I wonder when Malaysians are going to learn. Or is this purely an obsession with greed that no amount of knowledge and learning could ever make a difference? I am referring to another 7,600 individuals who have fallen victims to yet another investment fraud.  

The gullibility of Malaysians is beyond comprehension. We have men and women willing to give away everything they own for some promised love over the net. We have Malaysians willing to part thousands of ringgit of their life long savings for some ‘lucrative’ but dubious and devious investments based on some inordinate words of an acquaintance or investment adviser. This is how dire we are if frequency of scams is used as a gauge.

Many Malaysians must be very desperate for love or very frantic in seeking high returns of their investment. All that is needed is to throw them a story, and voila, the money will start to flow in to the schemers like an endless mountain stream.

We were taught from young true love is not about material wealth and money and yet so many are ever willing to part theirs out of longing for love and affection. They bought the story hook, line and sinker only to discover they were cheated based on their desperate emotion to be loved.

We were taught the adage of risk-return trade-off and yet many are ever willing to buy the story of lucrative returns without risk.  Bonds, gold, forex and exotic stocks are the usually stories.  I was ‘sold’ a forex investment with 20 percent return per month, a whopping 240 percent per year recently. Yes, you did not hear me wrong.

I asked the investment adviser to guarantee my investment, but give me only 5 percent return per month. He can keep the balance 15 percent for himself using my capital. He did not come back to see me since. To me, 5 percent return per month is more than I can ever get in any other forms of investment.

The strategy is to appeal to our inherent greed. The more preposterous the promised return, the more we are attracted to it. This is just a reminder - when they take a thousand ringgit from each of us, they could effectively pay us 10 percent return per month for next 10 months using our own money. I know what most of you are thinking, but you can forget your principal sum by now.

Malaysians must be taught the basics of financial management. If an investment is too good to be true, most probably it is. There are no free lunches. The regulators, the police and other authorities are not your granduncles. By the time they intervene, it is usually too late. Your money is as good as gone.