POLICE have detained five African men and a local woman, who owned a mule account, on suspicion of being involved in love and parcel scams targeting locals in the past five years.

Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department director Mohd Kamarudin Md Din said the suspects, aged between 27 and 43, were arrested in six raids in Cheras and Serdang near Kuala Lumpur, from 8am to 4pm yesterday.

“Investigations found that the Africans had entered the country by using student passes and, after their validity ended, they did not return to their countries and continued to stay here illegally by carrying out love scams,” he told reporters via a virtual press conference today.

In the raids, police seized various equipment believed to have been used for the activities, including 16 mobile phones, 15 automated teller machine cards and four laptops.

Kamarudin said 730 love scam cases were recorded, involving losses of RM24 million, from Jan 1 up to yesterday.

He related an incident where a female property agent lost RM2.7 million to a love scam syndicate after getting to know a man through the Tinder app earlier this year.

He said the 44-year-old woman got to know the male suspect, who introduced himself as Eric Tai and claiming to be a businessman from the United States.

“After communicating for some time, the woman is believed to have lent money to the suspect through 11 transactions as a result of a signed agreement,” he said.

“The suspect then claimed that he wanted to settle the debt and that he was already in Malaysia and heading for Johor to attend a course.”

Kamarudin said the suspect, however, claimed that the bag containing the money had been seized at the airport in Johor.

He said the victim felt that she had been deceived after the suspect gave more excuses and refused to repay the money he borrowed. The woman lodged a police report on April 15. – Bernama, June 11, 2021.