KUALA LUMPUR: When O faced some financial difficulties, he saw an ad for personal loans on Facebook and called to make some inquiries.
It was the beginning of a nightmare, which saw his father’s house burnt to the ground.
What’s worse, the loan sharks wanted O to pay the arsonist for the “work” he had done.
The 30-year-old had provided personal details when enquiring about the loan on Nov 7 but did not take out the loan.
Despite this, S$300 (RM955) was transferred to his account without his or his wife, Teh’s knowledge.
The couple then received a call on Nov 10 demanding that they repay S$3,500 (RM11,139). If not, the callers said, O’s father’s home in Kluang, Johor, would be burnt.
Unaware of the S$300 transferred to O’s account earlier, the couple ignored the threat and O’s father’s home was burnt down on Nov 15.
A week later, the supposed loan sharks threatened to burn Teh’s father’s home in Perak. The couple decided to pay S$7,000 (RM22,279) out of fear.
However, the loan shark then demanded another S$5,000 (RM15,913) from the couple as “payment for his worker’s fee to burn the house”.
The family is not alone. There are many people who have become victims like them.
A 57-year old housewife in Petaling Jaya found her house splashed with red paint, chain locked and with warning notices plastered on her walls when she had never had anything to with loan sharks.
Instead, an unknown person had used a fake IC with her address to borrow money. The notices were addressed to a person named Cheng Ann Keat and placed on her gate on June 26 this year.
After she filed a police report, police contacted the numbers from the warning notices to learn that Cheng had borrowed RM300 and gave the loan sharks a picture of his fake IC with Gan’s address.
Despite the clear case of mistaken identity, the loan sharks demanded that Gan pay them RM5,000 to remove her address from their “blacklist”.
Having refused to do so since she was innocent, Gan’s home was then locked again by the loan sharks on July 7 with red paint recently being splashed on her home on Oct 30.
“If anyone knows this Cheng person, please let us know. We don’t know what else to do.
“I don’t want to live in fear over the actions of someone I don’t even know,” Gan said during a press conference at Wisma MCA yesterday.
IT consultant Cheah, 55, meanwhile, saw his apartment plastered with loan shark notices addressed to his dead former tenant.
Cheah had rented out the apartment in Subang Jaya to a 65-year-old named Woon since 2016.
Woon had been having financial difficulties and did not pay rent or utility bills for eight months. She died on Nov 6 but Cheah’s apartment was then plastered with notices and threats on Nov 12 and Nov 25, which have left him rattled.
“I have never even contacted a loan shark before, but now my property is facing constant harassment although my tenant is no longer there,” he said.
MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Seri Michael Chong said he believed these cases were tied to scammers rather than actual loan sharks.
“I believe these are scammers who have happened on the information as loan sharks do not simply give out loans without properly verifying if an IC is real or not.
“If anyone has been forced to overpay their loan shark loan and is still being told to pay more, I advise you to lodge a police report. This is considered extortion,” he said at the press conference.
