Today, I was alerted to a scam which has brought much difficulties to a certain animal NGO in the Klang Valley, including the freezing of their bank accounts and significant disruptions in receiving donations which has affected their good work.
My purpose of writing about it is so that other NGOs will be aware of such scams and unsuspecting donors will not fall prey to these scams.
Here’s how the scammers do it:
- The scammers choose an NGO which has displayed its bank account number on its website.
- Then, they lure unsuspecting individuals into making small donations to this NGO in return for a modest monetary reward.
- There are usually several “tasks” that the unsuspecting donors have to complete, the first being making that small donation to the chosen NGO.
- Once that small donation has been made, the scammers actually reward the individuals by giving them that promised modest monetary reward.
- Next comes the other tasks, which involves the individuals giving up more and more of their money. These tasks vary from investing into fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes to anything under the sun. By then, the individuals have already given up so much of their money but of course, they have actually lost it all.
But it doesn’t stop there. How does this affect the NGO that has suddenly received a large volume of “small donations” by the scammed individuals? - Several outcomes: (a) The bank flags the bank account due to these suspicious influx of “small donations” and freezes the NGO’s bank account or (b) some of the individuals realise they have been scammed and think the NGO had scammed them, but in actual fact, they did not realise it was done by a group of scammers and that the NGO had absolutely nothing to do with the scam, so these individuals make police reports and Bank Negara reports resulting in, again, the NGO’s bank account being frozen.
- Then, the NGO has to go through all the red tape of getting their bank account unfrozen and this takes a long process and a long time. Meanwhile, their account is frozen and they cannot withdraw money to carry out their daily work and pay out the expenses to care of their animals.
Scary, isn’t it?
Examples of such scams:
Another example:
So, dear donors, please, please do not fall prey to such fraudsters and scammers. There are probably many of them out there and they come in all shapes and sizes. The scams may vary, so the moment you suspect something smells fishy, please do not proceed. If you wish to donate into our bank account, please do so with a direct bank-in (if you have stored our bank account number) or use our Touch ‘n Go QR code as displayed on this website. If we later have any new payment gateway, it will be displayed only on this website and nowhere else.
Today, after hearing about this news, I spoke with the person-in-charge of one of such NGOs and she related all the gory details to me. It is horrendous that their NGO was targeted so badly that even though they changed their bank accounts, the new one was targeted again. Now, they have to resort to not publishing their (new) bank account number anymore and using other means to receive donations. Meanwhile, their bank accounts have been suspended and they are facing much difficulties in getting the matter resolved.
So, again, please be very careful. As described above, not only are the individuals scammed, but the NGO involved is also victimised through no fault of theirs. They are just being so unlucky to have been “chosen” by the scammers to carry out their dirty work.
