KUALA LUMPUR: Police in Malaysia have arrested 58 people after busting an alleged love scam operating at a Kelantan resort believed to have targeted Singapore men.
The syndicate, which appears to have been operating for about a month, used women posing as Indonesians to lure victims emotionally, said Kelantan police chief Yusoff Mamat on Thursday (Apr 23).
“Their modus operandi was to send messages before building relationships through WhatsApp without video calls, and eventually deceiving victims into sending money,” Yusoff was quoted as saying by local media.
The rented resort premises had been converted into a call centre to run the purported scams, he added. The syndicate allegedly took up several rooms and a hall, reported local news outlet New Straits Times.
The operation is believed to have been running since late March from noon to midnight daily, and was managed by three supervisors and 55 operators.
Yusoff said that the 58 suspects detained included two Malaysians, with the foreigners mostly being Chinese nationals. The suspects – who comprise 53 men and five women – were aged between 20 and 30.
„Those arrested were people from China, Myanmar, India and Pakistan, as well as two locals,” Yusoff said.
Investigations found that 33 of the foreign nationals had valid travel documents while the others did not.
Police seized 46 computers, five laptops, 118 mobile phones, as well as eight routers, believed to include Starlink devices, used to ensure stable connectivity and evade detection, said Yusof.