KUANTAN, Dec 27 — Two civil servants, believed to be involved in the sale of fake ‘Datuk' and 'Datuk Seri' Pahang state titles will be charged in the Sessions Court, here tomorrow.

State Police chief Datuk Seri Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf said the two men aged 36 and 30 respectively, would be charged under Section 5(1) of the Computer Crimes Act 1997 (Act 563) punishable under Section 5(4) of the same act.

He said the suspects, who are attached with the Pahang State Secretary's Office (SUK), as operations assistant and administrative assistant were alleged to have wrongfully registered the names of 29 individuals into the system to obtain the title.

However, their activities were discovered by another Pahang SUK employee who was in charge of the matter.

"A police report was lodged and the investigation found that the suspects allegedly entered the relevant data into the system without prior permission of their superiors or have misused the identification number provided by the office, " he told a press conference at Kuantan District Police Headquarters here today.

Elaborating, Ramli said the two suspects were believed to be working with several agents and the Datuk Seri and Datuk titles were offered to individuals in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor for a fee of between RM80,000 and RM150,000.

"In addition to the two suspects, all the 29 individuals involved, aged between between 40 and 60 years, have been questioned to help in the investigation

"It was found that 15 individuals received the fake Datuk title while the rest received the Datuk Seri title and some medals and state insignias were seized," he said.

Meanwhile, Ramli informed that Pahang recorded losses of over RM20.3 million through three main commercial crimes, namely e-commerce, Macau Scam and non-existent loans between January and November this year.

He said the Commercial Crime Investigation Department had conducted 1,222 raids since January 1 until yesterday and as a result, 1,278 people have been arrested for various offences. — Bernama