Muhammad Azhar Ali, who was recently lauded by Malaysians for securing a prestigious NASA scholarship, has now said that he was scammed.
Over the weekend, Azhar's claim that he was offered a scholarship from the world's most prestigious space agency came under the spotlight, as several local media pointed out
several discrepencies in his announcement.
The things that don't add up include language errors, issues with the logo (which many says looked like a copy/paste job) and Muhammad Azhar's name not being found in the NASA database.
A scam victim
Now, the 20-year-old revealed that he was a victim of a scam through a series of tweets on Sunday (3 May).
In the tweets, Azhar clarified that he did participate in a suit designing competition organised by NASA, and about a month later, he received an e-mail saying that he was chosen as one of the top one per cent.
And at the same time, he claimed that he also received several e-mails from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Looks legit, right? So, how did he get scammed?
We thought it would be best to just embed the tweets. Read what he has to say, guys:
Azhar then asked Malaysians to stop spreading false information on his behalf because it could jeopardise his studies and future career:
No apologies but a lesson to learn
The bottom line is that he was basically scammed.
However, despite his explanation, some Netizens are still not very convinced.
Here's one of them:
So, was he scammed or was he the scammer?
Right now, nothing is certain. We guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Good job to the netizens for sniffing out discrepencies in Muhammad Azhar's initial announcement.