MALAYSIA (TR) – Local police here have arrested over 2,200 individuals, including five Japanese nationals, during a massive series of nationwide raids targeting large-scale telecom fraud syndicates, authorities announced, reports NHK (May 6).
During a press conference in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, police revealed that a total of 2,251 suspects were apprehended between January and February as law enforcement dismantled secret hubs used to carry out tokushu sagi (specialized fraud) operations. In such a scam, perpetrators pose on the telephone as members of law enforcement or other persons of authority to defraud victims.
In a concentrated wave of raids spanning late January to early February, authorities nabbed 430 suspects. Of those, 270 were foreign nationals, with the five Japanese suspects taken into custody alongside Chinese and Indonesian nationals.
According to investigators, the syndicates operated from the shadows to evade detection. The fraud groups ran their operations out of residential homes, commercial properties and buildings that had been specifically renovated to conceal their illicit activities from law enforcement.
The arrests highlight a growing trend of Japanese nationals being lured into transnational crime rings operating in Southeast Asia.
Authorities across the region, including in Cambodia and Myanmar, have recently intensified their crackdowns following a string of similar high-profile busts involving foreign scammers.
