BNM to develop national fraud portal to combat financial scams

KUALA LUMPUR - Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), is creating a special website to collect information about bank accounts and details used by fraudsters to commit financial crimes.

The portal, expected to be up and running by mid-2024, would only be accessible to banks.

BNM's Deputy Governor Datuk Marzunisham Omar explained that the goal was to gather information about suspicious bank accounts that scammers use to receive stolen money.

"With this database, the banking industry can use technology to detect patterns and connections between the accounts used by scammers.

"This can help banks stop fraudulent transactions more quickly and assist law enforcement agencies in their investigations," he said at a workshop on combating financial scams at Lanai Kijang, Kuala Lumpur today.

Marzunisham pointed out that this database could also prevent money from going into accounts used by criminals.

While he acknowledged that this would not happen overnight, he stressed the potential benefits for victims to recover their funds and prosecute scammers.

In a related matter, Marzunisham added that BNM and other agencies had used technology to help the National Scam Response Centre (NSRC) automate its processes for reporting and recording scam incidents.

NSRC has handled 15,723 financial scam cases with total losses valued at RM141.47 million from October 2022 until June 2023.

According to NSRC’s data, during this period, the centre received the most reports involving e-commerce scams amounting to 4,603 cases, with total losses amounting to RM13 million; this was followed by job scams (3,000 cases – RM44 million), phishing or Application Packaging Kit (APK) scams (2,573 cases – RM19 million), telecommunication scam (1,782 cases – RM34 million) and loan scam (1,432 cases – RM6.9 million).

The NSRC was a joint effort among the National Anti-Financial Crime Centre (NFCC), the police, BNM, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), financial institutions, and telecommunications companies.

Marzunisham advised the victims to call their bank’s 24-hour hotline or NSRC at 977 to report online financial scams on the spot.

He said immediate action was important to ensure the bank could intercept any stolen funds and allow the police to take action immediately.