Mak

 

Where do I even begin.

Mak pernah cakap dengan aku dulu, Hidup ni umpama tayar. Kadang-kadang di atas. Kadang-kadang di bawah. Bila dah tua bangka ni baru faham maksudnya apa. Menang bukan selalu, kalah bukan selamanya. Hidup ada cara untuk buat kau rasa humbled bila perlu dan memberi motivasi untuk terus berjalan tatkala kau rasa kena hempuk bertalu-talu dengan nasib tak baik. 

Macam itulah kut kehidupan Mak. Dia bukan datang dari keluarga senang. Susah sangat pun tak jugak. Middle class la kut. Arwah Atuk dulu kerja dengan British Army, jadi Chief Clerk katanya sampai disiplin ketat tu dibawak balik ke rumah. Memang patut pun. Adik beradik mak ramai. Dia antara paling muda. Belajar pun bukan jurusan professional. Tapi pelajaran Mak paling besar bukan dari universiti. Ayat klisenya mak belajar dari kehidupan, lebih tepat lagi kehidupan lepas universiti. Dan kehidupan Mak  banyak mengajar aku.

Mak banyak kali disalahanggap sebagai seorang peguam. Satu, from time to time dia akan pakai hitam putih bila pegi kerja dan lagi satu dan paling penting, dia tak takut dengan sesiapa. Dia nampak ada yang tak kena pada tempatnya, benda tak betul, memang dia akan tegur, memang dia akan bebel. Dia akan gaduh(mulut) kalau perlu. Berdarah la telinga, tersiat-siatlah ego kau kalau kena. Itu satu skill tak turun sepenuhnya pada aku. Aku man of peace. Most of the time-lah. 

Masa muda, baru berkahwin, Mak dengan Abah rajin mengumpul majalah National Geographic. Majalah berkulit kuning inilah yang menjadi tingkap pertama aku pada dunia. Bila Mak meningkat usia dia mula baca buku-buku Stephen Covey. Malcom Gladwell. Jenis-jenis buku macam tu. Buku self-help. Cerita pasal manusia, pasal cemana nak lengkapkan diri, baiki diri untuk menghadapi perangai manusia, nak menghadapi dunia. Agaknya dari situ aku pun mula minat menelaah pasal falsafah. Iyalah, falsafah ini pun berkisar tentang manusia, perangai manusia dan kehidupan. Sekarang bila dah tua Mak rajin menyelak buku agama, fikir pasal di Sana nanti pula. 

Mak memang sayangkan kami adik-beradik. Makan pakai semua cukup, tak kiralah waktu dia suri rumah sepenuh masa atau bila dia mula bekerja semula. Makan semua dia masak from scratch. The kind of food that sticks to your bones. Takde maknanya benda-benda instant ni. Aku cuma aktif makan megi bila dah masuk universiti. Kalau Mak masak, memang bertambah-tambah nasik. Bila di Kedah, aku rindu sambal tempe ikan bilis dia. Kadang-kadang sampai call tanya harini masak apa. Pastu kena bebel: tanya masak apa bukan boleh makan pun dia cakap. Aku balik dari Kedah kurus (ini bukan mitos) sampai ada sepupu tanya aku isap dadah ke. 

Itu, satu lagi skill dia yang tak turun pada aku. Memasak. Padahal itu survival skill penting tiap lelaki kena ada selepas menjahit. Takat goreng telur, nasik goreng cincai boleh lah. Tapi nak memasak sampai ramuan tu main agak-agak je campak tapi sedap menjadi, itu memang bukan kepakaran aku. Aku bukan Mak. 

Dia pernah kata dahulu, my children are my life. Dengan siapa sahaja dia tak bergaduh demi kami adik-beradik. Apa saja mak tak buat untuk besar kan kami. Sampaikan aku rasa dia betul-betul mula menikmati hidup ini bila kami dah besar panjang pasal dia sentiasa ada dengan kami. Sentiasa. Tapi iyalah, bila meningkat remaja, membesar mula lah nak melawan, little shits that we were. Konon nak melebar sayap. 

Dari masa ke semasa ada juga aku jenguk, bawak cucu-cucu dia buat teman kasi senyum tengok gelagat dua hero. Tapi tak selalu. Aku pun tak pasti kenapa. Sebenarnya tak ada alasan untuk aku tak luangkan masa dia sebagaimana dia banyak habiskan masa dengan kami waktu kecik dulu. Aku bukan kerja 9 to 5 pun. Aku bukan answerable pada sesiapa kecuali pada client. Entahlah. Mungkin kerana banyak titi-titi yang roboh tak boleh diseberangi kembali, simpang diambil yang tak boleh berpatah balik. 

