KUALA LUMPUR, April 18 — Police have detained 52 Chinese nationals suspected of being involved in a syndicate dubbed, ‘Macau Scam’ at six luxury condominiums around Kuala Lumpur since yesterday.

Kuala Lumpur Police deputy chief Datuk Law Hong Soon said the 52 comprised 26 men and 26 women aged between 18 to 52 years.

“Surveillance and investigations by police for two months resulted in 15 complaints about the syndicate scam from the public,” he told a press conference held at the Kuala Lumpur Contingent Police Headquarters here tonight.

He said police raided the six luxury condominiums around Kuala Lumpur during an ‘Ops Pelican’ at 6 pm yesterday until 5 am today.

“They used luxury condominiums which had tight security in order to hide their activities from the authorities,” he said.

Law said employees of the syndicate were wrongfully confined in the operating premises and barred from leaving.

“Each syndicate member was paid a salary of RM2,000 to carry out the activities and they had their own cook from China who managed their daily needs to prevent the operators from communicating with outsiders,” he said.

He said in their modus operandi, the suspects would telephone the victims and inform them that they had won a lucky draw worth millions from an overseas company.

“The syndicate members would give a telephone number for the victim to call and claim the gift offered. Before it is given, the syndicate member would ask the victim to pay the taxes and insurance on the gift, into his bank account,” he said.

Law said after the money had been banked into the account, the suspect could no longer be contacted and the victim would not get the purported prize money.

Alternatively, the victim would get a telephone call from a person claiming to be a local bank officer who said that the victim’s credit card account had an outstanding payment.

“The victim would be asked to contact someone who was supposedly an officer of Bank Negara Malaysia if he did not want his name to be blacklisted or his account frozen. Then the victim would carry out the suspect’s instructions to transfer money into a certain bank account through e-banking or cash deposit machine,” he said.

He said police investigations found that the 52 had entered the country via tourist visas.

They had been duped by the syndicate with an offer of valid employment here but were made to work as operators for the Macau Scam.

Police also seized 101 computer components, 66 laptops, 55 handphones, 10 bags containing telephone number pamphlets, cash of RM14,955 and Yuan 28,695.

“This is the biggest Macau Scam operations carried out by the police this year, involving a total seizure of RM200,000..and police are hunting down the mastermind,” he said. — Bernama