Hundreds of American women are being ensnared by Internet
scammers based in Malaysia, with some losing over a quarter of a million
dollars, as the country becomes an epicenter for online crime perpetrated by
Africans, U.S. officials say. The mostly Nigerian conmen, who enter Malaysia on
student visas, take advantage of the country’s good Internet infrastructure to
prey on lonely, middle-aged women, wooing them on dating websites before
swindling their savings, they said.
The scams are more sophisticated than most Nigeria based
operations, which most internet users have experienced at some time either via
email or advertising, helped by Malaysia’s advanced banking system, which
allows perpetrators to quickly set up accounts and receive international
transfers. U.S. officials say Malaysian police lack the resources and expertise
to tackle the problem and have yet to launch a single prosecution of a case
involving U.S. victim. Malaysian police were reported by local media last
December as saying that the number of Internet scam cases more than doubled in
2013 with total losses of more than $11 million. A total of 476 Africans had
been apprehended for suspected involvement, the report said. The Malaysian
police and the Nigerian embassy in Kuala Lumpur did not respond to Reuters’
request for comment. A spokesman for Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission said he was not aware of scammers operating in Malaysia, but added
they were known to have international networks. Tim Scherer, Consul General at
the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur, told Reuters that complaints about such scams
now made up more than 80 percent of inquiries to duty officers at the mission,
with a dozen new cases reported every week. Citizens of Australia, Canada and
Europe had also been targeted, he said. “These are not only rich widows who are
being preyed on, these are middle-class Americans who do not have this kind of
money to spare,” he said. “It can really transform their lives in a very
terrible way.”
The U.S. embassy estimates that U.S. victims are losing several
million dollars a year, with two women in the past 12 months losing more than
$250,000 each. There are more than 600 cases a year, and the amount lost by
each victim averages in the tens of thousands of dollars, it said. U.S.
officials say Malaysian police lack resources and expertise to take the problem
and have yet to launch a single prosecution of a case involving U.S. victim.
The actual figure of total losses is probably far higher,
Scherer said, because many victims are too embarrassed to come forward or do
not know who to contact. He said the scammers were highly sophisticated, often
grooming victims for months and using convincing techniques such as forging
letters purportedly from the U.S. ambassador in Malaysia. Large teams of
scammers typically trawl dating or Christian websites and contact middle-aged
women, the U.S. officials said. They pretend to be a Western man who then gets
into legal or business difficulties in Muslim-majority Malaysia. One U.S.
victim told Reuters she transferred a total of$260,000 to Malaysia, where the
man who claimed to love her said he was being prevented from returning to the
United States by Malaysian bureaucracy, which required hefty payments to
negotiate. The 59-year-old widow from Phoenix, Arizona, who declined to be
identified, said she had gone heavily into debt to make the payments to
“Charles”, and even flew to Malaysia in March to meet him. He never showed up,
but a European woman claiming to be his lawyer managed to bilk another $25,000
out of the woman before she returned to Arizona. Another victim, a women in her
late 50s in the eastern United States, said she sent her life savings of
$300,000 over two months to a Malaysia-based “American” man she met on dating
site Match.com, three years after her husband died. “I felt like I was in love
with this man and we have been moving forward with a life together real soon,”
she told Reuters. Match.com did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Along with other major U.S.-based dating sites, it features
prominent warnings about scammers, specifically telling users to be wary of
people who say they are Americans based abroad. The conmen have exploited
Malaysia’s drive to become a global education hub, securing student visas to
attend college, the U.S. officials said. Malaysia has pursued a policy of
attracting international students for more than a decade, allowing dozens of
foreign colleges to set up Malaysian campuses. Scherer said it was likely that
many of the Nigerians in Malaysia were not genuine students. As of March, there
were 9,146 Nigerians on student visas in Malaysia, the education ministry said,
out of 123,000 overseas students in total. “Once in the country as students,
there’s very little effort to verify their studies,” Scherer said. An official
with Malaysia’s education ministry said that last year it tightened its vetting
and tracking of overseas students. “We are aware of problems with some
international students, especially Nigerians,” the official said.
Posted by NewsRoom in Diaspora, Local Gossips
2 comments:
Bad Nigerians are now in Malaysia doing their shady deals....
This is serious...
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