Boleh jadi juga itu hanya alasan. Aku harap esok hari aku tak kena menjawab kenapa aku tak luangkan masa dengan dia masa dia masih ada. 

Baru baru ini hari lahir Mak. Dia hantar WhatsApp pada anak menantu pesan tentang akhirat. Pesan tentang rapuhnya kebergantungan pada manusia itu. People will fail you. Sometimes inadvertently. Sometimes deliberately. Kat situ aku tau Mak memang cakap dari pengalaman sendiri. A number of people failed Mak. If I am honest with myself, I might even count myself as one of them, inadvertently. Aku manusia, tak sempurna. Mak pun sama walaupun bagi aku dia the only superwoman in the world sebab lalui apa yang dia lalui untuk besarkan kami. Alhamdulillah jadi la juga orang kami adik beradik ni. 

Mak adalah produk generasi dia jadi sememangnya ada benda yang Mak dan aku tak sependapat. Tapi tak sependapat macam mana pun dia Mak aku. One and only. 

Kehidupan Mak ajar aku bahawa hidup tak adil tapi itu bukan alasan untuk kau tak berlaku adil pada orang lain. Mak ajar aku untuk take no shit from no one, untuk terus melawan dan terus melawan. Mak juga ajar bahawa a good pair of shoes are the best investment one can make. Dari Mak juga aku belajar untuk jangan harapkan orang untuk tolong kau kalau kau sendiri tak cuba tolong diri kau sendiri, bahawa sesungguhnya tak ada alasan untuk tak belajar. That everything and everyone is a lesson for you.

Aku tak tahu macam mana kehidupan bila Mak tak ada nanti. Kerana Mak sentiasa ada. That one constant in my life bila semua benda kejap-kejap berubah. 

Mungkin itu pelajaran terakhir dari Mak. Final lesson on growing up. That one day she will no longer be around to guide me (and nag me). My first and greatest teacher. My north star.

My mother. 

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On Trades. Nothing owned, everything on Loan with interest to pay.

I lost my bands last Monday. It was one of the oldest relics of my pupillage. I remembered buying it at one of the stalls at the KL Court cafeteria (odd thing to be selling at a drinks stall) after an LA  where i read in chambers discovered that he had his robe but not his bands for a High Court hearing. I was at KL Court at that time obtaining JID's by the armload at one of the magistrate's court, the LA knew this. So he sent me an sms asking me to find a spare pair of bands post haste. So i did. 

It was nothing fancy. Just a polyester bands with velcro fasteners at the end instead of the usual bands on strings type. As a token of his gratitude for saving his (turkey) bacon the LA bought me a big McDonalds lunch. When asked about the band he said: Simpanlah. Saya dah jumpa saya punya terselit dalam kereta. Lagipun nanti awak mesti pakainya nanti. In the end it was a worthy trade for me. A big lunch for a cheap band that would later go around (most of) the peninsular with me. Later on i found out that you can rent the damned thing from the Bar Room for pittance. But of course it would be better to own one. 

Going back to last Monday, I was in hellfire rush to an appeal i was already late to (or so i thought) when i realized my bands were not where it was supposed to be. I was exactly where the aforementioned LA was years and years ago only there are no pupil for me to call upon. But it ended well. I got what i came for from the appeal but the price was a new pair of bands and the loss of an old one. A worthy trade?. It seems that way. 

Either way, it marked my ongoing passage from nowhere to somewhere.. Maybe one day, i will get There. 

I cannot truly own that win because many hands contributed to it to which i give thanks to, Hands of Fate is the first and obvious one, my colleagues, friends and mentors. But as aside, can one truly own anything really? Or is it just our desperate attempt to mark our brief presence here on this Earth. Our means of saying: i was here.  

Anyway, of course it felt weird using a new pair of bands in front of a  judge I have never appeared before in an area of law i am not familiar with but it was a transition of sorts, something old for something new and a reminder for me that bands, relationships and jobs, they don't last forever and that the two certain thing in Life is Change and Death. 

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On Investment Scams

 

Yesterday, the Friday khutbah was about looking for rezeki halal or gains made in the permissible way. In the Khutbah there was a vicious poke at online scammers on whether in the race to accumulate riches in fastest way possible it is rezeki halal (it is not). If it is in the khutbah then things are that bad.

This is not a khutbah. This is just a reflection of mine after having been involved in court cases stemming from scams. More specifically, investment scams. To be clear, I am not an expert on investment scams. I just happen to encounter them regularly for some reason.

 

A.     Scammers show and tell a good story, but not the whole story.

Here is a scenario for you to consider. A nephew who is known to be leeching off his aging parent’s income, no visible employment of what so ever. All the sudden a guy who is known to borrow Dad’s car brought home an expensive car (insert your preferred dream car here). Started to change the unshowered look for the well dressed look and talk about investments with relatives. Sembang crypto. Sembang puluh ribu. Sembang kencang.

