Malaysians Lost A Lot - And We Mean, A LOT - Of Money To Cybercrimes This Year

Well, it seems like a lot of Malaysians did not get the memo.

Com­mu­­nications and Multimedia Minis­try (KKMM) deputy secretary-general Shakib Ahmad Shakir shocked the nation when he recently revealed that Malaysians lost a whopping RM67.6mil because of cybercrimes this year.

Yup, that's RM67.6mil in just three months.

Shakib told The Star Online that the sum lost came from 2,207 cases that were reported up until March this year.

Here's a breakdown of the cases:

• Telephone scams - 773 cases, RM26.8mil in losses
• eFinancial scams (credit card frauds, data breaches, identity thefts) - 212 cases, RM21.5mil in losses
• "African Scam" - 371 cases, RM14.9mil in losses
• Online shopping scams - 811 cases, RM4.2mil in losses

Despite the shocking amount Malaysians have lost to these scams, Shakib said the number of reported cases are still pretty low compared to previous years.

Citing statistics from the Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department, he said that a total of 13,058 cheating cases were reported in 2017 and last year, only 10,394 cases were recorded last year.

Unless Malaysians suddenly decide that they would like to get scammed in the last three quarters of the year, the number of cases will not best last year's.