Investment scams promise high returns of investments with little to no risk at all. It sometimes involves accepting illegal deposits while taking advantage of people’s lack of knowledge on how investment works. Beware of unsolicited investment offers. Some will invite you to chatgroups such as telegram/whatsapp pretending to be from a genuine investment company (the logo/brand of these genuine investment companies are stolen from internet).
Detect Signs
+ promote too good to be true investment schemes with little or no risk within a short span of time, such as “Investment of RM500 with return of RM3,000 within 4 hours”.
+ You receive invitation to social media platforms such as Telegram, Whatsapp or Facebook to promote the investment schemes with some fake “ínvestors’ in the group (part of the scammers group) showing off their good returns.
+ pretend to be agents from genuine investment companies by using names, logos, websites (stolen from the internet) to promote the schemes.
+ sometimes use credentials of celebrities to entice you.
+ request you to deposit your investment money into personal bank account or bank account of unrelated entities. Remember that investment money can only be transferred to the official bank accounts of the investment companies, and not account of individuals or selling agents.
How to stay safe
+ don’t deposit your investment money into the bank accounts of individuals, selling agents or unrelated entity. Genuine investment companies will only accept payment to their official bank accounts only.
+ ask more questions about the products and investment papers of such products.
+ do not rush into making investment decision, but to find out more about the product by making independent checks or talk to other trusted persons about such schemes.
+ check the list of unauthorised websites, companies and individuals from Bank Negara Malaysia https://www.bnm.gov.my/financial-consumer-alert-list and/or Securities Commission https://www.sc.com.my/investor-alert as part of your independent verification.
+ check PDRM’s Semak Mule portal https://ccid.rmp.gov.my/semakmule to verify whether the bank accounts and telephone numbers have been reported to the police.