Of course the earlier image of a deadbeat is hard to shed with relatives but one gullible uncle took a chance. After all, the investment is in Cryptocurrency and the deadbeat is the go to guy when it come to IT and cyber stuff. It ought to be a legitimate investment. It looks legit, there is a company website to monitor your investment. There is a physical office and the nephew even brought him to see one of the directors for heavens sake!. Confirm legit!

The gullible uncle starts to see the returns in three months time. Pump in RM 10,000.00 and get RM 5000.00 every month for 3 years. Guaranteed. Gullible uncle is now the perpetually smiling uncle. But then looking at the nephews new car the thought crossed his mind, He asked the nephew, how long has he been doing the investment? 6 months replied the nephew sheepishly.

The uncle did the maths. Impossible for the nephew to pump capital to get the kind of returns to afford the car. Even his parents could not raise that kind of capital being retired teachers. When pressed for details the nephew relented. Don’t tell anybody else. I made what I made from my downlines. For every downline I recruit I will get a certain sum every month. The more downlines I have, the more I can make in a month. Exit gullible uncle, enter greedy uncle. Wife, friends, surau members. All fair prospects. All happy, all swimming in money until one day the payments stops, the website went offline. The deadbeat went uncontactable, could not be located. Just plain gone. The physical office is now empty, unoccupied. Angry downlines began to chase after greedy uncle. Dreams of easy life turned into a nightmare. All because he took the bait. The expensive car being the bait. The seemingly to an extra cherry on top of an already profitable (scam) investment.

In a best case scenario the story ends with just loss of money and reputation for the greedy/gullible uncle. Worse case scenario, police reports are made, prosecution in criminal courts and civil suit by investor/downlines to follow.

This is a familiar old story. The difference would be the scam. It could be Palm Oil Investment in Thailand, Investing Coco Plantation in Gabon, Halal Hub investment with cryptocurrency baked into the deal, Insurance cum Investment Account or some Cryptocurrency scam belatedly riding on the already stale success stories of Bitcoin, or whatever. All the story had to do is to part you from your hard earned money. Greed will do the rest.

1.      It starts with Friends and Family

It always began with friends and family. Just like MLM schemes. But I find the middle aged to the elderly are more susceptible to investment scams than the younger generation. It could be because there are the ones with the money to spare. The young are hopelessly broke (okay, maybe not all). So if a friend you have not been in contact with for so long or a nephew or niece suddenly shows up with all the trappings of the newly rich and telling you that you can be like him or her too, beware. If not for yourself, for your aging parents or relatives.

 

2.      Too Good to be True.

Study the brochure or prospectus if there is one. There are bound to be something wrong with the actual document. Crappy printing. Typos. The investment product will sound something similar with a legitimate investment product except this one is better and more profitable (according to the scammer lah). All fluff words or grand promises of better returns than actual investments on the market which at first blush sounds too good to be true (because it is not true). If you are lucky there will be a comparison table. The emphasis will be solely on the profit and nary a word on the risk factor.  With that, it plays into the greed/ hope factor. Okay, maybe greed is too harsh of a word. Let us call it hope then. Hopes of expanding the college funds of one’s children. Hopes of building a bigger and better nest egg for the old age. Hopes of making extra money. Scams prey on that hope.  

 

3.      Consistent Returns, too consistent.

Another signs of a scam would be the consistent payout every month regardless of rumblings of war in Middle East, dropping oil prices, change of government in Malaysia. It would seem that real world happenings has no bearing at all on the investments. Share prices on the Bursa would rise or dip accordingly, the goings on on the Composite Index would affect your Unit Trust investment, even Crypto currencies values ebbed and flowed according to the latest news. Even periodic interest payments of bonds will rise and fall according to interest rates. But not this investment(scam). This investment (scam) impervious to harm. Or so you thought. There is one case where the victim received RM 5000 every month as the returns until the scam imploded at which point the victim received nothing but scorn from relatives who joined the investment at the victims insistence.  The point is, investment scams are immune to fluctuations and this is because they are not real investments rooted in the real world. They are as fake as China copy LV handbags.

 

4.      Short shelf life

From my observations, most scam investments will collapse within 3 years from the date money changed hands. So if in the course of convincing you to invest the number 3 years is thrown around, take care. It could be a scam. My theory is that the convoluted transaction of using Investor C to pay for Investor B’s monthly return while simultaneously using Investor A to pay for Investor D's monthly return creates a tangled web of deceit that will collapse on its own weight after a time. In one particular case the scammer wickedly proclaimed to the victims that their investments will mature at the end of 3 years after which the principle sum and the returns can be collected. By the time that 3 years is almost over the scammer had already milked what could be milked from the unsuspecting victims and are ready to disappear.

