GEORGE TOWN: A total of 29 foreigners, believed to be scammers posing as officers from law enforcement agencies, including the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), were detained during a raid on a bungalow.
It all started when a Cameroonian man in Selangor answered a call from a Cameroonian woman who was being held against her will in Penang.
He lodged a police report, leading to the raid on the bungalow where scammers had folders and uniforms with crests of the US Department of Justice, FBI and Canada’s Ottawa Police Service.
Police rescued the 25-year-old woman and arrested 29 foreign nationals at the four-storey bungalow in Bukit Mertajam on July 16.
Penang police chief Comm Datuk Dennis Lim Kwang Keng said the woman is believed to have been lured with a job offer before being smuggled into Malaysia from Cambodia via an illegal route.
The 29 suspects, aged between 21 and 55, comprised 20 men and nine women from Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Cambodia, Nigeria and South Africa.
Police seized electronic devices, folders with the logos of the US Department of Justice and FBI, uniforms like those of the Ottawa Police Service, and handwritten scripts used to coach scammers.
“The syndicate targeted victims in Canada and the US by posing as FBI officers and Canadian police officers,” Comm Lim said during a press conference yesterday.
The scripts taught callers to act as fraud investigators, question victims about fake transactions and pass calls to another syndicate member posing as an officer.
