PETALING JAYA: Syndicates are using special technology to dupe unsuspecting victims into believing they are being called by real law enforcement agencies.

The Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology is used to replicate phone numbers of the police, Bank Negara and other government agencies.

“The victims do not know they are being duped as the caller ID is identical to the real number of the relevant authority,” Federal head of CyberSecurity and Multimedia Investigation Division Asst Comm Mohd Kamaruddin Md Din told The Star, referring to reports on the Bukit Aman scam.

VoIP is a family of technologies, communication protocols and transmission techniques for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet.

The modus operandi of the syndicate involved in the Bukit Aman scam was to tell victims that they were being investigated by Hong Kong police for money-laundering activities.

“The syndicate then tells the victims that they must transfer all their savings into an account which is provided by the syndicate in order to verify that the funds are not linked to any cases,” ACP Kamaruddin said, adding that victims were told the money would be transferred back to their accounts once Bank Negara had completed investigations.

He said there had been 76 such cases reported nationwide amounting to losses of more than RM3.05mil between January and June this year.

ACP Kamaruddin advised the public to immediately contact the relevant authorities if they received such calls.

He said there had been a total of 367 cases involving bogus police, bank and government officials between January and June this year, resulting in losses of more than RM10mil.

“Last year, there was a total of 996 cases amounting to about RM17.4mil in losses,” he said, adding that in most cases the money could not be retrieved as the syndicates operated from outside the country.

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