He said while he welcomed Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) efforts to curb online scams, more was needed to be done by the government.
“The national anti-scam centre should be based in BNM and should involve multiple agencies, including the police, Association of Banks in Malaysia, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, Ombudsman for Financial Services (OFS), and the Attorney-General’s Chambers,” he said in a Facebook post.
He said 20,000 people fall victim to scams every year, with losses totalling over RM660 million.
“This works out to approximately 60 scam victims losing RM2 million every day,” he added.
The Lembah Pantai MP added that the government should also amend or change the loss limit for unauthorised online transactions from RM25,000 to RM100,000 for the Ombudsman for Financial Transactions so that more scam victims will get access to OFS services.
“A recovery fund should also be created to provide financial assistance to scam victims, either by providing full or partial compensation.”
He also suggested that a high-level task force be established to prosecute scammers and obtain the cooperation of Asean countries and Interpol to arrest and extradite criminals if the call centres or criminal activities of the scammers are based abroad.
Fahmi said multilateral ties and cooperation between Asean countries can help improve the respective countries’ cybersecurity and eliminate online scams in the region.
“The war against online scammers has just begun and it won’t end until they are successfully prosecuted in court and their victims get justice,” he said.
Earlier, BNM released a statement saying that financial institutions have been told to migrate from the one-time password (OTP) system to more secure forms of authentication for online transactions.
There were also plans to tighten fraud-detection regulations and triggers for blocking suspected scam transactions, having a “cooling-off period” for first-time registration of online banking services or secure devices, limiting authentication to one device per customer; and establishing a scam hotline for each bank.