A surprise operation by the Malaysian Immigration Department has cracked down on a foreign-controlled scam syndicate that operated in 17 bungalows around luxury residential in Jalan Kuchai Lama, KL.
The scam syndicate used phone scams involving investment, gambling, and love to defraud people and earned up to RM150,000 PER DAY.
All arrested suspects are foreigners with a monthly wage below RM4,000
In a press conference by the Immigration Deputy Director (Operations), all arrested suspects are between 23 and 54 years old. 14 of them are of Chinese nationality, including:
- 15 Indonesian men
- 4 Indonesian women
- 1 Burmese man and 2 Burmese women
- 2 Bangladeshi men, 2 Laotian women
- 6 Thai women.
The suspects all earned between RM2,500 to RM3,500 a month, with their food, clothes, and transportation taken care of at the rented bungalows, reported Sin Chew.
During the surprise raid on February 19, the Immigration Department seized RM100,000 in cash and confiscated several fraud tools, including two rack servers, four computers, 88 mobile phones, three routers, four modems, and 26 mobile phones.
The Immigration Bureau suspects that the mastermind of the fraud group is Chinese, and the other members from other countries are his “employees.” He revealed that the authorities took the surprise action after three weeks of deployment based on intelligence provided by the public and intelligence collected by themselves.
The syndicate used social media such as Facebook, TikTok, WeChat, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc., to find local and international “customers” or victims to sell fake projects, including gold, stocks, real estate, luxury boats, stock investments, foreign currency transactions, luxury goods.
As for other victims, they fell for the love scams or were lured to gamble.
The group certainly knew what they were doing. They had a “guidebook” that helped them navigate the scam and lure the victims into giving them money. The guidebook was also divided into different categories, including how to scam single mothers and people with low self-esteem.
All the suspects were arrested and detained under Section 51(5)(b) of the Immigration Act 1959/63 for offenses including entering the country without a valid permit, overstaying, and violating the terms of their tourist visas—people with low self-esteem.
