Police busted a fraud syndicate, dubbed “African Scam”, with the arrest of a Filipino woman and 10 Nigerian men after raiding four locations around Setapak.

Wangsa Maju district police chief Supt Mohd Roy Suhaimi Shariff said the raids were carried out from 6pm yesterday to 3am today.

"The suspects, aged between 25 and 35 years, had entered the country using student visas. Police also seized 18 mobile phones, 17 laptops, eight thumb drives, a hard disk, a printer and various documents believed to be related to their criminal activities," Mohd Roy said at the Wangsa Maju police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur this evening.

He said police tracked the suspects based on reports received from a businessman who had fallen prey to their scam.

Mohd Roy said the complainant lodged a police report yesterday and a police team from the Commercial Crimes Investigation Division started to track the IP address used by the suspects.

Syndicate has been active since 2010

  

"Raids were conducted on four condominium units rented by the syndicate in Setapak and used as headquarters to commit fraud," he said, adding that the syndicate had been active since 2010.

Mohd Roy said the complainant claimed that he had fallen prey to a woman after becoming acquainted with the suspect for three months via the social networking site Facebook.

"The victim was asked to pay Customs tax of RM25,247 in stages through bank accounts belonging to the suspect to obtain certain goods purchased online by the victim," he said.

The victim felt cheated when there were no goods as stated by the suspect after the victim had paid the tax.

According to Mohd Roy, more than 10 police reports have been received on the syndicate so far, with losses amounting to RM1.5 million in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur.

All the suspects would be remanded for four days, from today.

- Bernama