KUALA LUMUR: Eight more Malaysians recently succumbed to a variation of the Nigerian Scam, losing a total of RM1.3 million.
Police said a Malaysian arrested yesterday had confessed to being part of a syndicate that contacted potential victims by e-mail, offering them quick money in return for financing the clearance of imported luxury items halted at the ports.
The syndicate apparently had four other members, all of them Nigerian nationals.
The hardest hit of the victims, according to police, is a woman from Taiping. She lost RM650,000, they said.
A police officer told FMT that the syndicate carried out its transactions through four bank accounts registered in the name of the 55-year-old Malaysian accomplice.
He said police acting on reports from the victims picked him up at a luxury hotel in Bukit Bintang late yesterday afternoon after initially facing difficulties in tracking him down because he had various addresses.
"Finally we got a break yesterday, after picking up his son-in-law in Bentong,” he added.
“The suspect so far has confessed that he initially was approached by a Nigerian who asked him to be a local partner for a trading company that the latter claimed had been in operation since late last year."
The suspect is detained at the Petaling Jaya district police headquarters and helping police track down the Nigerians.
According to police, he said it was only recently that he came to know the real nature of the business he had involved himself in and had received only RM50,000 for his role in the scam.
A police check on the four bank accounts showed that only RM7,000 remained.
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