THE SMS message on his phone said he had won $5,000 from Malaysian oil company Petronas.

But Mr Mohamed Omar Mahadi thought it was odd.

Especially since neither he nor his wife had visited Malaysia since 2001 or taken part in any Petronas lucky draw.

Still, he was curious and decided to call the number on the phone to find out more.

A man with a Filipino accent answered.

Mr Mohamed, 26, a pest control operator, recounted: 'He congratulated me and asked for my handphone number and bank account number. He also told me to visit a bank branch and inform the teller of my win.

'I told him I thought this was a scam and asked to speak to someone higher up in Petronas. That was when he warned me not to call the number again, uttered a vulgarity and hung up.'

DIFFERENT DETAILS

Mr Mohamed lodged a police report that same day on 25 Jun.

He also looked up Petronas' website and found out that its contact details were different from those listed in the SMS message.

Mr Mohamed said the SMS message appeared to be linked to some overseas calls his wife had received about two weeks before his SMS message arrived.

Madam Dian, 26, a partner in her husband's pest control company, said the woman who called her identified herself as Mary, and wanted to speak to her husband.

She gave the caller Mr Mohamed's handphone number.

Madam Dian said: 'After that, I felt something was wrong, so I called my husband and told him not to answer the phone when he heard an overseas dial tone. He took my advice.'

Madam Dian said that Mary continued to call her several times that day and insisted on speaking to her husband.

Mary told Madam Dian that she was working for a company called ISS but did not elaborate. The next day, she called again and said she was from a Canadian company conducting a survey on small businesses in Singapore.'

Madam Dian said: 'In later calls, she even became very rude and demanded to speak to him.'

The woman, and later a man, continued to call Madam Dian for about 20 more times over several days.

When The New Paper called the phone number shown in Mr Mohamed's SMS message, a man with a Filipino accent, who identified himself as Mr Sony, claimed we had called Petronas Centre at KLCC in Malaysia.

Mr Sony, who claimed that he was a telephone operator, said that the prize money was given out in conjunction with Petronas' 34th anniversary this year and winners would have their money transferred to their bank accounts via Petronas' bank account in Singapore.

He hung up when he realised he was speaking to the press.

Petronas spokesman Wilson Lee said the SMS message that Mr Mohamed received was part of an SMS scam which had been reported in the Malaysian press recently.

He said it may have been started by Indonesians or an Indonesia-based syndicate, and also targeted some Malaysian telcos and Malaysian cable TV network Astro.

He said Petronas had lodged several police reports about the matter.