PENANG: A former three-term state assemblyman is also a victim of an investment scam.

Lee Hack Teik, 71, a three-term state assemblyman for Pengkalan Kota from 1995 to 2008, was one of the over 8,000 victims in an oil palm investment scam.

The agent in the RM600 million investment scheme has since disappeared.

Many victims have lodged police reports and Lee was present at a crime prevention talk demanding the police to reveal the outcome of the investigation.

During the question-and-answer session at the talk, Lee urged the speaker, ACP Lai Lee Ching from the Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) Bukit Aman, to disclose the findings.

In replying to Lee, Lai said the police would need to check the reports lodged against the alleged investment scam before classifying the case under commercial crime or other departments.

Lai was invited by Bayan Baru member of parliament Sim Tze Tzin to speak at a crime prevention talk organized by Lions Club Of Penang South West and Lions Club of Penang Island New Century.

Lai told the participants at the talk that older victims often lost large sums of money to scammers while young people aged between 20 and 30 form the largest group of victims.

She also said Chinese was the largest ethnic group falling victim to cyber scams.

A total of 2,070 Chinese were duped last year, followed by the Malays (788), Indians (262) and other ethnic groups (114).

1,065 teachers were duped into cyber scams last year, Lai said, adding that the police and the education ministry had been carrying out prevention campaigns to stop more teachers from falling prey to scams.

The number of phone-related scams increased from 4,969 cases in 2018 to 7,734 cases last year.

In Penang, the police received a total of 179 reports on phone-related scams involving RM13.84 million during the first six months this year, more than for the whole of last year.