KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 26 — PKR communications chief Fahmi Fadzil today suggested five steps that must be taken promptly by the government to tackle the issue of online scams, which have been on the rise recently.
He said he welcomes the moves announced by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) governor Tan Sri Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus, but cautioned that scam crimes are very creative and rapidly changing, hence the need for his suggestions to be implemented immediately.
"Today is the day that the war against scammers has begun to shift in the people’s favour. However, the war has just begun and will not end until every scammer is brought to court, the modus operandi of scammers is broken and their victims receive justice,” he said in a statement.
He suggested the formation of a national anti-scam centre based in BNM which will cooperate with other agencies such as the police, Association of Banks in Malaysia, Association of Islamic Banking Institutions Malaysia, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, Attorney-General's Chambers, National Cyber Security Agency, Cybersecurity Malaysia, Ombudsman for Financial Services (OFS) and many more.
He also recommended that the loss limit for unauthorised online transactions be amended from RM25,000 to RM100,000 for the OFS as it will allow victims of scammers access to the services provided by the OFS.
He called for a recovery fund to be established so that victims of scammers may be fully or partially compensated with the amount stolen.
Besides that, he recommended that a high-level task force be established to prosecute those involved in making scam calls, protecting scammers, and planning scammer activities through the cooperation of other Association of Southeast Asian Nations nations and Interpol in the arrest and extradition of criminals in the case that the call centres or criminal activities of the scammer are based abroad.
He also suggested establishing multilateral relations between Southeast Asian countries to improve each country’s respective cyber security and to establish legally inclusive cooperation protocols to eliminate scamming in the region.
"Annually, 20,000 people fall victim to scams and more than RM660 million is stolen by scammers. This is similar to 60 scam victims losing RM2 million every day,” he said.
The BNM today introduced additional countermeasures and more security to the financial industry as part of a measure targeting the modus operandi of the latest financial scam tactics.
This comes as the Commercial Crimes Investigation Department (CCID) reported a total of 71,833 scams totalling more than RM5.2 billion in losses from 2020 until May of this year.
