KUALA LUMPUR, July 8 — A single mother lost RM8,700 after being cheated by a foreign acquaintance, barely two months after adding him as her friend on Facebook.

Kam Lee Lye, 38, a sales manager in Gombak, said her ‘friendship’ with the man, known only as ‘Richard Harry from the United States’, began when he requested to be her friend on Facebook on May 20.

She said they never met in person but had somehow maintained casual conversations through the social media and telephone calls.

On June 24, she said Richard contacted her and requested to borrow some money, saying that it was meant to help him settle some issues with his permanent savings certificate at the Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad, endorsement fee and even to purchase a flight ticket.

Feeling sympathetic, Kam said she deposited RM2,200 into his account, but he kept asking for more, which resulted to her depositing another RM3,000, followed by another RM2,500 and another RM1,000.

“I refused to give him more money (after realising that I was being cheated) and that was when he started to badmouth me,” she told a press conference at the Crime Prevention Awareness Board office in Bandar Baru Ampang here today.

Kam said she had lodged a police report concerning the matter on July 3 and hoped that the man could be arrested and investigated immediately.

“Richard told me he is 49 years old and works on an offshore oil rig in Sarawak, but I believe he is using a fake profile picture of his Facebook page,” she added. — Bernama