The syndicates have “evolved” over the years with growingly sophisticated tricks.

Following the advancement in information technology and ubiquitous availability of Internet, telephone and online scams are beginning very common in recent years, making one surrender one’s hard-earned savings on the slightest oversight.

Let’s take a look at the numbers to get an idea how serious such scams are.

Police statistics show that more than RM200 million was involved in scams in the first four months of this year alone, phone and short message scams being the most common.

Members of the public seem to have lost their “immunity” against scams, rendering themselves particularly vulnerable.

Let’s talk about the Macau scam which has been widely reported on the local media and which the police have repeatedly warned Malaysians against.

Unfortunately, many still fall into the traps of the scammers, only to realize their follies after losing much of their savings to the swindlers.

Last month, the Perlis police revealed that a retired civil servant lost RM373,000 of her lifetime savings to Macau scammers, and this was only tip of the iceberg.

A Kelantan state assemblyman was another victim in the Macau scam, having lost more than RM80,000, also last month; while in the latest incident, a multimillionaire lost RM21 million to a phone scammer he was made to believe to be a bank employee.

Illegal syndicates are getting increasingly sophisticated nowadays as they employ all sorts of tricks to win the trust of their victims who would then knowingly transfer the money into their accounts. Obviously these syndicates have set up a highly professionalized work flow that would readily fool the uninitiated and simple-minded.

Additionally, thanks to the phenomenal growth in the popularity of online shopping, Internet scams are now omnipresent, and potential victims are cajoled into downloading some fake e-commercial apps to make the payment, from where their personal data will become compromised.

Others fall into the traps of scammers while looking for well-paying jobs online.

In short, the syndicates have “evolved” over the years with growingly sophisticated tricks with the motive of squeezing the last bits of savings from the victims’ bank accounts.

As the scammers keep “improving” on their skills and techniques, it is imperative that members of the public keep themselves abreast of the latest information in erecting a formidable “firewall” to ward off the con artists.

Two major rules of thumb to prevent ourselves from falling into these people’s traps:

• Stay calm and not to get panicked just because of a stranger’s phone call; and
• Don’t be greedy, and never download any app of unknown sources just to save a few bucks and get all your deposits withdrawn by unauthorized people.

Meanwhile, the police must also take more stringent actions to round up the scammers.

As mentioned earlier, these syndicates have become more and more professional in their modus operandi, making it increasingly hard for ordinary people to fend off.

It is essential that the enforcement authorities tackle these syndicates from the very root to safeguard the people’s property.

With online transactions becoming a predominant trend nowadays, we can foresee that more and more scammers will look for their victims online. The police cannot afford to defer their actions or more Malaysians will see their hard-earned savings changing hands.