A PERTH man has issued a chilling warning to travellers heading to Bali after he was fleeced out of his life-savings in a gambling scam on the holiday island.

Joe, who asked for his surname to remain unpublished, lost $200,000 after getting trapped in a card game.

The 66-year-old, from Baldivis, said it was the entirety of his superannuation, shattering his retirement plans.

Joe had been to Bali more that a dozen times and thought he knew the ropes, but he’s warning other holiday-makers about the elaborate rouse after he was lured into the scam in October last year.

Camera Icon Joe says the $200,000 is superannuation money that he worked more than 40 years to earn.

Consumer Protection warn the scam has been around for awhile and caught a number of West Aussie tourists.

“I think they're scum bags,” Joe said.

“I've lost my whole superannuation for my retirement. You worked all your life and now it’s all gone.

“I've worked since I was 15 and it's all gone, all my retirement's all gone. I said ‘what am I going to do now? Live off the pension?’”

Joe said that he is not a gambling man but when the amounts involved started small, he thought he was merely giving the locals a helping hand.

Camera Icon The Baldivis grandfather wanted to warn other travellers to mindful of the scam.

“I was only thinking about them, about giving them a bit of a lifestyle that they would never ever have,” he added.

While it was a seemingly innocuous, chance meeting that set the wheels in motion for the scam, it was very much premeditated according to Consumer Protection.

Joe said it all started with a random encounter with a woman in a popular shopping wall.

“She asked me, ‘where do you come from?’, I said ‘from Perth’ and she said ‘oh yeah.. do you know Royal Perth Hospital?’. I said ‘Yeah, of course I do, everyone in West Australia knows Royal Perth Hospital.”

From that conversation a friendship was struck and Joe agreed to visit the woman's family to tell them about Perth... but it was all a trap.

Camera Icon The elaborate rouse gets the victim to join a card game in which they are seemingly winning.

In the house was a friendly game of cards, with a family member claiming he has inside knowledge of poker and is willing to teach Joe how to play.

“He said ‘here, have a go’, I taught you the game,” Joe said.

“I said ‘oh no I don’t want to play, I'm not interested’. Then finally, ‘OK’, so I put $200 down, he had a little board there and he had all these chips in there.”

The scam, then builds the victim’s confidence. And in Joe’s case, his stake continued to grow.

“We started to play the game and I kept on winning,” he said.

“I only had $200, I put the $200 down and the guy pulls out $2000. I said ‘oh hang on a minute’.

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“I could've walked away, but I was just thinking about these young people, the young guy and his sister. What an opportunity for them to make some money and set them up for a business or something.”

The mastermind of the game had put $50,000 on the table and Joe was dealt a winning hand.

All he had to do was match the bet.

To raise the money, Joe was convinced to return to Perth to get the $50,000 surety for the bet.

Over the following few months the scam got deeper and the grandfather was convinced to put up more and more money so he could finally collect the elusive winnings.

The scam turned into an international game of cat and mouse as Joe flew to Bali then Johor in Malaysia and finally Manila in the Philippines

“They took me somewhere, I wouldn't have a clue where it was, it was a Kentucky Fried Chicken place and it had chairs and tables outside and they said we'll stop here have a drink,” he said.

“We had a drink, a talk about how things were going. It was just a general talk which I thought these people are genuine but they did ask for the money.”

That amount, by this stage was $200,000. He handed over the cash and the two friends got up to go to the toilet, leaving their belongings and Joe at the table.

They never returned.

Acting Commissioner for Consumer Protection Penny Lipscombe said it has been many years since reports of the scam have been received, but it appears the scammers are back in business.

“The scenario in this case is identical to the previous reports we have received. Victims are duped into believing that they have a winning hand and it’s impossible to lose so this entices them to invest more of their money into the game,” she said.

“We strongly advise anyone going overseas not to get involved in these games as tempting as the proposition may be at the time. The perpetrators are professional criminals so won’t take no for an answer and put enormous pressure on their victims to take part.”

Information and advice on scams is available on the WA ScamNet website www.scamnet.wa.gov.au.