KUALA LUMPUR: A woman has lost a total of RM100,000 in a scam, all because she was interested in purchasing “assets” worth RM1.8 million supposedly from the Sarawak Palace.
The woman was hoodwinked into believing that she had to pay the money so that the items, allegedly “frozen” by the Customs Department, could be released.
An auxiliary policeman and a restaurant owner have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the scam.
City acting police chief DCP Roslan Bek Ahmad said the scam began with one of the suspects befriending the woman and introducing himself as a “Datuk Seri”.
“He claimed that he was a private secretary to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and an advisor to the Istana Negara,” Roslan said.
“He offered to sell some ‘assets’ to the woman and then convinced her to pay RM100,000 to “resolve the matter of the ‘frozen assets’. She was told that once released, the ‘assets’ could be ‘converted’ into monetary returns,” Roslan told a press conference at the Kuala Lumpur police headquarters, here today.
The woman paid the money in separate transactions on Aug 1 and 2.
On learning about the incident, the woman’s husband lodged a police report on Aug 8.
Roslan said an intelligence-cum-operations team from the Putrajaya police detained the two men, aged 26 and 31, in Kajang and Temerloh.
He said investigations showed that the auxiliary policeman with the rank of ASP was the middleman in the transaction.
The other suspect was the man who claimed to be a “Datuk Seri”.
