KUALA LUMPUR – The long, tedious process taken by banks and police in handling reports of love scams are deterring victims from coming forward to seek help, according to a scam victim and a crime prevention specialist.
A woman who wants to be known as Maria, who fell victim to a love scam last year, said that she did not report the incident to her bank because she thought it would create undue stress for her father and she did not want to look silly in front of her family.
“Also, I have friends who have been in (similar) situations where they have gone through (the reporting process) and(found that) it was a very long process,” she said as a guest in a Scoop Insights podcast episode on love scams held by PODaBOOM, the podcast arm of Big Boom Media.
The podcast episode, focusing on love scam tactics, prevention, and victims’ experiences airs tomorrow, January 17, hosted by Big Boom Media head of podcast Shazmin Shamsuddin.
Maria also shared her experience of being scammed by someone who pretended to be an Indonesian-based Australian offshore engineer. The scammer managed to get an undisclosed sum of money from her after claiming that he needed it to settle an alimony payment to his ex-wife, which got “stuck” due to bank issues.
Meanwhile, Shamir Rajadurai, co-founder of Prevent Crime Now, who was also featured as a guest in the podcast, said that scam victims’ refusal to report such crimes is a major issue and it is driven by the lack of confidence among the victims that they would be able to get the amount of money lost.
He cited the data provided by the National Scam Response Centre (NSRC) which recorded losses of RM1.34 billion, in 33,234 online crime cases, from January 1 to December 8 last year.
Throughout the response centre’s operations from 2022 until last December, it has managed to retrieve only RM6 million out of RM1.34 billion – which accounts for only 0.45% of the total sum. RM19 million sum of money was also blocked from the transfer.
“I think just based on (these) statistics (alone) we can see how much money you get back. On average, when it comes to love scams alone, each person loses approximately about RM45,000 every year. Now (the) chances of me getting that RM45,000 back (is) very low,” he said.
Shamir explained that when victims report to their respective banks, they would find themselves being bombarded with “101 questions” as the banks want to make sure that they are not at fault here as they would be held liable.
“That is why they (victims) have to go through a process where they will ask questions like: What did you do? Did you give this (account) number?
“Did you give out your TAG number? Did you download an app? They have to ask those questions so that they can do the investigation.
“How big is the investigation team? I think (it) needs to be increased as well because it takes way too long for people to get an answer back sometimes. By then, the money is long gone,” he added.
When victims are told by the banks to file police reports, they are told that they are not the only ones filing reports on scams as the police have already received several similar reports – and the victims would be made to endure yet another lengthy process.
Shamir further explained that once the police received the report, they would attempt to track down the account holder. Police will block the account if it is found to be a mule account.
Improve the reporting process
Conversely, while Shamir welcomed the move to charge those who are selling their bank accounts, he felt that the process could be improved by a lot.
“This is because we also have to think of it as a patient in a hospital (where) you want to give them immediate care. The longer you wait, the more annoyed the patient is going to get.
“It is the same thing (with the scam victims). It is just that they’ve lost money (in this case).
“The psychological effects of (falling victim to scams) are huge. Therefore, it’s so important that I think the authorities and also the banking sector look into how we can make this process a bit easier and less stressful for the victims,” he stressed.
Commenting further on NSERC’s operation, Shamir highlighted that a total of RM30 million was allocated to the centre in 2023 and 2024.
“I am not saying it’s a bad initiative. (What) I am saying that something should be done for it to be (a) better (response centre).
“It is weird that we are spending so much money, but we are losing more (money to scams) So that’s one of the things I think should be looked into,” he added. – January 16, 2025