Malaysia arrests 400 foreigners in 2011, 2012 for 'Macau Scam'

KUALA LUMPUR: Federal police Commercial Criminal Investigation Department (CCID) through its Cyber and Multimedia Crime Investigation Unit (Unit Siasatan Jenayah Siber dan Multimedia)(JSM) arrested 400 foreigners in 2011 and 2012 who were involved in one of the most-mentioned online cheating network popularly known as 'Macau Scam'.

"These white-collar criminals from Taiwan and China, were caught in Sabah, Sarawak, Selangor and Penang,

"Ironically, Malaysia became their top operating location choice in the region, simply because of our nation's positive elements; multicultural society, ease of food and accommodations, as well as availability of hardware needed for the setting up of their 'con centres'," said Bukit Aman's CCID JSM unit assistant director Superintendent Ahmad Noordin Ismail.

The scam which mainly devised on 'spoofing' or the technique of embedding-over of the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) number, utilised in Internet telephony (voice, fax, SMS, voice-messaging) over the public Internet, masking it with the VoIP number of legal institution's like banks or law enforcement offices, is but one of the many commercially-motivated crime including others like phishing, email and SMS scams, parcel scam, and the 'African love' scam, to more common ones such as web-hacking and individuals' rights infringements through online publications of obscene images.

The latest example can be seen in Malacca, where the state police commercial crime personnel with the assistance of their Johor state and federal level counterpart busted another of the scam's ring, nabbing 10 Taiwanese and China nationals in a raid on Thursday in Puncak Bertam, Cheng.

It was learnt that the international Macau scam syndicate suspects who are on the Beijing police wanted list, had raked in over RM11 million from their countrymen since October.

Noordin revealed that since the past two years the statistics have shown a steady decline of commercial crime, with 4,902 cases recorded last year while 6,586 in 2011.

The JSM unit's 77-people personnel which are inclusive of officers, forensics teams members and civilian staff, have all gone through the CCID compulsory basic training in the department's basic commercial crime course, enabling them to engage criminal acts of the current post-information age effectively.

CCID today invited members of the media for a special two-hour interview concerning commercial crime, focusing on scam alert and cyber crimes, conducted by Noordin and the JSM unit personnel held here at the CCID office in Bukit Perdana.