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“The person then gave me a link to an application to verify my order; however, after downloading the application, my phone suddenly shut down and would often turn off on its own,”

Vishing, short for voice phishing, refers to fraudulent phone calls or voice messages designed to trick victims into providing sensitive information, like login credentials, credit card numbers, or bank details.

This involved 5,533 victims, or 6.4% of the 86,266 online scam victims recorded during the period, with overall losses amounting to RM2.7 billion.

A total of 489 land scam cases were reported in the past three years with almost RM300mil in losses recorded.

As of May 19, 74 cases had been reported so far this year involving RM60.6mil in losses.

In the latest case, a 69-year-old businessman lodged a report on the illegal transfer of ownership over three plots of land in Gombak on May 22.

Several factors have contributed to land fraud cases, including buyers’ lack of knowledge on land sales, not following procedures and laws, shortcomings of land office personnel, as well as mistakes by lawyers.

Fraudsters posing as customer support staff at online service platforms have swindled Hongkongers out of about HK$190mil (RM114mil or US$24.3mil) since January, with police saying they have spotted an increase in cases.

“They claimed the victim had wrongly bought a chargeable service and, if the victim did not immediately follow the instructions to cancel the related service, they would be charged or their account would be frozen, as an excuse to coerce the victim into transferring funds and stealing their money.”