Buy A Car Through Facebook, Malaysian Entrepreneurs Get IDR 525 Million Fraud

Illustration of buying and selling used cars. (Unsplash)

JAKARTA - A Malaysian businessman experienced fraud after making a car purchase transaction via the Facebook (FB) social media platform (medsos).

Perak Police Chief Datuk Azizi Mat Aris said that initially the 53-year-old businessman saw advertisements for car sales in FB.

In the link, he clicked on the WhatsApp link provided by the seller. The sale and purchase transaction then occurred from the suspect who claimed to be a car dealer sale in Selangor.

The suspect offered the car for RM113,000 with monthly installments of RM1,328.80 or Rp4.7 million per month.

The victim was also lured to get an iPad lottery prize if he bought the Mercedes-Benz GLA 200 AMG Sport 4matic 1.3A.

"Between April 17 and July 25, the victim made 32 transactions to nine different bank accounts given by the suspect, with a total of RM144,920, for various payments including insurance, road tax, AP permits, import duties, account activation, sales agreement letters, and stamp duty," he said in a statement, Tuesday, August 13, quoted from The Sun Daily.

The victim was then asked to make another payment via account transfer. The victim, who was suspicious because of the process of buying and selling complicated cars, reported it to the police on August 6.

Since then, the victim is estimated to have suffered a loss of RM147,600 or around Rp525.8 million, stopping the process of buying and selling the car.

The police who carried out the investigation accused the suspect of fraud and violated Article 420 of the Criminal Code.