KUCHING: The government has been urged to intensify efforts against online scams, given that investment scams have increased significantly.
Stampin MP Chong Chieng Jen said while the phishing and malware scams have decreased, the country has suffered over RM1 billion in losses to online frauds as of September, with investment scams at RM547,276,217 compared to RM472,156,391 in the same period last year.
“Meanwhile, telecommunication fraud is another major contributor, with RM334 million lost this year, closely following last year’s RM352 million,” he said in a statement.
He said it is very worrying that online scams and fraud have caused more losses in 2024 compared to the previous year, and the main bulk of the losses are due to telecommunication fraud and investment scams.
Chong said that inevitably, all scams will involve the opening of mule bank accounts to facilitate the transfers of fund.
“The government should thus take a stern action against banking institutes for allowing these mule accounts to operate and to facilitate such frauds,” he said.
He went on to say that all banks have the means to detect mule accounts, but such operation to detect such accounts will involve investigation costs to the banks.
“At the moment, as banks can wash their hands clear of all liabilities for such scams, there is thus no incentive for banks to launch a massive operation to clean up and clear their customers and their accounts.
“It is thus a matter of passing the costs to the customers and consumers by pushing all such losses to the consumers,” he said.
Therefore, he said, if the government serious about combating these online frauds and not merely lip servicing, it should pass a law to make banking institutes liable, if not wholly, at least partially, for the losses because banks allow mule accounts to operate.
On a related note, according to data from the Minister of Finance in reply to Chong’s question in Parliament on the effect of ‘kill switch’ and One-Time Password (OTP) replacement mechanism for online transfers and banking transactions, the ‘kill switch’ and other new authentication mechanisms introduced by the banks since 2023 has successfully blocked the transfer of RM644 million fund in suspicious transactions or scams.
(The kill switch is a self-service security feature that lets you protect your funds from online scams and enhances your online banking security.)
“In 2023, RM383 million suspicious online transfers of fund was blocked and in 2024 up to August, RM261 million online transfer of fund was blocked. These have saved many would-be victims of such bank scams.
“In the reply, it was also stated that after the implementation of these new features for on-line transfers, there is an obvious drop in bank scams via phishing and malware,” he said.
