A well-placed source told FMT that five individuals have been arrested, including the head of the syndicate who possesses a Datukship.
The suspects, aged between 33 and 43, were arrested following large-scale operations in 22 locations in Kuala Lumpur since early this morning. MACC and the immigration authorities had been conducting surveillance on their activities in the past year.
Operating with the aid of “insiders” in the Immigration Department, the syndicate is said to have cost the government hundreds of millions in revenue through foreign worker levies.
It is estimated to have printed hundreds of thousands of falsified work passes sold at between RM6,000 and RM8,000 a pass to undocumented migrants working illegally in Malaysia.
“They hacked into the department’s database by wiring transmitters in the department’s computer room, enabling them to change the passwords of officers, before printing the work passes from a remote location.
“That’s a very serious security breach,” the source said.
The source also revealed that the syndicate was able to remove or add individuals to the department’s “red alert” or blacklist allowing them to help certain people bypass security checks at airports for a certain price.
“All this is done remotely, outside the immigration’s office, using transmitters and a system cloned from the immigration’s database,” the source said.
MACC seized several computers and items used by the syndicate during a raid on a well-known hotel at Jalan Sultan Ismail, from which the syndicate was last believed to be operating.
It is said to move from one location to another to avoid being tracked down by the authorities, with luxurious hotels a regular base of operations.
MACC chief Azam Baki confirmed the arrests when contacted and said investigations are being conducted under Section 17 of the MACC Act.
He stressed that the probe will be done in a holistic manner to ensure that every syndicate member is brought to justice, including the immigration insiders.
In November last year, MACC crippled an immigration syndicate with the arrest of 53 people, including an immigration deputy director and 33 officers.