KUALA LUMPUR – A fun meme posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, ended up exposing a fraud who had managed to fool even the chief security office of the Malaysian government to win a place in its premier youth fellowship programme.
Mr Azhar Ali, 23, was selected as one of 56 Perdana Fellows for 2023 after boasting of being a Universiti Malaya graduate majoring in electronics and communications engineering.
But he has since been booted from the programme after many students and alumni pointed out there is no such course at the institution.
“He hasn’t graduated yet. Same batch as me. I was his ex-roommate. But AFAIK (as far as I know), I haven’t heard of the course yet. Mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, civil engineering, biomedical engineering. Only these five,” said @zikriadamn on the social media platform.
Mr Azhar had also claimed to be the champion of the WorldQuant Brain 2022 Global Alphathon. However, this was also revealed as false – the winning teams included students from universities in Vietnam, China and South Korea.
Mr Azhar had been assigned as an intern to Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz. But Datuk Seri Zafrul and Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh, whose ministry heads the fellowship programme, were not the first Cabinet members to be taken in by Mr Azhar’s claims.
Mr Zafrul has since deleted his social media posts welcoming Mr Azhar to his office.
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