 

B.     Minimizing the risk

 

If its looks suspicious and sounds suspicious, check

If the alarm bells are ringing in your head about a proposed investment promising high and consistent yield, get independent verification whether it is the real deal. One way to do that is to go to this PDRM website and this Bank Negara website. The PDRM website is butt ugly but it allows you to check for scams by way of bank account number used, company name or telephone number used for all kinds of scams including investment scams. The Bank Negara Website is more basic but you will find what you are looking for, most of the time and, I consider the BNM list much authoritative since BNM is the body responsible to issue licenses for financial institutions including investment companies and such. So if BNM says it’s an investment scam, it is an investment scam. If the suspicious financial product being offered to you is listed on the Financial Consumer Alert List, kindly tell the scammer that you are not interested and do your duty as a citizen and lodge a police report. Who knows how many life savings and nest egg you will be saving.

Some, not all.

If you keep in mind Items 1 to 4 above, and still think a suspicious looking investment is not a scam and worth venturing into then no power on earth can stop you from investing but for God’s sake please just invest a small sum of your own money. Not your father's, not your mother's, not your aunt or uncle's, not your schoolmate's money. Invest (if you really insist on investing) the sum you are willing to lose. This will vary from a person to person It could be RM 100, could be RM 50,000. If you are not willing to lose any money then don’t invest. Remember the old saying of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Maybe an egg or two will do.

Downlines and investments to greater misery

Like I said, if you are still adamant on investing in a suspicious sounding investment, invest only your own money. Don’t volunteer to take up deposits for would be investor/victims. Don’t fall for the recruitment aspect of the scam investments promising more returns for more recruits or nak kongsi rezeki and what have you. The reason is because it is an offence under Section 137 of the Financial Services Act 2013 (''FSA 2013'') which provides as follows:

‘’ 137.   (1)   No person shall accept deposits except under a licence granted under section 10 regardless of whether the transaction is described as a loan, an advance, an investment, a savings, a sale or a sale and repurchase or by whatever name called. (2)   Any person who contravenes subsection (1) commits an offence and shall, on conviction, be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or to a fine not exceeding fifty million ringgit or to both.’’

Since the investment sounds too good to be true, chances are it is a scam. Since it is a scam it won’t be licensed by Bank Negara Malaysia to operate. Don't fall for the line: we are in the process of applying for Bank Negara license. No license, no authorized to accept deposit. That simple. Since the purported investment is not licensed anybody accepting deposits on behalf of the so called investment is open to prosecution under the above mentioned Section 137 of FSA 2013.

Alternatively, should you have made the unwise decision to collect deposits for the scam you can also be prosecuted for cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property under Section 420 of the Penal Code which provides as follows:

‘’ Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property

420. Whoever cheats and thereby dishonestly induces the person deceived, whether or not the deception practised was the sole or main inducement, to deliver any property to any person, or to make, alter, or destroy the whole or any part of a valuable security, or anything which is signed or sealed, and which is capable of being converted into a valuable security, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than one year and not more than ten years and with whipping, and shall also be liable to fine.’’

As for the civil side of things, in most civil suit for investment scams, the pissed off downlines will go after their uplines or the ones who talked them into joining the scam most of the time. Having the scamming entity as a Defendant was almost unheard of. At least for me. So, most of the time the upline/recruiter will be the one having to compensate the downlines for their loss while the actual mastermind makes a clean getaway. Don’t let yourself be the patsy. Rein in that greed. Keep your hands off other people’s money/life savings.

Are the losses recoverable?

Not really. You can initiate legal suit in court to recover the losses but unless you drag in the scam company (if it is a registered company in Malaysia but that is highly unlikely. Some I have encountered are based in China or non-existent) I would say there is very little chance of recovering your losses either from the scam company, entity or from the scum sorry scam agent you once called nephew or niece. Most of the time the money collected had already been spent on God knows what. If you are unlucky, the money might still be there but will be forever beyond your reach because it is forfeited by the Government as proceeds of illegal activities. But, no harm in trying though. Who knows, you might be lucky to recover your loss. 

What about the Police, can’t they help me get back my money?

Unfortunately, the police and the criminal courts are not your debt collectors. They investigate, prosecute and punish scammers. Under no circumstances will they recover your money lost in investment scams for you hence my plea to only invest what you are willing to lose if you are really keen on investing.  

In the end

These investment scams prey on the financially illiterate and feeds on blind hope or greed of the victims. Financial education is a must as much as a healthy dollop of skepticism when it comes to parting with your hard earned money. Be vigilant. 

 

 

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