PETALING JAYA: Malaysians fell prey to the shenanigans of scammers, losing over RM50 million in the last four months.
The National Financial Crime Prevention Centre (NFCC) revealed that the National Scam Response Centre (NSRC) received 16,752 calls, of which 37 per cent (6,277) were from scam victims.
The other 63 per cent were calls from members of the public seeking advice before or after encountering possible scammers.
"The amount of losses in just four months is RM52.4 million, an amount that should concern us all," said Md Zainizam Mat Jenu, the Director of the Integrated Operations Division at the NFCC, during the National Anti-Scam seminar at the CelcomDigi Tower today.
Zainizam also said that a total of 12,877 suspected mule accounts were identified between Oct 12, 2022, and Jan 31, 2023.
"Again, this is a worrying figure ... if we can tackle the mule accounts, we should be able to curb online scams because these accounts are being used as conduits to siphon (off) victims' money.
"The syndicates would create layering (immediately transfer the victims' money from one mule account to another) to escape the authorities," he explained.
To curb these incidents, the NFCC established the NSRC-997 hotline in October last year to report online financial scams. The NSRC is a joint effort between the NFCC, the police, Bank Negara, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, financial institutions, and the telecommunications industry.
It focuses on online financial scams, including phishing attacks, Macau scams, malware attacks, package delivery or parcel scams, and love scams.