KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 — The Royal Malaysian Police suspect that there are victims of overseas job fraud syndicates who were rescued earlier, are becoming agents of the syndicate to recruit Malaysians to work abroad.
Bukit Aman Criminal Investigation Department (CID) director Datuk Seri Mohd Shuhaily Mohd Zain said the matter emerged from the screening of all individuals rescued in Myanmar recently.
“When we screen them at the airport, we realised that these people have gone out to other countries in a way or context that is not the same as before.
“When we call and investigate, the answers given by the victims appeared to have been ‘already trained’,” he said at a press conference after the CID Community Engagement Session at the TTDI Community Centre here, today.
To overcome the problem, Mohd Shuhaily said police had alerted the Home Ministry of the situation to assess the procedure for issuing travel documents for victims of job fraud syndicates abroad.
Mohd Shuhaily also revealed that 16 individuals have been identified as having returned to the country when they were involved in the employment fraud syndicate before.
“They are not scared with what happened. Therefore, our guess is that these people are aware of what they are doing,” he said.
Previously, the Bukit Aman Criminal Investigation Department (Investigation/Legal) deputy director Datuk Rusdi Mohd Isa said a total of 326 Malaysians who were victims of the overseas job offer fraud syndicate were successfully rescued from 2021 to February 23, while 133 people were still stranded in overseas.
He said most of the victims were taken to countries such as Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, and based on research 73 per cent of them worked as scammers, 12 per cent as customer service workers, eight per cent worked in casinos and seven per cent carried out various jobs such as cooks and so on. — Bernama
