KUALA LUMPUR: Online and short messaging service (sms) scams via handphones have become a trend used by criminals nowadays and Nigerians rank the highest for committing various commercial crime offences.
Bukit Aman Commercial Crime director Datuk Syed Ismail Syed Azizan said Nigerians formed the most number among foreign nationals arrested last year (2012) totalling 378 people.
When asked what was the main factor for Malaysians becoming victims to the fraudulent scheme, Syed Ismail said greed and impatience to become rich had been identified by the police as among the reasons even though some of the victims were well-educated.
“Malaysians are easily duped into this kind of ‘too good to be true’ schemes and among the notorious tactics used by criminals is ‘the love scam’ which is posting beautiful and attractive faces on Facebook, Twitter, e-mail or other social media platforms and making all kinds of promises which offer money to victims,” he told reporters in a special interview with reporters in his office here, recently.
The public need to be vigilant and cooperate with the police and the the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to decrease and hopefully to eliminate the online and sms fraud cases in the future, he said.
“Taiwanese nationals are the second highest group recorded for fraud, totalling (175) people, followed by Chinese nationals (154) and Indonesians (136).
“Apart from that, a total of 1,796 foreign nationals from 44 countries including South Africa, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar were caught for various commercial crime offences in Malaysia, last year,” he said. — Bernama
The foreign nationals were arrested for offences in cyber crimes, fraud, misuse of properties (fraudulent transfer of properties), forgery, and counterfeit money, and based on police investigation, cases involving fraud cases by foreigners on locals, he said. — Bernama