Fraud syndicates harvesting information from govt portals - Bukit Aman

Bukit Aman Commercial CID director Datuk Zainuddin Yaacob said such syndicates also used the latest applications in the market as a medium to communicate with the victims as well as Dark Web to obtain the target information.

"The syndicate representative will often masquerade as a customer service officer of Telekom Malaysia or a police officer," he said in a press conference at the Perak contingent police headquarters here today.

However, Zainuddin could not state the extent on the breach of private information of users who conduct business online because the matter is under the purview of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

In the press conference, Zainuddin also announced the success of Bukit Aman CCID in busting the activities of a fraud call syndicate with the arrest of 22 individuals comprising 19 men and three women aged between 20 and 46 years in a raid at a house here, yesterday.

Zainuddin said the raid conducted between 7 am and 4 pm was based on intelligence carried out with public information and police confiscated various items including two cars, three laptops, 47 mobile phones, 12 passports and 37 sets of scripts.

He said the syndicate had been active since April 2018 where several individuals underwent a week-long training in Cambodia and worked in Laos until March 2020 before returning to Malaysia in May due to COVID-19.

"At the end of September, they were working from a transit house in Menglembu, here, before moving into telecommunications call centre fraud in Taiping in early November before stopping their operation. In the middle of this month they resumed operation here until the date of the raid (Dec 29), " he said.

He said each member of the syndicate received a commission of between RM3,000 to RM4,000 a month and the group was believed to be involved in 29 fraud cases involving victims from all over the country with losses amounting to RM360,000 since returning to the crime in November.

He said all suspects were now remanded for four days from Dec 29 to assist in the investigation under Section 420 of the Penal Code and action was also taken according to the Prevention of Crime Act (POCA) 1959.

Apart from that, he said from Jan 1 to Dec 28 this year, a total of 2,226 cases of call fraud were recorded nationwide involving losses exceeding RM172 million.