30 foreigners nabbed over 'African scam' activities

SHAH ALAM: Police nabbed 30 foreigners including three women on suspicion of being involved in "African Scams" in raids at several locations around Selangor since August and this month so far.
Selangor police chief Datuk Mazlan Mansor said in raids carried out on four residential premises in Petaling Jaya, 14 foreigners were arrested comprising 12 Nigerians, an Ugandan and a Sierra Leonean.
He said eight laptops, 23 mobile phones, seven routers, a pen drive and a Samsung tablet were seized in the raids.
"At the same time, police also apprehended 16 foreign nationals comprising 15 Nigerians and a Filipino in raids at seven different locations around Bandar Sunway in Petaling Jaya, Batu 9 in Cheras and Serdang.
"In the raids, 34 mobile phones, a Samsung brand tablet and an i-Pad were also confiscated," he told a press conference at the Selangor Police Contingent Headquarters here, today.
According to Mazlan, with the arrests, police have solved 13 African Scam cases involving losses incurred by victims amounting to RM371,420.
He said all the cases were being investigated under Section 420 of the Penal Code for cheating.
In the meantime, he said that for the first period of this year until Sept 15, 262 African Scam cases involving "parcel scams", "love scams" and "escrow scams" were reported involving losses amounting to RM16.9 million.
We have advised the people many times, but still a lot of cases like this keep occurring. Recently, a 26-year-old female doctor got duped by a bogus doctor whom she befriended through a website and fell in love with the suspect and made 13 transactions amounting to RM70,000 to the man.
Hence, people are advised to be cautious in using social media applications and not be easily deceived. Also be reminded that the act of handing over bank account access with pin numbers to criminals can cause the account owner to be charged under Section 424 of the Penal Code," he said. — Bernama