KUALA LUMPUR:The police are reminding the public to always exercise caution at the tactics used by cyber criminals and stressing that the agency will never make telephone calls to any individual to settle crime cases.

Deputy Inspector-General of Police Datuk Seri Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani, when explaining the matter, said the police would only make calls to make appointments for attendance at police stations for any official business.

‘’Any matter relating to accounts, arrests, police reports and criminal cases are only resolved at the office, police station or court. The police have never telephoned any individual to settle cases, in fact, for any official matter (individuals involved in a call) must go to the police station.

‘’As such, I wish to remind society to always be careful with the modus operandi of the cyber criminals,’’ he told a media conference after the launching of a seminar on Strengthening Crime Investigation and the launching of the portal and Semak Mule application at Maktab PDRM in Cheras, here, today.

Asked about online purchase cheating cases, Acryl Sani said individuals who were cheated when making an online purchase should lodge a police report because the police needed information on the account number used by the cyber criminals.

‘’Some of the cheating cases do not involve a large sum of money and, in such cases, some victims preferred not to lodge police reports as they regarded the cases as not big or serious,’’ he said.

He said 28,508 cases of various types of online cheatings involving 18,130 mule accounts were reported last year with losses amounting to RM2.4 billion.

‘’From early this year until September, police received 14,000 reports of various cases of cheating with losses of over RM400 million,’’ he said.

In this regard, Acryl Sani said the Bukit Aman Commercial CID took the initiative to develop a mobile application, Semak Mule to enable society to authentically check bank accounts and telephone numbers which had crime records.

‘’The communities can access this application wherever they are to make an early check before they become victims of cheatings,’’ he said.

He said the public keen to use the application could download Semak Mule on the Google Playstore platform.

-- BERNAMA