I was a prisoner in my home

[StarshipTroopers]

I was a prisoner in my home

April 12, 2013 - 12:15am

By: Eunice Toh Linette Heng

TNP PHOTO: Jeremy Long

Pay up your loan, or we will “do your house”. That text message was the first thing Mr Jason Lim, 40, saw when he woke up on March 27.

That afternoon, he received a call from a private number, and was shocked when he realised he was speaking to a loan shark.

He did not owe any unlicensed moneylenders any money, yet the caller was threatening to harm his family and vandalise his home if he didn’t pay up.

Mr Lim, who said he felt like a prisoner in his own home that night, is not alone in being threatened and traumatised.

More than 180 people have received threatening SMSes in the past month.

It is part of a loan-shark scam.

Read the full report in The New Paper on Friday (April 12).