By Amirul Mohd Sajadi
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 25 (Bernama) — Nearly RM1 billion in losses from online scams during the first six months of this year is a clear signal that domestic enforcement alone is no longer sufficient to curb increasingly sophisticated transnational syndicates.
Criminologist Prof Datuk Dr P. Sundramoorthy said Malaysia must strengthen international cooperation to enable faster intelligence-sharing, money-trail tracking and enforcement action across jurisdictions.
He said Malaysia should seriously consider joining the International Anti-Fraud Coalition, which China is expected to launch in September and which is expected to involve more than 40 countries.
“If the coalition provides an effective mechanism for intelligence-sharing, operational coordination and money-trail tracking, Malaysia should seriously consider joining it,” he told Bernama.
On Aug 18, Communications Minister Datuk Seri Fahmi Fadzil said online scam losses in Malaysia reached RM958 million between January and June this year.
Sundramoorthy said cooperation with foreign agencies was becoming increasingly urgent as scam syndicates now operated as organised criminal networks exploiting technology and digital infrastructure across multiple countries.
“The victims may be in Malaysia, the scammers in another country, the digital servers in a third country, while the money is transferred through several countries,” he said.
He said such structures meant enforcement action within a single jurisdiction risked disrupting only part of the criminal chain without reaching the masterminds behind the operations.
“If investigations focus only on Malaysia, we may arrest the middlemen but fail to identify the real masterminds,” he said.
The international coalition, which will be launched at the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum 2026 in Lianyungang, China, aims to coordinate action against cross-border telecommunications fraud through joint investigations and coordinated enforcement.
Sundramoorthy said the speed of information-sharing between countries was crucial as proceeds from scams could be moved through several layers of international accounts within a very short time.
He said previous cross-border cooperation involving China and several countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia, had resulted in the arrest and repatriation of more than 20,000 scam suspects this year.
However, he said the true measure of success should not be limited to the number of arrests or the value of money recovered, but rather the ability of the international system to dismantle the entire ecosystem supporting such criminal networks.
On geopolitical considerations, he said ideological differences between countries should not hinder cooperation against transnational crime, provided Malaysia’s sovereignty, laws and data protection were respected.
“Scammers do not wait for diplomatic disputes to be resolved before moving their money or operations.
“Malaysia’s participation should be assessed based on security and crime-fighting interests, not geopolitics alone,” he said.
— BERNAMA
