House Gas Leak Checking Scam by fake Gas agent

Do not let wolves into your pen

Amazing that it's almost 2023 already and there's reports of uniform wearing scammers going house to house purportedly to check for gas leaks. Once in the house, the scammers will then tell the residents of the house that their gas cylinder head needs to be change as it is a gas leak hazard. The scammers will then charge around RM500-RM900 for the whole package. The price charged is not logical as a new gas tank only costs RM60, while the cylinder tube and head costs less than RM50.

Actually this modus operandi not new and have been happening 20 years ago before there were so many Internet related scams. Now , the scam is making a fresh comeback. Oriental Daily News, a Chinese news outlet reported about this scam in Dec 14 2022. The incident happened in Kepong.

Someone actually managed call the police on the scammers and video recorded it. In the video, the scammers were dressed in green uniforms with lanyards tags which looked exactly like a Petronas employee. The scammers work in teams to make it look like a sanctioned operations by Petronas.

Landed property residents are prime targets for these scammers. The target victims are elderly folks and people who are ignorant of such scams. The scam is slightly different than 20 years ago in the sense that the scammers come in big groups, wear uniforms with name tag and lanyard.

The on scene policeman can't do much in this case as this is not a criminal activity, this is more of a commercial crime which needs to be handled by the commercial crimes police division. The scam also cannot be proven as the scammers did indeed changed the gas cylinder head but charged a high price for their services/package. Charging high prices for services is hard to proof and is under another government agency's purvey, not the police's area of expertise.