AN “anti-scammer” campaign launched by the police last year has proven to be a success with a significant drop in the number of commercial crime cases in the country, top cop Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani said.

The inspector-general of police told The Malaysian Insight that the campaign was aimed at increasing public awareness and to reduce the number of commercial crime cases, especially online scams.

“We wanted to expand or broaden public awareness on online scams and fraud, including to reduce public fear on the issue.

This latest campaign continued a similar campaign launched previously to focus on online crimes.

“After providing information to and creating awareness among the public on commercial crime cases, we have seen a drop certain types of online crimes, such as ‘love scams’,” he said.

Acryl said in 2020 there were 1,580 love scam cases but after the launch of the campaign last year, the cases dropped to 1,460. As of May this year, police have recorded only 361 cases.

Likewise, for the Macau scam, there were 2,254 cases in 2020 but the figure decreased to 1,586 last year, he added.

However, the number of Macau scam cases went up to 1,612 as of May this year.

“We are working hard to bring down the number of Macau scam cases. The ongoing campaign is among of our latest efforts to help prevent more cases from occurring,” Acryl said.

Malaysia recorded a total of 71,833 commercial crime cases involving losses amounting to RM5.2 billion from January 2020 to May this year.

The IGP said of the total, 48,850 cases or 68% involved online fraud.

He said in the same period, a total of 26,213 perpetrators were prosecuted in court.

Acryl said there were positive signs from the public following the anti-scammer campaign but reminded the masses not to panic and be deceived by various tricks used by online syndicates.

“Direct involvement from the community is very important to prevent more cases from taking place but we are confident that the problem can be overcome due to positive signs shown by the public.

“However, we would like to remind everyone to be wary of the various tactics used by the syndicates.

“They must remember that police will never ask for personal details such as bank accounts over the phone even for investigation purposes. Instead such information will be asked only via a face-to-face probe,” he added.

In November last year, Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department chief Mohd Kamarudin Md Din said his division would continue to carry out various programmes to increase public awareness and prevent more people from falling victim to online scams.

He admitted that there was an increase in online scam cases from January to October 2021 compared with the total number of cases the year before.

“A total of 17,109 cases were reported in 2020 involving losses of RM509.99 million compared with January to October 2021, which recorded 17,537 cases involving RM449.51 million in losses,” he was reported as saying. – July 16, 2022.