Four love scam rings busted

Internet syndicates crippled in joint Malaysian-Singaporean ops Unconscious Myanmar found with three bodies

KUALA LUMPUR: Four Internet love scam syndicates based in Malaysia have been crippled in a joint operation by Malaysian and Singaporean police.

They had targeted victims here and in neighbouring countries.

Singapore’s Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) was alerted after 43 victims lodged reports that they had been cheated of RM20.7mil in total.

CAD approached the Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) here and joint investigations revealed 13 of the 43 cases in Singapore had striking similarities with 65 cases in Malaysia.

Local victims had lost a total of RM1.6mil.

CCID director Comm Datuk Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani said police got their big break from information uncovered by the CAD.

“A victim was duped of RM135,000, which was wired to the account of a woman on Jan 26.

“We arrested the woman, who led us to the mastermind, an African man, and his wife,” he told reporters in a joint press conference with the CAD yesterday.

He said the wife would pretend to be a courier company worker and a Customs officer to dupe the victims.

Comm Acryl Sani said the CCID and the CAD then launched their

The women were the money mules and provided accounts. The Africans were the brains Datuk Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani

joint operation with raids in Negri Sembilan, Malacca, Penang, Pahang and Sarawak between Feb 6 and 10.

Twentyseven suspects, including 12 African men, 12 local women and an Indonesian woman, aged between 22 and 67, were nabbed.

“The women were the money mules and provided bank accounts for the illgotten gains to be transferred to. The Africans were the brains,” he said.

Comm Acryl Sani said police seized seven vehicles, 17 laptop computers, 47 mobile phones and 36 ATM cards, while two bank accounts were frozen.

He said police have solved four cases in Singapore and 54 here with the busts.

CAD director David Chew said they arrested seven women in Singapore who were money mules for the syndicates.

“Most of the time, these syndicates offer the women a small sum to use their bank accounts.

“The women fail to realise that they could face serious jail time, up to seven years,” he said.

Chew added that there were 636 cases in Singapore last year, up from 385 in 2015.

Syndicates scammed a total of S$24mil (RM75mil) from the victims in 2016 and in the previous year, they got S$12mil (RM37.5mil). PETALING JAYA: Alerted by a passerby who spotted a house awash with blood in Taman Lembah Maju in Ampang, police went there and found a man lying unconscious beside the bloodied bodies of a woman and two young children.

The gruesome scene was uncovered after the police broke into the house following a call from the passerby, who said he saw a lot of blood in the house at around 11.50pm on Sunday.

All four were found in the master bedroom with only the man, 47, a Myanmar national, alive but unconscious.

The woman, also a Myanmar national aged 47, and the children, a boy and a girl, aged two and 10, sustained serious injuries on their bodies.

Ampang OCPD Asst Comm Hamzah Elias said the woman was a worker at a foot reflexology centre, while the man was unemployed.

“The bodies were sent to Hospital Ampang for postmortem.

“The man, who is under custody, has also been sent to the hospital as his condition is still unstable,” he said.

ACP Hamzah said police were trying to piece together what happened and find a motive for the case, which has been classified as murder.