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KUALA LUMPUR: The police have paralyzed a union that sells pre-activated SIM cards with the arrest of nine suspects.
According to the police, the SIM cards were sold online and the union is believed to have supplied these SIM cards to other scam groups as well.
Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) Director Comm Datuk Zainuddin Yaacob said police launched a series of raids between September 11-13 in Negri Sembilan and the Klang Valley.
Three local men and three women were arrested, as well as two Bangladeshi men and one Indonesian woman.
“The suspects were between 25 and 57 years old, and it is believed that they all participated in the distribution of pre-activated SIM cards to unions involved in fraud.
“During the raids, we seized 36,500 SIM cards, 28 SIM multiplexer units, six computers, two routers, a modem, a central processing unit, 17 mobile phones, 16 ATM cards and 120 master SIM cards,” he told reporters at the CCID Federal Headquarters here on Tuesday (September 15).
It added that the police also seized a Perodua Axia car, four credit cards, six stamps, three checks, a printer and RM14,997 in cash.
“Based on our investigations, (we believe) that the union has been operating for more than a year and would use identification documents of foreigners and locals to register and activate SIM cards and offer illegal international calling services.
“We found 10,000 images of foreign passports and 313 copies of local identification documents on one of the computers we seized.
“We believe that these documents were used to activate the SIM cards that would later be sold for between RM 15-17,” he said.
Comm Zainuddin added that several of these SIM cards had been used by bogus loan syndicates, phone scams, African scams, and online sales scams.
“These unions would use the SIM cards registered in the name of other people to make it difficult for the police to trace them.
“We have held the suspects for three days to help with further investigations,” he said, adding that the case was being investigated as fraud, unauthorized modification of computers or data and offenses of network facilities.
Meanwhile, Comm Zainuddin said last year that a total of 12,549 cases of phone scam, African scam, online sales and fake loan scam were reported involving RM277.16 thousand in losses.
“From January to September 13 of this year, a total of 11,432 cases were reported involving RM259.42 thousand in losses.
“We see this as an increase, and we must caution the public to be careful when dealing with someone online or over the phone.
“Never give out your personal details or account numbers and passwords,” he said, urging the public never to allow anyone to use their ATM cards or bank accounts for any deal.
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