A CHEF in Johor Baru regretted paying unlicensed contractors from China to fix his house after it began leaking again just days after work concluded, reported Sin Chew Daily.
Jia De Bao whose house in Taman Jaya Mas has been leaking for the past four years saw an advertisement on social media and contacted a company which purpotedly had experienced contractors who are able to stop leakage without having to hack walls or floors.
The 47-year-old said two huge men then drove to his place in Malaysian-registered cars.
“They had a mainland Chinese accent and were frank that they were working here despite having only a tourist visa,” he said.
The men quoted RM6,900 to seal up all the leaks in the house.
Jia was taken aback over the price but later agreed after they gave him a six-year guarantee that there will be no more leaks.
They wanted Jia to transfer the full RM6,900 to a bank account in Singapore.
Only after pressing them for a receipt did the two men fill up a store-bought receipt indicating that they had received RM6,900.
Jia began to suspect something amiss when he saw that the receipt did not have a company letterhead.
When asked, the two men told him their company was headquartered in Kuala Lumpur.
One week later, the leaks began again and Jia realised that he had been scammed.
He tried to contact the contractors again on WhatsApp but all his messages were ignored.
Jia made a police report and brought the matter to the Domestic Trade and Cost of Living Ministry.
However, the authorities are treating this as a commercial dispute rather than a criminal case.
> A man in China realised that he had fallen for a marriage scam after finding out that his fiancee’s pregnancy, bank account and family members were all fake.
Sin Chew Daily reported that the 26-year-old man met a livestreamer in 2022 who claimed to be 31 years old and unmarried.
The couple dated for two years and decided to get hitched in May 2024 after the woman claimed she was pregnant.
She asked for a wedding reception to be held before the birth of their child.
“At that time, she said she was expecting to give birth in July. She did have a bump but she did not seem like she was eight months pregnant.
“I was naive and went ahead with the reception,” he said.
As part of the wedding ceremony, the man’s family paid the woman 148,000 yuan (RM87,458) as a bridal offer.
As part of her “dowry,” the woman gave the man a “savings passbook” with a 460,000 yuan (RM271,831) balance, a gold bar and keys to a Mercedes Benz.
The woman ran away to her hometown in Qingdao, Shandong shortly after the reception.
After realising he was scammed, he made a police report, which led to her arrest.
