‘Scratch and Win’ Contest: Senior citizen conned

‘Scratch and Win’ Contest: Senior citizen conned

The smooth-talking youths were trying to persuade her to take part in an easy-to-win contest and were showing her the company registration certificates including some photographs of past winners with their prizes.

Scam Alert sign

A female senior citizen was conned in a ‘scratch & win’ contest here yesterday.

Singaporean Chan Fook Chan, 64, a hairdresser, came over to Johor Bahru to meet some of her customers.

On leaving the Johor Bahru CIQ, as she was walking towards a shopping mall where several well dressed youths approached her and identified themselves as agents of a company.

The smooth-talking youths were trying to persuade her to take part in an easy-to-win contest and were showing her the company registration certificates including some photographs of past winners with their prizes.

Chan said she was finally convinced by the youths and took part in the contest.

She was told by the youths that she had just won herself a Mercedes Benz worth almost RM1 million which will be delivered to her within a week.

She said she was overjoyed with tears when she heard the news as that was her dream car.

Besides the luxurious car, she was also told that she has won some other prizes too.

Then the youths told her that she need to pay a fee amounting to $4,500 Singapore dollars (RM10,779) before she can claim the prizes.

The youths asked her to follow them to their Taman Molek office to pay the required fee and claim the prizes.

She realised something amiss in the office when she was only given 2 sets of digital cooker, a foot massaging machine and some accessories.

Later, she went and did a market survey of the products from several electrical shops and discovered that all the ‘prizes’ she won cost not more than RM2,000.

She then went and lodged a report at the Taman Pelangi police station.

” I hoped that the police will investigate the matter and take strong action against the company to prevent others from being conned by such scheming syndicates.” she said.

Chan was relating her ordeal to the MCA consumer affairs bureau assistant chief, Kua Song Tuck.

Avatar photo

Steven Chen

Steve is a Citizen Journalist based in Johor Bahru.