Chinese International Students in Malaysia Encounter Forex Trading Scams

Writer: Lin Ge

Editor: Wang Qiyue

BANGI, 1 June - There are many different forms of online fraud these days, and one of the more common among the international student community is foreign exchange, some Chinese students in Malaysia were subjected to forex trading scams recently.

The specific form of the exchange is that the scammer asks the victim to credit his account in RMB (The official currency of China) through a Chinese trading platform and promises to transfer the local currency to the victim's local account. But once the victim transfers the RMB to the fraudster's account, the scammer will ignore the victim and not transfer the money to the victim's account.

(Screenshot of money remitted to the scammer. Photo by Zhang Yiming)

Zhang Yiming (22), from the Faculty of Information Science and Technology (FTSM), one of the victims, said: “I was in a hurry to exchange money and didn't think much of it, so I just found someone on a platform who said he could exchange money, so I added him, and he gave me his account number and asked me to remit him the appropriate amount of money, which I did, but after I remitted the money to his account, he disappeared. By the time I realized I'd been duped, it was too late. I had to accept my fate.”

“I can say that this is a very clever scammer. In order to make me believe him, he sent me a fake screenshot of the remittance record, which showed that he had sent the local currency to my account. When I saw this screenshot, I chose to believe him without hesitation. He said that the remittance would arrive within 48 hours, and I started to wait, only to be reminded later by my friend that this screenshot was not a complete screenshot and that the remittance platform shown in the screenshot did not exist,” said Li Sixu (21), from Faculty of Economics and Management (FEP), who also encountered a forex trading scam.

Pu Bingqing (21), from Taloy’s University, chose to call the police after realizing she had been scammed, said: “It was the first time this had happened to me, so I felt very confused at first. However, on the advice of my friend, we went online to find out how to deal with this kind of thing abroad. We first contacted the police in China, but since we were abroad, the Chinese police told us to go to the local police station in Malaysia to report the incident. But the money could not be recovered.”