Apparently there's a scam going on which I also received calls from. The scammers will pose as collection agents for Tenaga Nasional (TNB). The scammers will call in and send in images of forged lawyer letters and threaten action by TNB (electricity cut) if failure to pay the arrears in electricity bill. In fact, they will threaten that they have people already in front of the property to cut the electricity connection to the premise.
Once the owner buys/digs into the story, the scammers will tend pretend to sympathize with the owner and claim to be able to waive off the bill if the owners pays a small amount of money into the scammer's account. The scam seems legit as the amount requested to pay are normally below RM5,000.
The scammers seem to be targeting owners of commercial properties as most of these landlords do not monitor or are aware of their tenant's electricity bill. In addition, the scammers are playing in the the business owner and landlord fear that electricity cuts will disrupt business operations. A lot of busines operations are reliant on the supply of electricity to function.
I checked on the scam forums and found some business owners also get scammed by this operation. Scammers would called up the business premise and social engineer their way to make the people working in the premise to pay to another account instead of directly to TNB.
The salient features of this scam
- usually call at 4PM, 5PM right when TNB careline and TNB closes doors
- threated to cut of electricity supply
- sympathize but giving a way out (transfer to scammer account)
When in doubt, do call up TNB careline to confirm if it is a scam or not.
📱TNB Careline : 1-300-88-5454
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