News & Reviews:   online scam

Besut Police Chief Supt Azamuddin Ahmad@Abu recently revealed that a 67-year-old former teacher in Jertih, Besut, Terengganu, lost over  RM80,000 after he was duped by a TikTok Shop scam. The victim fell for the scam, which involved a fake offer to open an online business on TikTok Shop.

The Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) has revealed that online fraud cases in Malaysia have caused losses exceeding RM19 million from 1 January to 24 March this year. Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) acting director Datuk Rohaimi Md Isa added that online fraud cases have also risen by 36.9% compared with the same period last year.

The Malaysian founder and CEO of Singapore-based Replyr.ai, Dylan Tan, recently took to the Entrepreneurs and Startups in Malaysia Facebook group to share a new chatbot he created that is aimed at fighting scammers. An AI chatbot that will “infinitely waste scammers’ time on WhatsApp”, it’s hilariously named “Scammers On Hold AI” or “SOHAI”.

Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil recently revealed that Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp and Telegram have been identified as the most preferred platforms for scammers to commit fraud in Malaysia. He added that losses from scams and fraud on these 4 platforms had easily reached hundreds of millions of ringgit.

Previously, we shared how the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) removed 63,652 pieces of fraudulent online content on social media in 2024. Well, it looks like the new year will bring more of the same, as MCMC has received over 4,000 requests to remove online content so far in 2025.

The Cyber Incident Response Centre (Cyber999), which is under the purview of CyberSecurity Malaysia, revealed that it recorded a total of 5,181 cybersecurity incidents so far this year. Specifically, the number is recorded from January to October 2024.

Another day in Malaysia and another Malaysian is scammed or cheated. Online scams alone have involved billions of ringgit lost or stolen and new AI tools are enabling scammers as well. Once lost or stolen, recovering said assets can be near impossible (unless you’re really lucky). So, it is better to not get scammed in the first place by being aware of all the possible scams that exist here in Malaysia.

In our opinion, knowing is half the battle won so we’ve listed our top 3 common scams here in Malaysia. In addition, there are already many official online resources such as the Latest Trending Commercial Crimes ebook from PDRM, the Financial Consumer Alert list from Bank Negara Malaysia and more. Read on to avoid being scammed in Malaysia.

The Minister of Communications has revealed several concerning statistics regarding fraud and scam content in our country. These include how Malaysia has lost RM3.18 billion to online scams between 2021 and April 2024.

Yesterday, we reported how Meta and TikTok have pledged their commitments to monitor fake news and 3R (race, religion, royalty) issues on their platforms following a meeting with MCMC and the Communications Ministry. Today, MCMC and PDRM released a joint statement following up on the matter, urging the 2 companies to step up monitoring of harmful content.

Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching today revealed that a whopping RM1.34 billion of losses due to online scams were recorded in our country last year. This is according to the National Scam Response Centre’s (NSRC) data from 1 January to 8 December 2023.