Faster response needed to address online scams, Dewan Rakyat told

KUALA LUMPUR: Late response could be one of the reasons hampering efforts to track monies lost to online scammers, says Deputy Finance Minister II Yamani Hafez Musa.

“We have to work with a faster response. I think that is the key here.

“When the response is late, that will cause problems to track the monies that were lost,” he said during the Oral Question and Answer in the Dewan Rakyat on Thursday (Aug 4).

Yamani was responding to a proposal by Khoo Poay Tiong (PH-Kota Melaka) for a one-stop centre comprising Bank Negara, commercial banks, police and Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) be set up to address online scam cases.

Khoo, in his supplementary question, said this would allow the four agencies to take swift action as soon as the report was lodged.

“Today when the victim lodged a complaint, the bank will ask them to go to the police to lodge a report. When they make a police report, the police will divert them to Bank Negara.

“The victims are like a ball who gets passed around and their money's gone. More victims will be cheated by such syndicates,” he said, addingt that Bank Negara should also take a more proactive approach.

Yamani said online scams were handled by the police’s Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) response centre which was supported by various agencies.

To a question from Tengku Zulpuri Shah Raja Puji (PH-Raub) on steps taken by the government to adopt epayment transactions and the Acts that govern ebanking transactions, he said Bank Negara continuously monitors payment systems especially on matters related to cybersecurity resilience, customer data protection, critical service providers money laundering, terrorism financing as well as payment scams.

Yamani also said there were 20,701 online scam cases reported in 2021 and 10,468 cases as at June 30.