KUALA LUMPUR: Impersonating the very entity tasked with weeding them out, scammers have conned Malaysians of nearly RM720 million.
Police have received a total of 23 reports regarding cases involving individuals impersonating officers from the National Scam Response Centre (NSRC), resulting in the estimated losses incurred.
Commercial Crime Investigation Department at Bukit Aman director, Datuk Seri Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf, said that these reports cover the period from early January until now.
He explained that victims would receive calls from individuals claiming to be NSRC officers.
"These 'officers' would then inform the victims that the NSRC would deactivate their phone numbers due to complaints that their numbers had sent illegal links and fraudulent messages.
"For investigative purposes, the call would then be transferred to another individual posing as a police officer," he said during a special media briefing here today.
Ramli mentioned that victims would be directed to follow all given instructions, leading them to transfer money to the provided accounts.
"I want to remind everyone that NSRC is a call centre that only receives calls from the public and operates as a one-way communication channel. NSRC will not make calls to any individual, and any call claiming to be from NSRC is a scam," he said.
He added that since NSRC was established in October last year until November 30 this year, the total losses from NSRC cases amounted to RM173,339,234, with a successful blockage of RM33 million from that total.