Woman in dire straits after credit card swiped to buy RM13,000 in crypto

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KUALA LUMPUR – A female operations manager with a Klang Valley-based information technology (IT) firm has been riddled with more than RM13,000 in debt for nearly a year, after an unknown party used her HSBC credit card to purchase cryptocurrencies.

Since December last year, Rachel (not her real name) has been going back and forth between banks, mediators, police, and a telecommunications company (telco) just so she can prove that she was not the person who made several transactions that led to her current predicament.

Speaking to The Vibes recently, the mother of two – who is in her 40s – said she has become increasingly frustrated over the lack of an amicable solution to her case, as she will likely have to pay back the sum owed to the bank even though she is an alleged victim of fraud.

According to a police report she filed at the Travers police station here on January 12, Rachel claimed a total of eight fraudulent transactions took place between December 13 and 16.

The first half of the transactions between December 13 and 14 were done in United States dollars, and amounted to the bulk of the debt at more than RM12,000, while the remaining were done in ringgit and amounted to several hundreds of ringgit each.

In total, she accrued RM13,074.32 in debt from her HSBC Mastercard. The bank, she said, could not reverse the transactions.

In the report, Rachel said she did not receive any one-time passwords (OTPs), nor any purchase confirmation messages that are usually sent to her mobile phone.

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