1 careless mistake with a fake Touch ‘n Go ‘promo’ can empty your bank account

Ya’ll remember the good old days when scam calls came with robot voices? Just one word and you’d put down the phone because normal people don’t talk like that. Then you’d go about your day feeling mildly annoyed (ugh, how did they get your phone number?!) but also secretly pleased because you were smart enough to avoid it.

Yeah those days are long gone and scammers are getting so good it’s almost like they went to school for it.

The most recent in this string of upgraded scams is the one involving Touch n Go (TnG). And it’s done so well that even though we’ve been writing about scams for years, it still happened to one of our colleagues. Unless ofc he doesn’t read our articles💢

Meet Umar: our marketing guy, a handsome guy, and the guy who’s always first to arrive in the Cilisos offis and therefore opens the door for all of us.

Umar got a call from “TnG” and they had a great offer for him

So here’s how the scam works: The scammer pretends to be a TnG rep, and they offer you a new TnG card or some kind of card upgrade. They might even offer to show you their ID card if that gets you to trust them a bit more. In Umar’s case, the call came from Whatsapp.

He answered the call like he would any other. There was however a short moment where Umar wondered about about the call coming through Whatsapp and not the regular line, but he decided not to question it.

The first thing the scammer asked Umar was if he’d collected his RFID kit. If you have one of these, you’d know that the RFID chip is linked directly to your TnG eWallet, so yeah, nothing out of the ordinary with this question. But it caught Umar by surprise because he never ordered one.

The scammer then proceeded to promote the card, saying that it was a gift for TnG eWallet members. Now coincidentally, Umar had just opted for TnG Go+ (yes, yet another TnG product among the many other same-same-but-different TnG products saturating the market). So he was under the assumption that because he’d been a regular customer of TnG, this card was simply a gift reward.

Umar couldn’t believe his eyes when he read the SMS

After explaining about the card, and Umar agreeing to the offer, the scammer wanted to verify Umar’s phone number. But instead of asking Umar to provide the number or even any other kind of personal information, the scammer was the one who spoke the number out loud.

“They asked for confirmation to make sure it was me, and I’m thinking why did they ask me to verify my phone number? Because for verification they (usually) ask for your address or e-mail address or sometimes the last 4 digits of your IC,” – Umar

Despite the slight confusion, Umar was still keen to continue. So after confirming Umar’s phone number, the scammer said said they would be sending a TAC number via SMS and that Umar should read it back to them. This way, they could activate his card and have it ready to use the moment he receives it.

The SMS came in and Umar was about to read the number, but he happened to glance across the message to see the part about resetting his eWallet pin. It was instant, that feeling of something not being right. So he confronted the scammer; first about the pin, then about the phone number because he was still confused about their whole verifying process.

“I was like why do I have to reset my pin? They said it was just for setting up the card. Then I asked why did I have to clarify my phone number. There was just silence for a while, then they hung up,” – Umar

It really was one of those moments where luck and coincidence and a whole lot of good karma saved Umar from what was most definitely a horrible scam. In fact, it could’ve been a whole lot worse. Not only did Umar stand to lose his eWallet balance, but he could’ve had his entire bank account wiped clean.

So there’s an option in your TnG eWallet to auto-reload directly from your debit or credit card. And if you’re using this method already, when someone hacks into your eWallet account they can just reload reload reload until they drain every single sen you own.

Get in touch with the TnG help centre if you kena scammed

This scam has been so rampant that TnG actually posted an announcement on their Facebook profile to warn e-Wallet users against it. And here’s their advice:

So once more, the number to call is 03-50223888, the form to fill up is over here, and if you wanna be extra sure, you can change your pin with the help of this video.

As sucky as it sounds, nothing is free in this capitalist world we live in. And if that free thing comes your way, make sure you interrogate the heck out of the fella who offered it first.