KUALA LUMPUR: Police here have arrested six men and three women in an operation against an online sales scam syndicate.
Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department director Comm Datuk Mohd Kamarudin Md Din said the nine are aged between 21 and 52 and were arrested in a series of raids in the Klang Valley, Kedah, Perak and Kelantan on Friday (June 25).
“Our investigation revealed four of the suspects were account holders while the remaining six were holders of IP addresses used to dupe victims,” he said in a statement on Saturday (June 26).
Comm Mohd Kamarudin said that the investigation showed that the suspects would advertise items for sale on an e-commerce platform and interested buyers would contact them.
“Once the victim makes payment, they are kept waiting and would never receive the item they purchased,” he said adding that police have connected 28 similar cases to this syndicate.
He also said the syndicate was responsible for at least RM50,000 in losses.
On the raids, Comm Mohd Kamarudin said that the police also seized three laptops, seven mobile phones, 10 credit cards, three modems, one monitor and a Bangladeshi passport.
He added that records showed a 66.2 percent increase in e-commerce fraud in 2020 compared to 2019.
“In 2020, 5,845 cases were reported compared to 3,516 cases in 2019 This year, until Jun 20, we have already recorded 4,364 cases,” he said urging the public to be cautious when dealing with sales and purchases online.
He advised the public to use the ccid.rmp.gov.my/semakmule/ webpage to cross reference the account details of sellers
“If an account has been previously linked to any fraud, it would be in that database. Never give personal details to anyone such as account numbers, PIN numbers, one-time passwords or TAC numbers,” he said
Comm Mohd Kamarudin urged the public to contact the CCID Scam Response Centre at 03-2610 1559 or 03-2610 1599 if they
