Bookkeeper loses more than RM320,000 of company funds to email scam

BATU PAHAT: A 41-year-old bookkeeper lost more than RM321,000 of her company’s funds after falling for an email scam.

Batu Pahat acting OCPD Supt Shahrulanuar Mushaddat Abdullah Sani said the woman received a fake email from a supposed international company on March 27, purportedly to update her company about the changing of a bank account number.

“In the email, the victim was told to make a payment of US$94,555 (RM448,215.11) for shipping container rental to a new bank account.

“The woman transferred the amount from her company’s bank account to the foreign bank account six days later on April 2 without checking the legitimacy of the account,” he said in a statement.

After making the transfer, the victim got in touch with the other company’s representative to check whether they had received the payment and that was when she found out the email was a hoax.

“According to the company representative, they had never sent out any memo via email about changing their bank account number.

“By then, the victim had also realised that the email address from the March 27 email was a fake one,” said Supt Shahrulanuar.

He added that the victim immediately got in touch with the local bank to cancel the transaction.

However, the bank could only retrieve US$26,108.46 (RM122,709.76) and send it back into the victim’s company bank account.

“This meant that her employer had lost US$68,446.54 (RM321,698.74) in the incident, which was classified as a compromise of business email,” he said, adding that the case was being investigated under Section 420 of the Penal code for cheating.

“The public, especially those involved in business transactions, are reminded to be alert when handling emails such as those giving money transfer instructions.

“Please verify and do the necessary checks before making a payment,” he added.