The Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) has revealed that there a total of 98,607 online fraud cases have been reported in our country from 2017 to 2021. Furthermore, the total losses from all these scam cases combined exceeded RM3.3 BILLION!
As reported by national news agency Bernama, Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) assistant director (telecommunications criminal investigation) Supt Rozeni Ismail announced the damning statistics on Thursday (10 March 2022) and said that throughout the period, 30,000 individuals were detained. Out of that number, some 25,000 individuals were charged in court.
During a town hall discussion on the threats posed by scammers held on Thursday, Rozeni asserted,
“Most of them were mule account holders while those who were not charged in court were placed under the Crime Prevention Act 1959 which included restricted residence for a certain period of time,”
Furthermore, Rozeni said that most the cases involved Macau Scam, online sales and purchases, non-existent money loans and love scams. He further clarified that one of the reasons scammers managed to deceive their victims was that they operated using social media other than recruiting victims to become mule account holders, whereby the victims allow scammers to use their personal bank accounts for financial transactions from these online criminal activities.
For illustration purposes.
In fact, the CCID assistant director stressed that PDRM would be able to cripple criminal activities of the scammers if they can successfully deal with the mule account holders.
Meanwhile, Kuala Lumpur Police Chief Datuk Azmi Abu Kassim revealed that online fraud cases such as the Macau Scam, Love Scam and e-purchase in Kuala Lumpur had gone up even though the country was still coping with the Covid-19 pandemic. A total of 4,340 cases with losses of RM665 million were recorded last year compared to 4,062 cases with a loss of RM637 million recorded in 2020.
“This shows that there are still a handful of people who are easily deceived by offers, easily persuaded and are less aware of cybercrimes, thus causing them to lose millions of dollars. Some of the victims claimed that they had never heard of such online scams and had never been given information related to this issue,”
It is important for us to stay vigilant and not fall for any of these scams. Remember to always do proper research and vetting before spending or transferring money. Furthermore, if something seems too good to be true, most of the time it is!
What do you guys think of the statistics? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
Also read: M’sian Uni Student Loses Over RM42k In Video Game Scam On IG
