah's tweet, which was posted on 26 June, has since gone viral
It has received over 8,000 retweets and has more than 2.3 million views on the platform.
While Afiqah said that she and her family were amused by the language used by the scammers, many expressed concern over the incident, noting how the frequency of such cases was increasing.
"This is scary for people who are easily panicked. It's getting more severe. As if it is not scary enough already. With these kinds of death threats, do (authorities) not want to do something?" said one user.
"Why would you scam people at 4am in the morning, it's not even dawn yet," said another user.
