A scam syndicate have apparently managed to obtain personal information of their victims from portals that belonged to selected government agencies. This was revealed by the Director of Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) at PDRM Bukit Aman, CP Zainuddin Yaakob during a press conference earlier today.
Among those agencies are the Road Transport Department (JPJ) and Election Committee (SPR) as well as MyEG who is one of the main electronic service providers for the Malaysian government. Aside from that, the syndicate has also utilised the Dark Web to illegally source the personal information of its victims.
CP Zainuddin further revealed that the syndicate which operated in Perak has been around since 2018. Some of the members have trained in Cambodia and spent some time in Laos up till earlier this year after the COVID-19 outbreak forced them to return to Malaysia.
He has also revealed that the members would introduce themselves as TM’s customer service officers or PDRM officers to fool their victims. For the past two months, the syndicate have apparently managed to scam RM 360,000 out of their victims from all over Malaysia before its call centre was raided by CCID yesterday.
However, CP Zainuddin didn’t reveal in-depth information regarding the illegal data gathering from JPJ, SPR, and MyEG’s portals by the syndicate. Hence, we do not know if there was a data breach within these agencies which is why we are now reaching out to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to obtain more details regarding the serious crime.
While we are in the subject of the phone and online scams, please advise caution whenever you receive phone calls and messages from suspicious or unknown sources. If you are not sure or feel doubtful of whatever you have been told through the call or messages, just reach out directly to the respective agencies, institution, or companies in order to verify the information.
(Source: Bernama. Photos: Polis Perak.)
