These contracts were said to be for the maintenance of streetlights all over Sabah as well as a package to clean up parks and construct buildings in the Sipitang oil and gas industrial park.

The suspect, who was said to have been operating since early last year, was arrested by the Kota Kinabalu commercial crime unit on Dec 31.

City police chief Mohd Zaidi Abdullah said all six businessmen had lodged reports against the suspect, between September and January.

He said initial investigations showed that the suspect had offered the same projects to his victims. “The suspect would then request the contractors to pay a sum of money in order to procure the tender for the projects.”

To convince this was the real deal, Zaidi said the suspect would somehow come up with the tender letters and also provide bank cheques as payment cost to the victims so that they could start work on the projects.

“The only catch was that the victims were told not to deposit the cheques until given the green light by the suspect,” he said. “While waiting for this go-ahead, the suspect would then ask for further payments from the contractors. But after months of waiting, the victims finally sensed they were being conned as they could not get in touch with the suspect.”

He said the suspect has been remanded for further investigations.