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On Wednesday, 22 February 2023, at 10:30 am, I was targeted by a highway scam. I was driving my car from Ipoh to Kuala Lumpur. My husband was sitting beside me and my daughter was sitting behind. All of a sudden, a small animal came out of the jungle and ran in front of my car.
Image: Our dashcam footage showed this monkey crossing in front of our path.
Before I could think of swerving to avoid it, I ran over it. I heard a small “thump” and the car carried on. Feeling shaken, I continued driving but at a slower pace, but it was then that the engine’s high temperature alarm started beeping, indicating that the engine was overheating.
“Something is wrong with the radiator,” I thought. So I stopped the car in the emergency lane. My husband and I got out of the car, and placed the emergency triangle behind the car. I called the PLUS emergency line to ask for towing assistance and also contacted our insurance helpline.
Within 10 minutes at around 10:50am, two PLUS personnel arrived. They introduced themselves as Mr. Shah and Mr. Helmi. They replaced the triangle with some traffic cones, advised me and my family to stand behind the highway railings for our safety, and then they got in their car and left.
A man on a motorcycle stopped by and said he was a “mechanic”
Not long after, a man who was riding a motorcycle stopped by the road beside me. He seemed to be in his 30s, and was wearing a bright green t-shirt and black long pants, with his hair tied up in a bun.
He asked me what had happened, and I told him how we had accidentally knocked into a monkey by the roadside. The front of our car was damaged to the point that it couldn’t be driven for long distances, and we needed to call a tow truck.
The man asked if I wanted my car to be towed to his workshop, and introduced himself as a mechanic.
I said, “Thanks, but no thanks, I’ve already called a tow truck from my insurance provider.”
He tried to bargain with me and my husband for 10 minutes, trying to persuade us to come with him, but we politely declined, again. Unsatisfied, he got back on his motorcycle and rode off.
Quite soon after that, he returned. Stopping his motorcycle in front of our car, he squatted down and appeared to examine the damage on our car for a few minutes. After 5 minutes, he walked over to where we were waiting behind the rail.
The man then told us how the monkey we had run over actually belonged to “his friend” and he asked us for compensation for the death of the monkey. My husband replied, saying “Okay, let’s talk to your friend for payment.”
The man demanded money for the dead monkey
Quite suddenly, the man began to act aggressively. He leaped over the railing and walked right up to my husband, staring him down face-to-face with wide glaring eyes. He looked like he was about to attack my husband. He began to curse my husband with harsh words, like “bodoh sombong” (stupid proud man”)
Although my husband had not raised his voice throughout the encounter, this man behaved aggressively towards him, pointing his finger in front of my husband’s face. He threatened to leave and come back with a group of men.
At that time, around 1:30pm in the afternoon, I contacted the Polis Bantuan PLUS again, because I was beginning to fear for my family’s safety. PLUS informed me that they would send some patrolmen over.
I started recording the interaction between my husband and this man, so that I would have some proof of this encounter to show the police in case something happened.
The moment the man noticed that I was filming, he looked even angrier and yelled at me: “Hey! Delete the video!”
He seemed totally enraged now. I started to feel very afraid, because he was acting extremely unstable. I deleted the recording out of fear.
The man snatched my phone and tried to use my TnG app
Image for illustration purposes via VernonChan
“Show me your phone!” he demanded, so that he could see me deleting it in front of his eyes. As I was holding up my phone and showing him the screen, my husband took out his phone and started to record as well.
When he saw that, he snatched my phone away from my hands. He threatened to throw my phone into the jungle if my husband didn’t delete the recording. I tried to plead with this man not to throw my phone into the jungle. While he was making these threats, my daughter broke down and sobbed, crying out of fear for my safety. The man entered the jungle with my phone and was in there for about 15 minutes.
At last, the PLUS patrolmen arrived at the scene. When the man saw them, he walked out of the jungle and surrendered my phone to Mr. Faizull.
Like a switch had been flipped, the man seemed to calm down, his behavior changed completely. He started talking to the PLUS patrolmen, smiling and chatting like nothing happened. The man said that there was no disagreement, we were friends, and that the patrolmen needed worry, but he was clearly lying.
Once the patrolman handed back the phone to me, I noticed the TnG app on my phone was open.
I checked it and realised he had tried to send RM88 from my Touch n Go E-wallet app to his account! But he got stuck at the pin number stage.
After that, the patrolmen left, and the man appeared to leave as well. We waited for the tow truck to arrive.
The man came back…a third time??
Image for illustration purposes via piston.my
Not long after the patrolmen had departed, he rode back and appeared again in front of me and my family.
As we saw him approaching, my husband immediately told me to call PLUS for the third time, because at this point we were very frightened. When he arrived, he turned towards me and told me he wanted to see the footage deleted from my phone’s recycle bin. My husband stood between him and me, and prevented him from snatching my phone away a second time.
Within 5 minutes, the PLUS patrolmen came back, and this time, they stayed with us until we were able to get a ride back to Ipoh with my sister-in-law and her husband. The patrolmen had no authority to remove him because so far, he had not done anything violent.
Even though we told them he was threatening us, there was nothing they could do. While one of the officers was listening to him, the other one took me aside and advised me to get out of there, for our own safety. We agreed to all leave with my sister-in-law who had arrived in her car.
We got in and she drove up to the interchange and made a U-turn to return to Ipoh. As we passed by the other side of the road, we saw that the man was still there with the PLUS patrolman. I felt a sense of relief wash over me, and I was glad that they stayed behind to ensure our car would not be in danger of being damaged by the man.
A few hours later, my husband went with another PLUS patrol car back to the highway. But when they arrived at the scene, the man was nowhere to be found. Luckily, the car appeared to be in the same conditions as when we left it, and the tow truck had already arrived.
Highway scams are quite common in Malaysia
Image: Tow truck services are in high demand, which leads to highway scammers taking advantage. Image via carput.
It is not surprising that highway scams are common in Malaysia, whether it’s someone pretending to be injured by the roadside, or a man in a tow truck posing as a helpful mechanic.
In this case, this man introduced himself as a mechanic with a tow truck, but when that story didn’t work, he changed his story to that of someone whose friend had lost their pet monkey. When that didn’t work, he became aggressive and angry.
In my husband’s opinion, he was trying to provoke him to lay hands on him, and possibly use that as an excuse to call the police on us. All this noise is just to frighten victims into giving in to their requests.
Fortunately, with the help of the PLUS policemen, the situation was resolved.
Here’s what you can do to avoid a highway scammer:
- Don’t pay attention to strangers on the highway who are offering you assistance
- Call the toll-free PLUS hotline 1800 88 0000 for assistance when your car breaks down.
- Use the emergency telephones which are provided at every 2 kilometres along the PLUS expressways.
- Once you have put down the triangle sign on the road, wait behind the guard rail while facing incoming traffic to avoid accidents.
Do you have an interesting story? Email us at hello@inreallife.my
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