KUALA LUMPUR, June 10 — Have you received any emails claiming to be from the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM or LHDN), warning you to comply within 72 hours to avoid facing penalties such as jail for tax evasion?
Watch out! These emails could actually be scams.
Malay Mail has sighted two recent tax scam emails received by a reader, with both emails fairly similar and sent just a few days apart.
What the tax scam emails looked like
The first scam email came with the official-sounding title “Notis Tuntutan Cukai & Penalti (Akta 53)”, giving the impression that it was a notice from LHDN.
The email claimed that an LHDN tax audit had found that the recipient’s company had breached income tax laws by giving inaccurate information or by wilful tax evasion, and that the company must now submit the required documents (including bank statements and financial statements) within 72 hours of the purported notice’s date.
The email warned that failure to comply in 72 hours could result in penalties of up to 300 per cent of the underpaid tax and up to five years’ jail, and that the authorities could also freeze the company’s tax credits.
To make the email appear even more legitimate, the scammer peppered it with references to different legal provisions, while also providing an email address and a landline number for the purported LHDN officer who sent the fake notice.
The second scam email similarly carried the email title “NOTIS TUNTUTAN CUKAI & PENALTI”, and claimed the recipient had underdeclared their income and also gave the same 72-hour deadline to provide documents to the LHDN.
This email said failure to comply within 72 hours would result in a penalty of up to 200 per cent of the underpaid tax and three years’ jail.
This scam email had a green button that could be clicked on to purportedly download forms or the supposed list of documents required by the LHDN, but clicking it leads the user to a fake website that closely mimics LHDN’s actual website.
This scam email also gave the purported name of the LHDN officer who issued this fake notice and an email address and a landline phone number.
Both emails create a sense of urgency by backdating the fake notice and giving a 72-hour deadline to pressure the reader, but if you receive such an email — don’t panic and don’t call the phone number given in the email. Don’t write to the purported email address of the purported officer. Don’t click on any links or buttons in the scam emails.
The most obvious clues that the two emails were scams are that they were sent from these fraudulent email addresses: [email protected] and [email protected].
Do not write to or respond to these scammers’ email addresses.
The official LHDN website
LHDN’s official emails are only sent out through email addresses that end with: @hasil.gov.my
LHDN’s official website is https://www.hasil.gov.my/
On its website, LHDN has an entire section dedicated to warning Malaysians about tax scams: https://www.hasil.gov.my/en/beware-of-tax-scams/
It has regularly posted warnings about scams on its official Facebook page, including three such warnings in the past seven days.
LHDN has repeatedly told Malaysians to beware of scammers who might sound like LHDN when contacting you through letters, emails, phone calls, WhatsApp messages, Telegram messages or any other social media messages.
In fact, LHDN had on May 25 posted a warning about a scam that looks similar to the two scam emails received by the reader:
